The Key

Chapter 42

“As soon as we can,” Hannah promises. Eyes serious, Balthazar nods.

They take to the sky, leaving him behind.

An anxious morning and nerve-wracking early afternoon stretch into the mother of all tense evenings. They ride back to the castle while a foreign army fights their battle for them, on their soil, against the archangel who’d attacked his brother and their future king. Sam hobbles his way up to the library with a relieved Jess helping him on the stairs, and Dan opens the warded balcony doors of the library to let Cas in. Jo sticks around, an unofficial guard against Cas that their father insists on.

They spend the rest of the afternoon in there, Sam and Jess tag-teaming a history lesson for Cas. Dan and Jo interrupt with the versions of events they’ve heard out in the countryside, and Cas listens to them all, his wings hunched around the back of his chair. They sit at the table closest to the open balcony doors. The books laid before them try to blow shut, but it’s worth it for every time Cas’ eyes fall to half mast, his wings spreading, just a little. There’s a gray smudge on his shirt he keeps touching, and each time he does, it undoes his joy. In front of him, an angel blade lies on the table, unsheathed and untouched. Cas refuses to comment on either smudge or blade. Jo stands guard at the balcony doors, not the library door, ready to slam the warding into place at the first sign of movement from outside.

Dan tries not to pace, which means he is pacing constantly. He prowls a circuit around the room, orbiting his siblings and fiance. He pretends to check books for their titles, for their relevancy to history or law or anything else Cas needs to know, but he’s not looking.

“Dan, would you stop rubbing it in?” Sam calls from the table as Dan starts another circle. “You can walk, I get it. Sit down.”

Sighing, he stalks back to the table. Without looking up from the passage Jess is pointing out to him, Cas stretches out a wing, reaching for him. Rather than let himself be pulled in, Dan starts fussing over Cas’ feathers, messing them up and smoothing them down, just to see how far he’s allowed to go.

Jess keeps talking about the passage for half a minute longer before she laughs. Sam looks amused, but Cas doesn’t seem to notice, too busy listing to the side, toward Dan. The feathers around his shoulders are all fluffed up, so Dan pulls instead of preens, a hard tug of the hand. Cas’ head snaps up, but he doesn’t pull his wing away or push Dan back, or give Dan a single thing to fight against. Instead, in the quiet volume that passes for his tone of embarrassment, Cas looks up at him with dark eyes and says, “Dan, I don’t think you want to do that in front of your family.”

Dan pulls his hands away while Sam chokes on a laugh. He can’t sit, too restless, too aware of a battle that is rightfully his. He goes back to pacing.

“Dan, seriously,” Sam says.

“I could help,” Cas says, and no.

“No,” Dan orders, rounding on him, a talentless human against an angel. “You’re staying right there. If I can’t go, you can’t either.”

Cas and Jess stare at Dan together from across the table. From the balcony doors, Jo looks at him with understanding, but it’s Sam—Sam, of all people—who, twisted around in his chair, nods at him with complete empathy and not one shred of sympathy.

“Welcome to my entire life,” Sam says flatly. “Now, if you’re done running around in circles, can we do something actually productive right now?”

No. Dan needs to fight something, anything, right now, and if Sam is offering himself up as a target, so be it.

He opens his mouth with no idea what he’s going to say, only that it’s going to be awful, and then Cas makes this really f*****g weird noise. It’s like there’s something trapped inside his neck and he never learned how to cough.

Everybody looks at him.

Cas stares back at them in rotation until Sam clears his throat. Cas mimics this slightly better, nodding.

“You... wanted to say something?” Jess prompts.

“Yes,” Cas says. “When I said I could help, I meant with Sam’s leg.”

“No,” Dan says, unthinking, reflexive.

“I’m fully recovered,” Cas continues as if Dan hadn’t made a sound. “Hannah and Balthazar restored me, earlier. I would be able to heal Sam without taking more than the energy required for the healing.”

“No,” Dan says again, pointing at him, just as Sam says, “Please.”

“Can no one actually hear me right now?” Dan asks.

“Yes, but I outrank you,” Sam says. “Plus, people are already wondering why our personal angel with the miraculous healing powers hasn’t fixed my leg. He basically brought Mom and Dad back to life, and everyone at the Royal Hospital knows the kind of touch healing Lucifer pulled off. If Cas is back up to snuff, we really should get my leg fixed.”

While he speaks, Sam starts unbuttoning his shirt, going for the warded undershirt beneath.

“Jess,” Dan says, because come on.

“I trust Sam to know his own limits,” Jess says, and not just in the dutiful wife way Mary talks about King John.

“If you’re that against it,” Cas begins.

“I know you wouldn’t hurt him on purpose,” Dan hastens to say.

“Then I won’t,” Cas concludes.

“I would like my leg to not be broken anymore, please,” Sam says, and he at least looks to Dan this time. When he frames it like that, it even sounds reasonable. Human mages can only do so much, because breath healing can only go so deep. All human healing techniques can only go so deep.

Slowly, gradually, Dan forces his hands to unclench. “How fast can you do it?” he makes himself ask. “Mom and Dad, that was some pretty sustained contact you had to go with.”

“I’d be as quick as I could be,” Cas promises, which reassures only about intentions, not results.

“Practice first,” Dan tells him, rounding the table as Sam pulls off his undershirt to sit barechested. “Smallest area of contact possible, as fast as you can.”

Cas asks, “Is there another human with-”

Dan draws his blade, Cas’ blade, and slices his left palm. It’s so sharp, he doesn’t even feel the sting, but when he holds out his hand, his palm is dry and unbloodied.

Seated next to Cas, Jess stares. Standing to lean over the table, Sam stares. Jo cranes from her spot by the doors.

Cas looks up at him steadily, and the corners of his eyes crinkle as his feathers slowly fluff. But the tilt of his head seems... shy.

Looking down at his hand, Dan slides the blade’s edge against his palm a second time. It’s sharp, a danger he can feel, and yet his skin doesn’t part beneath it. He presses in harder, and though there is pain from the edge and the pressure, there still isn’t a cut.

Frowning, Dan plucks a long blond hair off Jess’ sleeve. It splits down the middle nice and easy, peeling apart like two pages in a book. It takes Dan a second to take a single hair off the top of his head and pluck it one-handed, but he does, and that short strand of hair won’t cut for anything.

Cas’ eyes are no longer crinkled. His feathers are back to an angle Dan is beginning to think of as his resting face. Cas says nothing, watching Dan make these little, monumental discoveries.

“Your blade won’t cut me,” Dan says.

“Never,” Cas promises, more matter-of-fact than earnest, as if it’s something he doesn’t need to prove.

“I, uh,” Dan says, and he doesn’t know what else to add. The hilt is cool in his hand.

“If you want me to practice before I heal Sam, we could visit a hospital,” Cas continues, speaking with ease. “It could be beneficial to morale and my public image.”

“We’d need to make arrangements for that,” Sam says. At some point, he’d pulled his shirt back on, though he’s yet to button it. “Just heal me today, it’s all right.”

“Dan?” Cas asks. He takes Dan’s hand, the one that should be bleeding. Cas’ fingers are warm and large and dry. He does not sweat, not even as the weather outside pretends it’s already June. He is ancient and inhuman, and he is looking up at Dan with deference and more, as if his original plan had never been to leave forever, to leave Dan holding a sack of s**t and blame.

“Yeah, fine,” Dan says, but he doesn’t pull his hand away. Cas uses that grip to pull himself to his feet, and Dan sways toward him more than he wants to admit. It’s the wings: Cas has a lot of mass to counter against.

Cas moves to Sam’s side of the table. He reaches with two fingers before pausing, hand inches from Sam’s upturned face. Then Cas folds one finger in and touches Sam’s temple, slower than a tap, more gentle than a poke. Sam’s eyes shoot wide, but he doesn’t jerk away. Dan’s hand clenches around the blade’s hilt. He doesn’t reach for the other blade, the one on the table, but he knows he could.

Then Cas withdraws his hand, his arm. Cas pulls back entirely and Sam smiles up at him, saying, “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Cas answers, and when he looks at Dan, Dan tries to relax.

“Dan, can you cut the cast off me?” Sam asks. “It’s itching like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Yeah, fine,” Dan says again, and it’s easy with the blade still in his hand. His steady, steady hand, as he cuts off his little brother’s cast. Plaster and bandage and splint part like butter, effortlessly, and Dan nicks Sam’s pale, hairy leg halfway down the shin. Sam doesn’t hiss or wince, only sighs in relief. The scratch is a thin, red line, too narrow for blood to immediately well, and Dan forces his eyes away from it.

“There,” he says when he’s done. He sheathes the blade and pats Sam on his knee, on his rolled up pants leg. “There,” he says again, and he stands.

“Thanks,” Sam says, and Dan says, “Yeah.”

Sam rolls down his pant leg and hesitates before putting his undershirt back on. Already sitting back beside Jess, Cas nods his approval.

“We were discussing precedents in foreign policy,” Cas reminds Sam, and Dan dies a little inside.

“Time for a break,” Dan says. “Or something else. Mostly, just something else.” Something that will actually distract him. He has no idea how Cas is holding it together, trapped here with his siblings out there.

“Dan’s right,” Sam says, giving in way too easily. He grins wide. “We really do need to be planning your wedding.”

“No,” Dan says, just as Cas asks, “What would that entail?”

“Well, we’ve been looking at locations that aren’t covered in warding,” Sam says, completely ignoring Dan. “We might want to consider heading back to that field. Decent space, really good symbolism. We don’t need to worry about rain with Mom scrying. Outdoor wedding, outdoor reception. And I know Dan’ll love making everyone use latrines.”

Breaking the silence typically required of a guard on duty, Jo snorts. Beside Cas, Jess doesn’t look too happy about the idea, which, yeah. Is totally why Dan finds the whole thing so funny. Some people have never dug a hole for their own s**t in the woods.

Cas has more questions, and Sam has more answers. Jess contributes with examples from hers and Sam’s wedding, and Dan pretends not to have any preferences, because it’s not like any of his are going to get catered to anyway, not when the whole thing is a diplomatic affair. Plus, it’s gotta be rushed through, to cement things.

“Were the marriage wreaths adapted from fae customs?” Cas asks, and Sam nods along.

“It carried over from Moondoor. They’ve been the cultural trend setters for a while,” Sam explains. “Once Charlie’s done with the state dinner downstairs, she’d probably be thrilled to give you an overview.”

Cas frowns. “Shouldn’t you be there?” The way he glances between Sam and Dan, includes Dan in that question. It’s almost sweet, how hilariously ill-informed that is.

“Heads of state and spouses only,” Sam says. “We’ll be calling up for food, tonight.”

“Are there colors we should use for the ribbons?” Jess asks, getting them back on topic.

“For the marriage wreath?” Cas asks, as if that’s something that needs clarifying. Although, maybe it is.

“Were you going to do that ribbon thing with your wings again?” Dan asks.

Cas looks at him, just this edge of sharply, and he pauses slightly too long before he says, “I was considering it.”

“So that’s a ‘yes,’” Dan says for him.

“What ribbon thing?” Sam asks.

Cas stares at Dan with a blank face and completely motionless wings, and Dan has no mercy for him.

“Yeah, Cas,” Dan says. “What’s with the ribbon thing? When we were pen-palling around with your family, Balthazar said he’d done me a favor, dressing you up like that. What gives?”

After another much too long pause, Cas answers, “Balthazar has an obnoxious sense of humor.”

Grinning fit to split his face, Dan comes back around to Cas and Jess’s side of the table. “Yeah, but what does it mean?”

Cas is completely still, which translates into absolute inward squirming. Whatever it is, it’s f*****g embarrassing, and Dan is giddy with this piece of politically viable revenge.

“You wanna tell me before Balthazar does?” Dan asks.

Cas narrows his eyes. “The customs of the masquerade dictated that my appearance escalate each night. It was what we had left.”

“Uh-huh,” Dan says. “Sure. So, y’know, if you weren’t doing it for solely practical reasons, what would it mean?”

Hand over her mouth, Jess unsuccessfully fights down a giggle. Dan looks to her, and she asks Cas, “Is that your version of a marriage wreath?”

Cas says nothing.

Cas says nothing for what feels like a very long time, all while blood goes rushing past Dan’s ears in an abrupt yet muted roar.

“Balthazar has an obnoxious sense of humor,” Cas repeats.

“Wow,” Sam says with a laugh. Catching himself, he clears his throat and schools his expression, but, well: wow.

“It was a costume,” Cas says, and it is f*****g appalling, how Dan didn’t catch such an awful liar from the very start.

“Uh-huh,” Dan says, mocking out of instinct rather than any conscious control over his mouth or body. “Sure.”

“I think it’s sweet,” Jess says, reaching out to put her hand over Cas’.

“I think Dan doesn’t have a leg to stand on,” Jo chimes in from the balcony doors, yet again speaking out of turn.

“You’re a shitty guard,” Dan tells her.

“Don’t train a squire properly, you get what you get,” she counters with a shrug. Which is awful for a lot of reasons, but mostly because that’s the same glib line Dan still shoots Bobby from time to time. Dan has, in fact, trained her too well.

“Shut up,” Dan says, and Cas is looking at him with crinkled eyes.

“So,” Sam says, stressing and stretching the syllable, “should the ribbons for your wings match the ones on your wreath?”

“Blue is for bonding,” Cas agrees with a nod, still looking at Dan. No matter how many times Dan looks away and looks back, Cas is unchanged, steady and waiting.

“What was the ceremony like the last time this happened?” Jess asks. “Are there precedents we should be honoring?”

“The last time what happened?” Cas asks, finally dropping his gaze from Dan to Jess.

“A human and an angel marrying,” Jess says, and Cas shakes his head.

“As far as I know, it hasn’t,” Cas says. “In angelic terms, it physically can’t. Not unless Dan can learn to craft his life force outside of his body, and absorb mine.” He hesitates just barely before adding, “By the standards of my people, we’re already as married as we can be.” And he looks back up at Dan, at once certain and tentative.

Dan’s gonna kiss his f*****g face off.

Later.

For now, Dan clears his throat and turns his head. His hand is back on the hilt of the blade, and he should probably sit down, but Jess makes a good barrier between them.

“If there’s no precedent, we just gotta make it up as we go,” Dan says. “Sam, give him the rundown.”

Sam details the ceremony, knowing most of the words verbatim. He gets as far as the vouching bit before he has to go and ruin everything. “There’s two ways for your honor guard to vouch,” Sam explains. Jess and I are technically a political match, so traditionally, we should have had our honor guards vouch our loyalty, not our love. But.” He looks across the table at Jess, and they might as well be holding hands and cooing, it’s so saccharine. “So, Cas, you’re going to need someone to vouch for you. Hannah or Balthazar?”

“For which?” Cas asks. He looks back up at Dan. “For loyalty?” And he doesn’t even say the other word, doesn’t even need to.

Dan’s tongue sticks behind his teeth.

“Dan can decide,” Cas tells Sam. “Hannah for loyalty. Otherwise, Balthazar.”

Sam looks at Dan, and Dan doesn’t decide. “Just run him through the rest,” Dan tells Sam. “I’ll see about getting some dinner sent up.”

“Just pull the bell,” Jess says, because she doesn’t actually know Dan all that well yet.

“No, I’ve got it,” Dan says, and flees. Retreats. Whichever. He’s down and back up, then detouring to grab Sam his regular shoes and a sock for his previously cast-encased leg. Sam’s in one of the joined marriage suites now, his childhood room hollow and empty, awaiting his own children. Dan knows, because he tried the old rooms first. Then Dan stops by his own rooms and wonders at the furniture.

He leaves the warding on the hallway door but smudges it on all the windows. He pulls his desk away from the window, hauling it to the side with a great scraping of legs and clattering of drawers. He opens the window, swinging it out, and the hinges cry. He feels around, but there’s no hint of a latch on the other side, and he adds that to the list, right after some grease for the hinges.

Except maybe he shouldn’t. Shouldn’t make these kinds of plans. Maybe he’ll have to move out, to live with Cas in a place with less warding. Maybe... Maybe there are still too many maybes.

He looks at the bed and the desk chair and the armchair and the fireplace. He looks at all of it with a sense of unreality. His room. His great-uncle’s room, his great-great-aunt’s room; a space he rents from his family with the weight of his sword.

Then he picks back up Sam’s shoes and sock. He heads down to the library. No food awaits him yet, but Sam is standing, unsupported, and laughing as he and Jess try to teach Cas and Jo the dance steps that Sam’s broken leg had prevented him from doing at their wedding. He’s going about it entirely barefoot. The last of the day’s sunlight trickles in through the open balcony doors, framing them all in faint gold. The light gilds them, painting over the tension lurking beneath each motion, as if this moment is one of celebration, not distraction. Cas’ wings gleam and flex as he moves, a creature of many kinds of grace, yet again learning to dance in a library, and Dan’s throat closes.

“Sammy,” Dan calls, and he brings his brother his footwear.

Sam thanks him, eyes knowing, cheeks flushed. Jo resumes her post at the balcony doors with a bow and a flourish, pointing Dan back to Cas, and Cas holds out his hands. Cas stretches out his arms and his wings arch forward, ready to funnel Dan down to his body.

“We should commission a new dance,” Dan decides, already walking forward. “Sam and Jess got a new one. So should we.”

Cas takes his hands and draws him close, wings closing around Dan’s back. The moment Dan touches him is the moment Dan realizes the full extent of Cas’ tension, his fears. Despite his smooth appearance, he’s a taut bowstring, drawn and aching to fire.

“I’d still like to practice this one,” Cas says, begging for a distraction, which is of course when a knock sounds at the library doors.