A/N: Watching the fourth season forward of Supernatural, my overwhelming impression was that Sam Winchester had been dealt a rotten hand. I quickly tired feeling like he never got the benefit of the doubt from anyone, even his brother, no matter how pure his intentions. I was particularly disappointed that he and Castiel never developed a strong friendship, as I think both characters could have benefited from that.

Consequently, this story will be a series of linked one-shots set primarily in the fifth season of Supernatural, tracing the development of Sam and Castiel's relationship from uncertainty to deep friendship. This isn't intended to be a pairing story in the traditional sense, but it is meant to draw as close to that line as possible without stepping over. I hope you enjoy reading.

Note: This chapter is set in season four.

Pairing: Castiel + Sam, light.

.x.

The first time Castiel came to him, it was a night with no stars.

Sam stood at the grimy window of a dingy hotel, resting his forehead and one hand against the rippled glass covered in greasy smudges from other hands, other foreheads, and stared out into the gloomy drizzle over the parking lot, the rain halos glowing around the streetlamps. Dean had walked off into that gloom hours ago in search of an angry drink—at least he'd been angry when he said it, the second to last thing he'd said to Sam before slamming the door on the darkness of the hotel room. Sam knew he hadn't been meant to hear Dean's very last words—but Dean hadn't cared to wait until he was outside to mutter "Bloodsucking freak" under his scotch-soured breath, and that meant something, too.

It made Sam tired. Too tired to think about going out, after Dean or something else—too tired to get into bed and pull the covers up around his chin, to pretend he didn't exist for a while. Too tired to do anything but stand at the window and stare out at the red blink of extinguishing taillights, the splash of tires in shallow puddles, waiting for a familiar figure to cut across the asphalt. But it had been hours, and the parking lot was still empty.

Sam turned to press the side of his head against the windowpane, closing his eyes to the raindrops glistening on the other side of the glass. His thoughts hammered inside his head like a furious pulse, and for a moment it felt like the whole room was throbbing around him, a giant amplifier wishing Dean back here—yelling at him, ignoring him, throwing a bottle, whatever—but just here, not lost somewhere out there in the dark, untouchable. Sam banged his head lightly against the window. Then there was something, a tiny shift, some warmth in the air or a flicker of the moth-eaten curtains, and there was a voice in the nothingness behind him.

"I'm here," Castiel said, as though he were expected.

Sam opened his eyes and whirled from the window, his shoulders tensing with the sudden presence at his back. Castiel was watching him from the middle of the room, still as stone, his face a mosaic of light and shadows. The angel's stark blue eyes locked on Sam's the instant he turned. Sam flattened his palm against the cold, oily window, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth as he returned the stare of this being he barely knew yet—this being who had hesitated even to shake his hand.

"Castiel." Sam's voice choked him as it rose in his throat, hesitation dangling inside his trachea. He rubbed his neck with an absent hand. "What, um—what are you doing here?" Then he heard the words in his own ears, tinny as if from a great distance, and he added in a fumble, "Dean's not here—he's out, uh, getting wasted—"

"I'm not here for Dean," Castiel cut him off.

The angel moved with his purposeful strides across the room, each footfall echoing as if he were crossing the length of a cathedral instead of a hole-in-the-wall hotel room with flypaper stuck to the ceiling vent. He came to a stop just in front of Sam; Sam thought he might have taken a step back, if he wasn't already pressed against the window. He felt like he ought to say something to his unexpected visitor, but his tongue was dead in his mouth—so he just stood still and waited, his expression half attentive and half wary as Castiel seemed to stare right through him, pinning him to the warped glass like an insect in a display case. Then the angel shook his head.

"I heard your prayer," he said.

Sam felt a few wrinkles gathering on his forehead, confusion and an edge of defensiveness igniting his words once again. "I wasn't praying," he told the angel, not sure a moment later whether that might be somehow insulting.

Castiel pressed his lips together. "No. I suppose it was more like… pleading. I heard you, that's what matters."

Sam opened his mouth to verify that the angel could hear his thoughts, to ask why he'd been listening, maybe to tell him off for being in his head, the way Dean would have—but his tongue got away from him, and instead he heard himself asking, "And you came?"

Sam knew what he was in the eyes of the angels. He had no delusions about that. They had made it clear—Uriel especially—that his voice was not welcome in their ears anymore, if it ever had been. Knowing what he knew now about himself and Azazel, about the blood in his veins, Sam had to wonder—all these years, praying every day, and maybe no one had been listening from the very beginning. He gritted his teeth to hold back the sting.

"I came," was all Castiel said, making it sound simple in a way Sam would not understand for a long time.

The drizzle had dried up into a thick mist, blotting out all but the glow of the streetlights below them, pinpricks of diffused light holding steady like harbor buoys in the fog. The sidewalk was still deserted. Sam watched it for a long moment before turning back to Castiel and shaking his head, the damp strands of his hair clinging to each other as they brushed condensation from the window.

"Thanks, Castiel." He couldn't bring himself to say Cas, Dean's nickname for the angel, which seemed somehow too demeaning and too familiar all at once. The thought of Dean made him shiver. Sam dropped his head back against the glass, the cold night rippling through him and making his bones ache. He swallowed hard. "But I don't think there's much you can do." Not unless you can take me back to a time when my brother didn't want to rip my guts out, he added in his head.

Castiel gave him a quizzical look, and Sam wondered suddenly if the angel was still monitoring his thoughts, and how loudly the guilt and pain that were clenching in his stomach like an ulcer had come through. But he just said, "I have not come to do anything, Sam. I have only come to offer you comfort."

The words sounded strange, coming from Castiel—an Angel of the Lord, almost a complete stranger, a stranger he only knew because of Dean—Dean's rescuer, Dean's ally, Dean's guardian angel. Not Sam's. The only connection Sam had to the quiet, intense man standing a foot from him was a person in a bar somewhere, clutching the neck of a green-glass bottle, trying to drink Sam away. Sam could almost taste the foam of the beer that was erasing him. It made his stomach twist.

"I'm fine," he said, sucking in a deep, shadowy breath. He felt dizzy and dehydrated, slightly off balance—he'd hoped the long inhale would take the edge off but somehow it just made everything worse, especially the nausea, and he slumped against the window, the crossbars digging into his back as he stared into Castiel's unreadable eyes. "I'm fine, I'm just a little tired."

Castiel shifted, analyzing Sam's face feature by feature. "Tired of what?" he asked, like he knew the answer.

Sam rubbed a hand across his forehead. "Of thinking and fighting and… and standing in the dark, waiting for Dean to come back," he finished in a whisper. Part of him wanted to say waiting for Dean to come home, the way he always had when he was little, when the revolving cast of hotels was always home, because that was where he was and where his father and Dean always came back to. But nowhere felt like home anymore. Not this dark hotel room with cold beds and all their clothes still in duffel bags, the dresser drawers untouched. Not wherever Dean was, staring at his upside-down reflection in unleaded glass. Certainly nowhere inside of Sam.

He was pretty sure he hadn't been home for Dean in a long time.

"Sam," Castiel said.

The angel's voice broke through his reverie, and Sam looked back at him, away from the parking lot. Castiel held his hands out at his sides, palms up, and took a last step forward until they stood toe to toe, gazes locked. The angel shook his head.

"He'll come back, Sam."

Sam wanted to laugh, but it morphed into a choke in his throat.

"He will," Castiel repeated, more firmly. Then he raised one hand and pressed his fingers into the dark circles under Sam's eyes, and his touch was so warm, compared to the window, that Sam didn't even pull away—just flinched a little as the pale fingers slipped from his cheekbone and fell back to their master's side. Castiel studied his face. "You need rest. You haven't been sleeping."

Sam shook his head, his hair whispering against the wet glass. "I can't," he breathed. "I can't fall asleep until Dean gets back." He swallowed hard. "I never can."

"I know," Castiel said, and it sounded like he did, though Sam didn't know how the angel could possibly know all these things. "I told you—I've come to offer you comfort. I can help you."

Castiel held his hands out again, just a little higher, and suddenly Sam realized that it wasn't pacification, it was an offer—to collapse forward into Castiel's arms, into folds of beige polyester and white cotton and wings, whatever color they were. An offer to fall. Sam looked up at his divine intruder and managed an almost smile.

"I didn't think you were that kind of angel," he said.

Castiel tipped his head. "Even I can do this much."

Sam closed his eyes and let himself go.

He wasn't expecting anything—half of Sam believed that Castiel would disappear from right in front of him, leaving him to plummet to the dark floor. The other half was afraid the angel had never been there at all. But Castiel caught him tightly, wrapped his arms around Sam and held him up as if he weighed nothing, as if he were pressing a feather into the folds of his coat. All at once Sam was warm again, every inch of his skin, all the way down to his bones, and the tension in his stomach and his head had vanished, replaced by a strange, soft impression of movement, as though he were floating a few inches up without his feet ever leaving the ground. He kept his eyes closed, so he couldn't be sure, but as Castiel held Sam to him the young hunter felt like the angel was glowing, or he was, a gentle yellow glow that ate away at his edges until he was melting into Castiel, disintegrating, all of the rust and the roughness and the scars scraped from his skin.

Sam laid his head sideways onto Castiel's shoulder, surrendering to the angel's hold. He liked that feeling—of disintegrating. But what he liked most was the warmth, the beautiful yellow light racing through him, humming in the arms wrapped tight around his body. Sam wished he could keep that light inside of him for the rest of his life—somehow it felt like something he'd been searching for a very long time.

"Rest," Castiel whispered in his ear.

Sam's body went limp, his legs buckling and collapsing toward the floor. Castiel swept him up easily, tucking one arm under Sam's knees and the other around his back, and carried the tall young man effortlessly to the first of the two stiff beds. In his arms, Sam felt like a child, a little boy who had fallen asleep in the car and was being carried into the house; at least, he decided, this was how he would want that to feel, if he had ever known a house, or remembered being carried up the stairs half-dreaming.

Castiel laid him gently down into the pillows and off-white sheets, drawing the rumpled hotel coverlet over his legs with one hand—Sam had the other, and he was reluctant to let go, gripping the angel's sleeve with feeble, lethargic fingers. Castiel made no attempt to pull away.

"Thank you," Sam murmured into the darkness, feeling the scratch of the angel's coat against his palm. He opened his eyes for a fraction of a second, long enough to find Castiel leaning over him, perfectly still, before they slipped closed again, giving in to the beautiful, quiet darkness inside his head. "Thank you, Cas. Castiel." There was no answer, and Sam struggled to blink again, suddenly desperate to know the angel was still there. But a soft hand covered his eyes, and his anxiety disappeared in an instant, replaced by the flood of yellow light.

"Rest," Castiel repeated.

As he spiraled into sleep, Sam felt the angel vanish from his side, gone without a sound. But the light stayed with him, and it gave Sam peaceful dreams—not of Dean, or of Ruby or Lilith, of demons or angels or Heaven or Hell—only of summer sunlight and steady arms, and the flutter of vast white wings.

.x.

Part one complete - more to come. Thanks for reading.