Archive of Our Own ^beta

“This is bullshit.”

Sam hauls his duffel up onto the map table, keys jangling in his other hand and that totally-empathetic-not-smug-at-all look on his face. “I’m not the one who accidentally swallowed angel grace, Dean.”

“‘Accidentally.’ It was frickin’ Gabriel, man. He played me.” You can take the archangel out of hiding, but you can’t take the… y’know what, doesn’t matter. Once a dick, always a dick. He should know better than to take candy from a Trickster. His new… predicament… ruffles behind him in a soft susurration. “You think the feathery backpack isn’t doing a bang-up job of reminding me?”

“All I’m saying is, you know you can’t leave the bunker until it wears off.” Sam’s got one hand raised like he’s calming a startled horse, and Dean kind of wants to bite it off. Just a little. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know. So, what, you just expect me to sit here and twiddle my feathers while you go track down a vamp nest alone? Without any backup?”

Ten years ago, Sam would have started a fight about that. Now, he just looks constipated. “No.”

“No?”

“I called Garth. He’s meeting me there.”

Of all the—“Garth? Seriously? C’mon, man, at least take Jody.”

Sam is halfway through a faux-innocent smile-shrug when their new permanent roommate strolls into the war room where Sam is double-checking his ammo stock and Dean is definitely not sulking. “You won’t be alone, Dean. I’ll stay here with you.”

“Well, that makes me feel great. Just what I need: a babysitter.”

Judging by the crease in his brow, Cas is not impressed. “I thought you’d appreciate the company. And if there are any unexpected side effects of the angel grace, I am the best equipped to—”

“Like I said. Babysitter. Hope you like Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law.”

~~

It had taken Dean weeks to get used to the whole thing. Having wings. He has fucking wings. The few people he’s told about it have reacted like it was either hilarious or the coolest thing ever, but it’s just a nuisance. Feathery bastards get in the way constantly. He can’t sit down normally in chairs, he’s always knocking shit over, and he hasn’t worn a shirt since May. (You try frying bacon without a shield. Grease splatters suck. He really needs to get an apron.) He’s not cold—it’s a balmy July, and he’s got his own personal down comforter that he can’t take off, so he’s somewhere between comfortable and sweating even in the depths of the bunker. But if he’s spending more time in the workout room, well, sue him. Guy can only walk past the mirror without a shirt on so many times before he starts getting a complex, and he’s sick of sucking in his pie-pudge. And anyway, it’s something to pass the time. Fat lot of good it’s doing him though, physically. One of those ‘unexpected consequences’ seems to be an influx of angelic super-strength. He can deadlift every free weight the Men of Letters had in stock without breaking a sweat.

He just hopes the damn things fall off before autumn. He’ll be rabid by then if they don’t, just from staying in one place too long.

They’re not even that cool. They’re pretty plain, mostly—tawny, with white floof and golden brown tips—except for a band of emerald green under the joint that he’ll never admit to being proud of.

At any rate, he’s finally getting the hang of tucking his eight-foot feathery appendages against his shoulders. He can even kind of hook them around his chest and hold on with the little finger-like hooks at the top joint—Sam had called them ‘alulae,’ but Dean’s happy calling them feather-fingers—so that they aren’t dragging on his back or across the floor. Bitches aren’t that heavy, but holding them up all the time gets old. He’s gonna need one hell of a massage by the time this is over.

If it’s ever over.

He tries not to think about that.

Showering has been an adventure, though. The one time he tried to get his whole arrangement under the water, he wound up hauling two soggy sacks of feathers around for an entire day. Not eager to repeat that pathetic showing, he’s been reduced to one step above sponge baths, his wings sticking far out in the middle of the room while he soaps and shampoos and sticks individual limbs into the water to rinse. 

It sucks, but it’s fine. He’ll manage. He can deal with going stir crazy, he can deal with the chronic bare chest, he can deal with weird, unsatisfying showers, and he can deal with Sam going off on cases without him every other week. 

What he can’t deal with is Cas.

Cas has been acting super weird. Ever since Dean started sprouting feathers, Cas has been… twitchy. Can’t make eye contact. Keeps finding excuses not to be in the same room with him. (Dean’s favorite excuse so far was when he said he had to go polish his angel blade. Dean had laughed for a good five minutes before remembering that Cas doesn’t have his own angel blade anymore. It’s not Dean’s fault, directly, but it’s not not his fault. That’s always good for a quick trip to Sombertown.)

At any rate, Cas has been jumpy like a jack-in-the-box with a trick lid. Which means Dean, cooped up and climbing the walls as he is, has nothing better to do than to mess with him.

On this particular Thursday, Dean finds Cas in the library. Deep in the stacks, in a section that mostly contains books on angel lore, as far as Dean knows. He’s got an armload already and is peering with great concentration at the cobwebby shelves.

Jackpot.

Dean sidles closer, winching his wings in tight as they’ll go so they don’t knock anything off the shelves (again). Be a shame to give away the game.

Closer… closer… years of practice keep his feet and breathing quiet until he can count the hairs on the back of Cas’s neck. And then, just as Cas is juggling his books from one arm to the other—

“Whatcha lookin’ for?”

Cas jumps about a half a mile, and a dozen moth-eaten volumes go tumbling to the floor. Sam’s gonna kill him.

Worth it.

“Dean—” Cas exhales, a hand on his chest and murder in the set of his jaw. “What the hell are you doing?”

Dean grins and relaxes his wings a touch. “Just having a little fun,” he says, tongue between his teeth. For some reason, getting a rise out of Cas always gets him giddy. It’s like champagne bubbles under his skin, and ever since he sprouted these feathery intruders, that’s where he feels it the strongest. It’s like all the feathers are standing on end. It’s happened before. Like the time he pretended not to know or care about the Library of Alexandria for an entire hour, and Cas had gone on a righteously livid rant that left him flushed and sweaty. There’d been a chalkboard involved. Or the time Cas had wandered into the kitchen all pre-coffee grumpy in nothing but sweatpants while Dean was making eggs. That hadn’t exactly been Dean getting a rise out of him, but it gave him the goosebumps all the same.

Dean had chosen not to analyze it too closely.

With a glare in Dean’s direction, Cas crouches down to pick up the books, ruddy around the ears. It’s then—looking down at Cas’s head just below waist level—that Dean realizes just how close he’d positioned himself. His wings tingle harder, and his stomach does this funny little twist as he shuffles back to a more respectable distance. Suddenly, he has to swallow a whole mouthful of saliva and clear his throat before he can speak.

“Seriously, what are you doing back here?” he asks. Totally neutral. Completely normal.

Rising to his feet, Cas hands over one of the books. The spine looks like it’s decided to make a break for it, hanging on by a few bare horsehair threads. Dean actually feels bad for a minute before he reads the title. 

“Alchemical Properties of Angelic Minutia? Sounds grim.”

Cas nods, still averting his gaze, fingering the dusty pages of a slim, gilt-edged volume. “I was hoping to uncover a solution to your… predicament.”

“Gabe said it would wear off on its own, right?”

One of Cas’s eyebrows climbs toward his hairline. “And you trust him?”

Dean snorts, handing the book back. “Not even half as far as I can throw him, but why would he lie about that?”

“I can think of a dozen reasons. But even assuming there is truth in that, why shouldn’t we try to”—he gestures vaguely with his laden arms—“encourage the process?” 

Dean considers, crossing his arms as he leans against a bookshelf. The edge of the shelf digs into his bare bicep, and he shudders to think what kind of dust his feathers are picking up. “It’s not so bad,” he says. “Kinda grateful for the vacation.”

Cas squints at him in flat disbelief. “Dean, you have put up a protest every time Sam has left on a hunt for the last two months.”

“Yeah, well.” How does he explain this? “Netflix ain’t gonna binge itself, right? C’mon. I’ll make some popcorn.”

Cas nods vaguely as Dean slaps him on the shoulder and turns to escape the library. “Give me a moment to… reshelve these, I suppose.”

“That’s the spirit.”

~~

There’s gotta be some kinda perk to this whole situation. Besides his nipples, which might be permanently perked at this point.

In spite of what he told Cas, Dean and his exposed pecs have seen quite enough of the bunker walls, thank you very much. But he can’t exactly hit up the 0.5 bars that Lebanon has to offer; he can’t even go grocery shopping. Even if he could go out in public without starting a religious movement, he can’t fit in a car. (That had been a rough realization. Sam’s been taking the Impala out for hunts, and it makes him antsy every time, but at least Dean gets to give her a wash and a wax and a thorough inspection every time they’re home. He’s only threatened to commandeer the keys once, after Sam came back with a busted bumper and one of the side mirrors hanging on by a thread. Parts aren’t gettin’ any easier to come by for an old girl like Baby.) 

Anyway. That pretty much leaves long walks in the woods, and after two or three months, the deer tracks and trees start to feel just as familiar and confining as the bunker walls themselves.

Which is why, today, Dean’s trying something different.

He can’t believe it took him this long to think of it.

It’s a cloudless day with the sun high, streaming down on the dry grass of the hill. The breeze rustles in the broad green summer leaves and brings with it the scent of hay and earth, corn fields, the dust and salt of the Midwest. The sun’s rays sink through his feathers to warm his hollow bird bones as he arches the wings up to shield his bare shoulders.

Shaking out his hands and feet, Dean casts a furtive glance around to make sure nobody’s lurking. Which is definitely for secrecy’s sake and not because he feels a little bit stupid. But there’s no reason this shouldn’t work. Right?

Right.

Here goes nothing.

Spreading his wings wide, Dean takes off at a clumsy run down the hill.

It’s a glorious moment. His feet pound the hard dirt, puffs of dust exploding under his boots. The force rattles his trick knee, but the wind—oh, the wind catches his spread wings, ruffling the feathers and singing all the way down to the prickled skin beneath. He hears thrush and the roar, and he pictures himself taking flight, launching into the air under his own power—not stuck in some faulty metal tube piloted by an idiot, but totally in control—he can see it—he can feel it—

He leaps—

And crashes right into the ground. One ankle twists out from under him as he lands, lancing pain up his calf to his knee; he bites off a curse as he crumples into a graceless heap of awkward feathers and limbs. 

Figures.

Letting his legs and wings relax into the grass, Dean stares up into the vault of the sky, not quite ready to get up again. He’ll say it’s because he doesn’t trust his ankle. Plausible as anything. The sun somehow finds a speck of cloud to hide behind, and the whole world turns a slightly darker shade of blue. A breeze rustles the leaves again, cool over his skin, waving the grass. It’s kind of nice, actually. Just lying there. 

How do real angels learn to fly? He’d never thought to ask. He hadn’t even been sure they had wings, intimidating shadows and scorch marks notwithstanding. It never really seemed like they flew , per se, not in the traditional sense. They just sort of… appeared. And disappeared. No ungainly hill-running for those junkless dicks.

Heh. Junkless dicks.

But as Gabriel had heavily implied and Cas had since grudgingly confirmed, angels did in fact have wings, and they were not unlike Dean’s.

“But more of them, generally,” Cas had elaborated after a couple of drinks and a lot of wheedling. “It’s less a matter of ‘having’ wings and more a matter of being made of wings.”

“With feathers and everything?” 

“Some, yes. Others are more like a bat or a dragon, and some are more like clockwork. Some are made entirely of flame or lightning. Depends on the angel.”

Dean had only just barely caught the melancholy in Cas’s eyes before asking what his wings had been like. The usual downturned corners and sloped brow had been even more droopy, the introspection turning his full lips soft and darkening the blue behind his lids. He’d been very still, hands curled around a cup of that ginger tea he likes, cradling it like a tender thing. A plucked flower, maybe, or a wounded animal.

Dean had stopped asking after that. It wasn’t worth it, no matter how curious he got.

And boy howdy, was he curious. Now that he has his own set, he’s desperate to know what Cas’s looked like. Back when he’d had them. He wonders if there were flying lessons in Heaven, if little baby Cas had ever gone careening down a cloud slope with little fluffy wings spread wide.

Now, he might never know. 

“What are you doing?”

Completely forgetting about his ankle, Dean startles to his feet, then topples right back into the grass when pain lances up his calf. Cas is there in a flash, hand on his elbow. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Dean gasps, not wholly certain. “Just. Rolled my ankle, that’s all.” Joints. Such frickin’ drama queens.

“Did you trip on something?” Cas asks, looking around like the offending rock or log might plead guilty of its own volition.

Dean bites his lip. “Not exactly.”

With a squint, still holding Dean by the arm, Cas doesn’t even have to voice his question. Dean can’t find it in him to lie.

“I was trying to fly, okay? Don’t laugh. I ran down the hill and”—like a clumsy deer trying to do ballet—”it didn’t work.”

Cas’s face smooths out in understanding, then creases again around the mouth and eyes. Dean catches a flash of teeth between pink lips.

“C’mon, man, I said don’t laugh,” he protests, shoving away from Cas to stand under his own power—carefully. “Asshole.”

Cas lets the laugh break the surface, then, throwing his head back in quiet chortles that, nonetheless, split his face into a wide, crinkly mess. It’s such a rare sight that Dean considers it a fair trade for his own humiliation. “Sorry,” he says after a long moment. “I forget, I suppose, that such things wouldn’t come naturally to humans.”

“So you—angels, I mean—” Tread lightly, Dean. “You really do fly? Not just teleport?”

“What you call teleporting could more accurately be described as flying through the fourth dimension,” Cas says. “But, essentially, yes.”

Don’t ask, Dean warns himself. Just don’t. The guy doesn’t need to be reminded of everything he’s lost just because you’re bored.

“That’s—that’s cool, man.” Lame-ass nothing-words.

They stand there for a lengthy, weirdly stretched silence. Cas regards him; Dean gingerly tests his weight on his ankle. Seems to be calming down.

“Dean?”

“Hmm? Yeah. Just thinking.”

“About what?”

About you , Dean doesn’t say. About everything Cas has lost—given up—for them and their stupid human race. About what it must be like to have all this power, this certainty of purpose, to be part of something so much bigger than any human could ever even imagine, and then to have it all torn away. To get shoved into a tiny little dude-shaped box. How that’s gotta be at least ten times as weird as suddenly sprouting wings.

“Nothin’,” Dean says, turning back toward the bunker. “Let’s get back. You hungry? I’m thinkin’ meatballs for dinner.”

Cas’s hand on his elbow stops him. From that touch, Dean feels, again, the particular heat, the tension. Goosebumps up his arm and neck and down his side, around to make every feather in his wings stand at attention. It feels so fucking weird. Dean wishes he could figure out what caused that or how to do it on purpose so he could see what it looks like in a mirror. He’d bet he looks like a startled chicken.

Cas lets go of his arm, and rather quickly. “I—” Cas starts, then averts his gaze. “Nevermind.”

“What’s up, Cas?” The words are out before Dean can think better of them. Cas should know by now not to pique a Winchester’s curiosity.

“Nothing,” Cas says, in a voice that never means nothing. “Spaghetti sounds fine.”

Now it’s Cas’s turn to retreat, but Dean stands his ground; he doesn’t make it more than a half dozen steps before noticing that Dean’s not following him. Their ensuing staring contest is not a long one. Cas fidgets. Rolls the hem of his T-shirt between two fingers, and it strikes Dean just how thoroughly human he’s become. At last, he blurts out, “I could teach you.”

Dean’s stomach jumps, his head already racing for the clouds. “To fly?”

Cas nods once, with gravitas.

“Oh, hell yes!”

~~

“Oh, hell no. ”

“It’s the best way, Dean. The only way.”

“I am not—” Dean waves his hands vaguely at the edge of the bunker’s roof, the sheer drop down the brick wall to the front steps, probably a zillion feet below them. (Maybe more like fifty, but close enough.) “If this doesn’t work, I’m gonna be a bloody smear on our front porch. No frickin’ way.”

“That’s why it will work,” Cas insists, standing way too close to the edge for a guy who doesn’t even have wings (anymore). “Flying is, first and foremost, a survival instinct. You will do it reflexively to save your own life, and only once your wings know the feeling will you be able to learn.”

“You don’t know that—in case you forgot, I’m not actually an angel, Cas!”

“Your wings are angelic,” Cas says, jaw set firm. “They will do what they must.”

“Forget it. I’m going back inside.”

“Dean, wait—” Cas stops him with a hand on his bare shoulder. Dean shuts his eyes, takes one deep breath in and out, slow as he can make it, and turns. Cas’s big blue eyes await him, as piercing and soulful as the day they met. “Do you trust me?” he asks.

A part of Dean melts—just not the part still locked up tight around the idea of a straight drop to his death. 

“Yeah, man. Of course I do.”

“Then you know I wouldn’t steer you astray. This will work.” With that, Cas’s hand slides down Dean’s arm to his wrist, dragging skin-sparks in its wake. “Come.” And Dean has no choice but to let Cas pull him by the wrist, step by torturous step, toward the edge of the roof.

Dean considers that Cas is probably the only being in the universe who could get away with that. Even God himself, Dean would tell where to stick it. With Cas, he just clenches his eyes shut so that he doesn’t have to watch himself die and lets himself be pulled.

“Trust me,” Cas says again. “Open your eyes.”

Dean pries them open to see the toes of his own boots a bare few inches from the edge. His bones go liquid and his nerves scream at him to leap away, get back to safety.

“No way, man,” he coughs out. “Sorry, I just can’t.”

Stubborn as always—the force of will that changed the course of biblical fate—Cas levels a hard-jawed look at him. “Very well,” he says.

And then he steps backward off the roof.

Dean’s heart and guts splatter on the rocks, he’s pretty sure. Quite suddenly, Dean’s instincts reverse polarity, propelling him inexorably over the edge. In the space of an adrenaline-spiked heartbeat, several things happen: Dean’s wings billow like the sails of a ship, slowing his descent precisely when he needs to go faster. Cas plummets away from him like a plumb line into the depths. In a snap, Dean winches his wings closer to his body, giving himself an arrow shape. He’s properly falling, now, but—he can control it. He aims himself at Cas, gives two solid thumps of his wings to move himself faster than gravity will take him—and then he has him. He has him . Grasps him around the ribs and waist, solid weight in his arms. He flaps again, this time skyward, and the strain of changing direction while dragging the weight of a full-grown man is like acid in his untested muscles. But he does it. He doesn’t make it far, but he at least gains enough lift to slow them down, and they come to a rough-and-stumble landing in the road that leads to the bunker.

Dean barely waits for Cas to get his feet on solid ground before laying into him. “You stupid son of a bitch! You got some kinda death wish? That was—You— Goddammit , Cas!”

“I knew you’d come after me,” Cas says, wide around the eyes and breathing unsteadily. His hands may be shaking, but his grin is ecstatic. Fucking adrenaline junkie, apparently.

“And what if I hadn’t?” There’s no chance in hell of that, but it bears asking, if only on principle.

Cas’s head tilts, but his grin doesn’t diminish in the slightest. “That never occurred to me.”

Dean wipes one sweaty palm down his face, only to discover that he is grinning just as wide, also shaking, and also on the verge of hysterical laughter. He shouldn’t let him get away with this. He should be furious. 

“You’re insane,” he says.

“But you flew, Dean.”

He did. He can fucking fly. He spread his own goddamn wings and he flew, if only for a second and only because the man he— his best friend is fucking bug-nuts banana-pants crazy. But he did it once, and he’s pretty sure he could do it again. The feeling of wind in his feathers is still fresh and exhilarating, and when he looks back up the brick wall toward the roof, it suddenly doesn’t seem quite so high. He could try again. He could definitely do that again.

“I guess I did, huh?”

~~

The heat of summer kicks in once and for all, and Dean is suffering. Turns out, even going shirtless all the time in the relatively stable climate of the bunker can’t make up for the fact that he’s got a down blanket literally attached to him. And he really misses showering. Real showering, not his weird little half-in, half-out song and dance. He wants to just stand in the stream and let it wash away the day’s sweat and grime and soothe his aching, flight-sore muscles for half an hour. Or hell, take the opportunity to spend some quality time with his right hand. He can get himself un-stinkified, sure, but he’s gotten spoiled all these months in the bunker. Even a shitty motel shower would be better than what he’s been getting these days.

And that’s to say nothing of the wings themselves. He can tell he needs to do something with them, but he has no idea what. They’re getting oily and stinky and dirty, especially now that he’s taking them out on the regular, and he’s pretty sure he’s got some feathers stuck in the wrong direction. Maybe he’s gearing up for a molt or something? Whatever the reason, the bastards feel like he took a dust bath in itching powder.

Flying helps. He’s getting better at it. Sam flipped his lid when he found out—not that Dean told him outright. He’s not that dumb. Sam just happened to be driving up to the garage after one of his hunts and caught a glimpse of Dean coming in for a landing on the bunker’s flat rooftop. He’d been waiting for Dean at the bottom of the roof’s spiral staircase, ready to read him the riot act, and Dean’s protests of “what the hell else am I supposed to do?” had fallen on deaf ears. He’d made Dean promise—swear on their father’s journal—to only do it at night. Which was fine by Dean. It’s too hot in broad daylight, anyway. He may not be able to see much of the ground at night, but the stars more than make up for it. 

Flying is his one escape, the one single upside to this entire fiasco, and Sam isn’t gonna take it from him. Especially since he’s still gone half the time. He comes and goes, but mostly goes. Seems like there’s always some hunt or another, or he’s off to visit Garth or Kevin or Jody and Donna. Dean almost wonders if he’s making himself scarce on purpose. Dude had nerded out so hard when Dean’s wings first sprouted, but now he seems to want nothing to do with them. It’s weird.

One night, while heading to the kitchen for a bit of a midnight snack, he thinks he catches the end of a conversation where Sam says something about “giving you guys some space.” But when he rounds the corner on Sam and Cas conspiring over the kitchen table, they button it up pretty quick. Sam’s gone the next day before he can ask about it.

Whatever.

Today, Dean’s making himself lunch—a simple sandwich and half-bag of chips—and poking at a map on his phone to see where he might want to go flying tonight when Cas shuffles into the kitchen, looking more like 2am than 2pm. Dean just gives him a hairy eyeball, then calls out “GOOD MOOOORNING, VIET NAM!” at full Robin Williams volume.

Cas startles into something marginally more awake, but it’s short lived. “Do you delight in tormenting me?” he grumbles, glowering and slumping down on one of the stools around the table.

Dean just snickers to himself as he arranges his Lays on top of the folded ham, closes the sandwich, and smushes the whole thing down. “What’s kept you up all night, anyway? You look like death over-easy.”

The conspicuous lack of an answer goes on just a beat too long, setting off a ping of deeper curiosity in Dean’s brain. He’s chewing on the corner of his thumbnail, not looking in Dean’s direction. Suspicious. Playing it cool, Dean calmly brings his plate over to the table and sits down. This is definitely the kind of quiet that means he’s deliberately not answering, not that he just doesn’t think Dean’s question merits a response. It’s taken him years to figure out the difference, but now it’s like a sixth sense.

Well. Two can play the waiting game. Dean just stuffs his face with sandwich, ignoring the impulse to reach over and pull Cas’s thumbnail out of his mouth.

“Sleeping is difficult,” Cas says at last, still not meeting Dean’s eye. “I never quite know if I’m doing it right until I wake up the next morning. And sometimes I’m still certain I’m not.”

That, Dean gets. He swallows his bite and licks a smear of mayo off his lip. “I wish I could say it gets easier, pal, but, well. This life doesn’t exactly play nice with your REM cycles.”

Dean works on his sandwich; Cas just sits there directly across from him, contemplative. Stubbly. Sloe-eyed and slouching. It’s kinda nice, actually. Companionable. Dean catches himself staring at Cas’s hands, now folded on the table between them. They’re good hands. Strong. Solid. Slender, and yet somehow still sturdy.

And then he notices himself noticing.

It’s fine, though. Nothing wrong with noticing. That’s another thing that’s taken years to get comfortable with, and now he can’t stop.

All at once, an itch ripples its way over and down Dean’s wings, radiating out from his shoulder blades all the way up to the feather-fingers and down to the pinions. It’s so sudden and intense, it almost hurts, and he needs—he doesn’t know what he needs. It’s like getting an itch on the bottom of your foot while driving and wearing boots, or right in the middle of your back just where you can’t reach, except over a sizable area of extra skin he’s not even supposed to have. Dean wouldn’t even know where to start. 

“Son of a—” He drops the crust of his sandwich on the plate and curls his hands in fists on the tabletop. He tries stretching them out, arching them high enough that they scrape the ceiling, but it only kind of helps. And he can only stretch so far before he starts knocking down kitchen crap.

“Dean?” Cas asks, and his voice sounds—weird. Strained. High-pitched, at least for him. Dean would say scared, but that doesn’t make any sense.

“These fuckers—” Dean starts, giving a couple of anxious flaps that ruffle the pages of his Better Homes cookbook and make Cas squint into the wind. “Sorry. They just itch like a mother.”

Whatever Cas was expecting him to say, that apparently wasn’t it, because his eyes open properly for the first time so far today. “They itch?” 

“Yeah. You know, like they need a good scrub down with a brillo pad,” Dean says. “Or steel wool, maybe.” A horrible thought occurs to him. “Wait. Do angels get lice? You don’t think I have lice, do you?”

Ignoring his very serious and concerning question, Cas asks a stumper of his own. “You have been grooming them, haven’t you?” Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Like Dean should have been able to figure that out for himself.

Scowling, Dean spreads his hands. His wingtips vibrate like he’s a fucking hummingbird. “Kinda new at this, man. How the hell was I supposed to know? You’re the expert here.”

Cas’s chin ducks to his chest, and—curiously—his ears go ruddy-red. “Apologies. I suppose you haven’t spent much time caring for feathered creatures.”

“Ya’think?” Dean forces himself to relax, feeling his feathers finally lie down flat and sulky against his back. He really hopes he doesn’t have lice. “So, are you gonna help me, or what?”

Cas’s head snaps up. “Excuse me?” And, oh, yeah, he’s definitely awake now. And definitely blushing. Huh. 

“You gonna show me how it’s done? Or, better yet—do it for me? I don’t even know how I’m supposed to reach back there.”

Cas’s mouth opens and closes a few times, teeth clicking together, and he looks like he has to remind himself how to breathe. “Dean, that’s—you don’t—” He stops again and swallows hard. When long seconds pass without a sign that he’s gonna start up again, Dean takes the hint. Apparently, his wings are too gross for even his former-angel best friend to take pity on him.

For some reason, that stings real deep. Dean’s not gonna look too closely at why. They’re not even really his.

But Dean Winchester is nothing if not totally pathetic, so he resorts to his old standby: emotional manipulation. “C’mon, man,” he whines. “I’m dyin’ here. At least give me some pointers? I can probably get most of it if you just, y’know. Point me in the right direction.”

Slowly, Cas unclenches, with a few deep breaths and his palms spread flat on the table. When he finally meets Dean’s gaze, it’s only to pin him with a long, searching look. Dean determinedly does not squirm, but meets him head-on with his best impression of Sam’s hangdog puppy face.

It must work because Cas nods once, firm and decisive. “We’ll need somewhere comfortable.”

Dean catches himself just in time before he suggests his own goddamn bed. Just the thought is enough to make his feathers fluff up, which reignites the itching. “Uh. Shower room?” Weak excuse for comfort, but they’re getting clean, right? That’s what showers are for.

“Yes, water will be helpful,” Cas says as he stands and gestures for Dean to lead the way.

It’s just down a hall or two, but the walk to the long, gym-style bathroom is weirdly solemn. Cas doesn’t say anything, and Dean can’t think of a single one-liner to break the tension. Why should there even be tension? 

Oh, right, because he’s an idiot who can’t take care of his temporary wings correctly, and now he’s cajoled Cas into touching them when he’s clearly disgusted. Great. Way to make it weird, Winchester.

They make it to the bathroom without Dean turning tail and running, which is enough of an achievement for one day. When they get there, Cas toes off his shoes and socks and heads for one of the semi-private shower stations. “Wait, wait, wait,” Dean says. “I tried this, and they stayed wet for a week.”

“That’s because you over-saturated them and didn’t give them time to dry,” Cas says with a shake of his head. He seems to have regained some of his composure, though his shoulders are still up around his ears and his gaze can’t seem to land on anything. Least of all Dean and his feathery intruders. “You’re not a duck; you don’t have the necessary oils to keep your feathers water repellent. Indirect spray from a distance will be sufficient to remove dust and detritus without drenching them.”

“Alright, Professor Bird. So, if I’m not a duck, then what am I?”

“For all immediately relevant purposes, you are an angel,” Cas says. Just comes right out and says it without a trace of sentimentality. The thing Dean has been trying so hard not to think about for months.

“Yeah, whatever,” he says, throat thick and hard. “Let’s just get this show on the road.”

If Cas is thrown by the abruptness, he doesn’t show it. He pulls down one of the shower heads on its long hose and starts fussing with the tap, testing the water temperature on the palm of his hand. Dean waits, wondering if he should take off his pants but never really managing to get the question across his lips.

When the temperature meets his satisfaction, Cas takes in a breath, visibly steeling himself, and finally faces Dean head on. He looks vaguely expectant, vaguely—nervous? And definitely flushed.

Dean takes pity on the guy and kicks his slippers off to make his way into the shower. His hot dog pajama pants will just have to deal with getting a little soaked around the ankles.

“Turn around. Spread your wings, please.” Cas’s voice is secret-quiet; Dean masks the little shiver that runs over him by squaring up and stretching out his wings. Lifts them up at the arches and reaches their tips out to the bathroom walls. Feels kinda good. Like a good stretch, but also kinda… well, there’s no other word for it but sexy. Somehow. Another thing to just not examine head-on. “Do your worst.”

And then, the worst does indeed happen: Nothing.

Cas does nothing while Dean stands there like an idiot with his gross-ass wings spread wide. Forcing his voice gruff, Dean asks, “Are we doing this or what?”

Cas answers with an aggrieved sigh. “Heaven forbid one of us appreciate this moment,” he grumbles.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

The first tentative blast of the shower is ice-cold, and Dean yelps, flapping so violently that he actually makes lift-off for a second. “Dude, what the fuck?”

Startled, Cas tests the water again, then winces. “I thought it might be refreshing? It’s very warm today.”

Dean will give him that, a cold shower on a hot day feels great. “Not that cold. You’re gonna give me frostbite.”

“Understood,” Cas says with a dip of his chin.

With faux reluctance, Dean turns and presents again. The chill seeping through his feathers does actually feel pretty good, but he’s not going to let Cas know that just yet. 

The next time the spray hits his wings, it’s mildly lukewarm and very pleasant indeed. Cas keeps the water moving, never letting any one area get too soaked. Dean’s eyes slip shut, and he focuses on the sensation of cool-ish water sluicing through his feathers. It feels nice. Really nice. With a sigh, he stretches them out even wider, rolling his shoulders and wishing he had a wall to brace himself against. He finds himself puffing up without even realizing it, shaking his wings in twitchy little movements that shake the water all the way from downy fluff to primaries. Droplets fly in all directions, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“Damn,” Dean mutters. “Yeah, I should have been doing this the whole time.”

“Does it feel good?”

Something about that low voice bouncing off the shower walls has Dean’s stomach tying itself into pleasant knots. Which doesn’t even make sense. “Uh-huh.” 

“Good. You should certainly do this more often. Look.” And then Dean nearly jumps out of his skin again when Cas touches two fingers to his bare side, just under his ribs, directing his attention toward the shower floor. 

“Oh, man. Gross.” It’s a gray-brown swirl of dust and dirt and tiny bits of fluff, all of it circling the drain like something that should have been flushed. Shame blooms hot in his chest. “Sorry, man. I know this is fucking foul.”

The spray dips down, hitting Dean in the back of the legs, and he jumps to the side with a yelp. “Watch it, pal.”

Cas pays him no mind. “Why would you be sorry? This isn’t your fault.”

Dean doesn’t turn around. Just stares along the length of the tiled room, the showerheads poking out of the wall like sentinel droids in a sci-fi movie. “I dunno. Not taking care of my wings right, I guess.”

There’s a soft metallic clunk of Cas putting the still-spraying shower head back on its mount. Dean folds his damp wings down tight, letting them drip cold down his back, preparing himself for Cas’s departure. But when Cas appears at Dean’s shoulder, he’s got that earnest, concerned crease to his brow, blue eyes wide under the folds. “Dean. I’m sorry. For being too—I should have been there to explain some things. Your wings are not ‘foul.’ They are—gorgeous.” The way his breath hitches as he says it makes Dean’s jaw drop open, just far enough for a kiss. But no. Nope. Not going there. He licks his lips instead and clenches his teeth together. “I’m sorry you’ve been suffering because of my negligence.”

There are absolutely no words in Dean’s mind. None that he wants to say, anyway. He clears his throat and tears his gaze away from Cas’s, down at the now-clean water circling the drain. “Thanks,” he says, gruff. “Yeah, I—thanks.” It’s lame, but it’s all he’s got.

The silence hangs between them with only the rush of water to fill it. Dean’s hands clench on empty air; he grabs both elbows across his chest. “Gettin’ kinda chilly here, buddy.”

Cas nods and moves back out of Dean’s line of sight. It’s a relief, but also, Dean wants him back immediately.

When the spray hits his wings again, it’s deliciously warm, and he tilts his head back in bliss as he opens them up wide. Cas keeps the spray moving, and they work together to get all the parts of Dean’s wings. At some point, Cas asks him to turn around so he can get the fronts; Dean keeps his eyes shut, though, not quite ready to watch Cas’s sincere concentration as he works over his wings.

By the time Cas starts working on the front of the second wing, Dean is almost as damp as if he’d taken an actual shower. He should have gotten naked. Or at least down to boxers. 

He wonders how Cas is doing, dampness-wise.

He probably should have gotten naked, too.

Before Dean can get too far down that train of thought, the faucet squeaks as Cas turns off the flow. “Better?” Cas asks.

Dean clears his throat, opens his eyes, and gives his wings an almighty shake, showering the room with a fine mist. Even soggy, they feel lighter than they have in weeks. “Yeah. Way better, man. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. We’re not finished.”

That pulls Dean up short. “We’re not?”

Somehow still mostly dry except for the ankles of his sweatpants, Cas steps out of the shower and starts digging through the cupboard where Sam keeps his fancy hair oils and shit.

“If we get feather grease all over Sam’s Argyle oil, he’s gonna be pissed,” Dean says.

“It’s Argan oil,” Cas says, still rooting around. “And that’s not what I’m—ah.” He pulls something out of a basket on the lowest shelf, then turns back to Dean holding a long comb with thick, widely spaced teeth. “This will suffice.”

“What’re you gonna do with that?” Dean asks.

Cas’s cheeks go pink again, and he addresses Dean’s navel when he says, “I’m going to preen you.”

Dean’s eyebrows fly up. “Preen me?” 

“Yes.” He doesn’t elaborate past that, so Dean just draws his shoulders back and presents his wings again.

“Kinky,” Dean says, then quickly sucks in a breath and turns his back on Cas. “All yours.” Not thinking about it.

There are a few seconds of taut silence where the words kinky and preen you chase each other around Dean’s hindbrain, but they freeze in place when one of Cas’s strong hands grips his left wing. Firmly but gently, he tugs on the big joint—what Dean would have called the elbow but now knows is actually more like the wrist of the wing. (So, yeah, Dean had done a bit of research.) Cas starts up there, just above where the band of green must be, and uses the broad teeth of the comb to slowly part through feathers and get to the skin underneath. It’s a gentle abrasion. As Cas works, Dean can tell he’s using the comb to carefully manipulate the feathers back into position, straighten out the crooked barbs. And it’s a good thing Cas can’t see his face, because Dean has zero control over the ridiculous O-faces he’s making at the sensation. It reminds him of the time—this one girl he’d hooked up with while Sam was at Stanford and his dad was on a hunt in another state. He’d been a few weeks past due for a fresh buzz cut, but she’d been super into the longer locks, raking her fingers through them and pulling hard on his hair while he ate her out. But that’s not the part he remembers most fondly. She’d insisted they share a shower after, and had reached for the shampoo while Dean was busy enjoying the hot water and brush of her breasts on his chest. Before he’d known it, she was lathering up his hair; it would have been rude to protest. She’d spent a good… god. Far too long? Not long enough? Just working the suds through his hair all the way down to the scalp, letting the apple-scented suds trickle down his neck and shoulders. Dean couldn’t have told you the last time anybody had washed his hair before that, but it might have been before the fire. It had always been him giving Sammy baths as a kid, their dad too—anyway. He’d been grateful for the spray of the shower for hiding how wet his face had been by the time she’d finished. 

A tug on one of his long primary feathers brings him sharply back to the present. Probably for the best. Dean is perilously close to either crying or popping a boner. Or maybe both.

“Keep this one elevated, please,” Cas murmurs, voice soft and warm and far too close. “You can fold the other one for now.”

Dean clears his throat and lifts the wing Cas is working on. It’s starting to ache from being stretched out for so long, and Cas seems to be taking his sweet time. He’s raking the comb up underneath the fluffy bits near the middle, and Dean’s fingers and toes do an involuntary flex and curl of pleasure. For a few moments, he loses his breath and his eyes cross. 

“You’re getting stronger,” Cas notes, still in that same quiet voice.

“Yeah,” Dean says, grateful for an excuse to distract himself by running his mouth. “Yeah, all those flying lessons are paying off, I guess. Keeping me in shape, too. I’d probably be hauling around a spare tire by the end of this otherwise. Though, I dunno, with all this superstrength, maybe it just cancels out. But, uh. This might be the longest I’ve ever gone without running for my life. Literally. Since, like, grade school. And then at least I had gym class.”

Cas chuckles, no louder than he’d spoken. “I thought you were glad for the reprieve.”

Dean shrugs, careful not to dislodge the combing hands. He’s working his way slowly toward the long, stiff primary feathers. Down there, it’s more hand-work than comb-work, since the barbs are too broad to straighten out and knit back together any other way. Even though he can’t feel them directly, the strength and tenderness in Cas’s touch echoes all the way up his bones. Dean has to work to keep his voice steady when he speaks again. “Yeah, well—not almost dying, that part’s pretty great.”

They both go quiet for a time, Dean lost in a sea of unfamiliar sensations, Cas apparently fixated on his task. Dean wishes once again that he had something to lean on, to brace his hands. The bathroom sink would do nicely. But then he’d be looking right into the mirror, and over his shoulder he’d be able to see Cas—watch his gorgeous hands working over Dean’s own feathers, his look of quiet concentration wholly trained on Dean —nah. Not worth the risk. This is fine.

When Cas speaks again, it’s even softer than before, so soft Dean has to strain to hear him. “Do you enjoy it?” 

Tracking backwards in the conversation, Dean finally picks up the right thread. “Oh, flying?”

Cas hums an affirmative.

“I mean, yeah, obviously. Who wouldn’t want to drop pennies on cars from 500 feet, no skyscraper required?”

“That’s interesting, considering how you feel about conventional air travel,” Cas points out, then says, “Other wing, please.”

Dean gratefully folds his newly refreshed limb and stretches the other one out. Cas starts in the same place as before, methodical and thorough, following the same pattern. “That’s different,” Dean says. “Humans weren’t meant to fly. Planes defy nature. They’re tin cans with delusions of grandeur piloted by people—humans—who are fallible at best and morons at worst. And any one of them could have a heart attack at any moment. And that’s not to mention turbulence.”

Cas just hums. “You’re human also, though.”

“I thought you said I was an angel.”

“You’re a bit of both, currently. Which, you could say, is also in defiance of nature.”

Dean shakes his head. “Right, but if I have a heart attack at 500 feet, I’ve got other problems to worry about.”

“You won’t. I cleared a minor potential blockage from your left anterior descending artery long before I became human.”

Dean throws an incredulous look back over his shoulder. It takes Cas a second to look up from his task, eyebrows lifted, face entirely guileless.

“Anybody ever tell you you’ve got a weird idea of comforting?” he asks, blunt as a hammer. Serves him right. There’s no way so many terrifying things should fit in one sentence, said so casually behind his back.

Without missing a beat, Cas volleys back: “It has been alluded to, yes.”

That manages to make Dean laugh a little, and he lets Cas get back to work. “I dunno why it’s different than planes,” he says. “It just is. It’s, like, the only perk to this whole thing, so I might as well enjoy it, right?”

Cas’s hands pause again, his first show of hesitance since they actually got going on this thing. “My apologies,” he says, and he sounds—hurt? Offended? Dean wracks his brain to think of what might have caused that, and—and it doesn’t take an idiot to figure out where he’d choked on his foot. 

“I mean.” Dammit. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving all this quality time you and me get to spend together,” he backpedals, and it’s not even a lie. “I’m just climbing the walls, here.”

“I understand.”

Cas still sounds stiff, and the grip of his hand and the scratch of the comb are less gentle than they had been. More perfunctory. Dean’s not sure what he said, but he definitely managed to piss the guy off.

Not much Dean can do about that, though, except keep his wing out and his mouth shut.

That works until Cas reaches for his little feathers again, those tender little soft spots near the base of his wing. They lift and quiver under Cas’s ministrations like—like a— fuck—

Dean needs to keep talking, because these PJ pants don’t leave much to the imagination once he gets going.

“Do you miss it?” 

The words just tumble out of his mouth, and it’s too late to put them back in.

Cas’s hands still, halfway through a caress. “Miss what?”

He could fill in the blank with any number of things, only some of them relevant, but instead he goes for the obvious. “Flying.”

Yeah, Dean’s officially an idiot, and an insensitive one at that.

Cas gets his hands moving again, his pace now contemplative. “I do,” he says. “But not the way you think. I told you before how angels ‘fly’ through the fourth dimension. That movement offers some unusual perspectives on humanity, the earth, the entire universe. They would stagger the human mind.”

“Yeah, I watched Flatland ,” Dean says. “Trippy shit.”

“It’s very beautiful,” Cas says. “I wish you could see it.”

“Yeah, how come I can’t?” Dean asks. “Like, if I’ve got angel wings, how come they’re visible? And how come I gotta fly the old fashioned way?”

“I suspect it has something to do with your essentially human nature,” Cas says. “Your mind and form are not intended for transdimensional journeys. Or, it’s possible that Gabriel wanted you to learn something Earthly from this experience.”

Dean scoffs. “Frickin’ Gabriel.” It’s almost a reflex at this point.

Cas just hums in agreement and continues with his work. All too soon, he’s reached the tip of the second wing, and he steps back, heading for the sink. “You can relax now.”

Dean does, flapping both wings out and rolling his shoulders before folding them into their tight tuck against his shoulders. Turning, he finds Cas washing his hands and rinsing out the comb. There’s a fine film of dust, grease, dirt, grass, and feathers all over the tile bathroom floor, but not as bad as what had been sent down the drain on the first pass. 

“Sorry ‘bout all that,” Dean says with a grimace. 

Cas dries his hands and turns back with a sardonic eyebrow raised. “I’ve assisted my brothers in arms with cleaning blood and viscera from between their inter-scapula tertiaries. This was no trouble.”

Dean snorts his way into a laugh. “Right. Well, uh. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Cas says, once again far too sincere for Dean’s comfort.

Cas starts to turn to leave, but Dean doesn’t know when to let a good dog lie and stops him with a word. “Wait—uh. There’s just—I think you missed a spot.”

Cas’s brow furrows, but his eyes go wide. “What do you mean?” he asks, too quickly.

“Yeah, uh. Right in the middle, where they kinda—come out of the back?” Dean’s not sure why his face feels hot to mention it, but he’s not alone. Cas’s cheeks are aflame, and his mouth is pressed into a tight line. “You think you can get that?”

For a few seconds, Cas eyes Dean’s wings like they’re a rearing rattlesnake. Then he drops his gaze and says, “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

The hell? He’s making no sense. “Come on, you did the rest of the wings. That’s where the itching is the worst.”

Briefly biting his bottom lip so hard it goes ghostly pale, Cas says, “I can’t, Dean. I’m sorry. Goodnight.” 

Before Dean can even open his mouth with a response he hasn’t come up with yet, Cas has turned on his heel and fled. 

It’s not until he’s disappeared around the hallway bend that Dean realizes—”Dude. You just woke up!”

~~

Summer drags on and on at a slow crawl. Heat radiates from the brick bunker walls; movie nights reach further and further afield until somehow they’re debating between Adventures in Babysitting and their fourth rewatch of Ghostbusters 2. Cas gives his wings a thorough tending to once or twice a week, though never quite as thorough as the first time. Sometimes, Dean catches Cas staring at him. At his wings in particular. Dean is aware that he’s developed some habits: flexing them slowly to feel the little tic-tic-tic of the feathers as they unfold and fold in again, or chewing on the tips of his feather-fingers, or pulling his primaries around in front so that he can stroke his fingers over the structured, tawny-gold softness. It’s usually when he’s doing one of these that he notices Cas noticing him, and he starts to wonder if his little habits are some big angel faux pas or something.

“Sorry,” he says one day, forcing himself to drop the primary feathers he’d been idly thumbing. “Didn’t mean to bug you.”

Cas startles at that, like a man rising from a long sleep. “What? Oh. I, uh—you weren’t.”

But a few minutes later, Cas all but drags him by the pinions toward the showers to bathe his wings. It had only been a couple days since his last feather bath and he’d only been flying once, but whatever. Dean’s not gonna bitch. It’s an indulgence, and a weird one, but, well.

He doesn’t mind.

~~

A night or two shy of the late August full moon, Dean’s up on the roof going through his pre-flight checklist when hears footsteps on the steel stairway up to the hatch. When he turns, he spots Cas’s shadow blocking the light of the Edison bulbs that spiral down the stone to light the steps. “Nice night for a stroll,” Dean says, pulling his arms across his chest one after the other.

“Somehow, I don’t think strolling is on your agenda,” Cas quips.

“You don’t know,” Dean counters. “I could be flying to some, I dunno… duck pond. I could take a stroll to feed the ducks.”

Csa’s eyebrows do a little dance and he purses his lips, then looks pointedly around the bare rooftop. “No bread.”

Dean shrugs. “Bad for ducks, anyway.”

It gets him a fond smile, which was the hope. 

They stand there a moment, assessing each other. Dean becomes slowly aware that he’s waiting for something. Cas tips his face up to the moonlight, his eyes shining silver and a soft breeze fluttering his hair. He could use a trim, but no way in hell is Dean gonna tell him that.

The idea nearly pops right out his mouth as soon as it crosses his mind, but he catches it in time. Turns it over and around. Chews on it for a few seconds. And then asks.

“You wanna come?”

~~

It takes some doing to figure out the best arrangement, but they settle with Cas perched on Dean’s back, arms around his shoulders and ankles hooked at his navel, thighs over his hips. Dean’s wings stick out under each armpit. “Are you sure you still have full range of movement?” Cas asks more than once.

Dean spreads his wings and flaps once, then pinches them back as far as they’ll go. He can feel Cas’s torso warm and solid between them. “Yeah, good enough. Out’s more important than back, anyway.” He kind of likes having Cas there, actually. Something comforting about it.

“And I’m not too heavy?” 

“Dude, I got that supercharged angel strength, remember? Barely feel you. We ready?”

Cas’s arms tighten around Dean’s shoulders, thighs hiking higher over his hips with a strong grip. Dean tries not to get distracted by that muscular heat bleeding through his jeans and directly into the bare skin of his flanks. “Ready,” Cas says.

“Alright.” Dean grabs one of Cas’s knees with one hand and his wrists with the other—just to be safe, of course. Once he’s certain of Cas’s stability, Dean sets off toward the edge of the roof at a brisk jog. Cas bounces a little, arms clinging even tighter, but it’s fine. Dean’s got him. With his wings wide, he leaps from the edge and throws his wings wide to catch the cool late-summer breeze. Easy as anything. Cas lets out a sharp cry at the short drop, but they quickly rise over the treetops, leaving the sigh and shimmer of summer’s dry leaves far below.

It is harder with a passenger, but totally doable. Beating his wings against the air, they gain altitude in great leaps, soaring down one cushion of wind and up another with a tilt of Dean’s great wings. Higher and higher in the moonlight until the familiar lights of Lebanon are pinpricks in the dark below, and Dean can really soar. Sweat beads on his forehead only to be cooled and dried by the wind as they carve a path up to where it feels like they’re about to scrape the clouds.

Kansas spreads out below them, greens and golds washed out to silver and steel in the moonlight, a patchwork stitched together with black asphalt roads and shivering stands of cottonwood trees. Here and there, a speck of light from a farmhouse glitters; some of the roads have street lamps strung along them like glowing beads of topaz. Cas is exalting, exhilarated. Dean can hear him shouting like he’s on a roller coaster—right in his ear. It puts a grin on his own face, and he turns his head for half a second to catch a glimpse of that glee. He can only manage a second, but he spies Cas’s wide-blown expression trying to take it all in, every second. Dean could swear his eyes are watering. Probably the wind.

The inattention causes a nerve-wracking dip to the left, and Dean gets his eyes back on where they’re going. Cas clings tighter, careful not to strangle him but also clearly desperate not to lose his grip. If it had been Sam, Dean might have been tempted to fake-drop him just to freak him out. But not Cas. 

Eventually, Cas settles down, stops yelling at every swoop and dive Dean puts them through. His limbs relax a little—not much, but enough to signal that he’s comfortable, or maybe getting tired. Dean really hopes he doesn’t fall asleep back there. He can carry him no problem, but only so long as he hangs on. 

The one downside to this magic carpet ride is that the wind rushing past their heads makes regular speech impossible, but Dean feels the vibration of Cas’s chest when he tries. “What?” Dean yells back. Cas turns his head so that his lips are almost directly on Dean’s ear, which— fuck . They lose a few feet in altitude and goosebumps race down the skin of his neck, but still he’s straining to catch what Cas is saying.

“You’re—getting—much—better—at—this!” 

“Thanks!” Dean hollers back, no idea if Cas can even hear him. “Easier without a human backpack!”

Cas’s chest shakes with a laugh, and then he leans in close again. “This was your idea!”

Dean just cackles and hoists Cas’s legs higher on his hips, both knees in his hands now.

After a few more swoops and dives—and startling an owl just trying to find supper—Cas leans in close again. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see!” 

Cas might shrug at that, or something like it. He definitely settles closer, if that’s even possible, resting his head against Dean’s and hooking his chin into the crook of his neck. Cheeks and ears pressed right together, all stubbly and warm. Dean clenches his jaw and focuses very hard on not falling. 

Before long, the destination that Dean had been aiming for looms into view, sparkling silver, rising above the fields of corn and wheat like a giant thumb. He’d found this grain silo weeks ago, not long after he’d started flying on his own. It’s got a flat roof that’s only slightly covered in bird shit, and it faces a long slope down a snakey river toward a town southeast of Lebanon. It’s not a large town—no town in this area is large—but the lights glitter jewel-bright in the velvety silver-black of night.

Dean’s feet hit the concrete top of the silo with a thud that rattles his knees. “Aw, hell,” he groans, stumbling a step or two forward with momentum before Cas can untangle himself. “Not my prettiest landing.” With a wince, he bends to massage his kneecap and covertly work out some of the ache.

“To your credit, you’re not used to functioning as a passenger vehicle.”

Dean tucks his chin to his chest to hide a fit of giggles. “Yeah, not so much.” He stands up straight, stretching his back and wings. He’s sweaty-cold where Cas has been pressed tight against his body. “So. How’d you rate my flying skills? Pretty awesome, right?”

“Adequate,” Cas says, and Dean catches a faint smirk. “For a barely-fledged ensign.”

Dean coughs on a laugh. “Hey, screw you! I’ve had like three months of practice, not three billion years!”

“As I said. Fledgeling.” Cas ambles toward the edge of the silo, and Dean fights the urge to reach out and snatch him back from imminent danger. It’s silly, considering that, just moments ago, they were soaring a few hundred feet higher than this with only Cas’s own grip and Dean’s angelically heightened strength keeping from free falling to his death. But Dean trusts himself and Cas a lot more than gravity.

Well. If Cas goes over, at least Dean could catch him.

“No, really,” Dean presses. “How was that?”

Slowly, not answering yet, Cas lowers himself to sit on the edge of the silo roof, legs dangling over the side. Dean joins him—carefully—folding his wings so that they rest on the roof and kicking one heel against the steel side. It rings with a dull, hollow thud.

When Cas speaks, it comes out in a rush, like he wants to race himself to the end of the sentence. “Even though the particulars of angelic flight are not the same, I have to confess that I…” Cas stops short. Trips up. Dean forces his foot still, waits. But Cas picks up an entirely different sentence instead. “You fly very well, Dean. If you’re genuinely seeking my approval, you have it.”

Thud, thud, thud. “Thanks, I guess,” Dean says, but he doesn’t really feel it.

Dean waits some more, watching the amber lights of the town in the distance play with the moonlight over Cas’s features. Cas takes in the valley spread below them: the town, the dark fields, the shadowy twists and turns where the river feeds loftier vegetation. Maybe beyond all that. But Dean only sees Cas. Looking at him now, Dean can see all the billions of years behind him. And the spare span of decades ahead of him, criminally brief by comparison.

Clearing his suddenly dry throat, Dean wrenches his gaze away. “Sorry,” he says. Even if it’s a non-sequitur.

Cas turns a furrowed frown on him; he can feel the expression even if he can’t bring himself to look back up at his face. “What do you have to be sorry for?”

Dean scrubs a palm over his knuckles. Spreads his hands, kicks his heel harder. Thwang, thwang. “Lotta things. Specifically? I dunno.” Suck it up, Winchester. “I shouldn’t have brought you out here. Flying with me, I—I dunno what I was thinking.”

In the corner of his vision, Cas goes perfectly still, then seems to shrink. “I see.” He folds his hands between his knees like he’s buttoning an overcoat. “We can go back, if you’d like.”

When Dean doesn’t say anything, he starts to get to his feet, but Dean’s got a hand grabbing at his shoulder before he can think about it once, much less twice. “Wait, that’s—that’s not what I meant,” he says.

Cas settles back down. Re-folds his hands. Waits.

“I just meant—” Dean wets his lips and hopes he can find his words somewhere between here and the horizon. “You’ve given up a lot for us, and I—I thought. Maybe this might help make up for it a little bit.” His face stings hot. “Stupid.”

“Dean.”

There’s this way Cas has when he says his name, like it’s… heavy. Like he could swaddle the whole world in that single syllable. Dean doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of hearing it, but he doesn’t always know what to do with it. Especially not right now, perched in the sky in the middle of nowhere. 

When he works up the courage to meet Cas’s gaze again, he’s more than half in shadow, the moon drifting off to one side. But there’s enough light to catch the contrasts of his profile: the soft curve of his lips and plaintive slope of his brow, the straight and decisive lines of his nose and jaw.

“Thank you,” is all Cas says, and that, too, feels like a benediction.

It’s a defensive reflex that makes Dean laugh, but thankfully he manages to keep it low. Can’t risk mocking Cas for his sincerity. “Blame Gabriel,” he says. “Or—thank him, I guess.”

Cas nods vaguely, turning back to the landscape around them. “I wish I could say it hasn’t been difficult, seeing you like this,” he admits. “I’m not entirely comfortable with the emotion of envy. It took me several weeks to identify it.”

“Yeah, I kinda thought you might miss the superstrength and the feathers.”

“Not for their own sake,” Cas says.

“What, you didn’t miss all the preening? Now you gotta do all that anyway, and you don’t even get the benefits.” Cas huffs a bit, and that passes for a laugh right now. “I guess that’s one reason I wanted to bring you out here. As a thank you.”

“You didn’t have to do that. I’m happy to assist.”

“I said one reason. Not the reason.” Dean snaps his mouth shut at that, because he’s cutting a little close to the bone, there.

Like a bloodhound, though, Cas asks the obvious follow-up question. “What were the other reasons?”

Clearing his throat and swallowing hard, Dean fluffs his wings and pushes himself back to his feet, wary of the edge. “You were saying—superstrength. You don’t miss it for its own sake?”

Cas is quiet for just long enough to be too long, but he joins Dean in standing. “Yes,” Cas says. “It was—” He pauses to think; Dean wanders in a circle around the silo perimeter, watching his own shadow wax and wane like a moon-dial around the rooftop. On his second circle, Cas joins him a pace or two behind, and both shadows dance in time. “I liked being useful to you,” he says at last. “As I am now, I often feel more like a liability than an asset.”

“Hey now, you know that’s bullshit,” Dean says. “You don’t need angel powers to be useful.”

“But you can’t deny that I was more effective with them than I am without. You know other angels now, Dean, as well as demons and witches willing to aid your cause, and a truly impressive number of your fellow hunters. There’s nothing I can provide to you that any one of them couldn’t give you better. I have no powers; I have no skills other than what you and Sam have taught me. I’m just… me.” Cas’s shoe scuffs on the rooftop, sounding as rough and scraped as the feeling in Dean’s chest. “It’s not enough.”

“You—” A tear on his eyelid blurs their shadows together; Dean shakes his head to knock it free. “You really think that?”

Cas’s shadow shrugs, but that’s the only answer.. Dean swallows, swallows, and swallows again, trying to figure out what to do with the lump in his throat. Their shadows shrink and grow. Dean’s barely aware of his own circling footsteps anymore, though he can’t forget the sheer drop on the right-hand side.

“You give us you,” he says at last. “And that is—that’s important, man. You have no idea.” He’s not getting choked up. He’s not.

“No,” Cas says, soft and contemplative. “I don’t suppose I do.”

And that’s it. Dean can’t take it anymore. In one swoop, he turns—minding his wings, minding the edge—and grasps Cas’s face in both hands. Looks one last time into startled-wide eyes. And kisses him.

Kisses him hard.

Kisses the little gasp straight from his lips.

Kisses him soft.

Sense catches up with him, and he yanks himself away. The tingle in his palms is the echo of Cas’s stubble, fingers still curved to the shape of his jaw. He takes a cautious step into the middle of the circle, away from the edge.

Cas is staring straight at him, moonlight full in his face now, eyes wide and mouth slack. “I said you don’t need angel powers to be useful,” Dean says, chest rubber-band-tight. “But you don’t need to be useful at all. You’re important, and that doesn’t—that’s not because of what you can do for us, or how many demons you can ice, or whatever. You just—you matter. Just you. Don’t ever doubt it. Please.”

“Dean.” There it is again. “What—”

Dean clears his throat, turns away. That’s that. He shot his shot, and—that’s that. “Nothing.” Gruff, hard. His father’s voice. “You wanna head back, or—”

But there’s a hand on his elbow, pulling, spinning him around. Another hand gripping, grasping at the back of his neck. And Cas—Cas in his arms. Cas pressed tight to Dean’s bare chest and crashing their lips back together. It’s inelegant, inexpert, and so fucking beautiful. Dean melts against him, filling his arms with the breadth of his body. A shivering sweeps over him from head to toe to wing-tip, that tingle of his feathers standing on end. He ignores it the best he can, losing himself in Cas’s kisses. Holy hell, Cas—

Then Cas is the one to pull away, taking his lips with him and holding Dean back with firm hands when he chases after on autopilot. “Dean, wait—what is this?”

Hungry for more kisses, Dean tries for a roguish grin. “Whatever you want it to be,” he says, and dips back in—or tries to. Cas holds him back.

“Please.”

A heavy exhale falls from Dean’s lips. Of course Cas is gonna ask. It would be so much easier if they could just do , but that ship has sailed at this point. “I—for a long time now, Cas, I—you gotta know I care about you, right?”

Cas’s eyes glow huge in the moonlight, round and blue and forever arresting. He’s a study in light and dark, pale and shadow, firm and soft, his body warm and shockingly real in Dean’s embrace. Dean fists one hand in his T-shirt, clench and release.

“And it’s not because you’re useful,” Dean makes himself say again. “It’s not because you gave everything up for us—you shouldn’t have had to give up anything! It’s just—”

“For you.”

“What?”

“Let’s not mince words, Dean. I did it for you.”

Heat flares up Dean’s neck and cheeks and he has to fight the urge to hide. Not that the silo roof offers much in the way of hiding places, anyway.

“And for the sake of the human race and free will, I suppose,” Cas says, dry as ever. “But I only cared about any of that because of you. Because I cared about you, and you cared about the world, so much. More than anybody has ever given you credit for.” Cas’s hands are moving now, fingertips over Dean’s cheekbones and brow, brushing back a lock of his hair that’s fallen down from the wind, damp with sweat. The tenderness of the gesture reaches deep down to the center of him, touches something in Dean that’s still scared and four years old and aching for his mother’s touch. The swift and sudden burn of tears across his eyes is inescapable.

With a wet laugh, Dean tips down to press his brow to Cas’s, squeezing him tight. Their eyelashes flutter together as their eyes close. “Yeah, well. I know I’m a pretty sorry excuse for a consolation prize. But. If you want me—”

Cas wastes no time before sealing his lips with another kiss. This one goes longer, digs deeper, moving with their breath through all the things a kiss can be. Deep and passionate with tongues and teeth; soft and playful, half smiles and all lips; intensely intimate with the force of the love that moved Heaven and Earth behind it. By the time Dean needs to pull back for air, he’s fully dizzy, and it’s amazing that they haven’t yet stumbled over the edge of the silo.

“Should we go back to the bunker?” Cas asks, his voice scraping low and rough and igniting the lust that has been pooling in Dean’s belly.

But Dean just grins at him. “I got a better idea.”

Cas gives him a quizzical head tilt, and Dean learns that heart-melting affection and boiling arousal can absolutely coexist. He pulls back, keeping hold of one of Cas’s hands to draw him toward the middle of the roof. There’s a little sheltered U between some pipes and boxes—machinery of some kind. Dean has no idea what they’re for and doesn’t care. With a squeeze to Cas’s hand, he lets go in order to root around in one of the shadowy corners where he’d stashed an old duffel bag. “I’ve been coming here for a while, just to, I dunno. Think, I guess. Or when I couldn’t sleep. Got cold sometimes. So.” He shrugs as he pulls out a collection of rolled up wool and fleece blankets, spreading them out in layers, resisting the urge to check Cas’s expression for approval. With a final steadying breath, he turns back with a leer, gesturing widely at the pile of softness he’s assembled. “Eh?”

But Cas isn’t looking at the blankets. His gaze is focused over Dean’s shoulders, and the look on his face is as close as Dean’s seen in years to “Warrior of Heaven, Show Me Some Respect.” Dean shivers so hard, his toes curl in his boots, wings puffing up as high as they ever have.

“Do you even know you’re doing that?” Cas asks, his voice rumbling over gravel.

“Uh.” Dean licks his lips. “Doing what?”

“With your wings.”

Dean twists to look over his own shoulder, like he’d forgotten they were there, somehow. They look about three times bigger like this, all the downy plumage and soft secondaries standing on end, broad flight feathers spread wide. It’s an obscene showing. “It just kinda happens.”

When Dean turns back, Cas is much closer. Still fixated on Dean’s wings. Dean tries to swallow, but his throat is Sahara-dry. “Is it important?”

“It’s a mating display,” Cas says, blunt as a mallet and straight to Dean’s face. Dean coughs, choking on air.

“Oh. So, I’ve been, like, giving you the how you doin’ for… how frickin’ long?”

“Months.” Cas lowers his chin, but Dean’s not sure if he’s embarrassed or if he’s a predator on the prowl. “It has been very distracting.”

Dean almost laughs. “Why didn’t you say something? Or do something about it?”

“I wasn’t certain of your intentions. It could have been any number of autonomic nervous responses. I didn’t want to misinterpret an unintentional signal only to have it go unreciprocated.”

Dean snorts a laugh, but he gets it. He really, really gets it. “It’s reciprocated. Trust me.” 

Meeting his eyes again at last, Cas steps all the way inside Dean’s personal space bubble. The heat shimmering between their bodies draws Dean in. “May I—touch them?”

Dean had been hoping for more kissing, but he’s not gonna turn down a wing massage, either. “Yeah, sweetheart. You can touch me any way you like.” He nearly swallows his tongue when he hears exactly what he just said, but that doesn’t make any of it untrue.

A flicker of a smile moves Cas’s lips. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says. Before Dean can die of anticipation, he says, “Lie down, please. On your front.”

Dean does. He’d put the softest of the blankets on top, a navy blue fleece that he was really hoping to get Cas pressed into at some point, but for now he bunches it up under his head and makes himself comfortable. The blankets do a decent job of shielding him from the worst of the concrete roof. 

Then Cas is settling over him, straddling his hips and settling his warm weight on Dean’s thighs. Right below his ass. Dean stops thinking about the roof, except in that it’s a hard surface against his dick, which is about to get interesting.

“Are you comfortable?” Cas asks.

“For now, yeah.”

“Spread your wings for me,” he says, and yep. Getting interesting already. 

Feeling oddly coquettish about it, Dean lets his puffed up wings relax and splay out to the sides. Cas’s weight shifts; Dean hears him suck in a breath as he leans forward. Plants both broad, warm hands in the curve of Dean’s lower back. Dean does his level best not to tense up, but it’s difficult when his pulse is pounding out a primal rhythm and Cas— Cas —is hovering over him with intent to touch—in any way he wants—

“This spot,” Cas says, “where you asked me to groom your feathers the first time. The spot I ‘missed.’ I had to assume you were not aware of the potential of this area.” 

“Figured it was some angel taboo,” Dean mutters into the blankets.

Cas hums thoughtfully. “Not exactly. It wouldn’t even be uncommon between family members or very close friends. But combined with the way you kept displaying at me—” the way he says it, it’s deliciously dirty, especially with the pressure of his hands sliding up toward where Dean’s wings sprout from between his shoulder blades. “That could only mean one thing, if you’d known it meant anything at all. And when you suggested I touch you— here —” His fingers drag into the space between Dean’s wings, and all at once, Dean’s entire body is on fire, plunged into a napalm of pleasure.

“Oh fuck— ” Dean groans, losing his breath, arching helplessly into the touch and against the blankets. 

Cas has the audacity to laugh at him. “You see why it would have been difficult for me.”

“Son of a bitch, ” Dean groans as Cas’s fingers comb through the tiny, tender feathers at the base of both wings, stroking lightly over the skin there. “Who’d’a thought angels were such pervy motherfuckers?”

“Pleasure is divine, Dean. What makes you think angels wouldn’t be full of it, and prone to indulgence?”

Dean’s barely listening. He’s too busy trying to process the waves of singing pleasure emanating from an erogenous zone he’d never known existed. He flicks his wings wider and wider to maximize the spread at the base and get Cas’s hands over as much of his feathers as possible.

“Oh, Dean,” Cas groans, tipping forward and mouthing at the back of Dean’s neck. His next words rumble straight into the top of Dean’s spine. “You are majestic. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this to you.” As if it needed the punctuation, Cas rolls his hips down and forward against the swell of Dean’s ass. The firmness Dean feels can’t just be the zipper.

“Oh shit, oh holy shit —” he pants out, desperately scrambling his thoughts together. “What—what else?”

“Hmm?” Cas is still rolling his hips in filthy little circles, mouth dragging down his spine, ever closer to the unexpected epicenter of Dean’s pleasure. “What else what?”

“Do you wanna do to me,” Dean forces out of his mouth, face on fire. “You can’t just play with my wings all night, I—I mean—” Unless. A worry as cold as ice slides down his throat into his stomach. What if it was just the wings? What if—

Cas’s mouth, hands, and hips all go stock-still for a moment, clearly catching Dean’s line of thinking. All at once, the heat is gone, his weight, his touch, except that he’s grabbing at the safer, less sensitive territory of Dean’s shoulder and hip, pulling him up, turning him over. Dean flails a little and lands gracelessly on his back, wings and limbs all akimbo.

Cas takes the opportunity to seize his mouth again, and Dean is not going to complain. He opens, wide and willing, and pushes up into Cas’s kiss with both palms slipping in the blankets. It’s messy, a tangle, especially when Dean falls back again with one hand wrapped in Cas’s shirt—tugging him down, shoving it up to get at the skin beneath, their denim-clad legs sliding restlessly against one another. Cas pulls away just long enough to fling his shirt to the side, then gets their naked chests pressed together. His hair is an absolute mess, and it draws Dean’s hands like a magnet. He sinks his fingers into thick, silky locks, gripping just tight enough to pull and steer Cas exactly where he wants. Cas, meanwhile, scoops his hands under Dean’s shoulders and around to the back so that he can pull him close and flex his fingertips in between those wings. Pleasure lights up along Dean’s nerves, and he bows his back, chest pressing tight to Cas’s.

“ Fuck ,” he spits out. Cas takes the chance to get under his chin with his lips and teeth, finding every sensitive spot on his neck from ear to Adam’s apple to collarbone.

“Don’t you dare think that I did not want you before this, Dean,” he grates out through heated breaths.

“Huh? Oh.” Dean has thoroughly lost the thread of their conversation, such as it was, but when he remembers, something twists and snaps in his chest. He opens his eyes, blinking in the bright, shimmering moonlight. “Y-yeah.”

“You are the reason, Dean. You are my unstoppable force. I would fall for you in every way, in any of a hundred thousand lifetimes.”

It’s—a lot. Dean presses his damp cheeks and a chaste kiss into the wild mess he’s made of Cas’s hair. “Love you too, Cas,” he murmurs, as soft as the night around them.

It’s a blur after that, and not just because the tears won’t stop filling Dean’s eyes. They kick their jeans off in a tangled rush; Cas’s hands are absolutely everywhere, huge and strong and tender. Before Dean can even get a good look at him naked, Cas is kissing him again, and oh —oh, fuck, they line up perfectly. It’s an inelegant rut of pleasure, Dean’s thighs splayed wanton-wide and Cas on his knees between them. It’s also nowhere near enough. Their cocks kiss and rub in sparks of friction, slick precome making everything sticky-sweet and hot, and it’s so close without being quite enough. It would be better if he could get a hand between them, but Cas doesn’t seem interested in letting go of him that long.

“Cas—Cas, c’mon, please—”

But Cas is already moving down the planes of Dean’s chest, intensely focused on his path as he slides down to settle between Dean’s spread legs. Suddenly exposed to the night sky and summer breeze, Dean’s skin kicks up all kinds of goosebumps. On instinct, he wraps his wings up and over the both of them, creating a cocoon of feather-soft warmth. Cas sighs against his stomach, clutches at his hips, and mutters something that Dean can’t quite hear.

He’s about to ask that Cas repeat himself (like a fool), but then, hidden in the shadows, Cas’s mouth slips wet and hot down the length of his cock, and Dean loses words. It’s sloppy, clearly lacking practice, but he knows the theory far better than Dean would expect, and he is enthusiastic to a fault. It’s all Dean can do to just sink his hands back in that hair and hold on for dear life. Faster than he would have thought possible, Cas works him up, up, up, and over, all the way through a blistering orgasm. Heedless of their midnight-public venue, Dean shouts himself hoarse, screaming his pleasure. Somewhere, a coyote howls back, and Dean comes back to reality with his chest full of laughter.

“Damn,” he sighs. Cas slides back up, still wrapped in Dean’s wings—puffier than ever, the damn things. Cas is the picture of self-satisfied smugness when he pops out of his feathery blanket. “Where the hell did you learn to do that?”

Cas tilts his head; the moonlight glistens on a streak of come gracing his lips and chin. “I told you I would worship you,” he says, and, ah, that’s what he’d said down there. Dean pulls him up with a clutch of wings and arms so he can kiss the blessed profanity from his lips.

Cas isn’t content to bask in the afterglow for long. Boneless as Dean is, Cas’s urgent cock still pokes him in the balls. He does get a hand down there now to say hello, thumbing over the wetted tip, ghosting up and down the length he really wants to get to know better. Cas’s breath punches from his gut; his face slack with bliss.

“You want me to return the favor?” Dean asks. His mouth is already watering.

“Perhaps—later,” Cas gasps. “I have another idea.”

“Uh. Look, I’m totally down in theory, but I didn’t bring lube, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Dean says. “And I may need a little time to recover.” Not that much, not with Cas squirming and blatantly horny on top of him, but he’s not as young as he used to be.

But Cas is already shaking his head. “Turn over again.”

They disentangle, Dean lamenting the loss of their feathery hiding place, but admittedly, he was getting a little sweaty in there. He wonders what wing bath time is gonna be like now that he knows he has a zero-to-one-hundred button between his wings, and a fallen angel willing to push it. He could maybe be convinced to give shower sex another try.

But for now, Cas is settling on his ass again—bare this time, his cock searing hot where it nestles between his cheeks. Cas sighs against his skin and braces himself over Dean’s body, strong arms on display if Dean just turns his head a little bit. It’s a damn fine sight.

“Beautiful,” Cas breathes, steadying himself on one arm to run the fingers of the other hand through Dean’s feathers, up his shoulder to his neck and hair, then back down his spine, through feathers again, and into the dip of Dean’s lumbar curve. “Stay just like this for me,” he breathes. And then Dean feels it—he’s touching himself. His knuckles rubbing rhythmically over the curve of Dean’s ass cheeks, Cas’s hips pushing over and over into the fast-moving grip of his own hand.

“Ah, fuck yeah,” Dean groans. He tilts his ass up under Cas’s weight, trying to make the best cushion he can for Cas to ride. His wings feel electrified, spread wide and open for exploration, and Cas notices. Curving and scooting so that he can mouth at Dean’s back while still stripping his own cock, Cas pins Dean to the roof with his other arm across his shoulders and plants his lips right at the juncture of feathers and skin. If Dean were more than five minutes past coming, he’s certain he would be right on the edge again, with the way the bliss floods his bloodstream. As it is, it’s just a firecracker of aftershocks shimmering through him while he lets Cas have his way.

“Dean—Dean—I—you are—” Cas is losing his words, hips and fist gaining speed and intensity. “Can I—?”

“Yeah, fuck yeah,” is Dean’s immediate answer. “Whatever you want, sweetheart, come on me, fuck yes—”

Cas does. With a few last hard thrusts, a snapping breath, and a groan like the creaking of the Earth itself, Cas comes. The first wet pulses land all the way up at the base of his wings, staining his feathers, then more streaking and pooling over Dean’s spine and ass cheeks. Dean is grinning so hard, his face hurts. Cas just came on his wings. He’s not sure if that’s sacred or profane, but it’s insanely hot either way.

Heaving great inhales, Cas rolls to one side, only barely waiting for Dean to lift a wing out of the way before flopping like a rag doll on their makeshift blanket-bed. When their gazes catch, there is nothing to be done but to laugh, long and giddy and breathless. Laughs become sighs, which then disappear into kisses as they come down from the high.

“That was insane,” Dean says, long moments later.

“It was beautiful,” Cas insists. “Thank you.”

“Not what I was expecting,” Dean says. “I mean, I ain’t complaining, but still. I always pictured we’d do this in a real bed first. Or at least the Impala.”

Cas hums, making himself more comfortable on Dean’s chest, cozy in the wrapped warmth of fleece and feathers. “Both of those merit future exploration.”

Dean’s feathers puff up yet again—excitable assholes. “Ya’think?” He could have Cas in his backseat. It’s a thousand wet dreams coming true at once. If he can ever fit in there again, that is. For the first time in a while, he wonders how long they’ll stick around. Doesn’t seem so bad anymore. 

“Mmhmm. Later.” Cas sounds like he’s fading fast. “I’m tired.”

“We should get back,” Dean points out, very reasonably, he thinks. Though he has to admit, their little nest up here is remarkably cozy.

Nevertheless, he tries to stand, or at least sit up. He’d settle for just scooting out from under Cas to start with. But he seems to have become a lead weight on Dean’s chest, a weight that grunts in protest at the attempted movement.

“For real?” Dean asks, even as a fond grin splits his face. “Not sure my back’s gonna love a nap on concrete. Especially not with you on top of me.”

Cas’s only response is a sawing snore.

With nobody to hear him but the sky, Dean sighs and gets as comfy as he can. “Great.”

~~

Pre-dawn wakes them up only a few hours later, the sky a soft, goose down-gray with a flood of peach to the east. It’s also much colder than when they’d fallen asleep.

“Dean.”

Dean shivers and gropes around for a blanket, wondering why Cas isn’t laying on him anymore. Dude was heavy, but he was warm.

“Dean, wake up.”

Dean grunts in the negative. He’s still asleep. Why is it so cold, though?

Failing to find either the blanket or his new snuggle partner, Dean tries to wrap his wing tighter around the both of them, make a nice feathery cocoon again. Maybe pull Cas in closer and rub his morning wood against his hip.

But—

No wings.

Dean snaps wide awake. He bolts upright—then immediately flops to one side, his balance somehow gone completely wrong.

“The fuck?” And that, that is the first thing out of his mouth on this most momentous of mornings: the first day he wakes up naked with Cas.

“Gabriel,” Cas mutters darkly. “This is what he must have been angling for. The whole reason you had wings to bein with.”

Cas. Who is still here. And still very much naked. 

Dean tries to scoff, but his brain is playing tug-o-war in two directions. On the one hand, it’s always a good time to rag on their favorite Trickster. And besides that, this sudden return to winglessness is fraught with complicated feelings. But more pressing than any of that is the sight of Cas’s cock and balls—soft and vulnerable, poking up from between his thighs—and the clean, unbroken line from waist to thigh to hip.

Lust wins. His face slips into a lazy grin, letting Cas see him looking. “Hey.”

Cas’s answering smile is a tiny sunrise all its own. “Hello, Dean.”

And just like that, Dean doesn’t really miss the wings, because with Cas looking at him like that, he’s already flying.

But before he can get caught up in the mushy emotions—or spook himself into a stupid mistake—Cas glances over his (beautiful, muscular shoulder) toward the edge of the silo.

“Dean?” he starts. “How do we get down?”

~~end~~