Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I wish I were on yonder hill
'Tis there I'd sit and cry my fill
And every tear would turn a mill

I wish I sat on my true love's knee
Many a fond story he told to me
He told me things that ne'er shall be

Siúil, siúil, siúil a rúin
Siúil go sochair agus siúil go ciúin
Siúil go doras agus éalaigh liom
Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán

[Go, go, go, my love
Go quietly and go peacefully
Go to the door and fly with me
May you go safely, my darling]

His hair was black, his eye was blue
His arm was strong, his word was true
I wish in my heart I was with you

Siúil, siúil, siúil a rúin
Siúil go sochair agus siúil go ciúin
Siúil go doras agus éalaigh liom
Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán

[Go, go, go, my love
Go quietly and go peacefully
Go to the door and fly with me
May you go safely, my darling]

Dean,

I have started seeing your face in the hills. This is how I know it’s time. I am sore to leave you and yet—there is a time for all things. Perhaps the trees feel sorrow at the shedding of their leaves each autumn. Perhaps you feel some sorrow at my going, too. I cannot pretend to know your heart, though I’ll admit I’ve longed to, for some seasons.

I will see you again, I know, in the hills and grasses of wherever my roaming shall take me. Whether you see me again, is up to you. I do not know.

You have held my heart captive two winters. I expect I shall leave it with you, even when my liberated body sets sail for America.

Just so, I am yours:
Your faithful servant, shepherd, lonely and wandering guide,
Castiel.

Just west of the town Porthgwarra, St. Levan, Robert Singer’s farm lies, a mess of ravaged land gaping out onto a fretting sea. In the farmhouse, which sits within a knot of restless hummocks cresting and falling, Robert Singer limps from room to room, awaiting the arrival of his lately orphaned godson, and this godson’s younger brothers.

“Godson” seems a generous name to the boy in question, who can no longer be called boy, but man, and has not seen his godfather in fifteen of his twenty-four winters. What he remembers of Robert is gruff and sarcastic, round for someone so tall and now, apparently, nearly bedridden.

At the bow of a ship from New York to Plymouth, Dean Winchester stands, watching the waves hulk around the boat, loping over ice waters. His younger brother Sam is beside him, watching the waves and fascinated by the waters which, for all their churning, seem to boil. Beside him is their bastard brother, Adam, the product of their father’s inability to think beyond a present tense need to act on his own wants and desires, or to look at the needs and hurts of others.

John dead, Mary long dead, and Adam alone following Kate Milligan’s fall to cholera, Sam insisted that Adam accompany them to a desolate farm owned by a desolate man, thousands of miles from the cracked earth and beating sun of Kansas. It’s only on account of Sam’s insistence that the illegitimate product of John Winchester’s baser desires—and there were many—is allowed to follow them. Dean will not be the boy’s ward.

Yes, John dead, Mary long dead, Mr Singer sending word across the sea that Dean is his sole beneficiary and to inherit the farm after his passing, which Robert speaks of with a prophetic, apocalyptic sense of immediacy… Dean has more than enough to worry about. Caring for Robert Singer is now a duty—of thanks, of unspoken contract. Caring for Sam is an imperative, a priority—always will be. Caring for Adam never came into the equation until Kate’s passing, when Sam insisted, and insisted with even more vehemence when Robert’s letter arrived, that familial duty be extended even to the bonds of bastard sons.

Dean remembers an open land of sun and empty pockets—at least for him and his brothers. This is the land he has left. He has heard of England as a sodden country where the gray moods of its inhabitants manifest the weather and turn the sky bleak, pull it down to earth. But for the first time in his life, Dean will own property, gray or not. Leaps of faith are made easier when the foundations you're jumping from threaten to crumble any minute.

Still, his memories are like teeth against his abraded heart.

Ocean wind beats about Sam’s long hair, long enough to take shears to. Dean has joked repeatedly on this journey, which has spanned many weeks, from Kansas all the way to New York, New York slowly to Plymouth, that Sam will be mistaken for one of the shaggier sheepdogs on the farm they travel to. Sixteen days at sea, and they’re finally drawing near. They must be the only damned souls trying to enter England from America—for four decades, everyone around the British Isles has been trying to leave, like England is a stroke of bad luck as well as a force of subjugation. The Irish, during and following the famine; the Scottish, during the Highland Clearances. The whole world is fleeing England like a bad smell, pushing west, and Dean and his brothers seem to be the only poor bastards travelling to it, east, against the current of migrants desperate for a better life. So what is it they are travelling toward, and what will meet them when they arrive?

At least the predominant direction of migration means the sanitation on this boat is better than those swarmed with people, and headed to America. Souls huddled together, rancid water which flips the stomach, typhus… Well. It’s well past the turn of a new decade: 1874—perhaps those days are gone. Perhaps not: Dean has heard rumours of the streets of London, mired in fog—smog like clouds of coal, smog so thick you can barely see the faces of houses at the other side of the road. Streets covered in soot and disease, where the problem of poverty is solved through eviction. He’s been glad to have grown as a farm hand all his life, away from the stifles of city life and the press of other eyes. A rising tide of sadness swells in him, thinking of their home at the edge of the Great Plains, the vast expanse of freedom which met Dean’s gaze every time he rose his eyes above the corn he was reaping, the vines he was tending to, the ruddy earth he was ploughing.

Corn reaping is gone. The golden fields are gone. Robert’s letter came, not a moment too soon: grasshoppers are shearing through the fields of those Kansas farms even as the ship Dean stands at, stomach turning, bounces along lurching waves toward a port of a new city. What ravages will be left of Dean’s old home when they are done, he has no idea.

And from the port of Plymouth, to a backwards farm with no doubt backwards people, and with Robert’s no doubt insane demands for its care and upkeeping as well as his own, without so much as a thank you to water them down, only his gruff and snide comment and perhaps, if Dean is lucky, a swig of his constant supply of whiskey.

Hold a match within ten feet of Robert Singer, and he’d burst into flames. His breath could be bottled and used to run steamboats. Cut him, and he’d bleed enough ethanol to warm a village during winter.

Same with all of John's friends.

Robert married an English woman when Dean was eight, well-to-do and with not quite enough blue blood in her to call her noble, but certainly in possession of some land, occupying the strange liminal space of the middle classes in England. The two moved to Cornwall, not to be seen again. Word came back that Mrs Singer had died in childbirth, the infant too, when Dean was twelve. By this time, John Winchester was too far gone in rum and rage to care much about his oldest friend across a cold, starlit sea—he was also too busy, it turned out, sleeping with the mother of Adam and siring a son he couldn’t afford the care of. And now the responsibility of care has fallen, as it always does, onto Dean’s shoulders.

People bustle around them. Less rancid  by far than the boats crowded by impoverished masses from Liverpool, Exeter, Southampton, Plymouth, the place still reeks below deck. Dean has opted, more nights than one, to stand shivering at the hull, the stars above him his only company, hauling his sack coat round him and wishing John had bought him a thick woollen greatcoat, like he did for Adam on the boy’s tenth birthday. With money Dean had earnt the family.

The wind might lash his face, his skin might grow stiff from the cold and the spray of salt, but he needs the space to clear his thoughts, to honour and dwell on the land he’s leaving, will perhaps never be able to honour and dwell on again.

Goldin fields, flat and sure as a promise. Golden grains, stiff with the sun.

He sniffs under a gray sky.

Sam glances over to him.

Kansas was easy to farm. The land was sunbitten but flat and tenable. You could see for miles: keep an eye on cattle while you swept your employer’s front porch; glance up at the sun, anywhere, and know the time and what the weather would be, come evening. Dean knew the land, knew the smell of the first day of harvest, knew what earth was good and would yield to spill out in vibrant crops, and what soil would make the fruit taste sour, come fall. A fount of knowledge and love for the beaten ground he spent two decades on, wasted, on account of having nowhere left to roam.

Dean sighs.

“What do you want?” he asks his brother, a little harsher than intended, but Sam, growing steadily into manhood, has had ample opportunity to get used to the hard bites of sentence which labourers will offer him for looking with intended words instead of speaking them.

“Another day’s travel,” Sam says, “and then we’ll have arrived. I spoke to the captain this morning.”

“And then how long?” Dean asks.

Sam looks at him, nonplussed.

“How long, from there, to the farm?”

“Oh,” Sam blinks. “Well, from the coachstation, a day’s travel.”

“Stagecoach is expensive,” Dean shakes his head. “We’ve already spent a fortune shipping this one over here, with us,” he gestures to Adam, who squirms, looking away.

“I doubt we can walk it.”

“We have legs.”

“We’ve been travelling for nearly a month…”

“Then what’s a few days longer?” Dean asks. Adam looks down as Dean speaks, knowing this pertains most to him: the boy hasn’t worked a day in his life, and wiry, barely approaching adolescence, he’ll struggle to keep up on the long walk to the Cornish coast.

“I’ll pay for the stagecoach,” Sam grumbles, to which Dean glowers. Wind whips at Sam’s hair as he speaks, he raises his voice above the knife-slash of the waters. “I have money saved from my time working for the Braedens.”

This is loaded. Sam lost his job working for that family because Mr Braeden caught Dean down the alley beside the tavern locked in an embrace with his daughter, one dark-haired Miss Lisa Braeden. He doesn’t regret the many punches swung at him by her father—Dean has gotten in trouble before for charming, courting and seducing young women beyond his station—but he does regret Sammy losing his job.

Dean clamps his jaw and stares out at the horizon. Vaguely, in the far distance, a hulking gray mass of land approaches from beneath the white vale of clouds. Gulls have begun screeching around the boat, riding the rippling air above it and tilting about like puppets with their strings pulled taut above the air.

The next few hours, the bleak mass grows bigger, slowly fleshing out into dull and muted colours. Adam watches excitedly from the hull, a little way away from Dean. Sam is caught in conversation with a painter returning from his travels to North Carolina. The man is too intentionally bohemian to be actually impoverished; it rubs Dean up the wrong way, and he’d bet money the man’s father went to university. He stares angrily at the washing, cold waters. His father, the vagrant that he was, ensured that never in Dean’s life would he have a strong sense of place, belonging, roots. Or so he’d thought: now he realises it was the soil he tilled, the wheat which unfolded into grain in his hands, the chirruping streams he would bathe himself in, tiny fishes intrigued by this tall, unscaled intruder nipping lightly at his heels.

The new old country draws closer across the calming waters. Adam, when he has them, directs his questions to Sam, fearful of Dean’s bitten and scathing answers.

Plymouth is a strange and shuddering city, Sam comments that Dean would like it more were the weather not so haggard and gray, but Dean replies that the weather is all part of it: no more the ruddy golden light of sunsets in Kansas, the green dawns opening like a window in summer to fields cloaked in mist and haze, ready for the tending. How anything but sorrow can grow in England is beyond Dean; stone buildings rise on every side dull and uncompassionate, not like the warm wooden frames in the centre of the towns Dean is used to, with their alleys smelling sweet with rot and heat in spite of the ammonia occasionally stinging the air. Here is a barricade to the senses, nothing subtle, everything grim.

Dean pays for the stagecoach—which is, probably, what Sam planned for all along. They catch it late into the night, Adam seems sad there’s little of the landscape he’ll be able to make out, but soon falls asleep on Sam’s shoulder in the awkward, jolting carriage, starting awake often at every ditch and hump the rickety wooden wheels encounter. The stagecoach stops a few miles short of Singer’s farm, which the coach driver refers to more than once as ‘the Eerie’—probably some in-joke about how God-forsaken the place must be. The man in tones and language Dean has to frown to understand, directs them along a long dirt road cloaked on either side by trees. They get lost more than once before finding their way so that from their journey from Plymouth to the coachstation to Mr Singer’s farm, evening has dipped into night and again, rises into the mists of dawn. Eventually, the damp and treecloaked path opens out into view of Mr Singer’s farmhouse, clothed in thin wisps of fog and blanketed by hills.

The house is big, though not quite big enough to be called grand, and would be called square were it not for the unexpected turns in its architecture and the stables and storehouses adjoining either side of it, and would be called gray, were it not for the surprising warmth of hue in the stone, and the ivy crawling over its face.

Dean blinks blearily and won’t admit aloud that yes, walking all the way from Plymouth would’ve been a very bad idea indeed, but he certainly thinks it.

They approach the door. The grounds are still and breathing with waiting for the promise of dawn. The grass is greener than Dean expected, or indeed has ever seen—even under the dim and misted light of a November dawn it glows emerald and verdant. A few animal sounds rise about them: pigs in their pens making vague noises of piqued interest, perhaps the expectation of breakfast; chickens tutting nervously and flapping in small gestures as they jostle by one another. A goose watches, wary, as they pass, and offers a hiss to the strangers, but little else.

“Will anyone even be awake?” Sam asks, brow knotted with concern. Dean doesn’t even want to entertain the thought of them sitting out on the doorstep in the crisp cold until the house lopes into life.

“If they’re not, we’re wakin’ ’em,” he answers, climbing up the steps to the door.

“Won’t that be rude?” Adam asks, obviously worried, but Dean ignores him. He clatters the rope tied to the bell so that it makes the geese and chickens exclaim loudly, flustering about in alarm; he hammers at the door knocker, the pretty brass face of a young Grecian boy.

“Dean,” Sam sighs, but a sound comes from the other side of the door, an awful lot like a curse.

Dean turns to his brother with a smirk, to which Sam rolls his eyes.

“Told you I’d wake someone up.”

“Yes, and a great first impression you’ve made, too.”

Before Dean can snark something back, the door is swung open with a huff.

“If you’re selling something—”

Dean turns back to the door. A girl—Sam’s age, perhaps a little younger, stands at it. Obviously a servant: Dean can tell that much by the faded brown of her dress, the grease on her apron, the wisps of blonde hair about her face loosened by work, and the smear of coal over her left brow. Clearly, she’d been preparing for the day, lighting fires and heating up the house, when Dean’s tumult interrupted her. And clearly, she’s not happy about it.

“I’m Dean Winchester,” he interrupts, holding out his hand to her, which she squints at, and doesn’t take. “This is my brother, Sam.”

“And our brother, Adam,” Sam adds, when it’s made clear Dean isn’t bothering to introduce him. “We’re sorry to be arriving so early—it’s been a long journey—”

“I know. I’ve made it,” the serving girl answers, and Dean realises that she has a West Coast accent.

“You’re an American?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she states,

“You’re the boys Mr Singer sent for.”

“Sent for?” Dean repeats, indignantly. “I’m his heir—”

“We’re very tired,” Sam interjects quickly, and Dean casts him an angry look. He doesn’t need his brother to mediate for him. “We’ve been travelling some time—I’m sure you’d understand, having taken the journey, too. We’d be grateful if we could take the weight off our feet.”

The girl sighs and steps aside, holding open the door for them. Dean is tempted to mention that as the future owner of this house, and all the lands surrounding it, she ought to treat her position with him as more open to evaluation than she seems disposed to. He doesn’t, of course. Unused to being a man of any note, let alone a landowner, let alone a landowner with servants, he abides her quiet insolence.

“The parlour is this way,” she says, and leads them through the house. Dean turns to his brother and mouths ‘parlour?’, impressively, and Sam smirks and shrugs. They drop their packs by the door on her request.

The hall is cluttered with paintings and brass metalwork—which Dean can tell Sam is resisting the temptation to bend over and examine—and several big mirrors which sit, unmounted, on the floor. The wood is darkened with age and the staircase twines along the far wall like ivy. The place seems to breathe around them like a forest peopled by strange and abstract creatures.

The girl leads them to a room on the left.

Dean stops short as soon as he enters, causing first Sam, then Adam, to bump into him.

“Dean,” Sam huffs, but Dean is far too distracted.

The room—large, large enough to comfortably seat a dozen people, and then some—is peopled with gold and wiry cages, metal webbing crafted into bell shapes, ceiling to floor, with chattering, nervous, excited, flittering birds. Ordinary, unremarkable birds, most likely carrying all manner of diseases: thrushes and finches and sparrows and blackbirds. Dean frowns, shaking his head—a madhouse? His inheritance is a madhouse?

“Mr Singer’s birds,” the girl says, weaving around the cages. “They keep him company.”

“And lots of it, I see,” Dean murmurs in assent. The girl glances at him and flickers a smile.

“They’re very talkative.”

“I’ll bet.”

Dean hopes they don’t stay up late.

The room glitters with the sound of the birds, and the sight of their darting about from perch, to cage bars, to perch.

“Please, sit,” the girl gestures to some chairs gathered round a small table beside an unlit fireplace. Kindling and logs are piled there, dried brush to encourage flames. The girl spots Dean rubbing his hands and eyeing the unlit space, and smirks. “I’ll set to warming the place up,” she offers.

“Thank you,” Sam smiles. Dean slumps onto a chair, Adam follows suit.

“And I’ll call on someone to take your bags,” she says, bending down beside the kindling with a struck match and, at a steady whistle of air from her mouth, blows the flame into tongues of life.

Dean flushes at the thought of the measly belongings he, Sam and Adam brought with them across an ocean, into a new country, new continent, new old world. Surely whoever picks them up, even the lowest servant in this house, would have more in the world to their name than him and his brothers.

The fire grows hungrily, licking at its fuel. The girl turns to face them, looking pleased at the effort.

“My name’s Harvelle, by the way,” she says brightly. “Joanna Beth. Everyone calls me Jo. You can, too—this house is strange. You won’t find much cause to call me Miss, so don’t. And Mr Singer’s sure to be around, soon. He likes to feed the birds himself.”

“Thank you, Jo,” Sam smiles. Dean gives her a nod, and stares into the flames.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty? We’ve fresh bread, and eggs, and milk.”

All of those sound good. Adam’s stomach makes a sound like he thinks so, too. The girl, Jo, smirks, and takes her leave, saying she’ll get something to them as soon as possible.

Dean stares at the fire while Sam speaks.

“The house is—is pretty.”

“Pretty weird,” Dean mutters.

“Well, the birds are eccentric,” Sam admits, and Dean rolls his eyes as he watches the flames. Slowly, surely, warmth is creeping into his fingers, again. He wipes his running nose on his sleeve. “But—but that isn’t a bad thing…” Sam tries, uncertainly.

“It sure ain’t a good thing, either,” Dean counters, frowning at the glowing logs. The birds chirrup around them in flashes of soft bright sound.

“I like them,” Adam states, and Dean breaks his gaze from the flames to shoot a look at the boy.

“Well, if Robert takes in broken birds, surely there’s hope for us,” Sam smiles uneasily. “It seems he’s got a good heart.”

“That, or he’s gone soft in the head,” Dean quips, and of course, with his luck, this is the moment he spots Mr Singer at the doorway. He balks. Sam flickers a frown and turns to follow Dean’s gaze, before spotting the old man and coughing what’s probably a laugh at Dean’s remarkable ability to end up with a foot in his mouth at every possible turn. They haven’t even been here an hour.

Robert Singer is more hunched than Dean remembers. Six decades old, his legs have begun to crumple to the mysterious cause of an unknown diagnosis. He walks with two canes.

Dean bolts into standing on instinct—something of the lessons in respect John drilled into him, since infancy—lessons the man barely taught Sam, and never taught Adam. These lessons kick in at the subconscious knowledge that Robert Singer and John Winchester were once brothers in the arms of agriculture. Singer will expect the same from Dean as John always did.

“Rober—Mr Singer,” Dean fumbles, “I’m—please excuse me, I didn’t—”

Mr Singer huffs out a laugh and raises his shoulders in an odd gesture which, Dean guesses, is meant to resemble a shrug.

“Child—it’s been how long?” he asks with a gruff laugh. Dean prickles at the address he’s given, but in a second, as he limps into the room, Robert says, “—too long to get away with calling you child, it seems?” he chuckles. The birds, at the moment he appeared at the doorway, and the moment he began to speak, have started twittering excitedly, tiny incomprehensible conversations with the old man.

“I’ll turn twenty-five, come January,” Dean answers, instead of confirming or denying.

“Twenty-five?” Mr Singer repeats with an incredulous look. He has finally made it over to where Dean stands—Dean realises he probably should have approached the other man himself, but all too late. He steps away from his chair just in time for Mr Singer to reach out and clap his shoulder quickly, cane still in hand, before regaining his balance. “And no wife? No sweetheart?”

Dean, taken aback by the familiarity Robert chooses to address him with, says,

“None that’ll settle for me,” with a shrug.

Sam snorts into his closed fist, knowing Dean better than Mr Singer, and knowing that Dean has had an enduring inability to tether his heart to any post or person, since John discovered Dean’s love affair with Cassie Robinson, and after opting to assault Dean rather than her, which was a relief beyond relief, once again uprooted the lives of his sons in moving towns and migrating north, east, west, south, wherever he might reasonably go to drink and be happy and untaunted by the drunks at the local tavern on account of his son. John was all too happy to do this. Even if it meant puncturing forever Dean’s realest sense of happiness in all his adult life: Cassie Robinson, her dark curling hair and the gentle way she'd cradle his jaw, had once been an answer to the restlessness inside of Dean. Now nothing is.

Sam has stood, and shakes Robert's hand when it’s offered to him. Adam does the same, and introduces himself, but Mr Singer treats him as though he already knows the boy as well as Dean.

“There’s not much in the way of company, for a young boy, here,” Mr Singer says apologetically. “Unless you like birds,” he gestures humorously to the twittering creatures around him, who grow louder every minute they remain ignored.

“They’re beautiful,” Adam answers, and Dean resents him for it, and resents him for how it makes Robert smile as though already, he has a favourite. This pricks at Dean’s heart like thorns at bare skin.

“Would you like to feed them?” Robert asks, and on Adam’s polite and enthusiastic confirmation, followed by a Sir, he insists they call him ‘Bobby’.

Perhaps less of a drunk than Dean remembers—but then, it’s only dawn.

One pale brown bird has pride of place in the centre of the room. Its cage is worn and romantic, the bird peaks about with pinprick movements of its head, watching the world of the parlour with interest.

Dean moves slowly around its cage; it tracks his movement.

“Ah, I see you’ve taken to Elowen,” Bobby smiles, so that the lines around his eyes stretch out to his temples like bands of light. Dean is nonplussed. “The nightingale,” Bobby clarifies. “I named her Elowen. I found her beneath an elm tree. Broken wing. Elowen—that’s Cornish for elm tree.”

Dean didn’t even realise Cornish was a language. He hopes he doesn’t have to learn it.

“When Andromache’s father dies in Homer’s Illiad,” Bobby says, and addresses this more to Sam than to Dean, because Dean has turned his attention to the trilling, tumbling movement of the nightingale, “Mountain Nymphs plant elms on his tomb.”

“You said its wing was broken,” Dean looks up, over the cage, to where Bobby stands.

“What was that?”

“You said its wing was broken,” Dean repeats, gesturing to the bird. “Looks fine, now.”

“Her,” Bobby corrects.

“Her,” Dean amends. “Her wing looks fine, now. I can’t even tell which was broken.”

Bobby shifts a little sheepishly.

“I’m having trouble letting her go,” he admits, something touchingly human in it. Dean twitches a smile.

“She’s pretty,” he admits. The bird trills again.

“She likes you,” Bobby smiles, though Dean suspects this isn’t true, and the comment has more to do with the fact Dean payed a compliment to the elegant fawn bird, than with Dean’s abilities to charm it from beyond the wire bars.

Adam pours seed and chopped apple into each of the cages. Bobby chatters with a few of the birds and Dean raises an eyebrow to Sam, who twitches a forgiving smile at Mr Singer’s eccentricities. When every bird has its food, Bobby suggests giving them a tour of the house. They leave the parlour and, out into the hall again, see that their bags have been moved. Bobby takes them into the kitchen, where Jo is sweeping, and her mother, Mrs Harvelle—Ellen, she insists—prepares their breakfasts. Bacon sizzles in a pan of its own fat, thicker cut than Dean has yet seen it. Bread cools by the window. Adam’s stomach, again, makes that loud and antisocial noise, but Ellen only laughs and insists that they sit down and eat before Bobby drags them any further.

They sit, at a great slab of a beechwood table, and Jo joins them—Dean, in his few brief stints as a servant, is unused to them taking such liberties—but then, Bobby isn’t nobility: he came into this property by chance, lost his loved ones and, desiring the warmth of familial company, has perhaps filled it with servants he also considers friends and enough birds to darken the skies.

The breakfast is like a warm weight in Dean’s stomach. Ellen heats milk and pours it into cups for the boys; the bread is still warm when she slices into it, the bacon salty enough to stop Dean from dipping into lightheadedness, which he has been headed toward since about midnight last night. For some time the only sound from the boys is eating—Adam in particular, messy and ravenous with pre-teen appetite. Jo eats and complains about someone—Mick—who Dean hasn’t yet met, while Bobby chuckles and tells her to look up the word longsuffering, when she has a spare moment.

A scruffy young man appears at the door.

“Are my ears burning?” he asks with a wink, and Jo rolls her eyes.

“You took up the boys’ belongings, Mick?” Bobby asks. The man confirms, picking up a slice of bread and slathering butter on it. He crams it into his mouth and chews as he answers. Jo pulls a face.

“That I did,” he confirms. “Didn’t take long. You travel light,” he says, and addresses this to Dean.

“Up ‘til now, we haven’t had much to our names,” Dean answers tersely.

“I’m an orphan, too,” Mick says, as though he’s sharing the weather. “Mr Singer’s told me all about you,” he explains to Sam, who seems taken aback by his abruptness. He pours himself some milk from the pewter jug at the table, and drinks it all in one. More bread into his mouth, and he says, “venturing all the way from America. Now, I’ve been desperate, but…” He wipes the crumbs off his stubble with his sleeve. “Old man Singer given you the tour yet? You met all his birds?” he grins and winks at Bobby as he says this. “Birds love our Robert.”

“They’ve been in the parlour, Mick, so you can give up the act,” Bobby rolls his eyes.

“Birds means women,” Mick explains to a nonplussed Adam. “As well as the animal.”

“Your wit needs sharpening, Mick,” Ellen says, and hands him a bucket. “And the goat needs milking. Go on, get out of here.”

Mick sighs and leaves through a door leading out to a courtyard surrounded by more farm houses. A few chickens curiously peck their way about the yard there, flapping and dodging Mick when he comes past, swinging the bucket as he walks and possibly aiming it a little more in their direction than necessary.

“Come on,” Bobby sniffs, “let’s show you round the rest of the place.”

Through to the drawing room, which is littered with collared doves, turtle doves, and woodpigeons all cooing happily in burring trills at the entrance of Mr Singer. The walls are a pale blue-gray which, intentionally or not, seems to match the muted shades of the birds. Peeling gilded chairs are scattered about, and match the iridescence of some of the birds. A fireplace sits at one end of the room and is strewn with tiny glass ornaments of… more birds. The paintings about the room are small, not the great grand things expected in old houses this size, houses just enough on the threshold of largeness to make them insecure enough to want to assert, at every opportunity, their own wealth and luxury through the medium of oil paints set to canvas and mounted in golden frames on the wall. Dean steps closer to them while Bobby talks, the man’s voice a vague rumbling in his ears.

One painting, no more than four inches wide, in a deep distressed blue frame, is a small of Mr Singer and his wife. They stand on either side of the fireplace in the very drawing room Dean stands in, now. The painting, however, is devoid of birds. The Singers lean against the pale green of the mantelpiece which is here not covered in tiny glass birds to match those real ones in the room, but with two teal vases, a snuff box, and a small clock of dark wood and gold finishing. A strange painting: the Singers look like two companions, their stance as Dean’s manner would be with other farm hands, rather than the stance of husband and wife. The bottom of Mrs Singer’s faded blue skirts are frayed and dyed pale brown by work outside.

Through again to the dining room. This room is deep and dark and glassy and until Bobby pulls back the curtains and a flash of iridescent colour in the night of the room lights up at every corner, Dean almost doesn’t notice the creatures here in twinkles of starlit cages.

“…Starlings?” Dean asks, growing more and more concerned every room deeper they are taken into the house.

“Yes,” Mr Singer confirms with an absent smile as he slowly limps his way back round the great black table in the centre of the room.

“You, uh,” Dean coughs, “you seem to like them.”

Sam gives Dean a look as if to say that dry comments such as these are absolutely of limits, actually, but Mr Singer doesn’t seem to notice.

“They come in constellations,” Bobby says, “round the autumn. Hundreds of them; they chatter about in the sky and billow like clouds and get themselves hurt. People know me for my love of birds—they come from miles with them, when they’re injured, and get me to fix ‘em up. Seem to think there’s somethin’ romantic in it.”

Only if ‘romantic’ is a blend of the words ridiculous, manic and lunatic.

“Right,” Dean sighs, “I get it.” At Sammy’s confused expression, he explains, “the stagecoach driver. Kept calling this place ‘the eyrie’.”

Bobby chuckles.

“It’s a nickname the place has earnt, by now.”

“Eyrie?” Adam asks.

“Like a nest,” Dean says, “high up,” and thinks of the hills set about the place. Well, it makes sense. He turns back to Bobby. “I thought they were saying eerie.”

“Well, I’m sure the pun helped the nickname catch,” Bobby shrugs, expression more amused than Dean would have expected, considering the ridicule implicit in the nickname. “And I’ve garnered the reputation of being something of an eccentric. Can’t resent people for recognising it.”

Dean nearly spurts out I can’t think why, but catches his tongue just in time. Sam watches him like he knew the words were moments from passing his lips. Adam is fascinated by the birds—which, to be fair, have an unexpected beauty to them: a kaleidoscopic spill of oil on blackened water.

They’re eventually taken up into their rooms—and for the first time in Dean’s life, he won’t be sharing a room with his brother. He’s surprised by the shot of blue on the skyline from his window—he can see the sea, near, just beyond ragged cliffs opening their arms to the blue lash of the Atlantic. The room contains the vaguely bitter smell of dust, barely noticeable, with the salt from the sea carrying lightly over the air. Dean watches fields beyond his window churn in the winds like waters.

The bedframe is handpainted a pale blue. Mick has laid Dean’s belongings, what few of them there are, on the otherwise crisp white sheets. The worn, exposed wooden beams about the room and on the ceiling make the place feel like a cradle. As if on cue, prompted by this comparison, Bobby appears at the doorway and makes Dean’s skin raise by saying:

“This was to be my son’s room.”

Dean shifts awkwardly on his feet. The look in Mr Singer’s eyes—Dean would sometimes see it in John’s eyes, in his more human and vulnerable drunken moments.

“Oh.” Dean doesn’t know what he ought to say. “Well—I thank you for giving it to me…”

Bobby quirks a smile, though it’s a distant one, his gaze set on the waves at the horizon.

“It seemed right.”

How could it? Dean is, when all is said and done, a stranger to the older man. Neither have seen, and barely heard from, the other in over a decade. Dean is a man now, where Mr Singer knew a boy. Sam was an infant when Bobby saw him last, and now Mr Singer has to reckon with the great looming presence which is Sam Winchester, even more great and looming, Dean would imagine, if you were a man pushing seven decades and supported by two crutches.

“You have my thanks, all the same,” Dean answers, and Bobby looks back at him, flashing a smile as if Dean has said the wrong thing. Perhaps, already, he’s wishing he’d chosen Sam or even Adam as the figure to project his desires for a son and grief at having lost one, onto.

“I suppose I ought to show you the farm, now,” Bobby says, and turns out from the distressed white doorframe.

Dean follows after him. Bobby shows them the farm—large, if in mild disrepair, rugged by the nature of the land and the nature of the neglect it has suffered: golden wheat and barley fields loping over the hills. The more rugged of these hills, untenable, are littered with sheep.

“We’ll need to get a shepherd in for these, of course,” Bobby says as they stand at a stile and look out at the bleating animals. Dean frowns.

“Why’s that?”

“Just a few day’s gone, our old shepherd eloped with a young lady from the town. Last I heard, they were headed for St. Ives.”

“No, I mean, why would you need a shepherd, at all? I can handle that.”

Bobby snorts.

“Hmph!”

Dean grows indignant, and can sense Sam bristling behind him, wordlessly begging Dean to drop it, along with his pride.

“I can,” Dean protests, trying not to raise his voice. “I’ve herded cattle, out in Kansas, I’ve looked after goats and cleared out pigsties—”

“If you think being a shepherd is equal to any of those things,” Bobby snorts, and Dean’s frown furrows deeper into his features.

“No, I think cows are a damn sight bigger, and more dangerous, than sheep—”

“And therefore sheep are easier?” Bobby raises his eyebrows.

“You said it,” Dean crosses his arms and leans against the dry stone wall they stand by.

“I didn’t,” Bobby shakes his head, and spotting Dean’s expression, smirks. “Now see, son, you’re welcome to try your hand at it for the next few days, while I hire a new one. I’m sure you’ll prove capable. I’ve no doubt.”—Dean wants to bite, it sounds like you do, but holds his tongue again. “But shepherding—that’s a language. Takes years to speak it. You see to the soil. Someone will see to the sheep.”

Dean grinds his teeth, but says nothing, jaw locking stubbornly. Sam is pulling a face which makes him want to say something he’s certain wouldn’t give Mr Singer a good impression.

“Alright,” Dean says, raising his chin with maybe more pride than he’d like to betray, “What can I start on?”

“Now, it’s well past midday, boy,” Bobby chuckles, “and you’ve been travelling some time. Let’s take some lunch, and let you rest up.”

“We’re here now,” Dean shakes his head. “Might as well set ourselves to work. We can sleep come night—at least, I can. And I’m not a boy.”

Bobby chuckles.

“You’re already my heir, you’ve nothing to prove.”

Dean bristles, but Adam’s stomach growls over the sound of the wind.

“Let’s take lunch,” Bobby continues. “If you’re yet eager to work after that, I’m sure we can set you to something.”

Lunch back in the house is simple: cheese and bread, cold ham and watercress. Adam is yawning so uncontrollably that Ellen, almost cooing, insists that he go to bed for a nap—Bobby seems to raise no objections to this.

Dean glances to his brother.

“To work?” he asks, but Sam snorts and shakes his head.

“Bobby says I’m welcome to spend the day looking through his library.” Of course.

“It was my wife’s,” Bobby interjects, warmly. “I’ll be glad to see it come to some use, after all these years.”

So Dean goes out, alone, feeling estranged from the house and its inhabitants—Bobby has taken to Sam and Adam, Ellen is already fussing over Adam, Jo has poked several affectionate jokes in Sam’s direction already, and Dean is…

Well, Dean is out in the bright nipping chill of Cornish afternoon air, repairing one of the ploughs as Bobby asked, then mucking out the stables, before sewing the last of the winter wheat, which he does, and does, and does, until the sun has dipped well beyond the jagged ridge of the horizon and Dean has to fumble home in the dark, legs numb with cold and work. While back in the house, the air is thick with heat and food.

Adam is in the kitchen standing over a steaming pot, with Ellen hovering over him, smiling instructions at him.

“And see, the cloves give it warmth,” she says, as Adam tastes whatever it is they cook.

“I see, I see,” he nods, lashes misted by the steam. Dean steps toward them to peer into the pot, but Ellen catches sight of him and stops him short.

“Out,” she shakes her head.

“What?”

“Out,” Ellen repeats, firm enough to make Dean balk. He thought she was a servant? Why—how—is she able to talk to him, in this way? “Look at your boots,” she gestures down to them, and tuts. “Traipsing mud all the way into the kitchen—down the hall,” she shakes her head, exasperated. “What were you, raised in a barn?”

Dean’s expression hardens.

“Pretty much.”

Ellen doesn’t rise.

“Well, not anymore,” she says, and swats at him until he moves back toward the door. “Go get cleaned up. “I’ll have Jo draw you a bath, if you’d like?”

“What about dinner?” Dean asks, hungry now.

“Mick’s out in town at the corn exchange.”—Why—why did nobody tell Dean about this? He’s the one running the farm now, pretty much. Didn’t anyone think he should attend, too—or at least know about it?! “Now, don’t pull that face, boy,” Ellen shakes her head. “We thought you’d want to rest yourself, your first day. Didn’t realise you’d be out there, working your fingers raw while you were still smelling of saltwater from the boat over.”

Dean grumbles.

“Anyway,” Ellen ignores it, “Mick will be back around the time I expect you’ll be cleaned up and your muscles eased,”—she says this, at least, sympathetically. “We’ll keep some food on the heat, for the both of you. How does that sound?”

Dean reluctantly acquiesces.

As promised, Jo heats him a bath in a copper tub. During the process of filling the tub, Ellen enters with a bundle of lavender seeds and tips them in. The air blossoms in the steam around them, Dean is reluctant to admit how lightening and good it smells, but Ellen must catch something in his expression which betrays this, because she gives him a look which is at once longsuffering and warm.

She also gives him soaps—handmade—and lavender oil, for your hair, you strange beast, when he asks what the hell he’s supposed to do with it.

Bath warmed and filled, Jo and Ellen take their leave to have dinner. Dean sinks into the waters—it’s been how many weeks, since he could last do this? And even then, Dean would mostly bathe in the streams and pools around the farms he worked—no steam rising off the water, no lavender seeds steeping the room in a lash-fluttering dusky scent, no oils for his hair. Dean sighs softly, muscles untwining in the water.

He falls asleep.

He’s woken by Sam dropping a towel on his head.

“Out of the water, or you’ll turn yourself into a prune.”

Dean grumbles, blinking, confused. He shoves the towel from his head onto the floor.

“Ass.”

“Aren’t you hungry?” Sam raises his eyebrows. Dean rubs his face with his wet hands. The bath water has turned light and misty with the salt and grit which has risen off his body.

“I guess,” he murmurs, but he’s too sleep-ridden to much know what’s going on, or how he’s feeling. He picks up the towel, stands, and dripping from the bath water, wraps it round himself. “I could get used to these hot baths, I’ll tell you that.”

“I could get used to Ellen’s cooking,” Sam says. “Seriously. Dress yourself, it’s too good to miss.”

Mick is downstairs, at the table in the kitchen and already eating by the time Dean is down.

“Hello-hello,” Mick grins at Dean’s approach. “What’ve we got here? The man of the land. Ellen tells me you’ve been givin’ yourself blisters with work today. Now why would you do a thing like that?”

Dean sits at the table and accepts the bowl Ellen offers him—stew, it seems, with an array of root vegetables and pieces of meat. His head is still heavy with sleep, and the mist—no, steam—coming off the stew hardly helps.

“Adam helped me cook this,” Ellen smiles, handing him a battered pewter spoon.

“I know,” Dean nods. “I saw, just before you kicked me out.”

“Still bitter about that, huh?” Ellen asks with a teasing smile, but Dean simply blinks blearily at her. Mick snorts.

“Give the fella a few minutes, Ellen,” Mick grins, ripping into some bread with his teeth, mouth full. “He might as well have just come out of an opium den, he’s so distant.”

“Now, Mick,” Ellen sighs. “He’s had a long day—a long few weeks. You haven’t made that journey, across the Atlantic. I have,” she shakes her head. Herbs hang about from the rafters in bundles, dried and ready for use. She takes a handful of what looks like dried daisies and tips them into a clay cup, pouring some steaming water from a copper kettle into it. “Here, Dean,” she hands the cup to him. “This is for you. Chamomile.” She turns to Mick again. “He hasn’t even had a day’s rest, like his brothers did.”

“Is it a pride thing?” Mick asks, glancing at Dean with eyes too bright with amusement for Dean’s senses, dimmed as they are by exhaustion, to make sense of. “Had to assert yourself, on your first day? Let us know you aren’t some poncey yank, fresh off the boat and never having done an honest day’s work before or since boarding?”

“Mick, is it?” Dean asks. Mick smiles and nods in confirmation. “You talk too much, by far, Mick.”

Ellen snorts a laugh. Mick grins and tears another bite of his bread.

“And here I was, worried you wouldn’t be any fun,” he quips. Dean offers a smile and rolls his eyes, but it’s a little forced. He sips at his drink—it’s faintly sweet, the taste pins itself to the roof of his mouth.

He’s used to the bantering of farmhands, he grew up on it, spent his most formative years offering quips over the evening meal in low-hanging light—usually the meal was oatmeal or, if they were lucky, some kind of soup heavy with corn, before the locusts set in. Yes, he’s used to the bantering of farmhands, used to holding his own. But that was before. That was an ocean away. And, he feels a biting urge to remind Mick, he is to be the owner of this house, this farm—and therefore Mick’s employer. The man, scruff faced, spindly and sarcastic and harmless as he is, should not make fun of him.

Dean eats his dinner.

Ellen and Mick chatter while Ellen washes the pans and bowls from Adam, Sam, Bobby and Jo. When he’s finished, Mick gets up to help her clean the kitchen. Dean only stares at the table, the wood turning silvery with age. He realises he failed to clean his nails in the bath—well, he spent most of his time in it asleep.

He pushes back his chair, after some time, he isn’t sure how much. He thanks Ellen distractedly for his meal, voice barely above a murmur, and is sure Mick shoots her a wry look at Dean’s ungratefulness. He hardly cares. Out of the kitchen, down the corridor—he passes the room Bobby generously calls a ‘library’—a room with a few square metres’ floorspace, an unnecessarily high ceiling, no windows except one coming in from the very roof of the house, and a curling iron spiral staircase mangled with age climbing up the shelves. There’s barely space for it in the room, an armchair is crammed just beneath it with shelves rising about it on all sides—and there is, of course, a blackbird in a cage with a splint on its leg.

Sam sits on the armchair and pores over a ragged text. Perhaps, in another life, he would’ve been one of those well-to-do boys who finds themselves able to go to college, think, dream, read as though simply having thoughts flitting about the head is a profession. Well, this isn’t another life—and Sam’s lucky to have had the education he has had. It was a privilege never afforded to Dean. He taught himself to read, which, he feels a twinge of jealousy as he glances to Sam, reading happily, he can barely do.

He’s too humiliated to admit this even to his brother.

He turns up the stairs and trudges up to his room. Tomorrow, more well-rested, he’ll speak with Bobby—get to know the other workers at the farm, let Bobby know that he doesn’t appreciate Mick going to the corn exchange without him, let Bobby know he’s capable, and ought to be entrusted with all the major tasks of the running of this place. Dammit. He had to run his family’s finances for enough years, had to barter for their food running the sums in his head to figure out when he could literally afford to stop haggling. Literate he may not be, but numerate he has most certainly had to become.

Bed. He curls into the thick sheets, which again smell faintly of dust, though also lavender. Ellen must like it—at least, he guesses she made his bed for him. The night is dark outside his window. Someone—Sam, perhaps, while he was downstairs, has lit a candle for him and left it on the modest table beside his bed. His bones ring with a hollow ache. This is a strange new land. A strange new bed. He never thought he’d wish he could hear the sound of Sammy’s snores as he tried to fall asleep, but here Dean is, unable to sleep without them.

He huffs out his candle; the room turns from amber to pitch in a flickered fraction of a heartbeat.

Through the night he hears the soft trilling of a nightingale. He cannot tell if this is in a fit of wakefulness, or only in dreams.

Chapter Text

When Dean wakes up, the white-fog of yesterday has dissipated. The sun is bright for the hour and the time of year: waters shimmer turquoise on the horizon under the orange glow of dawn. Gulls sound on the air with their indignant cries, bobbing in and out of view from among the cliffs. Dean huffs to himself—Bobby doesn’t keep any gulls in the house, at least. Even he must hate them.

Over the next few days, he learns of the farm’s finances, meets every employee and learns their names—and calls them by their names—and works every day, planting apple saplings, loading grain, selling grain, helping with the small harvests of squashes, and of course, struggling with the sheep. This is a farm too large by far, he decides, for a man as frail as Bobby. It’s as rugged as the cliffs, and the sheep just as stubborn and unyielding as the sea even as they freak and scatter in every direction but the one he directs them in. And Dean grows frustrated as the older man’s words on sheep echo in his ears.

Shepherding—that’s a language. Takes years to speak it.

Maybe it is a language, but Dean will speak it before the fortnight is out. And certainly before the new shepherd arrives. In a few days, Dean is sure, Bobby will be sending word to the poor bastard that actually, they no longer require his services. Bobby’s own godson is more than capable when it comes to these gormless, worm-ridden, panicked creatures.

Dean just knows it.

He can’t work the dogs, either: they seem wary of him, as resentful of him as he is of the very soil of England and its claim over him by merit of the fact he has to stand on it. Sam bonds with the sheepdogs quickly, which frustrates Dean more—these are working dogs, he insists to his brother, and he ought to treat them as such. Of course Sam refuses.

Adam is barely interested in the farm work. He hangs about from the branches of the taller apple trees—admittedly, he helps with the last of their harvest—and swings about the kitchen, helping Ellen with the cooking. Mick teaches him how to play cards and gamble—Adam, having nothing to give, can only bet the boiled candies made from blackberries that Ellen gives him. Dean only sighs when he finds them playing for the first time, Mick smug with an enormous pile of deep purple candied sweets in front of him, Adam with a much meeker pile and looking much meeker for it.

About three weeks into his time at the Eyrie, as he struggles still more with the sheep, this time wrestling one caught at a nail turned loose from a style, he spots a strange wandering figure roaming over the lands. As he watches, the ewe in its panic and bucking nearly headbutts him, twice, once clipping his jaw. He curses, lip flush with blood.

He almost wouldn’t notice the figure: they move like wind through the hills; but they stop to regard him in his tussle with the sheep for a moment. Dean frowns, staring back, as the sheep finally struggles free from his hands and bolts clumsily toward its friends.

The figure watches. A crack appears in their face; maybe a quietly bemused smile at Dean’s struggle, but from the distance, and the broad hat they wear, Dean cannot be sure. A dog lollops over the crest of the hill into view, toward the figure, as though telling him to hurry up. The figure flickers, turns toward the dog, continues roaming after it. Dean would shout—shout that if the dog isn’t off his land in the next ten minutes, Dean will take out his rifle. But the dog takes no mind of the sheep—scrappy and lightfooted and black and white—is it a sheepdog, itself?

A little later, he enters Bobby’s study, exhausted from the day’s work and close enough to dying for a warm fire to collapse himself in front of. But at shucking his boots off at the door, a lesson which Ellen has now long ingrained into his skull, Jo stepped over him with a basketful of strange, long ruddy-orange berries in her arms, and told him that Bobby wanted to speak with him.

So here he is. Entering Bobby’s study—which as of yesterday is up one cuckoo, with a splintered beak. For Christ’s sake, just let the poor thing die.

Except, entering the room, Dean’s thoughts are ripped from the frustrations of the day—Jo’s short tone with him, Sam’s refusal to stop babying the sheepdogs, Ellen’s coddling of Adam, Mr Singer’s freakish obsession with anything with a pair of wings on its back—

A man—who, Dean notes resentfully, has neglected to take his boots off, and has trudged a pale gray slime of clay-rich mud through the room—stands at Bobby’s desk, too grand by far for a man as ill-educated and humble as Bobby.

A man who stands in a great black shaggy coat which reaches his knees, and a broad and battered hat which he only takes off at Dean’s entering, to reveal mussed hair as dark and roughed as the coat. A blue scarf is coiled loosely at his neck: the man is all rumpled layers, his shock of whiteblue eyes burn out from beneath his heavy brow. His jaw is stubbled with dark hair which betrays the time he’s been travelling, as much as the battered pack, dropped onto the floor. A collie sits at the man’s feet, staring up at Dean with a gaze as wary and accusative as its owners, tufts of feathery coal ears pricked up and alert.

The figure from the hills. The mirthful figure from the hills.

Dean frowns at the figure just about the moment the other man must recognise him. Mirth slips back onto his features. Dean glowers.

“Dean,” Bobby says, sat at the chair behind the desk, “this is our new shepherd—”

“We don’t need one,” he shakes his head quickly, not looking at Bobby, continuing to glare at the stranger.

“Just so,” the stranger says, eyes flaring like lightning over the Atlantic. “It looked like it, today—you were headbutted, now, how many times by that ewe?”

His voice is rough and ragged as the cliffs. His pale lips curl lyrically around his words and make them sound simpler, more of the soil, than any language Dean has heard before. As if someone could plant letters and make them grow speech from the earth.

“Irish,” Dean says, and the lips twitch, though not in a smile. The stranger’s body moves minutely, only a shift in weight, but it makes the dog at his feet all but frown at Dean.

“That’ll be me,” the wanderer confirms.

“You’ve met?” Bobby raises his eyebrows, piercing through the air of the interaction which is already thick with resentment and distrust.

“No,” Dean shakes his head, “he didn’t feel the need to introduce himself, when he passed me, earlier.”

“Seemed you had your hands full,” the traveller replies, and Dean’s jaw sets.

“I was handling it,” he says, grating the words out.

“Oh, handling it?” The stranger repeats. Dean takes a frustrated step forward, and the dog lets out a low growl, at which Dean all but jumps back.

Fine: he isn’t such a fan of dogs. He hasn’t been, since one of John’s friends drunkenly set several of his dogs on Dean, and all for a joke. And John just laughed.

That had been soon after the happenings with Cassie. John had resented Dean for months after that, been all too happy to humiliate him and even see him hurt in his humiliation. Dean has to remind himself, even now, that it’s probably for the best John made them skip town. Who would’ve taken kindly to that romance, in a town like theirs? Better to protect Cassie, who would be the one who would get hurt by the men there—and by hurting her just a little, and leaving, Dean did protect her.

He hopes.

His heart is sad for a moment until he spots the stranger’s amusement at Dean’s fear. But the traveller has at least steadied his dog. Dean glowers first at the man, then the dog, then Bobby.

“We don’t need a shepherd,” he repeats the sentiment. And definitely not this one. Conceited and cold and speaking his words as though he has a secret.

“Yes we do, Dean,” Bobby sighs, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples. Dean scowls.

“No we don’t.”

“And why’s that?”

—The stranger asks this. Dean turns back to him.

“We have me,” he answers shortly.

“You’ve never cared for sheep before now,” Bobby answers, firm.

“Yes, but I’m a fast learner,” Dean grates out. “I’ve already—”

“This isn’t up for debate,” Bobby sighs. “We have a new shepherd. That’s final.”

“Perhaps you’ll let me teach you,” the stranger turns to Dean to say this, but Dean snarls his reply.

“And perhaps I’ll contract cholera.”

“Dean!” Bobby groans, but the shepherd—damn it, the fucking shepherd—doesn’t seem bothered at all by the insult, in fact seems to find it a little weak. “I appreciate your determination, and I’ve told you already your work ethic is second to none. But you have nothing to prove, here. You’re a grower, a planter, a harvester. Mr Novak here is a shepherd. He comes from a long line of shepherds. All his family have kept sheep, for generations—”

“Then he can go back to them,” Dean spits.

The stranger—Novak’s—face remains steady.

“I can’t,” he says simply, and shakes his head.

“It’s my word, and it’s final,” Bobby states, eyes growing stormy. Dean scowls. “This is still my farm, Dean.”

He wishes he’d stayed in Kansas. At least there, every farmer, every employer, would give him the chance to prove himself, instead of—instead of hiring some stoic, arrogant vagrant to do a job he’s perfectly capable of. Working was the only sense of belonging Dean had in this place—Sam and Adam have found friends, a new family, people to talk to and turn to—and what does Dean have? He had his sense of place in the necessity of the work he was doing, the fact that already, Bobby and all the household were relying on him. Not anymore. He misses the beating sun and flat expanses of his home, back when it felt as though he had grown roots into the earth just like everything he planted. Now he's driftwood.

So far north, so far east, so far from where he has always felt belonging.

“Fine,” Dean bites. He’s about to turn sharply on his heel, but Bobby, clearly sensing the direction of his thoughts, speaks again to stop him.

“And you’ll show Mr Novak to his room, thank you.”

Dean turns back again, slowly.

“And where is Mr Novak to stay?” he asks sardonically.

“Why, the croft, of course,” Bobby frowns—and of course, the croft is the building closest to the sheep. Dean seeps with relief that Novak the Usurper will not be staying in the house, at least. The croft, a small building of stone and wood, a thatched roof and the wind fresh off the sea lashing onto it, is the perfect place for the traveller, aside from outside, or off the farm entirely.

“Alright,” Dean mutters, and glances to the Irishman. “You’d better follow me, then.”

“Just so.”

The shepherd thanks Bobby, offering a small and simple nod to substitute a bow, and follows after Dean. Down the hall in stubborn silence, the only sound their footsteps and the ticking of Novak’s thoughts, and the swishing of Dean’s resentment inside his skull.

Dean shuffles his boots back on at the doorstep.

“Mr Singer… likes birds,” the shepherd offers by way of conversation while he waits for Dean to have his boots on. Dean glances up at him. The man’s face is a mask, steady, gaze sharp. His hat is back on.

“What gives you that impression?” Dean asks, and the shepherd tuts—whether with amusement, or frustration, Dean cannot tell. Boots on, he rises from the stone steps he’d been sat on, and ambles toward the sheep fields.

No words, again—perhaps Novak resents Dean as much as Dean resents him. He glances back at the man as they trudge up the steep green crest of a hill, slashes of mud torn in it from the feet of livestock like muddy wounds against the grass. Novak’s gaze is sturdy, on the horizon, sun glinting in his eyes. Thick creases around each corner of his eyes from years of squinting at the sun are set deeper as he watches it catching light against the sea. Dean starts when Novak flicks his gaze over to him.

He tears himself away, angrily.

“Mr Singer tells me he is your godfather,” the shepherd offers, and Dean doesn’t look back over to him.

“He is,” Dean confirms. They’re at the zenith of the hill; the sheep, their fields, and the croft nestled among them are all visible below.

“But it’s been some time since you last saw him,” the shepherd draws beside Dean, watching the land pan out around them. He has a slow way of moving, the way mountains must grow, sure and certain, something untapped and enduring within. No unnecessary steps, no unnecessary gestures, it could be graceful but for its stubborn minimalism.

“How could you tell?” Dean flashes a frown to the other man. He shrugs softly and makes no answer, stepping forward and descending the hill before Dean. Dean steps quickly to catch up with him. “How could you tell?” he repeats. The shepherd glances back to him. His gaze is like a lance. Dean is wordlessly accused of something as soon as it strikes him.

“You aren’t familiar,” the traveller says. “You take liberties in politeness, as though you are.”

“What?” Dean frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That you are impolite,” Novak answers simply. The light is dipping swiftly below the cliffs, Dean will have to walk home in the dark, slipping and skidding on mud and sheep shit as he goes, and for what? To walk an ungrateful, rude, usurping and patchwork man to his shack, which he can surely make his way to, by now? And who is this Novak, to talk of being impolite?

“You know,” Dean coughs stiffly, “whether you think I take liberties with him or not, I will be inheriting this farm, and its hands, from Mister Singer.” When Novak says nothing, continues staring at the skyline, Dean clarifies, “And I’ll be able to fire, and hire, according to how well someone might work, or their attitude, or even how much I like them—”

“No, I understood what you were driving at, the first time,” the shepherd shakes his head, and Dean makes a frustrated noise in his throat.

“And yet, you didn’t apologise.”

“What for?” A ridge of a frown grows steadily between the man’s brows like a vine. “You seem hardly too fond of me, as it is. Were Mr Singer to pass tomorrow, or in a decade, I would count on losing your employment that same day.”

Dean grits his teeth and hurdles the gate they’ve come to stop at, perhaps making a bigger show of this than necessary. He wants to spite the shepherd, who seems a few years his senior, and prove that Dean is still in the throes of youth, while Novak has just slipped out of them.

But the shepherd only watches the spot Dean jumped over for a moment, head inclined like a strange inhuman creature, then, with every economy of movement, opens the gate and holds it a moment for his dog to slip through.

Dean grits his teeth.

“The the sooner you’re out of here, the better.”

“We must hope you’ll have learnt how to shepherd by then.”

The comment is wry. But Novak only frowns thoughtfully as he says it. Dean spits at the ground and clambers over a sty into what is, fortunately, their final field to cross. Novak’s dog clears it without any problem, bounding on ahead. The wind whistles through the grass.

“The door doesn’t lock,” Dean says, hoping that this will put the shepherd off some, as they draw near the croft. “And the windows are something terribly thin.”

“I’ve no fear of thieves,” Novak offers, shrugging so small it’s like the fragments of movement offered by Bobby’s birds as they flitter about the wire bars of their cages. “I’ve little to my name, and still less worth stealing.”

“And what of the cold?” Dean raises an eyebrow.

“It has a fireplace?” The shepherd asks. Dean confirms. “Aye, it’ll do nicely. A roof is more than I’ve been used to, these past months.”

Dean grows exasperated. They’re at the croft, now.

“There’s a forge, there,” Dean gestures to the even smaller building to the side of the one they stand at, as he unlatches the door to Novak’s new dwelling. “Though I doubt that’s any use to you—”

“I make my own tools,” the shepherd shakes his head, stepping through the door before Dean has a chance to, himself. Dean scowls. He follows into the building after the shepherd. The air in it is icy, cold as stone—somehow colder than outside. Dean clasps his hands and rubs them together—Novak glances back at the gesture.

“Used to warmer climes?” he asks, and trills of defensiveness run through Dean’s chest.

“You’re not?”

“I grew up with the Atlantic at my doorstep,” the shepherd answers wryly. He drops his bag onto the kitchen table. It’s only the one room—a simple bedframe rests in the corner, a tarnished basin for washing against the wall. “Have you any straw?” he asks, turning to Dean after scanning the contents of the room from its centre for a few moments.

“You—you have a bed, right there,” Dean points to the cot. The shepherd gives him a look.

“For the dog,” he says, and Dean flushes.

“Right—”

“And though you, being the heir of some great grand house might find this hard to believe, there’ve indeed been nights where I’ve slept among the straw and hay.”

“No,” Dean frowns again, “I don’t find it hard to believe. And I have, too—so it’s not—not like that. And it’s not a great or grand house—”

The shepherd smirks.

Dean straightens up.

“Don’t act like I’m so far above you,” he frowns, but Novak cocks his head.

“But isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do?” he raises his eyebrows. Dean’s insides harden with frustrated.

“I’m not some entitled child, landed into good fortune.”

“No?”

“I’m not!”

“Describe how you came to be on this farm.”

Dean clamps his jaw shut. The farmer watches him.

“As I thought.”

“No, it’s only that I hardly owe an explanation of myself to some—some—vagrant shepherd, farm hand—”

“Is vagrant farm hand not exactly what you were, save until a few months gone?” Novak asks, innocently. Dean stops. “Mr Singer told me,” he says, to answer Dean’s confusion. “So you may save your explanations. As for your insults, I rather suspect they’ll act as spitting against the wind.”

“If it’s straw you’d like,” Dean decides to press forward—if he debates with the shepherd further, he’ll only be here longer, “there’s some in the barn in the next field gone. I won’t be fetching that for you.”

The shepherd tips his hat to Dean.

“I’ll be up with the dawn,” he states. “If you’d like to learn how to handle the sheep, I’ll see you with the sun.”

Dean grinds his teeth and stares at the shepherd. The shepherd stares back, unfazed, his wild electric shock of eyes the only thing modernising his strange pastoral features.

“We’ll see,” Dean replies, heart thumping angrily. Who is this arrogant traveller to assume he has so much to teach Dean? Dean, who fed his family for years by the hard labour he performed on farm after farm, sweat stinging his skin, running down his temples, turning to salt as the sun seared it from his skin? Blistering hands from tilling hard, cracked, uncooperative soil—Dean, after the wrenches of those years, surely proved himself capable?

“Just so,” the shepherd says, crackle in his eyes changing, now, the fizzing of lightning in clouds before it flashes down to earth, a rumination.

Dean hardly knows what to say, now. So he turns and leaves.

The sun has dipped beyond the sighing sea as he exits the cabin. The sky is a deep and dusty purple, the waters shimmer in what faint light there is. Around him, a few sheep let out anxious bleating calls over the long dappled grass. Fishing boats sail in from the horizon now that the sun has sunk below the waters: the day is done.

Follow that bright star west, and Dean would end up home.

If only he were a sailor.

Chapter Text

It’s a fitful sleep, with shades of blue prickling around him and pressing in on him. The sun slips up past his windowframe and he awakes with a long breath in, eyes fluttering, before remembering where he is. Not in the Atlantic. Not in pressing, bulshy waves. No lightning over the waters.

He starts, remembering Novak’s offer to teach him how to shepherd. Should he take it? The man is insufferable, smug, unreadable as the mist—and why would he want to teach Dean how to herd and tend to sheep, when he knows full well Dean will simply fire him, when he’s finished learning?

He doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to go and spend a full day with a man who finds obvious entertainment in infuriating Dean. Really, he ought to stick to Bobby’s advice, and stick to the soil. It’s what he knows, after all. He beats the question back and forth in his head, worrying, worrying, berating himself for the pride sacrificed in each answer—until Sam enters his room just as he’s finished dressing, and tells him that one of the grain silos has broken and is leaking, everywhere.

Dean’s question is answered. He spends the first half of his day clearing and mending after the silo accident. He was so relieved to have the necessity of work laid out for him, ensuring he didn’t have to decide whether or not to take Novak up on his offer of mentorship, that he completely forgot to take breakfast. Now, the sun pointed proud and high in the sky, the silo repaired, cold sweat prickling his brow, Dean remembers. His stomach growls at him. Hopefully Ellen has prepared something good, he thinks, trudging back toward the farmhouse.

Inside, chatter and laughter bubbles from the kitchen, and something sweet is on the air, like the scent of hibiscus but… deeper. Dean follows it, growing hungrier with every step, the idea of something sweet and warm sitting heavy in his stomach particularly relieving, until at the bending doorframe of the kitchen he can make out the source of the sound, and fizzes with anger at it.

“I haven’t had rosehip jam in years,” Novak shakes his head, his voice warm and rough. His boots are still on, he’s traipsed mud into the kitchen, and yet Ellen still beams at him as he speaks. They’re straining the red, pointed berries Dean saw Jo carrying in yesterday through a muslin cloth. The berries have been cooked in water and turn to mulch in the cloth.

“You get first try of it,” Ellen smiles warmly, ladling more of the cooked berries into the muslin strainer. “Getting rid of these seeds is always such a chore. Thank you for helping out with it.”

“Always worth it for the jam, wouldn’t you say,” Novak asks. In spite of the wildness, ruggedness of his dress, manner and features, seeing him in the domestic is… strangely touching. The delicacy of his features is brought out, the calm inquisitive slope of his brow, the fine-focussed point of his nose. Where he certainly didn’t fit in between the austere walls of Bobby’s study, he certainly does in the farmhouse kitchen.

“Oh, absolutely,” Ellen laughs. “You’re going to be very popular with Adam. That boy’s got a serious sweet-tooth.”

She spots Dean frowning at the doorway.

“Well now, look who’s back—it’s our silo surgeon.”

Dean says nothing, stepping into the kitchen, casting Novak a resentful look.

“Missed you out today, with the sheep,” the shepherd says, and Dean almost stops short.

Is ‘missed’ really the right word? Doubtless, Novak is mocking him.

“I was—I was fixing a grain silo,” Dean answers, defensively. “I couldn’t.”

“Another time,” the shepherd answers simply, eyes trained on Dean. Dean trembles with resentment.

“Are you hungry?” Ellen asks. “Didn’t catch you at breakfast.”

“I was fixing the silo,” Dean answers again, flicking his gaze onto her. He can feel Novak’s pressing at him, still. All of it riles offense in him. Even the man’s damn dog is in the room, lying down beside the back door to the courtyard, head on its paws, watching the world with intrigued, though peaceful, eyes. How’s Novak gotten away with this?

“Well, lunch is nearly ready,” Ellen says. “And Mr Novak will be joining us.”

“What a joy,” Dean mutters, sitting at one of the long benches drawn up to the kitchen table.

“Are you not to help your mother out with it?” The shepherd asks, eyebrows raised, voice rough with indignant surprise. Dean’s head shoots up, from where he’d been resting it on his fist.

“She’s not my mother,” he bites out. The shepherd blinks.

“Oh—my apologies—what with you both being from—”

Ellen smiles and laughs.

“Just a coincidence,” she answers.

“You must admit,” the shepherd says thoughtfully, looking from Dean to Ellen, “there is some kind of resemblance.”

Dean frowns. He can’t see it.

“Perhaps there is,” Ellen says, and glances at Dean. “What do you think?”

Dean shrugs. And, because he feels spiteful and would like to make this awkward, he says,

“My mother is dead.”

Ellen presses her lips together and turns back to the berries straining through the muslin. Her back to him, Dean can still make out the terseness of her muscles at Dean’s somewhat pointed rejection.

“You have my condolences,” Novak glances, concerned, from Ellen to Dean. “As is mine. You’re in good company.”

Is Mr Novak really the definition of good company? Is sitting in the company of another with a deceased parent really what one might call ‘good’ company?

“And what of your father?” Dean asks. A mask slides over the shepherd’s features, the feeling it stirs in Dean is like being choked.

“Long dead,” he says, voice quieter, and flat. “All dead.”

Silence. Novak turns back to Ellen to help her with the berries, which are strained twice, three times more.

“Perhaps we oughtn’t tell the young Mr Winchester about this,” he says conspiratorially to Ellen, “but the hairs on the seeds may be used as an itching powder. Nothing more irritating, I believe.”

Dean could name a few things.

Ellen titters.

“Oh, he’s a good boy—wouldn’t think of using it, I’m sure.”

“What about this one?” Novak gestures to Dean, who bristles.

“I’ve no idea,” Ellen admits, eyes warm as she glances to Dean. “Too old now, but perhaps when he was a boy…”

“Well, Mr Winchester?” Novak asks, and it’s strange to hear the name on his lips, though Dean can’t think why. “Were you a wild, misbehaving child?”

Dean’s lip turns down, half resentment, half sadness.

“I never was.”

“Never was?”

“I never was a child.”

Ellen tuts at the impossibility of this statement. But Novak’s eyes are turned sadly on Dean. Dean can only hold his gaze for a moment, before he flits his away, swallowing. He dislikes the understanding rinsing the shepherd’s features.

Bread is pulled from the oven and set aside to cool as Novak and Ellen spoon jam into heated jars. The kitchen smells like sunlight. Adam enters with a grazed knee and a broad grin, Novak frowns at the knee for a moment before catching the boy’s expression and easing.

“Scrape?” he asks, gesturing to the knee.

“I’ve been climbing in the orchard,” Adam says, which explains the powdery smears of lichen and dried moss on his hands and face. Dean comments on these, but Ellen tuts.

“Let the child be a child,” she says, and again, Dean’s insides simmer bitterly. Novak watches him with his mask-like expression.

Sam enters and enquires after the silo, before helping Ellen set the table. Dean moves his arms for Sam to put a plate in front of him.

Novak continues watching him. Dean bristles. What, is it because he isn’t helping Ellen prepare lunch? He’s been at work, too. Unlike Novak, apparently—the man has been lounging about in the kitchen, gossiping and making jam. Well, maybe not gossiping. The shepherd barely speaks at all: he’d hardly be a good partner for it.

They sit down for lunch—only Sam, Adam, Ellen, Dean, and the shepherd. Mick is out escorting Bobby to the solicitors, Jo is out running errands. Novak sits opposite Dean. Dean stares sullenly down at the table—lunch is smoked fish, fresh from the sea, greens, and the bread which has just been pulled from the stove. Dean thinks sadly of the stretches of time he spent on Sundays and Holy Days, sat at the lakes of his old state, fishing. Waiting and reeling in a soft circle of motion and stasis until the fear and anger in his heart had dimmed to nothing more than quiet ember and the sun ticked downwards through the sky. He remembers the happy look on Sam’s face when he would come back with enough to feed them for a week, and good meals, too.

How the tides of life came rushing in.

They eat: Sam barrels questions at the shepherd about his life, and Ireland, which the man is very good at answering without divulging any kind of information whatsoever. Dean comes out of the meal knowing no more about the shepherd than when he went in—and all he’s learnt, rings in his head like the tolling of a funeral bell.

Long dead. All dead.

Dean, about to leave the kitchen, is called back by the shepherd.

“No sheep herding lessons today, then?”

“I need to get on with the rest of my work,” Dean answers. And perhaps this is true, but not desperately so: his work for today hadn’t been so pressing that this morning, he’d felt there was no option but to forge on with it. No, this morning he wrestled with the idea of seeing Novak. If it had been so certain, there would be no wrestling at all.

“Just so,” the shepherd says. Dean leaves the kitchen, fists balled, as Novak thanks Ellen for the meal, and she offers him a now-cooled jar of the ruddy-gold rosehip jam.

The next day, he also decides against joining Novak. Bobby has hired some new men, two of whom, Victor Henriksen, and Benny Lafitte, Dean finds he doesn’t dislike and can stand to spend the day in hard labour with. He takes them up on their offer of drinking at the pub in town, and has to drunkenly stumble home alone—Lafitte and Henriksen opt to stay and chatter, but Dean is to be up early the next morning to take Bobby into town. He wanders along the cliffs from town, wind whipping about his hair. Perhaps this is unwise—several times he wobbles in the force of the gale fresh off the sea, and he steps aren’t exactly steady, and the land is uneven from years of the steady erosion of livestock treading over it, and the night is dark and his only light is the moon and stars and odd ships on the horizon…

Beer seems stronger in England.

Or perhaps the English drink more?

Or perhaps it was the songs they sang—the whole pub riled up in a rendition of a song named Farewell, Nancy, which Dean had not known, but picked up soon enough. Drinking seems easier when drenched in singing.

“In the deepest of danger,” he hums, and stumbles as he hums, “I shall stand your friend—”

He trips. He trips, and trying to catch himself, instead catches his hand on a blue-gray-black and jagged rock. A bastard jagged rock. He hisses in pain.

“Fuck,”

“Well now,” in the darkness, a figure stands over him, but Dean would recognise the voice in a crowded and murmuring room. He groans, already infuriated. “You’ve gone from singing sailor’s love songs to cursing like one. I know which I prefer.”

“Fuck you,” Dean spits up at the figure, before examining his hand, swimming with blood dimmed by the smear of the relentless damp of English mud. Damn it.

“And still now, I like that even less,” the shepherd says. His dog sniffs, a few feet away, in the tentative direction of Dean’s hand. Obviously his blood has caught on the air. Novak squats down to see Dean’s hand—Dean tries to rip his fingers away when the shepherd takes hold of them, but the man’s grip is firm, and Dean is uncoordinated, and the effort rips the wound further. Dean lets out a small cry. In the glint of moonlight off the sea, Novak gives him a look.

“Shut up,” Dean growls, but the man cocks his head.

“I said nothing.”

“Very in-character of you.”

“Would words undo the damage you’ve done to yourself?” The shepherd raises his eyebrows. Dean bites his tongue a moment.

“What’re you doing out here?”

“I was looking for Mugwort. I saw you coming, and stumbling, and thought you might need a hand. Before I could give you one, you’d fallen, and lucky it wasn't off a cliff-edge.”

“Mugwort?” Dean repeats.

“Aye.”

“Who’s that?”

The shepherd chuckles. It’s the first time Dean has seen him laugh, and of course it’s directed at mocking him.

“It is a herb,” he answers. And because the man is so set upon mocking Dean, Dean decides to return the favour.

“Funny time to be picking herbs,” he states. The shepherd’s expression twitches in the pure moonlight.

“She’s strongest under the moon.”

Dean frowns. The man is a strange and wild thing, and apparently something witchy, too.

“Huh?”

“Mugwort. She’s ruled by the moon. Strongest by her light.”

Dean shakes his head.

“Right.” Of course. What else? Bobby and his birds, Jo and her reckless impulsivity, and apparently Mr Novak and his superstitions… is everyone at the Eyrie either insane, or at least headed toward it?

The dog treads forward lightly, still sniffing at the air. Dean frowns at it, the shepherd stills it with a word.

“Can you walk?” Novak asks, and Dean glares up at him.

“I’m not that drunk.”

“I meant no offense,” the shepherd sighs, “only that you might have hurt more than just your hand, on the fall.”

“I’m fine,” Dean shakes his head, and struggles up. Perhaps not—his foot definitely feels sprained from the fall and sharp twist it took. Great.

Novak is at his side when he limps, hands patronisingly ready for Dean to fall.

“I’m fine,” Dean repeats.

“Let me see to your hand,” Novak says, voice like soft grass but also the soil under it. Wow, Dean is drunk.

He holds out his hand to the shepherd.

“Well,” he says, “hard to tell in this light. Looks like the rock’s splintered into your hand, though.”

“Damn it,” Dean groans.

“Nothing I can’t help,” the shepherd says. Dean doubts it. “My house is just here,” he gestures with his head to the small, ancient building while he rubs his steady thumbs down the length of Dean’s fingers. “Come.”

And what choice does Dean have? He follows.

Chapter Text

Inside the croft, Novak has hung dried herbs about from the beams spanning the rafters. It’s just as Ellen does, only more, far more, than Dean has yet seen—inside Ellen’s kitchen, or anywhere. He can’t identify all of them, some are strange, wild, prehistoric looking things. Novak roams in, dropping a small cloth bag onto the table. He hangs a blackened kettle over the hook at the fireplace, and pulls out a chair at the table, then pulls out another beside it for himself, and sits.

“Come,” he says again. “Sit.”

Dean does so, limping forward. The dog pushes softly past him and sits at the shepherd’s feet. It watches Dean as he approaches.

As he sits down, Novak has taken a hold of his hand. With his other, he draws the candle at the table closer, and frowns down at Dean’s injury.

“Yes,” he says, “I thought so.”

“Huh?” Dean blinks.

“The rock has splintered,” the shepherd looks up at him. “I cannot pick out all its pieces.”

“Well what good are you, then?” Dean glares. The shepherd stands.

“It’s shale,” he says, “that’s the danger, of course.”

“What?”

“The danger. Brittle. It splinters.”

“Ah, well my mistake,” Dean bites. “Next time, I’ll be sure to fall on a softer rock, like chalk. Or something sturdy? What about granite?”

“Next time it would be better if you didn’t fall at all,” the shepherd shakes his head. Dean snarls.

“Next time, I won’t take you up on your offer of help.”

“Let’s hope, then, you don’t need it,” the shepherd assents. He takes down a pot from a shelf and pulls out some small leaves, resembling spinach, but with light stringy fibres running through them. He picks up the kettle and pours a little of its water onto a cloth. Sitting back down, he checks the temperature of the water from the kettle, then rinses Dean’s hand with it. It’s hot, but not yet too hot, and once he has done this, the shepherd mops softly at the wound with the cloth until it is clear of the mud and larger pieces of slate. He rises again, returns the kettle to heat over the fire, and picks up a few of the leaves, chewing on them.

“Now’s hardly the time for dinner,” Dean frowns, but the shepherd simply rolls his eyes and spits the paste of leaves into his hand, reaching out to smear it over Dean’s own.

“Jesus!” Dean shouts, ripping his hand away, so loud and sudden that the dog starts up.

“Easy,” Novak soothes, but whether he directs this to the dog, or to Dean, he cannot tell.

“What’re you doing?”

“This’ll keep away infection,” the shepherd answers, nodding to the paste of plant and spittle in his hand, and Dean’s lip curls. Really. “And draw out the pieces in the cut that aren’t hand.”

“What?”

“The shale, Mr Winchester. It’ll rid you of the shale, cutting into you.”

Dean is unconvinced. It must show: the shepherd sighs and shifts forward in his chair.

“It gives me no great pleasure, Sir, but it is the best way.”

“But there’s another way?” Dean asks, still unconvinced.

“Digging around in your hand with a sharp pair of tweezers,” Novak answers frankly. “Or let the shale sit, and stay, and rub and cut and grate at your poor tender nerves from inside of you until your last breath.”

Dean doesn’t like any of these options. But then, he reasons, what’s a little spit? It never hurt anyone. In the time of the fuss he’s kicked up, more blood, watery from the rinse his hand was given, has trickled down to his fingers. He sighs and sits back down.

“Fine,” and he shoves his hand forward again.

Novak has to mop away at the blood again before applying the paste.

His hands move with surprising gentleness over Dean’s. He smooths the paste over the wound—it does, Dean will admit, have a strangely numbing effect, though maybe that’s simply because he’s expecting it—with soft and focussed motions, gaze set on what he does like a dart thrown, never veering. Dean is not so focussed—his eyes slip from the paste smoothed over his palm to Novak’s hands, the roughened, graceful fingers, the wind chapped and defined ridges of his knuckles, down to his wrists which turn with motion as he works. Then to Novak’s gaze. Steady, intent, intense. A strange wise wild beast of a man.

“Now,” Novak says, and takes a new cloth and binds Dean’s hand tight, “take this off tomorrow evening.”

“But I’m going to the bank tomorrow morning, with Bobby.”

“Good for you.”

“No,” Dean bites, “I mean, I can’t wander in with a leaf and spittle covered bandage—”

“Well, Mr Winchester, that sounds like a problem of pride.”

Dean grits his teeth.

“Now,” Novak says, rising, picking up the muddied cloth and tossing it into a basket on the floor, and taking a small tin pot from the little table beside his bed, “you’re lucky I have some of this left.” He approaches Dean again, sitting. “Give me your foot,” he says, and Dean balks.

“Sorry, what?”

“Take your boots off, and give me your foot,” Novak repeats, with longsuffering grace. “You’ve obviously sprained something.”

Dean sighs and acquiesces, slipping his boot off and lifting his foot, minus boot, awkwardly.

“Where…” he murmurs, but the shepherd, expression steady yet something in his gaze betraying annoyance, takes a hold of Dean’s leg and rests the foot on his lap. He pulls off Dean’s battered sock, and Dean flushes, strangely worried that after a long day’s work, he might smell, and concerned of what the shepherd will think of him.

Novak runs strong, steady fingers against the agitated knot of muscle.

“Yes, a sprain,” he says. He unscrews the pot and swathes some of its contents onto his finger. The colour of beeswax, though slightly runnier, Dean frowns at the mixture. “Balm,” Novak explains to Dean’s quizzical look. “Made from the leaves of the elder.”

“Oh,” is all Dean can think to say, both at the explanation and the smooth sensation of the shepherd rubbing the balm into his swollen skin. He looks from his foot up to the shepherd’s face. The shepherd continues looking down, rubbing the balm in, but something flickers in his countenance that lets Dean know Novak can feel Dean’s gaze upon him. Dean continues looking.

A stretch of silence and watching like the Great Plains of Dean’s home.

Dean doesn’t cease his watching. The shepherd is like some strange ethereal thing. Not of this world. Watching him work must be how Moses felt at the burning bush. The shepherd takes a strip of linen and binds it around Dean’s ankle tight, supporting his foot.

“There,” Novak says, when he’s finished. “You ought to keep that elevated. And try not to use it.”

“But I’m—”

“Heading to town, with Mr Singer, tomorrow,” the shepherd finishes for him. “I know.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Dean asks, prickles of annoyance flicking at his gut.

“Get your brother to go, instead of you?” Novak suggests with a shrug. “Or go, and limp through it. You’ll live, either way.”

Dean grumbles.

“You need to work on your bedside manner, there, Doc.”

“I never get any complaints from my sheep,” the shepherd takes Dean’s foot from his lap and moves it to rest up on the table, elevated, like he said. He rises, approaches the fire. Dean watches from his seat. Novak’s eyes glint in the firelight as he picks up the kettle again, now steaming merrily, and pours himself a cup of something from one of the many pots lining his shelves. “How’s the pain?” he asks. Dean shrugs. Novak takes out a small vial from one of the pockets of his coat, fills another cup with boiled water, and tips some of the vial contents into it. He spoons some honey, and stirs. Handing it to Dean, he says, “this’ll help.”

“You’ve settled in well,” Dean comments, nodding to the pots and well stocked shelves.

“Yes,” Novak agrees. He sits back down. Dean confuses himself by nearly returning his foot to Novak’s lap. He catches himself, shaking his head minutely at the strange intuitive act he almost performed.

When the shepherd doesn’t say anything more, Dean points out,

“You moved in yesterday.”

“I’m aware.”

Dean sighs. Novak’s gaze flicks back up to him. He pushes the cup closer to Dean.

“Drink,” he says. When Dean sighs and does so, he elaborates. “Mrs Harvelle gave me some assistance, and furnishings, this afternoon. And her daughter gifted me some essentials from town,” he gestures to one of the shelves, with salt, garlic, the jar of honey. “As you can see. The last shepherd left some of his things, the hurry he was in. I’ve laid claim to them.”

“Oh.”

“You knew him?”

“Never,” Dean shakes his head. “He left just before my arrival.”

“I see.”

“An elopement.”

“I heard.”

“Do shepherds make a habit of that?” Dean asks. Novak cocks his head.

“Does that thought worry you?” He asks.

“No, I’m hoping you’ll run off, too.”

“Ah.”

Silence. Dean takes another sip of his drink. It’s faintly flowery—is that the honey? No, the honey is headier than this taste; something light and floral accompanies the sugared flavour. The dog settles, lying down at Novak’s feet, letting out a long, soft, animal sigh from its nose. It looks up at Dean. It seems less wary of him, than before.

“Primrose,” the shepherd gestures to the drink, reading Dean’s thoughtful expression. “It’s primrose oil, in there.”

“Oh,” Dean says. Yes, that makes sense.

The room glows orange in the light of the fire. It hits the side of Novak’s face and creeps along the ridges of his features, something like the opening of a sunflower in the sight.

The night is dark beyond the thin-paned windows.

Silence as they look at each other. What kind of resentment, Dean wonders, must the shepherd feel for him, considering all Dean’s barbed comments and cold treatment?

“Mr Singer has… a lot of birds,” the shepherd says. Dean blinks.

“Yes,” he nods.

“Why is that?”

Dean shrugs. He glances down at Novak’s hands, which cradle his own drink, dark green flecks floating through it.

“What’s that?” He asks.

“Lemon Balm,” the shepherd answers. “For sleep.”

“You find it hard to sleep?” Dean asks.

The shepherd draws in a breath.

“Occasionally…”

“Me too,” Dean says.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Since his wife and son passed, Bobby began nursing whatever injured birds he could find.”

The shepherd blinks.

“Sorry?”

“Bobby. The birds. That’s why he keeps the birds. I think.”

“Oh. He hasn’t said that, though?”

“No,” Dean admits.

“And nobody else has told you?”

“I worked it out. At least—” Dean falters. “Well, I think I did.”

“It sounds feasible.”

“No more ridiculous than a man keeping and caring and tending to so many birds, in the first place.”

“We are all fools, in grief.”

Dean glances up from his drink, at these words.

“Yes,” he agrees. He thinks of his father moving restlessly from town to town, ceasing to work or provide for his family, drinking until his speech was perpetually slurred and he, at least twice a month, pissed himself. Better in his bed than the streets and public places, where Dean’s face would burn with humiliation as he carried his stumbling father to wherever ‘home’ was, each time. He thinks of Adam making strange little talismans of each of them, after John and his own mother’s death, and how he would line them up and count them, over and over, each night before sleep. He thinks of himself, and the vice that closed over him after watching his mother—

He thinks of Mr Novak, the shepherd, and what he said, this morning.

All dead. Long dead.

Another Great Plains stretch of silence. The shepherd looks down at his drink, taking long, low sips from it.

The shepherd starts humming. His voice might be the saddest and loneliest thing in the universe. He starts humming, and Dean is so distracted by the shale quality of his singing and distant look in his eye that he almost doesn’t recognise the song as the one Dean was singing to himself when he fell.

In the deepest of danger,
I shall stand your friend;
In the cold stormy weather,
When the winds are a blowing;
My dear, I shall be willing
To wait on you then.

Dean sings along too. The moment hangs in eerie silence around them save for the hum of their voices. Novak stares at a spot just to the right of Dean, but in a moment, his gaze flickers back over to Dean’s face.

“Are you alright for getting home?” He asks, and Dean blinks.

“Sorry?”

“On that ankle of yours,” the shepherd clarifies. “Are you okay for getting home?”

“Oh,” Dean says, and realises that this is a hint for him to take his leave. Mild offense simmers through him—why is Novak suddenly being so inhospitable? The man is rough and antisocial. “Yes. I’ll—” he takes his foot down from the table. “—Take my leave,” he rises, winces at the pressure on his ankle, but nonetheless limps toward the door. “Sorry, for taking up so much of your time—”

The shepherd sighs behind him and stands, pushing his chair back.

“Here, young master,” he says. “Let me.”

He opens the door for Dean, who steps through it, ready to make the turbulent journey back home—and so is surprised by the shepherd taking his arm and closing the door behind them—not before the dog slips out to walk through the darkness with the pair.

Now, Dean feels patronised, a disgruntled defensiveness coiling through him.

“I can make it myself—”

“Aye, but if you slip and fall again in the darkness, all the blame shall be on me.”

“No, it wouldn’t—”

“And I make no pretensions, Mr Winchester: I don’t count on keeping my job, long, with you around. But I’ll not be fired by Mr Singer, on my second night in.”

“So it’s all for your own self-preservation, is it?” Dean asks, irritated, and unimpressed. The air is cold around them, the stars distant and watchful. Clouds like smoke drift slowly across the vast surface of the sky.

“Just so.”

Dean grinds his teeth. The grass is wet, up to his shins, makes his clothing damp.

“You’ll grind them down to stumps, you carry on that way,” Novak warns.

Dean wants to push the shepherd away angrily, but there comes a sudden grassy gulf, which he stumbles and nearly falls at, and so ends up leaning more heavily on Novak than ever, while the shepherd holds tight and hoists him back up with arms like oak branches.

Balance regained, Dean’s face burns with humiliation.

“I’m not young, by the way,” Dean finds himself grating out sullenly. In the darkness, the farmer pulls an inquisitive expression. “You called me ‘young master’, back there. I’m not young.”

“I’m sorry,” Novak cocks his head. “Would ‘old codger’ serve you better, next time?”

Dean growls.

“For some unknowable reason, everyone in the farmhouse likes you. I want you to know, I don’t buy it, I don’t see it. I do see you flattering and grovelling—and it’s not impressive, nor subtle—”

“I neither flatter, nor grovel,” the shepherd frowns. “How old did you say you were?”

“What?”

“How old did you say you were?” The shepherd repeats.

“In January, I’ll turn twenty-five.”

“I see,” Novak frowns thoughtfully. “Well, you are older than I thought.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Behave like a sullen child, and that’s how you’ll be perceived.”

Dean shoves the shepherd, but it only has the effect of pushing him out of the man’s strong grip and toppling Dean over onto the grass. He makes an infuriated sound from the earth, scrambling at the soil.

“Do you want a hand?” The shepherd asks flatly above him. Dean nearly snarls.

“You’re so patronising!”

“So you don’t?”

Dean wrestles himself back onto his feet—or, foot, rather. Looking back up at Novak’s soft, even expression, he sighs.

“Would you give me your arm again?” He asks. Novak exhales and the sound is like summer wind through wheat.

The shepherd comes back to his side, and helps him walk, again.

“What about you?” Dean asks. A quizzical expression. “How old are you?” Dean elaborates.

“Oh,” the shepherd says. “I have seen almost thirty springs.”

“And no sweethearts?” Dean finds himself asking. The shepherd frowns, confused. “No-one waiting for you, back home? No-one who asked you, pleaded with you, not to leave, none writing you letters, no sweet young Irish lady hoping to call you husband, and to call you that, soon?”

Novak shakes his head.

“It’s all gone,” is all he says. Dean frowns again. “All gone.”

Silence. The sound of Dean’s awkward footsteps over the slopes, and the shepherd’s steady ones.

“Sírecht,” the shepherd says, and Dean frowns.

“Si-what?”

“Sírecht is the word for that. Old Irish. A home longed for, which you cannot return to.”

“Sírecht,” Dean repeats, and he thinks of the wandering flats of Kansas and the golden sun.

“Gone,” the shepherd says again, eternal sadness in the word. “All gone.”

The air around them is light and crystalline. The stars smile down sadly, little pinpricks in the broken vessel of the sky, through which shines some sorrowful heavenly light.

Neither speak.

The farmhouse grows bigger as they approach. A few lights—Sam’s, he’s probably reading—and the light from Bobby’s study. After Novak assists him up the steps, Dean pushes open the front door, and they make their way inside.

“Which room is yours?” Novak asks. Dean blinks.

“What?”

The shepherd sighs longsufferingly.

“Am I to take you upstairs, or can you manage that yourself?”

Dean breathes in for a moment, thinking. The shepherd’s body pulses steady heat against his own while his brain ticks over like a machine cooling down. The night air was cold; Dean’s hands are cold, but he’d quite forgotten it with the warmth of the shepherd against him. Maybe all the strange, folksy herbal crap the guy practices actually does some good—Novak’s circulation must be—

“Mr Winchester,” the man frowns, and Dean blinks back to himself.

“It’s upstairs,” he says, and then, “would you help me?”

“Just so,” the man assents.

“Dean,” a voice calls—Bobby—from his study. “What’re you doing out there?”

“Mr Winchester took a tumble by the cliffs—” The shepherd calls back in answer, and a noise of alarm comes from the study.

“Damn—” the sound of Bobby fumbling frantically for his canes, before Novak calls again.

“—Though it’s nothing to worry for, Mr Singer, it was only a small topple, and I’ve seen to his wounds—”

“His wounds?” Bobby repeats, and one of the canes clatters on the floor from his study, and Bobby curses within. “Damn it—”

“Mr Singer, we’ll come to you,” the shepherd offers, and guides Dean through to the doorway of the study. Bobby is fumbling from his chair for the cane on the floor, and looking up, seeing Dean in one piece, sighs, exasperated.

“Damn it, boy,” he shakes his head, “how much did you have to drink?!”

“Less than your new farmhands,” Dean states defensively, “and less than you, on any given weeknight.”

“Well, some of us can hold it,” Bobby grumbles. Something in Dean’s heart prickles—was—was Bobby concerned for him?

That’s unexpected. John would barely notice whenever Dean hurt himself, even when it was through doing things nobler by far than drinking. Dean recalls, with a salt-stinging sadness, when age fifteen his arm was caught in a machine and broke in two places. John had only scowled at Dean’s splint and bandaged arm and said, how long will that take to mend? Dean’s answer of two months had been met by a shout, and the sound of John’s bottle being thrown against the wall, and the alcohol-burn of his breath at Dean’s nostrils as he’d exclaimed, too close for comfort, and how are we meant to eat until then?!

Dean’s answer at this point, Why don’t you feed us, father? Had been answered with a vice grip around his other arm and the wordless threat of breaking this one, too.

The pain had been so great, that night, that Dean had stolen some of John’s whiskey and drank it, all of it, in one, two, three gulps. He’d face the consequences the next morning: of course John would notice. And he did. And he did.

“I’m seeing Dean up to his room,” the shepherd explains, and Dean flickers back to the present, and Bobby is staring at Dean like he just asked him a question, but Dean was too far off, treading the walkways of the past, to answer it. “He’ll be right by morning, I suspect, Mr Singer. I gave him some balm for his ankle.”

“Thank you,” Bobby says, drawing in a breath. “I’m glad to see the two of you are getting along,” he says, at which bitter wine seeps into Dean’s veins and his lip curls.

“We’re not,” he says, glaring.

“Oh,” Bobby frowns.

“He just walked me back. That’s all.”

“Right,” Bobby shakes his head, and returns to his papers. “I’ll see you, bright and early tomorrow, Dean. I hope you won’t be hungover.”

It’s not a well-wish, it’s an instruction to recover. Dean sighs.

“C’mon,” he mutters, and tugs at Novak, who helps him out of the room.

Up the creaking staircase, through to Dean’s bedroom. It’s dark inside; Novak takes a match from his pocket and strikes it against the stubble scratching at the hard line of his jaw. Dean blinks, impressed, when it lights. The shepherd doesn’t notice. He brings the flaring flame to the candle and lights it.

Lifting it and looking around the room, he states,

“Now, you’ve barely furnished this place.”

Dean frowns defensively.

“I have little to furnish it with.”

“I see.” Novak turns to face Dean, who rests his weight on his good ankle. “And would you like anything?” he asks. “To make it feel more like home?”

Dean frowns, heart twitching, though not only with homesickness.

“I—it isn’t home,” he says, and says it firmly. “This isn’t my home. So why should I need anything?”

The shepherd sighs.

“I see,” he says again. “Well. Goodnight, Mr Winchester. I hope you recover well.”

“I’ll return the bandage to you, tomorrow—”

“Don’t think on that,” the shepherd shrugs. “It’s no great thing of importance.”

Dean, remembering the size of Novak’s pack and the few earthly belongings he must own—most of which seem to be herbs, anyway—doubts the truth of this.

“I—thank you,” he says, as Novak turns toward the door to leave. “Thank you, Mr Novak.”

“Don’t think on it,” the shepherd repeats. “I suppose I shan’t see you tomorrow, to learn of the sheep?”

“No,” Dean admits.

“And what of the next day?”

“Sunday?”

“Aye, the sheep don’t stop their grazing on the Lord’s account,” the shepherd smiles wryly.

Is this the first genuine smile he’s directed at Dean? Dean blinks. It suits the man, the twist of his lips, the spark of his eyes.

“Then—then yes,” Dean answers, “I suppose. I shall see you, then.”

“To learn to shepherd?” Novak seems surprised.

“What else?”

“Well, then. Perhaps after church, if you’re a Godly man.”

Dean barely is; he’s seen little in this life to evidence something all loving, all good, except perhaps the soil itself. But he shrugs.

“Take lunch with us, and we’ll set out, together.”

The shepherd smiles curiously.

“Just so,” he says, and leaves.

Chapter Text

Sunday morning the dawn arrives soft and steady as the soft lapping waves in the coves below the cliffs. The pain in his ankle is all but completely gone, the muscle back down to normal size. Perhaps Novak’s medicine isn’t so ridiculous, after all, Dean thinks—and then laughs to himself. He’s up, dressed in his Sunday best, and waking Sammy up with a good mood that surprises even himself, to say nothing of his brother.

“You want to go to church?” Sam blinks with a frown, rising stiffly in his bed and rubbing blearily at his eyes. Ellen has embroidered birds with curling wings about their surface, Dean doesn’t know them, cannot name them. But they have the curling, graceful shape of swallows, though with shorter tails. Must everything turn back to birds?

“Sure,” Dean says, “come on. You know how much Ellen likes it.”

“I mean, sure…” Sam murmurs, shaking his head.

“I’ll wake Adam.”

Sam frowns. It’s rare that Dean voluntarily interacts with the boy.

“Okay,” he murmurs. “Just—be nice…”

“I’m always nice,” Dean protests, while Sam pulls an unconvinced expression down at his bedsheets.

“Adam,” Dean knocks at the boy’s door, before entering. Adam is scruffy haired and frowning, blinking and confused at Dean. “C’mon,” Dean says. “You’d better get ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“Church.”

Adam groans and rolls over in bed.

But in the chill air of the church hall, Dean can’t spot the face of the shepherd anywhere. He scans around them, all the way through the sermon, every one of the hymns, and during the liturgy before communion, but nothing.

“Dean,” Sam elbows him, muttering exasperatedly out of the corner of his mouth, “where’s your head at, today? I thought you wanted to come here. You practically dragged me and Adam out of bed.”

“Let me be,” Dean growls. Still there is no sign of dark scruffy hair, oversized black coat, scruff of stubble. Dean frowns.

“Both of you,” Ellen hisses, irritated, “Hush!”

Back at the farmhouse, Dean is agitated. Had the shepherd been lying, when he’d promised to spend the day with Dean? He guesses Novak had second thoughts, realised giving shepherding lessons to Dean would mean getting fired sooner—the selfish ass. So, what, he’s not going to keep his promises, now?

When he slumps down, angrily, for lunch in the dining room, he nearly starts out of his skin when the shepherd pulls out the seat opposite him.

“You did—” Novak frowns at Dean’s shock, still standing, “—you did extend the invitation to me.”

“I know,” Dean flickers, scrambling to sit up, “I just—I thought you weren’t—”

“Well, why wouldn’t I?”

“You weren’t at church.”

Novak shakes his head and sits down.

“Your church would do it wrong.”

“Huh?”

“I’m Catholic.”

“Catholic?”

“You seem surprised.”

“No,” Dean shakes his head quickly, “just—”

“I grew up in Kerry.”

“I don’t know where that is,” Dean frowns.

“Ireland.”

“No, I got that.”

Ellen enters, carrying what is essentially an enormous platter of golden-brown roasted potatoes and parsnips.

“Oh, Mrs Harvelle,” Novak clasps his heart, “I’ve not seen a sight this beautiful since I was at the mountains of Connemara.”

Ellen chuckles and lays the platter down.

“Not that I know if they look any good, but I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“The most beautiful things on this earth, aside from your cooking.”

“And there’s gravy,” Ellen smiles warmly. Novak clasps his heart again.

“You were sent from above, I’m sure of it.”

Ellen titters and leaves to fetch more food. Dean frowns over at the shepherd, who shoots him a quizzical expression.

“You’re grovelling,” Dean frowns. “Stop it.”

His chest is swollen with jealousy, once again. Ellen takes so kindly to the shepherd, all his words and phrases, every one of his idiosyncrasies. He’s not been here a week, and already has riven himself in among the people of the Eyrie: Adam thinks him kind, Sam finds him thoughtful, Bobby sees him as hardworking, Mick as a trusted ally in a house full of Americans, Ellen as a charming and warm if mysterious young man, Jo as an intriguing longsuffering creature with a beautiful speaking voice. Dean finds him insufferable, insidious, sarcastic, acerbic, smug, at once evasive and too honest, somehow both impolite and bootlicking.

“I think you’re confusing flattery for thankfulness.”

His voice is enough to raise pinpricks of frustration along Dean’s forearms. Nothing has provoked him like this before.

“I think you need to stop behaving with such disgusting—servility—”

“Well,” the shepherd shrugs, “as you keep pointing out, I am a servant.”

“I never should have invited you to dine with us.”

Novak looks up at him, curious, and riled.

“So why did you?” he asks. Dean inhales, ready to snark something, anything. But Ellen re-enters with gravy and roasted vegetables—parsnips, carrots, beetroot. The starlings in the room flitter about their golden cages, catching the scent of the food on the air and chattering to one another about it.

“A feast,” Novak says, and Ellen glows. “This’ll be the best meal I’ve had in years.”

“You’re a charmer.”

“No, I mean it—is it Christmas? Did I sleep through the month?”

Ellen titters and runs a hand through the shepherd’s messy hair. If Dean’s hair was like that, she’d almost certainly bitch about it. And Novak is their guest—he should’ve dressed up. How is this fair?

“A feast,” Dean mimics after Ellen has left again. The shepherd looks back over to him, and inclines his head.

“You know the pendulum, which swings back and forth, in those grand old grandfather clocks?” He asks. Dean frowns, swallowing. He nods. “You’re like one of those,” Novak says.

Sam and Adam come in and seat themselves. Dean grinds at his teeth before raging at the memory of what the shepherd said to him last night: You’ll grind them down to stumps, you carry on that way.

He balls his fist and glares at the dark wood of the table, varnished almost black. Around them, flashes of iridescent colour from the starlings flittering about the bronze bars of their cages. Novak, against the dark wood and walls of the room, and the flashes of fragmentary colour in the bird’s wings, fits in very well. He fits in too well, in this house, this house which everyone seems able to twist roots around, find good soil to dig down in, except for Dean.

Bobby enters and greets a few of the chirruping birds before sitting at the head of the table, leaning his canes beside his chair.

Aside from this, the other members of household staff—Jo, Ellen and Mick—join them. The Eyrie is the strangest jumble of a house Dean has ever been in: servants dining with their master; Ellen tuts and ruffles at Dean’s brothers’ hair and calls them all by their first names; Jo insults and rolls her eyes; Mick spends half the time he should be working telling Bobby and Sam outrageous stories about his criminal past, and teaching Adam to gamble. The people in town don’t just have the impression that Bobby’s eccentric, they seem to believe that it catches, that anyone spending to long in the Eyrie will turn warped and strange between the walls of their own skull. Perhaps Dean has been touched by it, too.

At least it mostly seems affectionate. If it wasn’t, Dean guesses people from the town, and even several towns over, wouldn’t come with injured birds for Bobby to nurse back to health.

Mick, upon the request of Adam, tells them a story of one of his escapades in the East-End of London, almost certainly embellished, about how he escaped from several policemen by charming his way into the passing carriage of a duchess who, for personal reasons, he cannot give the name of.

Dean rolls his eyes.

But Adam gapes, and grins, and the shepherd nods his way through the story, eyes sparking.

Novak helps Ellen clear up when the meal is ended, and flicks his gaze over to Dean in such a way that Dean stands suddenly, spitefully, ready to assist, too. Ellen seems delighted with all the extra hands, says the place has never looked so tidy. She and the shepherd talk of how successful the rosehip jam was, and he asks her if she’s ever tried fuchsia berries. Dean didn’t even realise there was such thing, let alone that they were edible.

Once the kitchen and dining room have been tidied, Novak turns to Dean.

“Now, then,” he says. “Shepherding lesson?”

Dean wants to say no—feels the spiteful, indignant need to say no rising like bile through his system. But if he’s to get rid of the shepherd, he’ll have to learn from him, first.

Out in the vivid greens of the field, the grass vibrant and thick with Autumn, the air seems to expand in Dean’s lungs the way that leaves unfold and grow, steadily, in sunlight. The sound of the sea washing against the cliffs teeters over the cresting hills. The sound, and the wind around them, is like the fiddle played so unevenly and prettily in the tavern, on Friday night. At least the cold air of England did a good job of curing Dean of any hangover.

“First,” Novak says, “you must learn how to talk to Madra.”

“What?”

“The dog. She’s called Madra.”

“Madra?”

“Means dog, in Irish.”

Dean rolls his eyes.

“Imaginative.”

“You didn’t know what it meant.”

“This is going to be a long day.”

“You could just fire me now, and get it over with.”

Dean sighs.

“No, I couldn’t,” he shakes his head. “Not without Bobby’s permission.”

“These are trying times for you, Mr Winchester,” Novak shakes his head sorrowfully. Something in it seems sarcastic.

“Yes, thank you for your sympathy.”

“How’s your hand?” Novak asks.  Dean blinks.

“Oh,” he says. “Um—yes—” the change of subject, and the new necessity of his gratitude toward the other man, startles him. “Yes. Better. I suppose I should thank you, for that—”

“No need.”

“Thank you,” Dean says, and is surprised that he means it. “Obviously you didn’t have to. I was surprised—I didn’t think that the plant would work. And I didn’t think that you would want to help me—”

“Well, it wasn’t about wants.”

Dean frowns again.

“I was trying to be polite.”

“I was trying to be truthful.”

“Watch out, Novak, or I’ll work on framing you for something that’ll get you kicked out of here, quicker.”

“Mr Winchester, do you ever stand in wonder at the thought that you’re now nearly a quarter of a century old, and still stuck behaving like you’re barely yet a quarter of a decade?”

“Just teach me how to herd these damn sheep,” Dean grumbles. “The sooner this day is over, the better.”

But the day sprawls, the day crawls. And yet Dean learns a great deal. Novak shows him how to call and command the dog, how to hold and approach the sheep—an old Irish trick, he says, and says the English wouldn’t know it.

“You won’t be taught this trick anywhere else,” he says, “apart from in my motherland. You’re lucky, you’re a privileged audience, now.”

“Uh-huh,” Dean says, unconvinced. But there is some old and ancient way in the shepherd’s manner with the sheep, like the chorus of a folk song, stirring something eternal and sleepy in the blood. He’s convincing, if nothing else. They roam Bobby’s lands, where bright green grass turns to sun-dried, golden and reedy grass.

“Was Ireland like this?” Dean asks, and the shepherd blinks at Dean’s question. They lean up against a drystone wall, occasionally calling commands to the dog. Madra. Weird name. “I mean,” Dean says, “did it look like this?” he gestures out to the hills, the cliffs, the sea beyond them.

“Oh,” the shepherd nods slowly. “No, wilder,” he says. “The rocks were angrier.”

“Angrier?” Dean repeats with a frown. All through today, Novak has had a strange and new understanding of the earth and soil and trees to any Dean has ever encountered before. He speaks about the ground like she’s some strange, possessed thing, a mistress at once both loved and feared, a wild horse you oughtn’t approach from behind, a star you can follow and give name to but know that she is grander and greater by far than her namer. “What does that mean?”

“Just that,” the shepherd inclines his head. Of course, Dean nearly rolls his eyes. Nearly an entire day of short, minimal, often evasive answers in spite of their frankness. How can one say so little, seem to answer thoroughly, and yet clarify nothing at all?

“Angrier,” Dean repeats, unimpressed. He folds his arms. The shepherd flickers a glance over to him, twitches a smile from the corner of his mouth.

“Aye,” he nods. “And not worse for it. Vibrant. But it’s softer, here.”

Dean looks out at the rugged, wavering landscape. It doesn’t seem soft to him. Soft to Dean? That’s the crops in Kansas, in the middle of Spring. Lush and hopeful with growth. Spring showers leaving spattered droplets of water across feathery leaves. Landscapes flattened and trodden down by millenia of grazing, wild farming. Hills cresting softly in the distance, in a violet haze. Not stretching wide and vast and sudden as a wave. Cornwall is soft? What of the sea and its lash against the rocks? What of the jagged stone Dean cut himself on, just last night?

The shepherd seems to read his mind, for he lets out a gentle laugh, amusement pulsing unassumingly from his chest.

“I suppose it’s a question of perspective,” he admits.

“I’ll say,” Dean shakes his head. He still doesn’t understand.

“Here,” Novak turns to face Dean, and gestures with his hand, making the shape of cliffs with it, “the land shelters you from the sea. You’ve the Atlantic close by, to be sure, but not the same as my home. There, the rocks and fields and everything faces the sea, and not just a sea, an Ocean. She’s an angry thing. The rocks are angry with it. But also welcoming. Like a mother.”

Dean shakes his head. The shepherd is stranger than anything he’s yet encountered in Britain. And he lives on a farm popularly aligned with Bedlam by the people in town.

The light in the sky wanes, Dean’s hands are bitten by the chill of evening air. Novak glances to them with a frown.

“Well now,” he says, “I’d gamble you aren’t used to English weather?”

“Not yet,” Dean admits. “Kansas is—it traps the heat. Here warmth disappears with the light.”

“Just so,” the shepherd chuckles. The wind flickers at his dark hair, it curls in a light drizzle. “Come. We’ve about finished up here, for the day. Take a drink with me.”

Madra bounds ahead upon the realisation that they are headed back toward the croft.

“She’s hungry,” Novak comments with a wry look.

“I can’t blame her,” Dean holds a hand to his stomach, which growls. After the enormous lunch they had, this seems a little unreasonable of it.

“Aye, it’s hungry work, roaming the hills,” the shepherd nods seriously, though something in the gesture is mythic and ethereal, as though, in a moment’s moment, he will begin gushing proverbs and riddles each two halves of one whole. “Take dinner with me?” He cocks an eyebrow at Dean.

“I—” Dean stammers, and thinks with shame on his behaviour, and how little he has done to deserve this invitation, “I wouldn’t want to intrude—”

“I wouldn’t offer, if you were.”

“You’re probably a little sick of me—after lunch—and then today—”

“No,” the shepherd says thoughtfully, brows twining gently together over the flashing intensity of his features. “And as you say, you hosted me for lunch. Let me return the favour?”

“It was no favour,” Dean laughs, shaking his head, and Novak’s face shifts.

“I see the invitation is very odious to you.”

“No,” Dean says quickly. “Not at all—only—” he doesn’t know what to say. “I would—I would be very grateful, to dine with you.”

The shepherd’s expression shifts again, washes with softness. Like the gentle waves, the gentle waves that lap at soft sands in the coves beneath the cliffs, away from the lash of the Atlantic. The soft waves which were like the dawn, this morning.

“Just so,” the shepherd smiles.

Chapter Text

The croft fills with smoke and steam and the burgeoning smells of food. The shepherd cooks them wood-pigeon, stuffed with sage and rosemary and garlic, covered in butter, and wrapped in dandelion leaves. He slices bread, gifted to him by Ellen, he says, in thick pieces, and asks Dean to butter it. Then he turns back to the fire, tipping some spices—cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and a little honey—into a heating pot, toasting these before pouring amber liquid into it to warm.

“What’s that?”

“It’ll be mulled cider,” Novak turns back to Dean. He picks up two pewter mugs from one of the shelves and places them at the table. The croft has caught with the warming scent of wintery spices on the air, mixed with the soured fruit of weak alcohol. “If you just practice a little patience.”

“You say that like I can’t,” Dean frowns. “But I’m a farmer. I grow crops, till soil, plant seeds. For whole seasons, patience is all I have.”

Novak twitches a smile.

“Just so.” Silence, as he stirs the cider gently. The focus of his gaze on the pot has Dean’s insides clamping up. How can something be so soft and so penetrative? “Lay the table?” he asks, turning to Dean again. Dean rises and does so, watching the shepherd uneasily. There is a shelf with a few clay plates, bowls, cup and mugs, and mismatched wooden and pewter cutlery.

Once the pigeon is done, the shepherd takes it over to the table, along with the mulled cider. Dean ladles some into each of their mugs, while Novak plates up their dinner.

“You have an orchard here,” the shepherd says as he pulls up his seat.

“Yes,” Dean nods, seated opposite him. “Apples—cox and bramley, mainly—and a few pear trees.”

“You could make cider, yourselves.”

“This isn’t a brewery.”

“You could still make cider,” Novak frowns. Dean sighs, but finds it is slightly more affectionate than exasperated, and picks up his fork. “Aren’t you going to say grace?” The shepherd asks. Dean falters.

“Um—”

The shepherd sighs. He startles Dean by taking a hold of his hand and beginning,

“Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.”

“A—Amen,” Dean manages. The shepherd lets go of his hand, which goes suddenly cold in the air of the cabin, in spite of the fire. Novak picks up his fork and begins eating. Dean, resisting the urge to shiver, picks up the hot cider and takes a drink from it, hoping this will warm the chill which has creeped suddenly into his bones. It does not. He wraps his hands around it and squeezes tight.

“You don’t like pigeon?” Novak looks up with a soft kind of smile, gesturing to Dean’s hands, curled around the drink.

“No, it’s not that,” Dean shakes his head. “Your cabin is cold.”

“Considering the fact you’re technically my landlord, that sounds like your problem.”

“I’m not you landlord,” Dean denies, taking another long drink, which begins to warm him up, and removing one hand from the cup to start on his dinner. The shepherd pulls an unconvinced expression. “I’m not,” Dean says again, shaking his head. “Bobby is.”

“And as you keep pointing out, you’ll soon take over the farm. And then it’ll be you.”

Dean decides not to reply, and instead takes a bite of his food.

“This is amazing,” he says, gesturing down to the pigeon.

“After our feast this afternoon, that’s awful kind of you.”

“No, really. It’s not flattery.”

“You have my thanks.”

Dean watches the shepherd as he eats. Novak’s eyes are on his food, not Dean. When he looks up, Dean wants to speak, but the words won’t form on his lips.

“You don’t get along with your brother,” the shepherd says, breaking the silence for Dean. He’d be relieved at the conversation, but this isn’t the topic he’d choose. His features twine.

“Me and Sammy get along just fine,” he disagrees. “We get along well, in fact.”

“I meant you and your other brother.”

“My half-brother?” Dean asks. “Adam?”

“What you’ve just said rather acts as confirmation.”

“That’s what he is,” Dean answers, resistance to the shepherd’s words flicking his insides in agitation.

“Samuel doesn’t seem to consider him that way.”

“That’s up to Sam.”

“Why are you so resistant to him?” Novak asks. Dean coughs once into a closed fist, frustrated.

“It’s not—it’s not resistance—” Dean stammers, but the shepherd seems unconvinced. “And if it is, it’s none of your business,” Dean frowns, leaning forward. The candles between them flicker, two dancing, dim suns on either side of them. Novak blinks slowly, unimpressed.

“He’s only a child.”

“When I was his age, I’d already been working on farms for three years.”

“And that’s his fault?”

“You don’t understand,” Dean growls, and Novak plants his head on an incline.

“Well no, I don’t,” he agrees. “Because you are refusing to explain.”

Dean opens his mouth, but again, no words sprout. The shepherd watches him, patiently, which almost riles Dean up, more.

“I’m not here to give you my goddamn life story,” Dean resolves with a glare. “I’m here to do my job.”

“Your job is to… sit in my house, and eat my food, and glower at me from the other side of my table?”

“I can leave, if you’d like,” Dean offers bitterly. The shepherd shrugs, sitting back. He takes a long drink of his cider.

“It would mean Madra would inherit your meal,” Novak says, and glances a warm expression down to the dog. “She’d certainly be grateful.”

“One reason to stay might be to spite her, then.”

“You really dislike dogs,” Novak frowns. Dean glances away, a muscle in his temple stammering. He wonders, for a few moments, if he should say what he does say, next.

“John—my father,” he coughs, “one of his friends set his dogs on me, when I was younger. I was fine with them before. Not after that—they can be…” he trails off. The shepherds brows have somehow both sloped and pinched together.

“Vicious, when they want,” he finishes for Dean.

“Yes,” Dean agrees. He tries to swallow, finds he can’t. “John just laughed,” he says, and peers at Novak, and feels the strange clamouring need for some kind of absolution.

“Now why would he do a thing such as that?” The shepherd asks, face woven with concern. When Dean doesn’t answer, sadness as well as antipathy biting through him, Novak says, “If a man did such a thing to my son, I’d have their guts for garters.”

“Then you’d make a better father than my own,” Dean answers. He takes a hard drink of the cider, wipes his mouth, then finds himself saying, “I’d begun—I was—I had a sweetheart.”

“Oh,” the shepherd smirks. Dean’s lip curls.

“Now, shut up.” He’s too sad to stop this coming out rather harshly. “She was—her name was Cassie.”

“Cassie?” Novak raises his eyebrows, looking unaccountably surprised.

“What, is that such a strange name?”

“No,” the shepherd falters, “just that—” but he bites his tongue. “Sorry. Go on.”

“Her name was Cassie. She was beautiful—she loved me,” Dean says, and his voice cracks, and he has to cough and breathe deep for a few moments. Mr Novak watches him, focussed and patient and intent, all the while. “And I loved her,” Dean finds himself confessing, though it’s hard to admit, even to Sam, because of all the pain that these words, and the feeling behind them, is bound up in. And longing. Still. Still a restless longing. “But she was—” Dean doesn’t know what to say, or how the shepherd will react. “—Her parents had been slaves,” is what he decides on, and Novak nods slowly, face washing with understanding. “And John was—not pleased—beat me somethin’ awful—I convinced him not to hurt her,” he says, lip trembling, “but—but he moved us, out of town, after that. Maybe for the best. It was love—and love—a love like that, people don’t take kindly to it.”

“I understand,” the shepherd says seriously. “And young or not, I do believe that was love.”

Dean raises his eyebrows.

“Love,” the shepherd says softly, “is not possession. Is not clasping something so tight, you hurt it. Sometimes loving is letting go. Sometimes love is protection.” Silence for a moment, Dean nods sadly, blinking away the burn at his eyes. “Love is a funny sort of word for what it describes,” the shepherd chuckles, “as it doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

Dean laughs breathlessly.

“Yes,” he agrees. “I think you’re right.”

“Though I am sorry for what happened to you, what you left behind,” the shepherd says seriously. “Both then, and… when you came from Kansas, to this new and strange land. I know what a thing it is, to lose a place, a people, you love…”

“How?” Dean asks. Novak blinks, faltering.

“What?”

“How do you know?” Dean says. “How do you know what it’s like?”

The shepherd draws a steady breath.

“Enough talk,” he shakes his head, waving his hand vaguely. “Enough of this sad, sorrowful talk. It brings out the bitterness of the dandelion leaves. Makes for a bad dinner.”

Dean sighs, unappeased, and takes another bite of his food.

“You like your secrets,” he comments to the shepherd, whose lips quirk through his mouthful. He takes a sip of his cider.

“As do you,” he replies, swallowing.

“Maybe,” Dean admits.

“Well, how’s this,” Novak leans forward, eyes trained on Dean like a gunshot. It leaves Dean breathless. “A secret for a secret. You share one with me, I’ll share one with you.”

“Deal,” Dean smirks, and lifts his drink. Novak taps his mug against Dean’s.

“Well, go on, then,” the shepherd says. Dean shakes his head, one part amused, one part offended.

“No, no,” he frowns, “I just shared one with you. A big one. It’s your turn, now.”

“Yes, but you told me that before we struck up the deal.”

“What? How’s that fair?”

“It’s utterly fair. It wasn’t part of our agreement.”

“Next time I’m trading at the corn exchange, I’m taking you with me,” Dean grumbles. “If you’re half as good at bartering as you are at arguing.”

“I had five siblings,” the shepherd smiles, but his lips barely twitch upward as he does so. “If you’re any sort of gambling man, Dean, you ought to wager I have a talent for it.”

“I’m sure,” Dean nods. “And five?”

“Aye, a big family. But you see, I’m counting half-siblings, there. And why shouldn’t I?”

“You say that quite pointedly.”

“I do.”

“And you give your opinion very freely.”

“And why shouldn’t I?” he repeats. “I already count my employment under you as terminated, the moment it is to officially begin.”

Dean looks down. He takes another mouthful of his meal.

“Where did you learn to cook?” he asks. Novak shrugs.

“A big family… you pick things up.”

“Will you teach me?”

“All these lessons, Mr Winchester,” the shepherd shakes his head, eyes sparking. “Are you planning on paying me extra, for them?”

“Yes, in sullen comments.”

“And here I was, thinking I’d be getting those for free,” Novak rolls his eyes.

“No chance.”

“Well, alright. But you shall have to cook for me, some time, too.”

“Deal,” Dean smiles. “And you’ll be struck be the insecurity every teacher must feel, when their student surpasses them.”

Novak grunts.

“We’ll see.”

“We will.”

“For all your talk of disliking dogs, Madra has quite taken to you,” Novak observes. The dog has approached and, sitting quietly at Dean’s feet, stares pressingly up at him, eyes big and purposeful.

“Only because I have food.”

“Not only.”

“She didn’t seem too keen on me, before.”

“She’s like you,” the shepherd shrugs.

“What does that mean?”

“She has her walls.”

“Like you, too, then.”

The shepherd seems unconvinced.

“Mine aren’t walls.”

“Then what are they?” Dean asks with a chuckle. But the shepherd does not laugh, only frowns into the candlelight.

“Mine aren’t walls,” he repeats.

Dean watches the man, frown pinned to his features. The candles between them flicker in something, but there’s no draught which Dean could pin it on. Madra watches Dean with curious eyes. Dean frowns down at her, before returning his gaze to the shepherd.

“And, what?” Dean asks. “Whatever they are, is there any way through them? Are they ever comin’ down?”

The shepherd feeds a little pigeon to his dog, sadness stinging the light in his eyes.

“Not soon.”

“But some day?”

Novak shrugs.

“We live in hope.”

“You still owe me a secret,” Dean points out.

“I gave you one,” the shepherd frowns.

“When?” Dean asks. “What?”

“I had five siblings,” the shepherd points out. “I was one of six.”

“That’s not a secret,” Dean says, annoyed.

“It is to me.”

Dean sighs, leaning back. He finishes the rest of his cider, eats his dinner quietly. Novak frowns into the candlelight, still.

“So are we to make a habit of this?” Dean asks, breaking the quiet which had fallen over them like snow. Novak looks up and gives a quizzical expression. “Sitting over dinner by candlelight, trading secrets?”

“If you’d like.”

“I think I would.”

Novak chuckles. The sound is sweet and rough like the give of honeycomb.

“Let me be sure I understand you, Mr Winchester—I am to teach you how to shepherd, in anticipation of you firing me only to take over my post, and after each day of shepherding with you, and your sarcastic commentary for company, I am to teach you how to cook, with the food out of my own cupboard, and eat my food while you drill me full of holes with questions?”

Dean grins.

“You don’t like the sound of that?”

“Hardly a fair trade,” Novak’s gaze is like pinewood in a fire. It catches Dean’s breath. The shepherd is something strange and pure, like the first rain of spring, warm but drenching.

“I thought you were good at haggling,” Dean points out.

“Ah, well, then. The pleasure of your company is fair trade enough.”

“They say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.”

“They do?” The shepherd raises his eyebrows. “Explains why you resort to it, so often.”

Dean gapes out a staggered laugh.

“I never should’ve admitted to wanting to fire you,” he shakes his head. “You know you have nothing to lose. You’re taking liberties.”

“I know I can.”

Dean doubts he will ever get over the warm curl of the man’s accent. All his syllables close gently into themselves. It’s like music.

“Either way, I count on being taught shepherding, cooking, and—and whatever it is you do, with plants—how you recognise them, uncultivated, and do something with them. Useful things.”

“As a man who tills the soil, how does that make you feel?” Novak asks. “That I find things, unfarmed, and give use to them?”

“Threatened,” Dean admits, with surprising vulnerability.

“Americans,” Novak shakes his head, half care, half rue. “You’re the same as the English, just younger. And with, perhaps, more virility.”

“What does that mean?”

“The earth was never yours to claim.”

Dean opens his mouth, not certain of what words might crest on his lips, next. The shepherd watches him, which makes the sound struggle out, even more. The walls seem closer, here in the velvet dark, it presses Dean into leaning forward. But still, he has nothing to say.

“You dislike farmers?” he asks, instead of forming some kind of bitter, splintered rebuttal.

“Quite the opposite,” Novak shakes his head. “I’m employed by one.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I think there’s nothing wrong with working with the land.”

“But?” Dean raises his eyebrows.

“There’s something wrong with claiming it.”

“Every interval, you try to insult me.”

“You’re choosing to be insulted.”

“It’s my livelihood you’re damning.”

Novak shrugs.

“If that’s the way you see it.”

“That way I see it?” Dean asks, raising his voice. “That’s what you’re doing!”

“You’re awful defensive.”

Dean groans, buries his face in his hands.

“We’ll never get along.”

“And why’s that?”

“You’re insufferable.”

“I wasn’t aware you’d been trying to suffer me, in the first place.”

Dean lifts his head. Novak is watching him, head on that marginal incline it so often seems to tip at. The pots and bric-a-brac lining the shelves paint dancing shadows on the walls. The soursweet taste of the cider has pinned itself to Dean’s tongue. He licks his lips. The shepherd’s eyes track the gesture, something wolflike in his gaze. Little wonder he has devoted his life to keeping sheep.

“This is a transaction,” Dean finds himself saying. “I’m choosing to suffer you, for what you can teach me. That’s all.”

“That’s all,” Novak repeats, voice laced with something—offense? Doubt?

Dean’s chest is tightened, spasms, in anger. What the shepherd rails inside of him, he doesn’t quite know, can’t quite understand. All anger and shame and resentment, Dean finds that he is more himself than ever around the man: as if anger and shame and resentment weren’t already the building blocks of Dean’s heart.

He swallows, trying to calm the angry hammer of his heart before he lashes out with something.

“Did you catch the pigeon yourself?” he asks, trying to shift the tone of the conversation. The shepherd blinks, unimpressed by the clumsiness of this move.

“No, I took it from one of Mr Singer’s cages,” the shepherd answers flatly. Dean balks, eyes wide, before realising at Novak’s expression that he’s pulling Dean’s leg.

“Ass.”

The shepherd makes a noise of agreement.

“Don’t ever,” Dean says, because he wouldn’t put it past the shepherd, this wild man who steals from nature herself instead of cultivating it.

“You think I would?” Novak raises his eyebrows, surprised. Dean nods.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you did.”

“You can rest easy,” the shepherd says. “I’m not some low thief or vagabond, as you seem to think.”

“I don’t—” Dean frowns, taken aback, “I don’t think that—”

But Novak ignores him.

“Does Mr Singer eat any kind of bird?” he asks. Dean snorts, but his insides still coil with worry—Novak thinks that Dean thinks of him as a thief, a crook?

“Not that I know of,” Dean shakes his head. “He might eat the seagulls, given the chance, but that seems about it.”

“Hm.”

“He seems to think it’s cruel,” Dean offers nervously. “I’ve—” he smiles uneasily, attempting humour, “I’ve tried to tell him, cattle, sheep, pigs, they’re all definitely smarter than his chickens, but—anything with wings, Singer thinks of as some fallen angel.”

“Sciatháin…” Novak says softly, gaze a thousand miles away.

“What?”

“It means wings,” the shepherd answers. “In Gaeilge—Irish.”

“Right…”

“It was what my father used to call the hills we grazed on,” Novak supplies. “Because they spreads so far, so high, into the sky.”

“Oh…”

“And there’s your secret, Mr Winchester,” the shepherd looks up. His features are an oil painting in the amber light of the wavering paintbrush-candles.

“My—what?”

“Your secret. Mine, in trade of yours. I hope you think it a fair one. I don’t often talk of home.” The shepherd’s expression is sad, closed off, like a widower’s house. Dean opens his mouth; no sound comes out. Again. What is it with the shepherd and robbing breath from his lungs, words from his lips? “I don’t like to.”

Dean chews his lip.

“It’s like you said,” he manages, insides knotting. Novak gives him a look, encouraging him to elaborate. “We cannot claim the land. But the land makes claims over us, all the time.”

Novak hums, obviously struck.

“Just so,” he agrees. He peers at Dean, his eyes at once soft and piercing. “And what land is it, that has a claim over you, Mr Winchester?”

“Kansas soil,” Dean answers without hesitation. “The Great Plains.”

“The Plains,” Novak shakes his head, smile affectionate and uneven. It’s like the hum of a fiddle, wistful and broken. “I could never understand that. All that flat.”

“What’s wrong with flat?” Dean asks with a frown.

“The earth,” the shepherd says, “is not some dead thing which ought to lie still against itself.”

“No,” Dean disagrees with a laugh, “the earth is not some restless thing designed to toss and turn over itself like soil and stone stuck in a bad dream.”

“And that’s what the hills do, you think?”

“Hills, mountains, cliffs…” Dean shakes his head. “I miss the clarity of the Plains. The flat was freedom—if you could see anywhere, you could go anywhere. Even if your mind. Even from the threshing field, you could pace the grasses, swing from trees trapped on the horizon, in your head.”

“But hills are the unknown,” Novak disagrees, “what lies beyond them—what they hide from view—that’s the adventure.”

“I can see we won’t agree,” Dean quirks a smile. The shepherd’s eyes spark.

“Perhaps not.”

“Nothing new.”

“Perhaps not,” the shepherd says again.

“Hills are oppressive,” Dean says, wanting to see the shepherd’s eyes spark again.

“The flat is suffocating.”

“Hills are overwhelming.”

“The Plains,” Novak says, seriously, “in offering no sense of a ‘beyond’, no sense of hope, either.”

“What, and hills are hopeful?” Dean laughs indignantly.

“Hills are the very definition of it.”

Dean shakes his head.

“You fit right into the Eyrie,” he decides, and the shepherd gives him a look of Oh? “Yes,” Dean nods. “it’s filled with wastrels and oddities.”

“Mick is a wastrel?”

“Oh, for sure.”

“And Mr Singer an oddity.”

“Yes.”

“And Miss Joanna?”

“Both,” Dean laughs. The shepherd huffs.

“She’s a sweet girl.”

“She is,” Dean agrees. “—And—maybe sweet isn’t the word,” he chuckles. “But she’s somethin’.”

“I’m surprised you’ve not attempted to court her, in your time here.”

Dean frowns. What does the shepherd mean by this?

“What—why—what makes you say that?”

“Your brother has told me of your proficiencies with flirting, and your tendency to do so, at every opportunity.”

“When?” Dean asks, feeling poked at and attacked. “When did you two talk? And what else did you say?”

“It’s little cause for concern, Mr Winchester.”

“No, it is,” Dean frowns.

“You don’t seem the type to take offense at that kind of comment.”

“Well, maybe I am,” Dean frowns. “Especially when you make it sound—like an accusation. Like I have something to be ashamed of.”

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” Novak shakes his head, but Dean isn’t convinced the man means it. He glares.

“Well, I wouldn’t try to court Jo,” Dean states, words with a hard edge like the shalestones piled up to make walls on the farm. “We work together. And I’m technically—I mean, for all intents and purposes—her employer—”

“From what your brother’s said, that kind of thing hasn’t stopped you in the past,” Novak shrugs, “although perhaps you’re only happy pursuing lovers outside of your station, when that station is above your own.”

“You’re a mighty fine host, you know that, Novak? Insulting your guests—”

“This house is more yours than it is mine,” the shepherd states, voice gentle and even. Dean grates his teeth.

“Dick,” he says, and nearly spits it.

“Does that mean I won?”

“This round,” Dean grinds out. He finishes his dinner, which has long since gone cold.

The fire has died down.

“Would you like me to walk me back to the farmhouse?” Novak asks. Dean shakes his head.

“I’d probably try to push you down one of the hills. See how much you like them then.”

Novak’s eyes spark again.

“Best save that for another day,” he says, and Dean agrees. Out in the piercing cool of night air, away from the croft, his heart thunders in his throat as he stares up at the whiteblue stars. He struggles to clear his head of the shepherd.

Chapter Text

November, like the frost-bitten hills, rolls into December. Grass cracks underfoot, Ellen makes Dean a pair of fingerless gloves to assist him as he works, and Dean keeps a hold of the cloth Mr Novak bandaged his hand with, that drunken night. It sits at his bedside table and he finds himself staring at it, often, his mind tracing the ridges of cliffs he doesn’t recognise. The year is exhaling, trees have shuddered off their leaves and long months of cold—colder than it is, even now—draw in. Bobby laughs at Dean’s complaints, lets him know this is one of the warmest, by far, parts of England. Dean isn’t sold.

The shepherd continues his lessons. Dean learns the handling of both sheep and herbs. He gets, almost, proficient, as the days extend to weeks. Novak teaches by opportunity, not by structure, not by planning. A sheep breaks its leg and he shows Dean how to calm it, how to hold it still, how to make a splint. Dean watches the strong ridges of the shepherd’s muscles as he works, the careful attentiveness piercing his features as he tends to the animal, and is shot by something sharp and hard in his chest. A cow falls into the well and Novak is called upon, trusted by all on the farm, and he shows Dean the pulley system that will save the beast. Dean watches the hard tense of Novak’s muscles as they haul the ropes tied to the cow, lifting her out. Firm ridges moving like the grass on the hills in the wind.

Repairing one of the drystone walls round the stretch of sheep fields, Dean slices his hand open, for the second time in the shepherd’s presence, on a jagged piece of rock.

“Fuck!”

“That mouth of yours, Mr Winchester,” the shepherd frowns, but he’s already drawn close, dropping the stone he was carrying, where it cracks in two pieces—the shepherd pays it no mind. His hands are on Dean’s hand, examining the blood-weeping gash opened on his palm. “Making a bit of a habit ut of this, aren’t you?” Novak says, glancing up at Dean, eyes sparking playfully. Over the past few weeks, Dean has learnt to read these signals and flashes in the other man’s gaze: he smiles rarely, laughs more rarely still—but sometimes his eyes do the job for him. Now is one of those times. The laugh is as soundless as it is gentle.

“Thanks for the sympathy,” Dean rolls his eyes, but the shepherd has already tutted and taken him by his other hand—squeezing softly—to lead him up the hill to the croft.

“Idiocy scarcely garners sympathy,” the shepherd informs him matter-of-factly, hand still clasped around Dean’s uninjured one, and Dean growls. “Only pity.”

“It wasn’t idiocy!” Dean protests. “It was an accident!” The shepherd glances back at him, eyes a blue and blazing fire, “I…” The gaze, not for the first time, steals the words from his mouth. It only serves to make Dean angrier—it usually does. He hates that something about the shepherd forces him to…

Novak unlatches the door of the croft and they enter, out of the wind and into cold stone. Madra lifts her head from where she had been resting, beside the dying fire, which the shepherd stokes into life, adding a log before turning to his shelves, his many damned shelves, and picking up a strange, pale grayish-white thing—a type of horseshoe fungus?—slightly larger than his palm.

“Birch polypore,” the shepherd answers Dean’s quizzical look. He puts the kettle over the fire, grabs a clean cloth, wets it with some of the heated water, and tells Dean to sit. It’s an echo, again, of that drunken night in the croft, all those weeks ago. Novak approaches, sits opposite Dean—but not just opposite: his chair is pulled away from the table and drawn close to Dean’s, so that their knees are pressed together as the shepherd leans forward, taking Dean’s hand to clean it with the warm, wet cloth.

“Nasty cut,” he comments, and Dean agrees. “We’ll have to clean it,” he looks up to Dean, seriously. Dean squirms.

“With what?”

“I’ve got a bottle of gin in the cupboard.”

“Fuck, no.”

“Ah, so I guess it’ll be infection, then?” The shepherd raises his eyebrows. Dean shifts in his seat. His clothes have been bloodied by his hand. The wound is deep, and long.

“You don’t know that it’d be infected.”

“You’re a gambling man?”

Dean sighs.

“I hate you.”

“So you keep saying.”

Novak stands and fetches the gin, tipping some onto the cloth. He comes back to Dean, seats himself, presses the gin-stung cloth to the wound on Dean’s hand. Dean hisses and tries to recoil, yanking his hand back at the whitehot burn of the alcohol on his raw nerves, but the shepherd is strong—it’s not the first time he’s noticed this, and he doubts it’ll be the last—and so Novak maintains a tight grip on Dean, in spite of his struggle.

“Ow!” He exclaims, but the shepherd’s face is not sympathetic. He pours more of the gin onto the cloth. “No,” Dean begs, but Novak says, simply,

“It’ll be over soon.”

“Not soon enough.”

“How many years do you have, Mr Winchester?” The shepherd asks. “Surely enough to cope with a little stinging.”

“You’re not the one with his hand sliced open,” Dean grumbles, wincing in anticipation as the cloth is brought close to his hand again. He lets out a hiss of pain as it makes contact. But the shepherd dabs at the wound with a thoughtful kind of care.

“No, I’m not,” the shepherd agrees, and already, Dean knows what’s coming next. “And I wouldn’t ever be, now you mention it, because I have a head on my shoulders.”

“It could’ve happened to anyone,” Dean denies, but the shepherd squints.

“And yet it happened to you.”

“If you were any more insubordinate, they’d call you Brutus.”

“Insubordinate? What are you, my commanding general?”

Dean growls, shifting his gaze away angrily.

Novak stands again, the heat of his legs pressed up against Dean making the room that much colder when they are gone. He picks up a knife, takes it to the fungus—birch, birch what?—and peels off the skin at its underside, a strange foamy and rubbery kind of skin. He comes back to Dean, and seals the wound with this strange skin. Dean watches the man’s eyes as he works: charcoal lashes adding to the shock of his bright gaze, its kind intensity as he regards his work.

“Right…” The shepherd says slowly, tying a strip of fabric round the wound and over the fungus skin, before softly folding Dean’s fingers over the bandage. “The polypore should stay put, but just in case, I’ve bound it up. It’s antiseptic, too. The fungus. You’ll be alright.”

Dean watches the man, who contains a forest of knowledge inside his head. Perhaps all the forests in the world. At least, all the wild ones.

“Where did you learn all this stuff?” He asks, and the shepherd’s lips twitch.

“Now, I thought we only traded secrets over dinner?”

“There are no rules about when we can trade them,” Dean counters. “And it’s a secret?”

“And not one for now. What matters is, I learnt.”

Dean frowns sadly.

“You don’t trust me.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“Don’t use that hand, at least for the next day,” Novak instructs, ignoring him. “The wound might rip.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Dean rolls his eyes, “it’s only my right hand, and I’m only a farm hand—”

“They say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,” Novak comments, seriously, standing up and picking up the dirtied cloth and dropping it into a bucket, then picking up the leftover fungus and slicing it finely. Dean frowns. The man is repeating Dean’s own words, over their first dinner together, back to him.

“What’re you doing?”

“Well, we might as well finish this up,” the shepherd states, pragmatically.

“I’m not hungry—”

“It’s not for eating,” Novak rolls his eyes, as though this much ought to have been very obvious.

“Okay,” Dean frowns defensively, “sorry for the ridiculous suggestion. Then what is it for?”

“Tea,” the shepherd answers. “I’m making a tea for us. Winter’s drawing in.” He drops the sliced fungus into a pot, and places the pot over the flame, filling it with steaming water from the kettle. “This tea will make it so that we never get sick, even during the cold months.”

“You seem awfully certain,” Dean comments, watching the shepherd bend by the fire. It paints his skin gold. Dean thinks, strangely and fleetingly, of the sunlight in Kansas.

“Have you ever seen me ill?”

“I’ve known you what, a few weeks?” Dean asks with an indignant laugh. The shepherd presses his lips together, eyes dancing like a blue pinewood fire. Novak stirs at the pot a few minutes, before turning back to Dean.

“We’ll leave the wall, for now,” he says.

“Are you sure?” Dean frowns. “I can still work—”

Novak gives him an unconvinced look.

“It’s nothing urgent,” he reassures. “We’ll keep the sheep where they are, and move them to the other field tomorrow, when the wall is fixed.”

“Okay,” Dean is uneasy. The shepherd sits back in front of him, and suddenly, they are close again.

“You feel uncomfortable, when you’re not working,” he observes, and Dean’s heart stammers. He doesn’t like the cut of this comment, nor the perceptiveness of those eyes.

“How—I—”

“Why?”

Dean swallows, heart flitting and flickering.

“What, so we are trading secrets, then?”

Novak stares at him. Those eyes—it’s like being pinned to a wall, like having a hand to his throat. He hates the intensity of the shepherd and has no name for what it riles inside his chest, except anger.

“You worry, if you don’t work, something bad will happen.”

Dean clamps his jaw shut, his lips turning down. He stares at the shepherd and pours as much dislike into his gaze as possible.

“You are worried you will be replaced. That’s why you hated me, and my arrival, so.”

Dean swallows.

“Stop it,” he says. His eyes sting. He wrenches his gaze away. The shepherd’s still presses at him like wind in a storm.

“You won’t be replaced,” the shepherd says softly. His voice is a whisper in the dark. “You can’t be replaced.”

There’s little left in Dean’s lungs, but he still manages to exhale at this.

The air has grown thick, thick enough to be cut through. When he looks back up at Novak, the other man is close, watching Dean.

“You can’t be replaced,” the shepherd repeats. Dean stares into his eyes in a moment which seems to stretch for eternity, before finding that his head has tipped forward to rest on Novak’s shoulder. He takes in great, shuddering breaths, but still somehow, for some reason, the world is short of air. The shepherd’s hand comes to card through Dean’s hair, raising the skin at the back of Dean’s neck and making his breath stammer in like harsh waves on a restless shore. His heart thunders in his chest—he can’t think of the last time someone touched him like this: Bobby will clap him on the arm occasionally; on rare occasions, he and Sammy share a hug; John was surely never physically affectionate with him, Dean can’t remember so much as a kind word from the man, let alone a kind action. Of his many love affairs, many of them were physical, many of them were definitely physical—but Cassie was the only one who touched Dean with something that made his heart stammer. Being touched like that—like that? Does Dean mean this? What does he mean, by this—again, it unravels something in Dean’s chest as much as it makes that same chest constrict.

His breath starts coming in short with panic as much as the hand weaving through his hair, the fingertips drawing patterns at his scalp, stir something in Dean which insists he all but melt into the touch. He feels like the delicate heads of poppies which must get bruised and battered as harsh winds tear around them and their bulbous heads, spindly stalks, paper-thin-skin pettles.

The shepherd’s palm cradles the back of his head. Dean turns his face downward into the man’s shoulder, worried that at any minute, he will lash out because of the raw vulnerability this moment has left him in, worried that this will spark a rage in him which will burn the beautiful silent startling delicacy of this moment. But why the rage? Why the inexplicable fear and anger, setting alight to his insides, in this moment?

And why the sting of wild longing?

The thought cannot complete itself: the shepherd pulls back, hand slipping onto Dean’s shoulder and squeezing softly a moment while Dean, startled and confused, can only blink and have no idea of where to look.

“It’s growing dark,” the shepherd observes, looking at the land and sky outside of one of the brittle croft windows, growing silvery in the receding light. “Sun’s setting… What do you want to do?”

“What?” Dean asks, blinking, confused, breath short in his chest which seems set to wring itself out in every moment since the shepherd first touched him.

“Will you eat here? And if so, what would you like?”

“I don’t care,” Dean shakes his head, words clipped, head a thousand miles away. He feels giddy. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like the shepherd for making him feel this way; he feels angry at the shepherd, in fact—is it the man’s stupid herbal, old world medicine, which is doing this to him? What was in the gin, which mingled straight into his blood? What was in the fungus, which is making his head float away from his shoulders, the world turn to the fog like that surrounding port cities?

“Fine,” the shepherd says, and seems put out by Dean’s shortness. “I’ve some fish I caught and smoked, yesterday?”

“Sure,” Dean tries to swallow, but finds that his mouth is too dry.

“Are you alright?” The shepherd asks, catching something in Dean’s expression which must give away how adrift he feels.

“I’m fine,” Dean trembles out.

“I could make you a—”

“No,” Dean raises his voice, anger flaring, “no more of your stupid—your damn—your ridiculous folk, pagan, whatever you want to call it, magic potions—”

The shepherd cuts him short with a look. Dean glares, but for some reason finds that he could cry, too.

“You have lessons to learn in respect, boy.”

“I’m not a boy—”

“Oh?” The shepherd asks, and for the first time since Dean has known him, raises his voice back at Dean. “Then stop acting as one.”

“The moment Bobby gives me the power,” Dean grates out, heart thundering against his ribs, “I’ll have you out of this building, off of this farm, with nothing but the pack you came with, and that dog at your heels.”

“The Lord speed that day.”

Dean’s breath is like rain hammering against a tin roof. The shepherd turns to his shelves and pulls off several items, quarters an onion and drops it into an old iron pot with some chestnuts. He places this on a shelf just above the fire, and just below the heating tea. He takes out the fish and wraps it in bittercress.

Ordinarily, Dean would help with this preparation—any other night would be standing beside Mr Novak, learning the names for plants he’s never seen before and their various uses, and often some strange and wild magic story behind them: how one day, the moon had been weeping and her tears had dropped to earth and grown this strange and alien looking plant; how once a sailor and mourned his lost love for so long that he had been turned into a tear-salty herb which could grow only on sand by the wind-battered sea. Now he sits and watches. The shepherd works silently, brow furrowed, but whether this is with anger or concentration, Dean cannot tell.

Eventually the anger in Dean’s chest is extinguished, perhaps by the pinch between the shepherd’s brows or the way he bites his lip when focusing. As his anger mutes, his shame grows. His face heats, a hot itchy heat which grows across his cheeks and makes the chair he sits on feel hard and uncomfortable. He stands, and Novak looks at him.

“Can I help?” He asks, voice unsteady. The shepherd continues to frown.

“It’s all but finished, now.”

“Sorry…”

“Well, you are my employer—I suppose I hadn’t realised that in being your shepherd, I would also be your cook—”

“No, I’m not sorry about that,” Dean shakes his head, “—or,” he fumbles, at the look he is given by the shepherd upon this declaration, “I am sorry, but not so sorry as I am—as I am for being such—for being so—”

“It’s forgotten,” the shepherd shrugs, and Dean’s heart tremors hopelessly.

“No, it’s not,” he disagrees. The shepherd shrugs again, saying nothing, and turns to the fire, with a thick cloth in hand to pull off the pot and place it on the table. The fish, which has been smoking just above the flames, is also taken down and placed upon one of his clay plates.

“Finish setting the table?” The shepherd asks. Dean does so, hopeless and wordless. The shepherd prepares them some yarrow leaf tea to drink alongside their meal. The tea from the mushroom, he says, will take a while longer, still.

Dean stares at the man as they settle down to eat. He can believe Mr Novak grew up with the shore-battering Atlantic on his doorstep. Something about his gaze is as vast and unknowable as that ocean.

Dean can’t think of what to say to fill the mist of silence set inbetween them.

“This is delicious,” he tries, but the shepherd looks up at him, unconvinced.

“You’ve yet to take your first bite.”

Dean stuffs some into his mouth, and makes a theatrical noise of enjoyment, saying,

“See? I could tell it would be.”

Novak rolls his eyes.

“Roasted chestnuts,” Dean says, and the shepherd’s lips twitch marginally.

“They’re one of my favourites.”

“Mine, too.”

“At last, something in common.”

“We have plenty in common,” Dean frowns, heart pricking with hurt. “In fact, maybe too much.”

“Oh?” Novak raises his eyebrows. He takes a bite of fish. “What things?”

“We both live and work here,” Dean points out, and the shepherd lets out a soft huff of laughter.

“Aye, there’s that.”

“And we both travelled to get here. And neither of us feel that it’s where we belong.”

“Well, that’s different,” the shepherd shakes his head. “My world is to wander, to roam from hill to hill. I’m all mobility. Yours is to plant seeds, dig down. All of you is entrenched.”

“And so, what?” Dean asks. “You’ve never had a home?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“We are from different worlds,” the shepherd says softly, peering at Dean with those intent, intense eyes.

“I know,” Dean rolls his eyes. “You’re from Ireland, I’m from Kansas—”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what?”

The shepherd shrugs and doesn’t answer. He eats his meal. Dean watches, frustrated.

“Is this one of those, secret for a secret, deals?” Dean asks. Novak shakes his head.

“There’s little to be said,” he answers. Dean lets out an exasperated growl.

“You’re beyond impossible.”

The shepherd neither agrees nor disagrees. Dean sighs, begins on his meal properly. Dean wonders how a man can be at once so humble and so arrogant.

“Alright,” Dean tries again, “we’re both stubborn.”

“I’m not stubborn,” Novak disagrees.

“What the hell would you call it, then?”

“I know myself,” the shepherd shrugs. Dean groans.

“You’re only proving me right. Okay, what about this, we both find beauty in the natural world.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Fine,” Dean grates out. “We’re both orphans.”

“That’s enough common ground, Mr Winchester,” brightcold eyes flick up to meet Dean’s, he draws back where he sits. They eat the rest of their meal in silence. Once finished, the shepherd rises, takes Dean’s plate, and sets them aside. He takes the stewing tea from the fire, ladels a little out into a cup for Dean, and says,

“This is mighty bitter. Would you prefer honey in it, or rather just drink it in one and be done?”

“Um,” Dean squirms, “what’re you going to do?”

“You trying to impress me?”

“No,” Dean glares, “I just—I just don’t know the custom—”

“There’s no custom,” the shepherd smirks, “it’s tea made out of a fungus. You wouldn’t exactly catch the Queen drinking it.”

Dean chuckles in spite of himself.

“I’ll take the honey, then.”

“Just as well,” the shepherd says, and spoons a little honey into Dean’s drink, stirring. “It really is bitter. You might want to drink this all in one, anyway.”

Dean smiles, watching the other man. His dark hair is darker in the room, scruffy from the wind, the angles it sticks out at make him look younger, make him look like a man barely out of his teenage years, and flush with youth.

The shepherd hands him a cup. Dean wraps his good hand around it instinctively, the shepherd smiles at the gesture.

“My home still a little cold for your hot blood?”

“Perhaps it’s your icy stare,” Dean counters. The shepherd chuckles, pouring his own cup and spooning honey into it.

“The heat of your constant rage and resentment toward me ought to warm you up,” Novak takes a seat opposite Dean again.

“It’s not all rage,” Dean finds himself saying, softly. The shepherd’s eyes change, look like the wind tossing gently at waves as he looks up at Dean. He seems suprised. Or…

“No?” He asks.

“It’s not all rage…” Dean repeats.

Chapter Text

Mid December, Ellen weaves holly and mistletoe wreaths and hangs them about the doors of the farmhouse, dark green ones with bright red berries and dusty green ones with pale, orblike berries. Adam is delighted, intent on helping her in the craft of all of these. Bobby chuckles warmly every time he sees the child run past with a new sprig of something to tie into the circles. They’ve never had a Christmas, a real Christmas before—well, Adam has with his mother, on consideration—but not Dean and Sam. Sam is quietly excited, Adam brims with it. It’s good to see them both so happy, so settled.

Dean continues learning from the shepherd—more and more. The man is like a still, wide river. He runs deep. Dean has spent day in, day out with the man for a month, now—and still he cannot claim to know more than a few inches of those yawning depths.

Out in the fields, a few days before Christmas Eve, he and Mr Novak sit on a drystone wall, watching Madra stalk a murder of crows. The pair smoke from a pipe of the shepherd’s, he casts Dean a funny look when Dean said he’d been dying for some tobacco for weeks.

“This isn’t tobacco.”

“Oh?—Then—”

“A mix of sage and mugwort.”

“Mugwort,” Dean nods, smiling as Madra stills theatrically when one of the crows notices her efforts at stalking and eyes her warily. “That’s what you were looking for, the night you fixed up my hand.”

“That’ll be the one.”

“Ruled by the moon?”

“Just so,” the shepherd smiles encouragingly. He says this often, Dean has learnt—whenever he teaches Dean something, and Dean mimics or executes it correctly, this will be the gentle response of the farmer. Just so. Simplicity forms on his lips like spun gold. Dean has never found things so humble so enchanting.

“Just so,” Dean nods in agreement, mouth quirking on one side. “It gives you vivid dreams?” He asks.

The shepherd confirms, obviously pleased with Dean’s having paid attention to his lessons.

“It was used for divination, in times of old.”

“I’ll let you know of my dreams tonight,” Dean promises. The shepherd nods thoughtfully.

“I’ll do the same.” He’s completely earnest with this, no trace of a laugh in his voice. His sincerity makes Dean’s heart warm inside his chest.

Dean puffs at the pipe when the shepherd offers it to him.

“Your youngest brother seems excited for Christmas,” the shepherd offers as conversation. Pale skies roll over the hills, which are dark green with winter.

He makes a point of doing this—will insist on referring to Adam as brother and not half-brother, step-brother, bastard brother like Dean is used to. Slowly it has even changed the way Dean speaks about the boy.

Dean lets out a wry chuckle.

“Oh, for sure. But he’s a kid, of course he would be.”

“You say that like you’re not?”

Dean shrugs.

“John was never much of a festive man…” He answers. The shepherd purses his lips unhappily. When it becomes clear that Novak is saying nothing in order to encourage Dean to continue, he says, “he’d spend the day drinking—like any other day, I guess. The worst part of it was that, it being Christmas, most of everywhere was closed up. So he’d be drinking at home.”

“And he wasn’t a kindly drunk?” The shepherd asks.

“Not by any book.”

“I’m sore to hear that.”

Dean sniffs.

“It’s fine,” he says, and takes the pipe offered to him again. After a few puffs, he says, “I think it’s hard to separate. You know. The Christmases I had, growing up, versus the ones I might be able to get, now. I want to have a good time, but… I don’t know. Is it fear? I don’t know what the word is.”

“I understand,” the shepherd nods softly. Dean passes the pipe back to him.

“And what about you?” Dean asks. “What are you to do, on Christmas day?”

The shepherd shrugs.

“I’ll probably roast some chestnuts, curl up with Madra, heat some wine.”

“On your own?”

“I’ve no family to return to.”

“Well, maybe not to return to,” Dean frowns, “but you’ve got a family here. Spend Christmas day with us.”

The shepherd glances over to him. It’s the first time the mask which covers his face, always, has slid off completely. It only happens for a margin of a second, but it steals Dean’s breath, utterly, all the same.

“You needn’t—”

“Listen, Jo, Ellen, and Mick are all gonna be there. They’ve got nobody else, either. None of us have. We’re all like you—why do you think Bobby adopts all those damn birds, anyway? Why do you think he’s so close with his servants? Hell,” Dean laughs, “why do you think he named me as his heir, the moment he found out about John’s death? The man’s lonely. He needs people around him—the more, the merrier, and he likes you. If nothing else, come along for him.”

Novak smiles softly, lips quirking.

“Perhaps…”

“Not perhaps,” Dean shakes his head. “It’s an instruction,” he grins.

“Am I in any more danger of losing my job, if I disobey?” The shepherd asks, and Dean laughs.

“No,” he says. “In fact, if you refuse to show up to the farmhouse on Christmas, I promise I’ll keep you employed here for the rest of your days, and you’ll spend every day in misery, harassed by me and my terrible jokes, and my angry comments.”

“Not misery,” the shepherd disagrees unexpectedly, and Dean’s heart twitches.

“Well,” he stammers out, “either way. You’re very much invited. I’ll only take it as grave personal insult if you refuse to come. And you’d be committing some great affront, to the spirit of Christmas, if you bailed.”

“Oh?” The shepherd asks, eyes sparking. “How’s that?”

“There’s, like, four orphans you’d be refusing to spend the day with. Me, Sam, Adam, Mick. And half an orphan, in Jo.”

“I don’t think you count as an orphan if you’re no longer a child.”

“You’re too cruel, Novak,” Dean grins. The shepherd’s eyes dance.

“Perhaps.”

“So that’s a yes?”

Novak chuckles.

“I have a feeling you’ll be set upon making my life miserable, if I say no.”

Dean grins again, wider.

“Damn straight,” he confirms. “Even more miserable than I’m making it, already.” The shepherd rolls his eyes. “And come for Christmas Eve, as well. Everyone will be there. It might even be fun.”

“Alright Mr Winchester, you repeating it isn’t going to make it any more or less true.”

Dean laughs.

“I’ll see you then.”

And he does. A heavy knock comes at the door on Christmas Eve just as Adam tosses some cinnamon sticks into a huge saucepan of mulling wine.

“That’ll be our shepherd,” Mick comments, sat back at the kitchen table, feet up as he shuffles a deck of cards elaborately.

“Get your feet down, Mick,” Ellen says, glancing back at him with eyes widening as she spots the offense. “That’s disgusting.”

Dean barely responds to the lighthearted look Mick gives him—he’s out of the kitchen, and down the hall before he has time to question why it is he’s so eager to open the door to the shepherd. But Sam has beaten him to it, and opens the door.

“Well, hello, young master,” the shepherd greets, eyes warm. He tips his hat to Sam as he is greeted, but when he catches Dean stood, a few yards behind him, he falters and takes it off completely.

“Mr Winchester,” he greets, and Sam glances back at him, wavering out a frown. The night is cold: cool air rushes through the house and Sam coughs awkwardly at Dean and the shepherd’s strange mutual staring as Novak stands at the door, neither out nor in. The shepherd apologises, steps in, Madra following obediently at his heels—Dean wonders what she will make of the birds, and worries what Bobby will make of her. Sam closes the door after them.

“You came,” Dean beams as the shepherd approaches him. The man seems somewhat taken aback, though his features wash with warmth as he regards Dean.

“I feared my fate if I refused,” he says, and Dean huffs out a laugh. Sam trails behind them as they head down the hall.

Up in the drawing room, Mick and Sam have put up an enormous Christmas tree, too tall even for the room: its point grazes the ceiling. Adam frets about how he’ll be able to mount the star onto its top.

“The chairs aren’t high enough,” Ellen admits sympathetically, looking worriedly up at the tree. “Sam, did you have to pick something so tall?”

“Mick picked it, too,” Sam frowns defensively, and both Dean and Ellen roll their eyes, and catch each other doing so with a flash of amusement.

“The chairs are big enough that Sam could get the star on, if he stood on one,” Dean points out, “he could just do it?” He suggests, but Adam looks crestfallen.

“Perhaps,” the shepherd says, gently, “if I lifted the young master up, he might be able to reach high enough?”

Adam’s eyes flash, his face lights up with excitement.

He looks at Dean, as if asking permission. The shepherd’s eyes fall on him, as well.

“I mean,” Dean says, heating under Novak’s gaze, “as long as you don’t hurt yourself, I can’t see why not.”

“I promise I won’t!” Adam beams, as if he could ever promise such a thing. Dean rolls his eyes again, but is surprised by the affection in his chest prompted by the boy’s excitement.

“Perhaps,” Novak says once more, “if Mr Winchester would help, too, you’d find yourself with even steadier footing?” He addresses this to Adam, but his eyes are on Dean as he says it. Dean’s pulse quickens. Adam looks up at him with big, hopeful eyes.

“Dean?”

“Alright,” Dean sighs, prickling under the shepherd’s gaze. “How d’you wanna do this?”

Adam is held up, by one leg by Novak, the other leg by Dean, close enough to the tree that Dean wrinkles his nose at the pine branches in his face. The shepherd chuckles at Dean’s expression, glancing at him, and Dean’s stomach flips inexplicably. Their shoulders are pressed together, they stand close, side by side, as Adam leans forward, reaching up for the very top of the tree.

“Nearly,” he says slowly above them, voice unsteady with concentration. “Nearly…”

“Careful, Adam,” Ellen says from behind them, fretfully.

“Nah, Adam, you’re fine,” Jo encourages, “see if you can knee Dean in the face.”

Sam snickers behind Dean to his left.

“Hey, Adam,” Dean glances up at his brother, “when you’re done up there, make sure you fall and land on Sam and Jo. Okay?”

Adam laughs nervously, the shepherd beside Dean sighs.

“I’m not kidding,” he shakes his head. “You get my fruitcake if you hit Sam, my gingerbread if you hit Jo, both if you hit both—”

“How come I’m the fruitcake?!” Sam asks indignantly. “Everyone hates it!”

“Well, I suppose that’s your answer, Sam,” Dean quips, but Ellen hushes them.

“Stop it, you two,” she tuts, “look, he’s nearly got it!”

“There!” Adam exclaims victoriously, and Jo and Mick applaud loudly. Dean and Novak coordinate stepping back from the tree in unison, before putting Adam down.

“Did it!” Adam exclaims when he hits the floor. “That was scary. But fun!”

“Uh-huh?” Dean raises his eyebrows and quirks a smile. “Glad to hear it. Good job.”

The shepherd gives Dean a soft look as he ruffles the kid’s hair, before Adam darts away to accept Mick’s invitation to a game of cards.

“What’re you thinking?” Novak asks, drawing close beside Dean as he watches Mick and Adam settle at a table, Mick with a hidden card just visible at his sleeve.

“That Mick’s a cheat,” Dean answers, gesturing, and the shepherd lets out a soft huff.

“His dice are weighted, too,” he says, and Dean twitches a smile. “I played him at a game of liar’s dice. Word of advice: don’t.”

“I suppose you shouldn’t be surprised,” Dean answers, turning to the man, who raises his eyebrows. “It is called liar’s dice.”

The shepherd chuckles.

“Too true,” he nods.

“But if I asked you to a game?”

“Aye, I’d trust you more than I do our footman.”

“Praise indeed,” Dean quips, as Adam loses a hand and exclaims in surprise and confusion. Mick takes his cards, smugly. Dean smirks and shakes his head. They move to an adjacent table and sit after Novak has pulled a set of dice from a nearby cupboard.

“Well, there’s a steadiness about you,” the shepherd shrugs, taking a seat opposite Dean. “In spite of it all. You aren’t the sort to cheat for fun.”

“In spite of it all?” Dean repeats. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The shepherd doesn’t answer him. He hands Dean four dice, and when it becomes evident that no answer is to escape from the shepherd’s lips, Dean lets out a frustrated huff. They begin to play. Madra settles at their feet. Sam eventually comes over to sit at another chair adjacent to the pair. Madra, probably able to sense how much he loves anything that can so much as bark, sits up to put her head on his knee. Sam smiles distractedly as he watches the game, playing with Madra’s ears. For a creature which isn’t a cat, she makes a sound remarakably close to purring.

Dean lets out a frustrated noise as he loses another die, now on his last one, and the shepherd’s expression softens even as he smiles, amused. It makes Dean clamp his jaw.

But then Dean wins the next round. And the next.

He frowns up to the shepherd, whose expression remains static, unreadable.

To test the waters, Dean makes a ridiculous call. In his hand, he’s rolled a three, a five, and a six.

“Five twos.”

The shepherd looks up, brow twisted. There is silence you could cut through.

“Six twos.”

Dean glares. The shepherd’s face is as ever, a mask. But Dean is sure that something behind those features flickers.

“Liar,” Dean says, and lifts his hand to reveal his roll. Novak does the same. He’s rolled two twos, a one, two fours, a three and a six. “Well,” he says, graciously, “you’ve won this round, too, Mr Winchester.” Dean glares.

“You’re losing deliberately,” he accuses. Sam coughs out a laugh into his fist. “Shut up, Sam,” Dean glowers, before turning back to the shepherd. “—Aren’t you?”

“I’m not so afraid of losing my job, that I’d let you beat me in a game of dice.”

“No?” Dean raises his eyebrows. “Well, you’re still letting me win. It’s patronising as all hell. Stop it.”

“Dean, don’t curse on Christmas Eve,” Ellen glances over and sighs. Dean’s jaw clamps.

“Mrs Harvelle makes a good point,” the shepherd says, voice infuriatingly gentle, and Dean could throw his dice right in the man’s face.

“Then stop losing deliberately.”

“As you say.”

They continue playing. Novak wins the next round, and Dean catches Sam smirking in his peripherals.

But the shepherd definitely loses several rounds, deliberately, prolonging the game needlessly.

“Okay, you’ve bolstered my ego enough,” Dean sighs to the man, “you can win.”

The shepherd chuckles softly.

“Just so.”

Another five minutes, and Novak has won the game, as per Dean’s instruction. Sam quirks a smile as he watches.

“Can I play?” Adam comes over, having lost at least tree games to Mick in this time, and feeling obviously hard done by.

“Of course,” Novak smiles, shifting his chair to make room for the boy. “You’ve played Liar’s Dice before?”

“With Mick,” Adam confirms, and the shepherd’s eyes spark.

“Ah, and I’m sure he did very well, when he played you.”

“He’s so good at games,” Adam says defeatedly, all innocence, and Dean smirks. The shepherd catches his eye.

“That he is,” he confirms, “but perhaps playing him has given you good practice.”

Adam hums hopefully, and in the next round Novak goes so easy on him—Dean following suit at the man’s silent request—that Adam wins and glows with pride, suspecting nothing.

“Now look at that,” the shepherd smiles graciously, “you have both of us beaten.”

“I don’t know how,” Adam beams earnestly, “normally I lose so terribly.”

“Isn’t that strange,” Dean comments dryly, flicking his gaze over to Mick, who grins and shrugs.

“Beats me,” Mick says, before turning back to Jo and continuing to teach her a card trick.

Sam joins in for the next game, but eventually Dean gets bored and forfeits, wandering into the kitchen to help Ellen with whatever it is she’s cooking. The shepherd watches him leave.

He’s in the kitchen, placing an enormous smoked salmon on a platter, when Novak appears at the doorway, watching him with steady curiousity.

“Can I help you?” Dean asks, raising his eyebrows to the man, who steps into the room slowly, heavily, still regarding Dean.

“I came to offer my own,” he answers, voice low and lilting, somehow more lilting than ever, like the idea of song is woven into it.

“You’re a sweet thing,” Ellen smiles, “but I think we’re just about finished up. Help Dean and I carry all this through?”

“Of course,” the man smiles, and picks up the warmed plates by the help of the gloves Ellen offers him.

Dean follows him out of the room.

“It’s nice to see you helping Mrs Harvelle,” Novak comments as they make their way down the hall. Dean bristles.

“Now that seems like something of a loaded comment,” Dean grumbles, and the shepherd’s expression twitches affectionately in the darkened hall.

“Not at all,” he shakes his head. “I meant it genuinely.”

“But you were surprised?” Dean asks, and they’re in the dining room, laying their things on the table.

“Pleasantly.”

“Ass,” Dean mutters. “I help you all the time.”

“Define help.”

“And ordinarily,” Dean continues, “I come in exhausted from work. Is it so bad that I don’t help out? It’s not as though I’ve been lazy.” He sighs, jaw clamping. “You’re always berating me,” he complains, with more vulnerability than he intended.

The shepherd looks at him.

“I’m not meaning to,” he says. His voice is gentle, nearly apologetic but also fringed with something else. “I’ll make sure not to, in future.”

“You’ll have nothing to say to me at all, if you do that,” Dean points out. They head out of the room, back down the hall, into the kitchen.

“I’m not so sure, Mr Winchester,” the shepherd shakes his head. “You’re an interesting man. I’d think of something to say to you.”

Dean’s head is snapped up. He stares at the shepherd, but Novak’s gaze is on the dish of roasted parsnips Ellen hands him. What does the man mean? Interesting. Dean’s never been called that before—and he’s been called many things.

Ellen gives Dean a bottle of wine—good wine—and a handful of glasses.

“We really are celebrating, aren’t we?” Dean grins to her, and Ellen titters and ruffles his hair. Dean is almost taken aback by the gesture, he stops short for a couple of moments, heart in his throat. Everywhere, from the top of his head where she touched him, to his very fingertips, tingles warmly.

He heads back out to the hall, into the dining room. The shepherd is laying down the parsnips when he approaches the table, laying a glass at every place. He gives Dean a small nod. Dean swallows.

Sam comes swinging in, Adam after him, each taking a seat. Bobby is helped in by Jo, and Mick carries in the potatoes—cooked with rosemary, and Dean’s stomach growls at the sight, which the shepherd hears, and his eyes twinkle at the sound. Dean swallows again. Ellen enters last, and Dean insists she sit at the head of the table, after all her hard work, and Bobby agrees. Again, the shepherd’s eyes twinkle. Dean takes a seat near the foot of the table, Bobby at the foot, and the shepherd takes a place beside Dean. Their elbows graze a moment as the shepherd takes his seat.

Ellen says a prayer of thanks, to which Novak Amens in a voice quiet but firm and sure enough that it carries, even under Mick’s cheer and Bobby’s emphatic Amen.

Eyes flitting round each face, Dean considers what a strange patchwork group this is. Sam seems to think the same thing; he catches Dean’s eye and flashes him a knowing smile as Jo sparks up a debate with Bobby about the best Christmas Carol, and suggests they sing one. Dean groans at the idea.

“Are you not one for Christmas cheer, Mr Winchester?” The shepherd asks, eyes warm albeit pressing. They startle Dean’s breath from his chest.

“I’ve plenty of Christmas cheer,” Dean rolls his eyes. “It’s just that I’ve heard Jo’s singing voice, and I can’t say I care much for it.”

Jo turns to glare at him, while Mick scoffs.

“And what about you, Novak?” Dean asks. “What do you think of Christmas.”

The shepherd shrugs, though something in his gaze withdraws. For how coldblue his eyes are, Dean feels oddly colder still at the something—whatever it is—drawing back.

“A haunting time of year, for men lonely as me,” he confesses, then adds, “but made that much warmer, by present company.”

“And what’s your favourite carol?” Jo asks, between a mouthful of buttery winter greens.

“Hm,” the shepherd hums softly. “Oh, now I’m not too sure you’d be familiar,” he confesses. “Old Irish hymns.”

“Well, what of the ones we would know?” Adam asks.

Novak’s eyes flicker and flash in the wavering candlelight. He looks ethereal, some remarkable, strange creature come down to earth, the Christmas star, or one of the chorus of angels who visited the shepherds, gracing their dining room and shimmering just the same as the shimmering feathers of the starlings which flit between their glowing bars.

“I suppose,” he says, “your Coventry Carol is one I enjoy.”

“But that one is so bleak,” Jo bemoans. The shepherd’s eyes crease sadly at their corners.

“I’ve never heard it,” Adam shakes his head. He looks over to the shepherd. “Would you sing it for us?” He asks. For the first time, Dean thinks, the shepherd draws back, features obviously betraying his thoughts, or at least his feelings. His cheeks seem to heat in the dim light of the candles and fire and flashing feathers of starlings all about.

“Alright,” the shepherd falters, and Dean’s heart twitches at the vulnerability of his voice. He coughs, and takes what Dean thinks is quite a large gulp of wine. Dean dutifully fills up his glass for him, and the man flashes a smile, warm and slightly nervous, but definitely grateful, to Dean, before beginning.

When he starts, it’s like no carol, no hymn, Dean has heard. It’s a lament.

Lullay, lullay
My little tiny child,
By-by lullay, lullay

Pinpricks are raised all along Dean’s forearms, the smile slips off his face. What is the shepherd mourning? Why do tears press at Dean’s eyes to hear his voice? The man is more, far more, of a singer than Dean would have guessed, his voice, ordinarily shale-like, turns to liquid gold on the air. There’s still some inexplicable gravel to it which brushes along Dean’s skin, rubs itself slowly along his neck in curling animal motions: half of his voice grazes Dean’s fingertips like the soft tips of reeds in the shining fields of barley in which he works, the other half is like the rock Dean sliced his hand open on that one drunken night, so many weeks ago. Something in it splinters and lodges itself inside Dean, sticking, stuck, at his chest. How could he apply plantain or polypore to this wound? What will draw it out?

Lullay, lullay
My little tiny child
By-by, lullay, lullay

Herod the king, in his raging,
Chargèd he hath this day
His men of might in his own sight
All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor child, for thee
And ever mourn and may
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
"Bye bye, lully, lullay."

Stillness has settled over the room. Dean stares at the shepherd, but as soon as the man’s gaze meets his, Dean flits his own downward, heart in his throat. He swallows thickly.

“Well, you certainly sing better than Jo,” Sam breaks the silence, and Jo threatens to throw a roast potato at him.

“You sing beautifully,” the words are past Dean’s lips even before he realises he has thought them. Several sets of eyes turn on him, surprised, but he doesn’t take it back. “Beautifully,” he repeats. “Hauntingly.”

“Thank you,” the shepherd gazes at him. It’s like standing in cold moonlight.

“You should sing, Dean,” Sam turns to him to smile. “You’ve a pretty good voice, too.”

“Oh, pretty good,” Dean repeats, rolling his eyes. “Thank you, Sam.”

“My pleasure,” Sam grins back. Dean gives him a dirty look, but the shepherd’s request of, “Do, please,” startles him.

“What—what would you have me sing?” He asks.

“Whatever is your favourite,” Novak answers. Dean’s guts twists. He isn’t sure he has one—Christmas is a time so wrapped in pain and grief for him. What could he sing, that wouldn’t destroy him? Perhaps Novak did well to choose a lament. He settles on a song which was always Cassie’s favourite, heart panging in a motion remarkably similar to that when the shepherd began singing.

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day is what he chooses. Novak watches him like a raven hung in the air, Dean has to avert his gaze. When asked about it by Mick, he says briefly that it was the favourite carol of a once-sweetheart. Novak’s eyes turn down to his plate.

“Well, aren’t you all a sorry and miserable bunch,” Mick rolls his eyes. “If we’re to sing anything, it ought to be happy, tonight of all nights.”

“And what would you suggest, Mr Davies?” Bobby asks, affectionate and gruff. Mick answers O Holy Night, and insists that all of them sing it. They do, Ellen beaming and practically glowing, which fills Dean’s chest with a little sweetness to assuage the haunting sadness which is the echo, he thinks, of Novak’s voice. Mick sings it enthusiastically, Jo practically shouts the final verse and chorus, Adam grins happily through his mouthfuls of food as he sings.

“Right, enough now,” Dean shakes his head when they’re all finished. “No more singing. My food’s getting cold.”

They eat, and laugh, but the feeling in Dean’s chest doesn’t dim, rather grows into some unknowable nervous flicker like the beating wings of a bird against a cage.

After dinner, they settle on the settees and armchairs beside the fire in the drawing room. Ellen and Adam mull some wine for them, and Bobby recounts his first Christmas in the Eyrie with his wife, eyes distant and misty and slightly awry with the amount of wine he’s consumed. Adam asks for more stories, but Bobby’s eyes have turned sad by the time he’s finished this first of his, and Dean wonders whether it’s his place to recover the situation.

But the shepherd does it for him.

“Perhaps another tale, perhaps a Christmas tale,” he suggests. “One that might even cure our Mr Winchester of his grumpiness toward the holiday?” He flashes a smile over to Dean, who rolls his eyes. “Have you a copy of A Christmas Carol in your library?” He asks Bobby, though it’s Sam who confirms. He jumps up excitedly.

“I’ll get it,” with a grin, long hair flopping about with the ferocity of his movement. Hard footsteps as he paces out the room, disappearing down the corridor. He comes back with a small volume in his hand. “Here it is!”

“That was Karen’s copy,” Bobby smiles sadly, drunkenly. The shepherd turns to him with understanding.

“A mighty sacred thing, then,” he says, and Bobby confirms. “I’ll handle it as such,” he promises, and Bobby’s eyes glitter from behind the shadow of his features. “Perhaps,” he looks up, “we could each read a chapter. Dean’s insides tense up.

“No,” he shakes his head, quickly, hoping the ruddy glow of the firelight will conceal the flames at his cheeks.

“Why not?” Sam asks, obviously put out and having looked forward to this idea, but Dean’s insides are still cold and tense.

“I don’t want to,” he frowns, and drains his wine, before ladling some more from the enormous pan Ellen has placed on an iron trivet on the table between them all.

“Well, there being only five chapters, there’s not enough for all of us to read a stave,” Novak says gently. “Anyone who doesn’t want to read is more than welcome to sit back. They all agree this is a good idea—Bobby looks like he is ready to pass out at any second, and Mick only laughs when asks if he’d like to join in.

But upon the shepherd starting—Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that—in that wild, rough, strange, enchanting voice of his, all the music of old poured into it, the others agree that he should read the text in its entirety. Dean is happy to keep the shepherd’s wine topped up through all of this, to keep his voice from grazing at his throat any more than it usually does. It’s bewitching, the story is bewitching, the shepherd is—

He takes a few drinks, Dean adds some extra honey to Novak’s mulled wine to ease on his throat, and is thanked warmly for it. By the fifth stave, Dean has already teared up multiple times, and has to turn his face away from the firelight to hide it.

“Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in,” the shepherd reads, and Dean’s breath stutters. He stares at the ground and when the shepherd has finished Mick, Ellen and Jo applaud warmly, Bobby jolts from his snoring and pretends to have been listening all along, and Sam beams and compliments Novak on his reading, while Adam nods in emphatic agreement.

Dean tries to take a steadying breath but finds it ragged and uneven, turned to torn paper in the wind. He tries again, it doesn’t work—what has him feeling like a rag battered about by a storm? His eyes are misty when he turns them up to the shepherd, whose own gaze is on Dean. Dean can’t speak and doesn’t, but Novak doesn’t seem to expect him to.

Mick insists that they all sing Silent Night, which is apparently only truly appropriate on Christmas Eve—so this is what they do. The voice of the shepherd carries on the air like the warmth in the smell of the first day of harvest, or the ruggedness of the smell of salt off the sea. His eyes stay trained on Dean’s face throughout—he probably caught Dean practically in tears over the stupid story he read, and now he’s most likely thinking of what a pathetic specamin Dean is—he squirms uncomfortably, frustration and resentment coiling in his gut, along with something else. He’s ready to lash out. But what’s the something else? It’s the colour of wheat ripe for harvest, the smell of apple skin. Everything is warm and gold. Everything is confusion, in spite of the acute and tentative sense of peace in Dean’s chest.

They stay and chatter a little, but Bobby is fast asleep within half a minute and Jo is yawning, eyes red. Slowly, the others all head up to bed, Sam offering to help Bobby up the stairs, which are hard enough for him at the best of times, let alone when he’s drunk and exhausted. It’s strange—Dean is so used to seeing older men turn angry and cruel with their drink—the more alcohol in the system, the more hate in their hearts, in Dean’s experience. But Bobby, though ruddy faced and occasionally offering grumpy quips, makes no digs aimed at Dean, no jibes or jabs, no attempt to start a fight and expect Dean to somehow be both victim and mediator.

In the end, yes, Bobby is helped up by Sam. And after Mick yawns and offers them a warm goodnight, and merry Chritmas, he leaves only Dean and the shepherd in the room.

“Well now,” the shepherd says, and seems ready to stand and leave, when Dean interrupts.

“You—you read very well.”

The shepherd twitches a smile.

“Thank you.”

“Do you—do you often do that? Give readings?”

The shepherd stills a moment, considering.

“When I was young, my mother would have myself and my siblings read to the family, over dinner. It was good practice, and comfort in a cold time.”

“Cold time?”

“We had little.”

“But books?”

“A few.”

“What would you read?” Dean asks. He’s sat on the floor, the shepherd on an armchair. He shifts subconsciously toward the man as he speaks.

“The Bible,” Novak says, and his expression is so still and steady and yet is like being hit by a hurricane. “Keats, Shelley. Blake and Burns.”

Dean nods quietly.

“Oh.”

“And what do you like to read?”

Dean squirms, looks down, face hot. Shame burns through him. Yes, he can name the feeling, it’s hot and coursing shame.

“I—” he tries. “Don’t know. I—” He hasn’t even been able to confess this to Sammy. He looks at his hands, lips playing downward. He cannot tug them up. He looks up at the shepherd, who watches him silently, earnestly. Really—the man would not judge him, would he? Novak is too steady, respectable, for that. It’s a surprise he can read, surely—his mother’s insistence seems to be some rare unusual thing, at least, he speaks of it as though it were something special, though perhaps that’s just because it’s a memory, a precious memory…

“I can’t read,” Dean confesses, or rather finds himself confessing. His face prickles hot with needles of shame. “I—well, I taught myself, a little—but—I can’t—”

The shepherd doesn’t look at him with mirth. He nods softly.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I had no idea. Your brother is such an avid reader—”

“I—I had to—I started work,” Dean says, “and was never really—not really—”

“I understand,” Novak’s voice is quiet and lilting for all its roughness, barely above the crackle of the fire. “You feel some shame over that?”

Dean raises his eyebrows, frustrated.

“You wouldn’t?”

“It’s not your fault,” the shepherd reasons. Dean looks away, lip curling. “But you’d like to learn?” The shepherd asks. Dean shrugs, face hot. Sam has always seemed to have to key to some secret and joyful world which Dean, for his illiteracy, was barred from. A door which could never open to him. “If you would, you know,” the shepherd says slowly, carefully—is he nervous?—“I could teach you.”

Dean’s head flits back up, over to the man.

“What?”

“Just that. I could teach you.”

“You’d do that?” Dean asks, something raw on the abraded skin of his heart.

“What’s another set of lessons?” The shepherd asks with a shrug and a soft smile.

Dean shakes his head.

“I—I—”

“You don’t need to say—”

“Thank you,” Dean says, earnestly. He bites down on his pride. He focuses on his gratitude. “That’s—I’m so grateful—”

“Don’t be.”

“I am,” Dean says, presses the words earnestly toward Novak. “And will be. You’re sure?”

“You’re not too bad a student,” the shepherd says warmly. “You listen well, when you want to, and you’re sharper than most, perhaps,” he says, and says it warmly, “one of the brightest people I know.”

“Stop flattering me,” Dean rolls his eyes, but manages a laugh.

“I think you know me well enough to know I wouldn’t,” the shepherd quips, and Dean laughs fuller, warmer, now.

“Perhaps not,” he admits.

The shepherd moves to sit on the floor opposite Dean. Their knees are nearly touching.

“When would you like to start?” He asks.

“Whenever you would,” Dean answers, strangely breathless. “I—I know I must be burning you out, demanding so many lessons from you—”

“You’re at the point of doing half my job for me,” Novak chuckles, and shakes his head. “I’ve been feeling something superfluous, of late.”

“Never,” Dean shakes his head. His voice is barely raised above the lick and crackle of the flames in the fireplace. “Never.”

The shepherd hums softly.

“Well then, Mr Winchester,” he says, “what say you we start Boxing Day. There’ll be little else on our plates.”

“Dean,” Dean corrects. The shepherd blinks. “Call me Dean,” he says, asks, requests, perhaps pleas. “Please. Call me Dean.”

Novak falter. He blinks again.

“Really,” Dean says. “Please call me Dean.”

The shepherd nods, and the nodding seems to soften him. He looks down to Dean’s hands, looped over his knees, then back up again.

“Just so,” he says, voice steadying itself out. “Dean.” He nods, twitches a smile. A tender moment of silence. “Just so.”

Dean cracks a smile. The firelight plays with the shepherd’s fine-carved features, amber in its light. The man is remarkably tan for someone who has spent the entirety of their life so far north. Dean reminds himself of the many hours the shepherd must have walked in the beat of the sun, even if it was an Irish sun, and not a dry, bright Kansas sun. Now the fire makes him glow a red-dipped gold.

“What’s your name?” Dean asks, voice hardly above a nervous tremor. The shepherd blinks with surprise, but it’s warm, it’s limb-curlingly warm.

“My name,” the shepherd says, voice low, but not with conspiracy, “is Castiel.”

Castiel.

Dean mouths it, staring at the shepherd, before he says it.

“Castiel.”

“Just so.”

“And,” Dean says, pulse flaring nervously at the juncture between his jaw and neck, “may I call you that?”

The shepherd huffs out a warm breath.

“You may,” he answers, and his words are like the mulled wine they have drunk dry, tonight. Sweet and heavy and spiced.

“Castiel,” Dean says, and says it again, and something in his gut clenches hotly. “Castiel.”

He could say it over and over. It’s music, it’s water, it’s wine.

“If you’re about to laugh—”

“Never,” Dean shakes his head. “Never, Castiel.”

The shepherd Castiel carries the light of the stars, infinite and eternal as they are, in his gaze.

“Well, Dean,” he says quietly, and Dean’s name on his lips is the thump of apples falling to a grassy floor in Autumn, is the wind teasing through wheat, is the knife breaking through the crust of a loaf of bread as it slices, “I ought to take my leave.”—But he oughtn’t; Dean doesn’t want him to. Why doesn’t he want him to? “I thank you for your hospitality—and wish you a very merry Christmas.”

“Yes—” Dean stammers, “yes—you too—you—” he fumbles to stand as the shepherd does. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“If you’ll still have me,” Castiel smiles. Dean nods emphatically.

“Absolutely. Always.”

“Goodnight, Dean,” the shepherd says. His voice is rough with sleep and speech.

“Goodnight,” Dean answers, chest tight, “Castiel.”

Chapter Text

On Christmas Day, after the gift-giving and eating has wound down, Dean is up in his room, hanging the smart shirts Ellen gifted him with a look that said, now you’ll have something nice to wear on Sundays. There comes a soft tap at his door.

“Come in,” he calls, expecting Sam or Adam, but is taken aback to see the shepherd at the weathered doorframe, peering in.

“Hello, Dean,” the shepherd greets—and God, it’s still taking some getting used to, hearing his name on the man’s lips.

The sun is slowly setting behind the sea outside Dean’s window. His room is painted plashes of wintery colours by its decaying golden light.

“Castiel,” Dean greets, strangely breathless, dropping the shirt he’d been folding..

“I hope I’m not interrupting?” The shepherd asks, and Dean shakes his head quickly.

“No, not at all,” he assures. “Come in. What is it? Come—come in—”

Castiel flickers a smile and steps into the room.

“I thank you for the gift you gave me, today,” the shepherd smiles—Dean had gifted him a small steel knife to assist him in his foraging, with a wooden handle Dean carved himself with small and abstract swirls and patterns of sheep. “Rare that a gift is so practical, and beautiful. Thank you for your thoughtfulness… I’ve something for you, but thought I would gift it in private—”

“Don’t worry about that,” Dean shakes his head, but Castiel draws closer, and holds out a small, red-bound and battered book. Its edges are frayed and where it is most worn, its colouring has turned almost violet. Dean takes it slowly, turns it over with all the thoughtfulness and disbelief of an illiterate, fingertips tracing the lines of the title with a creeping sense of wonder.

“It’s Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. I have always found it enchanting. I thought we might use it to start our lessons. And I thought it might also serve some purpose, in furnishing your room. It’s funny, the brightening a book can do.”

Dean looks from the book to the shepherd.

“Thank you—” he manages.

“It’s really nothing.”

“I saw how little you brought with you, coming to the Eyrie,” Dean shakes his head. “This is one of the few things you owned,” he says. “Are you—are you sure?”

“You’re a worthy recipient.”

“Thank you,” Dean says again, heart in his throat, certainly not feeling worthy, certainly not feeling worthy—not of the gift, nor of the shepherd who gave it. “I feel that I should—I feel I should teach you something—give you lessons,” he laughs, breathless, “to repay you for everything. But everything I know, I think you’d know already.”

“I doubt that,” the shepherd shakes his head. He seems closer to Dean than before. They stare at each other, a moment of soil-thick tension, before Dean breaks it.

“What’s—what’s it about?” He asks, holding up the book.

“You’ll find out,” the shepherd answers simply, with a smile.

“But you won’t tell me?”

“You’ll find out,” Castiel repeats. Dean flickers a irritated frown, but the shepherd pays it no mind. “Now, I ought to return downstairs,” he presses on, ignoring Dean’s expression. “I promised your younger brother a game of cards. I think he prefers playing with me to losing to Mr Davies.”

Dean lets out a breathless laugh, forgetting his frustration at the glint in the shepherd’s eye.

“Yes,” he admits, “I wouldn’t be surprised.

He watches the strange and wraith-like man leave.

When he comes downstairs to the drawing room, Adam, Sam and Castiel are indeed all knotted in a game of cards, Adam grinning happily, probably at the fact that he isn’t losing terribly for a change. Dean’s heart is warm. Warmer than it has been in years. Maybe since before his mother—

That doesn’t matter. His heart is warm, now. That’s what matters.

…

“A December lamb,” Castiel smiles as Dean wipes down the newborn. Fuck, who knew delivering them would be so visceral, so draining? “Now there’s a heartening sight to warm these cold months.”

Dean smiles too, exhausted.

“Yes,” he agrees, wiping the sweat from his brow carefully with the back of his forearm—he’s covered in—well, he doesn’t want to think about it. Birth smells. But Castiel is so inspired by it, bright with it, as though the very idea of life in all its vivid visceral fullness is worth beaming over, perpetually—even by someone who seldom smiles are rarely laughs. Even in all life’s gore and messiness and fear.

But the shepherd smiles, and even laughs, increasingly in Dean’s company.

“And one, two, December lambs,” Dean corrects, as the second lamb they have pulled out from the ewe is licked at by its mother and shakes delicately in this new, strange world.

“Aye, and both surprises.”

“They say our previous shepherd was not a reliable man.”

“It seems it,” Novak cracks a smile and hooks his finger, fishing out a lot of disgusting looking substance from one of the lamb’s mouth and throat, when it begins coughing.

“The intention was for lambing to start in early spring,” Dean informs.

“And all the others are on track for it,” the shepherd says graciously, fishing out the same kind of gunk from the other lamb’s mouth. Dean watches him and can’t stop watching him. Not the process—which he should be learning, if he really does want to replace this shepherd, some day—he watches the shepherd. Strange and constant as the soil. And somehow just as life-giving.

“Spring seems a long way away, in all this mist and mire,” Dean says. Fog sweeps round the hills and mists washes up from the spray off the sea. Dew clings to the long lush grass and is brushed off the blades underfoot.

“These lambs are a thing of hope, then,” Castiel says earnestly, and Dean’s heart warms in his chest.

“Yes,” he agrees, falteringly.

“And a good practice for you, before the real lambing begins,” Castiel comments wryly, and Dean nods.

“True. Perhaps by the spring, I’ll be better at this than you.”

Novak chuckles.

“Good luck,” he wishes. He wishes it sincerely, and yet in such a way that Dean stil smirks. “Miss Jo seemed awful excited about the newborns,” he comments. Dean smiles.

“Completely,” Dean agrees. “She’ll be glad to meet them. For someone who sees them every spring,” Dean shakes his head wistfully.”

“They never lose their charm, in my experience,” the shepherd comments softly, blinking slowly as he regards the little creatures shaking beside their mother with enough affection and wonder to make Dean’s insides sieze. Dean is struck by wonder at the thought that the shepherd is able, perpetually, to find joy and wonder in the certain treadings out of his own life: every year he sees lambs, helps them in being brought into the world. Every year, it seems, he thinks it beautiful. Is that not itself some strange kind of wonderful?

“Is that so?” He asks.

“Just so,” the shepherd nods.

“Well, I look forward to experiencing this all again, come spring.”

“And every spring after that, when you inherit the farm. You’ll be at the fore, I expect, especially when you kick me out.”

Dean prickles at this joke. He doesn’t know why it grazes his skin like the surface of the cliffs below. He presses his lips together.

“I’m not,” he frowns, and swallows thickly, disliking the bitter taste in his mouth. The shepherd’s eyes flick up unexpectedly to him. When Dean can’t finish, can’t get the sentence out, the shepherd helps by changing the subject.

“Adam seemed awful excited about the lambs, as well.”

“Damn,” Dean groans, and Castiel frowns either at the language, or at the regret in Dean’s voice, or both. “He probably would’ve wanted to be here,” Dean clarifies, and the shepherd softens, seeming—touched? “We should’ve called for him. He’ll be sad he missed this.”

“Come spring,” Castiel reminds. Dean nods in assent.

“Come spring,” he agrees, “I suppose there’ll be plenty more.”

“Just so. Now then, how about we clean ourselves up?”

Dean looks down at himself, his arms dirtied up to his elbows, and the various stains at his clothing.

“Yes,” he agrees, though thinks with exhaustion about the walk back to his room. “I suppose we ought to.”

“Come to the croft, with me,” Novak offers, rising, and still watching the lambs as their mother sniffs and licks at them. “The walk to the farmhouse doesn’t seem worth it.”

“Will the lambs be okay?” Dean asks, frowning cautiously at them. Novak smiles at Dean’s concern.

“Aye, I’d say so. Mother’s bonded, is cleaning them. She’ll be stood up soon. And they’ll be causing terror in no time. Let’s cherish this peace while we can.”

Dean nods, licking his lip. Golden thrills chase through his chest as he stands and follows after the shepherd. Castiel walks a step ahead of him but Dean makes no effort to catch up, fascinated by the ancient ringing of the shepherd’s gait.

In the croft, Novak stokes the fire into a humming crackle and heats some water over it, pouring it into a large basin, which he places on the edge of the large table at the room’s centre. Dean watches him move about the room and realises after a minute or two that he has watched, and not ceased watching, and said nothing. Been unable to say anything. But the shepherd has said nothing either, though he has certainly marked Dean’s staring. The basin is filled, water steams softly at its surface, Novak checks the temperature absent-mindedly before taking out some cloths and dropping them beside the basin. Dean approaches it and sinks his arms into the waters, up to his elbows, splaying his fingers out and letting out a long sigh. He closes his eyes and breathes deep but in a second senses the shepherd’s presence close at his side.

Castiel huffs and, reaching around Dean, tips a handful of dried lavender seeds into the basin of hot water. Their scent unfurls at the touch of the steaming water, and rises up on through the heavy air. Dean twitches a smile even at Castiel’s obvious, nonverbal assertion of his inconvenience.

“Lavender,” he starts slowly, muscles uncoiling at the warm water and the smell which lightens his system, “always reminds me of Ellen.”

“Is that so?” The shepherd asks, voice kind in spite of its shale.

“It’s her favourite smell,” Dean says. “She hangs it, dried, in every room of the farmhouse. Have you noticed?”

“I might have,” the shepherd shrugs easily. He watches Dean swirl his hands easily about in the water.

“She even put lavender in my bath, my first day here.”

“Hang lavender at doors, and you’ll ward off foul spirits,” Castiel says, quiet and sincere. A smile catches Dean’s lips; he stops the laugh before it escapes them.

“You believe in that kind of thing, do you?” He asks.

“In these cruel cold months, you don’t?” The shepherd raises his eyebrows, and at this Dean does crack a laugh.

“Good point,” he assents. The lavender seeds send tendrils of steam to unfurl happily within his lungs. “Tell me more about lavender,” he says, and closes his eyes again, and tips his head back as behind his eyelids, the soft lapping flames in the hearth flicker ruddy and gold.

“More about lavender?” Castiel asks. There’s amusement in his tone. Dean smiles, eyes still closed, head still tipped back. “Well, once—by this I mean, a few centuries gone—it was used by maidens to have visions of their true love.”

Dean tips his head down and smiles at the shepherd.

“And did that work?” He asks, sincerely. His voice catches with something—not delighted, but close to it—at the thought.

“I wouldn’t know,” the shepherd inclines his head. “Not being a maiden from a few centuries gone.”

Dean laughs.

“Okay, fair enough,” he assents. He closes his eyes again.

Heat from Castiel’s body warms one side of his own. The shepherd has drawn close. He dips his day-dirtied hands into the warm waters of the basin alongside Dean, his shoulder pressed to Dean’s own, his foot snug alongside Dean’s. Dean’s breath catches as his eyes flicker open. The smell of the lavender, the warm water, the day and the success that it has seen—Dean helped deliver two lambs into the world, and what an unlikely miracle of life it felt, and feels, at the close of December, the decay of a year and opening of a new one… He is heady with it. Heady with something.

Castiel’s fingertips graze his own in the water. Dean wavers his gaze to the shepherd, but the shepherd does not withdraw. He watches Dean. Dean’s breath would be ragged and uneven, his heart a hot flash in his chest, were it not for the ethereal stillness of the moment. He stares. Again, he stares at the wild wandering man who roamed onto their farm and has patiently abided all Dean’s abrasiveness, every glare, every quip, with the grace of a saint and the wit of a playwright. His hand, grazing Dean’s hand, in the warm and seed-perfumed waters, sings of that steadfastness, Castiel’s remarkable and quiet capacity to abide, abide, abide with…

With Dean?

They still stare at one another.

No, stare is too hard a word. Not for this. Never for this.

Novak is the first to speak. His words catch on the sweet-smelling air between them like they too are perfumed steam rising from heated waters.

“Am I in your head, too, Mr Winchester?” He asks.

As though it is the simplest mystery in all the world.

Dean’s mouth, open, lets out something like a sigh, but no words will follow it.

Am I in your head, too?

What is in Dean’s head, what has been in Dean’s head, from the moment he saw the shepherd standing, scruffy, strange, in Bobby’s study? Is Castiel in Dean’s head? And too—is Dean in Castiel’s head? His skull rings with it. Dean is in the shepherd’s head. In moments of low light and twitches of starlight, what enters Dean’s head is a pierce of blue like lightning over a rippling sea. When he sees cliff faces—which now, on a farm beside the roar of the sea, is every day—he thinks of a voice like shale grazing softly but with the thrilling threat of pressing harder, against his skin. Is the shepherd in his head, too?

Dean’s mouth hangs limply. He nods. Words are ash or—something less symbolic of destruction but certainly no more useful. How does Novak spin gold out of simplicity?

Am I in your head, too, Mr Winchester?

Dean nods, breathless, heart snagging in his chest.

Why does it snag? There’s a name for this feeling, he’s sure of it, different to the resentment which pierced their early interactions.

“Just so,” he finds the words unfolding in his mouth, and they’re the shepherd’s words, the words Castiel has forming at his lips more often than any other. The shepherd’s eyes dance.

“Just so,” he repeats, and hums in agreement. “Just so.”

The moment dances dream-like around them. And if this were a dream, this would be where Dean would wake. But this isn’t a dream. And Castiel takes one of Dean’s hands in the water, running his own over it, and up to the wrist, and up to the forearm, grip gentle—Dean isn’t used to being touched like this, like he’s worth softness, and not a battered tool to hang up when he’s finished with, or worse, thrown out completely at the day’s end.

No, instead, the shepherd’s hands move up and down his arms, cleaning them softly by hand, not even with a cloth. Castiel stares intently at Dean’s skin, Dean is fascinated by the quiet intensity of the man’s gaze, something hot clamps over his insides to know that he is the subject of that instensity.

No words, only this. Nothing else, only this.

Only this: Novak’s hands moving over Dean’s skin like warm wind over long summer grass. When Novak looks up, Dean is confused by the prickle of tears at his eyes, prompted by the touch, the newness of it, that Castiel thinks Dean worth touching with kindness, that anyone could—

“Would you like me to stop?” Novak asks, concerned at Dean’s expression. Wordlessly, mouth open, Dean shakes his head. Then he manages,

“Yes,” and the shepherd falters, looking hurt, but Dean takes Castiel’s hands and begins to clean them, just as Castiel did for him, and the shepherd doesn’t seem as startled as Dean felt moments ago, but certainly something new takes over his expression. Dean cleans the hands, surprised at how glad he feels to have an excuse to touch these knuckles—he takes the opportunity to examine them more closely than he has been able to yet, fascinated though he’s been by their movements as they work. He grazes his thumb between each valley between them and pretends it’s to remove the day’s dirt. Does the shepherd know this isn’t his reason? His gaze is upon Dean’s face as he works, intense and certain as a summer storm, as high wind against the thin panes of a window.

He cleans up to the wrist, then up to the forearm, fascinated by the soft skin and hard muscle beneath the caress of his hands. Novak’s gaze does not leave his face. Once the shepherd’s wrists and forearms are cleaned, Dean moves down to the man’s hands again and cleans every finger, running his thumb over them, turning Castiel’s hands over to clean his palms and thinking of the cold outline of trees against a winter sky in the fine lines that twist thinly against each palm.

He’s disappointed when they’re definitely, undeniably clean. He nearly removes himself, nearly only removes himself, but instead does something he can hardly understand. Folding the fingers of Castiel’s right hand over the shepherd’s palm, he brings the knuckles up, still holding tight to Novak’s fingers, and brings the shepherd’s hand up to his face, Castiel’s knuckles just beneath the tip of his nose. He doesn’t know why he does this. He doesn’t know why he wants to.

The shepherd’s gaze is still on him like lightning striking the sea.

He inhales. He breathes in deep, through his nose, which all but rests on the shepherd’s knuckles. Winter spices—anise and cloves and cinnamon—and there, there it is, the unfurling, grounding, sleepy yet bright smell of lavender seeds, a smell like the sound of warm wind through grass.

And still the shepherd’s gaze is upon him. And still Dean holds it.

“Lavender,” he smiles, the expression twitching at his features, and it twitches at Novak’s too, though he looks at Dean like he’s some odd and unknowable creature. “Smells like lavender.”

“Well there’s a surprise,” the man quips, and Dean sighs a laugh, and squints sarcastically at Castiel. “I wonder if yours will smell the same?” He asks, and Dean’s chest clamps strangely, and he breathes,

“Find out,” and doesn’t know why he does this, doesn’t know why he wants Castiel to dare, and Castiel brings Dean’s hand to his nose, and inhales, and keeps his gaze upon Dean as he breathes in long and deep, the tip of his nose grazing Dean’s knuckles.

“Lavender,” he says, and his eyes are soft. Dean’s throat is tight.

“Oh,” he says, as if it’s a surprise. His heart clamours in his throat. Has the shepherd taken a step closer to him? He feels closer. The walls feel closer. And the rest of the world feels further away.

“Will you be staying for dinner, Mr Winchester?” The shepherd asks, and Dean opens his mouth and has to breathe before he answers.

“Yes, if you’ll have me,” he confirms. It’s self-conscious and worried, he’s self-consious and worried.

“I’ll always have you,” Castiel answers, eyes like two blue fires against Dean’s skin. Dean has to laugh because something like fear flashes through him at the thought of not laughing.

“You’ll regret that offer, soon enough,” he promises, but the shepherd doesn’t quip anything back. He simply shakes his head with firm and gentle and solemn certainty, certainty like the stretch of muscles Dean was running his fingers along just minutes ago.

“I don’t think I will.”

Dean swallows.

“Then let me help, at least,” he manages to grate out. The shepherd chuckles, and shakes his head.

“All these lessons I’ve given you, Dean, I think it’s time I let you take the lead.”

Dean lets out a breathless laugh. He doesn’t offer a droll reply, like he normally would. Instead he finds himself confessing,

“I like it when you call me Dean.”

The shepherd looks, only looks, for a moment. A soft line pinches his brows together and Dean worries in a flash of background fear that he’s placed a foot wrong, that this was the wrong kind of extension of vulnerability.

“I’ll be sure to say your name often, then.”

Dean trembles.

He cannot name this feeling.

He doesn’t understand this feeling.

He doesn’t want to.

Chapter Text

With the beginning of a new year, new lessons begin, too. They tread slowly through Twelfth Night—or, Dean treads slowly through it, in the flickering glow of orange and amber candlelight in the croft. The croft, that small and rugged building, is where Dean spends more and more of his time in—until almost the only hours he is in the farmhouse are those he spends in sleep.

Castiel gives Dean a pencil and notebook to practice all his writing in, makes him copy out sentences of Shakespeare and modernise the spelling. It gives Dean a headache: often he grows angry or at the very least frustrated with the shepherd and snaps out sharp responses to Castiel’s gentle suggestions of help. Some evenings this obviously wears thin on the man’s patience: his response to Dean’s snarls will no longer be a longsuffering blink and head-incline, but a growl or glare which makes Dean’s insides wrench up.

Dean’s faltering tongue stumbles over the shapes crammed on the pages of Novak’s book, the book Novak gifted to him. Starting out his reading lessons with Shakespeare feels rude and unfair of the shepherd, but Castiel doesn’t seem to agree. As with everything, the shepherd is steady, patient, in these lessons. Like the earth. Novak points out, repeatedly, that as a man of the soil himself, Dean ought to know the inherent patience and trust in the act of planting a seed, smoothing soil over it, and waiting. Slowly, Dean’s hand falters less over each letter he mimics in his notebook, slowly he feels less as though he is uneasily drawing them out, copying their shapes, but is rather transferring from one book to another some meaning, like two rivers meeting and deepening, or a stream branching and parting.

They finish the play in about three weeks. Dean’s favourite part is when Castiel sings him one of the songs in the play, a version his mother always used to sing to him.

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.

“Journeys end in lovers meeting,” Dean twitches a smile, and finds himself looking up from the page to gaze at Cas, when he reads this line. “I like that.”

“As do I,” the shepherd smiles, eyes twinkling.

“He’s okay, this Shakespeare fella.”

Castiel chuckles, warm, leaning back in his chair a moment. They sit in the croft, at the table, at the corner closest to the fire.

“Praise indeed. I’m sure he’d be touched by that glowing review.”

“He’d shake my hand.”

“Not unless you cleaned your nails, first.”

“Cas,” Dean laughs, shoving the shepherd softly.

“I’m not joking,” the shepherd says earnestly, but his eyes dance like firelight, “you’re filthy.”

“Cas,” Dean laughs again. His hand hasn’t left the shepherd’s shoulder, from where it rested, at his playful push.

He does this increasingly. Calls the man Cas. It’s easier to shout across a field in the early mornings as greeting. It’s faster to say when asking for help or to be reminded of how to prepare and cook food for their meals together. It makes them feel closer together in the low firelight when Castiel is leaning over the book with Dean, helping him walk out sentences like the rising of the sun.

It makes him feel… It makes Dean feel… It makes Dean feel…

Castiel is a polymath. A strange kind of new old polymath familiar with everything unconventional and mystical, with the magic of sky and soil as well as the high words of Shakespeare and Keats. And he shares it, he shares all of it, with Dean. Abundant as the ground.

They continue to trade secrets over their dinners, Cas even more reluctant than Dean to share them but—but reluctant isn’t the right word. There’s no resentment in their sharing. Only… Only it’s hard. Unstitching secrets from the seam of your heart is hard. Both of them know this. Both of them are patient.

Dean never knew he could be so patient.

And so their evenings are a slow unstitching, restitching. Where do they restitch? They seem to unweave themselves from the hurt of their own lives—reluctant secret by reluctant secret—and re-bind themselves to one another. Trust is an act of entwining. The two are bound together by what they share, but bound is harsh, and this is soft and often trembling, always hopeful, looking up across the brief space of the table at the dropping of a new secret with the fear that it will be met with rejection. But it never is. The secrets range and roam in size and seeming significance: Novak’s father had dark hair, his mother light. Dean’s were the same. Castiel thinks the most beautiful sound is that of animals lowing in the evening as they push hard muscle and hide against one another to drink together during the setting of the sun. Dean thinks the most beautiful sound is the sound of a lover’s soft breathing in sleep. Novak smiles with sparking eyes and says, perhaps, Dean is right. Dean says he’s slowly starting to appreciate the sound of Madra’s breathing as she drifts off to sleep in the evenings. Castiel laughs warmly.

“There’s little better,” he nods, “than the sound of sleep from a contented working dog.”

“And it’s funny when she has dreams,” Dean grins. Cas smiles, reluctant and amused, and nods.

“Even in sleep, she likes to herd her sheep.”

Dean snorts, shaking his head affectionately.

“You speak of animals in an awfully funny way.”

“You live with Mr Singer,” Castiel points out. Dean barks out a laugh and concedes this point.

Through their treading out of Twelfth Night, the shepherd is teaching him more than just to read. More than to look at and understand the magic of plants. More than to shepherd. Dean’s chest unfolds like a flower in spring. Even if they are yet mired in the depths of winter.

After Twelfth Night they read Blake and Castiel makes funny exclamations of agreement at moments and lines he seems particularly struck by. He makes Dean memorise Ah! Sun-flower and recite it at odd intervals of their days; when they’re cresting the hill and watching the sun glint over its peak. The shepherd seems to like the poem so much that Dean begins greeting him that way, “Ah, Sunflower!” replacing an ordinary “Good morning”. Castiel is taken aback at first, which only makes Dean like it more, and like teasing him with it more. He sings the song from Twelfth Night while the two of them work, when Castiel starts wandering off somewhere will call after him O mistress mine, where are you roaming? Which, without fail, makes the shepherd laugh one of his rare, rich laughs, full-bodied as wine in winter, and turn to Dean to give him some foul informal gesture which, once upon a time, Dean wouldn’t have believed Mr Novak capable of. When Dean skids on the muddy, slippery and uneven ground of the chilly English season, Castiel will recite Trip no further pretty sweeting and Dean will either laugh or scowl, depending on his mood, but always also depend on the shepherd’s oak-tree arms to catch him before he hits the damp and frosted earth.

And both of them, as they greet each other each morning, or during the evenings where Dean joins Castiel for lessons and dinner, or when the shepherd joins them on Sundays for a big and indulgent meal, will joke, as though they are trying to beat the other to it, Journeys end in lovers meeting.

It makes Dean smile. Late at night, lying back in his bed, with the sound of the sea lapping at the cliffs in the distance, the light of his room turning blue in the dusk, it makes Dean smile to think on.

Winter tightens its grip on the new year. Frost turns the grass brittle and snaps it underfoot, turns it a glowing and luminous shade of the meeting point of blue-gray-green. Snow begins to drift down on the interval between the New Year and Dean’s birthday, and one day out in the fields with snow clinging to his intriguing charcoal eyelashes, Castiel frowns at Dean’s shivering frame, the way he has hauled his coat around himself.

“You ought to get something better than a sackcoat for these cold months,” the shepherd frowns, all gentle concern, but Dean scowls at it. “Especially if you intend to keep spending all your time out here in the frost and snow, not to speak of the wind off the sea.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Dean growls. “And I’d wear a warm coat if I could. This is the only one I have.”

“Your brothers have good coats,” the shepherd points out, and something in Dean’s jaw twitches.

“I know,” he grumbles, indignant. “I’m the one who got Sammy his. And John bought Adam his great, big, fancy thing—” he cuts himself off and swallows. He tries, increasingly he tries, not to speak bitterly of his half-brother—brother—in front of the shepherd. And not in front of the shepherd. Just in general.

“Well, that seems awful negligent of him,” the shepherd frowns softly, troubled, and Dean nearly snarls.

“It’s fine—I’m not a child—”

“I never said you were.”

“—And anyway, winters in Kansas aren’t like this.” Dean shifts his snarl of gaze from Castiel to the sky. The shepherd’s eyes twinkle. His steadfast patience with Dean… One day will he tire? One day will he grow tired? “I haven’t needed one, before, not like this…” He trails off, grimly, huddling into himself once again within the baggy confines of his sackcoat. The shepherd watches him thoughtful, obviously troubled. “What are you thinking about?” Dean asks with a scowl.

Novak looks away, blinking tiredly.

“Nothing,” he shakes his head. “Nothing for you to worry over.”

Dean discovers on the morning of his birthday. Ellen has cooked some great feast of a breakfast and of course, the shepherd is invited to join them. Dean has refused to take this day off work—it’s just as any other, and he hasn’t celebrated a birthday since before he was twelve years old—but Ellen and Bobby are both insistent on making an occasion of this. He and Cas are due to begin work shortly afterwards, but he’s caught up in a surprise of gifts which he is—he doesn’t want to admit—incredibly touched by. But Novak, however hurtfully, slips out of the room during this time. Dean frowns sadly at the doorway he has just taken his absence through—Sam catches this look, and Dean glares at him in silent answer to his raised, concerned eyebrows. They finish up their breakfast—Dean thanks Ellen warmly and sincerely but is still distracted and disheartened by the shepherd’s leave-taking—and Dean picks up his gifts to put in his room: tobacco, from Bobby, and a fine and slender pipe to smoke it from; a hand-made hat from Ellen to keep him warm, and an hand-embroidered handkerchief from her, as well; a new deck of cards from Adam with bright eyes and a hopeful so perhaps, later today, we can play together?; and a deep red leather bound notebook from Sam, who must have noticed Dean slowly tracking out words in the one Castiel gave him, and has assumed Dean has taken up a new passion for journaling.

He meets the shepherd as he walks up the stairs, gifts cradled in his arms. The shepherd is descending them.

“What are you doing?” Dean frowns. “Where are you going?”

“To stand in wait for you, by the door,” Castiel answers, and Dean’s expression twitches further, distrusting.

“And where have you come from?”

“Errand,” is all the shepherd answers, and brushes past Dean, toward the front door. Dean scowls again. Sometimes, he and Novak still have days like this: days where Dean can’t understand the shepherd, or the swirl Novak sets in his gut, or both. He turns sullen and frustrated, disliking the storm within him, disliking the perfect storm of Castiel’s eyes. Is today going to be one of those days? He sighs to himself as he climbs the stairs. He hopes not. Being sullen with Cas isn’t as fun as it used to be—or perhaps only seem. Yet sometimes Dean is made to feel so frozen in his ways he doesn’t know what else to do. But when he rounds off the stairs and enters into his bedroom, his heart falters in his chest.

Lying on his bed. Folded with sympathetic and intentional care. A black-green greatcoat. Thick as Dean’s finger is and new. How much did the shepherd spend on this? Too much, surely too much—Dean’s eyes cloud, he drops his other gifts onto his bed and picks the item up with slow and reverent care—this must be the most expensive thing he’s ever owned: surely, surely—and surely he isn’t worthy of such a thing, such a gift. How could he ever be? Not for the first time, and he suspects, or perhaps he hopes, not for the last, he is overwhelmed by the sympathy and acute, perceptive thoughtfulness of the man who has chosen to sit with all Dean’s anger and resentment for months, now. Even on his good days, Dean has never felt worth dwelling with. He holds it up to the light. Its buttons shined, bright and proud and polished. He shakes his head. No, he is not worth this.

“Mr Winchester,” a deep and rich and rough, indeed a musical voice sounds behind him, from the door. He turns to face it, and its source. “I,” Castiel looks nervous—more nervous than Dean has yet had the pleasure of seeing him. Strange, that Dean likes the faltering expression, glittering with worry, which veils the shepherd’s features, now. “—I feared, as you were taking some time—”

“You gave this to me,” Dean holds up the coat to him, and Castiel looks self conscious.

“I’ll admit, it affected me sorely, seeing you shivering and shuddering through the cold…”

“You gave this to me,” Dean repeats, shoulders slumping even as his chest fills with unknowable heat. “Why?”

“I’ve said…”

“It must have cost you,” Dean tries, and runs a hand worriedly through his hair. The shepherd looks self-conscious, apologetic. Anxious. His face is a knot with it. Dean would like to untangle it. “It’s new. It’s shining and new. It must have cost you… Months—months’ wages—”

“I have not so many calls for money…”

“You feed me, almost every night,” Dean worries, something tangled in his chest, “and teach me, every day—everything, your trade, about plants and trees, how to read and write—and now you buy me a coat which clearly—”

“You are more than a worthy recipient.”

“Don’t say that,” Dean bites out, and is surprised by the tears in his eyes. Castiel steps forward into the room.

“So it’s not that you dislike it…”

“Dislike it?” Dean repeats, brows sloped. “No, no…”

“Then,” Cas takes a step closer to him. “Won’t you at least try it on?”

“Cas, I can’t accept this.”

“I have everything I need,” the shepherd shrugs carelessly, as if guessing Dean’s anxiety. “Let me do this, for you.”

“I can buy myself  a coat—”

“Aye, but you won’t,” Cas points out. “You’ll buy a new pair of boots for your brother, Samuel, first. And then some small pet, to keep Adam occupied, during these lonely weeks of winter. And then a new sewing box, for Ellen. And then new bird cages for Bobby, to sustain his ridiculous hobby,” Dean huffs a laugh at this, as Castiel speaks, and the shepherd’s features flick upwards, affectionately. “I know you, Dean,” he says simply. It’s the truth, he says it as though it is, and all the evidence, all his words and gentleness with Dean would seem to confirm it. “I know you. Let me do this, for you.”

Dean’s chest pangs.

“Okay,” he nods. Then, and from the very soil of his soul, “Thank you. Thank you, Cas.”

“And many times yet,” the shepherd smiles, “I’d do the same.”

Dean swallows, throat tight, and shakes his head.

“The world isn’t worthy of you. All the world.”

“Stop your nonsense.”

“I will not.”

“Even my father wouldn’t buy me a coat.”

“That says little about the coat, and more about your father.”

“Put it on, for me?” Dean asks, instead of rising to this. He doesn’t know why the thought of the shepherd helping him slip this item on, thread his arms through its arms, lay it softly over his shoulders, fills him with such excitement. “Please?” Dean asks. “Put it on for me?”

Castiel swallows, brow flickering and twining. Dean worries for a moment that his request was too ridiculous, strange, absurd.

But the shepherd peers at him, all ancient intensity, and takes a step forward, stormy and precise gaze still set upon Dean like a promise. He takes the coat from Dean’s arms.

“Turn,” he says softly, and Dean trembles with the timbre of his voice. He turns. He lifts one of his arms, when it is pressed at by Cas’s fingers, a silent request. The shepherd slips Dean’s arm through the coat, and then the other. His breath is a ghost upon Dean’s neck, makes Dean’s own breath catch in his chest. Castiel smooths the thick material over Dean’s shoulders with hands that press at once hard and soft to his back. The moment lingers on the air like the scent of lavender in a small and compact room.

It is something all too sacred and all too strange to name.

Dean tries to breathe in. His mouth trembles, hanging open. He turns back to the shepherd.

“Well, now,” Castiel smiles, eyes warm and crinkled with the expression, “don’t you look the very picture of a gentleman farmer.”

“Shut up,” Dean tries to sigh the words out, but finds them struggling and cracking on their way past the column of his throat.

“I will not,” Cas shakes his head. “Remember, Winchester, who bought you this coat. Accordingly, I’ll offer you as many compliments as I like.”

Dean laughs, hoarse, warm, chest flooding with sunlight at the end of January, and tips his head forward, onto Castiel’s shoulders. He presses his forehead into the steady muscle of the man’s neck. Castiel chuckles and threads his hands through Dean’s hair.

“And here I was, worried the gift would be considered improper.”

“Improperly kind,” Dean answers. “Improperly remarkable. Just like you.”

“A compliment? For me?”

“It sounds like it, doesn’t it?”

Both of them laugh. Dean’s head is still pressed against the shepherd’s shoulder. Cas’s fingers still drift through his hair.

“Happy birthday, Dean.”

Dean chuckles into the man’s neck.

“It already has been.”

Chapter Text

The year crests even as it deepens. Snow falls heavy in February, heavier than it yet has. One Sunday after church Adam begs everyone to join him in a snowball fight—and so this is what they’re doing, when Cas arrives, expecting to join them for lunch. They’re throwing snowballs out in front of the farmhouse; the geese are honking in panic and surprise and indignance when he approaches.

“Cas, get down!” Dean yells, and grins, and the shepherd only has time to frown, perplexed, before Jo has landed a snowball square in his face. Dean laughs so hard that he slips on the ice, and is on his back, still laughing, when the figure of Castiel appears in his vision.

“Hello there, stranger,” Dean beams up at him, still on his back. He tilts his head back to gain a better sight of Cas.

Madra pants excitedly at the chaos, wagging her tail and sniffing at Dean’s face. Still lying down, he fusses at her ears in greeting. If dog’s could grin, this is what she does.

Cas’s eyes are like comets above him.

“I am glad to see you putting my coat to some good use by dirtying it in a snowball fight.”

“I thought you would be,” Dean grins.

“And that you found my being attacked, just now, quite so amusing.”

“Are you pissed?” Dean can’t bite down on his smile. Or the odd flare that presses through him at looking up at the shepherd. But he realises Cas purposefully holds his hands behind his back. Dean frowns. “Wait—”

But too late. Castiel drops two huge handfuls of snow onto Dean’s face—half of it ends up in his mouth, a lot up his nose. It clumps into his hair and stings his eyes with cold—barks of laughter sound around him as Dean yells in surprise, then anger, rolling fast and scrubbing the snow off himself.

“Ass, I was gonna invite you to be on my team!”

“After laughing at me?”

“But I’m not gonna invite you to join any more,” Dean grumbles, sitting up. “Now, you’re my sworn enemy.”

“It wouldn’t be fair if you were on the same team, anyway,” Jo approaches, though Cas looks comically wary of her, after her earlier attack.

“What?!”

“You and Adam are a team, me and Sam are a team, Castiel—you should be on a team with Mick.”

“Ordinarily I’d say I work alone,” Mick says, suddenly by Castiel’s side. Dean dislikes the grin hanging from his features, or the wink he offers the shepherd as he speaks. “But for you, I’ll make an exception.”

“Too kind,” Cas replies. Dean sets his jaw. The shepherd notices the expression. “What, Mr Winchester, are you afraid we’ll beat you?”

“No,” Dean glares, refusing the hand up which Cas offers him. “Me and Adam will bury you.”

Adam’s overjoyed to be included in this statement.

“We will!” He beams.

“Fighting talk,” Cas observes, expression steady, but eyes sparking. “It’s admirable, really.”

“Completely misguided, though,” Mick shakes his head. He tugs at Cas’s arm, and a growl Dean can’t control rises from his throat. Adam tugs at Dean’s coat—the coat Castiel gave him—saying they need to discuss tactics. Dean only glares at the shepherd, who watches him with frustrating warmth as Adam pulls at his sleeves, saying he’s thought of the best place to build a defensive snow fort from. Dean glowers as he’s tugged away—but Cas’s eyes on him startle him with softness.

He and Adam build the snow fort. It’s not bad at all but Dean worries that the others won’t be sensitive to Adam’s hard work and will instead take pleasure in kicking it apart. He bundles up about five dozen snowballs into a pile, ready for them to defend the fort with, at this thought.

And they start, Dean trusted to attack, Adam to defend. But really, Dean’s doing twice the legwork, on the defensive as well as attack, circling back to the fort every time it seems Adam is struggling to hold his own.

But eventually, Jo jumps out at him when he’s out of snowballs. The snow starts falling heavier and heavier, making the way ahead of him a sheet of white as his feet pummel the ground in escape. He runs around the side of the house, toward the stone block of stables. He ducks beneath the doorway of one of them as the snowfall becomes a blizzard and nearly jumps out of his skin.

“What are you doing here?” He nearly barks.

“Hiding from Miss Jo,” the shepherd answers, eyes sparking. They stand, facing each other, backs pressed to either side of the doorframe. Cas raises his hands in peacetreaty. “I’ve no ammo.”

“Oh,” Dean says, breathless from his run and now, something else. “Me too.”

There is, of course, pleanty of ammunition all about. This is the thing about snowballs during a blizzard. You only need to opportunity to make them. But something about the doorframe Dean leans against, staring at the shepherd, is far too comfortable to move from.

“She’s quite proficient with a handful of packed snow.”

“I think she laces her snowballs with small rocks,” Dean says, and he isn’t joking.

Castiel’s face lifts into a laugh, warm against the cold of the snow.

“I couldn’t possibly comment.”

“Very charitable of you.”

The shepherd shakes his head affectionately, looking away, out to the snowy expanse.

“Where’s Madra?” Dean asks.

“Oh, Sam has almost certainly stolen her for his own team.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Dean laughs. “Perhaps collie’s aren’t as loyal as they’re renowned.”

“Trechary is the word.”

“Man’s best friend indeed.”

“Sam’s best friend, perhaps.”

Dean huffs out another laugh. He still finds himself breathless from running away from Jo.

“Snow’s pretty heavy,” he comments, and the shepherd blinks thoughtfully.

“That it is,” he agrees.

“And cold.”

“Being snow.”

Dean rolls his eyes. Cas’s spark, some silent acknowledgement he’s being tiresome. But Dean isn’t tired of it. Not tired of him. No.

Never.

“I suppose you’re more used to it than me,” Dean states. Cas twitches a smile.

“Snow’s not so common, in these parts.”

“And what of your home in Ireland?” Dean asks.

A shadow falls over Cas’s face.

“Yes, it snowed there,” the shepherd confirms. Dean’s insides twitch anxiously at the suddenly removed tone and expression.

No trading secrets today, apparently.

“Right,” Dean nods, looking away. He rubs his hands together. His fingertips were red with cold before, but now the shade stretches across his knuckles and his palms. From where he doesn’t look, the shepherd sighs.

“You ought to be wearing gloves.”

Dean looks back at him. Cas’s face is steady, patient. There’s something concerned in the gaze but also something softly exasperated.

“You aren’t wearing any,” Dean points out.

“That’s different,” Cas says, as though this is adequate defence or rebuttal.

“And why’s that?”

“I’m used to it.”

“There’s no getting used to ice on your fingertips,” Dean says, and grins. “What if your fingers snap off?”

“I had no warning there’d be a cause to be holding and throwing snow,” Cas points out. “You did.”

“Alright,” Dean sighs, admitting defeat. He rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “You had a lot of siblings, didn’t you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You’re good at arguing.:

A smile presses to the shepherd’s lips.

“And you’re clearly the oldest child,” he says. “You’re not used to having to work for your victories.”

“You should’ve been a politician.”

“I think I ended up where I was meant to,” the shepherd says. Dean’s gaze flicks up to his. Cas watches him, and his eyes hit Dean like a freight train. He nearly startles back.

“Oh?” Dean asks, unsure why he feels so shocked, so at a loss. “And why’s that?”

He’s continued rubbing his hands from the cold, subconsciously all the while, and is startled when the shepherd takes them in his own, rubbing them together to warm them, before bringing them up to his mouth and breathing hot air over each finger and knuckle. Dean’s heart leaps into his throat.

“To warm these,” he answers, pressing Dean’s hands between his own and blowing warm air between them. Dean watches him, can’t stop watching him.

“Th—that’s awfully kind,” Dean stammers out. The shepherd curls a soft smile, regarding Dean. His hands still enclose Dean’s.

“I consider it no kind of burden.”

“Still,” Dean can’t seen to catch his breath from running away from Jo, though that was whole minutes ago. “It seems a waste of your many talents.”

The shepherd raises his eyebrows.

“A compliment?” He asks, surprised. Dean rolls his eyes.

“I give you plenty,” he counters.

The snow drifts down to one side of them. Cas smiles.

“They still come as a shock.”

“You’re asking for more?” Dean laughs.

“If you’re offering,” the shepherd teases. Still, his hands are wrapped around Dean’s. Dean laughs again, insides warm in spite of the blizzard.

“How’s this: your hands are warm.”

“Now that’s not a compliment,” Cas shakes his head. “You could give it to any person with a pulse.”

“Not to me,” Dean counters, nodding to his cold hands, still being warmed by Castiel. His blue eyes spark.

“Perhaps, though I’m working to amend that.”

“And it’s very charitable of you.”

“With you, I hardly count it as charity.”

“Oh?” Dean asks, blinking. “What do you count it as?”

Cas only looks at him. Steady. Pressing as the waves. Penetrating as ice. Staggering as the blue at the centre of a flame.

The moment lingers like snow on the air.

Silence. Silence, and the snow. Dean’s lips have parted, his breath clouds on the air, and he becomes, strangely, acutely conscious of the air between them.

Minutes pass with the drift of the snow. All they do is stare and still, Dean’s breath refuses to even out within his lungs.

Eventually, Cas lowers Dean’s hands, letting gently go.

“Warm?” He asks. Dean blinks dumbly. He nods. “Perhaps we ought to return to the game.”

“Right,” Dean nods. Something in his heart pangs at the loss of contact. Is he that cold, that the desire to renew it is so great? “I wonder how it’s going. I hope they haven’t done anything to Adam’s snow fort. He was proud of it.”

Castiel flickers, affectionate.

“I was proud, to see you work so hard at defending it.”

Dean’s stomach clamps.

“Proud?”

“I thought it terribly thoughtful.”

“Well,” Dean flushes, looking down. They move from the shelter of the doorframe, out into the blizzard again. “He worked hard on it. It deserved defending.”

Cas’s lips twitch, even under the shroud of snow.

“Just so,” he agrees.

They round the corner of the house, and as they do are pelted from four different angles with snowballs. Dean shouts out a curse, trying to cover his face with his forearms, but already snow is in his eyes, his ears, his hair, and even a little in his mouth.

Cas stoops down to form a snowball and aim it back, and Dean follows suit, shouting out at the hurdle of cold railed against him, laughing because Cas is laughing, too, but in the end they’re both overcome.

“Alright, alright, we surrender! What did we ever do to you?”

“Abandoned your posts,” Jo grins, but stays the snowball in her hand. “Which demands punishment.”

“So what,” Dean blinks out the ice in his eyes, “you all teamed up, to attack us?”

“Common enemy,” Mick grins. Dean squints at Adam.

“And what about you?” He rolls his eyes. “I thought we made a pretty good team, back there. Now I find it means nothin’ to you?”

Adam laughs, and, beaming, admits,

“We were a good team.”

“I’m sure you’re trying to imply something, there—”

“You abandoned ship,” Mick grins.

“I did not,” Dean protests, “I was running away from Jo’s gravel snowballs—which, by the way, were definitely against the rules—”

Ellen has come outside and huffs at the sight of Dean and Castiel.

“What kind of state is that to eat lunch in?”

“Ellen, it’s not our fault,” Dean grins, but she rolls her eyes.

“Children,” she huffs. “The lot of you.” Mick laughs and she bites, good-natured, “don’t go thinking you’re exempt from that, Davies. Dean,” she turns back to him, “you ought to get out of those clothes, you’ll catch your death. Lend Castiel some things to wear?”

“Alright,” Dean tugs on Cas’s snow-soaked sleeve, “come on, Cas.”

They hang their coats in front of the fire before heading upstairs. Dean rummages through his drawers for something for the shepherd to wear, Castiel hangs back, stood beside Dean’s bed.

He’s used to changing in front of men, having worked hard labour on farms all his life. But here, for some reason, he feels nervous, a flair of panic ridging his insides. When he turns back to the shepherd with a new shirt and trousers for him, Castiel doesn’t hesitate in stripping his soaked clothing off, but Dean’s pulse quickens in his tightening chest. He looks away, then he looks back, then he doesn’t know where to look.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Cas is muscled. Dean’s felt those arms like iron bands wrapped around him when he’s slipped on muddy slopes. Cas spends his days hauling sheep from brambles, repairing walls and gates, forging his own tools. He builds, whittles, makes, everything himself. But it’s pure and shocking to see. All this tight and compact flesh; Dean remembers how warm the hands against his were and wonders if the rest of Cas’s body feels the same. He can’t explain this strange material fascination he has with the shepherd’s body, the desire to trace the lines of his skin as though they were instructions on a map. Cas raises his eyebrows at Dean’s watchfulness. Dean flushes, retrieving himself.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, and pulls off his ice-soaked shirt.

Both of them glance at each other. Dean’s breath snags.

“Are you still cold, Dean?” Castiel asks, with a pressing and concerned frown. He’s taken a step closer.

“I’m—I’m better,” Dean stammers. “Thank you. And you?”

“I don’t feel the cold, so much.”

“No,” Dean says, quiet. The shepherd is closer still. The shirt Dean gave him to change into hangs in his hand, by his side. “Your hands were so warm.”

Cas smiles.

“They still are,” he says, and, as if to prove this, takes his right hand and curls it around the bare skin of Dean’s left shoulder. The world is robbed of air.

“Yes,” Dean blinks, in dumb agreement.

“And you had the gall to call me icy, when we first met,” Cas comments. Dean meets his gaze, huffs out a laugh. Cas’s hand is still on his shoulder. The moment is like the eye of a storm. Focussed and still, with the promise of chaos only a little beyond, swirling around. But only stillness, for now.

“And you had the gall to call me hot-blooded,” Dean quips back.

“Today you proved me wrong,” Cas admits, eyes sparking. They’re closer still. Cas’s hand is still upon Dean’s shoulder, a brand, a bond. “Your hands could’ve frozen hell over.”

“And your hands could’ve…” But Dean can’t find the words. Heat is radiating off the shepherd’s body and it robs Dean of thought.

“Could’ve…?” Cas raises his eyebrows. “Care to finish that thought, Winchester?”

Dean huffs. He pulls his shirt on, face prickling. Cas’s hand is off his shoulder.

“I don’t know,” he grumbles. “C’mon, get ready. Lunch is probably getting cold.”

Dean has to keep avoiding Cas’s gaze all through lunch. Something heavy has settled in the air between them, some wordless intensity to parallel the shepherd’s gaze. It doesn’t matter: Adam has plenty to say and rambles excitedly about the snow fort he and Dean built, while Dean nods encouragingly or offers a word of agreement when Adam stops to breathe or chew his food. Cas watches him during these moments with a muted smile.

After lunch, they look outside. The fields are buried in a pillow of white. The pines which spear the sky wear hats of snow.

“What about the sheep?” Dean asks, worriedly. Cas flickers his gaze affectionately to Dean. They stand at the window of the drawing room, which is frosted with cold.

“They’re in a stell,” Cas answers, “and will be warm enough. There’s little I need to do for the rest of the day, save perhaps check up on them.”

“I’ll do that with you.”

“You called them stupid animals, when we first met.”

He doesn’t say this as an accusation. Perhaps it’s a little amused, and mainly interested, in what Dean will have to say in response.

“All the more reason to look out for them.”

The shepherd rolls his sparking eyes.

“Of course.”

“Why do you care for them?” Dean asks. Cas glances back over to him.

“Because I care for them,” he shrugs. “Do I need more reason than that?”

“You care for them, because you care for them,” Dean repeats, deadpan.

“Can love be untangled?” Castiel asks, turning to face Dean, face on, away from the window. “Will love submit to any untangling?”

Dean laughs.

“Perhaps not. But it has reasons.”

“Love is with the heart. Not the mind.”

“So you love your sheep.”

“Every shepherd ought to,” Cas says. But his expression turns dark and troubled. Dean is silenced.

In the early evening, after seeing to the sheep and wading through snow up to their shins, they sit in the croft and eat the small dinner Cas has prepared for them. In the time of their preparing, eating, and talking through this, snow has continued its drift down to sleep on the hibernating land, and the sky has darkened from purple-blue to pitch. Dean catches Castiel flickering his gaze, troubled, out the window behind him.

“It’s getting dark, huh?” He smiles, and the shepherd blinks slowly.

“Getting,” he repeats, sarcastic.

“Okay,” Dean concedes, “it is dark.”

“And cold.”

“Now, I thought you didn’t feel it.”

“I wasn’t worried for me,” Castiel sighs. Dean smiles in spite of himself. He glances out the window again. “And the land is clogged with snow.”

“And what, you’re worried for the sheep?”

“I’m worried for you.”

“Me?”

“If you’re to walk home in it.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine.”

“Knowing your habit of slipping.”

“You won’t come to steady my feet?” Dean raises his eyebrows with a grin. Cas rolls his eyes again. “You’re in a mood, tonight,” Dean laughs.

“I’m in no mood,” Cas shakes his head, “except perhaps concern.”

“Concern,” Dean repeats, warm. His eyes are fixed on the shepherd. But Cas only frowns thoughtfully at the table for several long moments, while Dean is warmed by the word. Concern.

Ordinarily, concern is his burden. The burden he must bear on behalf of his brothers, concern for their wellbeing and whereabouts and safety, for years it was concern for John and whether he’d drink himself into a ditch or into another fight he wouldn’t scrape out of. Concern for where he would source his family’s next meal, or money for where they might rest their heads at night. Concern for his work. It’s shifted into concern for the farm, concern for Bobby’s health, concern for Adam’s happiness and that he can sustain a childhood Dean was never allowed.

But who’s concerned for him?

Cas.

As if on cue, the shepherd speaks.

“Of course, you’d be welcome to stay here, the night.”

Dean blinks.

“On account of the cold, and the snow,” the shepherd continues. Dean nods dumbly, skin of his heart peeling.

“On account of concern for me,” Dean corrects, smiling.

The shepherd sighs.

“I suppose.”

“Where would I sleep?”

“On the floor, and you’ll be grateful.”

Dean leans back, laughing.

“Cas.”

“You could share my bed,” the shepherd sighs, mock-grudgingly.

“It’d be terribly cramped.”

“And what, you’re too good for that?”

“I’ve slept on floors, in the past,” Dean leans forward again, defensive. “I’d be happy on the floor, let alone sharing a small bed. I was just checking you’d be happy with that arrangement.”

“I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t.”

“Well, then.”

“Your answer?”

“I’ll stay,” Dean smiles. “It’ll save the cold walk over here, tomorrow morning.”

“And perhaps you can make me breakfast.”

“Me?” Dean repeats, indignant, grinning. “I’m your guest!”

“Now, you spend far too much time here, to be counted a guest.”

“And what will you count me as?”

“A squatter?” Cas squints. “Perhaps I ought to charge you rent.”

“Room and board,” Dean snorts. Cas’s eyes flame with amusement.

“Just so.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Perhaps not.”

Dean gets up to clear away their plates.

“Well, perhaps I will make you breakfast. And dazzle you completely.”

“I look forward to it.”

Cas heats some water and pours it over a handful of lemonbalm to make a tea. They sit at the table, no longer opposite one another as they usually sit, but at the corner, adjacent to each other, knees pressed together.

“Perhaps soon we ought to go fishing.”

“Or collect mussels,” Dean says. “Have you seen them on the rocks, below the cliffs?”

“Swarms of them.”

“Let’s do both.”

“Something to warm us, these cold months.”

“Something aside from your overworked hands.”

“Or your hot blood.”

Dean snorts.

“Once I’m as well read as you, my tongue will be just as fast. Watch out.”

“You’re tongue’s already quick,” Cas shakes his head. “You’re a match enough, as it is.”

“You’re not used to people disagreeing with you?”

“I’m hardly used to people.”

“But your family is so big.”

“Was,” Cas corrects, face settling into something momentarily heavy, and Dean’s own features fall.

“Right,” he says. “Sorry.”

He glances at the shepherd. He wonders, again, what paths the man’s past has tracked and how they led him here. But for all their small trading of secrets in dark candlelight over food picked from the fringes of bushes and hedges, Castiel has yet to plough his heart and heave this part of it up from the turned soil for harvest. Not for Dean. Not even for Dean.

“The hour’s growing late,” Cas says, and Dean swallows, nodding.

“Would you like me to—”

“I’ve one spare nightshirt,” Cas informs him. His gaze flickers over to his small set of drawers. “You’ll find it in the first of those.”

“Th—thank you,” Dean stammers out. He drinks the last of his tea, gets up, and gets changed. The heat from Cas’s body comes to press in behind him.

“Which side would you prefer to sleep on?” Cas asks. Dean turns and is startled by how close they stand. He’s already changed.

“I—” he fumbles, “I don’t mind. Which would you—”

Cas climbs into bed, the side of the window. There is little over the space of one body left to his side.

“This side will be colder,” he says. “I’ll take it, and shield you from it.”

Dean’s heart pangs.

“Do you ever tire of it?” He asks, and Cas frowns up at him, nonplussed.

“Tire of what?”

“Being kind,” Dean says, and slips into the bed beside Castiel. He’s turned on his side to face Cas. Their faces are inches apart. “Don’t you ever tire of it?”

Cas’s features twitch. His eyes soften, like the curl of flames in a hearth.

“Not with you.”

Dean’s heart hurts.

“You ought to.”

“I can’t.”

Dean’s chest is collapsing like a dying star.

“I don’t think I’m worthy of that.”

Cas is on his side, facing him.

“I disagree.”

“Why?”

“I told you, today,” the shepherd replies simply. The darkness between them is elating.

“What?”

“Love will not submit to untangling. Love is with the heart. Not the mind.”

“You were talking of your sheep, then.”

“And now I’m talking of you.”

Dean huffs, amused and exasperated and—afraid.

“So you see me as one of your sheep.”

Cas’s mouth twitches, entertained at the thought.

“No. For all your stubbornness, you’re more like a goat.”

“A goat?” Dean’s limbs curl with laughter in the small space of the bed, pressing closer against Castiel.

“Oh, almost certainly,” Cas confirms, nodding seriously. “You think another animal would suit you better?”

“Yes,” Dean confirms. “A human.”

“You’re not playing the game right, Winchester.”

“This is a game?”

“It is now,” Cas nods. “What animal am I?”

“An ass,” Dean answers quickly. “Or a mule. For all your stubbornness.”

Cas chuckles warmly.

“You sound bitter, Dean.”

His name on the shepherd’s lips, in the satin darkness, in the small space between their faces, is a pretty and perfect kind of sound.

“Fine,” Dean rolls his eyes. “Then, a dog.”

“A dog?”

“For all your steadfast loyalty.”

“Well, now I feel rude, for calling you a goat.”

“Good,” Dean laughs. Cas does, too.

“Is that who I am to you?” He asks, softly.

“Huh?”

“Loyal. Is that how you see me?”

Dean blinks, confused.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Cas’s voice is velvet in the dim ether

“And who am I, to you?” Dean asks. Cas smiles. The whites of his eyes shine, pale, like moonlight on snow. Warm fingers curl around Dean’s arm in the dark.

“I don’t know,” he confesses, and Dean’s heart is deflated, disappointed.

“You don’t know?” He repeats, biting on his hurt. His voice cracks.

“I cannot unpick you.”

“You seem to understand me better than anyone,” Dean counters, and is pricked by the fact that Cas doesn’t seem to think so or agree. Cas’s voice is soft as the night.

“There is yet some kind of wonder about you, Dean Winchester.”

Dean swallows. Blinks at the stinging of his eyes.

“Wonder?” Dean repeats. “At me?”

Cas smiles. His eyes are two soft fires in the hearth of his face. Enough to warm any wintry night.

“Just so.”

Dean swallows. He moves his left hand over Cas’s in the darkness, the hand which is curled around his arm.

He drifts into sleep like snow drifting down from heaven.

At first, he dreams of saltwater and snow. The chill of ice clumped in his hair. The heat of a body behind him and fingers warm at his elbow, steadying him on mud-slippery earth.

Then his dreaming changes. It presses itself down into the muddied ethanol-dregs of a sleeping mind, not Dean’s mind in sleep, but the mind he puts to sleep each waking moment. The mind he is so used to laying to rest at the bottom of the lake of his consciousness that, rotting down there, he’d almost forgotten about it. He had forgotten about it.

Sleeping, now, he remembers.

Remembers drinking and drinking with his desires so that, when he saw the face of a young man, Lee Webb, at the door of a bar, and that easy smile swimming through the mists of Dean’s drunken mind, it didn’t seem so ridiculous that the two of them should end up caught up in kisses behind the tavern, pressed against its walls. But caught up in kisses, they had been caught themselves.

Behind the tavern it was dark. Behind the tavern it reeked of piss and this is where men who had gone no doubt to direct their piss came instead to direct their rage. Behind the tavern it was dark so luckily the men, although able to make out the nature of Dean’s embrace, couldn’t make out Dean’s face. They almost broke it in, anyway.

And Lee—Lee Webb had shouted that it was Dean, Dean’s fault, that Dean had jumped him while he’d been trying to piss—bullshit, and any idiot would know this in an instant by the fact Lee’s trousers weren’t down, his belt was still buckled. So what, he’d just been pissing, fully clothed? Lee had been the one to spark his eyes at Dean, follow Dean outside when drunken, Dean had stepped out for cleaner air than the smoke-heavy atmosphere of the tavern. And Lee had followed out and said you look new, and when Dean had said, because I am, had said then let me welcome you properly?

Lee had been the one to lead Dean behind the tavern and tell him not to worry, they’d hear if anyone was coming. Perhaps they would have, if they’d only been talking. But both of them distracted the other, so that all they heard was the heady and all-absorbing sound of breath against lips.

Behind the tavern it was dark. Behind the tavern it reeked of piss and this was the piss Dean had his face pressed into as men, furious at the audacity of difference, the defilement implicit in treating a man the way one might treat a woman, kicked and spat and aimed blows as Lee ran into the deeper darkness. A kick had landed Dean’s stomach that winded him, curled him over himself, and he would’ve been beaten to death, perhaps left to rot there until the morning when some poor serving girl, going about her chores, would be the unfortunate soul to have to stumble across his corpse, defiled and desecrated because of the accusation of Dean’s own abomination.

John would guess what had happened. This is what rang in Dean’s head as curses and kicks and words as foul as rot rang around him. John would guess what had happened, and why, and would spit on Dean’s name and would not shed a tear.

Dean had dared to stray in his love for Cassie and would have strayed again in his lust for Lee, for any man, and which would be the bigger offense?

Cassie was the one who would have suffered for Dean’s love for her and this is what made leaving her easier, was the one comfort: protection. But Dean would suffer and be forced to submit to suffering for the embrace of another man. There’s no crime, no abomination, like daring to desire a man the way men dare to debase women. And John would guess what had happened.

Perhaps this is what lurched Dean’s body into a roll as another kick, a hundredth kick, was aimed at his bruised frame. He gagged as he ran, legs both limping so that his gait was itself a kind of lurch, the men shouting behind him, as his gasping breath beat against his chest which was nearly crumpled from its battering. He gagged and gagged as he ran because his gut was in upheaval from the blows landed to it and when, finally, he had escaped their drunken feet, in more ways than one, he leant against the outhouse of a stranger’s home and puked, and puked, and puked. His body convulsed. He limped home and collapsed and his eyes were so swollen the next morning he could barely see.

He’d told his father he’d been drunk and gotten into a fight. John had hardly cared and luckily had himself been so drunk, on his own, that night that he didn’t make it to that particular bar until several days later, when the news had blown over and the men, who’d been half drunk out of their minds at the time of nearly beating Dean to death, had half-forgotten why they’d done the beating in the first place, and the fact that the person they beat had escaped, alive.

Sammy was harder to convince. Dean’s broken ribs and torn lip couldn’t be explained away to him by a tousle in town. Eventually, he dropped it. And Dean’s brainfog—from how drunk he was, from the blows to his head, from time and from trauma, graciously set it like a wax seal over a letter containing news of death. Dean never opened it. He forgot. He let himself forget. He let himself believe it was because of whatever excuse he gave John and Sam, that he was nearly killed. He never made the mistake of opening his heart to intimacy, or vulnerability, again. Not in that way. Not with other—

That was just after Cassie. He’d been heartbroken. That’s why he’d let the simmer of Lee’s expression sing to him. He doesn’t remember much about that time. His mind won’t let him. It cages itself up when he tries, and has relinquished other memories into ash and dust. Dean doesn’t know what else he’s lost to the tides of his own mind.

What would Cas think of him, if he knew all this? All that care would be transformed into disgust. Surely.

Dean awakes with Cas’s body pressed behind his own.

Arms, and now he knows what they look like, bare, are bound across his chest. He remembers shivering in the night and how hands pulled the thick, coarse blanket more fully over him, before smoothing over his skin and raising whatever the opposite of pinpricks must be. He remembers hot breath huffed against his neck and he remembers leaning back into it. He remembers the ghost of a smile against his skin. He remembers sighing in happy half sleep, half wakefulness. He tries not to remember what happened to him because of Lee.

Chapter Text

“Are you awake?” Cas asks, words grazing the edge of Dean’s ear. He can obviously hear the ticking of Dean’s thoughts or see the clamp of his jaw. Dean turns in the small space of the bed to face Castiel. Cas’s arm, which had been looped over him, shifts to accommodate this move, but stays over Dean.

“I am,” Dean answers. Behind Cas, dawn peeps at the window, an orange, nebulous glow like embers of a fire. But Dean’s eyes aren’t on it. They’re on Cas. “And so are you.”

“I am.”

Dean nods, distracted and worried. The croft is closer to the sea than the Eyrie, almost right beside it; salt spray turns the mornings here misty with brine and wind. Faintly, in the cool morning air, the scent of this carries.

“You were shivering in the night,” Cas comments. So this is what his voice sounds like, roughened with sleep, when he has just awoken. Like the crumble of chalk cliffs.

“I was?” Dean asks, distracted.

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” Dean smiles, blinking. “I—I,” he doesn’t know what he’s trying to say, nor what he ought to say. “I… I was grateful for you, there to warm me through it all.”

“You noticed?”

“And was thankful,” Dean confirms. “Never—I have never—nobody has regarded me with so much care.”

Cas’s eyes turn sad.

“That’s some great discrepancy, on their part.”

Dean raises his eyebrows, confused, at this.

“Huh?”

“I cannot imagine not regarding you with care,” Cas answers, simply.

“That’s not true,” Dean laughs, flush. “You thought me a nuisance, when we first met.”

Their faces are inches apart. In the bed, it is warm. But the air is cold. Cas’s eyes are two bright fires of ice.

“Oh, I still think you a nuisance,” Cas answers seriously. Dean laughs and, still lying, pushes Castiel softly. “The two are not mutually exclusive.”

“I’ll pray that remains the case.”

“My regard is a silly thing to waste your prayers over.”

“I disagree completely,” Dean laughs. “Your regard is very important to me.”

Cas blinks slowly, eyes washed with affection.

“It’s still silly to waste your prayers over it.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s going nowhere,” Cas answers simply, certainly. “It never will. Would you pray for the seasons to continue to turn? Some things are certain. Some things are sure.”

Dean’s heart trills.

“How did you sleep?” He asks.

“Alright, considering.”

“Considering?” Dean repeats.

“Considering you nearly shuddered the bed across the floor, with the force of all your shivering.”

“Cas,” Dean laughs, and pushes him softly again. “I wasn’t so bad, was I?” He asks, worried.

“No, your shivering was fine,” Cas says, fairly. His eyes glow. “It was your snoring, which kept me up.”

“Cas!” Dean grins. “You’re not funny!”

“Oh, you think I’m joking? That’s unfortunate.”

“Do I really?” Dean asks. Castiel chuckles. His hand, curled around Dean’s arm, squeezes softly. Cas strokes him with his thumb.

“No,” he says softly. “I was teasing.”

“Ass,” Dean rolls his eyes.

Castiel’s eyes spark. Neither speak for a moment. Cas sighs.

“Well, I suppose the day is calling us,” he says, and bracingly squeezes Dean’s arm again.

“I wish it’d stop,” Dean says. Castiel hums.

“I believe you promised me breakfast?” He asks. Dean snorts, incredulous.

“And you haven’t forgotten it.”

“You promised to dazzle me,” Cas says, and sits up in the bed. “How could I?”

“Don’t hold me to that promise,” Dean sits up, swings his legs over the edge of the bed. He stretches, toes curling off the cold floor.

“I’ll get the fire going.” Cas is smiling softly when Dean glances back at him. He’s noticed the tightening of Dean’s limbs in response to the chill outside of the bed.

“I’ve yet to get used to cold English weather,” Dean says, and Cas snorts.

“If you were ever to visit Kerry,” he shakes his head, rolling his eyes. Dean watches him.

“Perhaps you ought to take me,” he says, on wild impulse. Cas’s eyes emanate something suddenly sad, and a distance grows in his gaze. “You wouldn’t want to?” Dean asks, heart pricked with disappointment.

“The place is not without its ghosts,” Cas says, and looks at Dean in some kind of tender apology. Dean swallows.

“And nothing will amend that,” he points out, “except perhaps filling it with some living memories.”

Cas smiles reluctantly.

“And when did you become such a wise thing?”

“Since I started spending time with you,” Dean answers. Cas blinks warmly. He tosses Dean a pair of thick, woollen socks.

“Here,” he says. “For your poor, cold feet.”

Dean laughs appreciatively and pulls them on.

“They’re warmer already.”

Cas hums. His lashes are tight around his eyes with affection. His palm comes to rest on Dean’s back a moment as he rises, shifting off the bed. Dean is about to lean into it, but Cas has moved away, over to the fireplace, ready to warm up the room. All on Dean’s account.

Dean fries eggs, topped with chives he and Cas found at the edges of the woods a few days previous, and toasts bread over the renewed fire. He heats water in the heavy kettle Cas has in the croft, and Cas insists that on such a day as this, where the chill aches the bones, nettle—stinging nettle!—tea is what’s called for.

Dean sighs and heaps dried nettles into the water.

“If this leaves my mouth in any kind of pain, I’ll never forgive you. And I’ll never speak to you again.”

Cas chuckles.

“Oh, what a peaceful life that would be.”

Dean rolls his eyes. They sit down to their breakfast.

“You’d be bored before the day was out.”

“Take a vow of silence, and we’ll see.”

“And what if I did?” Dean asks with a grin.

“Don’t tease me,” Cas sighs wistfully, “I can only dream.”

Dean, trying not to smirk, trying to bite down on laughter or any kind of amused expression, clamps his jaw shut and stares at Cas, purposefully.

“Oh, so you’re trying it out?” Cas asks, and Dean blinks once. “I can already feel my headache easing.”

Dean continues staring, tries not to let his smile twitch any further. Cas acts as though this is the most ordinary thing in the world, and sighs, practically, pouring more tea into his cup with a peaceful expression.

“I was thinking that now we’ve finished with Blake, we could move onto Keats,” he says, and takes a sip of tea. “For your reading.”

Dean blinks, and says nothing. Cas’s eyes spark.

“I think you’ll like him. We may look at his letters, as well as his poetry.”

Dean sips his tea, and watches Cas over the rim of his cup.

“Of course, it’ll hardly matter if you don’t enjoy him,” Cas continues, conversationally, “as apparently you won’t be able to voice any of your impending complaints.”

Dean leans forward and rests his chin on his hand, still watching Cas through his lashes. He twitches a smile.

“You’re truly dedicated to this act?” Cas asks, with a sigh. Dean’s mouth twitches again. He gives a look which he hopes says I told you you’d get bored. Cas eats his toast, and doesn’t rise. “You cook a decent breakfast,” he says, and Dean gives a small, modest nod. “Of course, being only eggs and toast,” Cas admits, to which Dean rolls his eyes. Cas’s gaze fizzes like lightning. “Thank you, Dean,” he says, and regards Dean so intently and so softly that Dean’s mouth actually falls open.

He swallows.

“You’re welcome,” Dean returns.

“Oh, the peace is over?” Cas asks.

“You weren’t appreciating it well enough,” Dean answers with a smile. Cas chuckles. “So,” he says, “Keats, this evening?”

“Keats this evening,” Cas nods.

“You know,” Dean says, “and Sam might’ve offered you this, already—but if you wanted a book—any book, you’d be welcome to have it, from the library. Count it as yours.”

“I thought it was Bobby’s library, and his to lease out?” Cas raises his eyebrows. Dean laughs.

“Oh, he won’t mind. As far as Bobby’s concerned, you can’t be faulted. You shouldn’t have shown him how to make better splints for his poor injured birds. Now he thinks you’re a saint.” Cas hums at Dean’s words, looking down. “Are you shying away from these compliments?” Dean asks, incredulous. “Castiel,” he chuckles, “this is unexpected.”

“Almost as unexpected as your compliments,” Cas returns, warmly.

“I’ll endeavour to give you more.”

Cas rolls his eyes, leaning back.

Dean pours them both more tea. The shepherd gives him a faintly surprised, grateful look at the gesture.

“So—you’ll be proud of me, for this,” Dean says, “I think I saw some velvet shank in the woods, earlier this week. It ought to be big enough to eat, by now.”

“And there’s our dinner, sorted,” Cas replies, gracious and affectionate. Dean smiles.

“Perhaps I’ll be given the opportunity to cook you something a little more impressive than eggs and toast.”

“I was very impressed,” Cas smiles, and gestures to his almost-empty plate, taking a bite of the last of his toast.

“I don’t know where you think your flattery will get you.”

Cas rises. His lips are turned upwards as he takes Dean’s empty plate.

“Is there a plan for today?” Dean asks, following suit. “How many sarcastic comments have you got planned?”

“I’m not sure on that, but I did think I ought to take you down beneath the cliffs, and let the tide wash you away.”

“Uh-huh?” Dean rolls his eyes. “You wouldn’t miss me at all?”

“I can’t imagine it.”

Dean bumps his shoulder against Cas’s as he draws up by the shepherd’s side.

“You’re lucky I think you so funny.”

“Oh, I’m sure.”

Dean’s shoulder is still pressed against Cas’s.

He finds that it is, for much of the rest of the day. Inexplicably. Perhaps it’s the cold: the snow has yet to melt, and the air is static with an ice-chill unusual for their setting by the sea. It’s only natural, then, that Dean should press against the shepherd, whose words and frame thrum with a glowing warmth. By the end of the day, the cold has set into Dean’s bones, and Cas does well commenting only once that they’d be a lot more stiff than they are now were it not for the nettle tea, this morning.

Back in the croft, warming his hands round a cup of milk heated and sweetened with honey and mugwort, Dean watches Cas. The shepherd places a copy of Keats, brown-gold and well loved, in front of him.

“While our dinner cooks,” he says, “I thought we might start on Keats.”

“Here’s hoping he’s easier than Shakespeare.”

“Oh, almost certainly,” Cas says, and pulls his chair beside Dean’s. “Although a sight harder than Blake.”

Dean groans.

“You said you wanted to learn how to read,” Cas points out, though his countenance is gentle and affectionate as he speaks these words.

“Yes, but I didn’t realise learning meant effort.”

Cas shakes his head, with a small smile, and pushes Dean’s notepad toward him.

“Come on,” he says. Dean sighs. “You might find you like him.”

Dean looks up.

“Well, I did kind of enjoy Twelfth Night.”

“Oh, ‘kind of’?” Cas raises his eyebrows. “Praise indeed.”

“And Blake was—I liked reading him. He was weird.—Different,” Dean amends quickly. Cas’s lips are pressed together, as though he’s suppressing a smile. “Stop it,” Dean laughs. “One day, I’ll be a renowned literary critic and essayist—”

“And it’ll all be thanks to me.”

“Shall we just start?” Dean asks, and Cas concedes, opening the book not at the beginning, but to a page toward the middle he has marked out. “Not from page one?” Dean asks. Cas shakes his head.

“There’s no call, with Keats, to read so rigidly.”

Dean rolls his eyes.

“This is my favourite of his poems,” Cas provides.

“I’ll work particularly hard on hating it, then.”

He’s shouldered softly. He laughs, before looking down at the page. He sounds out the first line, as best he can.

What is more gentle than a wind in summer?

He looks up. Smiles. Cas’s gaze flicks up from the page, to his face.

“Wind in summer?” He repeats. “It seems a long way away, with snow laying thick outside.

“All the more reason to treasure thoughts of it,” Cas provides.

The croft has a funny habit of rendering everything warmer and closer. Perhaps it’s the tight stone walls, or the fact of them being bathed in amber dancing light each evening.

“I don’t think the snow is so bad.”

“Now there’s a changed tune.”

“You prompted it,” Dean grins. “You should be a music teacher, on top of everything else.”

Cas rolls his eyes, presses his palm to the back of Dean’s head, and softly pushes his gaze back down to the page.

“Continue, Mr Winchester. You read poetry so well.”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic.”

“I wasn’t.”

Dean looks up.

“You mean it?”

“I do,” Cas confirms. His hand, still at the back of Dean’s head, tilts his gaze back down again. Dean laughs at the gentle manhandling. Cas’s hand slips from Dean’s hair and comes to rest on the back of Dean’s chair as he reads the next lines.

What is more soothing than the pretty hummer
That stays one moment in an open flower,
And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower?

This takes some time to get through. Not nearly as much as it would have, even a week ago—but still Dean stumbles over soothing and bower. Cas is steady, patient, all the while. Increasingly, he is reticent to help Dean through his stumbling, will rather let Dean unfold the word causing trouble himself as concentration and occasionally frustration knits his brows together. Cas is never frustrated, though.

“There’s some use in rhyme,” Cas says, after Dean manages to unravel the word ‘bower’, “in helping us learn to read.”

“Oh?”

“Well, it’ll give some hint as to what the last word on a line ought to sound like.”

“Right,” Dean rolls his eyes. “And here—he’s talking about bees? ‘Buzzing cheerily’.”

“Just so,” Cas smiles.

“The pretty hummer,” Dean repeats, with a smile. “That’s—that’s sweet.”

“Oh, certainly.”

“Very sweet,” Dean says.

“There’s some great poetry, in bees,” Cas says, and Dean blinks, bemused. “Yes,” Castiel confirms, at the look Dean gives him. “Busy, always working, and somehow always joyful. Moving ever constant and yet, the very sight of home.”

Dean laughs. He tips his head forward to bump it on Cas’s shoulder. Cas’s hand cards his hair.

“Go on,” he says. “Continue.”

Dean lifts his forehand from the cradle of Cas’s shoulder. He looks back down to the page, breathes in, continues.

What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing
In a green island, far from all men's knowing?

He stammers several times over tranquil. It’s an unfair and deceiving word, he thinks. Cas’s hand, from where it had returned, to the back of Dean’s chair, comes to rest softly on Dean’s own back as he stammers, all things grounding and assuring. Dean gets tranquil out, and the rest of the words seem to blossom in his mouth. He glances up to Cas and tries not to glow with too much pride, but Cas is glowing with it, too—and now, not only do the words blossom, but his heart does, too. He looks back down, smiling, and continues.

More healthful than the leafiness of dales?
More secret than a nest of nightingales?

He looks up.

“We ought to show this poem to Bobby,” he states, and Cas chuckles.

“Are we ever to make it through this poem, Dean, or will you be providing a running commentary for every other line?”

“I’m just refining my skills, for when I become a famous essayist.”

“I look forward to reading your reviews in the papers.”

“They’ll be biting,” Dean grins.

“Not if they spend the whole time speaking of Mr Singer’s birds,” Cas states. “Which is a little esoteric, alongside everything else.”

“Esoteric,” Dean smirks.

“It means—”

“I know what it means,” Dean squints sarcastically.

“Well, aren’t you the picture of an educated gentleman.”

Dean sputters a laugh. He huffs.

“I’m just saying,” he states, “the poem talks about birds. Bobby likes birds.”

“Mr Singer likes birds?” Cas raises his eyebrows. Dean laughs again. His head returns to Cas’s shoulder. Cas doesn’t reject it. If anything—leans into it.

“Nightingales, especially,” Dean says.

“Yes—what was the name of his favourite?” Cas asks.

“Elowen,” Dean smiles. “Means elm tree. In Cornish.” A pause. He smiles, taking his head off Cas’s shoulder. “Is Cornish anything like Irish?”

“No,” Castiel answers. “I’m afraid not. Maybe distant relatives, but distant is the operative word.”

“Like second cousins?”

“Perhaps,” Cas laughs. “Now, to Keats.”

Dean licks his lips and continues.

The poem is long. They still aren’t finished by the time their dinner has cooked. That’s okay—there’s little rush, and Cas’s hand comes to rest assuringly at Dean’s back each instance the words cause him trouble.

Dinner is two fish—hake—wrapped in seaweed and smoked, and the velvet shank Dean found. A few potatoes are boiled and salted on the side. Cas lights a few more candles as the darkness creeps in, and they sit to eat.

“Perhaps one of these days I’ll bring a bottle of wine for us to drink, as we eat,” Dean suggest, and Cas glances up from his meal, eyes sparking.

“I’ve don’t nothing to stop you from doing so, so far,” he points out. Dean snorts.

“Well, then. I will.”

“Treating me.”

“Thanking you,” Dean corrects, “for all of it.”

“All of it?” Cas raises his eyebrows to Dean.

“Everything,” Dean smiles. “Everything you do, have done, for me. Wine doesn’t begin to cover it,” he laughs, “but it’ll make a start. And a merry one.”

“You’re suggesting drunkenness?” Cas asks. “In my croft?”

“Well, it being so cold, I wouldn’t suggest drunkenness outside,” Dean quips.

“And considering your propensity to slip on muddy soil, sober, I wouldn’t suggest it either.”

Dean huffs out a laugh.

“Ass.”

“And what do you think of Keats?” Cas asks, instead of rising.

“You seem to like him.”

“I know what I think of him.”

Dean licks his lips, suppressing a smile. He enjoys stringing out the tension of the moment.

“Yes, I like him,” he confirms, finally. “You like him a lot,” he observes. Cas blinks warmly.

“I’ll confess, I hold him dear to me.”

“Why’s that?”

Cas shrugs, takes a bite of his dinner. Dean doesn’t speak, only watches the shepherd. He has learnt that one way to coax him from his silence is to sit, yourself, in a kind of expectant silence.

“When you travel as far, as often as me, you must have companions in your own mind,” Cas says, mysteriously, after a moment.

“And Keats was one of yours?”

“Of a kind.”

“I hope you aren’t planning on travelling again, any time soon.”

Cas raises his eyebrows, intrigued at this statement. Dean’s cheeks prickle in response to his own words.

“Well,” he says, cheeks rosy in the firelight. “I suppose this place is comfortable enough.”

“Only the place?” Dean asks.

“The people are okay, too, I suppose.”

“You suppose?”

“Although there’s this one man, Dean Winchester, who asks incessant questions.”

“Perhaps it’s because you’re so secretive and mysterious,” Dean laughs, “and therefore interesting.”

“In that case, I must be sure not to answer too many of your questions,” Cas points out, “or I’ll cease to be so interesting to you.”

“You’ll always be interesting to me,” Dean smiles, and means it. Cas hums. He eats, and watches Dean. Dean watches back. Finally, Cas speaks again.

“I have told you, my mother would have us recite poetry over our evening meal. Keats was one of those poets.”

“And this is a fond memory,” Dean says.

“Very.”

“I’m glad.”

“Keats was always a piece of home. Even when I left it.”

“Why did you leave it?” Dean asks. But Cas’s eyes turn down.

“When?” He asks.

“When?” Dean repeats, with a frown. “You left it more than once?”

“Enough trading secrets,” Cas’s face knits together, and a wall seems to build around it. “Enough questions.”

Dean is set awry.

“You don’t trust me?”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

“Dean.”

Dean’s lips turn down.

Stung silence.

“You’d think less of me,” Cas supplies, at last, and Dean shakes his head.

“I couldn’t,” he says. “I couldn’t ever.”

“Your opinion is already too low to go lower?” Cas jokes, but Dean doesn’t laugh.

“You know what I meant.”

Cas flicks his gaze away. Dean presses his own, hard, at the shepherd.

“You’d think less of me,” Cas says again, and with such a certain firmness that Dean knows he means it.

“Then maybe I ought to share some stories to make you think less of me,” Dean laughs, and Cas cracks a smile, and sighs.

“I could never think poorly of you.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Try me,” Cas says, earnest. Dean leans back with a laugh.

“I wish to know you better.”

Dean grows frustrated. They’re holding two conversations, at once.

“No one has known me better, in some years, now,” Cas says, softly. Dean’s heart twinges.

“Okay, but once, someone knew you better than I know you, now.”

“Inevitably, yes.”

“I don’t like that,” Dean laughs, flush. “Who? I want to know you best.”

“My family,” Cas rolls his eyes, “is that such a crime?

“Only your family?” Dean asks.

“You’re jealous?”

“No,” Dean glowers, and leans back again, withdrawing. “I just think it’s strange, that you’d spend all your time with me, and not trust me with—”

“I trust you a great deal,” Cas counters, “and what, you trust me with everything?”

Dean glares. The shepherd sighs. He shakes his head, sadly.

“Secrets ought to be shared with trust and entrust, not guilt and resentment.”

Dean looks down, shamed by Cas’s words.

“I want to know you.”

“You do,” Cas points out.

“All of you.”

“All of me?”

Dean looks up.

“Every inch,” he answers. “Every breath. Every second.”

Cas’s gaze scintillates.

“You may not like what you learn,” he says.

“Love is with the heart, not the mind,” Dean answers, without thinking. He blinks at his own words, confused. Cas blinks, too. Obviously neither of them had expected this. And what the hell does Dean mean by love?

“I left home,” Cas confesses, after a moment’s mutual staring, stunned, “twice. Once when I was a tempestuous, impulsive teenager. I returned, eventually. And then, once I had nothing left.”

“All gone,” Dean says, and remembers the words Cas said of his family, in those first glared and bitten days of their early acquaintance.

“All gone,” Cas repeats, sadly.

“I’m sorry,” Dean says.

“You know what it is to be alone,” Cas shrugs, but looks away.

“Not all alone,” Dean contends. “Resentful and bitter I may have been, but never alone. Not like you—not like you were forced to be.”

Cas looks back to him, presses his lips together.

“It is a terrible thing, an uprooting.”

“Right,” Dean falters.

“And to uproot yourself…”

“Yes,” Dean agrees, “is hard.”

“Is more than hard.”

“Like tearing open a wound.”

Cas’s brows slope with the relief of one suddenly understood.

“Just so.”

“And you’ve never lain your roots down, since,” Dean states, and watches the shepherd. Cas flickers.

“It’s not so easy…”

“Have I been making it hard?”

“That’s loaded,” Cas frowns. Dean shakes his head.

“I want to know.”

“And why?” Cas asks. “Why would you want to know?”

Dean’s brow curls with worry.

“I want to know,” he repeats.

“You expect secrets from me,” Cas points out.

“I want to be a reason,” Dean says, and says it hard and resentful with sincerity and the weight of these words’ vulnerability, “I want to be the reason for you to want to stay.”

Cas is somehow surprised by these words. How could he not have expected them?

“Oh,” he says. He looks down. His cheeks, again, are pink in the candlelight. Dean has not seen him so awry, not from their very first meeting.

“You’re surprised?”

Cas doesn’t answer this. He blinks, looking at Dean. Their words are loaded guns and the ether around them stings with the smoke of explosives. Each sentence, each question, each answer, is a cartridge, is coated with gunpowder, is a struck match. What will be left of the croft when they have finished?

Cas’s words are shrapnel, when they come.

“I am not used to people wanting me to stay.”

Dean’s lips turn down.

“And I’m not used to people wanting to stay,” he replies.

Cas’s gaze softens.

“I cannot imagine that.”

“I cannot imagine anyone not needing you—nor knowing you, and not loving you.”

Stung silence. Were Dean’s words a white flag, or a mine?

“Ah, then,” Cas says, “you will have trouble imagining any chapter of my past.”

Dean’s heart cracks like baked clay.

“Then you’ll have to tell me about it.”

“I am not some wild beast, for you to coax out of its hole,” Cas frowns defensively, bristled by Dean’s tone and sad expression.

“Then prove it.”

The shepherd sighs.

“I left home once,” he says, after silence which stretches like the plains of Dean’s old home, for miles and miles. For some reason, it makes Dean appreciate the texture and cadence of Cornish land. “When I was a much younger man. Barely yet a man, but arrogant enough to believe I was one. My mother had died of the fever. Grief is a stammer in the brain. It makes us stumble, in the years of loss. I stumbled out the door, and left.”

“Oh,” Dean says. “And—and then you returned?”

“Not for some time,” Cas says. He takes a long drink of his tea, which sits beside his meal.

“But eventually.”

“Eventually,” Cas answers. “But by that time…”

“By that time?” Dean raises his eyebrows, and then berates himself for pressing—he ought to have waited, waited for Cas to unknot the brambles of his thoughts and tread them out, aloud—not have poked and prodded like the shepherd was, in his own words, some wild beast to be coaxed from its den.

He’s proven right. Cas’s jaw clamps, resentfully. Another silence like a vice closes around them.

“I wish I had something wise and kind, or even just comforting, to say to you,” Dean confesses. “You make it so easy for me to trust you. I can’t do the same for you. I’m sorry.”

“Who said you couldn’t?” Cas asks, with a frown.

Dean’s eyes sting as he looks at the shepherd.

“You,” Dean answers. “Though you didn’t say it,” he admits. Cas swallows. Silence. Again. They stare. Cas’s eyes glitter in the candlelight.

“I have been deaf to the song of my own heart,” he says, at last. Dean falters. His jaw is fixed shut. He can’t reply. “And fearful, that seeing my heart, you would reject it.”

Dean’s chest unbinds. So does his mouth.

“I never could.”

Cas’s eyes crest like a wave.

“I returned home,” he says at last, “when word reached me—eventually—that each of my younger siblings had contracted smallpox. I returned too late, and could care for them only in their last. I watched them die.” Dean’s chest becomes a vacuum to sorrow as Cas speaks. The shepherd’s eyes are awash with trouble, a murky sea after a storm. “All but one, a half sister, who was not yet born, but close enough to it. My father remarried in my absence. Her mother died in labor, I helped deliver, but was not help enough—used only to sheep, and not the complications people present to the ordeal,” he says, guilty. “I couldn’t—the irony,” he looks at Dean, “is that my mother was a midwife. If only she’d been there to help,” he jokes. Dean can’t laugh. “But my sister survived,” he continues. “She was a wonder,” Cas smiles warm, sad, lost to the mists of time and re-memory. His eyes swim with them. “All things soft and bright in the word, a world of so much hardness, so much darkness. No—my youngest sister, she was a marvel.”

Dean thinks of Cas’s resentment to Dean, whenever he mistreated or alienated Adam, or called him half or bastard brother. Is this where it stems from? Or just the goodness of the shepherd’s heart? Knowing Cas, it could be either.

“The brightest smile that you could think of. If she—if she’d had a chance, she would’ve caused such mischief,” he laughs, but God, it is a poisoned laugh. “Oh, she would have been trouble. But—” he seems to swim back through the waters of time and memorial, “—gone, now.” His gaze turns harrowed, his wistful smile falls.

“I’m so sorry—”

“Oh, and it was your fault?”

“You know what I mean.”

Cas sighs, frame softening with regret at his bitten words.

“I do,” he admits.

“Then what happened?” Dean asks. Cas’s gaze churns like the sea.

“When tragedy strikes, it rarely strikes but once. The opposite of lightning. It returned to the wound, and struck, and struck, and struck.”

Dean swallows.

“My father and my older brother carried the rage of all that had happened—Dean, I don’t know what you know of politics—” Cas presses his lips together, “England gutted my country. That is Irish history, over and over. And my father felt it acutely. Whatever my father felt, my brother felt, also. Both were killed, in a Fenian rising.”

“I’m so sorry—”

“Not the first, nor the last, blood to be spilled in the name of the British Empire.”

The darkness presses them from all sides, seems to push them closer together.

“But all that rage…” Cas sighs, pushing his plate away. Dean can see, or maybe only imagine, his mind. Flashes of colour unseen by the sun. Or maybe Cas’s mind is the sun. “All that rage,” he repeats, shaking his head. “I could never swallow it. It felt like poison. I wanted… I don’t know what I wanted. I cared for my youngest sister. It was just us, then. Just us, and the land, and my father’s and forefather’s flock. That was enough. My sister needed me. I needed… to be needed. To be wanted. But,” his eyes tremble like starlight, “it was not to last.”

Dean watches, silent, frowning, hurting.

“She passed, too, in the end. I could not save her. Whooping cough. I couldn’t save her.”

Dean can’t swallow.

He feels so small—so small in the face of Cas’s sorrow, and so small in the face of his—his selfishness, his obstinance, his idiocy. None of what Novak suffered was deserved, and yet he suffers the guilt for it, as well as the sorrow.

“Cas—”

“You needn’t say anything,” Castiel says. “This is why I don’t like to speak of it. It is a burden, and shouldering it to others is hardly…” But he trails off.

“I would shoulder it with you,” Dean says, earnestly, “if you’d let me. Whatever you’d let me, I would carry.”

Cas swallows. It seems difficult.

“After that, I—or I felt that I—had nothing left. Nothing to stay for. I left the farm, the flock, the land of my forebears… I took to wandering, again—only this time, I had no one to call me home. That’s a listlessness you cannot speak of. It’s one thing to roam. It’s another to roam without a tether.”

“You say all this as though you—as though you feel a guilt, because of it.”

“And shouldn’t I?” Cas raises his eyebrows, gives Dean a harder, meaner look than he has, yet. Ever. “The farm. The flock. The place of my family. I left it—all of it—because I could not swallow my own sorrow.”

“You—you were robbed of so much, you’d suffered so much,” Dean stammers out. “It wasn’t your fault, Cas, that you were left—left—”

“It was my fault, that I left.”

“Cas—” Dean’s heart is sore.

“The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep,” Cas recites, interrupting, and Dean frowns. “But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.”

“Cas, there’s hardly a comparison—”

“Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock!” Cas continues, features darkened. Shadows slant under his brow and his head tips forward with heavy anger. “The sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.”

Dean’s chest is filled with ash.

“Please, Cas—"

“And now be thou cursed from the ground, which hath opened its mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand,” Cas’s speech crests like a wave, makes Dean shiver. “When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield thee its strength; a wanderer and fugitive shalt thou be on the earth.”

Dean’s mouth turns down, he cannot swallow.

“Cas,” he says, and realises that he’s crying with Cas’s words, and Cas looks up, startled at Dean’s tears. And then he cries, too.

“What kind of shepherd abandons his flock?” Castiel asks, voice only fragments of regret and desperate shame. It splinters in the air. “What kind of man, am I?”

Dean gets up. He’s up, and round the table, in a heartbeat. Cas is on his feet and the moment is wild with ecstasy but all that happens is Dean pulling Cas toward him to hug tightly. He can’t give his embrace the same weight and sincerity Cas’s always seems to carry.

His hand goes to the back of Cas’s head, he cradles it, turns it in toward his neck, where Cas’s tears smear hot on his skin. Dean’s chest tremors beneath Castiel’s; Castiel’s all but disintegrates. The room crumbles around them; warm waters stream at Dean’s face and Cas’s breath is rough as gravel against the curve of Dean’s shoulder. There is only this, and them, this raw and desperate moment and an entire landscape of regret which Dean cannot redeem, although he can give new soil for Cas to lay his roots down, wants nothing more than to provide this, to provide the shepherd with a reason to never leave, never leave again.

And so they stand, and so they stay, for great inhaling, exhaling minutes. Minutes ravaged by the thrum of sorrow in Dean’s ears.

“What kind of man are you?” Dean asks, at last, repeating Cas’s question to him. He breathes his words out into the air in front of him. Cas is still bound up in his arms; he is still bound up in Cas’s. “What kind of man are you?” Dean repeats, and laughs it, breathless, this time. “The very best. The best of them all.”

“Dean,” Cas laughs, tearily, obviously unconvinced, but Dean shakes his head.

“The best of them all,” he repeats.

…

Spring emerges from behind closed leaves. The farm takes on more hands, and Dean, for the planting and barn repairing after the winter, is called from the focus he had sustained for months, on shepherding. He misses the days watching the size of Cas’s steps, the fascinating and focussed movements of his hands, he misses watching the sun glint of Cas’s bright and ice-fiery eyes, he misses the smell of water on grass as Cas’s voice, a voice like music, sounded in his ears.

Still, he continues teaching Dean, however. Every night they sit in the croft together, and tread through Keats, and, as March begins, Dean brings Castiel a pile of books—writers he’s mentioned passingly with undeniable affection—for them to start on, and tells Cas these books are his, now, his to keep.

“I think Mr Singer might have words to say about that,” Cas responds, doubtful. Dean grins.

“And they’d all be positive.”

Cas gives Dean a cynical look. Dean only grins, and presses the books into Cas’s hands.

To welcome the new workers, they clear out one of the barns and carry in a barrel of cider and glasses. Mick, Cas, and a lady new to the Eyrie, Jody, play music for them all—Cas playing a violin found in the attic of the farmhouse—and easy as the tide, they all begin to dance. It’s been a while since Dean has had a call to do so, and he can’t complain: Jo takes his hands and spins him fast, and violently, and as his head is giddy with some elderberry wine he and Cas shared—brewed specially by the shepherd, just before the dancing—his head gets only giddier.

He laughs and curses at her, and tries to slow them, which barely works, and so swings into it, while Jo laughs and kicks at him. Bobby takes out his harmonica and sits beside the musicians and almost certainly brings down the general quality of their playing but it hardly matters, he seems so pleased to be involved, and all the new hands are either too drunken or too kind or too generally happy to much care. The barn is bathed in the orange light of lanterns hung about, high above heads to save them from the risk of toppling and starting some kind of fire.

Cas’s eyes are blazing and flashing every time Dean, grinning, glances over to him. Cas is always looking back.

Dean’s heart thunders from the pace of the dancing. Eventually, attempting to catch his breath, he approaches Cas with a glass of cider for each of them.

“I can’t drink that,” Cas laughs.

“What? Why not?” Dean asks.

“Playing requires both of my hands,” Cas answers, and as if to underline this point, begins a new song, into which Jody, Mick, and far less proficiently, Bobby, all join.

“Then I’ll just feed it to you, while you play,” Dean grins.

“You will not,” Cas says, dangerously, but already, Dean, grinning, has looped his arm over Cas’s shoulder and tips the cup toward his mouth. “Dean—” Cas sputters, but swallows, as Dean laughs so hard his head tips forward to rest on Cas’s shoulder. “Ass,” Cas growls, when Dean removes himself, still laughing. “And you spiked that, didn’t you.”

“It’s sweet cider,” Dean counters, “it needed something to—”

“What, clean the varnish off a table?”

“No,” Dean laughs, “I only added a little rum. And you’re so uptight, I thought it might relax you.”

Cas rolls his eyes. Dean grins. The shepherd is suppressing a smile. Dean stays by his side until the song ends, when Cas takes the glass from Dean’s hand, tips it against Dean’s, and takes a long drink from it.

“Rum and cider,” he shakes his head, wrinkling his nose. “Whoever told you that was a sensible combination, Winchester…”

“Oh, I never said it was tasty,” Dean grins.

“Tasty? I can barely swallow it.”

Laughter bubbles from Dean.

When Cas has finished his drink and must return to playing, Dean ruffles at his hair and leaves, inviting Ellen to dance with him, who beams and warns him not to spin her anywhere near as violently as he and Jo had, each other.

After another thirty minutes, Dean glances back over at Cas, still playing. A little out of breath again, he approaches the shepherd once more.

“You ought to let somebody else have a go at that,” he states. Castiel frowns.

“You dislike my playing, Winchester?”

“Not at all,” Dean laughs. “But if you play all night, then how am I to dance with you?”

Cas’s eyes turn soft and bemused.

“Get back to your turning about, Dean,” he laughs. “I’m a man at work.”

But not ten minutes later, Cas is at his side, and taking a hold of his hand. Dean falters, shocked, and Cas squints.

“You did ask me,” he points out, and Dean laughs, breathless.

“I did,” he admits. “I only—I thought you turned me down.”

“I’d do no such thing,” Cas shakes his head, and turns them about. “Not ever.”

It’s like the sun is rising, in Dean’s chest. Cas steadies Dean every time he threatens, grinning, to spin them out of control. Dean laughs and tugs hard, trying to do so repeatedly. But Cas is strong, and steady, and not so easily blown about, not so easily blown about as Dean’s head and heart, both of which are reeling.

Many of the workers have turned in; the time is late. This is the last song he’ll play, Mick announces. What remains of the throng all groan sadly, but Mick suggests singing, instead of dancing—and for better or worse, several are eager to try their hands at it. Dean takes Cas’s wrist, and they sit on the floor, leaning back against one of the walls of the barn. Cas’s fingers rest beside Dean’s. Adam comes to sit next to them, after a few songs, and Dean frowns.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

Adam shakes his head, rubbing at his eyes.

“I’m not tired,” he says.

“Oh, it sure looks that way.”

“I’m not,” Adam grumbles. “And Sam’s still awake.”

“Yeah, brother or not, Sam’s still an adult. You’re young. C’mon.”

“Dean,” Adam looks up at him with pleading eyes, but they’re hilariously bloodshot.

“You’re exhausted,” Dean laughs, reaching out to ruffle Adam’s hair, but Adam bats him off. “You can stay for one more song,” he offers with a sigh. “But then it’s bed, okay?”

“Okay,” Adam sighs. He turns to Cas, who watches them warmly. “Will you sing the next one, Cas?” He asks. Cas blinks.

“Oh—I wouldn’t wish to subject—”

Dean laughs.

“You sang for us, on Christmas Eve,” he points out. “I know you have a voice, and a good one, at that.” Cas gives Dean a look, but Dean only smiles back. “Go on,” he says, “otherwise Adam will never go to bed. Sing for us.” Cas seems reluctant. “Sing for me,” Dean says, tilting his head forward with the request. Cas blinks. He doesn’t answer for a moment. Then the tension in his shoulders eases.

“If that’s what you wish,” he says, and Dean beams.

“It is,” he confirms. And Cas is up, off the floor, the warm presence at his side is gone, and Dean watches with wonder as Cas approaches Jody, and whispers something in her ear. She smiles and nods in confirmation, and picks up Cas’s abandoned fiddle.

Cas stands in front of the small group.

“I have a song for you,” he states, “and have been asked by my employer to sing it. You may blame him, for whatever comes next.”

Benny glances back and rolls his eyes at Dean. Victor, sat beside Lafitte, flashes him a smile.

Dean pretends to look unimpressed, but cannot sustain it. Not while looking at Cas. Not while looking at the very definition of wonder.

“And here it is,” Cas says, “a song, a love song, for one who has nothing, and is loved, anyway.” Cas’s gaze flits toward Dean. His eyes are the Atlantic. Severe and weighted and stormy with the mysteries of only the most ancient and buried things. “May all of us be the lucky objects of such regard.”

He starts.

Dean’s heart is shedding skin, is opening like the buds of May, is unfolding like the sunbound motions of a sapling. He watches Castiel and remembers his nightmare and the dredges of unacknowledged memories and the weight of rot sitting heavy at the base of a person’s soul and nearly gasps with it, Sam glances back at Dean and frowns, troubled, at the expression on his face. Dean forces himself to swallow but barely can: his soul is a bird covered in tar, and it cannot fly away.

I've no sheep on the mountains
nor boat on the lake
Nor coin in my coffer
to keep me awake
Nor corn in my garner,
nor fruit on my tree
Yet the maid of Llanwellyn
smiles sweetly on me.

Cas sings, and Dean’s heart sings back, and Dean hears it.

What was it, Cas said, that night in the croft?

“I have been deaf to the song of my own heart.”

Well, Dean had, too.

Cas made, has always made, simply being, too easy. Dean never needed to interrogate it. Never needed to listen to the music turning in his chest.

And now he hears it. Now he hears all of it. It cries out, rejoices, laments, both joy and fear which is, Dean guesses, the tragedy of it all, the tragedy of all of this, the tragedy of being a man and torn by the glass shards of feeling, feeling like this, feeling like this, now, for—

Cas sings.

Dean’s soul sings back.

His eyes sting like the white-hot blades of Cas’s forge press at their surface.

No sheep on the mountain nor goats,
No horses to offer, nor boats,
Only hens I have by me,
they are one, two and three,
Yet the Maid of Llanwellyn smiles sweetly on me.

No, no, Dean nearly cries. This is a death sentence. Surely. This is death.

Jody, at the fiddle, reels out long and trembling notes like mist on water to accompany the steady-as-stone devotion of Cas’s voice.

Surely, this longing is death. Lust for another nearly caused death for Dean. What will this do to him?

Rich Owen will tell you,
with eyes full of scorn
Threadbare is my coat,
and my hosen are torn
Scoff on, my rich Owen,
for faint is thy glee
When the maid of Llanwellyn
smiles sweetly on me.

But Cas is looking at Dean as he sings.

What could he mean, what could he have meant, in every one of their interactions, with every one of his words, his gestures, his deeds, his looks—if he did not mean the same?

And what does he mean, now?

No sheep on the mountain nor goats,
No horses to offer, nor boats,
Only hens I have by me,
they are one, two and three,
Yet the Maid of Llanwellyn smiles sweetly on me.

The patience, the lessons, the meals, the coat.

He’s looking at Dean.

The farmer rides proudly
to market and fair
And the clerk at the ale house
still claims the great chair
But of all our proud fellows
the proudest I'll be
While the maid of Llanwellyn
smiles sweetly on me.

He’s looking at Dean. Dean can barely move. Can barely breathe. He’s looking at Dean.

Dean reels in a breath, heavy at his chest. It’s like dragging a great weight from beneath choppy waves.

No sheep on the mountain nor goats,
No horses to offer, nor boats,
Only hens I have by me,
they are one, two and three,
Yet the Maid of Llanwellyn smiles sweetly on me.

His eyes are searing. Just, he manages to twitch his lips upward, as Cas repeats the final line. The shepherd seems to glow. His eyes shimmer.

The small crowd applauds—the few women in the throng eye Cas with intentional, shining gazes, and who could blame them?—but Cas’s gaze is on Dean. Purposeful and sincere. Dean swallows, and looks back, and—and loves. He loves a love Cas is to good for and yet, somehow, has said he is thankful for. And Cas loves Dean with a love steady and sure as the soil—surely, these are the voiceless words which ring in Cas’s gaze. A declaration, requited. Dean can barely breath, though he tries. He can barely look back, though he forces himself to. And he does his best to smile sweetly.

Chapter Text

The night ends. Dean, tentative as grass in a flickering wind, looks at Castiel. Castiel looks back. The dry yellow light of the barn curls around them in currents on the air. Two women are beside the shepherd, smiling winningly and complimenting him, but Dean can’t even feel jealous. They’re pretty and young and sweet, undeniably sweet on Castiel, and Dean can’t even feel jealous. Cas looks at him. And now that Dean knows Castiel to be so steadfast, how could he feel any curl of jealousy, any bite of resentment? He can’t. Love is not possession. Cas told him this, once. Not in having, not in owning. Love is being met with. Two travellers meeting on mist-smeared hills. And Cas’s gaze meets with his, one half of those two travellers. It does, doesn’t it? It does?

The barn is steadily emptied of its people like blood lobbing out of skin. Dean waits for Castiel at the door. Sam is busy putting out all the lanterns, and though Castiel offers him a hand with this, Sam declines, and thanks Cas for his singing and playing, a sentiment Dean would echo if he could even speak.

By now. everyone else has left.

Approaching the door, Castiel stops in front of Dean.

“Are you waiting for something?” He asks. Dean’s answer is breathless.

“You,” he replies. The shepherd blinks.

“Oh.”

“I thought—” Dean can barely find his words. The urge to lash out in defensiveness rises within him, but he suppresses it. “Care to walk?” He asks, instead of biting something out, as he would have only a matter of months ago. But being met with such softness and patience as lives in the shepherd… Well, it’s changed him—or perhaps returned him to what he was, and wanted to be, and was too scared to attempt to return to, for fear of failure or rejection or both. There’s a comfort in hardness, in living like a bird among the craggy rocks of cliffs: it’s a defense, no predator would dare to approach for fear of the waves beating them against the sharp shards of slate all around. But no friend would dare approach, either. Except Cas. Cas approached and coaxed Dean out from among the blades of stone and out toward the sands which are soft and golden underfoot.

Castiel blinks once, and follows Dean out the door.

“Your brother—”

“Sammy’s fine,” Dean shakes his head. “He doesn’t need my help.”

“If you’re sure,” Castiel says, unconvinced. He seems vaguely nervous, but with a stillness to his worry Dean would never expect to see in anyone else. He’d never expect to see much of what Cas is, in anyone else. “I’d hate to be the cause of some sibling feud.”

“You won’t be,” Dean promises. And, to prove this, calls back into the barn, “thanks, Sammy!”

Sam lets out a huff within. He picks up abandoned cups in the muted light provided by the last of the lanterns. Dean turns to smile at the shepherd. Cas only rolls his eyes in answer, though it’s good natured.

“Where did you suppose this walk might take us, Mr Winchester?”

Dean laughs, nervous.

“I hadn’t thought that far in advance,” he confesses. His thoughts had been so focussed on the who—Cas—he hadn’t stopped a moment to think of the where. But he has something to say. He wants to say it. To say you sang that song beautifully, so beautifully, it shouldn’t be a surprise: all of you is so beautiful. Is it wrong to say I hope you sang it for me? Would I be wrong to say that you did?

“And it’s awfully dark, for an amble.”

“You’ve proven yourself more than capable at catching me, at each of my falls in the past,” Dean points out. “I’ll trust you for this, too.”

Out of the barn, the night is cold. The currents of light like air which swam around them inside are gone, seem more distant by the still waters of night all about, the stationary swimming light of the stars, the wet and watery light of the moon.

Cas’s smile is as bright as it is small in the soft darkness.

“What was that line in the Shakespeare,” Dean grins, heart fluttering, watching the shepherd, who doesn’t reply. “Trip no further, pretty sweeting?”

Castiel huffs.

“Ay, that was it.” The grass, beneath their feet, as they step out onto it, is wet with dew and shimmers palely at each movement. “You’ve learnt the words admirably, though not the sentiment.”

Dean stammers a laugh and grazes his shoulder against Castiel’s.

“Journeys end in lovers meeting,” he sings, to the tune Cas taught him. Castiel looks up at him. The column of his throat tightens as he swallows. Dean watches it. Cas’s mouth twitches. Dean watches it.

“Just so.”

Dean’s chest, tighter than a clenched fist, will not allow him to release the breath he’s holding.

“I—um,” he stammers out, “I wanted to tell you how well you sang tonight.”

Castiel’s gaze, even in the darkness, is the paradoxical softness of a summer storm.

“You wanted to tell me?”

“I am telling you,” Dean huffs out, though it’s lighthearted, just nervous. Still nervous. He felt so comfortable around Castiel, just an hour ago. And now, he’s drenched in all the terror of knowledge. Ignorance is a soft and mute kind of embrace. There is nothing like the safety of innocence. “You sang well.”

The few lights on in the windows of the farmhouse, a flickering of candles, begin to go out. Everyone is ready for rest, but Dean’s heart is all nerve-endings, bright and frayed and raw.

“I thank you.”

The hill they walk over begins to turn more steeply upward. Cas leans into the incline.

“That song was—was—” Dean cannot get the words out. The stars, overhead, riddling the sky, tick at them like the immeasurable cogs of some vast clock. “Was a love song?”

Cas’s lips are pressed together. He regards Dean, softly, a moment as they walk.

“It was,” he says. “And is.”

“It’s—it’s a—” And when has speech been so difficult? And what about thought? All of Dean is clay. Cas is the waves. He’s washed away, doesn’t even need the force of the waters to crumble him, just being within them will rinse him, dissolve him, completely. And this is what he does. He rinses away. “It’s an awfully beautiful sentiment,” he manages, at last, to get out. The words aren’t nearly as elegant as he wants them to be, and not even cutting in their simplicity. His voice, for whatever reason, has diminished utterly. A blade of grass in the wind. He’s softened, he bends to whatever wind Castiel might direct. “To—to be loved by someone, in spite of…” But he can’t speak. “In spite of it all.”

“In spite of it all?” Castiel repeats.

The smell of dew, cool on grass, is ribboned on the air.

“You know,” Dean struggles. He tries not to panic. He tries not to lash out. It’s like trying to tame the waves. “That… That sometimes loving someone, is… Is all fear that you aren’t enough. That you haven’t enough to offer. That what you are, or have, is too little.”

“Ah, you oughtn’t be too afraid of that,” Castiel shakes his head.

Dean’s heart lances upward through his chest.

“Oh?” He asks, all hope, eyes turned up brightly on Cas.

“You’re to inherit a farm,” the shepherd points out. And, as quickly as it shot upward, Dean’s heart falls again.

He huffs, anger prickling his insides.

“That’s not what I mean…” He mumbles.

“And what did you mean?” Cas asks, voice softer, this time, and almost apologetic for his joke with its softness.

“That… That I wasn’t always to inherit a farm,” Dean says. “And sometimes… Most of the time, I even forget that I’m to take on the Eyrie. It’s not…” What can he say? That he spends so much of his time with Castiel that the small room of the croft feels more like his home than anywhere has before? That Cas gives him more of a sturdy sense of belonging than anyone has yet afforded him? That he thinks of himself, when he imagines himself, as a shepherd-in-training, as a farmhand and companion to a man who, until very recently, was vagrant, traveller, nomadic as the clouds? That’s who Dean is, in his own mind—when he isn’t hated by his own mind. When Dean thinks of himself kindly, he thinks of him as he is with Castiel. “All I mean is, I’ve thought it, I still think it, too.”

“Think what?” Castiel asks.

“What have I to offer?” Dean says, in answer. “What is it that I have to offer someone who loves me?”

Cas blinks distant and thoughtful for a moment. Dean watches him with a flutter of hopeful nerves inside him like dead leaves tossed by the wind.

“A reasonable sense of humour.”

“Reasonable?”

“Unreasonable?” Cas amends. Dean groans, bumps his shoulder with Cas’s again. Castiel laughs softly a moment. “I’ve not finished,” he says. Glancing up longsufferingly at the sky, with its dark blues woven with black and the silver light of stars, Dean inhales slowly. He doesn’t know what he wants. He does know what he wants. That’s half the problem. He’s afraid of it. “An unreasonable sense of humour, and many insane demands—”

“Cas!”

“I never said they were bad things.”

“You didn’t need to,” Dean rolls his eyes.

The sound of the waves beyond crests over the hills.

“And I’m still not finished.”

“Well?” Dean raises his eyebrows in the darkness, though he isn’t sure he wants to hear it. “What else?”

“You’re now, I would say, a proficient shepherd—”

“—Oh, you would say—”

“Do you ever want me to finish?”

Their hands are grazing each other. It makes Dean’s heart jolt. God, God, he wants to tangle their fingers.

“Go on,” Dean sighs, after a beat of silence.

Drawing closer to the sea, the smell of salt stings the air alongside the lilt of dew grazed off of grass by their footfalls. They continue their roaming, vaguely, toward the croft. Will Dean have the time, or courage, to say what he needs to by the time they reach it?

“A proficient shepherd, a proficient cook, you can now name and prepare a few dozen wild plants for eating,”

“—As all these things are thanks to you, I think you’re praising yourself right now, more than anything else—”

“You have a love for learning, or at least, a determination to do so, which I cannot but admire,” Cas continues. “You have a work ethic I’ve not seen, I think, in my many years—”

“Many years,” Dean repeats with a laugh. “You’re a young man, still, Mr Novak—”

“—And a heart, Dean,” Castiel turns to face him, stops walking. “You’ve such a heart. I don’t know how one chest can house it.”

Dean’s skin is suddenly too tight, stretched against his bones.

He’d wanted to hear something like this, had been all but begging for it—but now that it’s said, the words cannot ring true in his ears, can barely make it past his ears and into his head.

“I—I haven’t,” he tries, and tries to laugh self-abasingly, though it’s strangled and short, “I haven’t,” he repeats. “I’m angry and bitter and resentful—”

“If you’re looking for me to disagree with those assertions, I’m afraid I can’t,” Castiel laughs, and Dean flushes, overcome with shame—overcome with shame at the words, that Cas believes them, and that Dean hoped, perhaps, that Cas thought of him differently, and felt for him something a fraction as beautiful as what Dean feels. “Angry and bitter and resentful, yes,” Cas nods, and Dean looks away, heart tearing, but Castiel has taken a step closer to him. “But sweeter than cordial, bright as the dawn, with a kindness, a kindness in you… No matter the anger. I don’t mind it. Nor the bitterness. And by now, I think you’ve stopped resenting me, just about.”

“Just about,” Dean agrees, unable to meet Cas’s gaze.

Castiel chuckles.

“As I say, a kindness in you…”

Dean swallows. His eyes sting.

“You have a lot to offer, too, you know,” he says, dragging his gaze back to the shepherd. It’s a reluctant motion, reluctant with fear, but when his eyes meet Cas’s, he can’t regret it. “If that’s… I don’t know—something that you worry about, too. That who you are or what you have isn’t enough. You shouldn’t. Worry, I mean—you shouldn’t worry. You’re more than everything—you—” he looks down. “Someone is bound to see that,” he murmurs. “Someone does see it.”

Neither speak. Dean refuses to look up again. He cannot.

Eventually, Cas softly takes his hand and tugs him onwards. Isn’t this what Dean was longing for? His fingers tighten on Castiel’s. Warm in the cool of the night.

They walk onward in silence.

The stars turn overhead, pinpricks in the sky. Light through a broken jar. The sheep are sleeping, an owl sounds from the trees, a curling, rounding call into the blueblack dark. The sound trips over the hills, the air is cool, Cas’s hand is warm, Dean’s feathered heart is achieving flight. And he’s terrified of heights. The moon, a splintered shell, is low and large. It seems to watch them, casts its expectant gaze on Dean and says people look on me and think of love. Why can’t you be guided by it, now?

But Dean is guided by Cas. Yet in that case—when he thinks about it—it might as well be love guiding him.

Cresting the hill, the croft comes into sight, pale in the dark, walls caught with ghostly moonlight. The sea’s surface, beyond the cliffs, is crumpled with motion. The wind lashes off of it, distantly.

“That song you sang,” Dean says, as they’re at the top of the hill. They’ve stopped momentarily, but Cas, glancing to him as he says this, pinches a worried frown, and steps forward, descending toward his home. Dean has to step quickly to catch him up.

“What about it?” Cas asks. Dean’s lungs are pricked with worry.

“It was beautiful,” Dean says. “Did you—did you learn it as a child?”

“I learnt it in my youth,” Castiel answers, not looking at him. His features are set. “My misspent youth. My travels.”

“Well—it was beautiful.”

“So you’ve said.”

Dean’s insides rile, uneasily.

“A song for a sweetheart, no doubt.”

Castiel says nothing.

Fear drenches him. What’s he doing? What’s he about to say?

“Was it a sweetheart, who taught it to you?” He asks.

“Is that important?” Castiel raises his eyebrows.

They’re nearing the croft. Castiel has increased their pace, Dean grows frustrated. He wants to speak—he needs to speak. But for all of his need, his words are wrought with trepidation, are hopeful but uneasy.

“I asked, when we first met,” Dean says, “if you had a sweetheart back in Ireland…”

“And I said that I did not.”

“But you never had one?” Dean asks, nervous. “Have you never had one?”

The bolt of Cas’s jaw tightens.

“What does it matter?”

“Is it an offensive question?” Dean asks.

Cas sighs.

“I had a sweetheart. I travelled with that sweetheart, for some time.”

“Oh,” Dean raises his eyebrows, surprised by this answer. Cas who goes to church and confession and prays before his meals… to travel with a sweetheart? “And—and what happened to her?”

Cas’s eyes flash over to him. He says nothing. Dean’s heart is beginning to tear. Why the long, sustained gaze in the barn, as he sang, and why the sudden relinquishing of it, now?

“But you had a sweetheart, then,” Dean says. “Did you ever sing that song for her?”

Cas only blinks, but it seems to be in confirmation. Dean’s insides curl.

“Well, if you ever wanted to win the heart of someone new, that would be the song to sing,” Dean says, heart a hammer against his ribs. They are nearly at the croft. “And several women seemed to be won by it, completely. So if you ever find yourself lonely, or in need of a new sweetheart…”

They stop by the door, but Castiel doesn’t open it. He turns to Dean, brow heavy and earnest. He looks sad and serious.

“I have no call for sweethearts,” he says. Dean’s heart rips with the ease of poppy petals beneath the press of fingertips.

“None at all?” Dean asks, voice trembling. Cas looks up at him. He leans against the doorframe.

“Why does it concern you?” Castiel asks, but asks it after a stretch of silence and staring, only these, and the wash of the sea in the near distance, beneath the cliffs. Dean cannot answer for fear.

But he tries.

Cas’s eyes seem to search him for something. Dean surrenders to it. That’s all that’s left, isn’t it? Surrender. And isn’t love a surrendering? To your own fears, and of your own heart? The darkness embracing them tightens. So do Dean’s lungs. This is like jumping from a cliff-edge.

“Are we—aren’t we sweethearts?” He asks, finally, he manages to ask. “You and I, aren’t we sweethearts? You—you’re mine, at least. Aren’t I yours?”

Whatever the shepherd seems to have been expecting, it was not this. He blinks. His eyes shine in the dark. Dean is tempted to turn on his heel and bolt, but—but do Castiel’s eyes shine with tears? They’re misty in the silver moonlight, and stung with something… something that makes Dean ache with longing. Is it longing, that they’re filled with, too?

He seems to lean forward. Maybe Dean just hopes for it. His gaze on Dean is filled with all of the intention in the world.

His fingers, grazing up Dean’s cheek, are almost startling. But then, how could Dean be scared by them? They’re Cas’s. And warm against the cold, against his cheek. Cas’s fingers brush upwards, Dean’s skin singing at the contact, until Cas’s hand cups his face, soft, so soft. Dean is almost too afraid to lean into it, to break the perfect singing stillness of this moment.

“Aren’t we sweethearts?” Dean asks again. Cas blinks gently. This one is definitely in confirmation. “Aren’t you mine?”

“Just so,” he answers. Dean lets out a breathless laugh.

“Just so,” he repeats.

Dean walks back to the croft lightheaded, like the earth is not earth but sky, like the grass is not grass but clouds. It’s a wonder he doesn’t slip and fall, especially given his propensity to do so in the damp and dark, as he is now. But his heart is a clamour, his head is a bird far away in the heavens, he’s a whirlwind giddy thing unable to focus even on the steps he’s taking.

Aren’t we sweethearts? He’d asked, and Cas had confirmed it. Just so. Just so. Two words which sound, increasingly, like the determined pound of Dean’s own pulse. Just so.

Only these words, and cupping Dean’s cheek, thumb grazing his skin. That’s all Cas did, gaze pressed soft on Dean like sunlight glinting off clouds. Then he turned, entered the croft, and Dean left. That was all. But Dean feels like the first breath of the universe. How could something so simple be so sweet?

Entering the farmhouse, he meets Sam, who’s turning up the stairs. He frowns, confused, at Dean’s faraway expression.

“Are you alright?” He asks, worried. “You look—” But he shakes his head.

“I’m fine,” Dean answers, head descending back to earth. “Why wouldn’t I be?” Sam watches him a moment. “Thanks for tidying, after tonight.”

Sam shrugs easily.

“You seemed determined to talk with Castiel.”

Dean flushes.

“We had, um—I needed to speak to him about—we needed to—” But he can’t find an excuse. Sam doesn’t seem to expect one. He lingers on the first stair, rocking his weight to and from the bannister. They speak quietly, careful not to startle any of the birds in the rooms around them. The last thing they need is a crow screeching in alarm.

“Did you know he was such a capable musician?”

“Not that capable,” Dean admits.

“Maybe he could teach me the fiddle. I’ve always wanted to learn.”

“He’s very busy,” Dean says, perhaps a little too quickly, and definitely too defensively. Sam rolls his eyes and turns up the stairs. Dean follows after him.

“Right, I forgot how bad you were at sharing. Even friends.”

Dean’s face tightens with heat.

“I—I just mean—” he stammers, then sighs. “—I’ll ask him. I’m sure he’d be happy to teach you.”

“In-between all the lessons he’s giving you?”

Dean is about to bark something out, mortified that Sam has found out about the reading lessons—did Cas tell him? He feels the cold sting of betrayal to his chest—before he realises Sam is talking about shepherding.

“Well, now that I’m back working as a regular farm hand, he’ll have the time,” Dean says. They reach the top of the stairs. On the landing, Sam turns to him. It’s dark, the darkness is pale blue, the darkness makes Dean think of outside and walking to the croft with Cas and all the small and simple words they shared. “Why don’t you come with me to the croft, tomorrow night?”

“Wouldn’t that be interrupting one of your extremely exclusive, private banquets with him?”

Dean rolls his eyes.

“I’ll bring food, perhaps a little wine, and cook us all dinner. He can give you your first lesson while I do. If he says yes.”

Sam twitches a smile.

“Alright.” His voice is quiet, now that they’re upstairs and so near so many bedrooms. “You haven’t cooked for me in a while.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve had cause to,” Dean points out. Back in Kansas, feeding Sam—and then Sam and Adam—was of course his responsibility. From the moment John hit the bottle, Dean had to play mother and father to Sam. And sometimes even to John. “You’ll see how much better I am, with good ingredients at my disposal.”

Sam twitches a smile.

“Things have changed,” he says simply.

“They have,” Dean agrees.

“It’s good that you have someone,” Sam says, everything gentle.

“What?”

In the darkness, Sam’s eyes are soft on his.

“It’s good,” Sam repeats, “not being alone. I think that’s a good thing.”

“Right,” Dean nods, throat tight. “Yes,” he agrees. “I think it is, too.”

He turns down the corridor, face ablaze.

“Goodnight, Dean,” Sam calls quietly after him.

“Goodnight, Sammy,” Dean returns.

He enters his room and closes the door. Changing into his nightclothes, he can’t but think of Cas’s hands, imagine it’s Cas’s hands undressing him. He grazes the pads of his fingertips against the skin of his neck and relishes the way it raises pinpricks in response, particularly at the thought of Castiel touching him, softly, here. It took him too long to realise. Cas made it too easy, not to realise, just to sit with it, sit with the feeling unnamed and adore it and adore Cas, because how could anyone not? His soft strong hands and roughened fingertips, the graceful curl of his rare smiles, the way he regards Dean, like Dean is some amusing albeit beautiful mystery from the birth of the universe—or no, not the birth of the universe. Something brand new. Cas looks at Dean like he’s brand new, and not the bruised and broken thing Dean knows himself to be.

Sam’s right. It’s good to have someone. And Cas… Cas seems—seems, of all things, glad to have Dean.

That night, lying in his bed, his fingers curl over the place Cas grazed his hand. He cups his own cheek and closes his eyes and imagines it’s Cas’s touch on his skin, again. Distantly, the waves sound against the cliffs. Distantly, Cas must listen to them, too

Chapter Text

“So what’ll you be making us tonight, Winchester?” Cas asks, leaning beside Dean. Dean glances up at him from where he’d been taking the meat out of the paper bag he carried it in, and tries not to make it too obvious that his breath is stolen. He probably fails miserably. Cas’s gaze sparks blue fire.

“Remember our first meal together?” He asks. Cas’s lips twitch.

“Woodpigeon,” Cas says, as Dean finishes unwrapping it.

“It’s been so long since I last ate any kind of bird,” Sam shakes his head, and Dean snorts.

“You’ll have to sneak over here for dinner more often,” Cas smiles, though Dean’s heart prickles defensively at this. “It’s where Dean gets his required intake of fowl.”

“Yes, he’s left that out, every time I’ve complained how much I miss eating chicken.”

“I’m just trying to respect Bobby’s love for birds,” Dean rolls his eyes. Sam snorts. “Now, weren’t you meant to have a music lesson? Or just spend the whole time leaning over my shoulder as I work?”

Sam laughs again. Cas’s fingers graze Dean’s arm before he moves away.

As Dean works, Cas teaches. The croft is warm—Cas has stoked the fire, and it smells of sage—some hangs, fresh, and ready to be dried, just above the fire.

He glances up every now and then to the shepherd and his brother. Sometimes Cas’s gaze meets his. Dean smiles, heart trilling, every time.

After he’s prepared the meat, stuffing it with garlic mustard, he sets to roasting it alongside a few potatoes and carrots. As they roast, he pours himself, Cas, and Sam a glass of wine.

“I hear people play fiddle better when they’re a little drunk,” he says, passing a glass to Cas. Sam, holding the fiddle and bow, is unable to take one yet.

“Oh, you would’ve had me believe that as you fed me your devil-drink, last night,” Cas rolls his eyes. Sam frowns.

“While Cas was playing for us,” Dean explains to his brother, “—very well, I might add—” Cas snorts at this, taking a sip of his wine, “—I helped him drink a little something to soothe any nerves he might’ve had. Which was a favour, by the—”

“He spiked my cider with rum,” Castiel interrupts, informing Sam matter-of-factly. Dean grins. Sam glances over to Dean with a soft, perceptive smile.

“You know,” Sam says, “it’s been a while since Dean’s played any pranks, made any mischief. He used to do it all the time. But not in a while.”

“Well, may the days of Mr Winchester’s humourlessness soon return,” Cas shakes his head solemnly. Dean threatens to pour his wine down Cas’s shirt. “Not so soon as that,” Cas dodges. Dean laughs.

“You should be glad you brought it back,” Dean says. Sam smiles.

“So it was Castiel who brought it back.”

Dean flushes. But Cas is smiling.

“Perhaps it was the beautiful English weather.”

“Oh, for sure,” Dean says dryly, “famously sunny and uplifting.”

“You wait until the summer, Dean,” Cas replies, voice roughened with the crumbling shale of the cliffs. “Perhaps we’ll even be able to go swimming, one day soon.”

Dean smiles. He likes that thought. He likes the thought of salt-wet skin and another excuse to watch Cas’s form, admire every motion and moment of movement. He likes the thought of cool waters on skin and a warm honeyed sun beaming down at them, bathing them in light. He likes the thought of it slipping slowly down beyond the veil of the sea, of finally climbing out of the tossing waves with Castiel, to the privacy of a secluded cove, of pulling clothes back onto skin sticky with seawater so that their shirts cling to their chests, of walking back to the croft in the sunset, hands tangled.

God, he longs for it.

“Sure,” he answers.

“Adam would love that.”

Dean flushes and turns back to the table.

“He would,” he agrees. He swallows.

Cas said love was not possession. So why does Dean resent every time he has to share him?

Sam’s music lesson continues. Being as clever as he is, he doesn’t sound half bad by the time dinner is ready. Sam takes what’s ordinarily Dean’s seat, and so Dean finds himself with an excuse to seat himself at the head of the table, adjacent to Cas, and with his knee grazing Cas’s.

They finish the wine easily, and Cas, smirking as Dean frowns at his empty cup, gets up and places a large bottle on the table.

“What’s this?” Dean asks.

“Honey mead,” Cas answers. “Next time, remind yourself to bring more to drink. You’re lucky I consider this a special enough occasion for us to drink this.”

“Oh, Cas, you spoil us.”

“No doubt,” the shepherd assents.

The drink is deep and sweet and tastes of spices as well as honey. It flowers on Dean’s lips even as it feels like it drags his tongue to the bottom of his mouth.

“You do spoil us,” he exclaims after his first sip, looking from the drink in his hand up to Cas. “This is delicious.”

“Perhaps I’ll teach you how to make it.”

“More lessons?” Dean raises his eyebrows with a laugh.

“Is he paying you for these?” Sam asks, lips quirked in his small, signature bemused smile.

“With the pleasure of his company,” Cas answers, eyes fixed warmly on Dean, whose cheeks heat. Only a few nights ago, he would’ve blamed this on the alcohol he’s been drinking, but now he knows better. God, he’s had a blinkered vision, unable to see his own heart, let alone understand it.

I have been deaf to the song of my own heart. That’s what Cas said, that night he cleft his chest open and heaved out his beating heart and beating past up for Dean. Dean hadn’t understood what he meant, then. Blinkered vision, again. But he does now.

“I wasn’t aware that was legal tender,” Sam smirks, and Cas barks out a laugh.

“No, perhaps not,” he admits. “But it’s valuable to me.”

Dean’s ears prickle. He stares down at his food.

“You’ll tire of it soon…” He murmurs to his plate.

“I doubt I could,” Cas answers. His knee bumps Dean’s beneath the table. Dean’s heart staggers into his throat.

If Sam notices, he doesn’t say so. He asks Cas about music in Ireland, where and how he learnt to play, what songs he learnt as a child. Cas seems happier than normal to speak of his past—but perhaps speaking of music is much like listening to it. Some soft comfort to easing an aching life.

“Dean, for all the lessons you’re getting from Castiel, you won’t ask him to teach you music, too?” Sam asks.

Dean quirks a smile, self-conscious, and shakes his head.

“When it comes to music, I’d much rather be in the audience, and watch Cas,” he says, then reddens, and looks down, and shovels food into his mouth.

“You know he’s a fair singer though, Cas?” Sam asks, turning back to the shepherd. “He’s definitely capable.”

“I’ve heard him sing,” Cas smiles, “and I agree. He’s a fine singer.”

“Perhaps you could duet, come the next dance.”

“I don’t have the stomach for it,” Dean answers quickly.

“One night,” Cas starts, leaning forward to speak to Sam. His eyes spark in a way which doesn’t bode well for Dean. “One night, quite early in my time here, I caught Mr Winchester stumbling along the cliff edge, blind drunk—”

“I was not blind drunk,” Dean scowls, but Cas ignores him.

“—And singing to himself as he roamed. He was returning from a night with Lafitte and Henriksen, as I recall, from the pub in town. Well, they must’ve been playing the music of my homeland, there, that night, because he was singing an Irish sailing song, when I spotted him. But he’d had too many—blind drunk, as I say—and slipped, and fair carved his hand open on some exposed rock.” Sam laughs, though he looks worried, and shakes his head. “Shale,” Cas says, and nods seriously to Sam, whose eyes are flickering with amusement, “you see,” and he tuts. “Splinters something terrible. And it did.”

“And it did,” Dean agrees.

“Dean, you didn’t tell me that’s how you cut your hand,” Sam laughs, but again, something in it is frayed with concern. “Walking along a cliff, drunk—you could’ve—”

“I was fine,” Dean rolls his eyes.

“Well, because you had Castiel looking out for you,” Sam answers, and Dean groans, leaning back. Cas obviously suppresses a smirk at Dean’s grumpiness. “And then what happened?” Sam asks.

“He’d also hurt his foot, if you recall, during his pitch toward the ground. He cursed to high heaven—”

“I did not,” Dean bites.

“But you did curse.”

“Not to high heaven.”

“To the clouds, then—”

“—Only those low in the sky. Maybe.”

Cas chuckles. His knee brushes Dean’s again.

“Well, I helped him back to the croft, and patched him over. And then I helped him back to the farmhouse, though he worked, hard, at refusing that assistance.”

“He’s stubborn, for sure,” Sam comments.

“Believe me, I’ve learnt.”

“But he doesn’t always let people see to his wounds,” Sam says, “even me. Believe it or not, but he must trust you a lot, to let you tend to his. Must have trusted you, even then.”

Cas’s eyes flit to Dean’s. Dean’s cheeks are heated, he tries to shrink himself, make himself less noticeable, but with only three of them round the table, it’s not to much avail.

“I hope I never cease to deserve it,” Cas says. Dean swallows. Looks down. Sam complements Dean on the meal, and the conversation moves on.

…

He and Cas harvest mussels down beneath the rocks. Madra joins them, clambering over great stones with a lot more ease than Dean—Cas laughs at his uneven steps, which Dean glares at, but hardly cares about. Cas’s hands come round Dean’s body every time he slips, and are so sturdy and warm he almost starts slipping deliberately.

“It’s not my fault,” Dean laughs.

“Madra seems to cope just fine.”

“She has more points of contact,” Dean points out, and Cas offers a charitable laugh. The wind, more fresh off the sea than it is even above the cliffs, weaves through Cas’s dark hair. It’s beautiful like this, roughed-up tufts of hair which is, even ordinarily, unkempt. “And she’s lower down than me. Closer to the ground. More stable.”

“And what about me?” Cas raises his eyebrows, raising his voice above the flush and billow of the wind. “I’m not losing my footing.”

“Same principle,” Dean grins.

“I’m not four-legged, Mr Winchester.”

Dean barks out a laugh.

“No,” he admits, “but you’re closer to the ground than me.”

Castiel frowns.

“By the smallest margin—”

“By at least two inches—”

“Not two—”

“At least two,” Dean laughs. “If not, more.”

Cas frowns. And the expression is lovely.—Though of course Cas doesn’t mean it to be.

Dean laughs again.

“You look so sour, at hearing that.”

“I hope your freakishly long legs make you slip off this rock,” Cas says, and Dean laughs so hard he nearly does.

“Careful not to cut your hands on their shells,” Cas says, glancing back at Dean as he twists and pulls the darkened, silvery and blue-black shells from the rock. “Their edges are sharp.”

“I’ll pay the same care as I do around your wit, then.”

“I see you’ve been sharpening yours,” Cas comments.

“If I do cut myself, it’s some comfort that you’ll be there to nurse my wounds.”

Cas huffs, though he smiles at the rock he harvests from.

They carry big buckets of shellfish back up to the croft, and that night clean and cook the mussels. The sky turns watercolour shades of darkening blue, there is no sunset to watch, only a beautiful and gradual retreating of light. By the time their mussels have been cooked, the sky is black, and the candles are lambent amber against it.

Their reading lesson comes just after. Again, Cas’s hand comes to press at Dean’s back as he treads, steadily, through the words on the page, or writes out with slow intention new and unfamiliar words into his notepad. Each time Cas makes him laugh his head comes to tip onto Cas’s shoulder, and now the action is weighted and more than just innate, now Dean knows why he barely thinks before tipping his head to rest there. But now, Cas’s hand ends up grazing higher, so that his fingertips can trace up and down Dean’s neck, so that pinpricks are raised all along the length of Dean, and so that he has to think harder about breathing than he ever has in his life, who knew breath was a conscious effort? More conscious than letting your head fall onto the warm shoulder of another man, as you laugh at the rough rumble of his jokes?

Dean wants to kiss him. Itches to kiss him. Wants to taste the golden ale they drank, this evening, on Cas’s lips.

Instead he has to keep reading, pretend that the touch of the shepherd’s fingers on Dean’s neck don’t make him want to curl, tight, into Cas’s arms; pretend that the touch doesn’t make his eyes droop, or his heart melt into his chest.

Is this intentional of Cas? Is Cas thinking as he does this?

Dean looks up from his page and over to the shepherd. He blinks. Cas’s fingers stop their grazing. Instead they move, curl, warm and soft and firm, round the back of Dean’s neck, and offer him a tender squeeze.

“You’ve stopped reading,” he observes, and Dean continues staring.

“I have,” he confirms.

“May I enquire as to why?”

Dean aches.

“Why do you do this?” Dean asks, voice barely raised above the sound of the candles flickering on their stems. Cas blinks. “Why do you—you teach me, without pay, touch me, with so much care, talk to me, so tenderly? What am I doing in return? What could I possibly do in return?”

Cas laughs. Dean wants to recoil, but the shepherd’s hand is still firm at the back of his neck.

“Never ask me to leave,” Cas answers. “That, and you, are enough.”

“That’s not true.”

“You asked, and I answered,” Cas replies, words laced with amusement and exasperation. “I ought to have known that you wouldn’t believe me. It is, nonetheless, the truth.”

“I’ve never felt like this,” Dean blurts out, before he can close his mouth to stay his tongue. Castiel blinks tenderly.

“No?” He asks.

“Not for a man,” Dean says, and reddens, because this is, yet, more explicit and transparent than anything they’ve said to one another, “nor anyone. Isn’t that strange.”

Cas watches Dean.

“Have you—have you felt like this, before?” Dean asks, nervously, then realises with a jolt of dread that this is a big if, an assumption that Cas does feel, whatever ‘this’ is. But there’s a guard to it, too, some security: ‘this’ is broad. It could mean anything.

“I’m sure I’ve thought I’ve felt it,” Cas answers, and Dean’s heart pricks, disappointed.

“Oh…” Dean blinks, looking away.

“But thinking it is one thing,” Castiel continues, and Dean glances back up. “Feeling it is quite another. I was a reckless youth. You know this.”

“I can’t imagine you as reckless,” Dean states, truthfully. “You’re the most steadfast thing I know.” He means it from the very soil of his soul.

“All I know now, Dean,” Castiel says, and his fingers graze the short hairs at the base of Dean’s neck, “is that you’re the earth from which the rest of my heart may grow.”

Dean crumbles like chalk.

Still, they don’t kiss. Dean aches to know the taste of Castiel against him. By lambing season, with the tulips and daffodils lighting like lanterns among the grass, Dean is digging his nails into his palms, casting little crescent moons across his skin, at the sight of Cas’s mouth. Is he misreading? All this time, has he been misreading, mishearing? Dean helps deliver the lambs, Adam and Jo occasionally join them, generally wrinkling their noses but excited about the newborns once they’ve been cleaned enough to appear cute. He watches Cas’s hands and wants them on his skin, wants them cradling his jaw or curling tight around his bare shoulders. It’s like it’s always dawn in Dean’s heart, a constant breath in. It’s too drawn out. He aches.

One bright morning, as Dean is repairing a spoke on one of the carts, a silhouette passes over the bright disc of the sun and haloes its light around the figure. Dean squints up, and recognises the outline of the shepherd, whose form, and eyes, and mouth, had just been tattooed against Dean’s thoughts.

“Oh,” he says, still squinting, covering his eyes with one of his hands as the white light of the sun glints round the corners of Cas’s frame. The sky above him is broad and blue, a sheet of colour.

“Oh?” Cas repeats, eyebrows raised. “What kind of greeting is that?”

“Sorry,” Dean shakes his head, “no kind of greeting. I was miles away.” He glances down at his hands, dirtied and spattered with oil. “Good morning.”

“And to you,” the shepherd nods. “Do you need a hand?”

Dean sighs and rises, wiping his hands on a rag.

“No, but I could use a break,” he answers. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, it seems mine and Madra’s break coincided with yours.”

“Madra?” Dean raises his eyebrows. “I don’t see her.”

“Oh, Sam saw us coming, and kindly took her off my hands.” Cas’s eyes spark.

“How gracious of him,” Dean laughs.

“He’s a charitable young man.”

“Yes, if you’re a dog.”

Cas shakes his head, eyes creased.

“I know Madra’s grateful for the love he gives her. He must think I starve her of attention.”

“Anyone who knows you, knows what a heart you have, and how soft it is,” Dean tugs Castiel from the cart and out, over the fields, towards the woods in the distance. “I spotted some dryad’s saddle,” he explains to Cas’s quizzical look at Dean’s sudden intention. “I thought it might add some bulk, to whatever we have for dinner?”

“You’re becoming too proficient at this business of identification,” Cas says warmly. Dean laughs, and slips his hand into Castiel’s as the distance grows between them and the Eyrie.

“You’ll have to tell me if I’m right, first,” he reminds.

“I’ve every faith in you.”

“Every faith, until I poison us both.”

“Yes, and if you were dead, too, I wouldn’t even be able to haunt you,” Cas shakes his head sadly.

“You’d haunt me if you died?” Dean asks, turning to him with a broad smile.

“You sound… strangely touched,” Castiel squints.

“Of course—ghosts only haunt the people they really care about.”

“Care is an odd word to use, in this instance.”

“But it’s still true,” Dean points about.

Castiel shakes his head.

“You aren’t half absurd, Dean Winchester.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk,” Dean counters. “Every time we speak, I only think you stranger.”

“How cruel of you.”

“Do you remember those first conversations we had,” Dean starts, chest bound too tight to contain the swelling of his heart, “those early days, when you’d first arrived? When I was—”

“Um, somewhat antagonistic?” Cas finishes for him. Dean laughs.

“Yes, then,” he confirms. Cas’s eyes glint.

“I remember,” he answers. “I couldn’t soon forget such iciness towards me. The memory of that chill is what wakes me up, each morning.”

“Cas,” Dean says, worriedly. Cas chuckles, and his fingers, tangled with Dean’s, flex softly. Is he squeezing Dean’s hand?

They’ve approached the line of the trees. Now that they’re here, Dean’s heart swells with courage. Perhaps this is the place, this is the soil on which Dean will be able to brush his lips on Cas’s. How will it feel, how will he feel? He can’t begin to imagine. A burst of golden light. A singing like the lilt of birds at dawn.

“Cas,” Dean says again, ready to turn and face his friend, but a sound distracts his. The rag-torn cry of a bird, and Bobby cursing.

Both of them start.

Just beyond them, through the weave of the woods, and in a clearing, Bobby nurses a bleeding hand, and in the other, a length of rope from which a great, prehistoric looking thing bates and thrashes, a pulse of wings like the steady lash of waves on surf.

“Bloody hell,” Mick shakes his head and stands back far enough that only now does Dean spot him. “Mr Singer, don’t take this the wrong way, but is it possible that you’ve bitten off a little more than you can chew, with this one?”

It looks it.

“Is that—the hell is that?” Dean asks, awestruck. A bullet-braid of bird.

The creature is longer and narrower than the redtailed hawks of his home, it looks angrier and uglier by far than them—but then, Dean reasons, he’d be angry too, if he were some great raptor lurched out of the sky and pulled to earth by an aging drunk from Kansas and a scrawny man from the east end of London. But that’s just it—how did they drag the creature from the clouds?

“Give me a hand, boy, and stop asking stupid question,” Bobby growls, as the bird bates again. It’s panicked, risking tangling itself in the creance, and Dean scowls at Bobby’s tone.

“Which would be easier, if you stopped doing stupid things,” Dean quips.

“It’s a bird—”

“Oh, thanks.”

“It’s a hawk,” Cas cuts in, and strides towards Bobby with silent grace, so that at least the bird doesn’t seem to panic more at his approach than it already is. “Have you a rufter?” He asks, taking the creance from Bobby, unlooping its knots from the hawks terrifying looking feet with quick hands which steer clear of the birds talons, and winding the rope tighter before the hawk can become any more tangled.

“Mick,” Bobby, looking irritated at Cas taking over, nods over to Davies, who frowns at Cas’s expectant expression.

“The hell’s a rufter?”

“That leather hood, in your hand, Mr Davies,” Cas sighs. He glances back to Bobby. “This hawk has a broken leg,” he says seriously.

“We think he’s an escapee,” Mick says. “Some high lord’s pet.”

“Oh, and there are a lot of high lords around here?” Dean raises his eyebrows.

“He has wings,” Mick drawls, squinting at Dean, who squints back. “He could’ve travelled.”

“Pet, most likely,” Cas says, taking the hood from Mick when it is finally handed to him, “if ‘pet’ could ever be the word for such a creature. But not he.”

“Huh?”

“This is a she. Look at her eyes.”

“What do you mean, look at her eyes?” Mick grimaces. The bird, giant as she is, is beginning to tire herself out against Cas’s steady hold. Dean does as Cas suggests, though it isn’t easy, what with all the bird’s movements.

“What am I looking for?” Dean asks.

“What colour are those eyes?” Cas asks, when, as the bird finally calms, he raises her to stand on his arm.

“Uh, angry?” Dean raises his eyebrows.

“Yellow,” Cas corrects. “And the males’ eyes are red.”

The thing, prehistoric and furious, would only be more scary with red eyes. Dean’s glad it’s a girl.

“And her plumage is brown. Another giveaway.”

“Are you a falconer, Mr Novak?” Bobby asks, and sounds both impressed and somewhat jealous. That resentful edge hasn’t retreated from his tone, yet, for Cas being the one to rescue the bird, in the end. Cas lowers the hood softly over her head, and she starts, but stays still.

“No,” he answers. “But I’m familiar enough with the practice.”

“Of course you are,” Dean laughs warmly. “What don’t you know?”

Cas rolls his eyes.

“What are your plans with her, Mr Singer?” He asks.

“What are my plans with any of my birds?” Bobby glares. “I’m going to take care of her.”

“Taking care of her might mean not taking care of your other birds,” Cas answers.

“Bobby can multitask,” Dean protests, “he’s taken care of dozens of birds at a time, before.”

“Yes, and what do you think eats dozens of birds?” Cas asks. But Bobby is already walking, however slowly over the knotted roots underfoot as he finds secure holding for each walking stick with his steps, back to the Eyrie.

“I’ll keep her separate from the others,” Bobby says, but seems to say it more to himself than in answer to Cas. “She’ll have her own room.”

“Of course,” Castiel rolls his eyes.

“And what room will that be?” Mick asks. Dean is suspicious he’s egging Bobby on. No. More than suspicious. Certain.

“My study,” Bobby answers, quickly. “That way I can keep an eye on her, get her used to me.”

“Great,” Dean mutters. A new obsession.

“I’m sure she’ll make a fine companion,” Cas says, uncertainly.

“As am I,” Bobby answers.

Cas walks slowly to keep the injured raptor steady on his arm. She only rests on one of her great talons.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Dean asks softly, gesturing to the iron grip her claw has around his forearm. “Aren’t you supposed to have a—I don’t know—glove?”

“I’ll live,” Cas shrugs—though Dean doubts it, if the bird’s great claws slash one of his arteries. He watches worriedly, glad that at least Castiel wears a thick, beaten jacket today.

“How is it that you’ve come to know about everything?” Dean asks, earnestly. Cas glances at him, flickering amusement.

“I’m very old,” he says, dryly.

“But not nearly as eccentric as Bobby,” Dean grins. Cas flashes him a look which tells him off for not disagreeing. Dean laughs.

In the farmhouse, Dean and Mick are set removing the other birds and cages from Bobby’s study, while Castiel takes the goshawk through to one of the only birdless, and therefore safe rooms downstairs: the kitchen. Ellen protests with loud offense, but Bobby is already clearing space on the kitchen table for Castiel to lay the bird down and work on fashioning a splint for her broken leg. Ellen’s complaints sound loudly down the corridor as Dean and Mick heave wire cages from Bobby’s study to the parlour. Back in the study, Castiel frowns and shakes his head at the perch Dean brings in for the bird.

“What’s the problem?” Dean asks, defensive.

“Goshawks hunt high up. There’s comfort in height. If the perch is lower than anything else she could perch on, this one won’t sit on it.”

Dean sighs.

“So we need a higher perch?”

“Unless you want the bird clambering over every piece of Bobby’s furniture,” Cas answers. “There’s home in height, for a goshawk.”

“I don’t care what the bird does,” Dean answers honestly. “If I were the hawk, I’d want to climb as high up as possible, and take a massive shit on Bobby for trapping me—”

Bobby shoos him out the room to fetch a higher perch.

When Dean is back, the bird is placed on the perch, and Bobby smiles at her. She’s still, but cocks her head minutely at every reverberation of sound or movement, every breath from any of them. Some constant state of heightened sense. Dean shakes his head.

“Is she gonna be happy here?” He asks.

“Not at first,” Castiel answers. “She’ll hate it. But after getting used to it…”

“She’ll love it. Enough with these ill portents,” Bobby grumbles. Castiel frowns at the phrase love, and Dean agrees. Is it a word for a creature like this?

“Have you any books on falconry?” Cas asks, turning to Bobby. Bobby bristles.

“Probably,” he answers. Dean sighs.

“Well,” he rolls his eyes, “maybe you can hire Cas to teach you some basics, until we find further instruction.”

“Does he make you pay for your lessons with him?”

“Fine, I’ll pay for Cas to teach you falconry—”

“—That’s not necessary,” Cas soothes, but Dean rolls his eyes and tugs the shepherd out of the room.

“Come on, Cas,” he murmurs. “You can come back later. Give Bobby a chance to get acquainted with the latest testimony to his insanity.”

Cas is biting his lip, and Dean suspects it’s to stifle a smirk. He drags Cas into the kitchen, where Ellen is definitely giving Castiel some kind of evil eye for bringing the bird in. There’s a feather, bent from panic, at the kitchen table.

“Want a drink?” Dean asks. Cas assents with a smile, and Dean makes one for Ellen to soothe her temper, before reordering the kitchen table as she would have had it before the interruption which the goshawk must have presented to it. By the time they sit down at the table, she’s placated enough to join them.

“So you know about goshawks,” Dean smiles, wrapping his hands round his cup.

“Only a little,” Cas says, and glances an apologetic eye to Ellen. “Sparrowhawks—they were what my—”

But he cuts himself off.

“What’s the difference?” Dean asks.

“Goshawks are bigger,” Cas answers. “Angrier, too. And they look it.”

“Or Bobby’s did,” Dean laughs, “but to be fair to her, I’d be angry, too. Imagine,” Dean provides, and Ellen chuckles and shakes her head, “you’re up there, queen of the sky, unrivalled—let’s say you’ve just escaped the tyrannical thumb of one farmer, and then some new farmer—one who isn’t even a gentleman, like your old master—literally seizes you and takes you for his own. I’d look grumpy, too.”

Cas sighs affectionately.

“Well, whether she’s a right to it or not, you’ll find that angry expression of hers a rather permanent fixture. A sparrowhawk has an opener face. Softer. Kinder.”

“And that’s the bird you prefer?” Dean asks.

“I’ve little experience with goshawks,” Cas admits. “It’d be wrong to make a judgement, yet. They’re not a fashionable bird,” he says. “Nearly extinct, here. And considered vermin, by most. Whoever kept this one as a pet has an acquired taste.”

“Why are they unfashionable?” Ellen raises her eyebrows.

“As I said,” Cas shrugs, “they’re angry creatures. They’ve a temper. They’re murderous—people think falcons have a grace, a nobility. But goshawks are bloody, and bloody angry creatures. And you can fly them anywhere. They’re the layman’s bird, and to the English, and their rigid class lines, there’s some shame in that.”

“So why would people train them, at all?” Dean raises his eyebrows.

Cas chuckles.

“Ask Mr Singer.”

“Cas, I mean it.”

“They’re secretive,” Cas says, “mysterious, therefore. They choose who they share their lives with and are resentful of anyone who tries to know them. For some,” Cas shrugs again, “there’s some charm in that. In the investment they present. I know that I’ve been charmed by mysterious, angry creatures before.”

Dean’s heart pangs.

“And you thought those creatures were worth pursuing?” He asks. Cas twitches a smile.

“Every day I am rewarded for it.”

Ellen sighs, apparently unaware of the look catching between Dean and Castiel.

“Well, good luck to Bobby. But he’s not bringing that creature back in the kitchen.”

“I’m sorry for that,” Castiel turns again to Ellen. “A goshawk, injured or not, would’ve set the birds in cages into a flurry of panic. And who knows the damage she might’ve caused, broken leg or not. I thought it best to take her in a room without other birds in.”

“You’re hard pressed to find those around here,” Ellen rolls her eyes.

“We’re lucky the folk in town nicknamed this place the Eyrie, and not Bedlam,” Dean laughs. Ellen grunts her assent. The shepherd hums, amused.

Under the table, Cas’s hand has drifted to Dean’s knee. Dean swallows, heart a hawk, high in his chest.

Chapter Text

Easter Sunday arrives. Ellen teaches Adam how to dye eggs using cranberries and lemon rind. Bobby has named his goshawk Cathy—Cathy—and spends most of his time sat with her, getting her used to him. They all have to be quiet around his study, at the front of the house, so as not to startle her, and Bobby glares at anyone who speaks above a murmur within ten metres of the door. Naturally, he glares at Mick a lot. He doesn’t trust Madra, who’s never had a problem with any of the birds in this house before, so why would she now? But Bobby glowers and closes his study door firmly whenever she’s in the Eyrie.

Cas stays for lunch, and then stays late, Dean thrilling as the hours slip by, as it grows ever darker outside, as the shadows thicken and skein beyond the window panes. He wills the time forward, glances at the clock on the mantle, as he and Castiel and Madra are left, the only occupants of the house still awake. All around them, the sleeping forms of birds, and upstairs, the sleeping forms of people. If enough time passes, he can persuade Cas not to bother returning to the croft, but to stay here. And he can, maybe, feel those arms like bands wrapped around him again as they sleep.

“You still haven’t told me how you came to know about falconry,” Dean says, learning forward. They sit in the drawing room, Mardra coiled in a tight ball at their feet. The sound of her breathing makes Dean’s heart feel warm and loosened. And time slips between them like water on a sun-warmed pavement.

“Came to be acquainted with,” Castiel corrects, and Dean rolls his eyes.

“Come on, Cas,” he grumbles, though he smiles, “what, you want to keep it a secret?”

But Cas’s expression suggests that yes, he does. The bow-quiver of his brow stays steady and set.

Dean raises his own eyebrows.

“Seriously?”

“I should return to my home,” Cas says, shifting in his seat, but Dean stays him with a hand, and he thinks of a stone thrown into waters and sinking, slowly, surely.

“What?—No,” he shakes his head, “you can stay here. Stay, here. Let’s talk a little longer.”

“It’s growing late—”

“It is late,” Dean points out. And it is. The night clasps tight and heavy as tar around them. “And you let me stay in the croft, that time.”

“It was snowing—”

“Stay here. We’ve certainly the space for it.”

“And where would I stay?”

Dean presses his lips together, defensive.

“With me.”

Cas blinks and the motion of his lashes is like the heavy wingeats of a heron.

“You want that?”

Dean looks down to his hand, resting on Cas’s forearm. He drifts it down to tangle Cas’s fingers with his. Cas watches, too, all fascination and wonder.

“How could you doubt it?” Dean asks with a laugh. Cas huffs.

“Sometimes doubt is what keeps us safe,” he answers. Dean looks up.

“What do you mean?”

“I learnt about falconry from my sweetheart,” he answers, and Dean’s heart pricks with a pale green jealousy, and he almost unweaves his hand from Castiel’s. “The sweetheart I travelled with.”

“Oh,” Dean says, and he looks down, cheeks flushed. He thinks of himself, and how before Cas taught him, he couldn’t even read. Of how to sign his name he scratched out the letters he had committed to memory as shapes, not as sounds, printed in his mind as symbols, but not as their meanings. How when Bobby’s letter arrived, inviting them to England, Dean had recognised his name on its address and little to nothing else, and handed it to Sam with an excuse that he had to run an errand, and that Sam should read and relay what was inside to him. He thinks of himself and his stubbornness and resentment and poison blood and ugly rage, and he thinks of the strange and enchanting mystery a woman who could talk to birds, or at least train them, must have presented to Castiel. No wonder he’d been in love with her, no wonder he’d ran away with her. He would never run away with Dean, what does Dean present, represent? Nothing. Nothing good. Nothing good enough to catch on the wind with, and travel wherever it might take you. Dean is barely worth resting with—let alone taking to like a gale. “She must have,” Dean tries, “she sounds—well—it’s little wonder you loved her…”

Cas peers at him a minute, as if making a decision. Then he says,

“Him.”

“What?”

Dean blinks. And Castiel continues his sharing.

“Him,” Castiel repeats. “He.”

Dean’s heart stops. His hand is still wrapped around Castiel’s. His jaw hangs.

“Him,” he repeats, and Castiel nods, and looks, of all things, fearful. “He,” he says, and Castiel nods again. “Your sweetheart was—was a—”

“A man. Or,” Castiel amends with a wry and nervous chuckle, “as we were both so young, then, perhaps still a boy, a lad.”

“Oh,” Dean says, breathless. Cas watches him. “I’m—I’m a—I’m a man, too.”

The shepherd blinks, and seems perplexed by this statement, which Dean can’t blame him for.

“I’d noticed,” he answers earnestly.

Dean laughs, and still cannot inhale.

“I’ve never—” he says, fumbles, and blinks fearfully, “I’ve only ever—” he can’t find the words. “Was it nice, with a man?” He asks, then flushes deep, and Cas laughs, this time, bemused.

“I’d know nothing of how it compares with a woman,” he says, and Dean blinks again. The fire crackles, a dance of sound and sight on the air of the room. The sound presses Dean closer to Castiel, he wants to bury himself in those arms, and say make me your new sweetheart. Don’t talk of your old one. I’m here, now. Angry and bitter as I am, aren’t I better than nothing? I’m sorry I can’t tame the birds—but I can, and do, love you. Is that enough?

“Oh—you’ve never—”

“And never wanted to,” Cas answers, frank and soft and even. Now that the ‘him’ is out, he seems steadier, steadier than ever, as though he’s let out a breath and can now think and act evenly.

Dean nods, looking away, mouth still hanging open. He glances back to Castiel, who yet watches him.

“I’ve wanted both,” Dean says, and his chest constricts as soon as he says the words. “I’ve wanted both,” he repeats.

Cas blinks.

“You mean…”

“Men and women,” Dean answers, and feels how Cas’s voice sounds. Steadier than before. “Women and men.”

“And now?” Cas asks. Dean frowns, confused. “What do you want, now?” Cas clarifies.

Dean swallows.

“You,” he answers, and it laces a smile onto Cas’s features as he says it. “I want you.”

He takes Cas’s hand as they climb up the stairs. Madra clambers sleepily after them. Dean is breathless and quiet, but when, in his room, he turns to Castiel to kiss him, kiss him for the first time, his blood made magma with want, Cas only threads a hand through Dean’s hair and grazes a thumb on his cheek. The shepherd’s hands push him back, away, steadily. Firmly. No kiss. Dean’s lips don’t even get as close as an inch to Cas’s. What’s Dean doing wrong? Lee had wanted to kiss him immediately, had wanted more than kisses, they’d been pressed up against each other with want and the want of more than kisses, when they were discovered. Why doesn’t Cas want more? Why doesn’t he even want Dean’s lips? Dean wants Cas’s everything.

Almost shaking with longing and disappointment, Dean hands Castiel nightclothes and gets into his own, and makes less effort than he has before to avoid watching as Cas changes. Cas notices, eyes flicking up to Dean’s and sparking with bright amusement—but he does nothing else. Nothing else with the knowledge that Dean wants him, wants him, and wants him close.

Cas’s arms weave round Dean’s chest when he climbs into bed. Dean had turned his back to the shepherd, eyes shining angrily, but Cas either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. More likely the latter. He notices everything, and is patient with it all. His limbs are warm and heavy and Dean melts into the touch in spite of himself.

Cas’s breath is soft against the shell of Dean’s ear.

“Bobby works hard on not startling his bird,” Cas murmurs against Dean. “You’ll see. Goshawks are beautiful, but flighty things. The trick is to be gentle, even with something which isn’t always gentle, itself.”

The hell is the shepherd talking about?

“Right,” Dean shakes his head, frowning into the darkness.

“He’ll need to be patient as the seasons,” Cas says, and Dean’s heart is almost breaking with want. “Do you think he can manage?”

“Bobby?” Dean asks. “He’s not a notoriously patient man.”

Cas chuckles.

“Perhaps,” he admits. “But people have been patient, with much harder things,” he hums. He squeezes Dean’s body, as if expecting a response. “Isn’t that so?”

Dean sleeps well, in spite of the weight of all his wanting. Cas’s arms are heavier against his chest, a burden he wants to be buried with, he can’t help but delight in the press against him.

That evening, he and Benny and Victor go to the pub in town. He invites Cas, but politely, Cas turns him down, with some excuse of needing to make new tools in the forge, including new horseshoes per Bobby’s request. Everything between them now is spun with lightning—or at least it is on Dean’s side. Electricity sears and surges beneath his skin all the day, it ripples and rivets along his limbs and every time Cas smiles at him it sparks to the surface, he can barely contain his lurching wanting now, even in the company of others, and surely they must notice, or will notice soon.

They stumble back along the cliffs, late, Dean’s mind printed with the memory of him slipping and Cas binding his hand together and how Dean still has the bandage, like the print of letters on the pages Cas teaches him to read from. Everything returns to Cas, all his thoughts, all his words, Dean is like the turning inside-out of water into waves and Cas is like the shore. He walks a little ahead of Victor and Benny, and eventually, the croft comes into sight.

“There’s the house of our reclusive shepherd,” Henrikson smiles. Dean glances back at him.

“Not so reclusive,” Dean frowns.

“No, not when it comes to you.”

Dean flushes, and turns back.

“Well, I’m going to pay him a visit,” he answers.

“The hour’s late.”

“But there’s a light in the forge,” Dean points. “He’s awake.”

Benny rolls his eyes, and tugs Victor not in the direction of the croft, but of the distant, small cottage which is the accommodation of some of the farm hands.

“We’ll see you tomorrow, Dean,” he says. “Don’t stay up too late. We’ve a busy day.”

Dean huffs, but wishes them goodnight. He walks toward the croft, the light from the forge growing bigger. He can hear the clang of hammering within.

There’s no door, only the gap where one should be, which doesn’t seem to matter much because of the heat which hits Dean the moment he steps in. He leans around the empty doorframe and watches, only watches, for a stretch: time yawns for the time Dean wastes watching the shepherd. Cas’s right hand around the hammer, clenched tight so that the fine muscles show in his arm with every swing. Cas’s face, heated determination and a fine sheen of sweat over his features. Smears of coal on Cas’s forearms which Dean wishes he could touch. He watches, only watches, enchanted. And when at last he can speak, he says,

“Ah, Sunflower,” with a smile.

Cas turns, though he doesn’t start. Had he known Dean was there?

His features curve warmly.

“You’ve returned from your outing,” Cas observes, as Dean steps in properly.

“Returned to you,” he confirms. Castiel chuckles.

“Drunk?” He asks softly.

“No,” Dean laughs, cheeks heated. “I didn’t trip on the way home, once.”

“Ah, but your face has some heat to it,” Cas holds out a hand to graze the backs of his fingers against Dean’s face. “That’ll be from wine, I’m sure. Or something heavier.”

“Or from the heat of this forge, or from you,” Dean answers with a laugh, catching Cas’s hand and tangling his fingers with it

“Now why would I be the cause of it?” Cas asks, feigning confusion, and Dean realises what he’s said, and flushes deep.

“I—”

Cas tugs him back toward the forge. The tiny room is made smaller by the still too-great, yet very tiny, space between them.

“You’re not a little tipsy?” He asks.

“With the heat of this place, I’ll soon sweat it out of me, if I am,” he answers. Castiel chuckles.

“Just so. Do you know much about smithing?”

Actually, Dean is proficient—and maybe more than proficient. He’s good at it, brain forged—and perhaps forged is a word almost too appropriate—to the mechanics of metal and machinery. But he likes it when Cas teaches him things. He likes it a lot. So he lies.

“No,” he shakes his head. “Not really.”

“Would you like to learn?”

Dean smiles.

“You wouldn’t mind?”

Cas exhales affectionately, tugging Dean closer yet to the forge, and picking out a smaller hammer than the one he had wielded.

“You don’t think I’m strong enough to handle that?” Dean asks, nodding to the bigger hammer.

Cas huffs.

“No, I think you capable enough to handle the harder work of more delicate tasks,” Castiel answers. Dean laughs, and Cas hands him the hammer.

“What am I making?”

“A bell hook,” Cas answers. Dean frowns quizzically. “For Cathy,” he clarifies, “bells around her feet so we can hear where she is when she’s in flight.”

“Is Bobby paying you for this?” Dean raises his eyebrows. Cas laughs warmly. “No, I’m being serious!” He exclaims.

“I eat for free, every Sunday, and many lunches, in the Eyrie—”

“And I eat for free, every dinner, here,” Dean shakes his head. “Is he paying you? I’ll pay you.”

“He offered payment, I turned it down—”

“Well, you shouldn’t have,” Dean glares. Cas’s expression twitches at the look. “Cas—”

“I’ve everything I need,” Cas answers softly. Dean turns, angrily, to the tools in his hand, and is about to start up, when Cas asks, “Do you know what you’re doing?”

Dean hesitates. Yes he does. A bell hook? Easy. But Cas thinks Dean doesn’t know about this stuff.

“No,” Dean shakes his head. “Can you—can you show me?”

Cas hums, and takes Dean’s hand, and guides it into work. He’s pressed against Dean’s back: in front of Dean, the heat of the forge; behind him, the heat of Castiel. Cas’s fingers trail up Dean’s forearm, steady with soft assertion, to correct some work Dean deliberately got wrong. Just for this. Just for song-soft touches like this. His skin is prickling, his neck thrills with prickles of electricity, his breath is snagging on every in and exhale.

But he keeps getting distracted, and forgetting to be bad at this, only a beginner, as Cas sets him onto making more parts of the two bells to be tied at Cathy’s feet.

“I thought you said you were a beginner at this, Dean,” Cas comments, still close to Dean, watching him work. Dean falters.

“Uh—” he says. Cas exhales in warm amusement. “I—”

“Did you lie, Dean?”

The question is warm as amber flames on the air. Delicate as the feather of a sparrow. Cas isn’t angry. Never angry, not with Dean. Even when Dean deserves it.

“I like it when you show me things,” Dean says, heart tripping. “Sorry—” Cas tips his head forward, the gesture Dean carries out, so often, to rest his forehead on Dean’s shoulder.

“You’re a fool.”

“I like it when you’re close to me,” Dean says, eyes shining, because again, the want is twining round his bones and making him ache. Cas lifts his head from Dean’s shoulder with a soft expression.

“Is this close enough?” He asks softly. Dean, lips parted, looking back over his shoulder at Cas, shakes his head.

“No,” he answers. “Not close enough.”

“You’ve a hunger in you,” Cas comments, and Dean licks his lips. His gaze flickers to Cas’s mouth.

“And you’ve been making me fast,” he answers. Cas’s lips twitch. “Given me new meaning to the word abstinence.”

“Too witty, by far, Dean.”

“I’m not joking,” Dean shakes his head. Cas turns Dean’s body softly, to face him.

“No?” Cas asks. “Now there’s a first.” Dean rolls his eyes. Cas presses his body closer to Dean’s, and this, and its intensity, steals Dean’s breath. “What about this?” He asks. “Am I close enough to you, now?” Dean blinks, lips parted. He swallows.

“I’d have you closer, still,” he answers, and Castiel’s eyes are warmer and softer than the flames of the forge. He cups Dean’s jaw, runs his thumb across Dean’s cheek. Dean’s hands are behind him, he curls them round the edge of the worktable in terrified anticipation. The room is amber as flame and flames of want lick along Dean’s insides.

“Closer than this?” Cas asks, voice a murmur. He’s close, so close, not close enough, not nearly close enough. Dean lifts his head marginally so that his nose grazes Cas’s. It’s this motion that pushes them together, softer than deep and running waters, into each other’s arms. Cas twines around him, his lips on Dean’s lips, and Dean shudders, the aching want which has been crescendoing inside of him like a perpetual dawn for months, now, finally able to crest into some great wave, or sound, or song. His fingers, which had curled around the edge of the worksurface, move to clasp at Cas’s neck and shoulders, he pulls him close, close, closer still. His breath is staggered, it spikes against Cas’s mouth and he gasps it into his lungs in blades and knives. Cas moves from his mouth, presses a kiss to his cheek, and pulls back.

Still, Dean gasps. His eyes burn. His lungs burn. All of him burns.

“Was that close enough?” Cas asks, softly.

“It was a start,” Dean blinks. Cas huffs, but Dean presses forward to kiss him again. Kiss him, at last. At last.

At last.

His breath returns to him when he’s lying in Cas’s bed, caught in those arms like Cathy was, when Cas took her and calmed her and carried her back to the croft. His breathing calms out, slowly, still coming in deep and hard, but as the night stretches on, and their conversation lulls, each inhale and exhale steadies and slows. He likes the feeling of Cas’s bare skin on his skin. Maybe this, at last, is close enough.

“Are you to spend all this night shivering, too, Dean?” Castiel asks gently. Dean huffs.

“Not if you stay wrapped around me,” he answers. Cas chuckles.

“The bed’s so small, it’d be hard not to be.”

Dean laughs. He bumps his nose against Cas’s.

“Good.”

Their limbs are near knotted together. Dean’s heart feels like it’s following the motions of the sea, a draw of tides, a sweep of waves, washing in and out of his chest.

“I’ve never done that before,” he says, glances up at Cas. “Any of this.”

Cas’s hand runs gently up the rope of his spine, up the curve of his neck, and into his hair.

“Does it scare you?” He asks. Dean is surprised by the question, and how softly and understandingly it’s asked.

He bites his lip a moment.

“Maybe,” he admits. “I haven’t…” But he trails off. He doesn’t want to think of Lee, and everything that happened afterwards. Not here. Not here in the soft small press of the bed and not in the envelope of Cas’s arms. He wants to think of all things warm and firm and gentle, he wants to think of the feeling of the sun on his face as he walks through long grass or of plunging his hands into lavender-scented waters after delivering lambs. “Is it bad, that it does?” He asks, peering nervously, hopefully, at Castiel. The shepherd only twitches a small smile, grazes the back of his fingers against Dean’s temple.

“No,” he says, “it’s understandable. And by the sea and sky, Dean, I’m so lost to you that almost nothing you could do could be bad.”

Dean laughs, a bright bubble of laughter like a stream.

“Then work hard to find yourself again, Cas,” he shakes his head, “a lot of me is bad.”

“I don’t believe it,” Cas shakes his head, and leans forward to brush his lips against Dean’s. Dean beams against his mouth.

“You took me by surprise, in the forge, there,” he says, and Cas hums against his mouth. “Yes,” Dean confirms. “I was beginning to think you’d never kiss me.”

“And what, the task was entirely up to me?” Cas raises his eyebrows. Dean huffs warmly, bumping his nose against Cas’s. “Well, I’ve done more than kiss you, now,” the shepherd points out. “Are you happy?”

Dean is practically glowing.

“Blissful,” he answers with a hum. Cas watches him a moment, eyes curled softly at their corners.

“You certainly look it,” he smiles. “It suits you.”

“You’ll have to kiss me often, then.”

Cas rolls his eyes. But his lips brush the tip of Dean’s nose.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he answers. Dean’s mouth twitches.

“What happened to being patient, with the hawk?” he asks. Cas blinks a frown. Dean chuckles. “What happened,” Dean repeats, laughing, “to working hard on not startling the bird, to being patient as the seasons? To use your own words.”

Cas squeezes Dean’s body.

“It’s spring, Dean,” he answers. “New life is bursting from the cracks, everywhere. You know all there is to, about growth. Months under the earth, in cold soil. It seems sudden, above the ground. But this has been a promise, a long time coming.”

Dean chuckles.

“A long time coming?” He asks.

“Since I watched you wrestle with that sheep, the day I first arrived here.”

Dean’s cheeks heat, though for once the sensation isn’t unpleasant.

“You find incompetence charming?”

“It’s good news for you, I know,” Cas nods. Dean tries to elbow him, but limbs bound up as they are in Castiel’s, he finds that it’s impossible. “In any case, I find all of you charming,” Cas hums, and presses a kiss to Dean’s brow. Dean’s heart clenches. The night lulls them.

“All of me?” He repeats. Cas nods again.

“Every inch. Every word. Every whisper.”

Chapter Text

And Cas is right. New life is bursting from the cracks everywhere: dandelions between the rocks of the drystone walls, lambs bouncing and tumbling about the rolling grasses, calves of the few cattle they own, buds and sprigs which seem to birth the very idea of green. The reading lessons move on to Shelley and then to Austen: Dean is glad that when reading about love and longing, aloud, to Cas, he now finds himself able to lean forward and brush his lips against the shepherd—and wherever he chooses. Lips, cheek, neck. By the spring sheep dip, Dean is able to read whole pages without stumbling or stopping—the only thing which stops him now, or one of the only things, is the distraction which Castiel himself presents. Sometimes their lessons take place in the cradle of one another’s arms, in bed, instead of at the table of the croft; Dean reading aloud to Castiel, his back pressed against the shepherd’s chest, Cas’s warm sweet breath in his hair.

Castiel continues helping Bobby with what seems to be his main call to wake up each morning: the goshawk Cathy. And Castiel continues to refuse Dean’s offers to pay for this service. So Dean finds other ways to repay him: good wine, at their dinners together; wildflowers, to sit on the table of the croft; a vase, for the wildflowers to stand in. It’s almost unnecessary, because by the third day of Dean bringing Castiel flowers, he realises the shepherd has been using them for all his ridiculous herbalisms, from making tea to tinctures, balms to health brews.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t bother,” Dean laughs, when he realises that that’s where the cuckoo flowers he brought Cas, yesterday, have gone. Into his tea.

“Where did you get that message?” Cas asks, with raised eyebrows. “Quite the opposite—I’m getting good use out of everything you bring me.”

“It’s not for using,” Dean laughs, “it’s for looking at.”

“Now why would I want anything to distract me from you?”

Dean flushes and looks away with a smile.

“Impossible,” he shakes his head.

“What is?”

“You.”

“Next, could you perhaps bring me some gorse?” Cas asks. “Its flowers are sweet, and go well in—”

“Next, I’ll bring you pig shit,” Dean laughs. “For all your ungratefulness. How about that?”

“Oh, now those coarse words don’t nearly suit the pretty mouth they came from.”

Dean rolls his eyes. He’s helplessly lost.

Every night he can, he spends here. Nobody seems to notice. Waking up to the shepherd in the small space of the croft… falling asleep with Cas on the narrow bed, woven into each others arms… Sometimes Madra will clamber onto the bed and lie on top of them, which makes Dean laugh, a limb curling laugh, and Cas grumble that she was never so badly behaved, before Dean started spending all his time here.

Glinting stars of kisses are laced over his neck each morning to wake him. Fingers trace through his hair when he works, when he’s sat mending or making something. Lips are pressed to his knuckles at the close of every day.

Dean collects shells from the beaches and coves beneath the cliff faces with Ellen, with indignant gulls and curious gannets watching on, cries snagging on the salt-lashed air. She teaches him how to fashion windchimes out of the shells. He hangs several around the croft and now their nights are marked by the sound of the crackle of the fire, Madra’s steady breathing as she dozes, and the soft twinkle of shells against one another in the tousling sea air. A new kind of music to accompany the eternity of the present.

It’s time as precious as silver but infinite as air. He sleeps best when the weight of Cas’s arms lies heavy on his chest. He has to stop himself standing close to the shepherd when they’re in the company of others. It’s like dragging an anchor from the depths of the sea, hauling it through the waves and tug of tide. It’s like trying not to blink.

By mid-April, with blossoms sitting on the trees like bright and flowery snow to sweeten the air, lacing the branches in wedding shrouds, Bobby has the hawk flying across fields and onto his gloved hand. Dean and Castiel have successfully made him every ounce of equipment he might need, in the forge. Dean is grateful that, at last, this is something he does better than the shepherd, and may guide Cas’s hands in. Nights in the forge can only lend to the intense ritual reliving of their first kiss, kisses, touches. And they do, every time.

Dean opens like the blossom which sits so softly on the trees. The trading of secrets over meals, which they started so early in their acquaintance, continues. Never forced, only little parcels of the truth which they both press into the air between them and carry gratefully in their chests.

Jody is invited by a nervous Ellen to join them in the farmhouse for lunch, one day, and then it seems to become habit. Every lunch, every day—and even Sundays—she joins them, with her short hair and poking humour.

A few months ago, Dean would have resented the ease with which she settled into the rhythm and metre of life in the Eyrie. Dean would have felt jealous of it, Dean who has felt himself a thorn in the side of every place he has dwelt, as well as the only thing keeping it upright. But not any more. It’s on Cas’s account. It’s all on Cas’s account. And Jody fits in well to the cadence of the farm, strange enough herself—she has short hair, short hair, and she wears men’s trousers—so that she seems to find Bobby’s bird collecting, Mick’s swindling, and Adam’s singing to himself as ordinary as green leaves in spring. And if any of the others seem to notice her strangeness, none of them seem troubled by it, either. Bobby’s farm gains its momentum as a bizarre collection of outcasts ignorant of their own strangeness.

Dean’s limbs begin aching from the hours of work he does, the familiar twisted pang of spring and summertime work. Ellen runs baths like the one she ran for him, his first night in the Eyrie, with lavender seeds strewn in and leaving a soft unfurling smell to lilt on the air. Cas starts adding elder oil to it, for Dean’s aches, he says. And Dean starts tugging Castiel into the baths to join him.

“Dean,” Cas frowns worriedly, as Dean presses him against the bathroom door and locks it one such day, “what if we’re seen?”

“Seen?” Dean repeats. “Door’s closed, and locked, Cas.”

“Heard, then,” the shepherd corrects, longsuffering.

“What, you don’t find me attractive anymore?” Dean teases with a frown, but Cas rolls his eyes and pokes at Dean’s ribs. “Ellen’s working in the kitchen. Mick is running errands in town. Sam’s working the fields, Adam and Bobby are training that fucking bird. C’mon. We never get to be alone, together, in the house.”

Cas sighs.

“You said you needed these baths for your muscles,” he points out. “Not for spending more time with me.”

But he’s already taking off his shirt. And Dean spends almost an hour in warm waters, cupping his hands and washing these warm waters over Cas’s hair and face, as the shepherd tips his head back and closes his eyes. Soft fingers of steam rise from the bath and from their skin, and Cas’s eyes are warm on him, warm with love. He grazes a fingertip against Dean’s jaw.

“You’re in need of a shave, Mr Winchester.”

“Why don’t you do it?”

“Am I your barber, now, along with everything else?”

Dean grins, tips his head forward into the curl of Cas’s neck. He presses a kiss to the damp skin there. Cas’s hand curls into his hair.

“As you say,” Dean smiles, “you’re everything.”

“I think we ought to read less Romantic poetry,” Cas shakes his head seriously, “you seem to have taken to their hyperbole.”

The smell of lavender seeds in steaming waters reminds Dean of that night in the croft, the pure ritual raw tender fullness of the moments where Cas’s hands were grazing and cleaning his. Only a foretaste of this moment, and yet a universe in itself, a chasmed universe of longing, of nameless longing and ignorant desire, desire ignorant of its own desperation.

“What a feeling you flower in me, Dean,” Cas murmurs, quietly: he doesn’t need to speak above a whisper, they’re so close to each other that their noses bump one another. Dean’s mouth flickers, he wants to smile but he’s robbed of air in the steam-heavy room.

“It really is spring, huh?” Dean asks, breathless. “Blossom’s comin’ out, everywhere.”

Castiel chuckles, and grazes his nose deliberately against Dean’s.

“These flowers won’t fade,” he says, sure and soft and certain, and it’s a promise, it’s pure with promise. His words as essential to truth as ash is to fire, as light to the stars. “These flowers will not wither.”

They dry one another off, touches soft as the air on bare skin, and dress again, Dean stealing one last kiss at the top of the stairs, deep and soft, before they return downstairs. Cas sighs against his mouth. Cas has made a theif of him: Dean will take these fleeting kisses as often as he can, behind the shield of a door left ajar, around the curve of a road just out of sight, against the shrouding pillar of a tree.

Cas presses his lips to Dean’s forehead, and they descend the stairs, and enter the parlour, which is empty save for the birds which glitter about it behind the thin bars of their cages. Dean twitches a smile. A blackcap with a broken wing almost mended twitters hopefully at the sight of them, a bell-like chirrup which softens Castiel’s gaze like he can understand it. And this in turn only swells Dean’s heart more.

Castiel steps foreward to graze the back of his index finger softly against the eggshell blue of its pale front, through the bronzed bars of the cage. The small feathered creature doesn’t shy away.

“Bobby gets them too used to human company,” Dean shakes his head. “When this one’s free, it’ll be too trusting of people, and most likely be killed by some unkind, angry boy.”

“You think so little of the young lads in Cornwall?” Cas raises his eyebrows.

“I think so little of young lads in general,” Dean answers with a shrug. The shepherd looks at him, and shakes his head with a gesture of patience.

“And what about your brother?”

“Adam’s a softer creature than most.”

“You didn’t seem to believe that when I first met you,” Castiel points out, and Dean’s insides twinge. “You seemed to rather resent him.”

“Maybe…” Dean admits. “But I looked out for him, anyway…”

“And you no longer resent him?”

Dean is surprised by his own laughter.

“Much like Adam, I’ve had something of a growth spurt, these past few months. Though mine was more internal than Adam’s was.”

Cas’s lips twinge.

“You seem to resent me less, too.”

“Maybe,” Dean says again, and the back of Cas’s index finger bumps softly under his chin. Dean is ready to kiss him again—perhaps unwise, down in the house—but a yellowgreen siskin calls and hops about the perches in its cage, watching them attentively. Cas’s gaze flickers to it. Dean deflates at this twice stolen kiss.

“This one,” Cas says quietly, walking over, “is new?”

“Fairly,” Dean shrugs, drawing beside him again.

“I’ve not seen it before.”

“Bobby found it, out near the cliffs. Honestly, I think it had lost its way in the wind, and was only exhausted, not hurt. But he took it in. And is holding on to it longer than necessary.”

“He’s a pretty little thing.”

“He’s brightly coloured, for an English bird,” Dean admits. Most of the animals on this island are gray or brown, or some shade in-between.

“His colouring reminds me of you,” Cas turns from the bird to Dean, and smiles. “Your eyes.”

Dean steps closer, planning to kiss Castiel again, but the door opens and Sam enters. Dean starts back.

Sam flickers a frown at Dean’s shifting.

“Bobby asked me to feed the birds,” he explains, at Dean’s expression. “I didn’t—you two weren’t fighting, were you?” He asks. Dean glowers, though he isn’t sure why.

“No,” he frowns, emphatically. “I don’t—why would we fight?”

Sam gives a look that says, because it’s you, Dean, and worst of all is that Cas laughs at it. Dean shoots daggers at him. Traitor. But Sam hands him a bag of feed and tells him to help out and stop pulling sour faces.

“If you’re not busy, and not fighting, you can help.”

Dean rolls his eyes, but turns to the cages and pours small piles of food for the birds out into their dishes. Those fed begin to hum happily, a brass burr sound deep within the swell of their tiny chests. Those about to be fed chatter with excitement, and those further down the line grow agitated, voices high. Dean pulls a face at the noise, but Castiel is smiling some beautiful and wondrous smile at the sound. It softens Dean. As always, Cas softens all of him.

He reaches Elowen—the nightingale, and Bobby’s favourite. Castiel’s smile grows more distant, focussed on the pretty brown bird. He opens the latch of her cage, and she hops onto his finger. Dean watches, surprised.

“Hawk whisperer, sheep whisperer, and now it seems, nightingale whisperer,” Dean shakes his head in wonder.

“Dean whisperer, too,” Sam points out, drawing beside them. “You’re normally as flighty as that hawk of Bobby’s.”

“It’s been said,” Dean rolls his eyes. Cas chuckles.

“Cas has tamed you even better than he has Cathy.”

Dean squints.

“Galan,” the shepherd smiles. Dean frowns at him quizzically. “To sing. Nightingale,” Cas says. “Night singer.”

Elowen cocks her head and watches, perched on Cas’s finger. She’s no longer a bird being nursed back to health; she’s lived here longer than Dean, nearly a year. She’s a pet, a part of the Eyrie, her perch set at the centre of the room and the rest of them, like orbiting planets, have to rotate around it. Dean can’t even resent her. She was one of the first things to welcome him into the Eyrie.

“Yeah, she’s earned that title,” Sam sighs. “I don’t know how you get any sleep, Dean. She keeps me up all night with her singing.”

“I’ve never noticed—”

Dean cuts himself off, realising the reason.

“Where’ve you been today, anyway?” Sam looks back up at him with a quizzical frown.

“Ellen drew me a bath. For my muscles.”

“That explains your wet hair, I suppose,” Sam shrugs. “And you, Castiel?” Sam asks.

“Oh—I’ve been around. I only just dropped in, to say hello.”

“Only just?” Sam’s eyebrows are raised beyond his hairline.

“Yes,” Cas answers slowly. “Why?”

“Your hair’s wet, too.”

Dean doesn’t even have the time to panic. Sam drops the bag of seed he’s holding into Dean’s free hand.

“You can feed the rest, can’t you?” Sam asks. “I’ve got a busy day.”

“Cas was—Cas needed a bath—” Dean stammers as Sam turns toward the door. “So he—he had one after me.”

“Of course,” Sam squints, turning at the doorframe. “I’d guessed as much.”

Perhaps this moment should chasten Dean, make him grow more cautious. But he swells with too much adoration to slow the electric sharp and magnetic tug of his heart towards Castiel’s heart, his being toward Castiel’s. Out in the fields, herding sheep, Dean turns to the shepherd and grazes his hand up the column of Cas’s neck, drawing close so that his lips might linger an eternal moment against Castiel’s, with the late spring sun shining bright and rich behind him.

“Dean,” Castiel says softly, though he holds Dean steadily, still. “Not here.”

A frown twines Dean’s features as the strings of his heart tangle. The wind catches off the grass, the air smells green and sweet, but Dean’s heart is sunken.

“Why?”

Cas’s voice is soft as ever, a soft crunch of gravel underfoot on a walk home in the dark.

“Here, in the open, we might be seen.”

Dean’s heart clenches, recoils, into a fist.

“And what of it?”

“Dean,” Castiel says softly.

“If I were a woman, I’d be able to kiss you whenever I liked.”

“Ay, but the problem there is, I have no desire to kiss women,” Cas answers. Dean doesn’t laugh.

“You know what my point is.”

“Yes, I know what your point is, and I know that a man might drive himself mad with thinking it.”

“This,” Dean presses his hand to his heart, desperate, “what I feel—this is no thing to feel shame for—”

“I know,” Cas answers, “and I feel no shame for it.”

“There must be a world,” Dean shakes his head, “where we might kiss in a town square, be seen and known as sweethearts in the marketplace and it be ordinary—as ordinary as the seasons, as the sunrise—”

“Perhaps,” Cas says again, firm and gentle as ever but this time with a veil of tears shimmering at his eyes, the receding sun catching in them, “but a man will drive himself mad with longing for it—”

“I’m already mad with longing for it,” Dean shakes his head. “Loving like this—having to love in secret—that’s a madness, and—”

“Dean—”

“I want to kiss you in the streets,” Dean says, and his voice frays the raw column of his throat. The sea breeze is warm around them. Dean’s heart is raw with hurt and longing. All the world may love in the loud and light but he and Cas: they’re kept to the diminished darkness, to sit in secrets and trade their secrets over the small space of a table. But what happens when truth takes root in the heart, when secrets are no longer what weaves its arteries? All the world must live with its lungs cleared, but Dean. And Cas seems happy with it. Dean isn’t, he can’t be. He had to kiss Lee in a damp and dark alley, not even a backstreet. He wants Cas to be his sweetheart and seen to be his sweetheart on the streets, on every street of England. “I want your hand in mine when I walk down them—I want people to see, and to be jealous of our love, not—not afraid—and I don’t want to be afraid—”

“I know, Dean—”

“You’re acting like you don’t,” Dean shakes his head, trying to pull himself from the grip of Castiel’s arms. He’s not some hawk for taming, and even if he were, even Cathy is allowed to fly, to feel the thrill of flight and freedom. “You don’t understand—you seem happy in the shadows—”

“I’ve just had longer to accept it,” Cas replies. Dean’s jaw clenches. Surely years of suppressing love would rot the wound further, not diminish it?

“How could you accept it?” Dean asks, eyes shot with tears. The air is calm and yet there seems to be a thunderous and billowing wind in his ears, which he realises is the red-hot press of his own hurt blood. “I love you. I want to sing it. I feel like—like one of Bobby’s fucking caged birds,” he says, and even as he says it, the wings of his heart beat and batter and bruise against the wire bars of his own ribcage.

“I know,” Cas shakes his head, and tries to reel Dean back into his arms. Dean shudders in a broken breath. “But kisses in the dark are better than none at all, are in fact a comfort against the cold and dark—”

“Everyone else can sing their love in the light of day,” Dean shakes his head, tears hot and helpless on his cheeks.

Cas looks at him sadly. His gaze is older and more patient than the hills. Dean wants to be buried in it, but being buried means being hidden, too, and he can’t stand the hiding. Can’t stand the thought of back-alleys behind taverns and kisses shot with equal parts longing and secrecy, the aftertaste of fear filling his mouth. Can’t stand the thought of limping in flight from the curled cruel fists of men who have discovered them.

“Not everyone,” Castiel answers. “Not everyone sings in the light. We aren’t the only ones.” He wipes Dean’s eyes gently with the sleeve of his coat. “We’re like nightingales,” he says softly, like he’s talking to a child, a frightened child. “We're like the nightingales. Don’t you see?" Dean shakes his head, tears still tracing hot paths down his cheeks. "Like Mr Singer’s nightingale. We make our music in the dark.” Dean shudders breath. Cas’s hands curl over his shoulders. “But at least there’s music. At least we make it.”

Chapter Text

Slowly, Novak’s sparse shelf is lined with books conquered from the library. Dean tries to diminish his anger at every instance of love he reads about, and resents. Slowly, his anger is diminished into defeat. He and Castiel continue to sing in the dark.

Bobby limps more, can walk only for shorter and shorter distances; the only thing Dean suspects is maintaining the health he remains cautiously in, is his training of Cathy. Cathy, who in a few months, will mault her feathers completely, and for this time be completely unflyable. And what will happen to Bobby’s health, then?

The daylight broadens every day from ribbon into great sheets of amber. Blossom sits on the trees and May is met with pinks and yellows and the smell of pollen on the air. Occasionally Castiel will join Benny, Dean, and Victor on their nights in the pub. Some Sunday evenings Ellen cooks for all the farm hands, and they eat in one of the disused barns at long tables, a happy rabble of workers. Dean and Castiel will help Ellen with the cooking. Castiel will often sing, as he sang, that first night in the barn when Dean’s heart became a bird caught in the first motion of flight, a leap of faith into the air which was more hope than belief. That was the night Dean learnt true meaning behind the word ‘longing’; that was the night Dean gave name to love, and the name was Novak. Castiel has since taught him all about the ways a heart might burn.

Finished with their work for the day, Dean and Castiel weave through the cool of the Eyrie, away from the beat of sunlight, into the drawing room. Elowen can be heard with her starsong singing before they’re even in the room.

“Hello, pretty thing,” Castiel smiles in greeting to the nightingale, which, until the introduction of Cathy to the Eyrie, was the sure favourite of all the birds under Bobby’s care. As they enter the drawing room, Cas is at Elowen’s cage before Dean has the time to so much as close the door behind him. “The day is fine,” Castiel looks up at Dean with a gentle frown, “leave it open, and let the wind through.”

“But then I can’t kiss you, when I’d like to.”

“You’ve grown too confident, in this house,” Castiel flickers a smile, though his words send nerves recoiling in Dean’s system.

“And why shouldn’t I be?” He asks. “It’s to be my house, after all.”

“So I’ve heard you say,” Cas comments wryly, but Dean doesn’t laugh. “What, are you bitter I called the bird pretty, and not you?” Castiel asks, eyes sparking. Dean rolls his eyes. Cas turns back to the cage and opens it. Elowen, who has grown to trust him more every day, hops upon his finger and cocks her head up at him expectantly. Often, he comes with food for her—and it’s no use Dean telling him he’ll make the bird unhealthy with all these treats. If Bobby ever releases her, she’ll have no memory of where food actually comes from in the wild, and probably starve within a week. Dean watches the bird, then looks up to Castiel.

“What’re you thinking?” The shepherd asks, grazing the back of his free hand against Dean’s cheek. Dean’s lips twitch.

“Do you remember when I first spoke your name?” Dean asks. Castiel’s expression changes, bemused.

“I’ll not abide having this Novak on my farm,” he does an exaggerated expression of Dean, here, slouching and scowling, and Dean returns the expression sardonically.

“I never said that.”

“Perhaps not exactly.”

“And I didn’t mean that name,” Dean rolls his eyes. “I meant your name. Castiel.”

“You hardly call me that any more.”

“But when I did,” Dean sighs, “do you remember the first time?”

“Aye,” Castiel says, softer, now. His gaze flickers to Dean’s lips a moment. The sun panels light into the room, and it catches the shepherd’s dark eyelashes. “I remember the first time. I remember all of it.”

“Yes?”

“Christmas Eve,” Cas states. “And my name on your lips was a more welcome gift than any other I could think of.”

Dean’s cheeks heat and tighten. He smiles.

“Oh?” He asks. He draws a little closer to the shepherd. “It still has that effect?”

“I doubt it could lose it.”

“Castiel,” Dean says, “Castiel,” he repeats, over and over, as it broadens a smile across the shepherd’s features. “Castiel,” his nose grazes the shepherd’s cheekbone. Cas’s eyes fan sunbeam lines from their corners.

“And do you remember when I first used your name?” Cas asks, voice quiet. Dean’s heart trills like the bright song of Elowen.

“Just so.”

Castiel chuckles at Dean’s use of the phrase. He kisses Dean. Only briefly. They hear footsteps on the corridor. Dean steps away, flushing, and rubs the back of his heating neck.

Jody and Ellen enter, Ellen with a rag and bucket, obviously intending on a little cleaning. But Jody is distracting her with conversation and sparking jokes. Ellen, distracted by her work, only returns half the shots which are fired in her direction.

“What are you two doing?” Jody asks, glancing up at Dean and Castiel.

“Could ask the same for you,” Dean shrugs. “Our day’s work is done—is yours?”

“Almost,” Jody smiles. “All that’s left is to bother Harvelle, until she throws me off the farm.”

Ellen rolls her eyes.

“And I’m closer to it than you’d think.”

Jody titters, and glances to the bird on Cas’s finger.

“You’ve quite the gift with her, Novak.”

“Well, she’s easily won over,” Castiel smiles humbly. “A few gifts of food, and she’s the surest friend imaginable.”

“You two seem pretty kindred,” Jody comments, eyes glittering. “With your singing the other evening, to match hers, perhaps next time you perform for us, you could bring her along and form a duet.”

“I’m still holding out for the moment Dean decides to sing for us, one of those dinners,” Ellen looks up from the tabletop she polishes. Dean rolls his eyes.

“Not likely.”

“You don’t strike me as the kind for shyness,” Jody says. Castiel chuckles beside him.

“Oh, but Dean is a man riven with surprises, Miss Mills.”

Dean bumps his shoulder against Castiel’s and walks towards the window, looking out toward the cliffs.

“He’s a lovely singing voice,” Ellen informs Jody, looking up from her work. “One day he’ll show it off, I’m sure.”

“I don’t know any of the beautiful songs our shepherd does.”

“He’s certainly well versed,” Jody admits. “Where did you learn them?” She asks Castiel.

“My mother.”

Cas’s answer is short, guarded. Dean knows why.

“All of them?”

“Many,” Castiel admits, inclining his head. “Not all. But you know a great deal of songs too, Miss Mills.”

“And you play them well,” Ellen comments, smiling. Jody returns the look.

“I learnt most, travelling,” she answers. “Is that the case for you, too? You’re far from home, as I am.”

The shepherd, perhaps sensing that this won’t be a brief conversation, takes out a seat, Elowen still dancing from finger to finger on his hand. Jody follows suit, but Dean only watches them, for now, leaning against the window.

“Yes,” he admits. Dean listens, interest piqued. Still, it’s rare that Cas will talk with him about his youth. “I travelled a great deal, when young—and before, by good fortune,” he looks up and over at Dean from where he sits, “I came here.”

“Where did you travel, before then?”

Castiel shrugs, looking down at Elowen on his hands.

“Wherever my feet took me,” he answers honestly. “Which was many places, though never one of them was a home.”

“It must have been terribly lonely,” Ellen says. Dean moves to help her with her work. She smiles warmly at him.

“No,” Castiel admits, and surprises Dean. He remembers Cas’s lover and his heart pricks with hurt. “I wasn’t alone, for much of it. And then, when I was—without human company, I mean—I had Madra, to roam alongside.”

“Well, she may have been good company then, but I don’t think she’d take kindly to you trying to leave, now. She’s very domesticated, on account of Sam’s spoiling her.”

“Oh, Dean’s been spoiling her, too,” Cas flashes a smile. Dean rolls his eyes. “He just doesn’t like owning up to it.”

When Ellen has finished her work, she moves to sit beside Jody. Dean, watching Cas play with the small brown bird on his fingers, hardly thinks before sitting on the floor beside Cas’s chair. Ordinarily, in the croft, he’d lean back against Castiel’s legs and hum contentedly as the shepherd began to play with his hair—but he catches himself just in time, before he does this. Looking down at him sat on the floor, Jody quirks an eyebrow.

“You’re quite strange, Mr Winchester—you know that?”

“I wasn’t raised to be a gentleman farmer,” Dean reddens. Jody smiles.

“Neither was I,” she shrugs. “And yet I choose to dress like one.”

“Perhaps you should take over,” Dean smiles. Cas’s knee comes to rest, soft and subtle enough that it almost isn’t there, against Dean’s back. Jody and Ellen won’t notice. But Dean does, and cannot cease noticing.

“And what would you do, with all your time?” Ellen raises her eyebrows.

“I’d help you,” Dean grins, to which she rolls her eyes, leaning back with a smile. “And perhaps be Cas’s undershepherd?” He looks up at Castiel.

“Only on a trial period,” Cas says seriously. Dean laughs, and elbows Cas’s leg. “Dean!” Cas exclaims, though his features are bright and jovial, “I’m holding Bobby’s favourite creature in these hands. Don’t attack me.”

“I thought his favourite was Cathy?” Jody asks.

“With all the help he’s has given Bobby with Cathy, these past weeks, it’s probably Cas,” Dean comments. Jody laughs.

“That’s possible.”

Dean grins up at the shepherd, whose expression is veiled as it always is, when they’re in the company of others—but Dean has learnt to search the shroud, and beneath the shroud, find that signature earnestness, and every look of love.

…

As Ellen’s birthday draws near, Dean suggests making Ellen a present in the forge, and so he and Castiel set about the exciting work of making jewelry. Admittedly, this isn’t Dean’s area of expertise when it comes to smithing—he’s much more familiar with the intricate and logical details of machinery, the sensible and practical lines of tools. But he’s sparking with excitement at the thought of the challenge of this new task, and of the look it will stamp upon Ellen’s face, and of course of doing it with Castiel, in the first place. In the forge, where finally Dean’s longing was made living. When all their talking turned to touching, and all their words to wonder.

“You’ve never done this before?” Castiel asks, nervous, unconvinced, watching Dean hammer out a silver bracelet for Ellen. The metal is braided and, if Dean says so himself, beautiful.

“Never,” Dean smiles. “But I’m good at it, right?”

“All that you try, you’re good at,” Cas hums. A kiss is pressed, warm, behind Dean’s ear. Dean beams as he works.

“Even shepherding?” He raises his eyebrows.

“Well, not better than me,” Cas admits, “so don’t be firing me, just yet.”

“Even when I’m better than you, you can stay here,” Dean says. Cas raises his eyebrows.

“When you’re better than me?” He repeats.

“That’s what I said.”

“Well look at you, the very picture of charity.”

Dean splits a grin.

“I learnt from the best.”

“That you did,” Castiel assents.

“Is Bobby still not paying you, for all your help with Cathy?”

“I hardly mind,” Cas shrugs.

“I do,” Dean answers with a frown. The shepherd’s eyebrow cocks.

“What, you’d like to see me paid, so that you were lovers with a wealthy man?”

Dean rolls his eyes, and turns away from the bracelet and his work, to face Castiel.

“I’d like to see you paid, because it’s what you’re owed. I’ve no care for wealthy men. When you’re kissing me, I’m the richest of them all.”

“Are you a poet, with such pretty words?”

“Castiel, I’m not joking,” Dean shakes his head. Cas blinks at Dean’s rare use of his full name.

“I do not charge Mr Singer for my work,” Castiel says, quieter this time, “because it’s something rare, to find a place I think I might belong. Because I know what he means to you, and the hardness of your life, I like that he is something, though somewhat gruff, also kind. And, because, with his declining health, I can see no downfall to him spending as much time in clean, cool air, and walking, and otherwise attending to something that he loves. There, is that reason enough? In my mind, I’m paid in full.”

Dean looks away, saddened.

“You really think his health declining?” He asks, quieter. Cas sighs.

“That isn’t what—”

“But it’s true,” Dean looks back up at him. “He can’t walk nearly as far as he could in November, when I first met him, when you first—” He cuts off. “And these are warm months. What about when the cold sets in? What then?”

Castiel’s gaze is sombre as moonlight. The small space of the forge tightens around them.

“We’ll take the days as they come, from now until then. That’s all anyone can do. Let tomorrow worry for itself. There’s burden enough today.” He steps close to Dean, drags his fingers up Dean’s forearm, but Dean shakes his head bitterly, hurt as sand lashed up by cold winds.

“This isn’t just some ailment you can cure with your ridiculous plants and potions,” Dean’s lip curls, eyes stinging. “You know, I suppose, that the doctor from town has said there’s no good? It’s like a tree rotting from the trunk, it doesn’t matter the branches we fell. You think you can slow the tides of this with a few flowers in hot water?”

“I never said that.”

Castiel is hurt, too. Dean is reminded of the months of their first acquaintance, in which Dean spat out cruel and spiteful words, was cold and unyielding as granite under a veil of frost. He, like a petulant child; Castiel, constant and kind as the sessile oak.

“No,” Dean admits, looking down, and feeling strangely disappointed. Because if Castiel, in all his wonder and witchcraft, cannot save Bobby—then who can? His heart is as heavy as a stone.

“It does no good to worry so,” Castiel reminds, fingers still soft at Dean’s forearm. His toes touch Dean’s as they stand, faces only inches apart. “He has me, and you, and Ellen, and Sam—and, I’ll bet, the whole farm, when it comes down to it, to care for him. No, I cannot still the tides of his sickness. I might slow them. And he has more than some fight left in him. I’m sorry to have brought it up. You jump too soon into your fears, though.”

“Well,” Dean says, heart raw with worry and with love, “it’s rare for you to find a place you think you belong. It’s rare for me, too.”

Cas sighs. His breath is warm on Dean’s cheek.

“And you find that you belong, here?”

Dean tips his nose to graze it against Castiel’s.

“With you,” he answers, easily. They kiss a glittering lifetime in the glow of the fire.

…

Summer in Cornwall is something beautiful. The waters turn teal and the grass grows thick and soft beneath Dean’s fingertips. The sheep roam happily, the cows blink their long lashes as they watch passers-by, and Dean and Castiel take long swims in the sea at the end of their days of work, jumping off rocks and drying in the sun, salt glinting at their skin and roughening the hair beneath each other’s fingertips.

The evening of Ellen’s birthday, they amble back up the cliffs from an afternoon swim, late sun on their backs. Their fingers tangle every now and then as their hands swing by their sides, until they come in sight of the farm house. Dean’s heart pangs at the necessary distance which now must draw close between them.

Jo has hung bunting in the garden of the Eyrie, which Dean helped her with, before heading to the beach with Castiel. They also made honey cakes and crushed lavender seeds to go on top, filled vases with more lavender and sent Ellen into town with Mick and Jody the whole day to be sure she wouldn’t try to work, or see their preparations.

Honestly, considering the few errands Dean has had to run with Mick, he isn’t sure he’d choose a day in town with Mr Davies over a day of ordinary work—but perhaps the presence of Jody dimmed whatever menace it was Mick had planned for the town, and stopped him from swinging by the pub to cheat at a game of cards and win a little spending money.

The sun recedes behind the cliffs as Jo guides Ellen out of the farmhouse, covering her eyes with her hands. A chorus of happy birthday! is let out as Jo removes her hands from Ellen’s eyes. Ellen is all beams and lightly hitting Jody for keeping this a secret all day, and the sun retreats further until they’re forced to stick candles in the empty wine bottles scattered at the table, and moths flutter like enamoured ghosts and spirits around their amber flames.

Castiel sits beside Dean at the long table they put out there, their backs to the sunset. The gray stones of the house are dyed deep oranges by the light until it fades completely, and then flicker with shadows cast by the candlelight. Cas’s knee is pressed against Dean’s, and nobody notices; they’re all a little drunk and rosy-cheeked and Ellen’s mouth must be aching from how wide it’s set in a smile. It’s not diminished, by any means, when they gift her the bracelet, though she does cry, and Dean reddens and looks away with a grumble, because his own throat closes up and his eyes prickle in the candlelight at the sight of how it affects her. By the light of these flames, their gift to Ellen glints and glimmers on her wrist, and the night stretches on at a leisurely pace, the air warm from the day and the wind off the sea cooling the alcohol heating their cheeks.

Adam begins to yawn—the summer seems to be stretching out his limbs, and now he’s long and lanky, as though his frame is making ready for leaving childhood and entering adolescence. As he stretches sleepily, Bobby grumbles that if he’s tired, Adam might as well help him upstairs on his way to bed, and so this is what he does. Mick follows soon after, though not before gifting Ellen his own present, a candlestick which is almost certainly stolen, because it quite obviously belongs to a set of two.

“Silver, to match the gifted silver on your wrist,” Mick grins, and Ellen bites her lip, obviously trying not to laugh. Jody does laugh. “And if you’ll notice, that’s quite a bit more silver, than what those two got you,” he gestures to Dean and Castiel, dismissively. Dean rolls his eyes, but can’t feel anger at the motion, because months ago Mick’s antics stopped being vexing and started being absurd to him.

“Very generous of you, Mick,” Ellen smiles up at him. “If you ever find this one’s pair, let me know,” she gestures to the candlestick.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mick says, blinking. Dean snorts, and Mick takes his leave. Jo falls asleep at the table, cheek resting on her hand, and Sam begins playing a game of seeing how many sprigs of lavender he can stick into her hair before she wakes up. Eighteen. Jo wakes and curses him and takes the game as a good sign that she ought to turn to bed, and sleep there. This is what she does. Sam, apparently bored, follows suit not long after. This leaves Jody, Ellen, Dean and Cas to finish off the last of the wines, and grin happily at each other, and pretend that ‘tomorrow’ is a spectre which doesn’t exist, and not a very real figure they are already dipping generously into the hours of.

When, under the tremble of starlight, Ellen begins yawning and says she should go to bed herself, Jody also takes her leave. And Dean and Castiel are left alone to listen to the faint wash of waves from the sea, and rustle of warm wind in the leaves and over the grass, and the occasional call of a barn owl. Dean turns to his friend with a smile, drawning closer to him as they sit, at last, alone.

“Ellen liked her gift.”

“Yes, or really hated it, judging by her tears.”

Dean snorts. Cas turns more fully to him. As they sit, their legs tangle tightly with each other. In the house, a few candles draw flickering light at the windows—but it’s so dark out here, there’s scarce any chance of being seen, close as they are.

“And I liked seeing you make it,” Castiel hums, watching Dean warmly. “It was generous of you to say it came from both of us, considering the work you put into it.”

“You helped, too,” Dean frowns.

“Yes, though under your guidance,” Cas points out. Dean has to concede this point. “And I enjoyed watching you make it,” Cas says, and grazes his fingers along the back of Dean’s neck as they sit. With his other hand, he traces a place between Dean’s brows with his forefinger, the touch softer than the flicker of moth wings. “When you think, hard, or when you’re focusing on some task, a small line forms here,” he leans forward as he touches the place delicately. Dean flushes, that someone could notice all the minutiae of himself, like this. “It’s the prettiest frown I’ve ever seen, Winchester—something too adorable—”

Dean lifts his head to bump his nose against Cas’s finger, and laughs, breathless and embarrassed.

“Castiel.”

The shepherd smiles in answer.

“Dean.”

Dean leans in to kiss him. The air is sweet and lilting with the scent of jasmine, a bright burst of a golden smell in the dark. And Dean thinks, in the dim tremble of starlight, and flicker of candles from the house, that if this is love in the shadows, it isn’t always bad.

Chapter Text

They stay out, after Ellen’s birthday, the hours stretching further toward the dawn as the sky turns from pitch and washes of navy to a deep and resonant violet. As the light encroaches, Cas removes himself, slowly, adding distance as the earth adds light. Dean notices, and frowns.

“Cas,” he tries to reach out, to weave his hand in Cas’s hair, but Cas dodges it.

“We ought to return to the croft, or stop altogether.”

“Nobody’s awake yet.”

“But they will be.”

“So we should treasure the time, and be close until then.”

Castiel looks at him sadly.

“Dean.”

Dean’s heart hurts.

“What?” He asks, voice breaking with longing and hurt.

“You know why we cannot.”

Dean’s heart hardens.

“I don’t,” he denies.

“You forget,” Cas says softly, and leans a little closer as he speaks, though not for intimacy, but so that he may get away with speaking quieter. “I’ve done this before. I’ve been here before. You haven’t.”

“I have,” Dean tries.

“You told me I was your first—”

“I mean,” Dean sighs, fist clenching, “I’ve kissed a man before—does that count for nothing? We kept to the shadows, then, and it didn’t help us. Light or dark, they’ll find us if they want to, and they always do, don’t you see? They want to, and they’ll want to hurt us until they understand us, and how can they understand us, if we keep on kissing in the dark—”

“Keeping to the shadows is what saves us from their hatred—"

“No, keeping to the shadows is what sustains it,” Dean denies, eyes seared. Castiel’s jaw tightens. “How can anyone understand, if they never see?”

“Visibility without protection is vulnerability,” Castiel answers, shaking his head. “You wouldn’t have a rabbit stand in a field of wolves, just so the wolves might see how sweet it is before they consume it..”

“You think us helpless, then—”

“Dean, I’ve told you,” he says, quietly, “I’ve done this before.”

“You think I’m young and foolish.”

“In this, perhaps.”

Dean glares.

“I’ve kissed a man before,” Dean says.

“I’ve heard,” Cas answers.

“Does that make you jealous?” Dean asks, without thinking, heart spiking lovesick venom, and the shepherd actually laughs. Dean glowers and continues as he had been going to. “I’ve kissed a man before,” he says again. “It was just after Cassie, and I was—maybe the heartbreak made me weak. Maybe I wanted someone to love. Even for an hour.”

“That isn’t weakness—”

Dean rolls his eyes and continues over the shepherd.

“—I was in a bar, and he walked in. He was—confident. I liked that. He acted like… like life wasn’t a thing containing troubles or sorrows. He walked in like that, and—I wanted to believe life was a thing without troubles or sorrows. Even for an hour,” Dean says again. He swallows. This is harder than he thought. “He asked me to follow him—I didn’t even think. We went to the alley behind the tavern. We thought it was safe and—and it was,” Dean admits, “until it wasn’t.”

“You were found,” Cas states softly. Dean nods, and there’s salt in his mouth.

“Lee—the—the man I was with—he lied,” Dean says. “Some men came and Lee lied. Said I jumped him, was kissing him. The men were so drunk, and—poisoned by hate—they couldn’t even see it for the bullshit it was. All lies. But they didn’t care, they had someone to beat, and beat, and beat,” his throat closes up at the memory, “—and it was me,” he looks up at Castiel. “And it was nearly death. It only wasn’t, because, because I managed to rouse myself from their kicks. It was the thought of what my father would say. Word would travel. Word would travel like shame. That’s what made me run,” Dean looks at Castiel, eyes seared with white-hot tears, “not wanting to live,” he says. “I ran because I was scared of what he’d think of me. Not because I wanted to live.”

Cas’s hand reaches for Dean’s and he tangles their fingers fiercely.

“Lust for a man was nearly death—what would love for a man be?” Dean asks. “That’s what I thought—when I realised—when I realised what you were to me. What you meant. I was so afraid,” he shakes his head. “I wanted all those memories to stay in the shadows. I wanted my love to stay in the shadows. I don’t want to do that any more.”

“I know,” Cas says, voice frayed, “I understand,” he squeezes Dean’s hand, and his eyes are a mirror of Dean’s: swimming with saltwater.

“Do you?” Dean asks, a sour taste in his mouth. “You don’t have any hope, not for people like us—”

“I never said that.”

“No, you didn’t have to.”

Castiel hardens.

 “I think that if it came to it, you wouldn’t find yourself able to love aloud,” he states. “Though you speak, now, with anger and bravado. If you were called to it, you wouldn’t love in the light. I know you, Dean.”

“You’re wrong—”

“We’ll see.”

Dean’s jaw clamps, the pace of his heart flaring.

“Fuck you.”

“I don’t say it to be hurtful,” Cas shakes his head. “But as I say, I’ve been here before. You think my father couldn’t tell the man I was? He knew, and the weight of his knowing was death. And when my mother died, there was no one to soften his blows—I left my family, yes, and will regret it until the day I die—but I left with the man I loved, because I loved him, and because my father could not see that love and love me, still. Loving meant death to me, too—in more ways than one.”

“It won’t always,” Dean answers, and wants to believe it more than, perhaps, he can believe it.

“That’s a statement of faith,” Cas reasons, “of hope. We’re living now—let us live quietly, and peaceably. The birds don’t think or worry for tomorrow. Neither should we—especially when what it holds cannot be guaranteed, cannot be guaranteed to be good.”

“But it might be—”

“We’re strangers to the world,” Castiel states. “Why do you think I started my wandering? To remind me of it, so I wouldn’t forget, that I was stranger, everywhere.”

“A stranger here?” Dean asks, eyes stung again. “With me?”

Castiel cannot seem to answer. His jaw has coiled shut.

“Everywhere,” he says, eventually, “we must be strangers, in some capacity. To them, we are something strange.”

“You’re wrong,” Dean shakes his head. “One day, one day, we will be as ordinary as breath.”

Castiel looks at him, sadly. As though he wishes for what Dean says to be true. This is what breaks Dean, most.

“Until then…” He murmurs, and clasps Dean’s hands in the shrinking dark. Dean can’t think of letting go. He doesn’t want to.

…

Perhaps, but loving in the shadows is harder when the days of summer are so long, here. Daylight stretches long into what should be night, and darkness lasts only a few hours, and even then it seems dimmer than the thick darkness Dean saw in winter.

Cas knows where several beehives are, and collects honey with Dean and Adam standing underneath, fretfully.

“Don’t get stung,” Dean calls, worriedly, up at him.

“I’m not going to get stung,” Cas rolls his eyes.

“I heard that if you get bee stings all over your body, you die,” Adam says, and Dean turns to glare at him.

“Thanks for that, Adam,” he grumbles. “Real interesting.”

“I’m just saying.”

“Both of you worry too much,” Cas rolls his eyes, on the ground again. He hands Dean a large pot of honey. “Take that,” he says, before taking off the netted hat and net he’d worn to protect himself.

“You should be glad that we care if you get stung to death.”

“I’m eternally grateful,” Cas rolls his eyes. “Come on,” he motions that they head back in the direction of the farmhouse. They begin to walk. “You know,” he says, glancing at Dean with the sun glinting off the dark of his hair, “you could keep bees, here, and not just leave it up to finding wild honey. It’d be good for the farm. And life is always made better, and the winters shorter, with a little sweetness.”

A smile twines along Dean’s lips. He gives Castiel a look that says, I thought that’s what you were for? And Cas shoulders him lightly, supressing his own smile.

“Why’s it so dark?” Dean asks of the honey.

“It means it’s better,” Cas answers easily. “Darker honey means more flowers, more flavour.”

“Right,” Dean grins, shaking his head.

“And more powerful medicine,” Cas continues. “Whatever we make from this will do a world of good.”

“Hopefully it’ll taste good, too.”

“It’s honey.”

“But I’ve tried some of your other concoctions,” Dean laughs. “I don’t even think honey—dark or not—could fix their taste.”

Cas squints at him. Dean grins back. Next time he complains of a cold, or of aching muscles, or an infected cut, Cas will make him grovel before making him a cure.

“My mother used to give me honey with my medicine,” Adam says, oblivious. Something sad enters his countenance, and Dean’s heart pangs. He reaches out to ruffle Adam’s hair, and to his credit, the boy doesn’t immediately shrug him off.

“They say she was a good woman,” Dean states, something murky and upset in his gut. Adam nods, looking away. “And a very good mother, to you.”

“Bees are messengers to other worlds,” Cas states, and Dean nearly laughs, half in wonder, and half at the conviction Cas says this with. Not even a degree of irony to his voice or words, or how inappropriate their timing is. “Some believe they come from paradise.”

“And what do you think?” Dean asks, warmly. Cas glances over to him as they amble. The air is bright and light and pollen clings to the wind.

“Look at what you’re holding, Dean,” he gestures to the jar of fresh honey. “How could that be anything less than heaven sent?”

 “Alright,” Dean concedes, light-hearted with love. “So bees are sent from paradise, and are messengers to the Otherworld, give us honey, and for good measure, keep all the plants we farm living.”

“Just so,” Castiel smiles. “It’s why I took to you so, when we met. You know the value of the soil. Few people do, and the number’s ever growing smaller. But you do, and like the bee, you toil to keep the plants alive, and blossoming.”

For some unknowable reason, even this has the capacity to make Dean flush. He looks away and hopes that his brother doesn’t notice.

“We kept them in my home,” Cas says, attempting to be light, a little too light. “In Ireland.”

“Is keeping bees hard?” Adam asks.

“They keep themselves,” Castiel shrugs, “if we kept them here, we’d need only make sure they have enough of what they need.”

“And then we reap the rewards,” Dean grins. Castiel chuckles.

“In more ways than one. Those little creatures are what keeps the earth breathing and the seeds sowing.”

“I remember, you showed me a poem about bees,” Dean says. Castiel cracks a smile.

“Still in the depths of winter, if memory serves me correctly.”

“It seems a long time ago,” Dean tries not to sigh the words.

“You two talk so much,” Adam groans, and kicks ahead of them as they swing near the farmhouse. Dean barks out a laugh. Adam’s footfall on the stones towards the house sends a flock of pigeons into whistling flight.

“He’s getting rude as you,” Castiel shakes his head. “Perhaps it’s not such a good thing, the two of you becoming close.”

“You find my rudeness charming.”

“You overstate it.”

“Understate it,” Dean corrects. “You find it more than charming. You’re enamoured with me.”

“Enamoured is too light a word,” Cas answers, and hums these words thoughtfully, squinting at some point in the distance. Dean’s heart sparks.

“Oh?” He asks. The front door of the Eyrie is but twenty paces from them, and soon their words will have to turn from tender to moderated.

“And what is the word?” Dean asks. The sun pours down on them like the dark honey they carry in the jar. They swim around in golden light. Cas flickers his gaze, unamused, over at him.

“You know the word, Winchester.”

“I want to hear you say it,” Dean grins. “Is that so unreasonable?” Cas gives him a look in answer, one which makes bright and rounded laughter bubble from Dean’s lips. They stop beneath a bower of ivy. Green light dapples them. Cas rolls his eyes, and Dean laughs nervously. “See, me? I think the word might be love.”

“Heaven help me,” Castiel sighs forlornly, “I think you might be right.”

Dean’s heart turns a somersault in long dappled grass.

“You’ll have to find a way to say it,” he says, blinking, breathless, “in the light of day.”

“Why’s that?”

“Otherwise I might forget it,” Dean answers, easily, because this is true. He might forget it and, as it is, he can hardly believe it anyway. Not even his father said it to him. Cassie was barely given the chance. Dean barely gave her the chance.

Dean finds it hard to give people the chance.

But he’s giving it to Cas now. And in the shadows of the ivy, Cas steps closer, closer than Dean would’ve thought possible given their current setting.

“In Irish we might say grá mo choi. We have no verb for love, in Irish.”

“Why not?”

“Why do fish swim? Why do sheep graze?”

Dean rolls his eyes.

“So what does it mean?” He asks. His fingers have twisted and twined around Castiel’s. “Grá mo—grá—”

“Grá mo choi,” Castiel answers. “Means love of my heart.” As if on cue, Dean’s heart trills at this. “Or we might, perhaps, say mo cheol thú. That means you are my music.” Dean begins to beam. At every phrase, Castiel seems to step closer to him. But they’re stood toe to toe, and being closer isn’t possible. Dean wants to obliterate the space between them. He wants to live in it. He wants to swallow it like air.

“You are my music,” Dean repeats, and Castiel smiles, the curious smile which doesn’t reach his lips but twines and twists and sears and sparks at his eyes, a bright dance to match the melody of Dean’s heart. “That—I can’t help but think—think of the song you sang, that night in the barn,” he says, and can feel the flush at his cheeks as he says it. “Do you remember that?”

Castiel blinks, eyes burning with song.

“I—yes, Dean,” perhaps he’s trying not to laugh. “I was there. I sang it.” A pause. “I sang it for you.”

“How else?” Dean asks, chest bound tight so that breath comes out stabbing and staggered. “How else might you say you love me, without saying it?”

“Well, I might for example, sing a song directed at you, on a spring night, surrounded by candlelight and warm faces—”

Dean groans, rocking back, but Cas’s hands bound around his stop him from pulling away.

“How’s this,” Castiel says, softer this time. “Chuisle mo chroi.” This one sounds like waves have been turned into wine. “It means pulse of my heart.”

“I like—I like that—” Dean stammers. “I like all of them.”

“In that case,” Castiel hums, “I’ll call you all of them, in the company of others. And these might be a candle for us to light our love in the dark.”

Dean swallows, squeezing Castiel’s hands. He longs to kiss him. Longs to kiss the petals of his lips, the bolt of his jaw, the spiralled shell of his ear, the valleys between his knuckles. Instead, over his pulse of hope and panic, he returns what Cas has gifted him. He thinks of what Castiel sang to him, that night in the beautiful barn. How music was what grazed back the thick curtains of his heart and let in the light of love, set in place a new song for Dean to sing, and know he was singing.

“Mo cheol thú, Castiel.”

“And you are mine, Dean,” Castiel says. “And you are mine.”

…

“So, freshwater fish for dinner?” Dean asks, and within the safe cover of trees, can knot his hand with Castiel’s and allow the swelling of his heart to blossom onto his face. He and the shepherd are like jasmine flowers: they blossom best at night, away from the needling eyes of day. Behind the shade of trees is no different. Dean wishes they could sing in the sun.

“Assuming you catch any,” Cas answers. Dean pouts.

“You know I’m a capable fisherman—more capable in freshwater than in salt, and I do well enough fishing on the sea.”

“That you do,” Castiel agrees, squeezing Dean’s hand in his own. “For a boy from as landlocked a place as I’ve heard Kansas to be…”

“Exactly,” Dean grins. “I’ve exceeded every expectation. Fishing in rivers—that’s what I’m used to.”

“I’m ready to be astonished.”

Dean bumps his shoulder against Cas’s. They can hear the musical sounds of running waters nearby.

“We’re close,” Dean comments.

“When was the first time you saw the sea?” Castiel asks. “Was it when you boarded that boat to England?”

Dean laughs and confirms. Cas shakes his head in wonder.

“Is that so strange?” Dean asks. Birds chime musically around them and the air is thick with summer and trees.

“Oh, absolutely,” the shepherd confirms. The sunlight filtered by a veil of leaves is prettier than the light of any stained glass, in any church, against Cas’s skin. Perhaps the secret places of the world, beyond the gazes of the crowds who could never understand, or simply do not want to, perhaps these places will be Dean’s cathedrals.

They reach the glittering of the stream, which fragments the sunlight cast upon it as it fragments sound into rushes and trickles and glimmers against pebbles and round rocks and ringletting turns. They sit and cast their lines and wait in silence, a silence like a home, Dean pressing his head against Cas’s shoulder. His lashes flutter in the quiet and soft-glimmering light, his thoughts turn the spiral patterns of those near sleep.

He barely manages to act when his line is tugged, though Cas’s chuckle to himself presses him into action and an eye-roll. They fish, the stream sings, the sun lolls in the sky beyond the glinting cover of leaves. And Dean, head against Castiel’s shoulder, is almost asleep again when Castiel says,

“Rainbow bird.”

The words are whispered so that they ripple beneath the murmur of the river. Dean blinks and swallows, tries lifting his head from the shepherd’s shoulder, but Cas’s hand presses to his hand to keep him still.

“Look,” he says, quiet, and points with silent gesture to the coil of a gnarled stick curling out over and above the water. Dean follows the motion and, there, at a dip in the twig like a seat, is feathered fire.

“A kingfisher,” Dean smiles. “I’ve never seen one before.”

“Halcyon,” Castiel murmurs, and like the word has summoned it from pensive thought into blue and orange fire-flash of action, it snags down from its perch and blazes into the water. Dean blinks in wonder. Up on the stick again, the portrait of burning iridescence, it swallows the metallic sheen of a minnow. Dean watches, and knows that Cas watches, too, and thinks not for the first time that love itself is in the act of finding beauty in the small facets of life, and finding someone to dwell in these facets with.

“Huh?” Dean asks, blinking and recovering himself.

“Halcyon,” Castiel repeats, warmed words lighting kingfisher fires along Dean’s skin, fingers twining through Dean’s hair. “A name for kingfisher.”

“It sounds like a whirlwind.”

“The bird is a whirlwind.”

“A little one,” Dean smiles.

“My time in the Eyrie has taught me that there’s a great deal of power in small, ordinary things.”

“Uh-huh?” Dean smiles, glancing up at Castiel from where his head rests still, on the curve of his shoulder. “What kind of small things?”

Castiel hums.

“The movement of hands uncertain and determined with new work. Snowflakes on eyelashes. Wildflowers brought by a bemused lover.”

Dean’s mouth curls into a crescent moon.

“It’s not fair to make me love you as you do.”

“Playing at lovers was never the sport of gentlemen.”

“But we aren’t playing,” Dean answers.

“You don’t think one of us will emerge victor, the other defeated?”

The suggestion tastes sour.

“I can’t speak for you,” he says. “But losing you—any loss—would defeat me.”

“Hm,” Castiel’s frown is a knot in wood.

“You think I’m lying?”

“You are young, and the world is wide.”

“If I’m young, that gives me more time to spend with you,” Dean says. “And even if the world is wide, I could think of nowhere better than this small space to settle in.”

Castiel’s mouth twitches.

“You don’t believe me,” Dean half-asks, half-states, defeated.

The shepherd repeats what he said.

“You’ve much ahead of you, Mr Winchester,” he reminds, but Dean’s heart breaks. His voice is quiet, the whisper of a kingfisher in flight. “You are young, and the world is wide.”

They stay a few more hours; the kingfisher diving once more and Dean catching a few fish of his own. That evening, they cook and eat the fish, before turning to sit on the cliffs, at the rocks Dean cut his hand on that night Castiel invited him into the croft and touched him with more determined and exasperated kindness than Dean could remember being gifted.

In the light of the stars, they sit, and speak sweet and low, and in the bleach of moonlight take long drinks of elderflower champagne, which is sweet and bright in the salt-stained darkness. Far beneath the cliffs, waves lap at rocks and send out foam into the air, up here their hair is wind-ruffled and soft beneath each other’s fingertips.

“By the river, today,” Dean starts, and finds it difficult to swallow. “You seemed to think—think that I might find some way—some way away from you, as if I ever could.”

Castiel looks at him. The moon glints in the blue of his irises.

“Life is no certain thing,” he reasons. “One year ago you’d never set foot outside of your ‘Kansas’”—the word sounds, as ever, funny on Castiel’s lips, and were Dean’s heart not so heavy at the content of the shepherd’s words he’d be sure at least to laugh at the sound of them. “Let alone outside of America. Now you live in England, which I’m sure you’d never planned, or wanted, to dwell in.”

“Who cares if I hadn’t wanted it then—it’s what I want now, now that I know it I know that I love it—”

“You only prove my point. Things are changeable.”

“Not my love for you,” Dean shakes his head. “Life might change, but my love won’t—”

Why is Castiel doing this? Giving Dean the sickening sense of losing his grip on something he never wants to lose?

Cas’s expression makes him angry.

“Why’re you doing this?” He asks, heart breaking. “Why do you doubt me?”

Castiel looks away. Dean is reminded, and cannot think why, of the night the shepherd cleft his heart open for Dean to explain the wound red and weeping around Castiel’s family; that night in the croft the shepherd explained that he has loved, and lost, an entire land and all the children of it.

“Everybody asks me to leave,” Castiel says, looking out at the sea. “Eventually.”

“You think I will? You think I could?” Dean asks. “I’m yours, I’m lost to you. If anyone leaves, it’s not gonna be me, and it’s not gonna be on me.”

Castiel cracks a smile at Dean’s stubbornness.

“Perhaps, like spitting into the wind, your accusations of inconstancy touch upon more of you than they do on me,” Dean grumbles. Castiel’s hand slips onto his shoulder.

“No, but perhaps they reveal more of my fears than I ought to find flattering.”

Dean swallows.

“You’ll still love me, tomorrow?” He asks. Castiel’s sigh is warm on the night air.

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…”

Dean’s throat is tight.

“You’ll still love me, tomorrow,” he states, this time, and doesn’t ask. But Castiel answers for him, anyway.

“And beyond.”

…

A silver streak flashes through the sky one of the nights Sam is in the croft for a lesson on the fiddle from Castiel. Sam doesn’t see it; his back is turned to the window, but Dean and Castiel do, and Dean crowds to the small window frame and leans against it, peering out at the sky.

“What,” Sam asks, pausing his playing and turning to look out of the window with Dean.

“A meteorite,” Castiel says behind them. Dean can hear his smile, probably at Dean’s childlike captivation with it.

“What?” Sam asks, obviously disappointed he missed it.

“There!” Dean exclaims, pointing as the streak re-emerges and crosses a path away from the sea. “There it is!”

“Most likely a different one, I think,” Castiel reasons behind him. “It’s probably a shower.”

“Stars falling like rain,” Dean grins over his shoulder, back to Castiel, who rolls his eyes. “Now there’s a high, romantic thought.”

“I don’t think they’re actually stars.”

“It was headed toward the Eyrie,” Dean says.

“It looked as though it was,” Castiel says. “But it’s probably miles away, by now.”

“Let’s go look for it,” Dean beams, pulling on his coat.

“What about the rest of my lesson?” Sam asks, indignant.

“You’re playing well enough to charm the waves out of the sea,” Dean answers, impatient. “Come on, Castiel,” he looks over to the shepherd, pleading. “Find me a star.”

Castiel looks at Dean as though he’s something impossible.

But in the space of a minute, they head out into the darkness. A late summer night, the air is warm. The stars turn clockwork courses ahead, and the wind makes a soft rustle of music through the darkened grass. Madra bounds along beside them, excited by the outing and its strange hour. Castiel holds a lantern for them, but mutters every other moment that it’ll be useless: they won’t find the meteorite with the help of lamp, or without.

“You saw it, too,” Dean says to his brother. “I’m right, aren’t I? It was headed toward the Eyrie.”

Sam worries at his lip in the dim shades of night and shrugs.

“Um—perhaps, Dean—”

“I know I’m right,” Dean rolls his eyes.

“Be careful you don’t slip,” Castiel hums over to him, obviously thinking of Dean’s early nights here, and the cutwork he made of the soil with all his skidding and slipping through it. “If it did land, it’d leave a crater,” Castiel says as they approach the Eyrie, speaking of the meteor. “A great hole unmistakable. I see no such thing, anywhere about.”

“It might be round the other side,” Dean says. “Come on.”

He tugs them round the house, Sam grumbling under his breath at Dean’s sudden turn to insanity, and Cas dutifully biting his lip when no such crater appears.

“What would you even do with it?” Sam asks, exasperated and obviously tired.

“Mount it,” Dean beams. “And make guests kiss it as they enter.”

Even in the dark, he can make out Castiel rolling his eyes.

When they’re round at the front of the house, a tapping at Bobby’s study window surprises him. He turns, and sees Bobby stood with the support of both his crutches, at the tall window. He wears a frown and a the hell are you doing out there? countenance. Inside the room, someone stands behind him, only a shadow. Bobby taps the glass again and gestures them inside.

Sam, Dean, and Castiel enter the Eyrie.

In Bobby’s study, the figure is brought into clearer view. He’s tall and thin-faced, good looking in a removed and classical sense, with a long thin nose and something passionately cold in his character. Dean watches him warily. Next to him, Cas’s muscles seem inexplicably coiled tight like the cocked hammer of a pistol.

“Dean, Sam, this is our neighbour,” Bobby says, gesturing to the man, who curls a reedy smile.

“Alastair,” he holds his hand out to Dean, who takes it uneasily.

Dean knows a little of the English, this half-a-year he’s spent in Cornwall, and what he’s learnt is that they’re a stiff and static people—at least the middle classes, and those higher. This man, in his vest and cravat and tailcoat, his tight drawn out vowel sounds and nasal intonation, would seem to belong to that group. So why has he introduced himself by his first name?

“I don’t see any need for formalities,” he seems to read Dean’s mind, “as we’re neighbours.”

“I’ve never met you before,” Dean says, and Bobby coughs once into a closed fist at Dean’s abruptness. Alastair seems to take no mind.

“I’ve been abroad,” he says, “for some years now. I had my bailiff manage the affairs on my estate—and you can imagine my delight upon my return to hear that Mr Singer had gained an heir, and I in turn would gain a close acquaintance, or two,” he nods to Sam, who smiles weakly back.

“Well,” Dean tries, and glances about the room, and notices Cathy’s perch is gone, as is Cathy herself. He frowns. Then he looks back at the stranger. “I’m glad to make your acquaintance. Your travels were—fruitful?”

“Very,” Alastair’s smile is chilling, Dean’s gut twists. “As my return is looking to be.” Dean nods, unsure of where to look.

“I’m glad.”

“Of course, travelling has its drawbacks,” Alastair states, and Dean raises his eyebrows.

“Oh?”

“One of my beloved pets escaped during my time away,” he states. “I confess my visit to Mr Singer’s had some purpose—the man is reputed to be an expert on birds, I thought he might have some idea of this one’s whereabouts.”

“Oh,” Dean nods slowly. “A bird?”

“A goshawk. She answers—or considering her behaviour, doesn’t answer—to the name Gorgon.”

“Gorgon,” Dean repeats. Alastair nods, still smiling. Dean remembers Castiel teaching him about goshawks. “You know, you shouldn’t name your hawk something violent or bloodthirsty.” He doesn’t think as he speaks. This has always been a defect of his.

Alastair raises his eyebrows. He doesn’t look used to being challenged. Bobby coughs, once, again.

“It’s—it’s supposed to be bad luck,” Dean reasons. “You know. They say it makes them worse hunters. The superstition—I mean, it’s just a superstition—is that you should name them something tame, like—like—”

Bobby is glaring at him. Dean can guess why Cathy and her perch are nowhere to be seen.

“—Like—Kate,” Dean says, and great, because that’s such a different name to Cathy. Bobby glares at him. Dean smiles benignly back. “Or—Wendy. Or—”

“I didn’t know that you were such an expert on hawks,” Alastair says. Dean smiles and shrugs easily.

“I read.”

Cas rolls his eyes. Dean smiles weakly at him.

“Well, I have others. Gorgon was a favourite of mine—but perhaps you’d like to visit, and see the others in my collection.”

“Others?” Dean repeats.

“I have quite a few birds of prey. Yes, the farmers round these parts do seem to have a habit of collecting birds,” Alastair laughs, and Bobby obviously fakes one. “If you’re such an avid reader around hawks, perhaps you’d like to come and see a few, in person.”

“You’re very kind,” Dean says. Cas’s expression is dark, which almost makes him smirk. Alastair looks at the shepherd for the first time.

“This is our shepherd, Mr Novak,” Bobby steps in, and unlike with Dean and Sam, Alastair doesn’t hold out his hand to Cas.

Castiel coolly bows his head in greeting.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he says, but his eyes are more void than Dean has ever seen them: ordinarily their depths burn and pierce and burn and pierce at Dean.

“What were you doing, out in the cold?” Bobby asks, because a silence has grown like ice around the group.

“We saw a meteorite,” Dean states. “We were looking for it.”

“Dean was looking for it,” Sam corrects. “Some of us were dragged along.”

“Did you find it?” Bobby asks. Dean laughs defeatedly.

“Not quite,” he admits.

“But you were introduced to me,” Alastair smiles. “Hopefully you’ll consider it an apt trade.”

“Of course,” Dean says, politely, and is strangely startled by the words. Cas’s expression is still heavy.

Shortly, Alastair states that it’s time he took his leave. Only Dean hears Cas’s quiet sound of agreement in response.

“Sir Alastair is a knight,” Bobby says, after they’ve closed the door on the man.

“Of the round table?” Dean raises his eyebrows, and only makes the joke because slowly he and Castiel have been making their way through the tales of King Arthur by Thomas Malory.

“As in he’s nobility,” Bobby grumps. “The clue, Dean, is that I’ve been calling him Sir Alastair all night.”

“Why the hell didn’t he introduce himself as that?”

Bobby shrugs.

“He’s a strange man,” he states, and Dean quips,

“—It’s a pity he returned, then. We’ve got a surplus of those, round here—”

But Bobby ignores him and continues.

“—And normally he makes a point of his title. I don’t know why he wouldn’t, with you.”

“Maybe he knew there was no chance I’d be impressed by it,” Dean smirks.

“There’s little impressive in that man,” Castiel’s brow is set heavy. Dean nearly laughs, though Bobby seems shocked by the words coming from their ordinarily kind-spoken and thoughtful shepherd.

“Don’t let him hear you say so,” Bobby says, uneasily. “Merited or not, that man has a fierce hold of his pride. Don’t try and wrestle it from his grip. His temper’s like a furnace. Who knows what it could set alight.”

“Alright, Bobby,” Sam says, good-naturedly. “It’s late. Let me help you upstairs.”

Grumpily, Bobby acquiesces. They climb slowly toward Bobby’s bedroom, and Dean watches them before turning back in the direction of the shepherd.

“Tomorrow, I’m going to look some more for the meteorite.”

“Dean, if it had landed anywhere near, we would’ve heard it. Besides, even if it did land close by, the fact we didn’t hear it tells me it’s nothing more than stardust, now.”

“I’ll find it,” Dean grins, “and you’ll eat your words.”

“I believe you a most capable and wondrous man,” Cas says, warmly, “but some things—like finding items which don’t exist—are beyond even you.”

“I found a shepherd who can sing and read and teach and can even train goshawks,” Dean states. “How many people would believe you exist?”

Castiel smiles and rolls his eyes.

“You believing is enough,” he answers.

Dean tugs at Castiel’s hands in the direction of the stairs.

“Dean,” Cas says softly, voice low as the light.

“What?” Dean asks, already knowing what’s to come.

“It’s one thing, in the croft. But here?”

“What difference does it make?”

“It isn’t safe.”

“I want to spend the night with you.”

“You’ve spent most of it with me,” the shepherd points out, and Dean resists frowning.

“Be honest,” he says, “is it that I snore?”

Castiel chuckles, and threads his hands through Dean’s hair.

“No,” he says. “And I sleep better, by the sound of you breathing beside me.”

In spite of itself, Dean’s heart trills at this.

“Is it that I kick?”

“No,” Cas chuckles again, squeezing at Dean’s fingers, “though you do wrap your arms so tight around me I wonder if you’re dreaming that you’re ivy, and I’m the front face of a house.”

Dean smiles.

“So let me play at being ivy, again.”

“What if you strangle me in my sleep?” Cas asks, seriously. Dean snorts.

“You’ve slept here before,” he points out. “In my bed, with me. And I loved you, then.”

“It felt less dangerous, then.”

“Because we hadn’t so much as kissed?”

“Essentially.”

“What if I don’t kiss you, all night,” Dean offers, and though it’s absurd and a half-joke, he almost means it. Cas’s laughter is warm and rough as seastone warmed by the sun.

“You wouldn’t last on that promise,” he shakes his head. “And I wouldn’t want you to.”

But he is the one to tug Dean up the stairs, toward Dean’s room.

In Dean’s bed, which is broader by far than Castiel’s though neither of them seem able to make use of all this space, tangled tightly as they are, Castiel’s nose nearly bumps Dean’s as he speaks into the small space between their heads resting on the pillow.

“I don’t care for that Sir Alastair,” Cas frowns softly. Dean smirks.

“It didn’t come across at all,” he replies. Cas squints at him, but a smile laces his features.

“He seemed to have some regard for you, though,” Castiel says, and it sounds as though he measures his words a little too deliberately. Dean laughs.

“And that makes you jealous, does it?”

“No,” Castiel blinks slowly.

“It doesn’t sound that way.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“Okay.”

“I’m concerned,” Castiel presses, the frown twining at his features more beautiful than any silk embroidery.

“Concerned?”

“He seems dangerous.”

“You’re jealous,” Dean laughs.

“I don’t know what he’s capable of, but it seems a lot,” Castiel answers.

“You’re jealous,” Dean beams. Castiel squints.

“For all you know, he was being friendly. Only friendly.”

“Just like you were only being friendly, when you invited me into your bedroom, on our third night of knowing each other.”

“I cannot help it if my bed is in the same room as my kitchen table,” Cas answers, indignant. “And besides, that wasn’t friendliness, it was charity.”

“Charity?” Dean asks, bemused.

“Yes. The same force which drives Bobby to nurse his injured birds.”

“You’re jealous,” Dean says again, heart a hearth within him. “Jealous of the Sir Alastair. Or jealous over me because of that Sir Alastair.” Castiel sighs.

“Perhaps a little.”

Each day, knowing Cas, a little more of him unfurls and in spiralled patterns, complicates and enlivens and riddles Dean’s picture of the shepherd. Even jealousy on Castiel is something gorgeous and new.

“You shouldn’t be,” Dean hums. He noses at Cas’s nose. The shepherd’s hands run soft and firm, up and down Dean’s arms. “No matter the season, I’ll still love you. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…”

“…And beyond,” Castiel finishes for him, lips lifting gently. He kisses Dean. Dean kisses back, as he will kiss again, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. And beyond.

Chapter Text

A meteor, a kingfisher, a man returned from a long journey. Static words spoken in the study of a house which might be grand if it were not so run-down, and a shepherd stood as still and as jealous as ice beside Dean. This is the beginning of the spell.

A meteor, a kingfisher, a man returned from a long journey, static words, a static shepherd, and a missing but-not-missing-goshawk.

The spell is an unravelling spell.

Cathy is moved back into Bobby’s study the next day, in the wake of Sir Alastair’s absence. Dean is the one to do this for him, and holds the bird warily on his forearm as he carries her to her perch, back in its place beside his desk. She wears a hood over her eyes and bristles and cocks her head at every movement and sound. Dean doesn’t want to lose an eye, and his resentment of the risk to his health is heightened by the knowledge that the bird, in fact, belongs to their wealthy and knighted and apparently dangerously proud neighbour.

“I have to say, Bobby, this has gotta be one of the more stupid of your ideas.”

Bobby rolls his eyes, and moves restlessly on his crutches until Cathy is returned safely to her perch, because of course, he doesn’t trust Dean in the handling of her, at all. Dean bites down on the urge to quip something ruder to him in response to this.

“I can’t return Cathy to him now,” Bobby says, stepping forward. Gently, he removes the hood from Cathy’s head, and she flinches a moment at the light. “He’ll ask why I didn’t do it in the first place.”

“And in answer, you can tell him you didn’t know the bird was his,” Dean reasons, but Bobby shifts sheepishly. “Bobby…”

“He’s not a good man,” Bobby says. “He’s known to be cruel to his servants, and if the rumours are true, of how he treats people—imagine how he’d treat birds…”

“Some people get more attached to their animals than they seem to be to the people around them,” Dean points out drily.

“I love you and Cathy equally,” Bobby answers. Dean groans and tries not to laugh.

“I’m saying, you don’t know he treated her with cruelty.”

“He called her Gorgon.”

“That doesn’t say much.”

“She ran away. She escaped. Flew away.”

“That’s what birds do.”

“Not if they’re happy.”

“Are you a bird?” Dean raises his eyebrows.

“You don’t understand,” Bobby glowers.

“No,” Dean admits, frankly. “I don’t.”

Bobby glares at him. Dean is taken aback because, for a moment, it’s like looking in a mirror.

He and Bobby aren’t even related.

He sighs. He thinks of Castiel. He remembers something Castiel said to him, once, on their quiet nights over dinner lit by amber flame and soothed by the sound of Madra’s steady breathing.

“Maybe I do,” he says. He licks his lips. “We are all fools, in grief.”

Bobby looks down.

“Keep the bird,” Dean says. “She’s grown so attached to that perch, I couldn’t think to part her from it.”

…

The following morning, an invitation is extended for Bobby, Dean, Sam and Adam to eat at Alastair’s. After months in the beautiful strange upside-down of the Eyrie, it’s a shock for an invitation to not be extended to Jo, Ellen, Jody, and Mick. Dean forgets that the eyes of the Eyrie are different to those of the rest of the world.

This is to say nothing of how strange it feels not to have Cas, beside him. Cas beside him has been all Dean’s known the past eight months.

Sir Alastair’s home is bigger by far than Bobby’s. This is a house of pale stone which may easily be called grand, which is surrounded by no crumbling walls, which is not surrounded by babbles of animals and stables but is instead neatly and primly separated from those animals’ quarters. This is a house which is absolutely owned by that alien and vaguely threatening concept to Dean: nobility.

Their lunch in the long dining room is lavish and makes Dean think that, considering its vast size, Alastair is not a man who will be working this afternoon, nor is he a man used to working in the afternoon. The table they eat at is long and sleek and dark and conversation is stilted. Dean watches Bobby uneasily and is given the increasing impression that Bobby does not like the man by his terse shoulders and short answers. But perhaps he’s just paranoid about his ridiculous goshawk getting discovered.

After lunch, Alastair smiles winningly at Dean.

“Now, Mr Winchester, you must allow me to deliver on my promise of showing you my birds.”

Dean shifts in his chair.

“I think that’s the kind of thing Mr Singer would be more interested in—”

“Nonsense,” Alastair shakes his head with a smile, though his tone is firm and edged as a blade. “After you impressed me so with your knowledge of hawks on our first meeting, you must allow me to educate you further. In any case,” Alastair flashes a snakesmile to Bobby, “Mr Singer’s love is for small and injured birds. Little wretched things. I can tell you prefer something bigger.”

Dean bristles.

He glances at Bobby, who gives him a look which suggests that Alastair is not the kind of neighbour to disagree with over something small and petty as this.

“You’re very kind,” Dean says. “But perhaps my brothers might be interested—”

But Alastair has an answer for this, too. Sam is shown to his library, better stocked even than that of the Eyrie, and Adam is shown to his stables, and told he may ride whichever horse he chooses. This flashes panic through Dean—Adam is too small still to ride any horse he chooses, but Alastair is quick to emphatically smother Dean’s protestations with the promise to leave Adam in the charge of his finest stable-hands. Bobby promises to stay and watch, too. Dean’s heart still knocks anxiously against his chest.

But Alastair leads him back towards the house.

“I’ll give you a fuller tour,” he says, as they approach the pale pillars of the grand house again. “Everything I show you, you’re welcome to use, at any time. There’s no need to stand on ceremony with me, Dean,” he smiles, and Dean swallows at the use of his first name. How long had it taken him and Castiel to use these with each other? Months. And it had felt sacred and silent, when they finally did.

“You’re very kind.”

“Consider it my welcome to you, in this new and strange country.”

“I’ve been here the better part of a year.”

“A pity for me,” Alastair is unphased, “as I’ve been gone the better part of a year.”

“What were you doing, for all that time?”

“Indulging every desire I could think of,” Alastair answers. “When you’re as wealthy as me, it’s very possible.”

Dean looks away, unsure of how to respond.

“I’m surprised farming in Cornwall is so fruitful,” he finds himself saying, and then blanches, realising his rudeness.

“You will find there’s much more to me than your reckonings.”

Dean’s heard similar words from men, and in their mouths it was a threat.

He’s shown through the house. Room upon room of fine furnishings, dark wood carved into curves and coils, gold gilding on everything which might be gilded. Eventually, Alastair must get the impression that Dean isn’t impressed by any of this, because he cuts the tour short and takes Dean to see his birds. And this is where Dean realises it.

Alastair isn’t only welcoming Dean.

He’s courting him.

They enter a bright and pale conservatory, panelling light all around them. It’s enormous, larger than the dining room or drawing room in the Eyrie, larger than them even put together. The spindly frames between the glass panes and the sheer volume of the place make it feel like a great, oversized cage. It raises pinpricks along Dean’s forearms—to say nothing of what the creatures in this colossal cage do to him.

An enormous, dappled yellow-brown bird sits on a perch closest. Dean steps over uneasily, but he’ll admit, his interest is piqued. The creature wears a gray-black leather hood, but when Alastair steps over to him and removes it, a shock of yellow eyes are revealed which make Dean start back. The bird starts too, its call is ugly and jagged. Dean winces. But the man next to him doesn’t so much as flinch.

“His name is Sting.”

Dean bites the inside of his mouth to stop a smirk. Surely Alastair can see how gratuitous this name is?

 “What is he?” He asks, gesturing to the bird.

“A Honey Buzzard. Hardly the most impressive specimen in my collection,” Alastair answers, and returns the hood to the bird’s head, moving away. Dean follows over, a few yards away, to a much lither, more elegant bird: ruddy with a white chest and black tipped wings.

“This is Mordred.”

“Arthur’s son, and killer,” Dean says, without holding his tongue. He regards the bird’s face as Alastair removes his hood. Yes, it’s something cold and certain. Just what you’d name the slayer of a king.

“You’re well-read, I see,” Alastair’s eyes dash fascinated flame. Dean swallows with a shrug. He and Castiel have been reading Arthurian legend as part of their reading lessons. He doesn’t want to tell Alastair that before he’d met Castiel, he couldn’t so much as make it through a page. What would Sir Alastair say, if he knew that Dean Winchester was taught to read by a shepherd who only came to have a home in November? This shouldn’t be something shameful—Dean shouldn’t be able to feel shame around Sir Alastair. Why should he give a damn what this arrogant, oppressive man thinks of him?

“What is Mordred?” He asks, pressing forward.

“A Marsh Harrier.”

“He’s very beautiful,” Dean’s eyes catch on the black-stained tip of his beak, like it’s been dipped in ink, or darkened, darkened blood.

“I’ve more beautiful and terrible creatures still than him,” Alastair answers.

They press further into the great glass cage. A bird which in its gray and black colouring reminds Dean of a switchblade, named Biter, is apparently another kind of harrier. Its eyes are beady and alarmed when Alastair removes its hood. Dean keeps his fingers clear of the bird. After this, he is introduced to two osprey, whose eyes are keen and sharp, and whose names are Balam and Cerberus. Then there’s an angry eagle owl with severe features and a snapping beak, which Alastair has named Fracture, as though there’s a story behind it. A sparrowhawk called Shade, whose eyes are brighter and less wary and Cathy’s, and who does a good job of reminding Dean of the strangeness of naming all these birds such cruel, harsh things. Yes, they hunt, but Alastair seems a little too preoccupied with the grit and gruel of this. Bobby sits at the other end of this ridiculous spectrum—sometimes he looks at Cathy like she’s his child. Only Cas seems to have it figured out. As with all things. He looks at Cathy like she’s a bird who needs to hunt to eat, and sometimes there’s some beauty in this, but viciousness, too.

It seems strange to think of Cas in a place like this.

But Dean thinks of Cas, always.

“This,” says Alastair, with pride and possession, “is a red kite. They don’t keep as pets. But I keep her. She’s something cruel, you should see her hunt.”

“Cruel?” Dean asks with a frown. “She’s a bird. It’s—it’s what they do.”

“But you aren’t scared of it?” Alastair asks, turning to him with a thrilled smile. “The thought of all that bone and muscle. It doesn’t scare you?”

“No,” Dean shakes his head, frowning uneasily. “I’ve seen worse than a dead rabbit in the talons of a hungry bird.”

She’s beautiful. Not in the cold, removed way of so many of these birds. She is here, immediate, a redraw anger and immediacy in her which Dean understands instinctively, or thinks he does.

And fuck, he’s starting to sound like Bobby.

“What’s her name?” Dean asks.

“Boudica,” Alastair answers, word still wrapped in pride and possession.

“What does that mean?”

“She was a queen. She rebelled and fought the Romans after they killed her husband and daughters.”

“She’s much like birds of prey, then,” Dean says. Finally, a suitable name. Not gratuitous. Only apt. Alastair quirks a frown. Many of Dean’s answers seem to have fascinated him and thrown him off kilter. The fact that they throw him off kilter seems to, in equal parts, fascinate and frustrate him. “She was doing what she had to. Killing, perhaps—but it had its reasons. All your other birds seem to be named for violence’s sake.”

“You don’t think she felt some predatory glee at every Roman life she took?” Alastair asks. In the vast wide space of the great glass bird cage, he has stepped close.

“I don’t think anything heals a wound like her loss,” Dean answers, steadily. “Not even creating more of it.”

“You dislike the names I’ve given my birds?” Alastair asks. His pupils have seeped outwards, blown wide. Is it anger, or interest?

“I think them morbid.”

“I hardly took you for something so cowardly.”

“I take no issue with the blood or bone of birds of prey,” Dean says. “But my indifference cannot match your obsession.”

Alastair looks at him.

“Not yet,” he shakes his head. “But I think you’ll learn.”

Dean takes an unsteady step back. He glances away, around, and his eyes alight on a bluegray bird with bright yellow beak. Alastair smiles when he realises the direction of Dean’s attention.

“This is my prize bird,” he states. “Not the rarest, perhaps, but by every stretch the fastest. The fastest of any bird.”

“What’s his name?”

“Anubis.”

Dean glances to Alastair with a frown.

“God of the Afterlife. Egyptian.”

“You’re fond of your cultural references,” Dean says, looking back at the bird. “And what is he?”

Alastair watches him steadily.

“A peregrine falcon,” he answers.

Dean nods distractedly, but Alastair’s gaze continues to press needles at him.

“It’s funny,” Alastair begins, breaking the quiet. “But for one who seemed to know so much about birds of prey, last night, you certainly seem to have forgotten all of it, now. Perhaps it is only goshawks you are familiar with. One would expect someone who claimed to be such an expert on these animals to know a falcon, when they saw one.”

Dean flushes. His pulse flares.

Alastair will rage and rail and press who knows what charges against Bobby if he realises Bobby has, essentially, stolen the goshawk which belonged to him.

“No,” Dean panics, “I—um—” he thinks of Bobby’s frail health and the comfort that the bird is to him through it all. He thinks of Bobby’s scraped finances because of his ridiculous and reckless decisions for investment, because of the stretch and sprawl of farmland he owns—most of it untenable, only good for grazing, and that which is good for tending, not as valuable as he could be because of a declining market for corn which is undercut by prices from America. He thinks of Alastair’s obvious wealth and power and what could happen if he chose to weild it against Bobby. He remembers blown pupils looking at Dean the night he and Alastair first met, and Castiel’s intuitive jealousy. Heart still a hammer, he speaks. “I—I only like listening to you speak about them. You—you make me forget much of what I know. And I like listening to you speak about them.”

Alastair’s expression changes.

He looks at Dean the way he looks at his birds.

Which is like they’re no longer the predator, he is. Like they no longer belong to the air, but to him.

Dean swallows.

“Would you like to watch them hunt?” Alastair asks. Dean shrugs. He’s seen Cathy hunt. He knows the drill. But he remembers he must pretend to be fascinated by these birds, and everything they represent, in order to cover for Bobby’s indiscretion.

“Yes,” he answers. “I’ll watch.”

It’s past sunset, by the time Dean makes his way back home. Sam and Adam and Bobby have long since made their own way back, but Alastair had kept Dean with promises of more and more fascinating, impossible things. The delight in Alastair’s eyes at the death of rodents by his birds sent something crawling along his skin, but he’ll admit there was beauty in the way the birds caught their prey, and Alastair’s determination to impress him perhaps won out when he showed Dean all the machinery at his disposal. Steam powered inventions for farming, a typewriter, and perhaps most impressively—it certainly strikes childlike wonder through Dean—a north-facing room within which the gears and cogs of an enormous, working clock turn about like metal insects. Within it, circlets and rings of great models of the solar system also turn.

Dean spends at least an hour examining them, in silent wonder. All the while, Alastair watches him, in silence too.

Eventually Dean looks out of the glass face of the clock room, across Alastair’s farm. The great iron seconds hand of the clock ticks idly by.

“You like machinery,” Alastair observes, quietly, behind him.

“Yes,” Dean admits, guarded. But it’s the truth, and there’d be no use lying about it—not after spending so long poring over all of Alastair’s technology; from his typewriter to his steam ploughs to his turning model of the cosmos. Alastair’s gaze presses at him. “I’ve always found it simpler, easier to understand, than people.”

“Now, there’s a sentiment I can sympathise with,” Alastair hums, stepping closer. Dean draws in a deep breath. The air is at once sharp and heavy.

“Oh?” he asks. Alastair watches him.

“I prefer the company of my pets to that of most people. I understand them better.”

Dean falters a frown.

“Understand them?” He repeats.

Projects onto, perhaps, would be a better phrasing.

“You think I don’t?”

Dean has to find his footing again. Something in Alastair is thrillingly threatening.

“Only—they’re birds,” he reasons. “How could we think as they think?”

Alastair quirks a smile at this, eyes searing.

“Yes,” he says, “isn’t that half the fascination, though?”

Dean finds himself agreeing.

“But,” he says, quickly, “you say you prefer the company of your birds to that of people. Yet you seemed pleased enough at the prospect of new neighbours, when I met you. Would you have me believe you’re so antisocial, after all your friendliness?”

“Don’t believe I am so welcoming to everyone, Dean Winchester,” Alastair answers. His voice is low. Dean swallows.

“Oh…”

So, it’s past sunset, by the time Dean makes his way back home. His walk is long and Alastair accompanies him, by insistence, to the Eyrie. But when Alastair leaves him at the door of the farmhouse, Dean walks over the fields and cresting hills to the croft.

When he enters, Castiel is sat, brow set heavily, at the table, carving something. The light of the fire plashes orange across his delicate, petulant features. Madra sits at his feet, and her growl at the sudden intrusion turns into a happy expression as she recognises Dean and approaches amiably. But Castiel doesn’t look up. He continues his whittling.

Dean steps closer to the table.

“Cas,” he says in greeting. Cas is practically pouting. Dean could laugh, but it also makes his heart ache.

“Mr Winchester,” Castiel says in greeting. “I wasn’t expecting you back so early.”

“Now, Castiel,” Dean finds himself saying, and is surprised at the levelness of his tone. Ordinarily, he’d lash out. Ordinarily, lashing out is all he knows. “Those sour words don’t suit someone as sweet as you.”

Castiel huffs, and brushes his wood dusting onto the floor. Dean takes another step closer, around the table.

“What are you carving?” He asks.

Castiel stares at his work and doesn’t answer. Dean smirks.

“You know,” Dean says, “that it would’ve been rude to turn his invitation down. A man so rich, being so friendly. There are laws, social laws, we have to follow—whether we want to or not—”

“And judging by the late hour of your return, you certainly wanted to. Your brothers and Mr Singer were not so late on their return. Were back hours ago, in fact. What were you doing, that ran so late, with that man?”

Cas is like a pulled trigger. Any action, any word from Dean, will illicit the same response.

“He wanted to show me his birds.”

“I’ll bet he did,” Cas glares at his work.

Dean half-snorts, half-huffs in defeat, and sits at the bench beside the shepherd. He picks up a spare piece of wood from the table, and begins to carve, too.

“What are you doing?” Castiel asks with a frown.

“Oh, he speaks,” Dean says, and Castiel turns back to glare and his whittling. Dean softens. “I’m doing what you’re doing,” Dean says. “Carving.”

“You stole my materials, to do so.”

“Would you like compensation?” Dean raises his eyebrows. “A formal apology?”

Castiel’s jaw is locked.

Dean watches.

“It was just wood,” Dean says. “I didn’t think you’d mind. You’ve never complained about sharing with me before.”

“It’s not about that.”

“I guessed,” Dean rolls his eyes.

Castiel sighs. His expression saddens.

“When you wanderer alone for so long, you lose your talent for sharing.”

“You’re not sharing me,” Dean shakes his head. His words are soft and urgent. “I’m yours. All of me. All yours.”

Castiel glances up from his work.

He’s carving a goshawk.

Strange. Dean was carving a nightingale.

“All of me,” Dean says again, “all yours.”

Castiel swallows.

“You think you have chosen to love a good man, Dean,” he says, voice cracking. He’s a man confessing. “You haven’t. I’m not.”

“Not a good man,” Dean shakes his head, the thought of Castiel’s own doubt ridiculous. “The best of men.” Castiel looks unconvinced, but Dean leans closer, threads his fingers through Castiel’s hair, hand cradling the back of his head. “Who has made me better, too.”

Castiel cracks a smile, but is still unconvinced.

“You’re not sharing me,” Dean says again. “You never will. Not with Alastair. Not with anyone. This part of me,” he covers his heart with his free hand, “it’s yours, now. I’m not generous with it. But it’s yours. Will be, always. Believe me?”

“I’ll try.”

Dean smiles.

“I like seeing you jealous.”

“Well, at least one of us is having fun with it.”

Dean laughs. He kisses Castiel. He has to lean across the table and press hard into Castiel for balance. The beak of his unfinished nightingale presses into his palm.

“Now,” Dean says, pulling back, “let’s see what a mess you’ve made of your goshawk.”

“You may be the better craftsman of the two of us, but that doesn’t mean I’m bad,” Cas grumps. Dean beams. He kisses the shepherd again. And again. He kisses the shepherd again.

It doesn’t matter, in any case. Summer in Cornwall is beautiful, Castiel is beautiful, the sea and the cliffs it throws itself against are beautiful—even the sheep are beautiful. This life, Dean realises, is beautiful. Even amid worries for Bobby’s health, even amid laws and technology which made the fruitful production of the farm a subject of great worry, amid all this. Life, life in the Eyrie, is beautiful. Amid summer storms that rattle the roof of the croft, that batter down the thin and wispy window panes, yes, all this.

On such a night of rattling windowpanes they lie together, confined by the four walls of the croft, the sky beyond the spindly pane not like an ordinary sky, but a veil of gray. The day is slipping from them, but clasped between both of their fingers is a flower Cas picked in Ellen’s garden and tried to thread through Dean’s hair, earlier today. Dean’s chest became a bright curl of light. Now the flower sits, twisted between both of their fingers, as they lie chest to chest beside each other, legs tangled like the seaweed on the shore beyond them. So close. Dean feels so close to Castiel but wishes he could be closer still; the moment is so gentle but Dean wants to turn it into air, pure air.

“What’s this flower called?” He asks, and Cas’s breath against his chest is summer wind on skin. Even the tips of his toes dance with pleasure.

“As with every plant, it goes by many names.”

“Why is that?” Dean asks, tipping his head up. Cas presses fore and middle finger to Dean’s forehead and tips his head back against the pillow. He trails the flower against Dean’s lips, and then when his eyes close in pleasure at the act, against his eyelids.

“Names are a conjuring,” he answers. This is barely an answer. Dean tries not to smile and sigh at the shepherd’s, as ever, elusive words. “Name a thing, you bring about different parts in it.”

“Of course,” Dean’s chest expels a flood of air. His lips curl.

“But names are dying; soon there will be one word for everything. And everything will have lost its power.”

Dean opens his eyes.

“That’s sad, Cas.”

“Yes.”

“You really believe it?”

“Yes.”

“Good thing I have so many names for you. You’ll always remain powerful. At least a powerful thing, in my heart.”

“And what are your names for me?” The shepherd asks, eyes softening. He traces the flower against the bare skin of Dean’s shoulders.

“Well, first, I knew you as Mr Novak.”

“You rarely, if ever, gave me the dignity of placing Mr in front of my last name,” Cas points out, and Dean’s limbs curl into laughter. His hands coil, again, around Castiel’s fingers and the flower he holds between them.

“Okay then, I knew you as Novak,” he admits. “And after that, as Castiel. And then, as Cas.”

“That’s only three names.”

“And I call you Sunflower, because of William Blake,” Dean points out.

“This is true.”

“And,” Dean continues, “Gra mo choi—love of my heart. And Chuisle mo chroi, pulse of my heart. And Mo cheol. My music.”

“Ah, and you speak the language of my mother and father well,” Castiel says, and Dean beams at the broadened pupils and flashing irises Dean speaking Irish sets into Cas’s gaze. “But those are a fair few names.”

“And fair names. Both senses—beautiful and well deserved.”

Castiel presses his face into Dean’s neck and smiles. If Dean didn’t know any better, he’d say it was a shy smile. But what does Castiel have to be shy about with him, now?

Is he shy?

Dean beams.

“What’s the name of the flower, then?” He asks. After a moment to recover, Cas looks back up at him.

“Love-in-the-mist,” he says, and Dean looks down at the blue lacework flower lying in their hands and thinks, yes, this suits it.

“And is that what you want to summon, when you name it?” Dean asks. Castiel’s eyes spark.

“Love, in mist,” Castiel says, thoughtfully. He obviously enjoys the thought. “Yes. Love even in trials—for then it’s really love.”

“What do you mean?”

“Love is easy, in summer.”

“I loved you in the winter, too,” Dean frowns, “and with less hope of reward. Being close to you was enough—and had to be.”

“Would you love me even if I were gone?” Cas asks. “Lost, as it were, in the mists?”

The question is a pinprick to Dean’s heart.

“Don’t think to put me through that,” Dean begs. “Please.” Cas looks at him, doesn’t speak. “I would love until it were agony.”

“Love is pain, anyway.”

“You really think that?” Dean asks, and it’s no longer a pinprick at his heart, it’s a tearing.

“All love is pain. Eventually.”

“And what—Love-in-the-mist—the mist is the pain that love has to bear? That love brings about?”

“No, the mist is life,” Cas shakes his head. “But think, Dean. We’ve read Shakespeare’s sonnets, together. What does he say, on it?”

“A lot about sex, masqueraded as something else. Shakespeare was a bounder and a cad.”

Cas wrinkles his nose. Dean laughs.

“Dean,” he grumbles. Dean squeezes at the shepherd’s hands. Cas’s gaze falls on their fingers, and the flower entwined between them.

“He says,” Cas starts, still watching their hands, “Love alters not when it alteration finds. He calls it an ever fixed mark, says that it looks on tempests and is never shaken. That is love in the mist. Even in doubt, love remains.”

Dean looks at the flower. He looks at Cas. His eyes swim in saltwater.

“I love you, Castiel,” he says, and Oh, it’s a tide in him, sweeping through his chest constant and strong as the sea. “My Music. That’s a fixèd mark, too.”

Castiel looks at him. Him looking is enough. Him close is enough.

Him kissing Dean, in answer, deep and rich and slow like he’s drinking from a cup—that is paradise.

Love in the summer, love in the mist, love looking on tempests.

A meteor, a kingfisher, a man returned from a long journey. Static words spoken in the study of a house which might be grand if it were not so run-down, and a shepherd stood as still and as jealous as ice beside Dean. This is the beginning of the spell.

A meteor, a kingfisher, a man returned from a long journey, static words, a static shepherd, and a missing but-not-missing-goshawk.

The spell is an unravelling spell.

Bobby is stood whispering to Elowen in the parlour—he’s been shorter and shorter of breath in the summer heat, and Dean out of concern tends to stand close beside him whenever they are together. The sun is white in the sky; Dean and his shepherd have spent the day apart, Dean in the corn exchange bartering prices to sell which seem to be growing by necessity ever lower and lower. Cas has been in the fields, standing sentinel, as always.

But Bobby stops his whispering to Elowen. Luck doesn’t go Dean’s way; luck doesn’t go his family’s way. He should’ve known. Luck never goes his way. He got months of it, in this place. It wasn’t built to last.

Bobby collapses.

One moment he’s chattering to Elowen through the bars, voice sweet and low, the next his voice slurs, then stops, and then he’s reaching out for the cage and clawing at it for support, but Dean’s so shocked he doesn’t have the time to think or respond, the panic freezes him, and he kicks himself because reflexes are supposed to be what he’s good at, if nothing else. And there really is very little else. Bobby topples to the floor, and brings Elowen’s cage with him, and Elowen lets out a panicked call, and Dean’s panic must be audible, too, because Jody comes running into the room. But Dean can’t hear whatever sounds of panic he must be making or have made; in his ears is a ringing which refuses to pass, even while Jody is pricking him with questions and instructions, Dean’s hands are shaking and white noise has filled his ears, the hum of a thousand wasps.

Bobby’s right leg is spasming.

Dean’s mouth is dry. His eyes are wet, though. Eventually, Jody gets him to pick up Elowen’s birdcage and check her over, because apparently that’s the only thing he’s capable of, right now. Looking after a fucking bird while Bobby’s life hangs in flux. Again, he kicks himself for being so useless in a time of crisis. Isn’t crisis what Dean is good at? All his life he’s been trained to care, to see to the needs of everyone around them no matter how dire the circumstance, how scarce their resources. He’s worked farms while nursing a broken arm, he’s caught jobs while recovering from broken ribs and he’s been paid by wealthy older women for the pleasure of his company to make them feel less lonely and more attractive. He’s won fights with men twice the size of him, even as a teen. He’s fended for himself, for his brother, even for his father—God rest his soul, and all that shit. He’s supposed to be reliable. He’s supposed to be at the beck and call of everyone and anyone who might need him.

And Bobby needed him, and Dean panicked, and was nothing.

Dean’s breath won’t stop rattling.

Ellen comes in and Jody tells her to get Dean a warm drink—she adds, as Ellen turns quickly to the door, she ought to add a shot of brandy to it, too, or something similar. Ellen nods and paces out again. The wasps don’t stop buzzing around Dean’s skull.

He feels like he did when he first arrived in this place. Not—it’s—like he’s adrift. Anchorless.

“I need you to help me pick him up,” Jody says, turning to him. “Can you handle that? Dean?”

Dean blinks, and floods air into his chest. He can’t feel the hands he lays on Bobby to heave him upright.

“Can you handle helping him up the stairs with me?” Jody asks. “To his room? Or we could lie him down here.”

“Maybe—maybe it’d be better, if we didn’t move him too much, yet.”

Dean says it, and it’s half true. But he’s still feeling weak, feverishly so, and shaken, and furious with himself at not being more constant and reliable. Thinking of things constant and reliable, he thinks of Castiel. Rattled by panic and near catastrophe, he wants Cas here to stand beside him.

Jody seems to agree with his idea, anyway, and they carry Bobby over to one of the pale blue chaises in the room as Dean’s hands grow clammy and cold. At least he can feel them now. Bobby has stopped twitching by the time Ellen brings in a hot drink for Dean and a stiff one for Bobby. But Bobby can’t seem to drink it.

“We should call the doctor,” Dean glances worriedly to Jody, whose face twists with worry.

“Yes, but—he’s been sick for some time, Dean. What more will he say?”

“He’ll say something, dammit, I’ll make sure he does—tell him to bring all his books, I don’t care—I’ll figure this shit out with him, if I have to—”

“Calm down—”

“Don’t tell me to calm down!”

Dean wants to scream. His eyes are made venom with tears.

The sound of Adam closing the front door and humming down the hallway cuts him out of his fury and spite.

“Don’t let him in,” Dean looks up at Ellen quickly, blanched with panic. “Don’t let him see this.”

To her credit, Ellen is fast. In a moment she’s out of the room, closing the door behind her and hurrying Adam to the kitchen to tell her about his day and, she promises, feed him jam toast. Their voices sound down the hall again, toward the kitchen. She shuts the door firmly. Dean swallows and turns back to Bobby, who’s still slurring his speech.

“We’re gonna have to move him, eventually,” Jody says. “He can’t just lie down here forever. He needs bedrest.”

“And how the hell do you know what he needs?” Dean snarls. Jody prickles. People lose their patience with Dean when he gets angry with them. He hasn’t been angry, real angry, this kid of angry in months. Something in Cas has softened him, maybe the promise that Dean’s performance of responsibility and culpability isn’t necessary with him. But now Dean’s responsible again, and the weight of the world comes reeling back down onto his shoulders—he should’ve know it would. It comes reeling back down as inevitable as the force of gravity itself. And so does all of his forgotten rage.

When Adam is out of the house again, they take Bobby upstairs to his room. He can’t walk unsupported, let alone climb the stairs. His speech is slurred and disordered, his thoughts seem to sprawl and run awry. Dean sits by his bed and makes sure he drinks what Ellen brings him, this time—a crush of pills dissolved in warm water which the doctor prescribed him, months ago. A doctor in a small village on the fringes of a small country? Dean has no faith in it. But he pretends to, for Bobby’s sake—there must be something in belief, right? A kind of willpower for healing?

So Dean encourages Bobby to drink it, and watches as he does so. He’s slow, but gets it down.

And Dean is a flood of fear.

“Thanks for watching over me, boy,” Bobby huffs as Dean pulls his sheets over his chest when the drink is finished. “I don’t need it. But thanks.”

Dean recognises himself in Bobby’s grumpy and defensive words of love.

“Right,” he murmurs in reply. “Really, Bobby. It’s no problem. It’s just for my peace of mind. I know you don’t need it.”

“I’m fine,” Bobby says, and Dean makes a noise of agreement.

“Yes, completely,” he nods.

“Just had a funny turn.”

“Everyone has them,” Dean replies.

“Probably because I drank too much, last night.”

“That must be it,” Dean says, and tugs at Bobby’s pillow so that it lies a little straighter beneath his head.

“Well, lesson learnt,” Bobby continues with a huff. “I won’t be doing that again.”

“Yes, that’s sensible.”

“But everyone gets this way, sometimes, after drinking.”

“Yes,” Dean nods. “Everyone.”

He can’t swallow.

“Sorry for scaring you, though, son,” Bobby huffs. “Didn’t want to do that. Didn’t ever want to do that.”

Dean can’t see for tears, but they won’t fall onto his cheeks. They refuse. Stubborn as him. Stubborn as Bobby.

“No,” he says. And then, “it’s fine. I was being—foolish. Should’ve known it was nothing.”

“Yes,” Bobby agrees. “But I didn’t mean to scare you. Didn’t ever want to do that.”

He repeats this. He repeats this several times.

He doesn’t seem to realise that he’s repeated it several times.

When Dean’s on the verge of tears again, Bobby says something new.

“But you worry too much, boy. You’ll think yourself into your own grave, if you’re not careful.”

“You know, Bobby, I’m not a boy anymore,” Dean laughs, heart pricking. Bobby doesn’t seem to hear him.

“I never had that problem. That’s the problem of intelligent people,” Bobby laughs. “You’re a clever boy.”

“I think you’re thinking of Sam, there,” Dean shakes his head. Bobby looks at him and seems, for the first time in a good ten minutes, truly present, again.

“Did I stutter?” His eyes are harsh. “I’m thinking of you, Dean.”

Chapter Text

That evening he sits in the Croft, jaw clamped shut and chest like a vice. Cas works around him and his slouched, angry form at the table, the shepherd doing everything and not once asking Dean for help. If he did, it’d make Dean angry. The fact that he doesn’t makes Dean angry. He’s making something out of the fish he and Dean caught, the day before. But Dean doesn’t look up. Only glares at the table, angry at the fates who all his life have trailed after him with strokes of bad luck, with misfortune, with tragedy and catastrophe. Yes, angry with the fates though more angry with himself for believing he’d managed to run from them, that he’d left them somewhere, somehow in America.

But no. They followed him, they found him. They always would. It took them a while to navigate their way across the toss of the Atlantic, maybe they took a few wrong turns back there, but they’ve arrived now, and what an entrance they made, too.

Cas sets down a drink of cider in front of him. Dean pushes it away. Cas sighs.

“What?” Dean snaps his gaze up at the shepherd. Cas watches him dispassionately.

“Nothing,” he answers.

“That’s what I thought.”

Dean’s getting angrier. Angry at himself, too, for his cold and bitter words to the softest and sweetest thing in his life. But he cant’s stop. He’s slipping down muddy hills in the dark.

His breath comes in hard. The sea on the cliffs below racks against the rocks. The sounds reach the croft and match the pulse of his thoughts.

“Contrary to what you seem to believe, I don’t enjoy your bitten words,” Castiel says, brow furrowed. He lays the table around the inconvenience that Dean, sitting static and stone-angry at the table, poses.

Dean doesn’t care. Bobby called him son today and Dean didn’t resent it like he once would have, because Dean always wanted a father he could care for without resentment or fear, and now he has it, and now he’s losing it. Bobby called him boy today and Dean didn’t complain like he once would have, because Dean has never been allowed to be a boy and has always wanted to be one and has always feared and loved the vulnerability it poses, inherently, the vulnerability of being and recognising yourself as a child. And being recognised as one.

Cas brings the food over from the fire. He lays it on the table, serves Dean, and then himself. Even him passing a plate full of food has Dean reeling with resentment because—it doesn’t make sense, and he’s a fool, but the fact that Cas would care for him, through these gestures and more, even when he’s being like this… Dean doesn’t deserve it. Cas doesn’t deserve to love a thing like this. Not something as angry and jagged as Dean. Dean thought Cas had washed at his harsh, sharp edges like the sea against cliff-faces. Perhaps he hadn’t. Yes, yes, he’s angry at Castiel, and angry that Castiel could love something as undeserving as him. Angry that even Cas’s love hasn’t fixed him yet. Angry that in spite of that, Cas’s love has still changed him.

The shepherd sits down and says his grace quietly, not clear like he usually does, before he begins to eat. Slowly, miserably, Dean does the same.

On the table, Cas has laid a vase of flowers. Vase is a generous term: it’s a cup with the handle chipped off from when Sam was round for his lessons on the fiddle, and knocked it over by accident. Cas had blinked calmly at all his apologies and reassured him the cup was no thing of great importance. Cas is always this—calm, constant, reassuring. And yet Dean, sat opposite him now, feels such anger and such fear at losing him because of this anger. Like water through a cupped hand.

In the vase, with water, is a bunch of the flowers which Dean and Castiel had clasped between them, just earlier this week. Love-in-the-mist. Dean swallows sadly. Love-in-the-mist—and what a name for it. Cas was right, as perhaps he always is, in his prophetic rambling. Naming is a summoning.

That looks on tempests and is never shaken.

His love looks nothing like this.

He eats silently.

Even his love is broken and bad.

After several minutes of disjointed silence, the shepherd speaks again.

“How did Adam fare with the news?”

Dean shakes his head, jaw tightening.

“We haven’t told him.”

“What?” Castiel blinks with a frown. “Why not?”

“On my instruction,” Dean hardens, and leans forward. He waits for the challenge to come like a curled fist. Castiel’s gaze is impatient. The amber candlelight flickers at his features.

“And I want to know why.”

“The news would distress him.”

“It’ll distress him more, when he finds out it’s being kept secret from him.”

Cas’s words are measured and reasonable. But Dean’s frown is a venomous twist which hardens all of his thoughts and words. He can’t stop it. He can’t stop his anger. It’s been like this, ever since—ever since—

“You’d tell me how to conduct my family affairs?”

“I’d advise you to use your head in this matter. Now’s hardly the time for your hotheadedness, or protective impulsivity—”

“Excuse me?”

“Was I unclear?”

Dean glares. Cas watches him, steadily, back, with a granite gaze.

“He’ll find out eventually,” Castiel reasons, not budging. “Better you give him the dignity of telling him, than he finds out, and finds that you have kept it from him.”

“He’s just a child.”

“When we first met, you spent half your time complaining that he didn’t behave enough like an adult.”

“So I cannot do anything right, in your eyes?”

“Now you know that’s not what I was saying,” Castiel drops his knife and fork with a gentle clatter on the table.

“You’re instructing me on how to handle my family matters.”

Perhaps it’s the way Dean emphasises my. He knows—or should have remembered—the knot and thorn of Castiel’s sense of belonging in any place, the spear the word family might set in his heart, the wonder he has at feeling as though, perhaps, this place, the Eyrie, is a place in which he belongs. And here Dean is, implying that he doesn’t.

“I’d never dream of meddling where I wasn’t wanted,” Cas’s expression becomes a flat plane. Dean instinctively reaches out across the table, a twitch of a movement, but Cas withdraws his hand from reach.

Dean stares at the space between them.

“I didn’t mean that.”

“I know what you meant.”

“I meant that—”

“I knew what you meant,” Cas repeats. He takes a long drink of his cider. Dean hates his own broken love. But he doesn’t know how to fix it. He never does. He can’t fix Bobby, can’t even find a name for the rot which eats at him, can’t afford to take him to a doctor who could. He can’t fix his relationship with Adam, try as he might—too many bitten words and bitter comments, now the boy fears him even if he’s glad Dean doesn’t so obviously resent him any more. It’s just like how it was with Dean and John, except now Dean is John, and Adam is…

And he can’t repair the space between him and Castiel, now. He’ll try to, though. He’s spent his whole life trying to fix things. Even his dad.

“When—when you first arrived here,” Dean finds himself blurting out, “I hated you for the way that everyone in the Eyrie seemed to love you. I’ve—I’ve always felt like I had to be so much to so many people, just to be worth the effort of their love—and there you were, gaining it so effortlessly.”

“You don’t need to do this, Dean—”

“—I mean it,” Dean says, quickly. “I—I wanted to fit in so badly, and you just seemed to—”

“You’re loved by them.”

“Well so are you, dammit,” Dean growls, and Cas cocks his head.

“And you,” Castiel says, leaning forward, “believing you might not, could ever not, be worth the effort of someone else’s love?”

Dean’s jaw clenches. He looks down.

“That’s not what we’re talking about.”

“No,” Castiel admits. “We were talking about you not telling Adam that the man who’s become a father to him is in a state of unknowable, and it would seem swiftly declining health.”

“He knows that,” Dean grumbles.

“But not the latest turn.”

Dean balls his fists.

“We won’t agree on this.”

“I can already tell.”

“You won’t tell him.”

Cas looks at him. Cocks his head.

“Is that an order?” He asks.

Dean hardens.

“Matter of fact, it is.”

Cas’s eyes darken. Dean’s fingertips shudder lightning.

“He has a right to know.”

“He’s my brother. Not yours.”

“Your brother?” Castiel repeats. “Until a few months ago, you refused to call him anything other than step-brother, half-brother, bastard brother.”

Dean muscles coil. He leans forward. This comment has come, barbed, and too soon after the raw wound of Dean’s thoughts that Adam will never trust or love him as he trusts and loves Sam, because of Dean’s hardened anger and bitterness towards him.

“It’s none of your business, and who’s to say I didn’t care for him, back then? I fed him, I clothed him, I worked like a dog to support him, so he and Sammy wouldn’t have to live like I did! Who gives a shit if I resented him, sometimes? It was John who—”

“He was a child,” Castiel states.

“And he still is! That’s my point!”

“You were happy not to treat him like one, then, and blame it on his father, as if his own existence were something he could help.”

“You step beyond your post,” Dean snarls out. Cas’s eyes are two flashes across the table, but his expression and words remain measured.

“Oh,” he says, “forgive me.” He cocks his head. Expression still, his eyes are stormy. “I forgot, for a moment, that I was nothing more than a servant, to you.”

Dean swallows thickly. There’s venom in his veins. He knows he should soothe it, before he thinks to speak. He doesn’t.

“Don’t forget again.”

Castiel rises.

He picks up Dean’s plate.

Dean can’t hear anything, everything is a white chiming and blood rushing in his ears.

“I won’t,” the shepherd promises. He clears the table. Dean watches, terrified. “Don’t let me keep you, Mr Winchester,” he says. “I know that it’s a cold walk back.”

And it is, without the shepherd to warm the night, by his side. When he enters the Eyrie, everything is stillness, and for midsummer, his fingers have gone surprisingly numb from the journey from the Croft to here. He’s used to Cas taking this journey with him. He’s increasingly been used to not making it at all—sharing Cas’s bed like he belongs there, like it’s his bed, too. That tiny space never once felt tiny in the space of Cas’s arms.

His head burns with the words they shared tonight. His pulse has flared, hard, and won’t dim or soften. He wants to shout or kick but is shocked out of doing either of these things by the sound of whispering in the parlour.

Entering, he’s met by the sight of Bobby, unsteady, wavering on both his canes as he leans forward to speak to Elowen. He doesn’t hear Dean entering, he’s so absorbed in his conversation with the bird.

“Didn’t mean to frighten you today, girl. But my Dean took care of you, didn’t he? Yes, Jody told me. See, he’s a good boy. I told you that.”

His words waver the same as he does on his feet, with the uneven footing of the delirious—he needs sleep, or rest—at the very least, bed—but here he is, reassuring his fucking bird that everything will be okay. Dean sighs, and takes a step forward.

“Bobby,” he says, and the older man starts. “You were instructed bedrest, and here you are, past midnight, muttering to a nightingale.”

Bobby glances at him gruffly.

“She was scared.”

“How could you tell?” Dean asks, and almost laughs with how ridiculous the old man is being. “You couldn’t see her, until you came down here. You should’ve been upstairs.”

“I knew she would be,” Bobby answers, looking petulant.

“She looks fine to me,” Dean takes a step closer, glancing at the bird in her gilded cage. Yes, more than fine. Her feathers aren’t even bent from the topple her cage took, today.

“Because I’ve just comforted her,” Bobby answers with an easy grumpiness, and Dean huffs. Yes, of course he’d say this. And what response can Dean give?

“Well, thank you. Now she’s settled, what about bed?”

Bobby glowers, but accepts Dean’s arm when it’s offered to help him out of the bluedark room and back toward his bed. Dean has hold of one of Bobby’s sticks, Bobby uses the other to support his steps. Dean holds a candle and holder in his other hand, lighting their way in a light as unsteady as Bobby’s footfalls.

“How did you get down here, anyway?” Dean asks, shaking his head.

“Slowly,” Bobby grumbles, and yes, it seems it. They haven’t yet reached the first step.

“You’re an impossible man,” Dean sighs. Bobby glances at him.

“I often think the same of you.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m not joking,” Bobby shakes his head. He seems more present than he did before. He huffs as he scales the stares, leaning hard on Dean for support as he does. His words are punctuated by the effort to climb up and are uneven with every footfall. “When you first arrived here, and insisted on doing a full day’s work, even though there was no call to. I never asked. You just did it. What, you thought you had to earn your keep? Prove yourself? What was it?” He asks. Dean swallows. There’s a knife at his throat.

“Somethin’ like that,” he admits, eventually. They’re only halfway up the stairs. This is going to be a long journey.

“Ridiculous,” Bobby shakes his head. “You should’ve known. I’m an old man, Dean. And a lonely one. You should’ve known. All my birds. All my ridiculous fucking birds. You think they ever had to do a day’s work, to stay here?”

Dean huffs, but something in it is sad. No, the birds cause more work than they could ever, possibly, get done. Even Cathy seems to eat more game than she catches.

“No,” he admits. “Keeping them is enough of a task for at least two servants.”

“I know you think it foolish,” Bobby grumps, heaving up another step. Dean’s about to protest at this accusation, but Bobby gives him a look which silences him. “I know you think it foolish, think me a fool for keeping them. But one day you’ll learn. I hope you’re never as lonely as me—no, I mean I hope you don’t have to learn this that way. Things don’t have to be useful, to be loved.” Another step. And another. He stops, and glances at Dean. “You included.”

Dean stops. He can’t swallow. He looks away. He feels helpless again.

But Bobby is telling him it’s okay.

“But I want to help.”

“I know, child,” Bobby says, softly.

“Not to earn my keep—that’s not why I want to help—”

“I know.”

“Not this time, at least—”

“I know.”

They’ve reached the top of the stairs.

Bobby seems to be leading and directing Dean, now. He pants all the way to his room and Dean walks, hopelessly, beside him.

Dean opens Bobby’s bedroom door and they slowly approach his bed.

“One thing you can do for me, Dean?” Bobby asks, glancing at him.

“Anything,” Dean says.

“Look after the birds,” Bobby says, easing himself slowly into bed. Dean helps.

“Of—of course,” Dean falters, heart stammering.

“And your brothers,” Bobby adds.

“I mean—” when wouldn’t Dean do that?

“The birds, and your brothers.”

“In no particular order?” Dean jokes, but Bobby doesn’t seem to hear it.

“And Ellen, too. And Jo. Always Jo. She’s… And Mick. He might not seem like he needs it, but… Take care of them.” Dean can’t swallow. “Yes, take care of them,” Bobby nods to himself. “You’re good at taking care of things.”

“I’ll take care of you, too,” Dean says, eyes stung. The words can barely creak and crackle out of his throat. “I promise—I’ll take care of you, too—”

“I know, son.”

“I promise—”

“Why did you come in, so late?” Bobby asks, suddenly present again.

“Um—” Dean stammers. Should he tell the truth? Something close to it? “—I was with Cas. We—we had a falling out. No—” he corrects himself—"a discussion. Heated.”

“Now, child. No need for that,” Bobby shakes his head, giving Dean a longsuffering look. “Thought you were finished with all that.”

“I thought I was, too,” Dean admits.

“No need for that,” Bobby repeats. “He’s a good man. A good shepherd. We can’t afford to lose him. Not with the price of grain looking as poor as it is.”

“I know.”

“No, no need for that,” Bobby says again. Dean pulls the sheets over the older man. He feels as though his mouth has been stitched up with sorrow. “Don’t drive him away. Besides, who will take care of Cathy? She doesn’t trust easily.”

And who will take care of Dean? Neither does he.

“I promise,” Dean says. “But Bobby—” He doesn’t know what to say. He swallows. “You’re fine. You’re gonna be fine. Okay? No need to talk like this,” he shakes his head, and his hand squeezes bobby;s right shoulder. “We’ll fix it.” A beat of silence. Bobby looks at him, Dean can’t tell if it’s with sadness or with patience. “I promise.” Bobby’s hand slides over his hand. He doesn’t reply. He’s asleep in the next moment.

…

The next day is packed to its edges for Dean.

He wakes early and makes dough for the day’s bread for Ellen. She’ll be busy taking care of Bobby and if he can take one thing off her list, he will. Besides, she’s often complaining of how her arms ache from the kneading in the early mornings. He covers the dough and leaves it to rise on the windowsill.

Then it’s outside, milk the cows, collect the eggs, back inside to drop these off in the kitchen—Ellen has by now woken and come downstairs to find her most arduous morning task done for her, and she’s gushing thanks at Dean and kissing his forehead and he’s wriggling out of her arms with heated cheeks and the insistence that he hasn’t got time, even for her thanks.

“Aren’t you having breakfast—” Ellen tries, but Dean shakes his head quickly.

“I’m not hungry.”

This is true.

“Dean—”

When he was younger, in times of crisis, times like this, he didn’t eat, either. He didn’t get to. Missing a meal meant Sam got another meal—though he had to conceal that he wasn’t eating, as Sam got older and smarter. Missing a meal meant John was less likely to call him any combination of greedy, selfish, and thoughtless.

“I’ve got a lot to do,” he says, spinning on his heel to face her even as he walks, backwards, out of the room and back down the hall. But he still makes time to give the birds, all the ridiculous fucking birds, their breakfast, and whisper a warm hello to Elowen, brushing her tawny front with the back of his forefinger. She’s used to this from Bobby. And Dean promised to look after the birds, last night. He’s just doing his duty.

He knows why he’s staying busy. It’s not only to give Bobby peace of mind, not only to lessen Ellen and Jody’s load, not only to stop the farm grinding to a halt while Bobby recovers from his small slip of health.

If Dean stops and thinks about his fight with Castiel too long, his head will turn into a storm.

He rides into town, next. Calls upon the doctor. It’s still early, very early, when he rides out from the farm: the sun hovers low on the horizon and the fields are still hazy with dew. The light will turn dryer, brighter, later—but for now it’s dimmed and misted with morning. His horse’s hooves thud thickly against the dampened grass and set the dust of the dirt road pillowing about.

In town, not Porthgwarra but further in St. Levan—and he’ll travel to Plymouth if he must—he bangs hard upon the doctor’s door until a man emerges, blear-eyed, frustrated at Dean’s loud desperation, and harried.

But they’re riding back to the Eyrie together not ten minutes later, and Dean is taking him up to Bobby’s room and waiting outside the door, tilling around restlessly before he grows frustrated and impatient with all of the doctor’s examinations and remembers he was to ship grain to the mill before the afternoon, and it’s near eleven.

When he’s returned from this errand, and he made it only just on time, the doctor is descending the peeling painted stairs with a slow resignation. Dean’s insides clench.

He steps through the doorway and closes the front door behind him, which makes the doctor look up. At the foot of the stairs, Dean approaches him.

“So—so what’s your diagnosis?”

The doctor shakes his head with a sigh.

“There is no diagnosis.”

“The hell does that mean?”

“It means there is no diagnosis,” the doctor repeats, looking hard at Dean in answer to his bitten words and harsh language. “I have no answer for what has befallen Mr Singer.”

“No answer, no idea?” Dean asks, hopeless.

Dean remembers his father’s response to when, at fifteen, his arm was caught in a farm machine.

Dean had been so afraid—afraid of what would happen when he got home, when he had to tell John, when John saw the bound up arm and understood what it meant. Afraid of what would happen to their family while Dean couldn’t work, afraid of how often Sammy would be able to eat and whether he would have to begin working as a farm hand, instead of Dean.

And now, what will happen if Bobby’s health gets worse, if it crumbles further, if he—

“I’m sorry.” The doctors words barely sound in Dean’s ears.

It’ll only take two months to heal—I’m sorry—

“You’re sorry?” Dean repeats, numbly.

You’re sorry? John had spat, words loose in his mouth with alcohol.

“It’s all I can say,” the doctor answers solemnly.

I don’t know what else to say—Dean had trembled out his words, terror, it had turned his blood to ice—it was an accident—it’s only two months, and then I’ll be—

There was a shatter as John’s bottle hit the wall and splintered. He’d wrenched Dean close and spat

‘Only’ two months? And how are we meant to eat until then?!

This had riled Dean’s system, spiked Dean’s blood, sent it soaring for a moment of anesthetised hotheaded courage.

Why don’t you feed us, father?

John’s hand was on him like a vice.

What?

His voice had been a low hiss, dangerous.

“All you can say,” Dean repeats to the doctor, numbly.

But Dean had been brave, or perhaps just foolhardy, and the pain in his broken arm and his pain in his unbroken arm that John’s hand was on like a locked jaw must have stopped the blood flowing properly to his head, because of how he dug his heels in, next.

I said, why don’t you feed us, father?

Dean had repeated the words evenly, but the next moment cried out in pain, acute pain, as John with a drunken and hardened fury twisted hard at Dean’s unbroken arm to the point his bones seemed to scream within it.

I asked, how do you intend to feed us?

The image was there, and was it intentional? How would Dean feed his family with two broken arms?

I’ll—I’ll find a way, I swear—I’m sorry!

 “Apart from: I’m sorry,” the doctor answers. “And give him bed rest—I’ve medicines for muscle support, but I don’t think that’s Mr Singer’s problem, only a symptom—”

“You don’t think,” Dean repeats. The buzzing is back in his ears. White chiming. He feels giddy.

I swear I’ll find a way—

You will, John had spat. You will.

The ethanol in his breath had burned Dean’s nostrils.

I promise! I’m sorry, papa, I’m—You’re hurting me—

He’d resorted to the name he’d given his father when his mother was still around. Alive. Something tender because Dean was so afraid he felt like a little child again, and felt angry at himself for feeling like a little child again. Perhaps John would have respected him more if he’d been less like a child, less pathetic at that moment, and more like a man. Perhaps John would have respected him if he’d stuck up for himself. Or perhaps John would have broken his arm.

“As I’ve said. His symptoms are nothing like what I’ve seen before. I’ll search through my books, but,” the doctor looks doubtful. “I don’t think there’s anything more that we can do. Treat the symptoms, not the condition. That’s all we have.”

All he has? Bobby is dying. And the doctor is already settling for scanning through a few old dusty books and giving Bobby a few stiff drinks?

What good are you, Dean! If you can’t work—is this my thanks for raising you? I made you. The hell are you good for? The fuck is it you’re good for?

“Then what good are you—” Dean stammers out, anger and fear and confusion to the doctor, his head clouded. “What do you do—what do you do, if it isn’t make people better? The hell are you good for? The hell are you even good for?!”

The doctor straightens up.

The chiming in Dean’s head stops. His breath is torn.

“—Sorry,” he manages, and guilt starts to tread the ridges of his mind.

“My bill will be sent to you directly. If you’d like,” he hesitates, then continues, “I can treat Mr Singer’s symptoms. No, that will not stop the development of his condition. Hopefully, it might slow it.”

Dean looks down. He can’t feel his hands. His left arm, the one he broke when he was fifteen, aches. But so does the one his father took a hold of in his fury.

His head is a spin for the rest of the day, which he seems to float through in a dull, feverish pulse. He cuts and binds hay in the late afternoon and is finished just as the sun begins to set beyond the sea. He watches it catch upon the waves and wipes the beading sweat from his brow with his forearm.

The shepherd’s voice beside him makes him jump.

“There you are,” he says, and says it softly, like it’s a pleasure, like seeing Dean could ever be a pleasure, something happy or even close to something good.

After recovering himself from his shock, Dean confirms that yes, here he is.

“Everyone’s been looking for you, it feels like all day,” Novak says, and Dean swallows uneasily. The heat has been dry all day, but softens as the day wanes.

“What? Why?”

The shepherd’s eyes glint in the dying sunlight.

“I think they’ve been worried about you.”

Dean shifts defensively on his feet.

“But why?”

Castiel laughs.

“Because they’ve been watching you work like a dog, the full day. Before sunrise, and now past sunset. Not only Bobby’s work as well as your own, but Ellen’s too, it seems? You might like to leave some errands for the rest of us, Dean. Idle hands, and what have you.”

“If I keep busy, I haven’t the time to worry, or—”

Dean catches himself. Castiel cocks his head.

“Or…?” He invites. Dean sighs.

“Say things I regret,” he finishes. Cas softens like the sky at twilight.

“You’re prone to that, are you?” He asks. Dean looks away, back out across the sea, the waves made dark by the dying light.

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” he admits. He glances back at Cas.

“Try me.”

He’s so beautiful. The wind licks at his dark hair and his features, weathered by years of work in the beat of the sun, are caressed by shadow by its receding light. He’s so beautiful. And so patient.

“Sometimes I worry how long it’ll be, before people stop putting up with it…”

Cas watches him a moment. If Dean wants reassurance, he isn’t given it.

“With all that anger in you, Dean, sometimes I worry your heart’s a full house.”

Dean swallows, eyes salt-stung. He shakes his head, watching Cas desperately.

It’s—it’s not—or, it is, but Dean doesn’t want it to be. He can’t speak, he’s not good at this, he can’t scrape the words together from inside of him. Yes, anger has his heart a full house, often, but mostly, Dean’s heart is full of Cas.

“You didn’t like it when I disagreed with you, about Adam,” Cas states. Dean swallows again, and again, thinks of how terrible he is at speaking what he feels, and not lashing out or biting hurt in anger.

“Looking after my brothers—that’s the one thing I haven’t fucked up, completely. Only thing my father told me to do, that I managed to do: raised Sammy, kept him safe, saw him educated. John never asked for that, education I mean—but he wanted him safe. And I always made sure he was. So yeah—my brothers, only thing I haven’t fucked up. Came pretty close with Adam—nearly shut him out, definitely hurt him.” Castiel looks at him sadly as he speaks. “I know—I know things still aren’t right, with me and him. I know I broke something there. Maybe they’ll never be right, and I can’t fix that. But I can keep him safe, and happy. And I’ll be damned if I fail that task.”

“Perhaps, but you can’t keep the world from turning around him,” Cas states, like it’s a reminder, and not completely nonsensical.

“The hell does that mean?” Dean asks.

“Not everything is happy,” Cas answers, gently. “Not everything is safe.”

Dean hardens.

“I know that, better than most.”

“You seem to live in willful ignorance of it, at least with respect to your brothers.”

Dean looks out at the sea again.

“When I was a boy, and John took to taking me and my brother from one end of Kansas to another, never finding rest, I used to tell Sam stories, that we were going on adventures, that our father was searching for buried treasure to make us rich and able to live like kings. That we would, one day. We’d never stay in a place longer than a few months, at least in the first years after my mother died. How can a child understand that? So I’d make stories for him—tell him that father was chasing bandits, on the run from pirates, and when he came home drunk I’d hide Sam away and tell him our father was celebrating winning another battle with them, but he was tired and Sam should let him have some time alone. He was only a child—”

“And so were you,” Castiel points out, voice breaking like the waves. Dean frowns and swallows and shakes his head. No, Cas—Cas doesn’t understand, he isn’t understanding—

“I was the oldest, I was older than him—”

“You were what, seven? Younger?”

“I was old enough—”

“And how long did you continue telling these stories? Until you were twelve, thirteen?”

“Yes, perhaps,” Dean blinks with a shrug, unsure of what Cas is driving at.

“So Sam was past the age that you were when you’d begun the telling, by the time you finished.”

Dean stops.

“I mean—”

“So your spent what ought to have been your childhood, preserving that of your brother’s.”

“Stop it,” Dean raises his voice. “Stop—stop it!”

Castiel, to his credit, does. Dean shakes his head, heart breaking.

“I don’t like it when you do that,” he says. Castiel looks sorry.

“Then I’ll stop.”

“I’m under no illusions,” Dean tries, “no illusions that I had an easy upbringing, or that things were as they should have been. But you know better than most. You said it, one night in the Croft. Tragedy rarely strikes once, and only once. My father was a broken man, when my mother died—”

“Yes, and left a child to pick up the pieces. His child.”

“I don’t—” Dean tries, “I don’t make excuses for him. But he was hurt—”

“And you weren’t?” Castiel raises his eyebrows.

“And I think,” Dean says, speaking over Castiel, “what would I do, if I were in his position? If—if I lost you—I don’t like to think about it, but—but what if I lost you, in that way. What kind of man would I become? A ghost of myself, I’m sure. I’m more myself, with you. A version of me I thought I’d lost. I’d lose that, if I lost you.”

“No,” Castiel says, and steps closer over the sun-baked, ploughed land. “You’d still be good, Dean Winchester. You’ll always be good.”

Dean huffs, unconvinced.

“I wanted to ask,” Castiel takes a gentle hold of his wrists. Dean knows he only does this because out in the field, they are so secluded, and the light is so low. “Won’t you come for dinner?”

Dean paws at the ground.

“Considering our spat last night, I wasn’t sure if the invitation was still standing.”

“I’ve just told you that it is,” Castiel answers. Dean smiles, heart raw.

“I’ve nothing to bring, no wine, not even bread. Nothing to offer in return.”

Cas’s hand around his wrist flexes, squeezes softly.

“I’ve told you already, in song no less, that I need nothing in return. Only you. Always only you.”

Dean looks at him.

“Well, you have that.”

Cas smiles.

“It’s rare, you talk about your mother.”

“It hurts,” Dean shrugs, looking down. Cas’s thumb is on his chin, tilting his head back up.

“Good things often do,” he answers. He steps closer. “Good things often do.”

Yes, good things often do. Dean’s learnt this all his life, since the death of his mother, and he continues learning it, now.

Hearing of the turn Bobby’s health has taken, Alastair visits again—Dean has to lead him quickly away from the direction of the study, where Cathy the stolen goshawk sits unsuspectingly—and toward to parlour. He sends Jo to get Bobby, wherever he is—perhaps up in his room, perhaps sitting in the courtyard outside the kitchen, talking with the hens.

Alastair steps slowly about the center of the parlour while they wait, orbiting something invisible, turning on a pivot. He looks at the birds with a sweeping and dismissive gaze before his eyes settle on Elowen. Dean prickles instinctively. His hand at his side twitches.

“That’s—” he says, before he can cut himself off, and Alastair’s eyes flick up to him. “Elowen,” he finishes. Alastair cocks his head.

“Odd name,” he comments. He glances at Dean, and a snakesmile twists at his lips. “Well, you spend so much time complaining of the names I give my birds,” he says, at Dean’s raised eyebrows. “What do you think of this one?”

Dean swallows.

“It means Elm tree, in Cornish, and she was found beneath one—”

“Like something out of a storybook,” Alastair says, but it seems sardonic.

“I like it,” Dean states, hackles raised. Over a bird? Over a fucking nightingale? His hands clench and unclench in and out of fists by his sides.

Alastair’s gaze flashes back to him from the other side of Elowen’s brass bars. His face is riddled by the lines of the cage and Elowen’s dashing, flitting form from perch to perch.

Alastair holds the gaze too long, Dean’s insides wrench up and he tears his face away, as though doing so might peel his skin off, too. He swallows and looks out of the window. He remembers the snow, watching it from the window with Castiel, months ago, he remembers the silence and the hope bound up in that moment.

“This bird isn’t injured, like the rest,” Alastair comments, watching him coolly still. Dean nods.

“Uh—she—she healed up, months ago. I think—I think Bobby’s just… Just having some trouble lettin’ her go.”

Alastair curls a smile.

“Oh, he’s a sentimental man, in spite of it all,” he says, and Dean manages to smile and agree.

“And, speaking of Mr Singer,” he says, starting up because of the discomfort he feels, alone in a room with Alastair with his hackles raised like he’s a dog waiting for attack, “I should go fetch him—see where he’s wandered off to—”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Alastair waves an easy, dismissive hand. His smile is calm and even. “You sent your maid to go fetch him, she’ll be back soon enough—”

Dean blinks, confused at the word maid, then realises Alastair is speaking of Jo.

“Um—yes,” he stammers. “But for a man old and unwell as he is, he certainly gets around…”

Subconsciously, he’s shifting toward the door, and only realises that he is when Alastair fixes a look upon him which stops him short.

“No need to look for them,” Alastair shakes his head. “I’m enjoying conversation with you. Would you leave me to my own devices? Not entertained in your own house?”

“It’s Mr Singer’s house…” Dean mumbles, shifting on his feet, but he steps away from the door and back toward Alastair.

“And who is Mr Singer to you, Dean?” Alastair asks, eyes a pierce at Dean’s skin. Dean prickles at his use of his first name. “You’re to inherit this farm, this house, all this land. You made quite a journey to be here. What is Mr Singer to you?”

Dean squirms, coughs once into a closed fist. The birds chirrup quietly in their cages all around.

“Well, I suppose, he’s—he’s become like family—”

“Become?” Alastair repeats. “So he wasn’t, before.”

Dean doesn’t like what Alastair seems to be driving at.

“He was—he was a family friend, a close friend of my father’s, before he moved to Cornwall with his wife.”

“Your father?” Alastair raises his eyebrows. Dean confirms. “And who was your father?”

The breath is being startled from his lungs.

“He was—he was—” there’s no answer that doesn’t brings shame. “He wasn’t the sort of man you’d have call to consort with,” he decides, and unfortunately Alastair seems to take this as flattery. He steps around the cage and closer to Dean.

“Oh, but then I’d have no occasion to have met you.”

Dean tries to swallow.

“What do—what do you think of Bobby’s—of Mr Singer’s birds?” he stammers out. It’s a feeble attempt at diversion, but Alastair seems to take the bait.

“They seem so small, so fragile,” he says, and approaches Elowen’s cage again as he speaks. He tips at it with his forefinger, and from the fall it took a few days previous, it’s unsteady on its feet. Dean steps close again and stills it in a flash. He looks at Alastair. Alastair looks at him.

“They are,” Dean assures. “Be careful with them.”

“Why?” Alastair turns to face him properly. It’s a challenge and also a game.

“There’s value in small and fragile things, too.”

“Oh?” Alastair raises his eyebrows. “You know a lot about such things?”

“I raised my brother from infancy,” Dean answers. “Of course I do.”

Alastair is close. The hairs on the back of Dean’s neck are raised. Alastair is close, and stepping closer. Dean doesn’t know whether to dip his head or raise it in defiance. Something in the man freezes him. Somehow, Dean suspects that either way, he’d end up losing. There are ghost fingers at his elbow, but he isn’t sure if they’re real or imagined. The door creaks as it is pushed and he nearly sighs in relief.

“Bobby,” he says, thankful, drawing back, but it isn’t Bobby. Cas stands at the door, frowning, boots dirtied from a day’s work. He watches Dean, he watches Alastair, he watches the space between them. The little of it that exists is only there because Dean created it. Alastair seems angry at the interruption, but both he and Castiel both appear to refuse to break the silence.

“Sir Alastair,” Dean manages at last, “you’ve met our shepherd, Mr Novak.”

“Briefly,” Alastair confirms. Castiel nods, polite but cold, to Alastair. There’s a stretch of silence which Alastair does not claim a hold of, though it’s his place to.

“Have you recovered well, from all your travels?”

Castiel is the one to break the quiet. He’s civil, but something in him is taut, bound tight.

“Yes,” Alastair confirms. “I’m quite rested, now. And settled back into life in Cornwall. You can’t imagine the contrast.”

“I’m sure,” Cas nods solemnly. “Remind me of where you were travelling?”

“I own a tea plantation in Darjeeling, India.”

This explains his wealth, then.

Cas’s expression hardens. This doesn’t bode well.

“I see. That must be very profitable.”

Alastair must read Cas’s expression just as Dean reads it. His jaw tips up.

“It is.”

“I’m sure. Especially considering how little you must have to pay your employees, there—if we may even call them that.”

Dean balks.

“What is it you mean to imply?” Alastair asks. He doesn’t raise his voice. His expression doesn’t change. But something in him becomes soft and dangerous as a viper.

“Only that it must be pleasant, to live so comfortable and free, as you.”

 “And where does the shepherd of Mr Singer’s farm hail from?” he asks, and if Cas’s expression was laced with distaste, then Alastair’s words are laced with derision.

“It’s unlikely, that with your luxuriant travel, you’d be familiar with so humble a place.”

“Your accent is Irish.”

“Because its owner is Irish.”

Dean could scream with how cold Castiel is being to this man with a Knighthood, whose good opinion and affection may well save the farm in the near future—doesn’t Cas care? Does he even realise?

“And where in Ireland?”

Castiel seems aware that Alastair isn’t about to drop it, and isn’t the kind of man who hears the word no very often. If at all.

‘“County Kerry,” he says, finally. “By the coast.”

“Your family were shepherds, I assume?”

Alastair is watching Castiel the way his birds must look upon their prey. Or perhaps upon their competition.

“Once,” Castiel answers.

“Once?” he repeats.

“I am the last of them.”

“How lucky you are, then, that you’ve been taken in by a farm where humble farm hands seem permitted to wander about the master’s house without fear of repercussion, and speak to guests and even noblemen, however they please.”

Castiel straightens up.

“I am very lucky to be here,” he answers, somehow both earnest and deadpan.

“And we’re lucky to have him.” It had been Dean’s thought, but it comes from the door, where Bobby appears, using two sticks as he enters with Jo. “Sir Alastair,” he greets with a bow, made awkward by his canes, “it’s a pleasure. What brings you here?”

“Hearing of your small turn, Mr Singer,” Alastair says. “I came to wish you well, and offer any help which might be needed.”

Bobby wrinkles his nose.

“Small turn is right—I’ll have recovered in no time. Thank you for your generosity, Sir Alastair, but there’s no need for assistance—of any kind—”

“Would you prefer to have this discussion beyond the ears of servants?” Alastair interrupts to ask, and feigns an understanding look. But he must know that Jo is family to Bobby, and Castiel swiftly getting there, too.

“Oh,” Bobby stammers, as though he’s only just remembered that yes, even having Cas and Jo so casually in the presence of a nobleman is rude. “Yes—of course,” he limps toward one of the chairs, and Jo looks torn between helping him reach his seat and leaving outright, unsure of what her place is in the presence of this new highborn man, and hurt at Bobby for remembering her position should be as servant and shouldn’t be as friend. “Come take a seat with me, Sir Alastair,” he says. “Leave us,” he waves a hand in the direction of Jo, Cas, and Dean. Jo, by the door, leaves, faltering and hurt. Cas and Dean are close behind her, but Alastair calls to Dean.

“There’s no need for you to join their number,” he says, and Dean stills by the door. Cas hovers at its frame, watching uneasily. “You’re not a servant,” he reminds. “If anything, you’re their master.” Dean swallows. He flickers a glance at Castiel, who looks back at him, steadily. He seems to ask Dean something, but Dean doesn’t understand what.

He looks back at Alastair and Bobby, sat opposite one another, looking expectantly at him. He’s torn.

“Oh—” he stammers, “sorry—but—I wouldn’t want to intrude—”

“I’m asking for your presence,” Alastair states. “You’re a man of importance on this farm.”

This is a blow aimed at Cas, who Alastair must see stood hovering at the door. Dean swallows.

“No more important than any other who works here,” he says. “But if this concerns Bobby and his health, I’ll stay.”

He glances at Cas, wants to give him a look of apology, but Cas has already turned out of the room. Dean watches his retreating back.

“I’ve said my health is fine,” Bobby grumbles quietly. Dean sighs and sits beside him, between Bobby and Alastair.

“Well, if I found myself briefly sick,” Dean emphasises the briefly here, to appease Bobby, “I’d allow you your fair share of worrying over me. Return the favour?”

Bobby sighs.

“Now, Mr Singer, who’s your doctor?” Alastair asks, and Bobby bristles.

“Dean brought in a new doctor, from St Levan,” Bobby grumbles. “There was nothing wrong with my old—”

“I just thought we should get a second opinion,” Dean tries to soothe, but is agitated himself.

“Well, I won’t hear of it. Hire small-town doctors and you’ll be given small-town answers.”

“Small town is all we can afford,” Bobby replies, but clearly hasn’t realised what Alastair is building up to—and his answer accelerates its arrival. Dean does realise. he cringes in his seat at Bobby’s words. He knows what’s coming.

“I won’t have it. I’ll bring you the finest doctor I can find—send word to Plymouth, Bath, Bristol, London.”

“You’re very generous, Sir Alastair, but—”

Dean needs Bobby healthy, of course, cannot cope with the thought of him getting worse, and yet nor can he cope with the idea of being indebted to this man in some way. Surely it would play out dangerously. Sir Alastair doesn’t seem a man to easily forget his debts, or forgive his debtors.

“Now, please, we’re neighbours.”

“But barely acquaintances,” Dean reasons, fingers digging into the arms of his chair out of worry. “You’re generous—very generous—too generous—”

“Not at all,” Alastair shakes his head. “And acquaintances now, perhaps, but in a few months, who can say? Besides, Mr Singer and I have been neighbours for years, now.”

Dean glances at Bobby, wondering what he makes of all of this, but his eyes are glazed over and unfocused and he barely seems to hear Alastair’s speech. Dean’s gut twists sharply.

“You’re very kind,” Dean says, heart trip-tearing because he knows that the source of Bobby’s glazed-eyed look is not benign. “We—I hate the thought of being indebted to you—must find some way of repaying you—”

“I’m sure you will,” is Alastair’s answer. He smiles. Dean swallows. His fingers haven’t stopped digging into the arms of his chair.

He finds Castiel later, sitting in a field and looking over the smallest lamb of their flock.

“She’s still not ready to wean, yet?” Dean asks, and Castiel seems to steady himself before replying.

“Too small,” he answers. “But it’s late in the year. I’ll have to start feeding her myself.”

“There’s our good shepherd,” Dean smiles, but Cas flicks his eyes up to him.

“And there’s my good master,” he replies. Dean’s heart tears.

“Cas—” he tries. “Don’t say that—”

“Apologies, I don’t think I’ve asked permission to speak in your presence, yet.”

“Castiel,” Dean frowns, and Cas cocks his head.

“Was I out of turn?”

“I couldn’t speak frankly to Alastair. I’m sorry—I’m sorry for how he spoke to you. But he’s a wealthy man, and—”

“I had no idea such things meant so much to you,” Castiel answers. Dean hardens.

“They have to, now, Castiel,” he says. “I’ve told you—don’t pretend I haven’t told you—how the Eyrie’s finances are—how Bobby’s health makes it so much more—how the price of fucking corn and—”

Cas watches him.

“I had no idea you had your eyes set on that man to be the one to bail us out.”

“It’s not a matter of bailing, it’s a matter of friendship—or, at least,” Dean fumbles, “being allies. We can’t afford to have him as our enemy, when he could so easily become our competitor, already.”

“I’m sorry my uncivil tongue will apparently be the downfall of an entire farm.”

Dean glares.

“Well, you were rude to him. He might well be the man who saves this place. And then what?”

“And then you will be forever indebted to a man who keeps predators as playthings, who keeps people as possessions, and who watches you as though he wants you to be both of these, to him.”

“You think I don’t see the way he watches me? Isn’t it my right to exploit it?”

“I don’t think Sir Alastair is a man so easily maneuvered.”

“You don’t believe I’m clever enough.”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to,” Dean glares. “Just because you’ve taught me what I didn’t know before, Castiel—”

“And you’re putting words in my mouth.”

“Why did you insult Sir Alastair for owning a tea plantation?!”

The lamb which Castiel had been holding scrambles out of his arms at Dean’s raised voice and dashes away. The shepherd ignores it but continues staring, hard, at Dean. He rises to stand at Dean’s eye level.

“If I believe England has no business in Ireland, I ought to believe it has less business still in a land five thousand miles away.”

The lamb has pranced toward its mother, but she grazes, inattentive. She must sense it’s past time for him to be weaned, too.

“And what, your rude words and expressions toward him will make him reconsider his ownership of what has made him as wealthy as he is?”

“If you believe sweet smiling and fluttering lashes might save this farm, why can’t I believe justified disdain—”

“I never fluttered my lashes,” Dean’s nails dig into his palm.

The air is cool, especially so for summer—even for a summer in England, Dean’s been told. He’s used to the dry bake of the Great Plains. The bite in the air makes him worry for the barley harvest. The air has grown too damp and misted, these past few days.

“If you had a mirror during your interactions with him, I’m sure you’d think otherwise.”

Dean grinds his teeth. The first time in a while that he’s done so.

“I’m trying to—” he fumbles for his words, blood white with heat. “—I’m trying to save the farm, which is me and my brothers’ only home, now—and remember how far we had to travel here?—to say nothing of what it is for Jo, and Ellen—even Mick. Not to mention the livelihood it represents for people you—you’d claim as your friends, even—Victor and Benny and Jody and yes, even yourself, it’s your livelihood, too. I’m trying to protect Adam from all of this, while it happens, to stop him from being hurt. Trying to run the farm and run its finances when you know that I’m not educated, when you know I’m also working as a farm hand—spread out like butter on too little bread, I can’t carry it all but I am—and I’m trying to ensure Bobby has a doctor good enough to help him, treat him, rather than resign after only an hour of looking him over and finding no head trauma which might be blamed for bringing his turns about—so excuse me if flutter my lashes or offer sweet smiles to the man who might be able to support us—who has offered to support us,” Dean amends, and Cas cocks his head. “Yes, this afternoon,” Dean confirms, “he offered to bring a doctor from as far as London to treat Bobby.”

“Well, now, that is generous. And I wonder what he’ll ask for in return?”

“Enough!” Dean shouts. “You don’t know what it’s like!” He shouts louder, and wants to scream. Cas’s face hardens.

“No?” he asks. “I watched my family die,” he reminds, voice quiet but angry. “Don’t you forget that. I couldn’t heal or help them. Only ease their passing. Do you know what it is to play ferryman to your siblings, down the river of death? I know what it is to watch those closest suffer, and be unable to stop it.” Dean’s chest tremors. His breathing is uneven, erratic as the pulse of tossing waves. “Every day you speak to me as though you are the only one who has had to care for a loved one in their passing—”

“Bobby isn’t passing!” Dean shouts. “He’ll heal, and soon, and through none of your help, none of the help of your stupid fucking potions and tinctures, he’ll heal because of Alastair, and that’s what you hate!”

“You hate being helpless, too,” Castiel says, standing closer. “It’s written all over you. But don’t act as though I’ve been unfamiliar with the feeling until now, Dean—I lived through it, before. Don’t forget that, to suit your purposes.”

“How am I supposed to know about it?! You never talk about it! You never talk to me!”

“And the wisest men must only be able to imagine why,” Cas answers. “As you’ve only ever been softly spoken and respectful toward me.”

“That isn’t fair,” Dean stammers.

“You think it isn’t true?”

“No, I said it isn’t fair.”

“What part of it was unjust?”

Dean struggles for words. Castiel watches him. Dean shakes his head.

“I’ve too much to do to spend my time arguing with you,” he says. “I’ve too much to do—to bear—as it is.” Cas looks at him. The oceans of his eyes begin to was with sadness. But Dean has turned on his heel and paces back towards the Eyrie.

Ellen’s most likely at breaking point with taking care of Adam and Bobby, keeping Adam ignorant of Bobby’s condition, admittedly by Dean’s instruction. running the house and cooking for all of them. Dean will make dinner. He won’t eat in the Croft. Not with the shepherd.

Chapter Text

It’s several restless nights and days emptied to their brim before he sees Castiel face to face again. He’s never gone so long without spending time by the shepherd’s side—not since his arrival in the Eyrie. There have been hours when he’s seen Cas’s figure silhouetted on the crest of a hill, almost certainly and heart lurchingly looking in the direction of Dean, just as Dean looks at him. Cas pausing here and Dean hesitating before pacing on—no, he’s too busy to watch and want.

He lies awake in the Eyrie staring up at the exposed beams of his bedroom, the room Bobby intended for his son, the son which became Dean—or the son who is still becoming Dean. The son to Bobby Dean is slowly growing into. And Dean doesn’t know how he feels about that, only that it hurts and heals him at once. He knows how he felt about it at first. Angry, exasperated. He was a thing hard with anger when he first came here—but it was his perfect defense. Now Castiel has washed away at that anger and left him something soft, feeble, vulnerable. He wants to be made coarse and brittle again. Coarse and brittle is what’s kept him safe, all these years.

He hears that Cas has been taking long walks from the Eyrie, disappearing for hours and working late into the evening as a result of these excursions. He wonders if the shepherd is thinking of leaving him. Perhaps he’s seeking employment in some new farm, with some kinder and less impulsive farm hand to lay beside every night, playing with his hair with gentle weathered fingers, kissing his forehead with delicate adoring lips.

One day, high on the cliffs, he catches Castiel making his way down them, towards the sea.

It’s late afternoon, late enough to be called evening really, and the sun is a soft glow on the horizon. The sea seems to caress it. Dean watches, the long wild grasses and flowers giving him some cover, as Madra follows Castiel down the sands of the beach cove, toward the waters.

What a longing is netted in him.

Castiel strips and swims. Madra bounds into the saltwaters after him. Soon, when the weather turns to Autumn, long late swims like this won’t be possible. Dean and Castiel always used to take them together. A stab of feeling lances through Dean at the thought that this, this night right here, might be the last of these swims it is possible to take in the year. And out of his own hard heart and stubbornness, Dean has missed it. He watches a little longer. Castiel turns onto his back in the water and looks up at the cliffs. Dean doesn’t know if the shepherd has noticed him.

More evenings pass without the shepherd.

At the end of a long and weary day, he’s climbing the stairs to his room—another night alone in his room, too many nights alone in his room—when Cas is climbing down them. Dean stops, looking up at the shepherd, lips parted. A firm fine line settles between his brows, but it isn’t angry, or isn’t only angry. He’s shocked—it’s been so many days, of not seeing Castiel. Now that he is…

“Where have you come from?” Dean asks, mouth hanging limply open.

“Errand,” Castiel answers simply, and brushes past Dean, back toward the front door. Dean takes a shuddering breath, angry and hurt and not sure what these feelings are directed at or what their cause is. It’s been a week and he and Castiel have not spoken to each other once since their fight. And now that they have the chance, Castiel is giving short, curt answers and brushing past Dean as though he’s nothing more than a stranger? He and Castiel have never fought for so long: ordinarily the shepherd’s forgiveness for Dean’s impulsivity and hotheadedness comes almost immediately. Dean had assumed that this time would be like any other. Apparently he was wrong. He starts up the stairs again, scowling.

But once up in his bedroom, the bedroom which was intended for Bobby’s son which has become Dean, Dean’s heart falters in his chest.

Placed on his bed. Lying on top of his pillow, in the center of his pillow with sympathetic and intentional care. A small money bag of black-green. Dean picks it up with hands which shake, at once insulted and touched. Again, once again, Cas has done too much. Too much for him. Dean swallows, the bag is up and off the pillow and heavy in his hand, he holds it up to the light as if he might see the coins shining through it, which of course he can’t. But he can feel them, the heavy weight of them, the ghost metal clinking of them, slipping against each other from within.

He swallows, eyes burning and glassy, angry as he has been for days with the shepherd, resenting him more than ever, loving him more than ever.

“It’s—it’s very little—” a voice from the door sounds, and Dean starts, heart bolting within his chest. He spins to see Castiel standing, watching, from the doorway. His arms are crossed with worry. “Very little money.”

“It doesn’t feel that way,” Dean shakes his head, concerned. “More than all you earn in at least a fortnight—where did you get it?”

“I’m no thief, Mr Winchester,” the shepherd laughs, taken aback, and Dean blinks his frustration.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying—but—how did you get it?”

“I sold a few of my ridiculous potions, as you’ve become so fond of calling them,” Castiel answers. “Knowing how offended you’d be by any offer to give them to Mr Singer, I thought I might yet make some small profit off them, about our neighbouring villages. It’s no great sum, Dean—” he says quickly, as Dean undoes the money bag and begins to pour the coins out into his hand.

“No great sum, Castiel?” Dean looks from his palm full of money, to Castiel. “No great sum?”

“You know, Dean,” Castiel says, looking at him with the sincerity of the stars, “I have not so many calls for money…”

“You feed me, almost every night,” Dean says, “and most mornings, you, you—”

“You are more than a worthy recipient,” Castiel answers.

“Don’t say that,” Dean bites, tears springing to his eyes. “Why are you even giving this to me?” he asks, hopeless and helpless. “I’m the one who’s meant to be paying you—” not really, it’s still technically Bobby who fills this role, but with his health worsening, it’s coming closer and closer to this, “not the other way around. I don’t understand, Castiel—”

“You were right, with what you said, before,” Castiel says. “About me not knowing what to do with feeling helpless—about you not knowing what to do with feeling helpless. Perhaps me seeing you so distressed in turn distressed me beyond reason. What I—what I mean to say, Mr Winchester, is—that amid your fear of funds, to treat Mr Singer of his sickness—which I’m sure will be a brief one,” Castiel adds quickly, and Dean huffs a laugh that brings tears to his eyes, and takes a step closer to Castiel alongside the pulse of his breath, and cannot think for the love swarming in him, “but to treat Mr Singer, this money might be of some help. You know I’m not a rich man, no, not near so rich as even the grocer in the next village, let alone you, now, let alone Mr Singer, and not to speak of Sir Alastair, but—”

“—I don’t care for riches,” Dean blinks out silent tears. “But you, you—”

“—And I know that others might provide for you better, buy you a pianoforte and fine clothing and horses to fill your stables—but this heart in me, Dean Winchester, this heart loves you so—”

Dean takes another step forward, and his hands are at Cas’s jaw, and the coins are tipping and tossing onto the floor, rolling along the boards. But Dean doesn’t care. He’s kissing Castiel, after too many days of not doing so, he’s finally kissing Castiel again. And Cas, hesitant and shocked at first, melts against him after a moment, and after the melting, presses into him with a building of every hunger imaginable, and kisses back, and kisses back, and kisses back.

“Cas,” Dean gasps, breathless, against the shepherd’s lips.

“You dropped all my money, Winchester,” Castiel grumbles, as his feet fumbling with the force of their kiss kick some coins across the floor. They skid and rattle against the boards and walls again.

“I thought it was a gift?” Dean asks. He’s sure Cas is smiling against his mouth, but he can’t flutter open his eyes for long enough to see.

“And a fine way you’re treating it—dropping them everywhere only so you could kiss me—”

Cas’s hands frame his jaw, hard. They bring his lips close.

“You’re complaining?”

Dean’s heart is swelling.

Cas’s hands move again to run up and down the length of Dean’s arms.

“No,” he answers, and the playful anger is gone, now everything is tenderness. “Not over this, when I’ve missed it, so.”

Tears have slipped, warm as forgiveness, warm as Cas’s hands, onto his cheeks.

When they finally get to their hands and knees to pick up the spilt coins from all over the floor of his room, he can’t stop watching Castiel, and his torn and dirtied shirt, and the tattered hems and weakened seams of his clothing. Yes, he’s beautiful—beautiful, yes, and his wild and weathered look was what washed at Dean’s heart when they first met. But now it hurts to think of his battered belongings, and how little Castiel seems to think that he deserves every kindness he will share with others.

Castiel is so giving with him, would pour from is own cup until it ran empty, and expect nothing in return. But Dean wants to give it in return. He doesn’t like feeling indebted to people, ever—but that isn’t why he wants to give Castiel everything in return for the everything he gifts so generously. No. That isn’t why.

When they’re facing one another, on hands and knees, only a foot or so apart and heaping the last of the coins into the bag between them, Dean swallows and looks nervously up at Castiel. Cas, who’s definitely marked Dean’s staring so far, looks up too, and cocks his head softly.

“Yes, Dean?” he asks. Dean sits up so that he’s sat on his knees instead of hunched on all fours.

“I think…” Dean starts, uncertain, “I think I’ve spent all my life, feeling unworthy.”

Castiel frowns, and sits up on his knees, like Dean.

“Unworthy,” he repeats.

“Like, being worth love, meant proving myself. You know—doing more, being more. The more I did, the more likely that love, being loved, would be.”

“Which is why you felt so threatened by my arrival,” Castiel says, softly.

“People took to you, and you weren’t doing—you were just being,” Dean laughs. “I never knew how to be loved like that. Nobody ever taught me how.”

Cas watches him with a soft sadness.

“And yet, you know how to love better than any of the rest,” he says quietly. Dean glances away sadly, shaking his head. His insides squirm with guilt and shame. He thinks about his harsh words, his lashing out, his cage of feelings which cause anger to boil up before tenderness has time to reach the surface, which cause fear and shame to overpower the courage love should set in him… No, he’s a poisoned mess of it: yes the mess is love, but it isn’t a good love.

“I’m not so sure,” he replies.

“I am,” Cas says. Dean looks back at him. He can’t swallow. “Caring for your brother, all those years. And your father, even when he should’ve been doing it, for you. Even when he was cruel. Caring for Adam, even when the fact of his existence hurt you.”

Dean blinks, ready to draw back at this, but Cas presses on.

“Don’t think I haven’t realised. Adam was born out of your father’s failure to be committed to caring for the children he already had. And then you had to care for the child who marked your father’s own rift from his first family. But you did care for Adam, anyway.”

“Not very well—”

“And you arrived here, and cared for Bobby, and for Ellen, and took Jo as a younger sister, and even took on the task of caring for my sheep.” Dean laughs as Castiel speaks. “You loved them all. And who showed you how to do that?” Cas asks softly, grazing his fingertips against Dean’s temple and pushing his hair back. Dean closes his eyes. It’s been nearly a week of no touch, and God, he’s missed it, needed it, with everything. What has Cas done to him? He spent years without tenderness, and survived just fine. Now he can’t bear to go a day without it. A week was cold agony.

“All that love,” Castiel says, voice like earth cracked by sunlight. “Who taught it to you?”

“I don’t—” Dean struggles, falters. What’s Cas looking for, here? It wasn’t John, and his mother wasn’t around long enough to teach him how to love, or show it. So what can he say? It’s with  wretched defeat that he finally replies. “No one,” he answers, saddened.

“Exactly,” Cas replies, word full of wonder. “Exactly.”

Cas’s ingenuity sparks something in him, something he berates himself for not having thought of earlier. Cas has his trade, shepherding, and his hobby, folk medicine. Dean has his trade, farming, and his hobby, smithing. The only difference between him and Castiel is that Cas decided to make something of his hobby.

Well. Dean will do the same, now. He thinks first of Castiel’s patched and tattered clothing and then how handsome he would look in a fine new shirt, how he’d forget to turn the collar down and Dean would have to do it for him, smoothing the surface over with hands riddled with love. But then he thinks how Castiel would try to turn the gift down and say this money spent on this shirt could be better used, used on Bobby and his health, and all Castiel’s things get spoiled by his work anyway, so why invest in something which would be so quickly ruined?

Perhaps Dean could buy him something nice and tell him it’s for Sundays, but he’s sure Castiel would reply with something mystic about God not caring for rich clothing but rather for rich hearts. So what can he do in return? What could he possibly give?

He works on using his smithing money for medical bills, selling crafted tools to men in town and any farmers in the vague area of Penzance, repairing things, making things, before he sets his understanding of the trade on softer, finer objects as well. Cas will come into the forge late at night and wrap his arms around Dean’s waist and kiss his shoulder and tell him metal will yet be metal tomorrow, come to bed and Castiel will give him new meanings to the words forging and melting, and it will take all the self control in the world for Dean not to himself melt immediately into Cas’s touch. Usually he lasts a few seconds. His record is two minutes.

Unable to buy Castiel new clothes with the knowledge of the trouble he will have accepting them, Dean fixes and fastens the shepherd’s old garments, patching and hemming what needs it and beaming when Castiel realises what he has done and sweeps him up in his arms, when they stand alone in the kitchen of the Eyrie.

“Dean Winchester, when did you do this?” he asks, gesturing to the patched hole at his elbow which Dean has decorated with the stitched outlines of sunflowers. Dean tries not to laugh too giddily at the shepherd’s obvious gratefulness and joy and affection for Dean—for Dean!—but he fails miserably.

“When you were distracted,” Dean answers, and Cas runs his fingertips through the hair at Dean’s temples. “When else?”

“And I had no idea you had yet more gifts, and these in tailoring. What else are you hiding?”

“Well, I repaired mine and Sammy’s clothes for years,” Dean reminds. “So I’ve had plenty of practice. We hardly had the money to buy new garments, at any moment.”

That was where he learned embroidery, too, how to make the repairs look charming to a child’s eyes and not humiliating: for Sam he’d sewn small dogs around and over the sites or repair, and the other boys at the schoolhouse had wanted clothing just like his. It was a flood of warm relief: instead of laughing at Sam’s tattered patchwork clothes and messy hair, Dean had managed to conceal at least some of their poverty with embroidered animals. And Sam had felt cared for which… was not a feeling often given to the sons of John Winchester.

For Castiel he sews sunflowers—as per his nickname for the shepherd—and sheep, grazing or dancing about the site of repair and turning it from something broken into something sentimental. Well, Castiel seems pleased by it, and even starts making requests of Dean when he finds something new in need of mending. What if you patched this one with bumblebees and pots of honey? Or with lavender? Ellen would like it. And, you know, wrapping his arms around Dean, it’s a symbol of love. What about mugwort? As an ode to that night we spent, when I patched back together your poor injured hand? You could patch up my clothes with it—now wouldn’t that be fitting?

So Dean stitches bumblebees around the mended hole at one of Castiel’s sleeves, turns the hole into a pot of honey, makes small weaves of sewn lavender along the frays of Castiel’s nightclothes, and over a patch at the knee of some trousers, sews the symbol of a silvery-green mugwort leaf, its feathery fanned fingers splitting into the shape of starlight.

Cas is delighted. And his warmth flowers something in Dean even as summer ends.

He forges jewellery alongside tools, and enjoys this finer and more delicate craft, and scrapes together enough funds for the inspiration which comes to strike him, at the break of September.

It’s when he’s standing in Bobby’s room, beside the fireplace, while Bobby sits up in bed and speaks to him. Their conversation has followed tides of topic: first on all the machinery that must be fixed which is broken, before the Autumn harvest; next on what Bobby thought of Cornwall when he first arrived here; next on the monthly wages of all the farm hands which Dean must now be the one to distribute; next on Bobby’s wife, Karen. This is the flow conversation takes when Dean absentmindedly picks up a necklace on the mantelpiece he leans against.

“Oh,” Bobby says, the sound a sigh, watching Dean. “That was Karen’s.”

Of course it was, and Dean drops it like he’s been burnt.

“I’m sorry—” he fumbles, but Bobby huffs a gruff beat of a laugh from where he sits.

“What? For making me acknowledge she existed?”

Dean closes his jaw worriedly. When John was alive, any reminder of Mary could be met by fury. It was a rage which had terrified Dean, and a rage which he realises, now, he’s inherited. Once, there was nothing worse than the thought that he might be anything like his father. Now, he fears that he’s completely like him.

“I know—I know how that kind of wound can—”

Bobby huffs again.

“Well. I loved her.” He looks at Dean a moment. Dean swallows and thinks of how, once, when he’d only been young and crying, and told John how he missed his mother he’d been met by—but Bobby speaks. “I don’t know what kind of widower John was,” he says, and Dean is so taken aback the poisoned thread of his thoughts snags, “but I’m not angry, that you’ve made me think of her.”

Dean swallows. His fingers dig into his palm.

“That necklace,” Bobby continues, nodding to the place on the mantelpiece where Dean dropped it, “that necklace was hers. She was a richer lady than any man like me should’ve had hope of marrying.”

“You’re a rich man, in other ways, Mr Singer,” Dean answers earnestly, and Bobby huffs another laugh.

“Rich with the family I’ve been given, maybe,” he assents, and Dean’s throat closes up. He twitches a smile, strangled by feeling. Bobby glances up at the expression, and twitches the look back at him. “Yes, I’ve been very lucky,” he nods. “Look there,” he points to a wooden box with metal inlay in a weaving pattern of ivy, sat in the centre of the mantleplace. “That was Karen’s, too,” he says. Dean looks at it, only looks, but Bobby says gruffly, “well, open it, child. It’s no good if it only carries dust.”

Dean decides to pick it up and carry it over to Bobby, sat on the bed. He sits beside Mr Singer on the bed, and for some reason the act doesn’t feel like an intrusion, as it ought to. Now there’s a familiarity between them as intuitive as the back of Dean’s hand. He opens the box and is met by the soft glint and glimmer of worn silver and gold.

“These were hers,” Bobby says with a distracted smile. He picks up a silver bracelet with coiled chains which spiral back on themselves like waves pulled off a shore.

“They’re very beautiful,” Dean says, catching the end of this bracelet between his thumb and forefinger.

“Oh, that’s because she was very beautiful,” Bobby says, easily. Dean smiles.

“I know—I’ve seen portraits of her.”

“Yes, very beautiful,” Bobby continues with a nod. “You’d be lucky, to find so beautiful a lady, Dean,” he says. Dean looks down, a heat flashing at his temples.

“I’m—I’m sure—”

“Now, I’m surprised none of the pretty ladies in England seem to have caught your eye. You’re young, Dean—I’m worried you’ve forgotten, with the weight of all your duties—”

“It’s not that,” Dean shakes his head quickly. “I’m just—I’m not thinking about that—I’m happy, anyway.”

“Well, you spend so much time with our shepherd, I doubt you’d have the time for courting, anyway,” Bobby says, oblivious.

“He’s—he’s teaching me a lot,” Dean has dropped his fingers from the jewellery to wring his hands nervously.

“I thought, when he first arrived, you’d end up in some kind of duel with him, at worst, or push him off the farm, at best.”

Dean laughs uneasily.

“You can cease your worries over that, Bobby,” he says. “I count him a friend—close friend—now.”

He’s still flushing.

Bobby’s attention has turned back to the jewellery box. Thank God.

“Emeralds were her favourites,” Bobby pulls out a golden wedding band with an emerald sat sweet and mellow at its centre. “But I was not a wealthy man. I worked and saved all that I had, for this. It seems so small, now…”

“No, it’s beautiful,” Dean shakes his head. “She must have loved it.”

“But that’s the gift, of a good sweetheart. Whatever you bring them, is enough.”

Dean thinks of Cas and his joy over his humbly patched clothing. His smiles when Dean will enter the Croft at night with a bottle of red wine in his hands. His eyes sparking brightly when Dean brings him a handful of wildflowers.

“Yes,” he says, nodding. “I think you’re right.”

“A ring though,” Bobby continues, almost to himself, “that should be a special gift. I tried to make it so. The band, you see,” his fingertip traces the circle of it, “is a sign of forever. That’s what it promises. A love that won’t fade. So why shouldn’t you make it beautiful? A love like that deserves it. There’s a love that’s worthy of pretty things. A love that won’t demand them.”

Dean nods again. He thinks of Cas’s humble clothing and belongings. He thinks of how beautiful a ring would look, set upon his finger. A secret he and Dean could keep. A secret which could double as a song.

“I think you’re right,” he nods.

“You’ll know, when you find a love like that,” Bobby continues. “Don’t worry, son.”

Dean splits a smile.

“I wasn’t worrying about that,” he answers honestly.

“If only I’d had your confidence, when I was young.”

“No,” Dean laughs, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Bobby grumps.

“Really!” Dean grins. “I just—I was thinking—love takes a lot of different forms. Maybe I have a lot of unfading loves, already.”

Bobby twitches a smile.

“I don’t know where you got your sentimental streak from, child,” he says.

“Well, I know John felt things, felt them intensely.”

“No, you’re not like that,” Bobby shakes his head distractedly. Dean’s heart all but rips in shock. “I mean,” he huffs, “you sure do feel things, Dean, and you sure as hell feel ‘em hard. But John let it swallow him.”

“Sometimes I think it’s swallowing me, too,” Dean confesses, face twisted up with worry. Bobby glances at him. His hand slips onto Dean’s wrist and he squeezes. Dean looks at Bobby’s hand, then up at Bobby’s face.

“You want an answer to that?” Bobby asks. “Some kind of reassurance? Absolution?”

Dean prickles.

“I mean…”

“It’s in all of us to be like our fathers. When Karen conceived, I thought I’d be like mine, too.” Bobby’s face darkens. “I ever told you about him?” He glances up at Dean. Dean shakes his head. “Good,” Bobby huffs. “I’m not so partial to horror stories. Whatever you’re thinking, though, he was worse. He could make the worst of men look a saint.”

“You’d never be like—”

“But I could,” Bobby looks at him, hard. “Not just because he’s my blood. It’s in me to be like that, it’s in you to be like that—hell, it’s even in Adam to be like that. That’s my point. Any of us could be like that. What matters is that we choose not to be.”

Dean’s riddled with fear.

“But what’s stopping us? There’s—there’s gotta be something stopping us, right?”

“Got to?” Bobby repeats, raising his eyebrows. “Why ‘got to’? Who says?”

“I mean—” Dean squirms. Bobby shakes his head.

“No. That’s the beauty of it. That’s the terror. Fact is, if one person’s capable of it, so is any other. What matters is the choice. That’s the ecstacy of choice. And the awe.” He pats Dean’s hand. “Sometimes, you’re like John. Sometimes, I’m like my father. Mostly, we choose not to be.”

Dean looks back down at the ring in Bobby’s other hand. They’d quite forgotten it. He doesn’t forget it, now. He thinks of wind in feathered grass. He thinks of charcoal eyelashes. He thinks of hair curling in gray mists and drizzle. He thinks of choosing love, not anger, every time.

He thinks of Cas.

…

He starts saving for silver for the ring. All he needs are scrap pieces of silver, rejects, but he wants it all to be perfect for when he begins working it. He looks over his assortment of silver shapes, lined up on top of the drawers in his room in the Eyrie, looks over them religiously and finds purer and purer pieces he thinks might be better refined and used for this purpose. And what is this purpose? A ring for Cas—but why?

Not—not a wedding ring. He scrunches his hands at his sides nervously at the thought. Not a wedding ring, no—people like him and Cas don’t get wedding rings. They’re lucky if they get a peaceful life, aren’t they? And anyway, at the end of it all, that’s the thing a wedding ring hopes for. A life together. It can’t even promise it. But if it’s about love, then Dean has it, and has it in droves, has it in droves that ruin him like he’s crumbling rock under battering waves. If that’s what rings symbolise, then Dean ought to be more than eligible. As for the legal purpose they present, Dean hardly cares. Everything he has is Castiel’s, anyway.

If wedding rings are about God, then—then—

Well, Castiel has his faith, doesn’t he?

Surely not every iteration of every God must want to reject them. Surely there is one, at least one, who might look into Dean’s heart and not call it repugnant. Might even call it beautiful.

All the while as Dean does this, Alastair continues efforts of attention which Dean can barely pay attention to, because he’s stretched so far in so many directions, but which Dean can’t dare to spurn completely, because now for numerous reasons, they can’t afford to.

He’s able to turn down the more recent offers from Alastair to foot the bill of doctors and medicine, with all the work Dean is putting into smithing and selling, and with Cas making tinctures and balms for the people in surrounding villages. But still, even now, they can’t afford to have Alastair as their enemy.

He invites them, often, to dine with him in his great old house, and while Dean invents excuses as often as possible—the only benefit, as far as he can tell, of Bobby’s poor health is the ready excuse it provides him—there’s only so many hospitalities a person can politely decline. And his excuses of Bobby’s poor health lead to Alastair offering to employ a full time nurse for him. And so Dean has to start accepting these invitations more often, for the fear that his best means out of these dinners and lunches in Alastair’s company will be taken from him entirely.

On one such occasion, taking a lunch in Alastair’s fine and venerable house, another guest is hosted, who’s only passing through the country.

She’s older than Alastair, and severe and tight-lipped. She extends what’s probably her version of warm manners to Alastair, but certainly not to Bobby, not to Adam, and not to Sam. With Dean, she seems ambivalent, probably swayed by Alastair’s obviously favorable treatment of him.

The dining room is grand and ornate and obviously much better kept and maintained that that of the Eyrie. It lacks all of the warmth and cosiness. The windows are high and remind Dean of drawing a sharp breath. In the presence of this new and severe lady, Dean’s more self-conscious than usual. Especially, he’s more awkward than usual around the servants, guilty of their difference in status which is even more circumstantial than most, and unsure of how to behave.

“Sir Alastair, I was concerned to hear of your troubles during your stay in India,” Ms. Hess starts up, after taking a tight-lipped sip from her wine. Alastair blinks at her.

Hess lives in London, her late husband owned two workhouses there, and widowed for the past two decades, she has run them without him. Her eyes are little needles and every time they rest on Dean, he prickles. Mick grew up in London workhouses, before breaking out and living on the streets, committing petty crime and making petty cash by begging and performing, cheating at games of dice and cards and charming rich old women. Mick’s lighthearted to the point of obnoxiousness, most of the time—but the darkening of his eyes when Dean even asks him what growing up in a workhouse was like…

Well, it’s little wonder Ms. Hess looks as sharp and unyielding as she does. But maybe not all workhouses are like the one Mick was raised in. Or maybe they are. Maybe they’re worse. Hess’s eyes are flinty and cruel. And presiding over the labour of children? You’d have to be something harsh and brittle to be so thoughtless to the needs of a child, the need of a childhood…

Alastair has spoken in reply, but Dean’s been too lost in thought to hear. Now he blinks and straightens up.

“Troubles?” he repeats, turning to Alastair. “You’ve said your time away was restful.”

“It was, for the most part,” Alastair says, and the way that he says it tells Dean that his initial reply to Hess had been dismissive and brief, that he’d been hoping it was the only one necessary. “But have employees, anywhere, and they’re bound to sometimes be restless. To reach above their station.”

“I’ve heard that you’ve had some of those same troubles here,” Hess says. Alastair’s gaze flickers to her.

“Unfortunately,” he admits. “Though it’s nothing that cannot work itself out.”

“What kind of troubles?” Dean asks, leaning forward.

“Here?” Alastair asks. “A few complaints of my tenants.”

“Oh.”

“So your ‘troubles’ in Darjeeling just… worked themselves out, too?” Sam asks, and Dean almost balks, because damn it sounds impertinent. He tries to shoot his brother a look, but Sam’s gaze is steady and certain on Alastair. “That seems very fortunate for you. Too fortunate.”

“Oh, nothing’s ever so simple,” Alastair shakes his head, and takes a drink. “But all is resolved, now.”

The conversation moves on.

Hess is to be staying on Alastair’s estate for the rest of the week, and Alastair insists that she’s enjoyed Dean’s company so much, he ought to join them for their last lunch before she leaves and returns to London. This is on a Sunday, and the day in which Castiel always comes to eat a fine, great lunch with everyone at the Eyrie. They’re usually marked by snorts of laughter from Jo, quips every minute from Mick and maybe a ridiculous tale or two, Sam and Cas gently teasing Dean, Bobby getting bored of conversation with people and turning to talk to one of his birds, and Ellen trying desperately to control it all.

But Dean won’t get any of that today, and yet lunch at the Eyrie is going ahead as usual, without him. And why shouldn’t it, just because Dean’s not there? But—but still. It pricks at his chest.

He helps Ellen in the kitchen for the lunch he can’t attend, drawing out the minutes for as long as he can afford to, without being late for the lunch he can’t avoid.

Mick sits at the kitchen table, pretending to peel potatoes. Dean is cutting vegetables, and clearing the work surfaces as he goes.

“Those should’ve been ready a half hour ago,” Dean glances up at Mick. Mick’s flicks Dean his signature uneven, petty criminal smile.

“I’m doing a thorough job, Mr Winchester,” he answers. Dean rolls his eyes, and hangs the cloth he’d been using to wipe the surfaces down with, over the sink. He approaches Mick and sits opposite him, picking up a knife and joining the peeling. Ellen goes out into the courtyard to pick fresh herbs.

“Here,” Dean rolls his eyes, taking one of the potatoes. “So it’s at least done by the end of the year.”

Mick grins.

“Helping with a lunch you won’t even get to eat. You are generous.”

Dean glances up at him.

“I like feeling useful,” he admits. And seeing as how he won’t be able to eat with the others, he wants to at least be part of the process in some other way.

“I hadn’t noticed.”

No, the sarcasm isn’t missed on Dean. He sighs.

“And what about you?” He asks. “You like feeling lazy?”

“Oh, you know you’re truly loved in a place when you contribute nothing to it, and yet are allowed to stay, anyway,” Mick answers, and his grin is as wide as ever. Dean huffs a laugh. Well, he makes a good point.

“What if I said there was a difference between being loved, and tolerated?” Dean asks, and tosses his finished potato into a bowl before starting on another.

“I’d say there was no need to be jealous, Winchester.”

Another easy answer. Damn. Mick’s too good at this. Dean rolls his eyes, but still, he’s smiling. Mick seems pleasantly surprised by it.

“Besides, Dean, there’s no need to be so bitter about missing out on lunch at the madhouse. You’re going to be dining with nobility.” Dean presses his lips together, tosses another potato into the bowl of finished ones, and begins on the very last. “Now come on,” Mick says, in a delighted, conspiratorial tone. He leans forward at the table, closer to Dean. He’s still peeling the same potato he was on when Dean first sat down to help him. “Surely the food, at least, is good? What’s it like? Do they feed you elephant steaks, wrapped in gold?”

Dean coughs out another laugh.

“No,” he says. “And no amount of good food would beat the company of people I love.”

Mick leans back, smug, surprised.

“Dean Winchester,” he says, with a slow delight which makes Dean sigh longsufferingly. “I never took you to be such a romantic.”

“I’m not.”

“Sentimental, then,” Mick concedes.

“For a long time,” Dean says, sincerely, “family was all that I had. You might say that’s still true. The family’s just bigger, now.”

Mick smirks.

“Now, isn’t that sweet.”

“Shut up, ass,” Dean rolls his eyes, finished with the last potato. Ellen’s back in the kitchen from the courtyard, and shoots Dean a reprimanding look for his language.

“It’s an animal, Ellen,” Dean says innocently. “What, I’m not allowed to say the name of an animal? We live on a farm.”

Ellen rolls her eyes and begins dressing the vegetables with rosemary. Dean turns back to Mick.

“Well anyway,” he says, “I would much rather be here. That guest of Alastair’s is terrifying.”

“Rich people often are,” Mick nods.

“Which is why I want nothing to do with them,” Dean know’s Mick’s being tongue in cheek, but Dean is sincere. “I don’t know what it is. Something in her eyes. She probably whips the children that work for her.”

Mick flicks a frown.

“Children?” he repeats.

“Oh, yeah,” Dean confirms. He begins halving, then halving the potatoes again. “Hess owns a workhouse. Two workhouses. Fucked up, right?”

Ellen sparks something about Dean’s language, but Dean doesn’t pay attention with the way colour has drained from Micks features.

“Right—you were raised in a workhouse, weren’t you?” Dean asks. “What was it like?”

Mick either ignores the question, or doesn’t hear it.

“How—how does Sir Alastair know her?” he asks. “What’s their connection—what’s she doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Dean frowns, shrugging. “Rich people—they all know each other, don’t they? They probably first bonded over their love of mounted unicorn heads,” Dean tries to offer Mick a grin, but Mick doesn’t register the joke.

“What does she want?”

“Fuck if I know, Mick, she said she was just visiting!—Why do you give a shit? Sorry for bringing up workhouses, I thought you were okay talking—”

Mick has pushed back his seat and walks out of the kitchen like he can’t feel his legs.

Dean blinks, nonplussed.

“I thought he liked telling stories about his past,” Dean says to Ellen, who watches him leave with a twined expression. “What’s gotten into him?”

Ellen shakes her head slowly.

“I don’t know…”

Dean sighs and finishes up with the potatoes. Then he washes his hands, returns the apron he was wearing to Ellen, and gets ready to join Alastair and Hess for lunch.

The clatter of cutlery against plates is that much colder in Sir Alastair’s dining room than it is in the Eyrie.

Talk circles around banal themes, directed by Hess, and Dean flits in and out of attention, conscious that Alastair’s focus seems to be far more directed upon him than it does on Ms. Hess and what she has to say. It surprises Dean. Alastair seems a man who like to have utter control of everything. And yet he seems preoccupied by scanning Dean’s every gesture and movement, so that he doesn’t care what Hess speaks about.

“It must get so very hot there,” Hess continues, and Dean realises she must be speaking of India, and Alastair’s time there. Dean thinks of Kansas, and of warmth, and familiarity, and thinks that the distaste and wonder in Hess’s voice is childish, for a woman so old.

He hasn’t thought of Kansas with so much longing in months. He hasn’t had call to: for months, he’s felt as though he belongs. Now, and constantly as he sits here, he feels the sharp twist of discomfort, and the sense of not-belonging. “Of course, you’d know all of that, what with the fire,” Hess says. Dean flinches at the word, looking up sharply. Alastair marks him.

“Fire?” Dean asks, a frown braiding his features. Inside, his stomach remembers the taste of ash on the air—

“There was a small fire, during my visit,” Alastair says, still watching Dean. “Nothing of much consequence.

Dean can’t swallow. His throat remembers the air, thick with smoke—

Hess is speaking again, but Dean can’t hear her.

After lunch, Alastair invites them to retire to his study. Hess declines the cigar he offers her, but Dean accepts, needing the heavy smoke of tobacco to replace the ghost remnants of smoke of another kind. Smoke which was immeasurable against the sky. Alastair watches him as he draws a long breath from it. He’s been absent, distracted all day, not feeling altogether safe without the promise of security which Bobby or Sam would have provided if they’d been allowed to accompany him here. But for some reason, since Hess’s mention of the flames on the plantation, Dean’s felt them licking at his skin at every moment.

Dean, distracted, rises to flicker through Alastair’s belongings in the study. Hess bristles at this intrusion, but Dean’s head is heavy with the tobacco and with memories of smoke, and anyway, Alastair doesn’t seem perturbed by it, even remotely. In fact, he watches Dean with curiosity, even delight, that Dean should take an interest in what belongs to him.

At the surface of Alastair’s desk sits a pile of his papers—newspapers, Dean realises, and with a lurch of curiosity, newspapers from India. A place so far away has never felt so immediate to Dean. He flips through them, their titles—if there was any way to learn of a country, this would surely be it, and as he flips through the sheets his stomach turns to flip too, suddenly and unpleasantly.

The other sheets slide across the surface of the desk.

Alastair and Hess look up at him—Hess tight-lipped at the fact that Dean has obviously interrupted whatever she was saying, Alastair watching Dean the way he watches his birds when they behave with the instinctive, flitting, languageless minds of animals. Which is how Alastair prefers them.

The headline of this paper has Dean’s mind spinning in images of flames and the screams of women, a woman, just one woman, and him, a child—

“You said the fire on your plantation was small,” Dean looks up at Alastair, not sure why his heart is pacing so, not sure why he feels angry.

“I did,” Alastair nods, unperturbed.

“It says here there were thirty deaths,” Dean replies, hands growing cold. “Thirty is not small.”

“Perhaps Sir Alastair was attempting to keep our conversation light,” Hess answers through her tight lips. But Alastair doesn’t seem to see any need for anger.

“It was small, all things considered.”

“What does that mean?” Dean asks, frowning. “People—people died. People with families, with children, with—” With sons. Little boys. “You let that happen on your farm—”

“—Plantation,” Hess corrects, and Dean blinks, not understanding the difference, and interrupted from his thought that if this happened on the Eyrie, Dean would be devastated, hold himself responsible—worker and tenants losing their homes, even their families, even their own lives, to the curl and curve and carve of angry flames.

“Thirty…” Dean repeats, voice small, staring at Alastair.

“Why, in one of my workhouses last year, at least a dozen children lost their lives in one instant, when a machine—”

Dean has dropped the newspaper, and it falls to the floor. He doesn’t want to talk any more. He doesn’t want to talk to these people, any more. He thinks of his arm breaking in a machine when he was fifteen, he thinks of when he was ten years old and hit so hard over the head by his master that he lost consciousness a moment, and all because he was daydreaming, he thinks of when he was four years old and his mother, his own and only mother—

He stands and stares and doesn’t even realise that he’s unable to speak or think when Hess excuses herself a moment, rises and leaves.

Not until Alastair rises, too, and watching Dean, approaches.

“You don’t like fire,” he says. Dean swallows.

“Does anyone?” he asks, and tries to mask the tremor even the word sets in him. What’s wrong with him? What kind of man is he, that can’t even read about a fire without breaking out into a cold sweat?

“Some find it hauntingly beautiful.”

Dean looks up at Alastair and tries to stop his lip from curling. Alastair doesn’t seem to mind.

“You dislike it for a reason,” Alastair says.

Dean swallows, shakes his head.

“Do I need a reason to be—to be moved by the deaths of thirty people—”

“You disliked its mention, even before you found that out,” Alastair shakes his head. “I’ve been watching you.”

“I know,” Dean nearly snarls back, panic flaring along his spine. He needs to stop speaking in this way, but—but—

“You’ve seen fire, too,” Alastair says, stepping close to him, and only now does Dean realise there’s a wild madness to his eyes, not rough and rowdy as the sea but hollowed and barren and hungry and not—not—human. As inhuman as it’s possible to be, as inhumane as fire. “You’ve seen it too,” And Dean tries to step back, but the arm of Alastair’s chair, pulled up to his desk, catches Dean’s leg, and he nearly falls backwards. He catches himself on the back of the chair, hand gripping tight, but Alastair doesn’t stop drawing near. The mad and cruel hunger is still in his gaze. “You’ve seen the flames, haven’t you?”

Dean’s answer is lurched out of him in panic, not in a desire to tell the truth.

“My mother—” he says, and his heart rate flares, that he should share himself, any of himself, with Alastair—when he so struggles to share it with anyone, even Cas. This isn’t fair—he doesn’t want—but he’s afraid—

“Your mother?” Alastair presses, as Dean turns quiet.

“Died,” he says, heart a hammer against the cage of his ribs. “—In—in—there was a fire, too,” he says, and his chest hurts with the ferocity of his pulse, not with sorrow like it normally does. “I was four years old.”

Alastair draws back.

“Only a child,” he says. And Dean nods, any further speech robbed of him. “What a shame.”

Dean swallows, but it feels like there’s a blade at his throat. He resteadies himself, removing his hand from the chair, tipping back properly onto his feet. Alastair has taken another step or two back—and a moment later, Dean realises it’s because he’s heard Hess outside the door. She reenters and doesn’t seem to notice the cold fear drenching Dean’s insides, or how close Alastair had been stood to him, only seconds before.

He races home as soon as he can. The sun is retreating by the time he makes it to the Eyrie, and Ellen registers the panic sitting in him at his fumbling, flitting movements as he rifles through the kitchen for a strong drink to take to the Eyrie. She tries to talk to him, but her words are vague strange chiming in his ears, and he swings out of the kitchen as fast as he entered it with an apology and a goodbye garbled by the spinning of his head.

He races to the Croft, where Castiel sits, making medicines to sell because of Dean, because he loves Dean, and the sob of Castiel’s name is out of Dean’s chest before he knows that he’s made it. Castiel has stood, alarmed, and pushed his chair back with a clatter as it tips backwards onto the floor.

“Dean,” his hands are, in the next instant, cupping Dean’s jaw and tipping his head up when Dean tries to bow it to the ground in shame. “What’s happened—what—” his expression turns from cracked with worry to dark with protectiveness. “Has someone hurt you?”

Dean wants to laugh, but can’t, the tears are streaming silent down his face, and he shakes his head, and asks,

“Can I stay here, tonight?”

Cas huffs, incredulous, because when doesn’t Dean stay here. But his words are soft and steady.

“Of course, Grá mo choi.” Pulse of my heart, he calls Dean, pulse of my heart. Dean swallows, nodding, tries to swallow back his tears, but it doesn’t work. Cas’s hands are still cupping his jaw, his thumb pads grazing soft curved lines back and forth over Dean’s cheekbones.

“I’ve brought—I brought some brandy for us,” Dean says weakly, lifting up the bottle. Cas glances to it, longsufferingly, as though he knows why Dean brought it: so he could do as his father taught him best: drink and forget.

“Ellen uses that for cooking,” the shepherd answers diplomatically.

“I’ll replace it.” Dean is shaking, can’t stop shaking. Alastair scared him today. The thought of fire scared him today. He scared himself today, with how pathetic all of it made him: Dean could hardly see for panic, and the memory of pain.

“I’ve some cider we might drink, instead,” Castiel says, and Dean wants to snark something back, bite something cruel and rude, but as soon as he draws in a breath to do so, it turns into another shuddering sob. “Dean,” Castiel turns back to him, fingers flexing at his cheeks, “what’s happened to you, beloved?” his eyes are pressing. Are beautiful. Dean wants to melt into his touch as much as he wants to run away. “What burdens you?”

Maybe it’s that word. Dean blinks out fresh tears, new tears, tears purer than before.

“I want to,” he tries, but the words are strangled by sorrow and snag in his throat. “Can I—” his words shudder out of him with broken breaths. “I want to tell you about my mother.”

Castiel blinks, and in his gaze is every tide of love.

“Then I would like to hear about her,” he answers.

He takes Dean’s hands. He leads him to the table and sits him, gently, there. He pulls a stool close to Dean so that all of the side of his leg is touching Dean’s. So that he’s close and Dean can’t forget it. So that he’s not too close and Dean can draw away if he wants, or needs. But he wants Cas close. And Cas is close. This makes it easier. He swallows. He looks at Castiel. Madra lies down across their feet. Dean glances down at her and the panic in his heart is washed at by lapping waves. Her breathing is soft and long, the perfect opposite of Dean’s short stabbing gasps when he arrived. He blinks out tears. He looks back up at Castiel. And Castiel is looking at him with his beautiful gentle eyes, and his hair is curled from the mists of the day's work, and his face is washed with understanding but without expectation. And Dean loves him so. He begins.

Chapter Text

She’d been everything soft in the world. After she died, everything turned brittle and sharp. John turned brittle and sharp, especially. Dean isn’t a cruel, angry person—he knows he acts like it. But since only four years of age, everything has been brittle and sharp, and he had to harden, had to harden himself, or he’d never have made it. Not this far.

But now Cas is here. And curls around him like he’ll stop the sharp and brittle things from grazing Dean’s skin raw, or from breaking him completely.

The words have spilled out of Dean like his tears. Like a river into the sea. Long overdue, they became a torrent. But Cas caught every drop. Not all of it was about the fire, or after the fire, or what happened because of the fire. Some of it was about the lightness of his mother’s hands when she ruffled at Dean’s hair, was about how often she burnt dinner and Dean and her sat grinning, wrinkling their noses as, poor as they were, they ate through the bitter tang of charred wheat on their lips. Some of it was about Dean helping her with chores and feeling important, how she showed him a few bare basics of cooking which carried him over when John no longer fed them. Eventually Cas cries too while Dean speaks, and normally this would make him angry, some intrusion onto his sorrow, but it doesn’t now. Now it makes Dean feel cradled. Seen, like the sorrow of the waves in all their wild and desperate rushing.

They drink enough of the cider that Castiel spices and warms, enough so that Dean’s fingertips are tingling with warmth by the time they curl up together on Castiel’s bed, legs tangled, Cas’s arms bound tight as any covenant around Dean’s body. Lips graze, soft as summer wind, against the shell of Dean’s ear. His breath is steady, steady and slow when just hours ago it spiked through him like heated metal.

Now it’s soft, soft and a little shaken still as Cas noses at his hair, as Madra curls at their feet on the bed and Castiel lets out a huff that lets Dean know that he’s thinking about how well behaved the dog used to be before Dean became a regular guest at the Croft. Well, he’s hardly a guest, anymore.

This is his home. Cas is…

He drifts away from consciousness.

Winter drifts closer.

The weather turns to drizzle and watercolour smears against the sky, leaves darken and curl on branches with the promise of falling and making an ochre carpet of the earth. September seeps into November and Dean thinks of a year ago, and travelling to England in the first place. How much he missed home the moment he boarded the boat to Plymouth. How much he thinks of this place as a place of belonging, now.

One night, Cas makes something he calls boxty, and tells Dean he’s lucky to have food which is such a comfort given to him for free, when Dean frowns at the word and the item. Castiel tells him with rolling eyes it is made of potatoes and flour, and Dean needn’t look so sceptical.

“This was one of the foods of my home,” Cas says as he sits opposite Dean for dinner. Dean’s cheeks are still rosy from the cold walk from the Eyrie to the Croft. When he entered, Cas cupped his face with crackling eyes and commented with affection curled words on the pink hue clinging to Dean’s features. Utterly, ridiculously delighted by it.

“Of your childhood, you mean?”

“Yes,” the shepherd nods. “Not a meal of plenty, but certainly of comfort.”

“It’s so rare, that you speak of it,” Dean says. “I like it when you do.”

“Why’s that?”

“It hurts you, and it’s sacred to you,” Dean says, and peers, with an earnestness that could rival even that of the shepherd, at Castiel. “When you share it with me, you give something that has the power to hurt, and to heal you. You give it to me. Which means you trust me. You love me. It has to.”

Castiel huffs.

“I fear that if you’d been raised by a man of learning, you’d be the wisest of us all. Already so perceptive, Dean. Perhaps there’s no more call for all our lessons.”

“I’ve much to learn, still,” Dean answers with a smile, and cannot cease his staring at Castiel. They’re nearing the time that he and Castiel first met; almost twelvemonths since the shepherd first arrived at the farm with his scruff-lined jaw and battered clothing and sparking, mysterious eyes. His inexplicable capacity to send Dean’s head in a reel. Dean had been so startled by it he’d been angry, defensive. Now he knows why he was sent reeling. “Don’t stop your lessons, so soon.”

Cas hums warmly, takes a long drink of the wine Dean brought for them.

“Well, Dean,” he puts down his cup and leans forward, voice crackling, “won’t you trade me a secret, back? What was the food of your childhood?”

“I ate more than one.”

“Very clever. Give me an example.”

“My favourite, which my mother made, was pie.” Dean’s voice cracks only once as he relates this. “Not the savory ones, so much. Those too, but the sweet ones I adored. Ones made with fruit. I used to watch her make them. I was so enchanted. Thought there was some kind of magic in it.”

“And perhaps there was some,” Castiel answers, and Dean loves him all the more for the gentle sincerity of his tone, that Cas believes his words and is inviting Dean to do so. Dean loves him all the more.

He cracks a smile.

“Perhaps there was,” he concedes.

“I’ve always thought there was some wizardry and wonder in you too, Dean,” Cas states. “But you’ve never made me any of that pie.”

Dean laughs.

“Okay. I will,” he promises. “I will.”

“And what about our next secrets?” Castiel asks.

“Well, I’ve just told you one of mine,” Dean titters, “I believe it’s your turn, now.”

The shepherd shakes his head with a sigh.

“So be it,” he concedes. “Well, what would you like for me to share? You’re right to say I trust you. What would you have me trust you with, tonight?”

Dean’s silent for a moment, thinking. He watches Castiel over the flickering candlelight. Castiel watches him.

The shepherd trusts Dean. But he’s trusted someone else, before.

“What happened, between you and your beloved?” Dean asks. “You never speak of him, except sadly.”

Castiel swallows with a frown. The shadows play chasing games across his face.

“What would you have me say? There’s little good in telling tales of past lovers, to present ones.”

“What was he like?” Dean asks, and his heart tremors, the frightened flickers of butterfly wings. “Was he—was he handsome? How did you meet? And—and how did you know that he—that he was like—us? And—” Dean stammers, “what happened, between you? To make you stop loving each other?”

If Dean can know this, he might be able to keep Cas from ever falling out of love with him. He might preserve this moment of love, forever. He won’t ever stop loving Cas—and how could anyone? But Cas is by his own description a traveller, a man who roams and wanders over land and leaves when he grows weary of it; it’s soon that he’ll grow weary of Dean, he’s sure.

“That’s a swathe of questions, beloved,” Castiel answers. “Certainly more than one secret, bound up in there.”

“Fine,” Dean says, and tries, as fast as he can, to reel of as many of his own secrets as he can scrape together to make the trade a fair one. “I used to cry, maybe once a day, before I came here. Before I met you. I hated myself for it. Now I don’t—that’s because of you. I still cry a lot. I’m not so ashamed of it, though. The first man I ever looked at—looked at, you understand—was called Aaron. I was so blindsided I walked into a table,” Dean relates, and Cas finally cracks a smile at this, and shakes his head gently. “I tried not to think about how I’d looked at him. I didn’t understand it. My mind felt like it was turning in on itself, like it was made of thorns, and they were all getting tangled together. This wasn’t a part of myself that I loved, until I met you. Until I loved you. I love it now,” Dean says, honestly, leaning forward. “I love it now because of you.” What else, what else can he share? Castiel sighs at Dean’s panicked thinking expression.

“Dean, I don’t need you to do this,” he says, fingers reaching across the table to graze at Dean’s. “Just give me time to think, and I will answer what I can.”

Dean swallows, nervously.

“One of your questions,” Castiel says, shifting, and obviously nervous, “was how I knew that he was like us. Well,” the shepherd huffs, “I suppose so much of it is hope and fear, anyway, that you never feel truly certain until they say so. Or you say so.”

“But he said so, eventually?” Dean asks.

“Not in so many words,” Castiel admits, and to Dean’s quizzical expression, answers, “he kissed me.”

Dean swallows, a twist of jealousy searing through his gut. His hand twitches and Cas glances down to it, watches the gesture, intrigued.

“You’re jealous?” he asks, and clearly takes some pleasure in it, reminding Dean of the hungry feeling in his stomach when he asked Cas if he was jealous about Lee. The memory makes him feel childish.

“He’s not the one who gets to kiss you, now,” is Dean’s decided answer. Castiel hums.

“Just so. Well, in any case, as I’ve said, my father could sense the kind of man I was—boy, back then,” Castiel amends. “After my mother died, I left. I’ve said that it was impulsivity. That’s—that’s half true. My father faced me with the option of leaving, or staying, and not staying with my sweetheart. As I said, he could tell the sort of man I was, though he hadn’t seen anything that would tell him, explicitly. I’d made sure of that.” Castiel swallows. “So, I left with my sweetheart. It seemed a good idea, at the time.”

“It was,” Dean frowns. “If your father didn’t have it in him to love you—”

“He still loved me,” Cas looks up, brow twined. “Things are not so simple as you like to make them, Dean. He was a good man.”

Dean swallows, glancing away.

“Good men love their children.”

His words are decided with hurt.

“I left with my sweetheart, thinking that if we travelled, none would know us long enough to realise what we were,” Castiel continues, ignoring Dean. “It was a good life. For a while. We must have paced every hill in Ireland, have swum in every lake. We took up employment as we travelled, nothing permanent. Most of what we ate came from the land. I was so sure that we would—that we would love each other, forever. That it would always be just so.” Dean’s gut stabs with hurt as Castiel speaks. “And, to be sure, it was many seasons of love we shared like that. But it was not to last forever. Little is. We were young. The world was wide. It had its teeth.”

“What happened?” Dean asks. His voice is quiet, so quiet. He can hardly breathe.

Castiel shakes his head minutely, and for a moment Dean thinks the shepherd will not answer him.

“We grew careless, I suppose,” he answers, “and were found. Stumbled upon by eyes so hardened with hatred they could not bring themselves to look softly upon us.”

Dean’s bones seem to lurch, his ribs crack with the ghost blow of kicks aimed upon him in a dark and piss-soaked alley.

“Cas—”

“It was not near so terrible as your ordeal,” Cas assures quickly. “We ran—were chased from that town, and beyond its borders, by lads with stones, and sticks, and…” Cas frowns, and swallows, “I was not so scared as he, I think—I was scared, but…” Castiel swallows. Dean’s never before seen the look at his face. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Cas afraid, before—and that is what terrifies and breaks him. “It must have overwhelmed him. He bade me leave him. Told me he could not continue living in such a manner… moving from town to town, in fear. And risk being stoned to death, if seen. And when I said I could not leave him, that I loved him, he said I was a plaything, little more. That he’d not loved me as I had, him. He told me to leave again. Once more I begged him to let me stay—stay with him. And a third time,” Castiel relates, eyes shining in the candlelight, “he told me to leave and not return to him. And…” the shepherd pauses, looks down at the table, “and so I did.”

Dean’s throat has closed up.

“Cas…”

“Three times is enough—if any lover says it three times, it’s enough to be true. Think of Saint Peter by the fire. I continued living such as I had, but not for long. I feared returning home, but soon it became a necessity. I returned to a family riddled with sickness, no longer my father could afford the luxury of rejecting me—or perhaps he’d forgiven me for the sin of loving a man. In any case, I was home again, and thought home would be enough for me. I clung so tight to it I think the splinters from its floorboards must still be dug under my nails. Still, I lost it, as you know.”

“I’m so sorry—” Dean shakes his head.

Castiel looks up.

“It led me here, to you,” he answers simply.

“That isn’t enough,” Dean shakes his head. “I’d—I’d have it so that you never suffered, so that nothing of sorrow touched you. I’d cradle you from all of it. Make it so that joy and kindness—that’s all you ever knew.”

“It led me here, to you,” Castiel repeats.

“But that can’t be enough—” Dean shakes his head, eyes stinging. “Cas, all you’ve suffered through—”

“But you know of suffering, too,” the shepherd points out, gently. His gaze is earnest and perhaps the purest, kindest thing that Dean has ever seen. Some blessed holy fire. The holiest of hearths.

“I—yes,” Dean admits.

“And we’ve found some shelter, in each other,” Castiel smiles. Dean trembles.

“Yes,” he says, after a beat of disbelief that Cas could consider Dean comfort against the all shale of his past.

“I for one feel blessed.”

Dean blinks out tears.

“And I, too.”

“And I’ve been promised pie, made by none other than the Dean Winchester,” Castiel says, and Dean huffs and rolls his eyes, but the smile stretching at his lips is irreversible as dawn. “If I’d known that was what I was running towards, those years ago, I would’ve run all the faster.”

“Grá mo choi,” Dean shakes his head. Love of my heart. “You’ve an answer for everything.”

“That’s a promise that you will make me some of this infamous pie, then?”

“And many more,” Dean says.

“Oh, Mr Winchester, you’ve a kind heart.”

Dean huffs and tries to gently kick at Cas under the table but the shepherd, who knows every depth of him, of course sees it coming. He dodges easily. Perhaps Dean lets him.

“Can we read Keats, tonight?” he asks. Castiel twitches a smile.

“A favourite of yours, is he?”

“Of yours,” Dean answers. “It’s just that your love is infectious.”

“I’m sorry for contaminating you.”

Dean reaches out and across the table to rough up Cas’s hair. The shepherd wrinkles his nose, but half-leans into the touch. And in a few minutes, Keats is down from the shelf, and Dean and Castiel are wrapped together in bed, Dean’s back to the shepherd’s bare chest, taking it in turns to read lines to one another. Dean takes near three times as long to stammer out a line as Castiel, and that’s saying something considering the steady, soft pacing of the shepherd’s speech. But Cas is so constantly proud of Dean for his reading he can hardly think to feel shame over its clumsiness. And the shepherd encourages Dean to reread the poem once he is done with it, each first time round, so that by the second reading they come out more even and more fluent than Dean, with his shame and wonder at the very thought of reading, let alone aloud, would have been able to believe a year ago.

Cas noses at his hair, just behind his right ear.

“People pay to hear recitals in such a beautiful voice,” he says, after Dean’s rereading of one poem. Dean snorts, rolling his eyes. But his cheeks still bloom with a delighted heat.

“People would demand compensation, if they heard me butcher poor Keats, so.”

“Never,” Cas nearly growls, squeezing Dean closer. “Read me the next?”

Dean’s lips quirk. Cas’s breath is soft and hot on the back of his neck. He begins, and as he reads, Cas’s nose grazes against his delicate skin there. Dean reads, and stumbles, and Cas is patient through it all, and applauds Dean when he finishes, making a lace of kisses over his neck.

“Perfect,” he hums. “That was perfect.”

“Far from it,” Dean disagrees, but his heart is light and almost numb for joy. “You’re just a biased audience.”

“Perfect to me.”

“That’s better,” Dean concedes. He tips his head backwards, against Cas’s shoulder. “I like reading Keats.” Cas hums questioningly, and Dean confirms. “Yes. There’s the fact that you like it, so—but there’s more. Remember when we first read him, together?”

“Ah yes, in winter, I believe.”

“Yes,” Dean laughs. “It was so cold. And I wanted to be so close to you. I couldn’t tell why. I didn’t understand.”

“I remember, you kept tipping your head onto my shoulder,” Cas replies. “It gave me immeasurable joy.”

Dean tips his head slightly, glances up at the shepherd.

“Yes?” he asks. Castiel chuckles.

“It always does,” he says, “being close to you.”

Dean beams. His heart sighs.

“I could hardly stop doing it,” he laughs.

“And I could hardly find cause or reason for you not to do it,” Castiel returns. Dean closes his eyes and tips his head back against the shepherd again.

“I never will.”

…

It’s like Ellen’s lying in wait, when Dean returns the bottle of brandy to its shelf. He’s been avoiding her, and the Eyrie, for days now. Spending time with Castiel is hardly difficult, anyway, and ordinarily consumes most of the hours he doesn’t spend at work. But this morning the shepherd frowned at the brandy bottle which has sat, waiting, on one of his shelves for weeks now. He turned to Dean with eyes somehow both patient and with no room for maneuver. I think you’ll return that bottle to it’s rightful owner today. Dean had swallowed thickly. But Cas is nothing if not persuasive.

And has Ellen been camped out in the kitchen, waiting for the moment Dean crumbles and returns the spirits to her? It certainly seems it.

“Oh,” she says, arms crossed, standing in the corner of the kitchen. Dean scarce jumps out of his skin. Had she appeared out of thin air?! Dean could swear she wasn’t there, a moment before. He bumps his head against one of the bundles of herbs she’s dried and hung from the ceiling, and a tiny leaf of thyme lands in his eye. He grumbles and rubs at it, wrinkling his nose, as Ellen begins what he anticipates will be a tirade against his actions, earlier. “So that’s where it was.”

“You saw me taking it,” Dean grumbles in reply, turning to her when the brandy is safely in its place, and the thyme is blinked and rubbed from his eye.

“Oh, so you did see me.”

“Yes,” Dean admits, cheeks heating, “and I’m sorry—”

“And you ignored me when I asked what you were doing, if you were okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean repeats, heart tangled in his ribs like roots. “I was—my head was a storm.”

“I guessed, by the fact you were stealing spirits from me.”

Dean looks down.

“Well, I didn’t drink any.”

“I’d noticed that,” she steps forward, picks up the bottle from the shelf, frowning at its contents. “You didn’t water it down or anything, did you? ‘Cause I’ll notice—”

“No,” Dean shakes his head, “nothing like that. I just—I went to Cas’s. To the Croft.”

Ellen raises her eyebrows.

“And we talked, instead…” Dean says.

“Instead of getting blind drunk?”

“I mean, essentially…”

Ellen sighs like she doesn’t understand Dean.

“Sorry…” He murmurs, unsure of what else to say.

“Seeing as no damage was done, I think we can overlook it,” Ellen answers. Dean swallows thickly. “Maybe that shepherd’s good for you, Dean. You didn’t strike me as much of the talking kind, when we first met.” When Dean shrugs at this, Ellen continues. “Why were you looking to get blind drunk, to begin with?”

Dean’s features tremble. His head had been slouched down toward the floor, but when he raises his eyes to Ellen, hers are surprisingly gentle.

“Why does any man look to get drunk?” he asks. “I was wallowing in my own sadness. It won’t happen again.”

A frown pinches Ellen’s features.

“Why were you sad?”

Dean shrugs again.

“Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

Her words are so certain that Dean all but balks.

“Ellen—”

Whatever he’d manage to say next is cut off by Sam and Adam entering the kitchen, arms laden with apples.They’re green and gold and bigger than the palm of Dean’s hand, let alone Adam’s.

“Dean!” Adam beams. “Look how many we got! And Mr Lafitte said that we could take all of them!”

Dean croaks out a laugh, shaking his head. His eyes are still watering from Ellen’s words.

“I don’t know why he’d say that, but okay…”

“I’m his favourite,” Adam says by way of explanation, and drops his armful of apples onto the table, where they bounce and roll out in all different directions and threaten to fall off. Sam darts forward to recover them, and glances at Dean to roll his eyes longsufferingly. Dean’s heart is surprisingly tender.

“And what do you plan on doing with this mighty haul then, boys?” Dean asks. Sam twitches a smile.

“We were thinking apple pie,” he admits, and Dean doesn’t even realise that he’s smiled, or licked his lips.

“Sam said that Ellen could teach us,” Adam says. “But now you’re here,” he beams at Dean. “You always made it best,” Adam says, and Dean bites his lip, worried that these words will offend the person who is paid to cook for all the household. Ellen has turned and Dean’s gut lurches with worry, but when she turns back to Dean, she’s holding an apron out to him.

“Well, Dean,” she smiles. “Do you have the time, today? Do you think you could show us how it’s done?”

Dean’s heart is sore. He nods with a smile.

“Of course,” he answers, taking the apron from her. Ellen ties her own. “Alright, you two,” to Adam and Sam, “wash your hands. I’ve no idea where you’ve been and I don’t want to know, but I’ll bet it’s left you covered in dirt.” Adam grins and Dean ruffles his hair as he walks past. “You’re getting way too tall, boy,” he says, and Adam looks sheepish.

“Keep growing,” Sam encourages him from the sink, already washing his hands. “If both of us end up taller than Dean, he’ll have no room for pride left.”

Hands washed, apples washed, Dean shows Adam how to cut and stew them in slowly in spices so that they’re sweet and tart and warm and perfect. Adam surprises him, beside Dean, by wrapping his arms tight around Dean’s side and squeezing hard after they’ve tipped the apple slices in the pot to stew. Dean falters, before his hand meets Adam’s hair again.

“Thank you, Dean,” Adam says.

“It’s—it’s nothing, little brother,” Dean says. Adam squeezes again before pulling away and turning to Ellen. Dean isn’t left a second to gape in surprise at the warmth and tenderness of this moment, because in the next Adam calls Ellen mother.

It’s like a bullet has gone clean through Dean’s heart. He blinks in shock, and Ellen looks torn between being touched, and being terrified. Dean blinks again, mouth open. After everything—everything Dean told Castiel, and so recently, only days ago, leaving his heart so raw—

He looks at Adam. They never shared a mother. They shared a father, a father Dean always worried he would turn into, and perhaps nearly did, as he cared for his brothers alone and afraid and hurt beyond what he could ever admit. Afraid he’d turn into a father Adam couldn’t be further from, with his bright inquisitive eyes and innocent gentleness. The two of them never shared a mother—Mary Winchester was the woman who sang Dean gentle lullabies, and was taken from him too soon. Kate Milligan was the woman who—who sang Adam gentle lullabies, and was taken from him too soon. And then they came here, to the Eyrie, and Ellen. They’ve never shared a mother—before.

He swallows. He steps toward the pair of them

He slips his arm around Ellen and squeezes.

“You think you can teach me a thing or two about pie crusts?” he asks gently. Ellen huffs. She beams.

“Oh, absolutely.”

It’s evening when Dean has the time to visit the Croft and his shepherd.

“Ah, Sunflower,” he smiles, pushing open the door with his foot—his hands are busy carrying the last of the pie which was all but demolished by the efforts of Mick, Bobby, Jo, Sam and Adam. He, Jody and Ellen held back and ate only one slice—it was like muzzling himself for Dean, and his one comfort was knowing he’d have more with Cas, come evening.

“Good evening, Chuisle mo chroi,” Castiel smiles. Pulse of my heart. He’s stood beside the fire, turning to Dean. Stepping inside Dean sees he’s heating water for some kind of tea—and knowing the shepherd, it really could be any kind of tea.

“I hope that goes well with pie,” Dean smiles, approaching and lifting his offering to Cas, whose eyes sparkle and spark.

“Oh, Mr Winchester,” Castiel says warmly. “What’s this?”

“I promised, didn’t I—apple pie. Stewed the apples for hours with cinnamon and cloves—you’ve not tried pie like this, Sunflower—”

Castiel pulls Dean close and winds his arms round Dean’s body.

“I’m sure,” he smiles, bumping his nose against Dean’s. “Though there doesn’t seem to be very much of it,” he nods down to the pie and dish, in which little over two slices remain.

“Now that’s not my fault,” Dean grins. “I went to the trouble of making three pies, actually—but through the best efforts of that madhouse,” he tips his head in the vague direction of the Croft, “and Lafitte and Henriksen dropping in, this meagre remnant is all that’s left.”

“Three pies?” Castiel repeats, obviously stunned by this information. “What, Winchester, do the occupants of that house have two stomachs?” Dean snorts, untangling himself from Cas’s arms and placing the pie on the table.

“Remember that Adam is in the throes of youth,” he reminds. “When I was his age, I was always hungry.” Something stabs into his gut when he remembers why. He swallows and puts it out of his mind. The present he sits in is a time of plenty, more than plenty, in comparison to his past. He focuses on that.

Cas must sense the trail of Dean’s thoughts because he approaches Dean again and winds his arms around his middle.

“It is my deepest wish, beloved, to see you never hunger for anything, again. Dean huffs and twists in Cas’s arms to face him.

“A little hunger is good,” he shakes his head.

“Oh?” the shepherd raises his eyebrows.

“Yes,” Dean confirms. “I like my hungering for you, for example. All day, I hunger and ache for you, and that yearning is almost as delicious as the time I finally return to you.”

“Almost as delicious?” Cas cocks his head, obviously insulted. Dean huffs another laugh and curls into Cas’s frame. “Almost as delicious as my actual company, Winchester?”

“And almost as delicious as this pie I’ve made,” Dean grins into the shepherd’s neck. Cas trails light fingers through Dean’s hair. Dean thinks he can feel Cas nosing at it and breathing in, deep.

“Are you enjoying the smell of me, shepherd?” Dean asks.

“You smell like cinnamon,” Castiel smiles into Dean’s hairline.

“That’ll be the cinnamon,” Dean grins. Cas huffs, and draws back, taking the water from the boil and pouring it into two cups for them.

“Let’s try this famed pie, then,” he says, passing Dean a plate. “And I’ll see if I think it as delicious as your company.”

They sit opposite one another at the table. Madra asks Dean for scraps of food which he is absolutely not going to give her, not when it’s pie. Cas smirks, because recently Dean has taken to indulging the dog of her every whim and wish, which is part of why she’s taken to coiling on the bed at their feet as they sleep. Part of why—maybe all of why. But Dean is absolutely not sharing his pie with the creature. It’s been too long since he last had it. Cas sighs happily upon his first mouthful, and Dean beams, heart an opening flower.

“Good, huh?” he asks, and Castiel sighs again, shaking his head.

“What I want to know is why you refused to cook this for me, before.”

“Refused?!” Dean repeats, cheeks aching from how far his mouth curls upwards, “I never refused—I just—neglected to mention—”

“Kept it secret is what you did, Mr Winchester,” Cas looks at Dean, seriously. Dean laughs more, rocking back.

“I did no such thing,” he shakes his head affectionately. Cas’s foot is pressing against his beneath the table.

“Tell me how you filled your day today, Chuisle mo chroi,” Castiel’s voice is cracked with love. Dean’s chest stutters.

“Made this pie, for one thing,” Dean smiles. “Which was no small feat, considering the direction I had to give to Adam and Sam in the kitchen. Those two could burn water.”

“But surely there’s some talent in that?”

Dean rolls his eyes.

“What did you do, shepherd?”

“Sold a few more of my medicines. Took a visit to a friend.”

“A friend?” Dean repeats, raising his eyebrows.

“Now, is that so ridiculous?” Castiel asks, indignant. Dean laughs. Victor and Benny spent all the day in the fields, Sam was with Adam and then Dean and Ellen. Jody was in town, running errands. Jo and Bobby were training the ridiculous goshawk. These are the shepherd’s immediate friends, Dean thought, and all of them.

“Who?”

“A woman, so you and your jealous heart have no cause to worry.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Dean huffs out laughter. “Or jealous. Who, though? And do I know her?”

“I doubt it. She lives on Alastair’s land. She’s to be a mother.”

“Oh?” Dean asks. “And she needs your help with that?”

“It’s her first. I’ve been helping her these past weeks. She’s all alone,” Cas says, sadly. He takes a long sip of his tea, and looks away.

“Why all alone?” Dean asks, concerned.

“The father’s some high lord, some fool with too much money and too little care for the poor. I doubt his child will even see him, in the course of his poor life. Kelly never will, and that’s certain.”

“Kelly?”

“Miss Kline. The mother.”

Every day, there’s something new to the shepherd.

“How do you know how to help her?” Dean asks with a twitched frown. “No offence—but if I was a pregnant lady, the last person I’d want looking after me would be—”

“A man who’s had no call to be near a woman, nor certain parts of her, since he himself was born from one?”

“Well,” Dean snorts. “Yes. But I wasn’t about to say it so bluntly.”

Cas smiles, shaking his head and looking out the window.

“My mother was a midwife,” he reminds, “and I helped with the birth of my little sister—no matter how badly that went,” he looks down and swallows sharply. Dean’s heart pangs. “And I’ve assisted the births of countless animals. Even Madra,” he gestures down to her. “Yes, I was there for her birth.”

“Her birth?” Dean repeats. Strange, and of course she was born, and born in Cas’s lifetime—but Dean cannot imagine the shepherd without the dog. He huffs out a breath of laughter.

“Yes,” Castiel confirms, serious. “After the death of my youngest sister, when I was all but ready to leave the land entirely, the only thing that stayed me a while was the birthing and weaning of Madra and her siblings from our sheepdog. I sold the rest, but kept this one,” he scratches the top of Madra’s head. “I… for some reason, I couldn’t let her go.”

“I’m glad,” Dean answers, earnest. “She’s a fine friend, and must’ve been, to you. Especially when everything else was so awry.”

Castiel curves a gentle smile.

“Too true. And as I roamed, she learnt shepherding from her mother. She was a swift learner—I was glad for her, especially when Aoire passed.”

“Aoire?” Dean repeats.

“It means Shepherd, in Irish.”

Dean bursts out laughing. Cas squints at him.

“You certainly like to get to the point with your names, Castiel.”

“Well, name a dog ‘Shepherd’ and perhaps she’ll be a good one,” Castiel shrugs, earnest.

“And name a dog ‘Dog’ and perhaps she’ll be a good dog.”

“Precisely.”

“And never think to rise above her station,” Dean smiles.

“Oh, I’d hoped—but considering the way that you’ve permitted almost everything with my Madra, I’d rather abandoned that ambition. Now she thinks herself a younger sister of you and your giant of a brother, rather than a working dog of mine.”

Dean rest is chin on his hand, chuckling.

“You have my sincerest regrets.”

“I know for a fact that I have no such thing.”

Dean grins.

“So—Miss Kline?”

“Yes,” Castiel nods, “lives alone on Alastair’s land, though in a house next to the Chambers family.” Dean frowns at the name—it sounds familiar. Cas continues. “She’s far along—a few weeks now, and she’ll have two mouths to feed by her meagre savings. ‘Tis a sad thing.”

“I hope you’re not charging her,” Dean frowns. Cas blinks, insulted.

“Of course not,” he shakes his head. “Though she has tried to pay me. But I’ve brought her medicines for morning sickness, and balms for her poor joints, and foods which might nourish her in a time of need for both her and the life she’s growing.”

“I’m sure she’s very thankful.”

“She has little to be thankful for, from this poor life,” Castiel looks at the table, troubled.

“At least you’re one thing.”

“Let’s hope.” Cas looks up at Dean a quirks a smile. “In spite of it all, she isn’t half excited to meet her little one. And she’s keen to be rid of pregnancy—the way she talks of it, Dean, I’m glad it’s a trial I’ll never go through.”

Dean laughs, warm—but it fades. He and Castiel will never have children.

Softly and surely it becomes easier for both the shepherd and Dean to speak of their childhoods and families. Now trust seeps into everything they do and say to each other. Before their traded secrets were small parcels of information. Now there are whole waves of it. Dean is forgetting his fear. Or trying to.

He and Castiel are so different at their cores: Dean hardened and resentful, Castiel walled off but in spite of it, so soft and forgiving. Dean realised this early in their acquaintance, has only come to know it better with all of the shepherd’s patience with him. And he knows it better, now, now that Castiel Novak, the shepherd of so few words, will speak for whole minutes of his past with hurt but no bitterness. Dean is so hurt and hardened by the world, made so brittle by it every moment he seems to threaten to break. And yet Castiel has borne hurt with forgiveness.

“Do you know what my father did, when he saw me returning home, treading the hills like wings, returning to the land of my family?” Castiel asks, on one of these evenings where he clarifies not only the details of his past but also the goodness of his heart. They lie in the shepherd’s bed—their bed—Dean’s back pressed to Cas’s chest, Cas’s arms caught around his waist. Worry lances through Dean—he thinks of John, what John would say, what John would do, after a leave of absence to traverse the country with another man. He shakes his head. “He saw me, cresting the hills which he called Sciatháin, you remember, Wings—and while I was still a long way off, he ran to me, embraced me, and kissed me. No, perhaps he did not love me as I deserved, for the fact I loved other men. But he did love me, Dean,” Castiel says seriously. “I was loved. And welcomed home.”

“And isn’t that what love is,” Dean’s voice cracks. Cas raises his eyebrows in question. “A welcoming.”

Castiel hums.

“Just so.”

A kiss is planted beneath Dean’s ear. It flowers a smile upon his lips.

“What else is love, to you?” Cas asks. Dean’s breathes out a single syllable of amusement.

“You looking for a compliment, shepherd?”

“Haven’t I earnt it?”

Dean laughs again. Warmth floods his chest in spite of the chill beyond the windows.

“What else is love?” he asks. “To me?” Castiel hums in confirmation. “A damned inconvenience, Mr Novak,” he laughs. “I found it so much easier to resent you, before I realised how much I wanted to be held by you.”

“An inconvenience?” Cas repeats, indignant.

“Yes!” Dean laughs, squirming through the shepherd’s attempts to tickle him. “I was hardened to the world, perfectly so, before you came along.”

“It was my great pleasure to crack you open,” Castiel noses at Dean’s neck.

“You didn’t even try,” Dean shakes his head. “Don’t think I don’t know. You didn’t even need to.”

“So, loving me is an inconvenience—these are not the compliments I’d hoped for, Mr Winchester,” Cas grumbles. Dean beams. “What else is there?”

“I don’t know!” Dean exclaims, giggling. “Love is—love is staying with someone. Love is facing the humiliation—the fear—of asking them to stay with you.”

“Well now,” Castiel hums, and sounds oddly touched. His nose grazes the short hairs at the back of Dean’s head. “There’s an elegant answer.”

“Satisfied?”

“For now,” Cas confirms. “I shall still endeavour to inconvenience you as much as possible, however.”

“Good,” Dean smiles. “And I, you.”

…

“Thank you, sir,” one of the voices calls below as Dean finishes his hammering.

“It’s no trouble,” he answers, climbing down the ladder again. The roof of one of Bobby’s tenants had caved, and with the cold drawing in as it is, the afternoon it was reported to the Eyrie, Dean dropped his day’s tasks and set about to mend it.

“Still, it’s a kind thing you’ve done for us,” the father of the household nods earnestly to Dean. Their surname is a place in Cornwall, apparently—Penryn. “Not every landlord in the parish is so generous.”

“I’m not your landlord,” Dean laughs honestly, “and in any case, you can’t be left to shiver through the autumn and winter, in your own home.”

“It’s very generous, sir,” Mr Penryn repeats, sincere. Dean licks his lips, a little embarrassed.

“I’ve some experience, mending things,” Dean answers honestly. “And I like to be useful.”

“I know that,” Penryn laughs. “All the farm speaks of your dedication and hard work. Not many a master will cut the corn, sheer the sheep, deliver the lambs—and now, it seems, mend the roofs of tenants.”

Dean tries not to flush at the praise, but his heart certainly swells a little.

“Well, I’m not much of a master,” he laughs honestly. “But that roof, there,” he gestures up to it, “it ought to last you some seasons, yet. There’s a ten year warranty on it, at the very least. If you find so much a leak before then, you may bestow on me whatever cruel and unusual form of punishment you desire.”

“How might we repay you?” Mrs Penryn asks. “Please—”

“Don’t think on it,” Dean dismisses, waving a hand. “This is your home. It ought to be fit for living in.”

“Sir—”

“Don’t think on it,” Dean repeats. “You pay enough in rent, I’m sure.”

“At least let us—may we offer you a drink, some food, in thanks? Before your return to the Ey—the farmhouse,” Miss Penryn, a daughter of perhaps fifteen starts, and cuts herself off, flushing at her using the unofficial title of Bobby’s house. Both her parents look mortified, and terrified. Dean only laughs.

“Yes, it is a long walk back,” he agrees. “Alright, I’ll join you. That’s very generous.”

Mrs Penryn is still flushing from her daughter’s slip.

“It’s nothing. No—not nothing,” she corrects. “The least we could do, in thanks, for repairing our home.”

Inside the home, Dean is sat down and offered warmed cider. He smiles. It reminds him of Cas.

The home is small, a little larger than Cas’s in the Croft, but the kitchen is smaller—well, it doesn’t double as bedroom and drawing room, and so it does make sense. In any case, the house is a humble two rooms on each of its two floors, and after living in the comparative spaciousness of the Eyrie, and the cosy simplicity of the Croft, it is strange to see. Back in Kansas, Dean often shared one room with his brother and his father, and this room would often double as the kitchen, too. But John kept them moving so often that no dwelling, no matter how small, was ever home to them.

“It was scarce an hour, when we told our neighbours of the problem, before you arrived at our door with the tools to fix it,” Mrs Penry comments, setting the cup down at his side.

“Ah, but men talk while they work, you see,” Dean answers with a smile. “And working together every day, you run out of things to talk about. News of a collapsed roof is news indeed.”

“Not many landlords—sorry—you know what I mean—are so considerate to those who live upon their land.”

“They ought to be,” Dean frowns.

“We’ve always considered ourselves fortunate, to live upon Mr Singer’s land,” Mr Penryn provides.

“Now more than ever,” their daughter murmurs, and Dean glances over at her.

“What do you mean by that?” he asks. Her parents cast her a look which tells her to be quiet.

“Just that—with you here, too, to see to tasks which Mr Singer can no longer manage, on account of his health—” Mrs Penryn fumbles.

“But there’s more,” Dean frowns, sensing the panicked cover-up in her tone.

“We mean you no offense, sir—”

“And I’m not about to take it,” Dean answers, sincere. “What else is there?”

“Only—on account of you taking up friendship with him, it’d be improper to speak ill of him, in your company—”

“Who?” Dean asks.

“Sir Alastair, the next farm over, is not so generous toward his tenants, as you,” the young Miss supplies, and once again her parents look aghast. Dean is barely surprised by this, but what does surprise him is that this family seem to think he counts Alastair as a friend.

“That man is not—we’re not—I hardly know him,” Dean laughs, put out. “I mean—yes, he often has me dine with him, but—” he sighs, shakes his head. “I certainly don’t count him as a friend. You may speak of him as you wish in my presence,” he reassures. “Most likely I’ll agree. And why do you believe him to be such a poor landlord?”

Mr Penryn looks down.

“Well, Mr Winchester…”

“Please,” Dean encourages, “speak honestly.”

“You see, Mr Singer’s the sort of man to forgive a rent being late, in the tighter seasons—whole months we’ve gone, and others, during hard times, and Mr Singer patient through it all. But Sir Alastair…” Penryn swallows, shaking his head. “You’d be at risk of houselessness, and many are. He put’s ‘em out, down the lane, and not a second thought, I don’t think. Even in mid-winter. And to hear the way he treats his workers…” He glances up at Dean. “No, he’s not the sort of man to join the threshing, or the sheering, or the lambing. Well, Mr Winchester, we must remind ourselves of our great fortunes.”

“We must,” Dean agrees. “But please,” Dean says, leaning forward, “you hear these tales, from those who work for Sir Alastair?”

“Our youngest is best friends with the young Chambers girl,” Mr Penryn provides. “In fact, she’s out playing with her, now.”

“Chambers,” Dean repeats. Is the name familiar?

“They work for Sir Alastair, and live on his land. Mr Chambers has been… causing quite some stir of trouble for him,” Mrs Penryn replies.

“I’ve told him not to rock the boat,” Mr Penryn shakes his head. “He says it’s easier not to do so when you are paid enough to feed you and your loved ones, let alone keep a roof over your head.”

“Are they really paid so little?” Dean asks, worry clamping his insides.

“Times such as these, Mr Winchester, we must be happy for any work.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“People forget that leaving a place costs money, too,” Mrs Penryn states, downcast. “And if you’ve a family, you can’t simply uproot everything, on account of a little discomfort. Mr Chambers thinks it wiser to negotiate with Sir Alastair, than risk everything on the gamble of displacing his wife and child to some new parish, with some new master who might not pay enough, and provides even less.”

“Negotiate?” Penryn repeats. “If he could, I’d say that it was wise. But there’s no negotiating with Sir Alastair. I’ve told Chambers that, but…” Penryn shakes his head. “He thinks that he can rally up the rest of the tenants, and all those in Sir Alastair’s estate, and then the man will be forced to negotiate. I’m not so certain. His anger’s a great furnace. He likes to be warmed by it. I’d not poke nor prod it, not for all the world. Who knows what it may scorch, when fanned.”

“Well what would you have him do?” Dean asks. “Mr Chambers, I mean.”

“We used to live on that land,” Mr Penryn peers at Dean. “The moment vacancy and work opened here, we took it. The seasons of Sir Alastair’s travels, his tenants forgot what it was like, I think, to live under him. With his return, they soon remembered.”

“We’re all at the mercy of someone, Mr Winchester. We just have to pray they’ll be kind enough to fix our roofs,” Mrs Penryn says, uncertain, and obviously worried by the dark and serious turn their conversation seems to have taken. Dean presses his lips together a moment.

“And who’s Sir Alastair at the mercy of?” he asks. “A man as high as him. Who does he have call to fear?” The question hangs on the air and it seems as though there is no answer, nor any accountability which Sir Alastair will ever have to burden. Penryn is silent. Then, with a frown, he answers,

“God.”

Dean swallows. He isn’t at all convinced, on this count. But it’d be rude to insult Penryn and his hospitality. He takes a long sip of his cider, nodding slowly.

“I hope you’re right.”

Chapter Text

“What’s all this?” Castiel asks, with warm laughter, as Dean takes his hand and takes him down the cliffs towards the sea, down into a cove covered by the setting sun and ragged rock face fringed with wildflowers. Away, that is, from the eyes of any. The sea is a dark and silver-tinted colour in the dying autumn light, and what light there is glints off of it like the sea is a web of crystals and not in fact the English Channel.

“Have you forgotten so readily?” Dean asks, beaming. The wind is not so cold as it often is, in November, in England, beside the sea. Or perhaps that’s the effect of the shepherd with him. But it tousles softly through Dean’s hair and Castiel seems to mark the gesture, because his mouth twitches slightly, and he cocks his head by only a fraction. “It’s one year since our first meeting,” Dean reminds.

“And you thought we ought to mark it in some way, I suppose,” Castiel replies, words tumbled with warmth.

“Aren’t you a man of ritual? When I first came into your home you told me you prefer collecting mugwort by the light of the moon—”

“—That’s because it’s strongest, then,” Castiel frowns gently, and is utterly sincere.

“One day, I’ll blindfold you, and make you try two mugwort leaves—one, picked under the light of the moon, and the other—”

“And I promise I will get it right,” Castiel shakes his head earnestly. “So I’ll tell you now, you needn’t bother.”

“You’re unlike any man I’ve ever met,” Dean says, and means it. His words are soft. They’ve arrived down onto the beach, and the sand is soft beneath their feet, lies woven with pebbles and shells. Dean has started up a fire which crackles happily, and he’s caught fish for them to cook over it, and the look on Cas’s face makes him want to say forget sitting on the beach, take me back into the Croft and kiss me until your name is all I can remember. But Cas takes his hand and traces lines over Dean’s palm as they sit beside the fire, waiting for their fish to cook, and the closed cliffs of the cove keep out most of the wind, but there still comes to be a chill in the dimming light so that Castiel frowns at Dean’s shivering and wraps the blanket Dean brought for them to sit on round both of their frames. Dean leans into his shepherd.

“I almost miss all your anger and resentment at me,” the shepherd hums, looking into the flames.

“Why’s that?” Dean asks, cocking a confused smile at Cas.

“Nobody frowns as prettily as you, Dean,” Castiel answers, as ever all things sincere, and traces his finger between Dean’s brow. “I never knew such a simple line could be so charming.” Dean laughs and rolls his eyes at the shepherd’s words, but Cas continues with a smile. “No, I’m in earnest, Dean! And your little pout, now that was something to behold—the sweetest, prettiest—”

“Castiel,” Dean beams, blushing giddily, and the shepherd bumps his nose against Dean’s.

“Oh no,” he hums, “there’s my full name—and now I know I must be in trouble.”

“Teach me new ways, to say I love you,” Dean asks, giggling at Cas’s words.

“But Dean,” Castiel says, frowning, “you teach me new ways to say I love you, every day. You patch my clothing with small embroidered bees. You tip your head onto my shoulder while we read together. You greet me with the name of Sunflower—”

“And you’re complaining that I should ask for more ways to say it?”

The shepherd huffs and noses at Dean’s cheekbone.

“In Irish, I suppose?”

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“Not too much trouble,” Castiel hums, “for you, Dean, anything.”

Dean beams and places three kisses along the shepherd’s hairline.

“Here is one,” Cas begins, words softened as they are breathed into the space between them. “And aside from Madra, I haven’t had a friend, Dean, in perhaps all my years. So this is some fierce compliment.”

“What is it?” Dean asks, his heart bleeding.

“Mo anam cara,” the shepherd answers, squeezing at Dean’s hands, “My soul friend.”

Dean exhales.

“Mo anam cara,” he repeats. “Soul friend. Now there’s a pretty phrase.”

“And it’s who you are, to me.”

Dean turns to face Castiel a little more, so that his legs tangle over the shepherd’s.

“And to me,” he answers, and means it from the very soil of his soul. “Sunflower,” he smiles, breathless, framing Cas’s face in his hands, “teach me more. Teach me more.”

“Another for you, then,” Castiel blinks, eyes beautiful and resonant as the sea as he stares into Dean’s. “Tá mo chroí istigh ionat.”

This one is difficult. Dean stammers out his repetition many times until Castiel smiles and hums, satisfied.

“Just so,” he says. Dean’s heart flowers, he nearly laughs.

“Just so,” he repeats. This is a phrase, too, which has come to mean love to him. “And what does it mean?” he asks.

Castiel’s hand, beautiful and firm and gentle and rough and weathered by years of devoted work, moves to Dean’s chest, resting there over his heart, which beats steady and sure and hard.

He looks at Dean, not down at the hand at Dean’s chest.

“My heart is in you,” he answers. Dean swallows, throat tight, eyes salty.

“My heart is in you,” he repeats. Cas’s lips curl softly, but his eyes are still steady and serious and sincere.

“Just so,” he says again. “Just so.”

Dean’s heart is in Cas, too. He thinks back to their first laying eyes upon each other. He thinks back to Castiel helping him, every time he fell on the muddy slopes of Cornwall. He thinks back to Cas’s hands washing his own with such care, after birthing the lambs. Yes, it is just so. Dean’s heart is in Cas, too.

Fear is in Dean’s heart, too, each time he is forced into the company of Sir Alastair. Sam grows more and more suspicious and rude in each of their encounters with the other man so that, one day, on the walk through fields and forest to Alastair’s estate, Dean has to hiss an anticipatory reprimand to him.

“Remember who he is, Sammy—”

“You remember who he is,” Sam rolls his eyes. “Have you spoken to his workers, or his tenants?”

“Matter of fact—”

“—Because I have. He isn’t a good man, Dean.”

“Yes,” Dean agrees, clambering over a turnstyle. “But he is a rich one.”

“And that matters, does it?” Sam raises his eyebrows above his ridiculously low hairline. Dean sighs, caught between smirking at his brother’s need of a haircut and grumbling at his pestering.

“No,” Dean shakes his head. Adam jumps the turnstyle, not particularly paying attention to either of them, it would seem. Dean waits until he’s ahead and out of earshot before continuing. “But we can’t afford to quit society with him, Sam. He’s wealthy enough to afford doctors from London.”

Sam follows him, and once over, turns to Dean again.

“And I wonder why he wants to do that, on our account,” he deadpans. Dean flushes. He swallows, neck prickling. He begins walking, trying not to stomp, trying also not to run away.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he stammers out.

“Oh?” Sam raises his eyebrows. It’s easy for Sam to catch up with him, his legs are so ridiculously long.

“Yes,” Dean confirms, clenching his fist. “Having Alastair as a friend can only be a good thing.”

“Only a friend?”

“What the hell do you mean?” Dean asks, turning to Sam in a moment and spitting his words out. Sam blinks at him, perhaps made a little anxious by Dean’s outburst, which with a gut-twisting moment reminds him all too well of their father. But worst of all is that Sammy doesn’t seem surprised by it.

 “If you were a woman, people would be saying the two of you might be wedded within the year.”

A muscle in Dean’s jaw works.

“But I’m not a woman.”

“I’ve noticed.”

Dean swallows, feeling sick. He clenches and unclenches his hand in and out of a fist.

They begin walking again. They’re going to be late. Obviously, Sam doesn’t consider this a bad thing.

“And people aren’t saying that.”

Half of this is a question.

“No,” Sam answers. “But…”

“But?”

“I worry for you,” Sam says softly.

“Why?”

“Because I’m your brother,” Sam huffs. “Is it so difficult to believe? I know how hard you’ve been working yourself, Dean,” he says. “Stretching yourself in every direction. But no man can carry the weight of all the world upon them. Not even you.”

“Which is why we need Sir Alastair as a friend,” Dean growls, putting more force into his footfalls than necessary. The grass is silverblue with the cold of the time of year and dew slips gracefully from its long blades. The fields drape around them, where cattle graze quietly, or stand and watch three brothers cross land onto an estate they never should have dreamed of entering. Never should have dreamed of entering. Perhaps this is what happens when no good, poverty stricken farmboys step beyond their bounds. The sons of a drunk widower should not have believed they could inherit a farm, not even in their wildest imaginings.

Good things like that don’t happen.

“We have other friends—” Sam says, pacing to keep up with Dean. A woodpigeon coos in a tree to their right, a rich soft burr of a sound. Dean sighs. Sam thinks he wants to be in this position?

“None so rich.”

“You cannot stop the seasons of life.”

He sounds like Cas.

“You need to stop having violin lessons with that damn shepherd,” Dean grumbles.

“Fiddle,” Sam correct. Dean sighs, and looks heavenward. The sky is white and wispy. Somewhere, a pale sun shines through. But it’s faint. “All I’m saying, Dean,” Sam continues, to the right of him, “is that I worry for you. Won’t you be cautious?”

“Who have you been speaking to?” Dean asks. “That you’re an expert on Sir Alastair, so suddenly?”

“His tenants,” Sam answers, “as I said. He’s no care for them—and in the eyes of the law—even a law which needs much reform, his actions have been questionable.” Sam reads, plenty, and the kick of it is that he’s been using Alastair’s own library to read about which laws the man’s apparently been violating. Certainly Bobby wouldn’t have many stored in the Eyrie: from what Dean has heard of her Karen seemed more partial to fiction rather than the Rights of Man. Sam fixes Dean with a sincere and pleading look as they walk through long grass which dusts their legs with cool dew. “He isn’t good, Dean,” Sam says, and Dean knows that he means it. “He’s nothing good.”

“Unfortunately, associating only with the good is a privilege we can no longer afford.”

“I just think—”

“—This was meant to be a conversation in which I gave you advice,” Dean frowns.

“And a younger brother cannot return the favour?’ Sam raises his eyebrows again.

“Not if he insists on being so annoying about it.”

Sam chuckles, shaking his head.

“You’re impossible to take care of,” he says.

“Because it’s my job to take care of you, and Adam, and Bobby—”

“—And everyone else in the world, it would seem,” Sam finishes. Dean rolls his eyes and continues his pacing—but Sam’s so tall there’s no putting distance between the two of them. Damn his grasshopper legs.

“All I ask,” Dean says, and makes the effort to keep his voice even, and keep from gritting his teeth, “is that you be cordial to Sir Alastair. Can you manage that?”

Sam’s brow furrows. He’s obviously pissed. He thinks for a moment; Dean can hear the clicking of his brain, which is frustratingly big, so he’s probably thinking of a loophole to Dean’s request.

“Okay,” he says. “If you promise to keep your distance from him.”

Easier said than done. Arriving at Sir Alastair’s, it’s obvious that his attentions are not about to wane. He takes Dean to his grand and beautiful library with Sam and remarks that he’s noticed Dean reading, sat in the parlour of the Eyrie. Dean wants to shudder and ask how, when? but he also wants to shudder at the thought of Alastair realising the slow uneven pace of his attempts to read, how bad at it he is, how he’s still yet in the process of learning.

And how he’s being taught by a lowly shepherd.

At least Sam is something more polite over lunch. Alastair remarks of the misfortune it is that Bobby cannot join them on account of his health, and once more announces that were Dean to say the word, Alastair would send for the finest and most expensive doctor London had to offer to see to him.

“Thank you again, Sir Alastair,” Dean swallows, “but we’ve no cause to put you such trouble, yet.”

“Besides, our shepherd knows a thing or two about medicine,” Sam provides, glancing at Dean innocently when he glowers in the direction of his brother. Dean doesn’t like Cas being brought up here. It feels wrong. He wants Cas away from this place and its gilded plates and fine wallpaper and cut-crystal chandeliers the size of coach wheels.

He wants Cas safe.

“A shepherd?” Alastair repeats, unconvinced. “Now, tell me you wouldn’t leave the health of your godfather in such rough hands,” he turns to Dean.

Dean glances down at his plate, swallowing. If he defends Cas, here, it’ll place attention on him—and he wants the shepherd safe, away from the prying eyes or risk of jealousy of Alastair.

“I’ve not called upon him, yet, for any such services,” Dean answers honestly.

“I hope you never will,” is Alastair’s reply. Dean glances back up at him. “I’d much prefer you to depend on me, Dean,” he says. “It would serve you better, if you did.”

Alastair takes Dean to the stables after lunch. He’s obviously noticed how much Dean likes horses, too, and seems intent upon impressing him today.

“This one,” Alastair says, standing in front of a closed stall door, “is new. Bred in the Netherlands—had a long journey to get here. She wasn’t cheap,” he smiles. “You’ll see why.”

He opens the stable door.

And yes, Dean can see why.

The creature is beautiful. More than beautiful.

She’s like someone has taken the pen and paper image of a horse in fluid movement and fine wild grace and breathed it into life: Dean has worked with horses, working horses and horses which were ornaments, horses which were pride and prize, pretty horses, tired horses, graceful horses, horses for gentlemen and ladies to parade about town and not to heave heavy ploughs through meadows, but never one like this. His life in Kansas comes rolling back to him; the flat gold fields and amber sunlight, the views for miles in every direction and the warm wind sweeping against the heads of corn. His life in Kansas comes rolling back to him but now it’s parcelled up with new impossible life in Cornwall: to see and meet such richness and be invited into its own home.

“A Friesian?” Dean asks, glancing back to Alastair. He’s already taken two steps into its pen, and hardly realised it.

“You have a good eye,” Alastair curls a smile. “Yes. She’s young, turning four soon.”

“She broken in, yet?” Dean asks. The air is sweet and warm with straw and manure.

“No,” Alastair shakes his head. Dean nods.

“Good. She’s too young.” He glances back at her. Jet black, beautiful, but small, not yet fully grown. A little spindle in her legs which in a few months will firm out into muscle, fine and delicate and poised, precise: Dean imagines the wind in his face as she paces across fields and sends the rain caught on long wild grasses spinning to the earth.

Alastair watches him.

“Have you ever broken in a horse before?” he asks. Dean continues staring at the young Friesian. She’s not yet as sleek and muscled as she will be, but Alastair keeps her in good condition anyway: she’s well groomed, smooth and glossy and a perfect black, Dean can barely make out her eyes for how dark all of her is. She’s like a shadow, a perfect silhouette, but one which light may shine off, one which may be taught and touched and frightened, and yes, even now she watches Dean warily. Which means there’s a thrill to it, too: that he may one day gain her trust.

He’s always liked horses.

He likes the gentle eyes of cows and their seeming depth of understanding, their long thick eyelashes and thoughtful manner. He’s grown to like the vulnerability of sheep, appreciates the sensation of being needed by another creature, it’s a feeling he’s always fed off: to feel like he belongs because he is depended on. He’s even grown to like Madra and the way she’ll lay her head across Dean’s lap, her bright intelligence, her long and clever looks and love of play at the end of a day’s work which, by all rights, should have left her bone-tired and irritable. But horses, horses he has always loved, and never fought to understand them. He knows what it is to be flighty and resentful, knows what it is to have more feelings than are safe for the power and strength that you wield, knows what it is to be at once commanding and commanded.

“Well?” Alastair presses. “Have you ever broken in a horse before?”

“I’ve helped to,” Dean answers. He used to love working with horses. “When I was a boy. At least ten. I worked a lot of farms, when I was young. Ranches, a lot of ranches.”

He inhales. It’s good to be back in a stable, in fact. Not the small and pithy place of the Eyrie, with one young Thoroughbred, one old and surely dying Packhorse, a giant Shire horse, and one mule with the contorted features and signature stubbornness, if gentleness, of its kind. There’s something centering in returning to a place like this, with ten horses all fit and ready to saddle at a moment’s notice, about the sweet fresh hay on the air and the steady timber smelling faintly of pine. After the panic and craze of these past few months… This place is as comforting as it is invigorating.

“Well then,” Alastair seems closer than before. “Why don’t you be the one to break her, when the time comes?”

Dean turns back to him, frowning.

His heart jumps in his chest but his brain ticks slowly, not comprehending, or believing he has comprehended, what Alastair has offered him.

“Me?” he asks, brow knotted.

“Consider it a gift to you,” Alastair says. He curls a smile.

“Th—thank you,” Dean stammers. “It’ll be a few seasons yet, before such a time comes, I think. Don’t you—don’t you have someone trained to do it, instead of me, though?” he asks with a frown. Alastair is still smiling. “With all your servants, and workmen—surely someone else would be more qualified.”

“Yes,” he confirms. “But she’s my gift to you.”

Dean stares.

And his heart bolts within him again.

“Oh,” he stammers out, stupidly. He barely remembers his brother’s advice to him, just on their walk on the way here. He’s never had a horse before—not of his own. Never of his own, though of course he dreamed of it when he was a young boy back in Kansas. Thought how sweet the taste of freedom in the form of air rushing and pounding into your face as your very own horse gallops you across the land, the horse’s breaths sounding deep within it just beneath you, the power and energy of knowing you were rich and free enough to go anywhere, which included away from all the places which had harmed and hurt you. How sweet all that must be. Oh yes, he dreamt, but not believed it might come true. And not a horse so beautiful. “Thank you,” he manages, mouth caught hanging open. A horse, and one so fine. One of his own.

It’s only on his returning walk home that he realises the size of the gift he’s just accepted.

He worries of what Sam told him—not his advice on Alastair, which a voice in the back of Dean’s head has been repeating to him near enough every minute he’s been with the man, or even forced to think of him.

But he worries that Sam is growing too involved in this increasing conflict between Alastair and those who rent from and work for him. And Alastair is not a man to meddle with. If he realises that Sam has been using his library to research the legality of his own business proceedings… The point is, Dean needs to talk to his brother about it.

And when he enters the parlour, after a day’s work, looking for his brother, he finds him there, with a throng of men around him.

“It’s called a union,” Sam is saying. He hasn’t spotted Dean at the door, and the room is busy enough with at least a dozen and a half men so that their presence is a sufficient distraction from any sound Dean might have made upon entering. “And boil it down, and the idea is that when you stand together, you’re stronger. He thinks he’s stronger than you, because he’s richer—but you must remember that there’s more of you, and that much of his wealth relies on you—”

“Yes, much,” one man says gruffly, “but not all. He yet has shares in most businesses in Cornwall, and the local copper mine, and that plantation, and his family’s tin mines in Trevescan. Added up, we’re not one small portion.”

“And right on his doorstep,” another frowns. “If he wants to quash any rabble we form, it’ll be as easy as stepping out his front door and saying the word.”

Sam swallows and nods, listening.

“Yes, that’s true. But I’ve been reading, and a man called Proudhon—” Dean’s stepped too close. Sam gives him a double take, and stops talking. “D—Dean,” he says, face falling from its animation and passion. “I didn’t—I thought you’d—”

“Don’t stop on my account,” Dean says, crossing his arms. “I’m interested, too. Who’s this Proudhon, and what does he have to say?”

Several of the men glare at Dean. He glares back, prickling under their mistrustful gazes.

“Well—he—” Sam stammers, but one of the men holds a hand out to him.

“Stay your tongue,” he frowns. “We’re no fools—should’ve known better than to gather here. What is this, a trap?”

“It’s no trap—” Sam blinks earnestly, and another speaks over him.

“He’s a friend of Alastair’s—don’t thank we haven’t seen him, gadding about—”

“I don’t gadd,” Dean growls, “—and—and I’m no friend of Sir Alastair’s—” Obviously adding in the Sir was a mistake. The men glower. “—That man’s,” Dean corrects himself.

“I herd ‘e got ‘im an ‘orse,” one of the men mutters to another, in a thicker Cornish accent than Dean has yet heard, and Sam balks in Dean’s direction while Dean attempts to translate the words in his head.

“He got you a horse?!”

“—He said I could train it,” Dean corrects. And yes, he supposes it was implicit that the horse would also be his, once it was broken in. But he decides to leave this out, and good thing too, because apparently him being the one to train it seems offensive enough.

“What, and take the job away from Andrew?”

“Who’s Andrew?” Dean blinks.

“Alastair’s stable hand.”

“Or Rob?”

“Who’s Rob?!” Dean asks, exasperated.

“Alastair’s steward.”

“He’s not a political man, nothin’ radical, but he’s a good man. And you’d steal work from him?!”

“I don’t even know him!” Dean exclaims. And why is he the one facing an inquisition, when Sam is the one who invited Alastair’s men into the Eyrie—with no thought of the repercussions—and apparently decided to circulate radical literature?! “And Sam,” he turns to his brother, “what are these men doing here?!”

“—Don’t answer that,” one of the men cuts across Sam’s inhale-pre-answer. Dean sighs.

“You know we’re brothers, right?” he raises his eyebrows at the man. “You can stay here or leave. Either way, I’m gonna get an answer out of him, eventually.”

“We’re…” Sam looks down, fiddling gently with his hands.

Dean sighs again at his brother’s hesitance.

“I can guess,” he rolls his eyes. He pulls up a chair to the circle, but the men in it make no attempt to make space and let him form a part of it. He groans and stays standing so that he might have all of them in his eyeline, barred as he is from their pack. “Listen,” he says, “I’m not Alastair’s friend—”

“—No, from what I hear, you’re his pet,” one of the men corrects, and Dean’s pulse flares. Whitehot anger floods his system for a moment, and mortification, and a few of the men around snort laughter. He has to clench and unclench his fists for several long moments before starting up again.

“I’m neither,” Dean manages, breathing deep and ragged at the worried thought that even these men can tell the kind of man he is. “What I do know is that Alastair is not a man to be so easily overcome. I know that you don’t trust me—”

“—And why should we?” one of the men, one who has been the most vocal, asks, antagonistic.

“What’s your name?” Dean asks.

“Chambers,” he answers, after glancing hesitantly at Sam, who gives him a nod to provide it. Still there’s no trust in his answer. He offers it defensively, as though he thinks Dean might inform Alastair of it. The name’s familiar, though, Dean’s heard it now from many mouths: Alastair, Penryn, and Cas.

“Chambers,” Dean says. “I—I know friends of yours. The Penryns. I mended their roof,” he says, and Chambers’ face washes with a little recognition. “I know—I mean I’ve heard what it’s like, working for Alastair. But you cannot suppose for a moment he doesn’t know what you’re up to—and meeting here, in such numbers—you know he takes visits to this place, don’t you?” He looks at Chambers.

This is what staggers Dean most—did Sam even think? Bobby has had to start taking Cathy out late at night when he knows Alastair will not be able to see him with the hawk, even if he does visit unexpectedly. He’ll take Cathy flying with Cas when Dean is having to join Alastair for his ridiculous fucking lunches and dinners, because he knows Alastair will be completely occupied, and all Dean can be is glad that at least someone benefits from Alastair’s attentions towards him, even if it is, of all things, a goshawk.

“You have a daughter,” Dean says. A line twitches between the man’s brows.

“Aye, and ‘is mother-in-law lives with them,” another man nods. Chambers cuts him an angry look. “What?”

“Stay your tongue,” Chambers growls. “What, you trust this man, all of a sudden?”

“Not to mention your niece, or your widowed sister—”

“The point is, I’m sure many of you do—have families who depend upon you, I mean,” Dean continues over them. “Daughters, sons, and wives, and many others who depend on you to keep on living. You’re right in what you do—but I’d be a fool not to tell you to be cautious. He’s a powerful man with—with powerful friends. And starting here. You can’t meet here.”

“But we can’t meet on Alastair’s land,” another man frowns. “Where could we?”

“I—” Dean stammers. “I’m not sure—somewhere secluded—or at least that he wouldn’t wander into—”

“There’s the Croft?” Sam suggests. Dean nearly growls in answer.

“You are not dragging Cas into this—”

“Who’s that?”

“The shepherd of this place.”

“Well, Lee, there’s no saying we can trust him, neither,” one man reasons to Mr Chambers. Dean steps back, blinking. His heart shoots fear.

“Lee?” he repeats. He thinks of alleys behind taverns. He thinks of feet against his ribs. Chambers watches him with a frown.

“That’s my name,” he says. “What’s it to you? You’ve heard it before?”

Dean shakes his head, swallowing. What’s wrong with him? Even the name of the man will set him off, and after the men suggesting infatuation, at least on one side, between Dean and Alastair… He doesn’t feel safe, he wants to feel safe, he only wants to feels safe. And he’s in a group of men—and it was a group of men who found him and Lee Webb locked in an embrace—

“Has Alastair been speaking of me?” Lee Chambers asks, voice edged with panic. Dean tries to take soothing breaths, rubs his forearms up and down several times.

“No, it isn’t that—” he shakes his head. “And—and that’s not the point—”

“Yes, we need to find a place to meet, and you won’t let us use here,” one man grumbles.

“It’s that here is dangerous,” Dean replies, and yes, he feels the danger of it, though perhaps unreasonably. Still his heart is set in an unfriendly pace.

“Where else is there?” Sam asks, obviously desperate. The look in his eyes settles Dean, at least a margin. Only one of them is allowed to be panicked at a time. He makes an unsteady attemnp at a steadying breath. He sighs and takes a seat, rubbing his forehead. The group seem to trust Dean, now, for they move the circle wider to make space for him. He presses his lips together a moment before answering.

He looks up at his brother, clasping his hands together.

The caged birds around them twitter uselessly, it’s almost as though they’re gossiping to one another about all these absurd proceedings, but of course they live happy and delicate lives rid of such foolhardiness. Dean wonders what the men, hardened by rough life in the country and toiling across rugged land, their fathers either farm hands like them or rougher still and miners, make of these small eccentric creatures being kept as patients in a makeshift hospital for birds.

“The barn,” he says. “The one we use for dances. It’s pretty empty. And if Alastair asks, we cover our tracks with the excuse of another dance. Many men can meet there.” He looks round the throng. “I’m no expert, like my brother,” he admits. “Not so good at reading. Not so good at thinking, either. I don’t know many names of thinkers outside of a few U.S. presidents, and maybe Mr Marx. But Alastair’s a powerful man. It looks to me like you’ll need more numbers, for any leverage over him. Rally more of you. You can’t be the only ones who live or work on his land, and feel this way.”

“But what if they betray us?”

“Believe me, he knows that there’s unrest, already.”

“Well, that’s on account of the dealings he’s had with him,” one of the men gestures to Chambers. Dean shakes his head.

“It’s on account of Alastair not being a fool. If one of you is going to him, requesting higher wages, he knows there’s dozens of you thinking of a strike. You need to make it so that he can’t afford that. You said he owned a mine, locally?” Dean asks, and several of the men nod. “Go there, and spread the word. You need to make it so that when you apply the pressure, he’s the one to feel it. A dozen men striking can be replaced. On an estate like Alastair’s, a dozen families not paying rent may be evicted. Double that, and it grows more difficult. The more of you there are, the more he has to fear.” Dean rises. “I’m not his friend,” he says firmly, “but I do know him. And I’ve seen enough workers' protests go awry to know when one looks doomed from the start. Start there. And stop meeting in the house he has a habit of visiting, unannounced.” He pushes his chair out from the circle and makes to leave. “You have my word that I won’t utter a word of this to him, though.”

A few of the men thank Dean.

“And Sammy,” he looks at his brother, “I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”

…

The Eyrie is empty when, in mid-afternoon, Dean takes a hold of Cas’s hand and leads him softly up the stairs to join him for the bath he’s running. Cas is laughing softly and mumbling something about how ridiculous Dean is, how he ought to lock Dean out of the bathroom and take a bath on his own while Dean is left, smelling of soil and sweat alone out on the corridor. But Cas’s hands are reverent as, behind the safely closed bathroom door, they draw Dean close and undress him.

Dean chatters happily and uselessly while they sit in the warm waters, smiling and unable to help it, back pressed against Castiel as the shepherd rinses at his hair. Whenever Dean glances back, Cas is smiling softly, too, more than content to sit quietly and listen to Dean talk about nothing at all and everything he can think of. Cas’s hands are so warm on his skin.

He tells the shepherd about the foods he would make him and Sammy when they were children, how much more he feels he’s learnt to cook since coming to England—part of that is new food, but most of it is just having more at his disposal. Now he doesn’t have to scrape together dishes for two nights out of a handful of oats and a few root vegetables. He tells Cas about the pretty long lashes framing the gentle eyes of the cows that the Eyrie keeps—only a few, but Dean has taken to spending early mornings tracing letters and words in his notebook in the field with them. His handwriting’s improving, he tells Cas, and Cas hums happily and tells him he agrees.

“Really?” Dean asks, as Cas’s fingers trail gently up and down Dean’s forearm, resting on the side of the tub.

“Would I have said it if I didn’t mean it?” Castiel asks. Dean shrugs.

“You might say a lot of things to me which you don’t mean,” he reasons.

“I’ll never lie to you,” Cas answers. Dean laughs at the ridiculousness of this statement, but the shepherd somehow seems to hold it as true. “Now keep talking,” Cas murmurs into Dean’s neck, damp with steam and sweat. “I like listening to you.”

Dean’s chest sweeps with sugared sensation. He beams and continues his babbling, while Cas sits behind him and hums and nods at the appropriate moments, patient as he always is, patient as the hills, and listening.

When they’ve cleaned one another softly with wash cloths, and Cas has cupped water over Dean’s hair and Dean has hummed and closed his eyes and tipped his head back, when he’s kissed every inch of Cas’s face and paid special attention to the pretty corners of his eyes, when the water has turned from hot to warm to cool, they step out and dry one another off. Who knows the hours they have wasted, here? It doesn’t matter: Dean hasn’t been able to relax in weeks, and today was his first day not packed to its borders with tasks and chores. His muscles are loose and soft. Cas’s smile seems to be set on his lips. Dean wants it set there forever. Except perhaps when he’s frowning his pretty frown, perplexed, at one of Dean’s jokes, or blinking at one of Dean’s rude comments, or squinting at something Dean has said sarcastically, or keeping his expression even and still as Dean laughs through his attempts at teasing. Or when he’s working and focussed and his lips are parted and his eyes are bright and sharp and steady and soft, honed in on one thing while Dean could watch forever. Or when he’s sleeping and his features are pressed hard into the pillow, or soft and completely blank and turned up towards the ceiling. Except for all these times. Except for all these times, Dean wants Cas to be smiling forever.

Dressed but still damp from their washing, clothes clinging to their skin—and what a pretty sight it is, on the firm muscles of Castiel—they tread softly through to Dean’s bedroom.

“Mo anam cara,” Dean beams, pushing Cas back so that the shepherd is sitting on his bed. Dean straddles him. “Mo anam cara,” he says, over and over again, littering his face with kisses. My soul friend. My soul friend.

“You’re in a good mood, today, Dean,” Castiel smiles up at him. Dean’s lips stretch and curl.

“Well, I’ve been able to spend so much of it with you,” he reminds. “For the first time in a while.”

“You spend every evening, every night with me.”

“But not every day,” Dean reminds quietly.

“Ah, this is true.”

“And I miss you spending your hours, teaching me to shepherd.”

“And I miss you spending your hours, scowling at me,” Cas answers. Dean grins and rolls his eyes. Cas’s hands press, firm and warm, to his back, keeping his balance as they sit at the edge of the bed.

“Oh, I can scowl at you any time you’d like, Sunflower,” Dean laughs. “In fact, say the word, and I will.”

“I expect you spend much of your time, repressing them around me, as it is,” Cas nods seriously. Dean grins and confirms. “What a blessing, to have such a patient man, as a lover.”

Dean huffs and presses his face into the firm curve of Cas’s neck and shoulder.

“I know that I’m blessed, to have a man such as you as a sweetheart.”

“Even amid the storm the past few months have been?” Castiel asks softly, seriously. Dean lifts his head so that he may look the shepherd in his gentle and inquisitive eyes. Washed with understanding. Dean could bathe himself in them.

“What did you teach me about love?” he asks. “When—when we were speaking of names. That flower. Love-in-the-mist. Remember?”

“I remember,” Cas nods softly.

“And you said—you quoted Shakespeare. That looks on tempests and is never shaken.” Dean recites. “That’s what love is. You were right.” Dean traces the ridge of the shepherd’s brow with the tip of his forefinger as he speaks. “That’s love. Yes, even amid the storm of these past months. Love has been my refuge from it. You have been my refuge.”

Cas squeezes Dean’s body to his, tight. His eyes are sad and flushed with love. Dean knows the feeling.

“I kept that flower,” Dean smiles, getting up off of the shepherd’s lap. Cas stands after him, when Dean tugs softly at his hand.

“Oh?” the shepherd asks.

“Yes,” Dean laughs, pulling Castiel to his set of drawers. “I dried it. I kept it, remembering what it was you said.” It sits atop his drawers. He picks it up and twirls it between his fingers. Cas’s gaze is wave upon wave of feeling. “Love in the mist, love in tempests, love amid storms,” Dean smiles. “Love always, so long as I’m with you.”

“And this,” Castiel smiles, picking up the scrap of cloth he used to bandage Dean’s hand that first night in the Croft, the bandage Dean inexplicably couldn’t bring himself to return. Well. He knows the reason now. Dean blushes somewhat, but his smile is bright. “You kept this, too?” he asks.

“You recognise it?”

Castiel laughs, warm.

“Of course I do,” he confirms. Dean tangles his hand with the shepherd’s. “It was the first night I had call or cause to touch you. It was treasured, to me. Of course I recognise it.”

“Then of course I kept it,” Dean laughs gently. He’s preserved the bandage, he’s preserved the flower, and now, now he wants to preserve this moment. Cas looking at him with his watercolour eyes, and watching him with love. “It was treasured to me, too,” he says.

Cas exhales. His expression is nothing Dean has seen before. It feels like flying. Dean feels afraid. And yet, Dean feels nothing but wonder.

Cas is holding his arms. They’re standing close, but, Dean thinks with an almost-pulse of laughter, not close enough. Just like that night in the forge, when Cas first pressed his body close to Dean’s so that when he asked closer than this? all Dean had to do was lift his head by a fraction of an inch and bump his nose against Cas’s, and then, in that moment, they were kissing, and they were close enough at last. After all those months of nameless longing.

Like a mirror to that moment, Dean lifts his head to bump his nose against Cas’s. And then their lips have met, and he is robbed of breath or thought all over again. Still, Dean gasps. His eyes burn. His lungs burn. All of him burns.

Kissing Cas. Kissing Castiel. Kissing his shepherd.

It’s all he knows. It’s all he wants to know.

“Dean—”

He staggers backwards with another gasp. This one his sharper than before.

His door is open.

Adam stands in his room, blinking, mouth hanging open.

Adam.

Adam saw him kissing Castiel. Adam saw him kissing Castiel.

“A—Adam—” he stammers out, heart hammering. Adam has seen. Adam has seen, Dean has been seen, and this time, there’s no running. The pleasure of the previous hour dissolves like mist.

White chiming starts filling his ears. As if he could come up with an excuse—what excuse is there, for this. For this?! Panic flares in his system. He thinks of the boys who chased Castiel with stones out of town because they saw him with his sweetheart. He thinks of the men who beat Dean’s body into a pulp after they discovered him and Lee behind the tavern. He thinks of what a fool he’s been. He thinks—he can’t stop thinking—he can’t think. The white chiming grows louder. He can barely hear Adam’s next question.

“What were you doing?”

“We were—we were—”

“Were you—were you—why were kissing Castiel?” Adam asks, and draws back a fraction, and Dean grows terrified.

“Of course—of course not,” Dean shakes his head. He thinks his ribs might splinter from the furious pacing of his heart. “No, of course not, Adam—”

“It looked like it,” Adam frowns.

“Men don’t—men don’t kiss other men,” Dean shakes his head, his blood is turning into ice. “Men don’t do that—of course we weren’t—”

Adam continues frowning.

“I was going to ask if you wanted to play cards with me.”

“No,”  Dean shakes his head, pulse a fury against his wrists. “No, I don’t want to—why—why didn’t you knock?”

He can’t stop seeing the flashes of faces he would catch between kicks outside the tavern while Lee shouted that it was Dean, it was all Dean’s fault. Behind the tavern it was dark and the men hadn’t known Dean and the men hadn’t seen Dean and Dean had the chance to run, the possibility of escape. But here it’s bright with Cornish light and Adam knows Dean and has seen Dean and has seen Dean kissing Castiel, another man—and who will he tell? And who will hurt Dean, now?

“The door was open,” Adam answers, face still twisted up.

“Why didn’t you knock!” Dean shouts, terrified tears searing his eyes, and Adam falters, because Dean hasn’t shouted at him like this in years, but Dean can’t not, can barely think of that, not now, not now that his ribs are splintering in his chest all over again under the angry and disgusted blows of cruel men.

“You promised me we’d play cards, once you’d finished work!” Adam shouts back, and Dean grows furious, and sees the image of his twisted arm in John’s vice-grip when Dean decided to answer him back one too many times.

“Get out!” He shouts. “Get out!”

“You promised!”

“Get out!”

The words are bellowed loud enough that the panes of the windows rattle. Adam blinks, stunned for a moment, eyes shining, before turning on his heel and running down the corridor.

Dean stands, air like blades stabbing his lungs with every inhale, staring at the open door. Cas’s hand on his shoulder makes him lurch, and he wrenches away, jumps at least two feet back.

“Dean,” Castiel frowns softly. “It’s not his fault—we should’ve closed the door—”

“You should’ve closed the door,” Dean nearly spits, eyes searing. “You’re the one who spends all his time saying we can’t do anything out in the open—can’t so much as stand next to each other, for fear of looking suspicious—then the moment it matters, the moment I actually need you, you—”

“Now, Dean, that’s not fair,” Castiel shakes his head. “This is your room, after all, and you dragged me in here—”

“—And you—” Dean can’t breathe, he can feel tears streaming whitehot onto his face, but he’s barely conscious of the moment he began crying. His hands shake. There’s the chiming in his head again—but no, now it’s not chiming, now it’s pulsing, now it’s pounding, pounding like the feet aiming kicks against his body and face in a piss-stained alley, ready to leave him for dead, and they didn’t stop, and the pounding won’t stop, and Cas is stepping closer to him and Dean shoves him away, terrified. “Don’t touch me!” He shouts. “Don’t touch me! Get away from me!”

“Dean,” Castiel pleads, but Dean staggers more steps backward.

“This is your fault! None of this would have happened, if, if—”

“If what,” Castiel glares, “you hadn’t dragged me upstairs? You hadn’t taken me into your room? You hadn’t fallen in love with me?”

“You let me!” Dean shouts, and flinches when Cas tries to move closer to him again. The shepherd freezes in his tracks. “How could you let me?! When you know what it’s like, living as we do—”

“You knew what it was like, too,” Castiel’s face darkens. “Remember what you told me of you and Lee—”

Dean’s body seizes at the name. His skull is too tight. His skull is too tight. There’s no air. There’s no—

“Stop it!” Dean shouts. “Stop it!” He feels drunk, drunken, caught in one of John’s drunken rages, except now he is John. “This is your fault! All of it’s your fault! Get out—get away from me—get—get—” he can’t breathe. Every moment, every movement he anticipates attack, expects someone to break his ribs and someone else to break his nose and someone else to slam his head against a wall, and men to taunt and jeer and threaten to give Dean exactly what he wants in ways he doesn’t want, his lungs are burning, he thinks his lip has split in panic and he thinks of his lip splitting beneath the kicks and punches of angry, ugly men. Who will Adam tell? This is no dark alley he can run away from, this is his home, and where else can he run, if they turn him away? Kansas is a long way away, he left everything to come here, and now, and now…

“Get out!” He shouts again. The shepherd tries to say his name again, but Dean can hardly hear him or register the heartbreak in his voice. “This is because of you, I’d be safe if it wasn’t for you! Don’t come back!—”

“Dean, calm down, and we can talk this through,” Castiel soothes, “—and talk it through with Adam.” But Dean shakes his head fiercely. “Don’t yet jump to conclusions, beloved—”

“Don’t call me that!” Dean can’t breathe. “Don’t ever call me that again! This is—get out!—go—never come back here!—we’re never—we’ll never be like that again—never again, you hear me?—Get out, get out—” Dean sheds more whitehot tears. “Get out!” He bellows again.

Three times is enough for the shepherd. He looks at Dean, heartbroken. He shakes his head sadly, swallowing. Dean’s only seen this look, this look in his eyes a handful of times before.

“Just so,” he says. “And I’m sorry to have stayed so long.”

And with these sorrow-stung words enough to cut through Dean’s rage like nothing yet has, Castiel leaves him.

Chapter Text

Dean’s breathing doesn’t even out for many hours. He lies curled on his bed shuddering as he was when he thought he was about to die at the hands of men who hated him for kissing another man. He lies shuddering and can’t stop and won’t leave his room, doesn’t, can’t. It grows dark beyond the windows and when he finally returns to himself he realises that it must be well past midnight, and that the others at the Eyrie must have eaten dinner and assumed Dean would be dining with his shepherd in the Croft, as he usually does. He swallows. His mouth tastes sour. His hands won’t stop trembling, and he’s lightheaded. He’s covered in a thin and cold sweat.

Out on the corridor of the Eyrie, with its floorboards deep blue in the darkness, creaking uneasily beneath his cautious feet, everything else is stillness. A stillness like waiting. A stillness like something else is about to happen, go wrong, threaten Dean. He swallows again and returns to his room, heart a hammer. He closes his door—now he remembers to close his door—and leans back against it. He doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t know what he needs. He doesn’t know what to do—should he go and talk to Adam, explain away what he thought he saw and say that Adam shouldn’t tell anyone? But—but has Adam told anyone, already? Was dinner in the Eyrie filled with Adam’s tale of wandering in on Dean and Cas locked in an embrace that no men should be locked in? Dean’s throat closes up again, his gut lurches, he trips into bed and curls onto his side once more and cries. And cries. He needs to tell Adam to keep it secret and safe but he doesn’t think he’d be able to make it down the corridor to him, let alone open the trap of his jaw to speak the words. He needs his mother here stroking his hair with her soft long fingers and humming something sad and sweet to him. He wants to cry. This is the only of these options physically possible, right now. And so he cries. And cries.

Eventually, he sleeps.

When he awakes, he wanders down the stairs, numb. He doesn’t eat. The risk of entering the kitchen is the risk of seeing any member of the household, particularly Adam, which he cannot abide. Can never abide again. He works all the day, manages to speak to only Lafitte and Henriksen, who seem taken aback by his skittishness and taut muscles, but don’t pass comment on it. By evening, he’s almost starved—over a day, with no food. But he waits until the lights have gone out in the Eyrie before wandering into the kitchen and allowing food to pass his lips with cold hands which cannot cease their shaking.

The next day runs much the same: he wakes early and manages to steal food from the kitchen before heading out into the fields, ready to busy himself with so much work that he might be able to avoid thinking about the shepherd, or Adam, or what Adam saw; or men who saw what he and Lee were doing and curled their fists against Dean’s features until he was left only a battered remnant of himself. He works the fields and once again spends the majority of his hours with Victor and Benny, and at their suggestion of heading to the tavern in the next town over, Dean takes it without hesitation, in spite of the fact that all he’s eaten today was the meagre slice of bread and apple he stole away for breakfast.

It’s a bad decision—or perhaps a good one—it means he gets far drunker than he intended, on account of the little there is in his stomach ready to absorb the alcohol. He’s practically carried home by Benny and Victor and feels curls of melancholy and the strong curve of their muscles beneath his hands as they lay him down into his bed, that night.

“Never knew you to be so bad at holding your liquor, Winchester,” Victor chuckles, placing a jug of water beside his bed. “You’ll need this tomorrow,” he promises.

“’M’fine,” Dean rolls over, feeling sick. Benny snorts above him.

“You sure look it.”

Dean wants to offer him an obscene gesture, but can barely lift his hand. Dean wants to cry, but thankfully the shame stops him. Sometimes shame is a good thing, he thinks.

“We’ll see you tomorrow morning, brother,” Benny’s voice is gentle if a little amused. “Hope that hangover’s not too bad.”

If they say goodbye, Dean doesn’t hear it. He passes out in the next second.

When he finally sees Ellen, it’s the next morning, and she’s worried about him. A day’s work in the fields yesterday managed to still the storm of Dean’s head, somewhat, so he’s not as startled as he could be when she catches him in the kitchen, trying to take a bread roll for his breakfast and run out before seeing anyone.

“Dean,” she shakes her head. “Are you alright? It’s—I feel that it’s been days, since I saw you last.”

Dean winces at how loud her voice is, but otherwise remains calm.

“I’m fine.”

Fortunately, Ellen’s distracted by something. The light is a pale gold of morning, and a few chickens peck about the courtyard absently. Apart from this, the day is only a seed, and quiet as the breath before germination.

“I’m sorry—I know that you’re stretched, as it is—but Castiel is gone—”

“Gone?” Dean repeats, panic flaring through him. The shepherd has left them? Dean knows that he’s a hard, cruel thing when he’s angry—but Cas has left without saying a goodbye. Which is crueller: Dean’s words, or this act? His heart drops and breaks all in the same moment.

“—A few miles hence,” Ellen continues with a frown, watching Dean warily, “to aid with the birth of a tenant of Alastair’s.”

Oh. Yes.

Dean’s body floods with relief.

He’s still a little drunk.

“Miss—Kline,” he blinks.

“You know her?” Ellen asks, eyebrows raised. Dean shakes his head.

“C—” he can’t get the name out. “Our shepherd, uh, mentioned that he’d been helping her.”

“Helping her, he certainly is. She went into labour late last night. I helped a little, but he’s been there through it all.”

“She’s still—”

“Birthing is nothing easy, Dean,” Ellen nearly laughs.

“Is she okay?” Dean asks.

“He sent word this morning,” Ellen says, as though pressing the point that Dean has interrupted her several times, and she’d have had this out by now if he hadn’t, “that he’ll be there some hours yet, he estimates. Which means we have no shepherd for the day.” Dean blinks, nonplussed. “Fortunately,” Ellen rolls her eyes, “you’ve been trained by our shepherd, and know Castiel’s dog well, and can look after the flock for him.”

Dean swallows.

“I’ve got things to do. And I’m nursing a mean hangover. The flock can look after itself.”

His chest is hollow.

“Why are you hungover?” Ellen asks. “And will you be the one to tell Castiel that you were too lazy to look after his sheep? ‘Cause it sure ain’t gonna be me.”

Dean doesn’t want to answer either of these.

He grinds his teeth, glaring at the ground.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll take care of the damn flock.”

He stomps all the way to the Croft. Madra growls at him as he enters.

He returns to the Eyrie for lunch—he can’t very well eat the shepherd’s food, now, not after everything. Back in the house, he’s met by a smiling and relieved Ellen.

“Something good’s happened,” Dean frowns, marking the expression. “What?”

“Miss Kline has a boy,” Ellen smiles, folding a note which most likely bore the news, into her apron. “Castiel just sent word round.”

“Good,” Dean frowns picking up one of the pasties Ellen has left cooling on the table. He’s ready to leave. He doesn’t want to see his youngest brother. “So he’ll be back, this afternoon, I guess?”

“No chance,” Ellen blinks at Dean. “Miss Kline needs to recover—a sixteen hour labour isn’t something you walk off,” she shakes her head. “No doubt Castiel will be looking after her, until late tonight. He’s written that her neighbours will mind her when he has to take leave. You probably ought to make sure that Madra is fed.”

Dean sighs.

“Fine,” he grumbles.

“Aren’t you going to eat lunch with us?” Ellen calls as Dean turns on his heel and stalks back out of the kitchen. He doesn’t answer. He’s out of the Eyrie and pacing back towards the flock in a matter of seconds.

Madra’s off with him all day—or he’s off with her. Something in them is out of time, and, at the end of the day, Dean sits atop one of the drystone walls and sadly watches her stalk a murder of crows. He’s tired. He still feels frail from two days ago. His blood is thin in his veins. He wonders if Cas is more mystical even yet than he thought, and somehow communicated to the dog that he and Dean were no longer friends. No longer soul friends.

What are he and Castiel, now?

It’s taking days, and slowly and still Dean’s head is clearing. He can barely remember what he said when he saw the shepherd last, only how he felt. Which was bad—terrible—perhaps the worst he’s felt in years. More afraid even than when Alastair made him speak of fires, made him speak of his mother… And oh, he was afraid, then.

The sun begins to set. Eventually, he calls Madra inside the Croft, and fixes supper for her. Normally when he does this, she seems to grin at him, flashes him a thankful look before settling down to her meal. She all but ignores him this time. He frowns and shakes his head at the dog.

“At least I’m not as petty as you,” he mutters, and Madra seems to glance up at him carelessly.

He really must be losing it. Affixing human character onto a fucking dog.

He sighs and turns toward the door, but stops, freezes, as it opens.

Castiel.

The shepherd is back.

Obviously Cas hadn’t expected him here, because he freezes up, too, as soon as he sees Dean. The door hangs open—Cas’s hand is on it, but he’s obviously so dumbstruck that he forgets this, let alone to close it.

Neither speak. Perhaps, neither can.

Dean is waiting for Cas to say something to fix this, fix all of this, because that is what he always does. Patient as the hills and soft as summer grass, Cas will have something to say which will soothe the panic of the past few days, will tell Dean he’s spoken to Adam and resolved things, convinced him what he saw was nothing, nothing at all, convinced him to keep Dean and Castiel safe.

But Castiel only stares at him.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. Dean blinks.

“I’m—I was—I was looking after your flock.”

“I never asked you to do that.”

“No,” Dean says, a little defensively. “Ellen did.”

Some thank you this is.

Like he can read Dean’s mind—or perhaps just his features, Castiel hardens his own and speaks again.

“Well, I thank you for inconveniencing yourself.”

Dean glowers. Cas continues.

“Though, looking after the flock, or not, there would’ve been no need to stay so long.”

“I was feeding you dog,” Dean answers.

Castiel glances at Madra. Now that she’s finished her food, she scampers over to him. She offers Castiel the grinning face she’s been refusing to give Dean all day. His jaw clenches. The shepherd bends to greet her, scratches at her ears but remains looking up at Dean.

“Well,” he says. “Now she’s fed.”

“A simple thank you would suffice.”

Castiel watches him for another moment of silence.

“Thank you,” he says, eventually. Dean doesn’t know why it raises his hackles, so. “I can’t remain here long. I’m needed back in a few hours.”

He’s telling Dean to leave.

“I was about to go, anyway,” Dean says, nearly snaps, and tries hard not to fall guilty of the furrowed brow or pouting Castiel has so often accused him of, in seasons so much sweeter between the two of them.

“Then goodbye,” Castiel rises and moves away from the door. He makes his way to his shelf and takes down a cup. He’s probably making one of his ridiculous fucking concoctions, one that will apparently restore his energy drained from the day and somehow, simultaneously, send him into the sweetest softest sleep. Dean glares. Castiel glances back to him. “Goodbye, Dean,” he repeats. Dean’s throat is tight. No, he doesn’t like this. He doesn’t want it to end like this.

“Miss Kline has a son?” he asks. The shepherd’s jaw tightens before he nods.

“Yes,” he confirms.

“She has my congratulations.”

Castiel nods curtly, glancing down.

“I’ll pass them on to her.”

The air hangs heavy with their own rage and heartbreak.

“Has she given him a name?” Dean asks. Castiel is quiet. Still, he watches Dean. His eyes hold none of the warmth, as they regard him, as they used to.

“She named him for her father,” the shepherd says eventually. He presses his lips together a moment. His gaze is sorrowful. “She named him Jack.”

Dean nods.

There’s nothing left to say.

He wants to say everything.

He leaves.

…

He cannot avoid Adam forever. For one thing, it’s important he actually have the conversation with his brother about what he saw, and how important it is Adam not tell anyone about it. So no matter the pain of it, after finishing in the fields, and after he has looked with Bobby over the farm’s finances, and after he has spoken to Bobby’s doctor and screwed his hands up in his pockets the entire time, because how can they afford this now, Dean finds his step brother in the orchard, turning upside down and hanging off the branches of a sturdy apple tree.

“Adam,” he smiles uneasily, but tries to make it natural. “I think I still owe you a game of cards.”

Adam drops from the tree and turns to Dean with an apprehensive frown.

“I don’t think I want to play it, right now,” Adam says, hesitant. He crams his hands into his pockets. Dean thinks of himself, is reminded of himself, and how he stood today as the doctor told him what his fees would be for the care he’d provided Bobby.

Now that Dean cannot very well go to the forge beside Cas’s home, and fashion or repair tools for the men in the local villages, or craft fine things for the women, he can’t earn the money he did before to pay for Bobby’s medical bills. Nor can he line the pockets of the farm at least a very little in anticipation of any new disasters which might befall them, or in case of a bad turnover at the corn auctions this year. The price of grain is dropping so low, it feels like they’re having to pay people to take it…

“Now, there’s a first,” Dean tries to laugh, attempts levity, but it’s coming out strangled and forced and Adam doesn’t seem to buy it.

He cannot very well go to the forge, not when it stands beside the home of the shepherd whose heart he broke, and he’d be a fool if he continued to rely upon the money Cas was earning from selling his medicines to people in the local villages to help Dean with the expenses of Bobby’s care. Now he can’t even ask Castiel to make something for Bobby himself, not after Dean vitriolically insulted his medicines so vehemently from the first dramatic decline of Bobby’s health.

He feels such a fool.

“Listen, Adam,” he sighs, trying to steady out the nervous pounding of his heart, “I wanted to talk to you.”

“And yell at me some more?” Adam asks. Dean swallows.

“I’m sorry for yelling at you,” he says, and his heart still trembles.

“You haven’t shouted at me like that since…” Adam frowns at the ground, toeing at it uneasily, “…Since we arrived here. Maybe even before…”

“I know,” Dean says, and his mouth is going dry. All his life he swore he wouldn’t be like John. Even while yelling at Adam, biting harsh words at him, he was saying to himself he wasn’t like John. But has he been his father, all this time? A mirror image, ready to hurt and hurt others even after the first version passed away?

“I didn’t even mean to do anything wrong,” Adam says, swallowing thickly.

Any other time, Dean could almost laugh. When he was Adam’s age he was tilling fields, breaking horses, sweeping porches, getting clocked around the head for not following instructions properly. This boy really is a youngest child.

“I know, Adam,” Dean says. He swallows. He clenches and unclenches his hands in and out of fists, nervous for what’s coming next. “You didn’t—you didn’t do anything wrong. I just wished you would’ve knocked.”

Adam looks up at him again. Still, his brow is furrowed. His eyes shine a paler shade than usual in the late autumn light.

“Why?”

“Because—” Dean’s face heats, “because privacy is important—”

“Because you were kissing Castiel?” Adam asks. Dean swallows, frowns.

“I wasn’t,” he shakes his head, but Adam ignores him.

“Why were you kissing Castiel?” he asks.

Dean runs through his options. He could lie, do what Lee did, say he wasn’t kissing Cas, Cas was kissing him. But as soon as the thought enters his skull, it feels like poison, and he feels like poison for thinking it. He could deny again, all over again, say that’s not what he was doing. But Adam saw. Adam saw.

“We’re good friends,” Dean decides, and winces, because even as he says it he knows how stupid it sounds.

“Are you still friends?” Adam quirks his brows at Dean, seeming unconvinced.

“What?”

“I heard you shouting at him,” Adam says. Ash starts filling Dean’s system. “I don’t think people should shout at their friends like that. I don’t think their friends would stay friends with them, after that.”

Dean swallows. He doesn’t want to think about this.

“And what about you?” he asks. “Are you still happy to stay my brother, after I shouted at you like I did?”

Adam sighs.

“I don’t get to decide whether or not I’m your brother,” he reminds. Dean presses his lips together worriedly. Adam glances up at him. “But sure.”

Dean settles. He smiles.

“Thanks.”

Adam shrugs.

“You—uh—you wanna play cards, then?” Dean asks, apprehensive. Adam looks back up at the tree he was in until Dean interrupted.

“I was climbing…”

“Don’t you have school work to be doing?” Dean asks with a frown. Adam goes to school in the village, but Bobby’s so liberal with pressing the boy to go, especially these days, that Dean’s going to have to start cutting into his days of work to return to the Eyrie and wake his youngest brother, hassle him into getting dressed and ready, and packing his books and chalkboard into a satchel. He’s lucky Sam’s around to read with the boy, and teach him math, and whatever else he misses during his days absconding.

Adam huffs.

“Fine, I’ll play cards with you.”

Dean nearly laughs. They begin to walk back to the Eyrie. He glances nervously at his brother.

“You… you haven’t told anyone about what you saw, have you Adam?” he asks. “Between me and… me and the shepherd.” Adam looks at him with a frown and shakes his head. Dean sweeps with relief. “And you won’t, will you?”

Adam looks at Dean and shakes his head.

“I promise,” he says.

So at least Adam has promised not to share what he saw with anyone. But still, fear is drenching Dean’s insides, and has been the whole week. He hasn’t found the opportunity to speak to the shepherd, because every chance he gets, he’s either interrupted by more tasks, or care for Bobby, or the shepherd is out, not in the Croft, obviously caring for Miss Kline and her new child.

Dean hasn’t even met the boy yet, and he resents him. December is drawing closer and turning all the air still and cold. This time, last year, Dean was just beginning to thaw to the strange, wild and wandering man who had come to act as the farm’s shepherd.

Alastair invites him for dinner again, without the company of Bobby or his brothers. He does it in person, and every attempt Dean makes at an excuse is brushed away, so that there’s no polite way to refuse.

And so he dines again at Alastair’s estate, eating richly stuffed pheasant in a room long and large and grander than anything Dean ever could or should have dreamed of. And again, perhaps this is his punishment for reaching so high above his station, for accepting Bobby’s offer to leave their lives in Kansas and travel all the way to Cornwall. Before dinner, Alastair takes Dean into the stables again to admire his new horse.

“Have you named her yet?” Dean asks. Alastair shakes his head.

“I thought I’d leave that honour up to you,” he answers, and Dean swallows. The horse watches them, turning her head so that Dean can catch his own nervous reflection in the corner of her eye.

“Th—thank you—although I don’t think you’d like any of the names I had to suggest.”

“And why do you say that?”

As always, Alastair has stepped close to Dean. As always, there seems to be something behind Dean, stopping him from stepping back.

“Well,” Dean tries to laugh, “you name your birds such gory names. I’m not sure what I’d want to name your horse would live up to those standards.”

“But Dean,” Alastair smiles easily, “the horse is yours. She only lives here.”

Dean hesitates. This feels dangerous.

“I’ll try to think of a name,” he answers.

After this, Alastair takes him upstairs toward the great gears and parts of the clock which faces out from the front of his house. It’s such a strange and unnecessary piece of mechanics, not what ought to be found in the country manor of a nobleman—but perhaps Bobby is not the only eccentric in all of Eastern Cornwall.

Climbing the grand staircase, Dean stops beside an animal head, mounted on the wall. It isn’t so strange for Alastair; there are deer heads mounted in his drawing room, a bear skin in his study, and down in the hall is a leopard’s head. Apparently wild animals—and the wilder the better—constitute good decoration for the man, not gory ones. But Dean doesn’t recognise this creature. He steps close to it.

“What is this?” he asks, and presses a fingertip to the coiled tip of its ridged horn. It has the same elegant and delicate majesty as a deer, but it certainly isn’t one.

“I shot that during my time in the Cape Colony,” Alastair smiles, and at Dean’s hesitance, “Africa.”

“Oh,” Dean nods, swallowing, and again feeling the shame of his lack of education. How long until Alastair realises? Realises how low and base Dean really is? He doesn’t seem the kind of man to sit beside Dean and sound out letters with him until they fall off his tongue with ease, until he could carve out the shape of them into the pages of his notebook with a pencil by candlelight.

“He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” Alastair asks, but doesn’t look at the creature as he says this, only stares at Dean. Dean nods again.

“Very,” he agrees. “I’m sure he was more beautiful, when he had the privilege of being attached to his body.”

Alastair chuckles. It’s not warm.

“He’s an impala,” he says. “Very graceful creatures. Not easy to shoot, either. They run in zig-zags.”

“Impala,” Dean repeats the word, enjoying the bounce and prance of it off his tongue.

“Do you hunt, Dean?” Alastair asks. Dean shakes his head with a frown.

“Well—yes. But not for pleasure,” he answers. He’s good at it, he had to be, growing up. But it was never for sport.

“Pity,” Alastair hums. “I’d have liked to hunt with you.” He glances at Dean. Dean’s insides fill with smoke. “Still,” Alastair’s lips curl. “There’s time. You might change.”

Dean shakes his head and starts up the stairs.

“You’d be better asking me to till your soil,” he answers honestly. “That’s where my true talent lies.”

“I’ve heard,” Alastair replies, following after Dean. “Although I’ve also heard that you have a talent for metalwork.” Dean’s insides clench. “Now what on earth could have given you call to be smithing, in your position?” Dean swallows as Alastair speaks. “You stand to inherit a farm,” he laughs casually, and Dean can’t run away anymore: they’re at the top of the stairs.

“Yes,” Dean stammers uncertainly, “but—”

“I’ve heard report, you see,” Alastair smiles, but it’s the smile of some ominous and dangerous creature, “that you’ve resorted to renting out your talent to whoever might pay for it, and all to the cause of caring for Mr Singer.”

Dean swallows.

“I’m not smithing, anymore,” he answers honestly. This is true: and for the foreseeable future, he won’t be. They’ve arrived beside the giant clock face of Alastair’s home, the one he first used to charm Dean with.

“Good,” Alastair says. “I wouldn’t have you do it again.”

This is implicitly more an instruction than a statement.

“Well,” Dean huffs, but there’s no air left in his lungs, “I cannot say with certainty that I won’t—what if—”

“I’ll not have you selling all your talents to all in the neighbouring villages,” somehow Alastair makes it sound as though Dean is doing something dirtier than he is, doing something more than simply fashioning and fixing wares for people who need them. “I insist upon it, now, Dean. I will pay for Mr Singer’s care—the doctor’s fees, the price of medicine, all of it.”

The smoke in Dean’s lungs begins to billow. He cannot breathe.

“I can’t ask you to do such a thing,” he shakes his head, but Alastair speaks over him.

“I insist,” he repeats. And then he smiles graciously. “The least I could do, for a neighbour. And I am a good neighbour, Dean.”

“I know,” Dean nods. “And we’re very grateful for all you’ve done for us—but some things are really—”

“There’s no extreme I would not go to,” Alastair shrugs carelessly. He moves away from Dean again, where he’d been standing, as always close. He walks slowly around the great gears of the clock. “Remember that, Dean.”

Dean swallows.

“Th—thank you, Sir—”

Alastair brushes him off.

“So you can imagine my concern,” he says, and watches Dean like a hawk, “when I heard rumours about you and your shepherd.”

Dean’s breath seizes up.

“Wh—what?” he blinks.

“There’s no need to be coy, Dean,” Alastair laughs carelessly, but it feels as though there’s blades hidden in it. “I only say it with your best interests at heart.”

But Dean can’t breathe. The smoke is thick and heavy in his lungs, now. His throat is closing up.

“Me—me and C—Mr Novak?” Dean blinks. Blind panic begins to surge in his system, and he does his damndest to suppress it, to not let it overpower him, but it’s like trying to hold back the tide rushing in. Alastair’s gaze is grey fire.

“You and Mr Novak,” he confirms. Adam—Adam promised he wouldn’t tell anyone—has he told people? And why has he told Alastair, of all people?! Dean’s hands ball into fists, and he’s ready to coil them tighter and begin punching and hitting and kicking; the fear is rallying into his system but the fear is turning into violence, he’s ready to curl a blow back for every one he is given. Adam has betrayed him, his brother—

But Dean’s head clears of the smoke, at least for a fraction of a second. Why would Adam tell Alastair he saw Dean kissing Cas? He’d have no call to, and much less an occasion. He tries to steady out his ragged breath, trembling as he is. He draws air deep from his chest.

“The first night I met you, you might recall the looks he gave me,” Alastair has stepped round the circle of gears and mechanisms of the clock and approaches Dean again, drawing slow and certain and close towards him. “You might recall the looks he gave you.”

He’s close again. Very close. He’s tall—and Dean is tall, but has to turn his head up to look at the man. It makes him feel small. It makes him feel afraid. It makes him feel—

His pulse is lurching within him.

“Did you mark them?” Alastair asks. “I certainly did.”

People know… People know… Dean can’t breathe. People know.

“I can’t say certainly how much of it you’ve entertained,” Alastair’s voice is low, possessive. Dean wants to push him away, but then… “But you’d do well, Dean, not to entertain a man like that. It will do you no good—he will do you no good. For one thing, Dean, it isn’t safe for you to entertain a man like that. Not safe for you. That’s what I’m worried about.” The gears of the giant clock face turn slowly around them. Outside, the shadows of its hands fall and block out the sun.

Is it—is it a threat? Or a warning, earnestly meant? Either way it stirs the fires of panic further in Dean. Stokes fires already burning thickly.

“Who would you have me entertain?” Dean asks, and can’t tell if he says it as a challenge or not. Alastair’s lips curl again. He doesn’t answer. Dean knows the answer, anyway. He tries to take steadying breaths. “I haven’t—I haven’t entertained him, in any case,” he answers, and thinks of the angry feet of men against his ribs.

“Good,” Alastair smiles.

“He’s nothing to me,” Dean says. But the words tremble out from his lips. And his eyes sear with enough saltwaters to fill the Irish Sea.

…

Sam begins holding his union meetings in the stable, just as Dean suggested. Dean begins feeling riddled with guilt that in one moment he will offer drinks to the men there, and in the next be making his way to Alastair’s estate to groom and train the new Friesian. But she’s one of his last comforts in this place, now, and she trusts him, which is more than anyone else seems to do. This place is Cornwall, is England, is this entire fucking continent.

He names the horse after the animal whose head he saw mounted in Alastair’s house. Dean doesn’t want to read into this. Impala. A beautiful, swift, dancing word. It suits the horse.

Alastair doesn’t seem to hate the name. He does seem a little confused by Dean’s choice.

Dean is collecting herbs in the courtyard for Ellen when Mick dashes out of the kitchen door and ducks beneath the window. Dean frowns and approaches him, and as Mick hears his footfalls, practically jumps out of his skin.

“Dean!” he hisses. “The hell are you doing!”

Dean frowns down at the fully grown man squatting down beneath a windowsill.

“You… You realise I could ask the same of you, right?” he asks.

“I’m hiding.”

“Of…course …” Dean frowns. “Why?”

“No offence, Dean, but you are slightly blowing my cover.”

“Who are you hiding from?” Dean asks.

Mick huffs and beckons Dean to join him in crouching at the ground. Dean sighs, but squats next to him.

“Who are you hiding from?” he repeats. Mick peeps over the windowsill before dropping down again.

“That man’s visiting again,” Mick says, sounding bitter.

“That man?” Dean repeats.

“You know him,” Mick gestures to Dean, before turning his back to the wall and sitting properly, leaning against it. “That Sir, the next farm over.”

“Alastair,” Dean says, and sighs, and turns and sits too, back pressed against the house.

“That’s the one. Your friend.”

Dean rolls his eyes.

“We aren’t,” he answers, but Mick huffs.

“He gave you a horse.”

“Who told you that?” Dean frowns. But Mick ignores him.

“Anyway, it’s because of you I’m hiding from him.”

“Me?” Dean repeats, indignant.

“You,” Mick confirms. “You told me about his friend,” Mick looks away, brow furrowed. “She’s not back, is she?”

“You mean Hess?” Dean asks. Mick almost seems to shudder, but it’s not comical, more… disconcerting.

“That’s the one. She about?” he’s trying to sound casual. He’s not succeeding.

“Not that I know of,” Dean shakes his head. “And not looking likely to be. She was only visiting briefly. She lives in London.”

“I know that,” Mick frowns down at his hands.

“Far as I know, she’s not here.”

Mick kisses his hand and raises it to the sky. Dean furrows his brow at the gesture. He’s never known the footman to take to religious signs before, at least not sincere ones.

“Why?” Dean asks. “When I said her name, when I first mentioned her, it was like you’d seen a ghost.”

Mick glances at him. His face is heavy.

“She is not the kind of woman you want to get on the wrong side of, Dean.”

“I’ll take your advice,” Dean says slowly. “So you have been on the wrong side of her?”

Mick stares at Dean, stares into him, appears to consider answering honestly or lying. Dean’s surprised by his answer, and that he seems to choose candour.

“I was a child in one of her workhouses,” he says, straightfaced. Dean’s mouth hangs open. Mainly, he’s shocked that Mick just told him the truth. “You remember—remember how I’ve told you where I came from?” he asks, and Dean nods. “Workhouses,” Mick says, “and not nice ones. Hess… She was not the kind of person you’d want in charge of… in charge of…” Mick scrubs at his legs a moment. “Not a good woman,” he admits, and laughs, and a little of his cocky and lighthearted veneer slips back up.

“What do you mean?” Dean asks, but Mick doesn’t answer him, only shakes his head.

“I ran away, soon as I could. But that was after years, Dean, years…” He shakes his head again.

“Right…”

“’Course, see, I needed a spot of money to make it out of there. So I stole from her. Not a lot,” he looks at Dean, sheepish, and Dean wants to remind him that he’s seen Mick steal items of great value, very recently, and not out of necessity. He doesn’t need to sound so awkward and guilty about this particular transgression. What about the candlestick, for Ellen’s birthday? What about the cheating in card games, at the tavern?

“Not a lot,” Mick repeats, and Dean begins to think okay, maybe it was a lot. “Just enough to get by, see? She had this room, this office, in the workhouse, where she kept all her things. I knew it. I planned it. I started acting all good and trustworthy,” Dean nearly laughs at the image, because this is far-fetched, “months and months I worked on it. She took a liking to me. It was better when she took a liking to you. And worse.” He swallows thickly. “In this room, she kept all her valuables. I’d be set about to clean it, bring her tea, her meals, all of that. It was better than working her machinery, clogging up my lungs with tar and coal, my eyes with dust and soot. No thank you,” he wrinkles his nose. “Did what I had to. Tracked where she kept her purse. And her pistol. Think she wouldn’t have such hard feelings against me if I hadn’t done this next bit.”

Dean groans.

“What did you do?” he asks, but isn’t sure he wants to know.

“Well, I tried robbing, and running, when she was occupied. Obviously I got my timings wrong. She comes in, and my hands are in her purse, pulling everything out of it.” Mick laughs. “Should’ve just taken the whole bloody thing, don’t know why I didn’t think of it. I slowed myself down. And I could’ve sold it, if I’d took it too. Anyway,” he sniffs, “had to stuff all that money in my poor little pockets. And it was a lot of money,” Mick looks at Dean seriously. “More than I was expecting. More than I was hoping. Thought I’d just scrape enough together to get a few meals, maybe a night at an inn for me to find my feet, maybe a coach out of there, to some other end of London where she wouldn’t find me. And there I am, stuffing handfuls of money into my pockets, more money than I’d ever seen, and I’d never touched a note before, not a real pound note, not in my life. And she comes in, and freezes, and the look she gives me. Death in her eyes. She’s a proud woman, Dean. The lot of them are. Proud. And angry. There’s a rage in all of them.”

“Who?”

“The wealthy,” Mick says, seriously. “Like a furnace. Like they’ll burn all the world to keep their parlours warm.” Dean swallows uneasily. Mick continues. “So she sees me. Death in her eyes, as I say. And then,” Mick smiles, “she lunges at me. I’m across her desk, so there’s some form of shield up. And in her drawer is her pistol. And She’s screaming that she’ll kill me, calling me all manner of words I’d never say to a child,” Mick looks at Dean seriously, as though he’s suddenly the warden of all good morals, “and I take her threats quite serious. Quite serious. You would, Dean, if you saw the way she treated children. Especially those she didn’t like. So I pick up the pistol and I point it at her. Say I don’t want any trouble. And I don’t. I’m a child of eleven, Dean,” he looks at Dean earnestly. “I just wanted to… taste clean air. And bread which wasn’t moldy. Maybe even an apple. Or strawberries.” He tips his head back on the wall and exhales. “Isn’t that every child’s right?” he asks. Dean presses his lips together and nods. “We didn’t even get to see sunlight,” Mick reasons, and sounds as though he is pleading. “Not even sunlight. There was one window, in the workroom they had me in, first two years. One,” Mick holds up a single finger. “And soot covered. The sun wasn’t yellow, when it wriggled through that ash and dust. It was weird, ghostly grey-white. Nasty.”

Dean looks down. Yes, it sounds it.

“And the courtyard was so small, and the walls were so high. No sunlight could get in. Too tightly packed in there. …So I’m in her office,” Mick returns to himself. “And she’s screaming cold bloody murder, and I’m aiming her own pistol at her, and I tell her, with all due respect, to shut her trap. She’ll get me in trouble, see, and I don’t want any trouble, do I? And she says trouble’s not the half of what she’ll put me through when she gets her hands on me. She calls for help. She lunges at me. And I’ve never held a note of money before, Dean,” Mick says, “let alone a pistol. Don’t hardly know what I’m doing. So I’m panicked, and she’s lunging at me, and I—”

“—Oh, Jesus,” Dean knows where this is going.

“—Well, I suppose you could say I shot her,” Mick sighs with a shrug.

“You suppose you could say,” Dean repeats, deadpan.

“I suppose,” Mick nods. “Nothing—nothing permanent, I don’t think,” he raises his hands innocently. “And I don’t even know what a lady like her is doing with a pistol—what call’s she got, for a thing like that?” Mick shakes his head. Dean wants to say, a fair call, considering at least one of the boys working for her stole from her office and shot at her. But he keeps his mouth shut. “Nothing permanent, as I say,” Mick continues. “Clips her shoulder. Clips, at most. But she’s on the floor screaming, writhing, the whole bag,” Mick shakes his head. “So I stand over her, and I say, you wouldn’t last a day in that workhouse you run. Which is true. I’d injured myself in that place more times than I could count, and nine times out of ten I lost more blood than she seemed to be losing, screaming on the floor as she was. And I was a child, so I had less blood to lose!” he reasons. Dean huffs. This is a fair point. “Anyway, I say that, and few other things. I think I call her evil. Maybe call her a bitch,” Mick scratches his head, wrinkling his nose. “Can’t quite remember. Blimey, Dean,” he glances over, “it doesn’t half feel good to finally talk about this.”

“You… You don’t talk about it often, I guess?”

“Never,” Mick answers. “Never have cause to. Never feel like it. And I don’t trust just anyone. But you’ve got one of those faces.” Dean huffs. “Anyway, I’m standing over her a second, telling her just what I think of her, but only for a moment. I’ve got to run. And she’s been screaming to high heaven, there’s people coming. I can hear them, feet slamming down the halls of the whole bloody institution. So I run. Well,” Mick amends, “first I climb out of her window. See, she gets a nice window,” he rolls his eyes. “So I climb out of it, and I run. Hit the ground and run. Make it about two miles before I even think to stop—and I’d small lungs, on account of being raised in confined spaces,” Mick glances at Dean sincerely, who bursts out laughing. But Mick carries on, ignoring him. “Oh, yes, if I’d had the space to grow, I would’ve been at the least six foot. But I got stunted.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Me too. Believe me, I’d be at least an inch taller than you, if there was any justice,” Mick sighs. Dean wants to say I barely ate as a kid, so for all you know I’d be taller too, if there were any justice. But he stays his tongue. “So two miles running with my little lungs,” Mick continues. “And they’re all filled with coal smoke. But I made it out of there. And I’d shot the woman I’d seen hit children younger than even six, for blinking at her funny. So you can imagine, Dean,” he glances over again, “that I’m in no hurry to run into her. Even now.”

Dean sighs, and presses his face into his hands.

“Yes, I can believe it.”

“You promise to do me a favour?” Mick asks.

“Sure.”

“She ever comes back, and you run into her, you tell her you never met a Mick Davies. Never even heard of him.”

“Better yet, I won’t mention you at all,” Dean laughs.

“Exactly,” Mick nods, serious.

…

Alastair’s words have set a fear in him. Cemented the terror which at once scorched and froze him when Adam entered Dean’s room to find him locked in the arms of another man. When he finally sees the shepherd again, it’s after weeks barren with his absence and drenched in need. But Dean is still too afraid to kiss him and beg him forgiveness. And his anger at himself storms and swirls and turns into just anger, without cause or direction.

Dean’s kneading bread for Ellen when the shepherd enters the kitchen of the Eyrie. He freezes the moment he lays eyes on Dean. Dean swallows thickly and tries to dust the flour off his hands, which of course doesn’t work. Cas’s expression is flat as he looks at Dean. Perhaps this is what hurts most. Anger, Dean would’ve expected, hurt, he would’ve hoped for—to prove that he meant something to the other man. Instead, he’s given nothing. Which suggests that he means noth—

“Dean,” Castiel nods curtly to him. “I wouldn’t have come, if I’d known you’d be… Forgive me.”

Dean steps round the worksurface.

“Don’t—don’t be,” he shakes his head. Every other fight between him and Cas, Castiel has been the one to miraculously repair it, to make forgiveness flower up from the earth like dandelions in spring. “It’s been—some time since I’ve seen you.”

“I’ve been busy,” Castiel says. “Doubtless, you have been, too.”

“Yes—” Dean stammers. “How—how is Miss Kline? I hope she’s well.”

“Yes, she fares okay,” Castiel confirms.

“And the baby?” Dean asks. “Jack?”

“Had something of a cough, last week,” Castiel looks away, swallowing. “But has all but recovered, now.”

“That’s—that’s good,” Dean nods.

“And what about you, Dean?” The shepherd asks. “You’ve been busy, too.”

“Well, Bobby’s health has been—”

“I didn’t mean with Bobby.”

Dean frowns.

“I hear you’ve got a new horse as a toy,” Castiel says, and Dean’s heart rips with fear in a single spasm of movement. How has—how has Castiel heard of this? The shepherd’s face is a veil, and Dean unable to read it. “And it only came at the price of making yourself a toy, in return,” Novak states. He’s never spoken to Dean like this before. With all this rejection.

“No,” Dean shakes his head. “She’s only—how did you hear about her?”

It’s as though whatever he does, eyes press in at him from every side.

“So it’s true?” Castiel asks softly, brows sloped. Dean swallows, looks away.

“I’m—I’ve never had nice things—” Dean tries, but the moment he says it knows it isn’t true, and knows what a foolish answer it is.

“Once upon a time, you said such fineries didn’t matter to you.”

Dean’s jaw all but locks. He breathes deep.

“Am I such a bastard, irredeemable, for accepting a gift when it is given?”

Castiel stares at him hopelessly and shakes his head.

“Given by such a man, Dean,” he says. “How could you accept it?”

“I don’t—what is there to explain?” Dean asks, indignant, words choking him. “It’s a horse—and I might as well have something for myself, something nice, for all the time I spend with him, making sure that he views our farm favourably, and doesn’t run us out of business—which he could, Castiel, any moment he desired,” Dean says, words sour. “You—you choose to focus on what suits you. These months, I’ve worked so hard—and it’s a horse, and he gave it to me—should I really have said no?”

“He gave it to you,” Castiel agrees, “but you’ve already admitted it was some kind of trade.”

“And you’re only angry, because of what happened between us—”

“I would be concerned if it were Mr Singer, or Sam, accepting such a gift from such a man,” Castiel shakes his head.

“No, you’re bitter,” Dean disagrees. “Bitter that a man who’s richer than you is able to pay me attention—bitter because of what happened between us, when Adam—” but he cuts himself off. The shepherd looks at him sadly.

“I was right about you,” he says, voice quiet. Dean hardens.

“What do you mean?” he asks. Castiel watches him.

“I told you. In spite of all your protestations to the contrary. Do you not remember?”

“Obviously not,” Dean’s jaw clenches. “What are you talking about, shepherd?”

Cas’s expression shifts again at the name. His eyes are a vast and contained wilderness.

“You complained, always, of keeping our love secret. But I told you that if it came down to it, you’d never be able to love in the light. Oh, you were so affronted,” Novak laughs bitterly, “that I could ever suggest such a thing. But the moment it came down to it, and you were discovered by one most likely to accept you, of anyone—a child, you brother—you were overcome by fear, fled back to the shadows, and told me I couldn’t return to them with you.” Dean’s blood is heating at the shepherd’s words, heating and heating and heating and Novak can tell, but he doesn’t stop. “Yes, you sat in those shadows shivering while I was left blinded in the light, you took me out of safety and then, when you felt that you weren’t safe, told me to leave—well, Mr Winchester, I gave you what you wanted, as I always do. Just so.”

“You step beyond your post—”

“You never once complained of that, while enjoying my kisses—”

Here in the vulnerability of the kitchen, where anyone might wander in, Dean’s blood freezes in terror at the word.

“Enough!” he bellows.

“Whatever you command, Mr Winchester,” the shepherd bows to him. “As always.”

“You weren’t right, you weren’t right!” Dean shouts. “It wasn’t like that—you don’t understand! You always choose—you always choose how things happened, you say and then it is—just so, as you always say!”

“And you cannot love aloud, nor in the light,” Castiel says, “and I told you it was so. What’s my prize for knowing you so well?”

“You leave this house, without losing your job,” Dean answers, heart hammering. Words ridged with fury.

“So you admit it,” Castiel says, and Dean blinks at him, frowning. He doesn’t understand. “You are my master,” the shepherd explains, “and always were. And I your lowly servant.”

He bows coldly to Dean, who can’t swallow. Can’t see for rage. He picks up a wooden board and throws it against the wall, hard enough that it cracks and splits in half. But Castiel has already left him, as careless for Dean’s anger as he is his anguish.

…

He no longer sees the shepherd at all. He used to spend every night curled in the beautiful small space of his bed in the Croft, curled also in the beautiful warm space of Novak’s arms. No longer. It’s a good thing, anyway, and it doesn’t matter. He should have spent more time, these past months, caring for Bobby, not caught in a ridiculous ill-fated love affair with a ridiculous ill-fated man. He spends more time with Bobby, which means more time caring for his ridiculous birds—for some reason, it hurts to see and care for Elowen, now—but he spends plenty of more happy hours teaching and caring for Cathy the goshawk with Mr Singer.

The hills look lonelier than before.

Cathy is angry and guarded but coaxed into trust by those who spend enough time with her, earning it. Dean tries not to glower when Bobby mentions how she seems to dote on Mr Novak, even chirrups with happy interest when she sees him. Dean’s heart doesn’t rip when he says this. Doesn’t tear. Doesn’t graze raw against gravel which does not remind Dean, remarkably, of the shepherd’s voice.

He’s too distracted with thoughts of the shepherd for any good to come of it. He might be uneducated, but Dean flatters himself that he is at least smart, or simply canny—but he’s too distracted by the fucking ridiculous, wandering, infuriating, stubborn, thoughtless shepherd of the Eyrie. And so, one morning in front of the farmhouse, with fine December mists draped about them to carpet the land, Dean is a fucking idiot.

Alastair visits enough for caution to be a necessity around the bird. But Dean’s head has been in a spin ever since his argument with the shepherd in the kitchen. They’re out in front of the Eyrie and mists are swathed around them and Bobby is sat out on a chair that Dean has brought out for him, his right hand is gloved and they’re training Cathy to fly from Bobby’s gloved right hand to Dean’s, and it’s working well, so well, too well for anything in Dean’s life, when through the carpeting mists, Alastair appears.

Dean’s heart lurches. Cathy spooks and reels off course and goes to land on the highest chimney of the Eyrie. Alastair watches with what seems to be a cool victory. Dean stares from the bird to him with his mouth open. Fuck. Months and months and there were never any slip ups, even when Alastair first arrived, unannounced, looking for the bird. Well. Now he has found it. And she just flew from her promised destination of Dean’s right hand, up to the building which has been her home for the past six months.

“S—Sir Alastair,” Dean stammers out, and can barely glance reassuringly to Bobby with the promise to take the blame for this, for all of this, because he’s so afraid. But he does glance, and when he does glance, Bobby is looking pale in a way which makes Dean’s gut lurch with fear for the man’s welfare. If Alastair decided to make this a legal affair, Bobby might not survive the stress of it. Dean’s chest rattles with fear.

“I see you’ve found yourselves a goshawk,” Alastair says, cocking his head softly, and there’s perhaps a spark of anger behind his gaze, burning alongside the sense of victory. “And lost it again,” he nods to Cathy, resting high up on the chimney where she sits. “But I know better than most how easily that is done. And what a strange coincidence it is, that I have lost one, and you have found one.”

“Yes,” Dean admits, fraught with fear, “in fact—in fact we only coaxed her out of a tree, last night, and were set to bring her to you this morning, only we were a little distracted: I wanted to try my hand with her—you know how I love your birds,” Dean heart ticks frantically, his brain spins with panic and the force at which he is having to think on his feet. Alastair blinks through it all, perhaps he just likes the torture of making Dean lie on the spot in this way. “And in fact, once we were finished, I’d have brought her to you immediately,” he can see Bobby biting his own jaw shut with the pain this promise brings. Of course Bobby doesn’t want to give Cathy up—but they can’t very well keep her now, not now that Alastair knows they have her. It’s his bird, and one they swore they hadn’t seen, when Alastair reported her missing.

“I’m not even convinced she was your bird,” Bobby says from where he sits, and Dean nearly groans. The old man never would make this easy. Obviously. “Well, I mean,” he stumbles over his words when Dean looks over to him, fearful and frustrated and exasperated. “Your bird went missing months ago. We found this one, as Dean said, this morning—”

“—Last night,” Dean corrects, ready to groan aloud that Bobby has already forgotten the particulars of their own fucking lie.

“—Last night,” Bobby amends, nodding quickly. “But all the same. Your bird has probably died, by now,” Bobby says, and Dean glares at him. “I mean, domesticated all its life, it probably didn’t even know how to hunt. Probably starved.”

“All my birds know how to hunt,” Alastair replies. His eyes are cold and removed as the great islands of ice in the Atlantic. “I make sure of it.”

“Well—still,” Bobby reasons. “Yours is most likely miles away, by now. Why would it stay near?”

“Perhaps because somebody was feeding and caring for her.”

Dean swallows, before speaking. His breath is ragged.

“There’s no way of knowing,” he tries to shrug coolly, tries to shrug as coolly as Alastair does, tries to learn from the composed control of the exterior of the other man.

“Perhaps if we call the bird down, I’ll be able to identify her.”

Dean’s insides feel poisoned.

“If she comes down to you,” he agrees.

“Perhaps you’re right,” Alastair acknowledges. “You seem so gifted with her, in the—as you say—short time you’ve known her. Only the space of a night. It’s remarkable you’ve such a skill with her handling. And her trust. Perhaps you should be the one to call her down, then.” Forcing Dean to call the bird down, only to hand her over to Alastair? It’s calculatedly cruel—the only crueller thing, in fact, would be to make—“Or,” Alastair turns to Bobby, “perhaps you’d like to be the one to do it?”

“I’ll call her,” Dean says quickly, knowing the heartbreak it would cause Bobby to betray his own bird to the cold cruel hands of Alastair. Besides, Cathy doesn’t know Dean nearly so well as she knows Bobby. There’s some hope yet that she won’t come when Dean calls her. He knows he isn’t a lucky man, but after so many weeks of cruel, hard fate, he’s surely overdue some good fortune.

He stands at the foot of the house, looking up toward the chimney, with a piece of rabbit in his hand. He calls for Cathy repeatedly, and grows in relief each moment she stays fixed in place. He can feel the tension radiating off Mr Singer and catches the terseness of his muscles in his peripheries every other moment.

Don’t come down.

Don’t come down.

This is an act which is heartbreak to Dean, having to betray this bird to Alastair, this bird which is beloved by the man who took Dean and his brothers in when he had no need nor cause to. Took them in because he was lonely. Took them in because he wanted somebody to love. How he must regret that the person he chose to house, and love, was Dean.

Dean, who can’t think of a solution to this mess which preserves both Bobby’s finances and welfare from a court case over a fucking bird, and protects Bobby’s heart from the ache of having to part with her. Perhaps if he were smarter, or braver, he’d be able to come up with something. Perhaps if it were Sam with Bobby, at this moment, he’d be able to think of something.

But it’s Dean. And Alastair waits beside him for near an hour as he stands, calling to the goshawk. Dean gains hope that perhaps she’ll fly away, and be free. Or refuse to come down for so long that they have the excuse of giving up. But the moment the bird swoops down to his arm, sinking with the very motion all his hopes in a remarkably similar gesture of plummeting toward the earth, Dean can’t think of anything that might fix this. Alastair smiles. It’s a poison smile. The goshawk sits upon Dean’s wrist.

“Well,” Alastair smiles, and though Dean is sure it’s been almost over a year since Cathy last heard his voice, he’s sure she startles at the sound of it, and threatens to fly again. “It looks like you’ve recovered her for me.”

“For you?” Bobby repeats with a frown.

“This is Gorgon,” he says. “After all my months of missing her, I’d recognise her anywhere.”

Dean’s insides shrivel.

“How good it is that we found her for you, then,” he tries. But Alastair doesn’t look as though he’s in much of a mood to humour it.

“And how fortunate that you seemed so equipped with all the necessary gear for falconry,” he returns, nodding to the gloves on Dean and Bobby’s right hands. Dean swallows.

“Bobby loves birds,” he answers with surprising ease. “We have a great deal of equipment stored away for their handling.”

It’s finally a good answer. Alastair seems to think so, at least.

“And there’s no harm done,” he smiles. “Perhaps with that great store of equipment you have for them, you’d be able to spare a cage for her transportation, back to my estate.”

Dean swallows thickly and nods. Bobby’s eyes are downcast.

“I’ll get one for you now,” he says, and turns towards the house. His heart is heavy. He’s useless. Useless even to save the life of a bird.

Alastair has won the goshawk. And Dean was powerless to stop it.

Chapter Text

As Dean feared he would, Bobby seems to decline without the bird around. He worries he can’t very well contact Alastair and ask if Bobby can visit the creature, without giving away Mr Singer’s attachment and the fact that they were in possession of Cathy far longer than a single night. The likelihood of chancing upon another injured bird of prey, especially a goshawk, seems slim to none. And they can’t very well steal Cathy back.

Dean has to be even more guarded, and even more polite to Alastair than usual, now that he has the added leverage of the bird over them. If he pursued it, Dean is sure Alastair could prove how long Cathy was under their care, and in the eyes of the law their act would look a remarkable amount like theft, not the preservation of goshawk-welfare.

He dines with Alastair most nights, by now. Now that the man is paying for all of Bobby’s doctor’s fees, now that the man has the added leverage of the goshawk over Dean’s head. He dines with Alastair every night. Where once he used to dine with the shepherd every night. And now he sees Mr Novak not at all—the shepherd seems to have taken quite seriously Dean’s angry declaration that Novak was no longer welcome in his presence. He hasn’t stepped foot in the Eyrie since, keeps to his Croft, keeps from Dean.

Dean hasn’t seen him close, hasn’t spoken to him in weeks.

Even Christmas looks likely to occur in the cold absence of the other man. Ellen is hurt by Novak’s turning down of her invitation to spend the day, and the evening before, in the Eyrie. He did a year ago, she reasons, why would he refuse now? Dean bites his tongue and his throat tightens. He can’t answer why the shepherd would no longer want to spend time with them, when Dean is the reason.

Dean hasn’t seen him close, hasn’t spoken to him in weeks. Hasn’t heard the rough smoky shale of his voice. Hasn’t seen the bright flare and spark of those eyes as they meet his own.

This changes in the sparking chaos of a single night.

And, of all things, on Christmas Eve.

They hear the bells and shouting from across the horizon. Dean is in his room, looking out in the direction of the sea, but Adam shouts for him, and the panic in the boy’s voice is enough to rouse Dean from his thoughtfulness and sorrow. Rushing into his brother’s room, Dean sees Adam staring out his window, where a glow above the fields and trees makes it look as though the sun is rising eight hours early.

“What is that?” Adam asks, pointing to it. Even as he points, it seems to grow. Dean watches it with a frown twining his features firm together, until with a gut-lurch and blood-freeze he realises.

“Fire,” he says, and can’t feel his fingers. “There’s a fire.”

“That’s at the boundary of Alastair’s land, and ours,” Sam has appeared behind them, and Dean scarce jumps out of his skin as his younger brother watches the lights behind him with something troubled ticking at his features. “That’s—that’s where Lee Chambers lives—”

Dean has pushed past his brother. White chiming is in his ears, but he presses past it, heart made of thunder—or perhaps not thunder, perhaps the clouds which tremble around thunder when it sounds. He pounds down the stairs and out of the Eyrie, the door is left swinging open as he races toward the stables. He thinks he can smell smoke on the air, but can’t tell if it’s real or imagined.

He doesn’t bother saddling the horse, only grabs a pair of reigns, while Sam raises his voice fearfully behind him, obviously having followed him out, down the stairs and into the stables, in Dean’s thunder of fear. But Dean can’t make out the words. The world thrums and crackles around him like he’s too little dried tinder in too many flames. Dean is up on the horse, and Sam has to jump backwards as Dean blasts out past him, the horse’s hooves a roar to match the thunder of Dean’s heart.

Thunder, thunder, and as he grows closer, the growl of flames. And of people’s cries. He jumps off his horse and ties it in a motion as fast as the hammer of his heart. His breath bullets through him. He looks up to the snarl of amber ahead of him.

One old building, parcelled out into three homes, stands caught in flames.

He’s four years old again. He’s four years old again and louder even than the roar of the fire, he can hear the roar of his father’s shouts. It was a night like this. The first night he realised what kind of frightened beast John Winchester might be capable of transforming into. Fire is a catalyst. John emerged from the flames not a phoenix but a scarred and different man.

And what will Dean turn into?

He pounds through the crowd of useless people, staring up at the flames and crying, throwing superfluous water over the the blades of orange which lick closest to them. He pounds through the crowds and hears, within one of the windows of one of the houses, a child’s cries. He barely thinks. He takes his shirt and steeps it in one of the buckets of water someone holds as they stare, stock-still, up at the inferno. He ties his now soaked shirt round his head and over his mouth. The white chiming is still there: it never left. But he ignores it, just as he ignores the vague blurred smears of people’s shouts in his ears. Three houses, someone says—the building is split into three separate households, and now all three stand in flames. They don’t know how it caught so fast. The smoke is dirty. This isn’t a clean burn.

The household in the centre of the building looks to be a simple two up, two down, but the door is barred by flames and the cries for a ladder have yet to see fruition. As Dean looks up at it, heart made ice with fear, the thatch of the roof blisters into flames. This whole place will be a funeral pyre for those who live here if somebody doesn’t help. Sparks are sent fizzing out into the night, and one of the windows on the furthest home blows, shatters and scatters glass outwards like starlight. Several people shriek and run for cover.

There are still screams inside. There are still screams inside. Dean runs into the house.

Flames blister at his skin and he realises that he’s bolted through at least a metre of them, a blaze which shrouded the door and kept all those who’d gathered outside away out of fear. The heat is searing and smoke clouds everything. But his thoughts are working a second behind his instincts, which is good, because his thoughts are a polluted elixir of terror and memory, and his instincts are hopefully what little will allow him to help the poor souls left in here. Already he’s jumped the stairs, which are half burnt and collapsed, most frayed into ash and ember. Everything around him is hard orange light. Even his shadow is amber.

He ignores the crying in his head. He thinks it’s in his head.

No, wait—

Upstairs is the crying.

He bolts into the room it’s coming from. The air is thick and a deep, ugly grey. The house chokes with it.

There’s a girl. She shakes the form of—of—the flames burn harder in Dean’s mind and he can hear the echo of his father’s yelled instructions. Now Dean, go! And he can hear himself crying and see himself running and holding his brother tight, and he’s afraid, he’s so afraid and surely his tears are enough to put this fire out? And he’s afraid but he has to run, he has to look after his brother. And his mother, his mother’s screams—

The little girl in the blazing room shakes the form of her mother. The smoke is so thick that Dean can barely see, can barely breathe, at first she’s just the outline of a child, a silhouette of a little girl. Dean’s eyes water from the smoke and already his throat is grazed raw by its heaviness and heat.

He darts forward toward her, and remembers the tinderbox of his old home in Kansas and how it struck up into flames in a heartbeat—they’re lucky this home is built largely from Cornish stone, and yet—how could it have gone up so quickly?

“She won’t wake up!” The girl shouts. She can’t be much over ten. She’s shouting and crying and Dean takes a hold of her harder than he intends, but she pushes him away. “Why won’t she wake up!”

It’s the smoke.

It’s choking Dean, already, and he’s guarded his mouth with his wetted shirt. His skull is tightening, though.

The flames burning across the roof collapse a portion of it into the room.

Dean flunches and it takes a moment to recover himself. This isn’t Kansas. This isn’t Kansas. He isn’t four years old, and he needs to save this girl.

She actually tries lifting her mother, but she staggers and collapses beneath the weight and the lurch it causes to the floorboards, the floorboards already weakened by heat and flame, doesn’t leave Dean feeling any kind of confident.

Beside where the girl’s mother lay, before the child tried to carry her to safety herself, lies the limp form of Lee Chambers. Dean recognises him now, through the shroud of smoke.

“Come with me!” Dean shouts, pulling the girl up from beneath her mother’s collapsed form.

“No!” She wrenches free of him, and tries again at picking up her mother.

This girl is about to lose her mother to fire, just like Dean did. This girl is about to lose her father to fire, just like Dean—

“We need to go!” Dean shouts, and the girl is sobbing and shouting and he tries to pick her up but she kicks at him, will not cease kicking at him, kicks the air out of his lungs and he drops her, and she runs back to her mother, and another portion of the roof collapses and in so doing breaks through to the room next door, where the forms of an old lady and a mother and her young child lie crushed beneath a rafter and a pile of bricks. Dean retches and tries to seize a hold of the girl again. “We need to go!” He yells, and thinks of his father’s desperate instruction. Now, Dean, go!

Sam was the youngest, and he needed the most protection. It’s what Dean learnt then, when he was handed the form of his infant brother and left to defend both of them from whatever monster might arrive in that blaze. Sam was they youngest, he needed the most protection; it’s Dean’s job to look after other people because he doesn’t get—doesn’t need that same protection. He learnt it when he was four years old and he’s learnt it every moment since. This girl is young, too. Perhaps if Dean rescued her mother or father, carried either of them from the flames, they’d end up coughing out the smoke with raw and sputtering lungs, and would survive the night. But there’s no promise that they will. And Dean’s heart is flaring and his hands are trembling and the smoke isn’t the only thing clouding his vision, right now, more than anything it’s the fear, it’s the fear which freezes his blood even in the middle of this furnace.

The girl is screaming and sobbing and at an explosion of sparking timber, the heavy smoke and lack of air must make her collapse, too. Dean seizes her and runs.

The stairs are frayed by flames completely, not even two of them remain intact for them to escape down, and the kitchen below is consumed by fire. The raw white heat has the hair on his forearms curled and singed. There’s no way down, that way. He glances about desperately, and the white chiming returns to his ears, and the air is thick with poison smoke and he cannot breathe, the water in his shirt has all but evaporated and now nothing lies between his lungs and the heavy, ash-ridden air. Everything around him tastes like the singe of death. In seconds he will collapse just like Lee and his wife, and be lost to the flames too—and more importantly, so will the girl in Dean’s care. All because Dean wasn’t good enough to save her. He can’t breathe. He’s so—he’s so afraid.

He’s so afraid. He can hear a woman screaming but he knows it’s in his head. He knows that it’s his mother. He can hear a baby crying but he knows it’s in his head. He knows that it’s his brother. A young child is sobbing and he knows that it is him.

His eyes stream with tears and these aren’t from the smoke.

He runs toward the heat-shattered window. It’s at least a twelve foot drop down from here, but it’s better than the drop into the furnace of the kitchen—right? He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know any more, he doesn’t know what to do, the flames are in the room with him, the flames are at his back, the flames are on his skins, the girl is is his arms, the girl is in his arms and he cannot let her die, his mother’s screaming is in his ears, and his father’s Now Dean, go! The girl is in his arms, his brother is in his arms, he cannot let them die. He will not let them die.

He jumps.

He’s lucky it’s grass and weeds thick with lack of care beneath him. He keeps the girl tight in his arms and rolls the fall onto his shoulder and cries out in pain as something in him seems to snap. He knows this feeling: the same as that in his arm when it was caught in the machine aged fifteen, the same feeling as that in his ribs when he was kicked near to death outside the tavern. He can barely stand for pain and when he glances down at his arms he sees the impact his jump into the fire has had upon his skin.

Someone helps Krissy out of his arms and Dean cries out in pain again at the movement on his shoulder.

When he looks up, it’s Sam above him.

When Dean was four years old he carried his brother’s infant body out of the flames of a burning house. Now Sam helps him with the body of a new child, carried out of a burning house.

He feels sick. He can hear a baby crying. He can hear a woman screaming. The woman is his mother. The baby is his brother.

He rips off the shirt he’d tied around his mouth to protect him from the smoke just in time, and retches and retches and retches and vomits onto the grass. He can’t think of what’s caused it. His insides taste of ash. He imagines all the smoke he inhaled inside gurgling out of him, imagines himself as one of the chimneys in the coal-polluted workhouse Mick was raised in, where the air was so thick no sunlight could struggle through.

The chiming in his head doesn’t stop for what seems an age.

When it dims, he realises that he really can hear a baby crying, and this time he realises it isn’t Sam. Sam is stood in front of him, alive, breathing, worried. And there is a baby, and the baby is crying, and afraid.

He stumbles up onto his feet. The thickened grass tangles his steps.

“Dean—” Sam darts forward, supporting him, but Dean pushes him away with his good arm.

“Someone needs help—”

“The fire brigade’s been sent for—”

“Well, they’re not comin’ fast enough, are they?” Dean spits. In ten minutes, all this place will be ash and rubble and melted stone. There’s a baby crying, really crying, and Dean’s sure it’s real, this time. “What’s that noise?” he asks. The house at the center of the terrace is all but obliterated. The one on the far right is riddled with flames against the dead night. Ash, still glowing with heat, lights up the sky with orange stars as it sputters out into the darkness. The neighbours around them stand and stare uselessly, tear-streaked faces turned up toward the building. Useless, all of them.

“What’s what?” Sam asks, and Dean gestures weakly toward the noise.

“I don’t—I don’t know,” Sam says, trying to pull Dean backward. “Dean, stop, you’re hurt—”

“There’s a baby—”

“Cas has gone in already—”

Cas—

“What?”

“He arrived—you were being sick—he ran into the house, said something about—”

“Cas!” Dean shouts, and rips himself from Sam’s grip.

“Dean!” Sam shouts, but Dean stumbles on ankles either sprained, or worse, toward the house again.

“Cas!” he shouts. “Cas!”

Sam is still trying to pull him back, but the unpredictable lurch of Dean’s body on account of his injuries makes it almost impossible.

He stumbles through the blazing doorway and realises a moment too late that he has no shirt on his back to protect his skin from the scorching heat, that he left it outside after vomiting, and that he has nothing to cover his mouth from the smoke. He sputters out air and chokes out coughs as he cries out after the shepherd.

“Cas!” he calls out. “Castiel!”

The shepherd appears before him as if in a dream.

He holds a bundle in his arms.

“Dean!” he exclaims. “Take Jack and run—”

Dean blinks, clueless. The flames roar close to them.

He’s being given a baby as he stands in the middle of a house on fire. He can’t breathe for the ash. He’s been here before. He knows this story.

“Jack?” he tries, but the shepherd shouts over him.

“Now, Dean, go!”

Now, Dean. Go.

He’s four years old again and in a burning house and holding his younger brother in his arms and, in a way, will never be able to put him down again. He’s four years old and there’s the sound of a baby’s crying in his ears and ten minutes ago there was a woman’s screaming, but now the screaming has stopped. He’s four years old except he’s not and as he stumbles out of the building, blinded by the instruction to do so, cradling the baby in his one good arm, he thinks of what a coward he is.

He makes it out of the furnace, and oh, what a coward he is for it. All that drives him forward is the child in his arms.

Someone tries to take the infant from Dean but he can’t let them—he has to protect him—he has to—

He has to—

His legs have given way beneath him.

Someone takes the baby from his grasp just in time, hands frantically wrenching the child from his grip. It hurts his broken shoulder. It’s the least he deserves for his weakness and terror tonight.

He collapses onto the grass.

Cas isn’t outside, yet. He tries to move but pain riddles all of him. Where’s his shepherd? Where is he? Where’s Cas? He tries to stand, intent on running back into the flames and grabbing Castiel but he can’t even raise an arm, can’t even raise his good arm. He realises that he’s rasping out the shepherd’s name. Cas. Castiel. Sun-Sunflower. Pulse of my heart. Love of my heart. My soul-friend. Every name he can think of, every name under the sun which means love to him. But the shepherd doesn’t appear.

The light of the flames still flickers at the edges of Dean’s vision. Still flickers, still flickers, until it turns to black.

When he awakes, he’s sat up in bed. His arm is in a sling, and there’s dressing across all of his bare skin. He frowns down at it.

His head billows with smoke.

He’s lying in his room, back in the Eyrie. His lungs sear pain with every breath he takes. Beyond his window is the cool light of dawn. Early daylight, white with mist like smoke. He coughs, and the motion sends shards of pain shooting through his shoulder. It whitens his vision for a moment. His door is open. From downstairs, he can hear voices. His ears pulse and buzz.

It’s with shaky limbs that he manages to rise. His ankles are weak and painful beneath him, one is definitely sprained, but that’s the least of his worries. His skin is too tight and he’s sure that beneath its dressing it rips and weeps when he begins to move.

He grits his teeth and hisses through the pain as he limps out onto the corridor.

“The girl’s in Jo’s room, now. She’s still sleeping.”

“Is she okay?”

“Okay? Her parents are dead.”

“But does she—does she know?”

“She hasn’t woken.”

Dean treads softly out along the creak of the faded boards and toward the top of the stairs.

“But what of her injuries?”

“She seems to have suffered the least of the both of them. A few burns. No doubt too much smoke in her system. But all things considered…”

It’s the doctor’s voice—the doctor from town. Dean recognises it. He’s had to speak with him more than enough, at this point.

“And Dean?”

“He’s hurt.”

Dean is down half of the stairs.

“How hurt?”

Ellen. She sounds afraid. Dean’s heart shoots with sadness and remorse.

“Bad burns, a broken shoulder. Too much smoke in his system, same as the girl. Why did he return to the flames?”

“He was trying to help,” Sam’s voice. Sam. He sounds hurt and scared. Dean’s heart pangs again. He’s down to the bottom stair.

“He was a damn fool, is what he was.” Bobby. He sounds angry. Not John Winchester angry. Bobby Singer angry. Like he’s angry at Dean for scaring him, not for failing him. For some reason, this one still hurts.

“I’m only glad that he’s okay.”

Dean stops short. It’s the shepherd.

His sudden stopping sets a floorboard creaking. The conversation in the parlour stills. A silence falls. A listening silence.

Knowing there’s no use to stillness now, Dean treads towards the door.

In the drawing room they stand around. Bobby and Ellen and Sam and the doctor and—and the shepherd.

He’s alive. Dean could collapse with relief.

The skin of Cas’s hands and around his wrists is blistered badly, as though he’s held something in flames. Why the hell did he return to the burning house?

“Dean,” Sam says, and darts forward. “You—you’re supposed to be resting—”

“I came to join the party,” Dean tries to shrug, but idiot that he is, of course it splinters pain through all of him because of his broken shoulder. He hisses and Sam catches him just in time. The shepherd lurches a movement, but stills himself at the sight of Sam’s hands holding Dean upright.

“And this is why you’re supposed to be resting,” Sam frowns, but guides Dean softly toward a chair.

There’s a Christmas tree standing in the corner of the room. Dean gapes at it a moment, realising the day.

What a strange way to wake up on Christmas morning.

He looks up at the group.

“M—Merry Christmas, everyone,” he wishes with an uneasy smile. Bobby sighs. Dean ignores him and nods to the doctor. “Thank you for—for visiting today of all days. But as you can see, I’m quite recovered.”

Sam huffs to the right of him.

“Jumping out of a burning building,” Bobby seethes. “What were you thinking, boy?”

Dean raises his eyebrows.

“Would you rather that I stayed in the burning building?”

“I’d rather that you stayed out of it altogether,” Bobby glares. Dean glares back.

“And leave a child to burn?” Dean asks. “And what of your shepherd? He did the same thing.”

Novak bristles in Dean’s peripherals. The doctor coughs.

“Mr Winchester, valiant as your efforts were, I really must insist upon bedrest, or at least a good night’s sleep, before indulging in fresh air, let alone arguing with your relatives. Perhaps your brother will be good enough to assist you back upstairs.”

“Who carried me up the first time?” Dean asks with a frown.

“I did,” Sam says indignantly, then amends himself. “Well. And Cas.”

Dean swallows and glances over to the shepherd, who looks only at the floor.

“Have you seen to his burns?” Dean asks the doctor, who frowns, confused. “Mr Novak’s. Have you looked at his hands? They need tending to, as well.”

“I—”

“I’ll pay whatever it costs,” Dean says. The shepherd looks up.

“I don’t need your charity—”

“I don’t care,” Dean bites out. “See to his wounds,” he says again to the doctor. “Don’t let him get out of it. He—” Dean thinks of Cas cradling his injured palm that drunken night he splintered it against rock from the cliffs, the shepherd soothing his palm with leaves crushed up by his own mouth. He thinks of Cas’s hands washing Dean’s with lavender waters in the Croft in December, after birthing the lambs. He thinks of Cas taking a hold of Dean’s hands, freezing in the February air, to warm them, as they stood in the doorway of a stable while snow emptied a cold heaven down to earth just outside. He thinks of Cas smoothing his hands over Dean’s cold skin that same night when, snowed in, Dean shared the small bed of the Croft with Castiel for the first time. He thinks of Castiel grazing his fingers against Dean’s cheek when Dean asked him the question which in that moment held everything: all Dean’s hope, all Dean’s fear, all Dean’s sorrow, every chance of Dean’s joy: aren’t we sweethearts? He thinks of Cas’s touch on Dean’s knee beneath the kitchen table in the Eyrie, out of the sight of all others on the day when they first found Cathy. He thinks of his and Cas’s fingers, clasping the flower, love-in-the-mist, together, that night they spoke of names and naming and pulling being forth from the earth like a yield of crops. And all the world seemed soft with possibility.

His eyes are searing.

“See to his burns,” Dean instructs, voice cracking. “Mr Novak works with his hands.”

Sam helps him out.

Up in his room, Sam helps him into bed. He’s instructed to sit up, as he was when he awoke, and not lie down.

“Where’s Adam?” Dean asks, as Sam pulls the covers back over him. He endeavours not to feel patronised. Honestly, he’s so exhausted that it’s easy to ignore.

“Asleep,” Sam answers, and Dean nods.

“Good,” he says. “And why aren’t you?”

“There was much to take care of,” Sam shrugs. “You, for one thing.”

“What about the girl?” Dean asks. Sam swallows. It seems as though it’s painful.

“Krissy?” he asks. Dean frowns. Is that her name? And how did Sam know it? “She’s—sleeping, still. She hasn’t woken since we brought her here. The doctor says that’s good.” Sam looks down. “I don’t know…”

“And what about the baby?” Dean asks. Was there a baby? Or did he just—was it just a vision?

“Jack Kline?” Sam asks. Yes—yes, his name was Jack. That was the name Cas shouted as he shoved the baby into Dean’s arms, then turned and left, abandoned him again. Left Dean, terrified, to fight his own way out of the fire. “He’s been put to rest in the parlour, where Castiel insists he’ll keep watch over him. Ellen laid him in a clothes basket.”

“What—what of his mother?” Dean asks. Sam’s expression darkens.

“Castiel returned to the flames to save her,” he says. “But she was caught under burning timber when Castiel first entered—when she insisted that he save her son, first. When he returned, and heaved the burning rubble off of her…”

Sam trails off.

This explains the burns covering the shepherd’s hands and wrists.

“That damn fool…” Dean shakes his head, eyes searing. “He could’ve…”

“What, and you’re any better?” Sam asks with a frown. Dean swallows sourly. He looks out of his window. Sam sighs. “A chaos of a night,” he admits. “In the confusion, even Madra went missing.”

Dean’s gaze snaps back over to his brother.

“Madra?” he repeats. “Why? Where? Is she found, now?”

Sam shrugs. His shoulders are sloped and Dean realises he must have barely slept. Must not have slept, at all.

“I haven’t heard anything.”

Dean’s heart is rotting in his chest. Madra lost, along with everything else.

Sam sighs and pours a tincture of something into the cup beside Dean’s bed.

“The doctor has prescribed this for the pain,” he says, lifting the cup to Dean’s lips.

“I’m not in any—” Dean tries, but Sam only rolls his eyes.

“Please sleep,” he begs. “I promise the world will still be around for you to press your good shoulder to, and hold upright, when you awake.”

Dean looks away and takes a reluctant sip of the drink Sam offers him.

“What of the girl’s parents?” he asks, looking back up to his brother. “Krissy’s parents. Lee—Lee Chambers and his wife. What happened to them?”

Sam’s eyes burn tears. They shine like fires in the night.

“Gone,” he says. And her grandmother, and aunt and cousin, who lived in that place with them. They’re—everyone. All gone.”

Dean looks at his brother. Already, the drink is making him woozy. His breath is coming in longer and slower than before. The skin which was so tight across his frame before seems to loosen.

“All gone,” he repeats, sadly, and thinks of the kitchen in the Eyrie, and thinks of Castiel Novak standing there sadly, speaking for the first time Dean would hear it, of his family. “All gone.”

Chapter Text

He does sleep. His dreams are pierced by blue eyes lancing through amber bursts of flames. He dreams of blue eyes. He wakes and is met by grey ones.

He flinches back.

“S—Sir Alastair,” he stammers out. The light beyond his window is higher and brighter than before. It’s at least the early afternoon. “What—what brings you here?”

“I heard of your misfortune in the flames,” Alastair says, staring hard at him. He’s sitting on Dean’s bed, beside him, and sitting on his sheets in such away that they draw tight around Dean and he cannot shift away. “And came to call upon you. Such a sadness, that you should be so hurt, on Christmas. I’d hoped to have you in my drawing room for drinks, this evening. It seems unlikely, now, so I thought I’d attend upon you here.”

“There’s no call, really,” Dean shakes his head, trying to shift away in bed, but of course with the sheets pulled tight over him and his broken shoulder this is no easy, nor painless task. “And it wasn’t my misfortune—it wasn’t my home destroyed, my parents lost—”

“Yes,” Alastair says, still staring. His nasal tone is oil the second before it catches alight. “A tragedy, isn’t it?”

Dean looks back at him. The man’s eyes rest still as deep waters. Dean scans them for what lies beneath though he doesn’t want to, though he fears what he will find.

“It is,” he says. His jaw is wound up tight.

“I heard you rescued the little Chambers girl.”

Dean nods, swallowing. Alastair’s eyes are cold as steel but something seems to spark and flicker just behind them.

“I did,” Dean replies. He coughs, the ghost of smoke still caught in his lungs. His throat is dry as ash and a weight is tied sharp and heavy around it. The weight is guilt. The weight is shame. “I had no such fortune rescuing any of her family, though. Not her little cousin, nor her grandmother, nor her—”

His voice cuts off and he thinks of blonde hair and burnt dinners and gentle smiles ending in a shriek ripped out short amid a burst of flames.

“But you’re with us, now,” Alastair returns. “And what a relief it is.”

Dean nods weakly.

“I confess,” Alastair continues, “I dislike you lowering yourself, so, to save the life of a farm hand’s child.”

Dean stares.

“I am a farm hand’s child,” he states, heart hitting hard against his ribcage. Alastair stops smiling as he watches Dean.

“So you are,” he agrees. Dean is staring back, all anger. Perhaps Alastair can read it. “I’m glad to see that you’re recovering,” he rises from Dean’s bed, and Dean finally can breathe again. “I’ll send my doctor to treat you.” Dean tries to protest, but Alastair speaks over him. “Only the finest for you, Dean. Besides, I ought to thank you for rescuing one of my tenants today.”

He doesn’t look very grateful. Dean swallows.

“You’re very generous.”

“Only when it comes to you,” Alastair says. He stares at Dean. “Remember that.”

Dean doubts he could forget.

He doesn’t want to sleep anymore, and the cup beside his bed is filled with whatever drugs Sam gave him to ease the pain and aid his rest. He cannot drink from this. Instead he gets up and treads downstairs once he’s sure that Alastair has left, and sneaks toward the kitchen. After three cups of water and a head somewhat cleared, Dean stands in the open doorway to the courtyard breathing deep.

“It was foolish, what you did.”

Dean starts and turns, and is met by Bobby stood at the other side of the room, at the other door. He’s walking with two canes today, but at least he’s walking.

“So I keep hearing,” Dean answers. He still holds his refilled cup in his good hand, and takes a long and steady drink from it, because Bobby is going to insist on bringing up all that happened last night, when all Dean wants to do is forget it.

“You could’ve died.”

“As far as I can tell, at least six people did die,” Dean returns.

“Twelve,” Bobby corrects. Dean swallows thickly. So many? And Dean only rescued one. “The fire sprang up so damned quickly. They think the smoke got most of ‘em.”

“And collapsing rafters,” Dean says. He feels sick again.

“Yes, Castiel says that’s what was the end of Miss Kline.”

Dean stumbles toward a seat, head spinning.

“Not only her,” he replies numbly, a defeated hand running through his hair. “The Chambers girl—her grandmother, and her aunt and cousin. All living in the same house. They must have—must have huddled in the corner, away from the fire. And it was their damned bad luck that the corner they chose for safety had to collapse on top of them.”

Dean thinks with pity and revulsion about how the flames had blistered at their skin, the sickening shapes their bodies had twisted into by the force of the heat.

“I couldn’t save them,” he looks up. “I couldn’t save any of them.”

“You saved the little girl,” Bobby says, softer this time, and he takes a gentle step towards Dean.

“Yes,” Dean admits, but at what kind of cost? If he’d—if he’d been stronger, or more assertive, perhaps he could’ve carried the girl and her mother from the fire. Maybe carrying Lee Chambers, a full-grown man, and farm-hand, would’ve been too much to ask—but at least her mother. Surely Dean could’ve saved her mother, too? He swallows thickly. Smoke is in his lungs again. “Though I doubt she’ll see it that way,” he says. The words are soured with ash.

He isn’t able to find out for many hours. Krissy is attended by the doctor almost all of the day. Dean stands at the doorway, just out of her sight, and watches sadly. She doesn’t speak much. She cries a lot.

And who could blame her?

Not even ten years old, and both her parents dead. Not even Dean was that unfortunate.

Sam brings her baked sweets made by Ellen, spiced with a taste of Christmas none of them will be able to feel the heart of, this year. He sits at the end of her bed and speaks softly to her, soft in a way Dean and all his hard, brittle brokenness has never managed to be. Dean stands out of her sight in the doorway and watches them, watches the sad purse of her lips and listens to the quiet, gentle tones his brother takes while he speaks with her.

That evening, Christmas dinner is quiet and sombre in the dining room. Grief blizzards down and blankets them. Sam’s mouth is stuck shut as though someone has run a pin through his lips. His eyes are swallowed and removed by shock. He doesn’t smile, and Dean thinks of all the time he must have spent with Lee, even with Lee’s wife. By the end of it all… they must have been friends. Now gone.

The Chambers girl sits as far from Dean as she can, the other end of the table. Mr Novak sits beside her—apparently he decided to join after all, with not even his dog to keep him company in the Croft this Christmas. Victor and Benny have joined those in the Eyrie for what can hardly be called the ‘celebrations’ of the day. Tragedy hangs heavy around all of them and sets a hollow ache in every chest. They all sit in dead, deafening silence, eyes cast down onto their plates. The sound of cutlery against china is cold and still. The candles mounted on the tree burn dimly. The night outside is dark but in every mind an amber light burns upon the horizon and gurgles grey-orange smoke out into the atmosphere, choking the stars.

Even the bird’s twittering around them seems subdued. As if all the land and all the creatures in it know what has happened, so near to their own home. It’s a cold sad contrast to the warmth and the vibrance of their last Christmas together.

And still, somehow, Jo finds it in herself to ask Dean and Castiel to respectively recite the hymns they sang, this time last year.

Dean stares down at his plate, choked. The carols of last year certainly both seem fitting, after everything.

Cas sings his Coventry Carol. His voice is even more cracked than usual by the smoke he must have inhaled last night. All the faces round the table hang heavy.

Lullay, lullay
My little tiny child,
By-by lullay, lullay

Herod the king, in his raging,
Chargèd he hath this day
His men of might in his own sight
All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor child, for thee
And ever mourn and may
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
"Bye bye, lully, lullay."

As it did, a year ago, a new kind of stillness has settled over the room. Dean stares at the shepherd, but as soon as the man’s gaze meets his, Dean flits his own downward, heart in his throat. His eyes sear and burn. He can’t stop the tears which fall onto the table.

And then Dean’s expected to sing, and he can’t, and he’s close to crying, and everyone can see that he’s close to crying. Anger smokes through him. But he stands. He thinks of Cassie, who taught him this carol, who taught him so much, who it hurt so much to leave… He thinks of her, now, and wonders how it is she celebrates her Christmas day, all the way in Kansas. Is she still there? Perhaps she travelled. Perhaps she fell in love again, and married. Hopefully she doesn’t spend the day with lungs too hoarse to sing, skin too scorched to move, heart to sore to live. An ocean away. He thinks of how her hand felt on his jaw when she kissed him. Her fingers would graze the line of his neck so delicately, could guide his head softly in any direction. His heart would lurch shortly through him every time she did, panging with longing. Cassie knew the brokenness of the world better than most, and still she taught this song to Dean as though she actually believed it.

He thinks of the first time they kissed, and the last. He thinks of how easy it was to sit and be with her, how easy she made it for him. His first love. His first doomed love.

Not his last.

How strange it seems, to sing the line Peace on earth, when everything around them is so awry. And it is awry, and broken.

The evening draws steadily and quietly out. Little is said. When he, Victor and Benny sit around the fire in the drawing room, Victor begins to hum another carol, and in his eyes the reflection of the flames dance. Dean watches them with a pulse on edge which he cannot soothe entirely, much as he wants to. Victor hums O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Dean swallows as the man murmurs the words, and Benny joins in, singing in a barely-murmured voice, Rejoice, rejoice. As if any mouth could.

Climbing the stairs proves difficult with his sprained ankles and broken shoulder and splitting skin. His energy has waned since he awoke. Victor and Benny assist him up and into his room, before wishing him a goodnight, and a merry Christmas. If it ever could be, under the circumstances. When Henriksen is at the door, and Dean in bed, he calls after the man.

“You sang well today,” he says. Victor’s lips twitch up sadly.

“As did you,” he returns. Dean coughs once in disagreement. Victor huffs a laugh.

“It’s been the strangest day,” Dean says, and looks at him earnestly.

“I know what you mean,” he nods. He glances to Benny, who waits for him out on the corridor.

“Even—even the idea of peace. Or of rejoicing.”

Victor nods.

“I understand. But perhaps next year, we’ll be able to sing them with meaning, instead of only hope.”

Dean exhales, the corners of his mouth turned down. Breath prickles at his already raw lungs. He certainly hopes Henriksen’s words will prove true.

“And still no reason, for why the fire started,” he muses sombrely.

“You want the suffering to have some reason?”

“I don’t know,” Dean sighs. “Is cause a reason? But then, at least it’d give it structure. Now everything seems mired in chance and chaos.” He glances up at Victor, who watches him, brow knotted sombrely. “It could’ve been us, you know? A tragic fire, and losing the people we loved. It could’ve been us.”

Victor presses his lips together. The shadows in Dean’s room dance by the candlelight at his bedside.

“I don’t know what to say,” he confesses.

“You don’t need to say anything. I just mean…” But Dean doesn’t know, himself. “Goodnight,” he says, to both Victor and Benny. “Thank you for helping me upstairs.”

“It’s nothing, brother,” Benny smiles gently from beyond the doorframe. “Here’s hoping you heal, soon. We need you out on the fields.”

Dean snorts.

“I hope I heal soon, too.”

“And what of the girl?” Victor asks gently, brows raised. His eyes are gentle and pressing in the dim light of Dean’s room. Victor has a younger sister. Dean wonders where she is, how often he sees her. If he asks because Krissy is like his sister. If he asks because Krissy is not like his sister. “How do you think she will fare?”

Dean lips turn down. A weight ties around his neck.

“She’s young,” he reasons. “She’ll be better, soon. But she won’t hate me any less.”

“Don’t say that,” Victor frowns. But poison is in Dean’s heart.

“Merry Christmas, both of you,” Dean says. “And what a strange one it’s been.”

“Goodnight, Dean,” Victor smiles sadly, and leaves.

He listens to the pair creaking down the stairs. He thinks of Miss Chambers, and how much she must hate him for failing her so. He thinks of how everyone he’s expressed this fear to has dismissed him.

Yet he’s proven right. When Ellen gently leads the girl into the kitchen for lunch the next day, her gaze lands on Dean standing by the stove—he can’t be useful on the farm today, so he might as well be useful in the house, surely? But as soon as the Chambers girl sees him, her face hardens.

“I’m not hungry,” she says, and turns on her heel. Dean swallows thickly.

He sets aside a bowl of soup for the girl and has Ellen take it up to her. At least the child has allies in the house, even if Dean isn’t one of them, on account of him failing her so. But Dean is trapped and unable to work, at least until his skin heals up—and not to speak of his shoulder—in a house in which one of the current occupants hates him.

A broken shoulder, papery skin which tears at the least aggravation, a child who hates him for saving her life without the lives of her parents to accompany her, a shepherd who must think Dean weak, and deceitful, and cowardly, and—

“Mr Winchester, you are not supposed to be working.”

The voice has him jump out of his skin.

He’s barely working, anyway: he’s grooming the horses with his one good hand.

He turns to the voice. The shepherd.

“The doctor prescribed me rest, but not driving myself out of my own mind,” he answers. “And if I stay in there,” he gestures in the vague direction of the Eyrie, “that’s how I’ll end up. Just like the rest of her occupants.”

“Is that the only reason you hide out in the stables?” Novak asks, and Dean realises with a flush that this is the very stable doorway he and the shepherd stood in, when snow lay thickly on the ground and blanketed the air all around them, and Mr Novak took his cold hands and breathed heat and life back into them as warmth blossomed in Dean’s heart even on the coldest day of winter.

“No,” Dean finds the word falling clumsily from his mouth without his own volition. “No,” he admits, blinking, breaking his gaze with the shepherd’s intent, gentle, dismantling one. His heart is hurting. “The girl,” he says, and gestures to the house again, “the girl—Krissy—she hates me for what I did.”

Castiel blinks.

“You saved her, did you not?”

Dean swallows. He can still taste the ash from that night on his tongue.

“That’s not the way she sees it,” he answers steadily, steadier than he feels.

Castiel steps closer. Straw breaks beneath his feet and makes the air smell a little sweeter.

“How does she see it?”

Dean looks down.

“That I took her away from her mother and father,” Dean says, chest tearing. “That I took her away from them, and didn’t so much as try to save them.” He looks up at the shepherd. “You have to believe me,” he shakes his head, “I did try. It wasn’t good enough, but—I did try.”

Mr Novak looks sad.

“You ran into a burning building on her account. You jumped twelve feet from a window on her account. I believe that you did a good deal more than simply try, Mr Winchester.”

Dean swallows.

“I didn’t try hard enough,” is all he says.

The shepherd steps closer still.

“It was but two nights ago,” he says softly. “Give her time. Give yourself time.” A pause, because Dean doesn’t want to reply. “Don’t think I’m any kind of fool,” Castiel shakes his head. “I know what stepping into fire meant to you. I know what it meant when you—when you, after escaping the flames, so foolishly decided to return to them again, on… On my account, I think, and hope it isn’t proud or vain to say so. I beg that you believe me. You’re a better man—a far better man—than you believe.”

Dean looks down. The words sour in his heart.

“You can’t save everyone, my friend,” the shepherd says. “Though you try.”

The words strike through Dean like bullets. When he looks up again, Castiel has left him.

Eventually he returns to the Eyrie.

He takes the copy of Twelfth Night the shepherd gifted him last Christmas, and sits on his bed, and flips not to the beginning of the play, but to the song which once he sang to the shepherd of Mr Singer’s farm, at the times they roamed the hills together, at the times Mr Novak held out a strong arm to steady Dean from all his falling, and at hour the day crested and Dean arrived at the Croft and saw Castiel for the first time, each gold morning.

He looks to the second verse. He never paid much attention to it, before. But now he does.

What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.

He hums it to himself, sadly, the tune that the shepherd first taught him. The pads of his fingertips trail the soft paper of the page.

A small voice at the door makes him start.

“You didn’t save them.”

He looks up. It’s the Chambers girl. Of course it’s the Chambers girl. His throat dries. And these are the first words she says to him in the Eyrie.

“I—I tried to,” he says, and the girl shakes her head bitterly.

“No you didn’t,” she denies. “I tried to. You just ran away.”

“I didn’t run,” Dean frowns, pulse flaring. “Except into the flames, on your behalf.”

“I wish you hadn’t.”

“I’m starting to wish that, too,” Dean bites back. The girl’s eyes shine, she withdraws about a fraction of an inch. Dean’s lungs twist. Shame lances through him. He shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says, and sighs. “I didn’t mean that.”

“I don’t care,” the girl says, and Dean glances up at her.

“How old are you?” he asks.

She eyes him warily.

“Eight and a half,” she says, and the words are shoved out firmly. Dean twitches a smile he can’t explain.

“Oh,” he says.

“It’s not funny.”

“No,” Dean agrees. “Just—you act much older.” The girl presses her lips together. “It—it reminds me of—well.” Dean swallows. “I used to be like that, too.”

The girl stares at him with hurt in her eyes.

“I’ll never be like you.”

She turns and leaves. Dean looks back down at the pages of the book. He wants to cry. But the tears seem to have been dried up in the fire.

Days later, and his skin still rips when he grows agitated or when he exerts himself too far. It’s searing pain and it sets the image of searing orange flowers still flickering behind his eyes every time it happens.

The shepherd finds him, again in the stable, this time trying to muck it out, which is a difficult enough task with only one working arm—let alone skin which tears every time it is stretched to far.

He hisses and glances down at his shirt, which is dirtied by his burns weeping onto it. He groans.

“That’s twice now, I’ve caught you in here, and told you to stop working.”

Dean looks up.

Again, the shepherd stands, leaning against the doorway.

“And that’s another time I must decline the request,” Dean answers, hurt, and unsure why.

“Not a request,” Novak shakes his head, stepping closer to him. His eyes are on Dean’s shirt. “Your skin…” He says, softly. Dean swallows and takes a step back.

“Is fine,” he states.

“Is torn,” the shepherd frowns. “Tell me you’ve been dressing it, each morning and each night.”

“I’ve—” Dean stammers, brow twisted, “when I remember,” he says. Novak sighs, exasperated. Dean scowls.

“And do you know what medicines your doctor has prescribed you?”

Dean groans.

“No, because I trust him to know what the hell he’s talking about. I’m a farm hand. He’s a man of learning. It ain’t exactly my place to question his methods.”

Castiel sighs.

“The wounds are bothering you?” he asks.

Dean glances down to Castiel’s hands and frowns. They look better than Dean’s burns, by far. Why is that?

He shrugs.

“I’ve been better.” He swallows. “But I’ve been worse, too. Thank you for your concern, though.”

The shepherd watches him a moment.

“The girl—Krissy—she’s still staying in the Eyrie?”

Dean nods.

“And how is she?” Novak asks. Dean shrugs.

He looks away.

“Still angry with me,” he says.

“Well,” Castiel says softly. “It’s not yet been a week. Give her some time.”

“I don’t think time will resurrect her dead parents,” he answers dryly. Castiel doesn’t rise. In a way, Dean wishes that he would. Silence lies still around them for a moment, like snow. “The boy—the baby—how is Jack?” Dean asks. The shepherd smiles sadly.

“I’m caring for him.”

“In—in the Croft?”

“Perhaps it’s not fit place to raise a child,” Castiel admits, eyes turning like stars. “But he has no-one—nowhere else.”

Dean shakes his head.

“I’m sure it’s a fine place to raise him. I—I’m sure Miss Kline would—would—”

But he can’t find the words. The shepherd swallows sadly, expression downcast.

“I certainly hope so.”

Dean can barely breathe.

“I—I know she would be.”

The shepherd twitches a smile.

“And just the same, Mr Chambers would be glad to know that his daughter was under your care.”

Dean shakes his head.

“I doubt it.”

“But she is?” Castiel raises his eyebrows. Dean frowns. “Under your care,” the shepherd clarifies. Dean swallows. “You’re caring for her, are you not?”

“If… if she’ll let me.”

If she’ll let him. Just so.

The next day, the shepherd is round at the Eyrie with the infant Jack, and Ellen is cooing over the child. Novak has fashioned some kind of baby sling out of old fabric, and apparently this is how he carries the child from hill to hill during his long days of work with the flocks. Dean is in the kitchen trying his best to help prepare for lunch, but his injuries still hinder him. The shepherd enters without a word, and without Jack, to lay a small pot of something on the table in front of Dean.

“For your burns,” he says. “I know what you think of all my medicines—but it’s what I used on my hands, and you can see how they have fared, since. I hope you don’t consider it an intrusion.”

Dean pauses and stares at the shepherd, who is turning self-consciously to leave.

But Dean doesn’t want him to.

“What’s—what’s in it?” he asks. Mr Novak blinks. He seems ready to answer defensively, so Dean tries to clarify himself. “What’s in it?” he asks again. “You always used to tell me—” his voice cracks, “how you made these things.” He glances down at the pot, small and round and made of ruddy clay. “I liked to hear of it. I think—” his voice is frayed. He looks back up at the shepherd, who watches him, questioningly. “I think you liked to tell me, once.”

Castiel stares.

And then he answers. And when he answers, his voice is just as frayed as Dean’s.

“Yarrow and wild violet,” he says, “and a little dandelion. Infused in acorn oil. The yarrow is for healing and circulation. The violet is for cooling, and for the inflammation. The dandelion is for the pain. And the acorn oil on its own is good enough to treat burns. Together I think—I hope,” he amends, and gazing at one another too long seems to bee too painful for either of them, so their glittering eyes dance about, “they will help you in some way.”

“I’m sure they will,” Dean answers earnestly. “Thank you—”

“It is nothing,” Castiel brushes aside.

“Yarrow is a symbol for healing,” Dean says. “I remember you telling me that, once.”

Castiel nods, sombrely.

“Aye, it is,” he confirms. Silence for a moment. He looks back up at Dean. His gaze ticks with thought as well as hurt. “And for enduring love.”

Castiel leaves. Dean can’t think for the storm and smoke in his head. When he finally enters the parlour, one and all are cooing over the infant boy and Dean is able to slip quietly into a seat away from them all. People seem to talk too loudly, these days. This past week.

Krissy surprises him when she comes to sit beside him.

“You don’t like children?” she asks.

“I love children,” Dean frowns.

“You’re ignoring the Kline boy.”

“I’m not ignoring him.”

He can barely look at her for the guilt which riddles his system. The girl, eight years old, made an orphan—all because Dean was too weak and panicked to carry her and a parent out from the flames.

“But you’ve been ignoring me.”

“I haven’t been ignoring you,” Dean shakes his head. His mind is fuzzy, still fuzzy, getting fuzzier. “It’s just—”

Just—

“Just?” Krissy raises her eyebrows.

“I feel so much guilt and shame, every time I see you,” Dean confesses, with surprising honesty, to a child who can hardly be expected to understand the feeling, no matter how precocious she seems. His lungs are tight. “I’m—I’m sorry, Krissy,” he says, and the girl presses her lips together and frowns and looks, suddenly, the age that she really is. Her eyes start to shine. “I couldn’t save them—I wanted to—I wasn’t strong enough—I wanted to be, though—”

Krissy gets up and leaves. Dean presses his head into his hands and shudders out tears. The others in the room are too distracted by the infant boy to notice.

Eventually Dean pulls himself together enough to leave.

But Castiel follows after him.

“Mr Winchester,” he says, and oh, his voice is more soft and tender than Dean ever deserved, least of all now. “Are you alright?”

Dean swallows thickly and turns from where he stands, on the first stair. Castiel is just beneath him.

“I am—” he stammers, but he can hardly breathe the words out. “I am—quite well, Mr Novak—thank you for your care—”

“I pray you’ll take no offense at this, but you don’t look it.”

Dean huffs and looks away, blinking out more tears.

“I’m being ridiculous.”

“Who told you that?”

Castiel peers at him seriously.

“I thought I would retire to my room,” Dean says, dodging the question.

“If it’s what you think you need,” the shepherd nods gently. Dean swallows.

“It is.”

“Perhaps some rest—”

“I’m tired of rest,” Dean’s lip curls.

“—And the balm I gifted you,” Castiel continues over Dean’s snarled words, “will do you good.”

Dean looks down at his feet, breath shuddering.

“I’m sure,” he admits. “Thank you—again—for it.”

“Is it still in the kitchen?” Castiel asks. Dean nods. “Then I will bring it to you.”

“Th—thank you,” Dean stammers out again. “I know I don’t deserve—”

But the shepherd has turned down the corridor.

Dean watches his retreating back with a cave of longing in him. Krissy descends the stairs just as Castiel returns with the balm and presses it softly into Dean’s hands. He knows he’d be a fool to hope for forgiveness, but the touch of the shepherd is so gentle—

And gone in an instant. Castiel returns to the parlour.

“What’s that?” Krissy asks. Her eyes are red. Dean turns to her.

“A balm,” he answers, “Our shepherd, Mr Novak was kind enough to make it for me. He’s—he’s good, at fixing things.”

“A balm?” Krissy repeats. Dean nods. “What for?”

“For my burns,” Dean says, and tugs at his collar to show the angry skin beneath it.

“It will fix them?”

“That’s what he tells me.”

Krissy looks at him sadly.

“Mr Novak makes a lot of balms?” she asks.

“A fair few, yes,” Dean nods.

“Does he make any for hearts?”

Dean looks at her sadly. Her eyes shine again. His throat has closed up. He tries to speak several times, but finds that he can’t. Finally, he manages,

“You know, Krissy, I’ve seen sadness, too.” The little girl only looks at him, but Dean takes this as permission enough to continue. “My—my mother died in a fire. Just like yours. I’m—” he looks down. “I’m so sorry that I couldn’t—didn’t save her.”

Krissy watches him.

“They say you ran back into the flames, after you’d saved me.”

“Yes,” Dean nods. “Going after our shepherd.”

Krissy looks at him.

“You must be good friends.”

Dean’s throat is still tight. He can’t even nod.

“We—we were,” he admits. “He was my first friend here.”

He moves gently round her and treads up the stairs.

In his room, he closes the door. He takes off his shirt and soothes the balm over his chest and closes his eyes and draws in deep breaths. It tingles softly across his skin. He imagines that it’s Cas who’s touching him. He wishes it were Cas who touches him.

Alastair visits again that evening, and the only notice Dean gets is Adam appearing at his door to tell him before the sound of the man’s footfall is on the first stair. Dean is at least standing and ready for him by the time Alastair reaches his room.

“Dean Winchester,” Alastair smiles. “I trust you are recovering well?”

Not really—but as of this afternoon, and the balm Mr Novak gifted him, Dean’s skin is cooled and no longer feeling so tight that any movement or stretch might at once tear it again.

“I—I am, thank you,” he says, but he must glance over to the balm sat beside his bed, because Alastair looks over at it too, and twitches a frown. “And you are, too?”

Alastair looks back at him.

“Quite well,” he confirms. “I came to ask you if you’re recovered well enough to dine with me, tomorrow night.”

Dean swallows thickly.

“Um,” he stammers, “I’m not—I’m sorry, Sir Alastair—I think I might need some repairing, yet, before I travel so far.”

“It’s only to my estate,” Alastair reminds, looking at him unwaveringly. “You ran to it, well enough, on the night of the fire. And I’ll send my carriage to you, if it’s truly such an issue.”

“Not issue,” Dean tries, “but I think perhaps—”

Alastair steps across the room, toward Dean’s bed. He picks up the pot of balm and opens it.

“What is this?” he asks, smelling it a moment with a frown.

“It’s—a medicine,” Dean stammers, chest tightening.

“Did the doctor I sent for you prescribe it?” Alastair asks, looking up over the rim of the humbly-made pot, to Dean.

“No,” Dean admits, pulse quickening.

“Then where did you get it?” Alastair asks, and asks it patiently. Or seems to ask it patiently. But something beneath his words is cold with venom.

“The—the shepherd, of this farm,” Dean says, “Mr Novak gave it to me.”

“And where did Mr Novak get it from?”

Dean’s mouth is dry.

“He made it.”

“Well,” Sir Alastair laughs, putting the lid back on the pot before tossing the item coldly onto Dean’s bed, where it lands, cushioned by his sheets. “Is Mr Novak a man of medicine now, too?”

“He—he makes many things, for the sick and injured in the area,” Dean stammers. “He’s—he’s very good at it—”

Perhaps it isn’t wise to sing Cas’s praises to the other man.

“I had no idea that Mr Novak was such a talented man,” Alastair’s mouth is cracked upwards and dangerous. “Shepherd, doctor, whatever next? He certainly seems to have a… propensity… to rise above his station.”

“So do I,” Dean points out. His heart is still pacing within him.

Alastair steps closer. Dean swallows thickly. But then the other man’s eyes land on the book left apart from the few others atop Dean’s chest of drawers, the book Dean took down to pore sadly over so recently. The first book he ever read.

Twelfth Night.

Alastair picks it up. Dean wants to snatch it from him but knows that he can’t, and knows that it would be ridiculous and telling if he did.

“A fan of Shakespeare’s, are you?” Alastair asks.

Dean nods weakly.

“I suppose.”

Alastair hands the book to Dean.

“Read me some,” he says, coolly. Dean frowns up at the man, nervous and stunned.

“What?”

“Read me some,” Alastair repeats. “I’d like to hear a rendition.”

Dean’s hands shake as he opens the book. He knows the song he used to recite to Cas, off by heart, and he makes to turn to that page. He won’t stammer or stumble over these words. But he will stammer and sputter over any other he attempts, and give the shame of his illiteracy away.

Alastair stills his hands. “No,” he shakes his head. “Wait.” And he takes the book again and turns to a page of his own choosing. Panic rises in Dean’s system as he does. “From here.”

Dean looks down at the page and swallows. His hands are trembling as he takes the book from Alastair.

“Go on,” Alastair smiles calmly. The air is curiously still around them. Stale and cool. “I never knew a young man so prone to hesitation.”

Dean looks up at Alastair from the page. There’s no mercy in his iron-eyes.

He knows he shouldn’t be embarrassed—how many farm hands can boast of being literate, anyway? Certainly not all of them, even if the numbers might be increasing. But somehow Alastair commands the air around them so that all of it cloaks Dean in shame, before he even starts.

He draws a steadying breath.

“This is the air,” he reads, and is glad for these four short words, which he breathes out of him with trembling speech but without much other trouble. “That is the—” And here it begins to go awry. “The,” he tries, pulse quickening, skin tightening around him like a vice-grip, “the,” Alastair watches him coldly. He misses the shepherd. If he were in the Croft, and trying to read, Cas would be gently waiting with Dean for the words to unravel themselves before him. Perhaps his hand would be placed comfortingly on the back of Dean’s neck, ready to soothe him when Dean grew frustrated and impatient and upset with his own slowness. Ready to applaud Dean when he finally squeezed the words past his lips and comprehension. If Dean were in the Croft with Mr Novak now, he wouldn’t feel so nervous about this, anyway, and likely wouldn’t be stammering and trembling as he is, now.

It’s been months since his last lesson with the shepherd, and he’s not only nervous, but out of practice.

He looks up at Alastair, whose expression is hard and poisoned with happiness at what, exactly? The man is certainly not about to let Dean cease, soon; he wears it like a crown upon his features. Dean swallows and tries again.

“The glorious sun,” Dean practically sighs as he manages to get the words out. “This pearl she gave me,” and now they flow a little easier, “I do feel’t and see’t.” He draws a deep breath and tries to repress its shuddering. He can’t stop pacing through the words, because if he does, the embarrassment will overcome him, and the fear, and the ability to read these words at all will fall from him completely. Mortified, he sets on. He cannot let Alastair win. “And though… ‘tis wonder that—that—” and his stammering begins again, and his pulse rises once more. What word is next before him? “—En—enwr—enwraps me thus,” he manages, and wills himself not to cry with mortification, “Yet ‘tis not ma—” he frowns at the word a moment. “Madness,” he finishes, and looks up again at Alastair. His face is hot. Normally at this point, he’d feel a curl of triumph and pride at making it through a difficult sentence, but normally at this point it would be Castiel with him, making him feel that way. Now it’s Alastair. And Alastair looks scornful.

“Well,” he smiles. “There was an agonising process.”

Dean flushes shame and ducks his head. Alastair lets him.

“So strange, that your brother reads so well, and you so poorly,” his voice sounds above Dean. “Clearly there’s not much of a family resemblance, there.”

Dean looks back up, hurt flashing through him.

“I worked all my life so that Sammy could learn—”

“To read books, from my own library, on the subjects of landowner’s duties, and worker and tenant rights?” Alastair asks. Dean frowns. “I’m not a fool, Dean,” Alastair is closer than before. “What, would I not find it strange that one moment, my workers were speaking in grunts and waving clubs, and in the next, reciting Rousseau to me? Or that the books I found taken from their shelves in my own library, were those used as source material in the improving rhetoric of my own tenants, and setting them against me?”

Dean’s throat is tight. Any sound at all struggles to escape from it, let alone excuses which might cover him and his brother.

“I don’t know what you’re implying—”

“That, after my generosity, my hospitality, toward you and your brothers, your brother saw fit to exploit my kindness and behind my back, in my own home, rally a mob against me.”

“He wouldn’t—it wasn’t like that—he’d never—”

“And how am I to guarantee that you,” Alastair continues, and what’s terrifying is that at once he manages to be both angry and calm, “the one I’ve treated kindest of all, shown my attention to most devotedly, knew nothing of his exploits?”

“I,” Dean shakes his head, “I didn’t—”

“But how can I believe you?” Alastair asks. Dean stares at him. Pleading. He cannot answer, he has no answer. The words have frozen in his throat. “Well,” Alastair sighs performatively after a prickle of painful silence, or silence at least painful for Dean. “There’s some comfort in your illiteracy. If you were not so backward, perhaps you would have noticed what he was reading, and seen fit to tell me of your brother’s—misguided—activities. A pity for me, that you are so slow. Fortunate for you that you’ve such handsome features, to make up for it. Those pretty eyes almost make up for the little substance behind them.”

Dean’s chest tightens and sparks pain. That isn’t fair, this isn’t fair, he isn’t stupid—

“Now I shall read you my favourite passage of the play,” Alastair smiles, and takes the book from Dean. He flips calmly through it until he finds the page he’s looking for. “If this fall into thy hand, revolve. In my stars I am above thee; but be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.”