How (thanks to Gabriel) Dean and Castiel raised each other (and Sam)

Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

John Winchester was not a fool. He was good at patterns and finding monsters where most people saw nothing at all. He knew long before he really knew that something was going on with his children. The evidence had been there, the sequences he'd trained himself hard to notice, but because all of the incidents had been positive, it had never occurred to him that something supernatural was at work.

It went on for years with a vague suspicion gnawing at him, tickling the back of his mind, before the evidence appeared before him with one hand in Dean's hair.

He'd come back to the apartment, cold even in his sweatshirt and heavy jacket. The winter had been unkind this year and the werewolf he was hunting more wily than he'd counted on. Or perhaps it wasn't a wolf at all. The books tucked under his arm promised some answers and his mind was more on that possibility then the door he unlocked or the hall he walked down.

The television was on low in the living room. The boys were both in, a rarity since Dean had turned sixteen and earned the right to drive the truck. The Impala was waiting for him at seventeen if he kept the truck intact for a year. When John got back now he often found his sons missing with a note on the kitchen table in Dean's slanting handwriting. He liked that they were out there together, watching each other's backs.

Today though they had taken up their usual places for a night in: Sam, a gangly awkward streak at thirteen, sat on the floor with his back against the couch and the hair he wouldn't let anyone touch spread in a fan over the cushion while Dean was stretched out, legs thrown over the couch and a book open on his stomach.

And his head was cushioned on the thigh of another teenage boy. He looked average enough, dark hair, pale skin and an oversized tan sweatshirt swallowing his thin frame. Dean was saying something to him, hands moving in broad circles while Sam stared up at both of them with a grin tugging on the edges of his lips.

John stood frozen in the doorway. Dean had brought home friends on occasion, other knockabout boys who stayed only long enough for Dean to fetch whatever he had left behind or pretty girls that breezed in and out, leaving behind their candy perfume smells. No one settled into the couch and let their head fall against the back with one hand stroking through Dean's hair.

This boy looked comfortable. Like he fit. As if the pose of Dean on couch and Sam on the floor had always been missing a piece and now it was slotted into place.

Dean and Sam hadn't heard him come in, but the stranger looked up, locked eyes with John. He tilted his head at an odd, alien angle. John gripped the hilt of the knife at his waist. He blinked.

The boy was gone. Dean was laughing, head on the cushions. Sam's nose was wrinkled up the exact same way it did when John slammed a door to loudly or Dean made a joke he didn't approve of.

"John Winchester." A low voice said from behind him.

John pivoted, knife drawn. The boy stood behind him, his hair a ruffled mess, but the rest of him preternaturally still.

"Who are you?" John growled.

"My name is Castiel." The light in the hallways flickered and for a brief moment, John could have sworn the shadow of great wings painted the walls. "I'm an Angel of the Lord."

"Angel." John snorted. "Right. What do you want with my boys?"

"I want nothing from them. I watch over them."

"Bullshit." John buried the knife to the hilt in the boy's chest.

Castiel reached out and pulled the knife back out, then handed it back to John hilt first. There was no wound, no blood, not even a rip in the thin black t-shirt with it's faded band logo. John took it back numbly.