Prologue

It was always a hunting trip. Always a week-long trip that would end up being a couple of weeks or a month instead, and Castiel would never hear a word from him until he would stumble through the door at ridiculous o'clock battered and bruised and exhausted. And Castiel would be there waiting eagerly, like he did every single time and take Dean into his arms and lead him to the kitchen. Dean would slump down in his chair and lean heavily on the table as the older man poured him a drink and handed it off to him before wordlessly going to grab the first-aid kit from the bathroom. And inside that first aid kit would be a suturing set and vials of morphine with syringes, large rolls of gauze and bandages, staples and plaster and antiseptic. It made him wonder, as he patched up each gash and treated each bruise and broken bone, exactly what it was that Dean did on these 'hunting trips”.