Title: Blood and Anesthetic

Chapter: 15

~~~~~~~~~~~

Dean took a deep breath. “Where did you hear that,” he asked her.

“It was something Jo said last night.”

“What was it Jo said?” After she’d explained, he nodded. “I see. Did you ask Cas about it?”

She splayed her hands on the table. “I tried, but he didn’t really answer me. He didn’t deny it, but he didn’t confirm it either. I mean, I felt a little silly asking if he was an angel out loud, even though I know they exist, because…come on. Cas? An angel? With the way he acts and the things he does? I’ve heard him cuss a blue streak on occasion.”

“And?”

“I started thinking earlier and, like, okay, I know angels are real, along with all sorts of scary stuff. It’s a fact, but aren’t angels supposed to be righteous and holy and pure and…and,” she tapped the tabletop, “…not like Cas. That’s why I ask if he’s a fallen angel, because I don’t think a full on holy angel would, um, have orgies. It doesn’t reason out. A fallen angel though, that would make much more sense.”

He was a little stunned that it was Melanie asking him this. The last person he’d expected. He’d thought perhaps Noah would be asking or Ashley, but...maybe it wasn’t so unexpected. After all, she’d been spending a lot of time with Cas since that very first day they’d found her. Was it really surprising?

“Dean?”

He didn’t think he needed to lie to her or put her off. He knew she liked Cas, cared about him, and didn’t want to hurt him. Dean suspected she’d be very careful with the information and who she mentioned it to. Reaching out, he laid his hands over the tops of hers, thumbs rubbing her wrists in slow swoops, ready to hold her there to finish this conversation if necessary. For a second he wondered why Cas hadn’t told her, but it had likely been very late when she’d asked and the topic was not one that should be covered in a quick sentence or two. There was a bit of explanation involved. Castiel probably just hadn’t gotten to talking to her about it yet today. Or he was waiting for another day to fully discuss it with her.

Here’s hoping Cas was serious about not caring if anyone knows, he thought, and leaned forward like she was, lowering his voice. “He’d call himself fallen, yes, but by my definition these days he’s just a guy who got the short end of the stick.”

There was elation that she was right in her eyes, followed seconds later by guilt and fear. She was thinking that over, hands shifting. “Oh no. That means that I --”

“Melanie, listen to me,” he hurried to stop whatever she was going to say, shaking his head. “There is no reason to feel any differently about him. He’s very much the Cas you met last year when we found you. Nothing about him has changed since you’ve known him.”

“This is bad,” she whispered. “Angels are holy things.”

“No, no it’s not bad.” Dean let his attention wander about them, satisfied they were still the only ones in the immediate vicinity and their conversation remained private. “You need to trust me on that.”

“I had sex with an angel. An angel, Dean. That’s not good.”

“Melanie, stop.”

“That’s so not good. It’s…it’s like --”

“Stop.” He squeezed her wrists tight enough that she gasped and winced. He hated to do it, but he needed to get her full attention and fast. “Listen to me. Now, are you listening? Are you? Because I’m going to tell you something very few people know.”

She gulped, hands curling into fists under his. “I’ll try. I’ll listen. I will.”

“This is privileged information.”

She gave a shaky nodded. “Okay.”

“He was doing his job, sort of like a soldier stationed away from home, and saw his superiors doing things that were wrong and not…righteous. They were supposed to be the good guys, only they weren’t really that good after all. It was sometimes hard to tell them from the demons the way they behaved. Sneaky, underhanded, just plain mean. Castiel though, he was a stand-up, good angel through and through. He was the one to have at your back. Saved my ass more than a few times and not just with the angel powers he had. Cas is smart, Melanie. He figures things out, or he did then.”

“Of course he’s smart. He’s like the smartest guy I know.”

The smell of dinner cooking wafted across the clearing. Instead of making him hungry, all it did was make him gag a little. At least he didn’t have much of a headache anymore and the sun was behind him so it wasn’t causing shards of pain in his eyes whenever he looked around. Dean swallowed the urge to retch and waited for his stomach to settle back down.

“He ended up having to make the decision to rebel against them, to do good things instead of the bad things they wanted from him and out of spite, they cut him off from the heavenly powers tap. By his definition, that strength of will and use of free will he displayed right there made him fall even though he was right to make that choice. He made a righteous decision based on what he’d seen and it bit him on the ass. The powers went away and when they were gone, he was human.”

Her lower lip trembled and Dean released one wrist to caress her cheek in a comforting gesture. Her skin was smooth and cool.

“It’s okay. I fully understand the need to indulge in a little freak-out about it. It’s a lot to take in.” He moved his hand back to her wrist. “Take a couple deep breaths and relax.”

She took the breaths, lips parting. Her blouse slipped down on one shoulder.

“Good girl. Keep breathing.” He continued to caress her wrists with his thumbs. “Now, by the time we picked you up, all his powers were gone and he’d been human for a long time.”

“How long?”

“About a year.”

“That’s not long.”

“Considering that a week in a human body is long to him, a year is an eternity. Two years, two eternities. It’s agony to him to have to live as a human.” He felt her tug against his grasp, but wasn’t quite ready to release her yet. The cool breeze made her hair fly about her face, bringing more scents from the dining hall.

“He really was an angel? It wasn’t Jo drunk making up stories?”

“He really was,” Dean confirmed. “However, he’s been a man as long as you’ve known him. You see, there’s no reason to feel weird around him. He’s a man now, and a good one. That’s all. Got it? There’s no angel left anymore.”

Her brow furrowed in a puzzled expression. “Why didn’t he just say so last night? He could have.”

“You’ll have to ask him that.” He watched her contemplate that for long moments, loosening his grip slightly. Behind her, he saw Alexis and Maggie jogging on the path, laughing together, not even noticing Dean and Melanie as they passed.

“Does anyone else know? I mean besides you, Jo, and now me?”

“Chuck.” And Bobby had known. Ellen, too.

Her surprise was evident in the way she shrugged her brows. “Really?”

“Yeah, really. Chuck knew from the beginning, probably even before I did.” Giving her wrists a final squeeze, he released her. “You gonna handle this okay?”

“Can I talk to Cas about it?”

“Depends on what part of it you want to discuss. The part about you knowing would be fine, sure, but I’d avoid an in-depth discussion about what angel life was like. It’s a touchy subject for him since he lost all of it. Hurts him, you know? It hurts him a lot.”

“He lost his identity.”

“Pretty much.”

“He wasn’t a man, but now he is.” She licked her lips, touched his hands hesitantly with her fingertips. “Are you a man?”

That’d be an odd question if they hadn’t just been discussing Castiel’s angel past. “Yes, I’m a man. Never been a cloud hopper.” Never planned to.

Save that weak moment when he’d screamed himself hoarse trying to accept Michael and the son of a bitch had ignored him. He remembered falling to his knees, screaming and crying, desperate to be Michael’s vessel just to save the world; the sense of utter despair once he realized Michael wasn’t listening and that the world was doomed to destruction.

Selfish dicks.

Melanie frowned again. “Oh.” The word was drawn out, disappointment heavy in it.

“Oh?” Surely she hadn’t been thinking that he’d been one too? “What’s that mean, Melanie?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” When she looked at him, he didn’t see any evidence of that crush she’d had on him, none of those things he’s seen as recently as a couple days earlier. No curiosity, no flirtatious flickering of her lashes, no open invitation reflected there. What he saw there was a far away expression, as though she was miles away in her head. “I’ll avoid talking to him about it. I like Cas.” Her lips curved in a slow grin. “I do. I really like him. I don’t want to hurt him. I did that once already and absolutely hated how I felt after and how he felt.”

Dean got the distinct impression he’d ceased to exist for her as a sex symbol in the space of only a few minutes and all because he hadn’t been an angel at any point in his life. “Okay.” Weird. “How about you and me? We okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” She rested her chin on her hands.

Things really did feel okay right then. Whatever had happened between them that he didn’t remember was already gone from her mind. Amazing. Had he ever been that resilient? “Good. That’s…that’s great, Melanie. Why don’t you go back in to work, then?”

“Okay.” Melanie got up and, after taking two steps from the table, she came back, bending and placing a quick kiss on his cheek. “Thank you for telling me the truth, Dean.”

He returned to his cabin then, considering having a nice long nap before dinner in hopes of the last vestiges of the hangover disappearing. To his surprise, he found Nina waiting. It wasn’t their regular day, yet there she was, sprawled on his bed in a seductive pose -- her usual one.

“Well, hello there. Fancy meeting you here,” she purred. “Come here often?”

Dean glanced behind him, then decided why not? He shut the door.

~~~~~~~~~~

Jo hated that she was responsible for outing Castiel to Melanie. Maybe she hadn’t spilled the entire story, but her drunken mention had been enough to get Mel asking questions. While Jo and Cas had been sleeping that day, Melanie had asked Dean about Cas and Dean had actually answered.

Castiel wasn’t concerned by it. Either that or he was putting on a good show of not being concerned, claiming he’d never tried to hide what he’d been. He simply hadn’t volunteered the information.

She expected fall-out; for Melanie to talk to Alexis and it to snowball until the entire camp knew about Castiel’s heavenly origins. There were an infinite number of ways people could treat him differently once they knew and Jo tried to prepare herself for the worst. She imagined the few overly religious people claiming he was in league with Lucifer and demanding that Dean oust him from camp. After that scenario, Jo imagined that there’d be some wing fetish freaks who’d come calling, asking if he still had his wings and could they touch them. No matter that he’d run around without his shirt on occasion and there were obviously no wings anywhere. He did point out then that the wings had been invisible to the human eye except under certain conditions, but Jo didn’t see any reason to tell any of the freaks that should they even pop out of the woodwork. And finally, she thought about the inevitable whispers and stares.

Castiel listened to all of Jo’s concerns and held her as she spoke, seeming more concerned that he work her clothes from her than in the potential consequences of Melanie knowing the truth. He undid her jeans and evaded her hands when she tried to stop him.

“While I understand you’re worried, Jo, you don’t have to be.”

“Cas, stop. This is serious. We need to talk about it.”

“You want to talk too much sometimes,” he complained, pulling his hands away and sitting up. “She’s not going to tell anyone.”

“Why not?”

The way his lips twisted made her insides go all quivery. “Will you just trust me?” Straddling her, he leaned down, lips treading a slow path across her chest, nibbling after each word. “There is no way she’s going to run around telling anyone.”

He managed to distract her then and keep her that way the entire afternoon.

She waited and waited for that fall-out and when it never came, she decided that maybe, just maybe, Melanie had begun to really mature. It was a mature decision to keep quiet about something like that.

Too bad she discovered she was wrong about the maturity thing.

On Tuesdays, Jo spent most of the morning in the laundry area doing laundry. She’d wash her clothes, Cas’s, and for anyone else who dropped it off when she was there. Sometimes she washed the sheets, too, but Maggie usually did that on Monday and Friday. As Jo fed clothes into the washers, she checked pockets and in the back pocket of one of Cas’s pairs of jeans, she found a folded drawing.

It was in Melanie’s unique style, a gorgeous rendering of Cas lying on a bed sleeping. One arm was above his head, the other at his side, elbow bent and hand on his stomach. Beneath him was the suggestion of wings, though if Jo looked at it one way, it seemed like it was just the way the sheet had bunched. As usual, the detail was fantastic.

She took one long look and fought the urge to bang her forehead against the wall beside her.

Melanie had transferred her affections from Dean back to Castiel.

And here Jo had thought it was maturity peeking through when it was actually plain old lust. If Melanie made Cas uncomfortable, he wouldn’t invite her over, and if she thought telling someone would make him uncomfortable…then so on and so forth. Jo was starting to suspect that Melanie had a thing for bad boys, and with her knowing the truth about Cas, he likely now qualified for the baddest boy in camp, usurping Dean from that spot.

Jo expressed her opinion to Cas later that day when she gave him the drawing back.

His smirk had a definite naughty twist to it. “Now that you mention it, she does like a man to misbehave and you must admit Jo, I misbehave in quite the satisfactory manner when I choose.”

He certainly did, proving to her right then how well he misbehaved.

As the days went by and slid into weeks, it was clear that Melanie really had switched affections. She was back in Cas’s company most days, as though there’d never been any trouble at all in any way.

Jo quit trying to maneuver Melanie into maturity. It just wasn’t going to happen. Every supposedly mature decision she made ended up relating to men. The ultimate acceptance of her weapons training? Because Dean approved and not because Jo had laid down the law. The keeping of Cas’s past a secret? Because it made her hot to think of him as the supreme bad boy.

Every last damn decision.

If there was any behavior that drove Jo crazy, it was that one, the whole desire to have a man’s approval. She reminded herself that it likely had to do with Melanie’s upbringing and background, but that didn’t mean she didn’t find it irksome.

So she quit trying and let it go on. Dean and Castiel liked it that way. Cas liked having his number one groupie back in place and Dean liked being that authoritative father figure. Sometimes Jo wondered if he even knew that’s what he was doing. They liked Melanie right where she was and so did Melanie.

~~~~~~~~~~

Humiliating.

Castiel gritted his teeth and fought back tears with little success. He refused to look down at his foot, which had an ice pack covering it. Nor did he look at Jo. She kept asking what had happened, her voice grating the longer she pestered him until he snapped at her to go away and leave him alone. The stricken look in her eyes, though quickly replaced by stubborn anger, made him feel even worse than he already did.

This incident was one more humiliating example of human frailty. If he was an angel he wouldn’t have this problem. If he was an angel, it’d be healed by now, but he wasn’t an angel. He was another stupidly weak, hopeless human. A desperate, pathetic, miserable, wretched, useless, frail, inadequate failure. He might feel better about the injury if he’d even been doing anything spectacular or particularly daring to get it, like rescuing a small child from Croats or something. Then maybe he could take the physical injury with some kind of dignity. Then, maybe. But to be injured from an everyday shifting of supplies from the truck to the cabin? Then to be carried into his own cabin by Dean and Jim like he was an invalid incapable of movement?

It was beside the point that he couldn’t put his weight on his foot and just glancing at it seemed to make the excruciating pain increase. Removing his boot had been agony.

Castiel gripped the sheets beneath him in his hands.

Utterly, totally, so very completely humiliating.

And he’d known it was bad by how Dean made not one tasteless, awkward joke that fell flat, ordering Jim to find an icepack and insisting in a low, calm voice that it didn’t look too bad. Cas snorted at that. Not too bad, his ass. He’d seen Dean’s expression and the alarmed glance he’d exchanged with Jo. It was bad and Cas was just a damn weak, pathetic human.

Alan arrived after what felt an eternity, poking and prodding and giving orders to Jo and Maggie as to how to care for the injury.

A broken foot. How…wonderful.

Castiel snorted and when he felt himself sliding deeper and deeper into depression about his circumstances over the next days, he didn’t try to pull himself out of it. He didn’t care if he laid around staring at the ceiling or if he wallowed in the spectacular insignificance of being human. He’d been so much more once and he never would be again. Ever.

He didn’t feel better when Alan gave him crutches to get him mobile, nor did he feel better when he could maneuver himself fairly well about the camp. Why should he feel better about it? He still needed someone to help him. Granted, he had Maggie, sometimes Melanie, and Jo -- when she wasn’t occupied elsewhere. Some days he suspected she fabricated jobs she had to do just to get away from him. Some days he wouldn’t blame her if she did. Cas knew he was being difficult, but he just couldn’t care. He hated having to wait for someone to help him get a tray of food. He hated not being able to do anything without crutches. And he hated that he was going to have to relearn how to walk because of it.

With a month down, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from snapping at Jo whenever she tried to help him with something. The worst part was when he made her cry and realized right then that he was doing exactly what Dean had done with her: provoking her into arguments, one right after the other. It hit him between the eyes with the force of a hammer strike and he got up, balancing on the crutches. “Jo…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I just feel so helpless and I don’t like feeling this way --”

“You think anyone does?” Wiping her eyes, she left the couch and reached for the backpack she used on the rare occasion she went on a raid. “Screw this.” She jabbed a finger at him. “Screw you, Cas. Screw you. I don’t have to sleep here. I’ve got my own cabin to go to, in case you’ve forgotten. And while it’s small, it’s got a bed and it’s nice and quiet.” She began to pack, going through the clean laundry basket and pulling out her clothes, shoving them into the backpack, stuffing it full.

The sight made his heart ache. She was leaving? No, no she couldn’t.

“I said I was sorry. What more do you want? Tell me.” He hobbled over to block the doorway because he knew she wouldn’t shove him out of the way, not when he was on crutches. It was a dirty tactic to get her to stay. Cas was aware of that and employed it anyway. “Jo, please, don’t go. I don’t want you to.”

“You want to know what I want, Cas?” She struggled to close the backpack and finally tossed it down onto the floor. “Do you really want to know what I want? I want the pity party to stop. You broke a foot. Boo-hoo, poor you. Could have been your leg. Or you could have cracked open your thick skull. Maybe even snapped your neck. Geez, you’re acting like some teenaged drama queen, like you’re the first person to ever break a bone.”

“Well, I am the first angel to that has to wait for it to heal at a human pace.”

She shook her head. “Former angel. You’re not one anymore. You’re human now and humans break bones. Even I’ve had a broken bone before. I was five and fell out of a tree. Broke my left arm and wrist and got a spanking on top of it later because I’d also worn the fancy expensive Easter dress my mom had bought to do it. She was a little pissed. My point is, it happens.”

He wanted to go to her, to reach out and touch her arms, coaxing, apologizing, kissing her, but he couldn’t. The crutches got in the way. “I’m sorry. I can’t say it enough. I’m sorry. I’ve been an ass.”

“Understatement.”

He stared at her, saw the slight, almost imperceptible shifting of her shoulders that indicated she was weakening in that determination to leave. Castiel studied her, waited until her shoulders slumped a bit more and made a wholly calculated move to sway her.

~~~~~~~~~~

He’d broken a foot and wouldn’t tell Jo how, an indication that he thought the cause was humiliating. Physical injuries seemed to irritate him the most, leaving Cas moody and morose, unpleasant for days. For the week after the injury, he was not the Castiel she’d come to know, preferring to answer anything she said in monosyllables or grunts, and refusing anything close to affection from anyone.

Desperate to know what had happened, Jo went to Dean.

“We were unloading the truck and one heavy crate slipped, overbalanced, and came right down. It could have been me, Jim, or Yeager just as easily as Cas. Why? Didn’t he tell you what happened?”

Jo declined to answer.

Castiel was a bad patient, surly and ill-humored, making it clear that he hated every bit of his forced inactivity and the necessary physical therapy exercises to get him walking again. He argued with anyone who’d take the bait, behaving more like Dean had when Jo had first arrived in the camp. Aside from Jo, the only other woman to sit with him was Maggie. Alexis and Amanda both refused to put up with him in that mood and Jo refused to let Melanie near him for fear one glare would put her in tears.

Jo took his bad moods as long as she could and then it got to be too much. She couldn’t take it anymore and realized there was no reason she had to. Once it was obvious she was going to actually walk out that door, or through the open doorway rather, he quickly shifted mostly back into the Cas she’d grown to love.

He stood in front of the doorway, pleading. Jo could see that he didn’t want to; didn’t want to have to beg her to stay, his discomfort high and growing more so by the second. When she hesitated, he played the lost little boy card, giving her that vulnerable expression that was at present entirely calculated. She knew very well it was, that he was trying to manipulate her, either consciously or no. He hadn’t come far enough off the pity party sulks yet to show her the real vulnerability inside him.

But he knew she was serious. She’d leave. It made him stop and think about what he was doing, how he’d been behaving.

“If I stay, you can’t keep snapping at me like that. I don’t have to put up with it and I won’t. I already lived that life with Dean. Remember that?” She noticed a guilty shifting in his eyes and nodded. “I see you do remember. Well, I won’t do it again no matter how much I love you. It’s not worth it. Shape up, Cas, or I’m shipping out. You’re being stupid. No sugar coating. What I’m trying to do is help you recover faster, but you’d rather wallow in the fact that you got injured in the first place. It’s stupid.”

He was at a disadvantage when he couldn’t simply reach out and touch her. Cas knew it and Jo thought it was a contributing factor to his feelings of helplessness. He was used to using touch to get his way, having grown dependant upon it: a gentle caress on the cheek, a tender kiss on the temple, or something far more seductive and blatant.

“I know.” A dull flush spread across his cheekbones. “There are only so many times I can say I’m sorry before it begins to sound trite and insincere and --”

“Let me make this very easy for you. You yell at me like that again,” she pointed at the doorway, “I go out that door and I don’t come back. It’ll hurt me to do it, but I will because the way you’re making me feel these days is not worth staying for. Been there, done that, and hated myself for months after the fact because I put up with it for so long. I’ll leave you, Castiel. Do you want that?”

“You know I don’t. I want you here.”

It was better between them after that. He made a conscious effort to be the way he’d been before the accident.

But he wasn’t the same. She saw it in his eyes and wondered what had caused that change.

When he was walking again, he informed Dean that he wasn’t going out on missions or for any other reason unless Dean specifically wanted him to. He was done, over, unwilling to put himself out there in the field. He threw himself further into that decadence he’d been flirting with, immersing himself.

Castiel began to slip away from her and Jo didn’t think there was anything she could do about it.