Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dean is distantly aware that staying alone in a cabin in the woods is how a lot of horror movies start, but this place seems too nice for it. He leans carefully against the railing that surrounds the wooden back porch, and he takes a deep breath.

At least he’ll be relaxed whenever a monster shows up to get him.

Even the air smells better here somehow. Earthy. Fresh. Pure. Dean takes another breath and closes his eyes.

When Garth had said that he knew a guy who knew a guy who would rent him this cabin for two weeks he’d initially been reluctant to take him up on the offer. But he’d been the one complaining that he’d got this vacation time from work and now had nothing to do with it, since he’d… cancelled his previous plans.

Dean steps back through the open double doors leading out into the garden and makes his way into the main living area. He has to admit that the place is cozy. An ornate fireplace sits as the focal point of the room, with two huge armchairs pointing straight at it, while an entire wall is stacked floor to ceiling with shelves of books.

Ah. The books. Dean only had a cursory glance when he first came in, wondering if he might want to read any of them, but he’d quickly scrapped that idea. Rows and rows of books about birdwatching, bird migration habits, bird species, anatomy, behaviors…

It’s kinda creepy.

And it’s not even just the books! Feathers are carved into the stone surrounding the fireplace and paintings of birds of all shapes, sizes, and species, hang in big ornate frames around the entire cabin. The biggest he’s seen hangs above the fireplace – a swan and a sparrow flying in a bright blue sky.

Birds everywhere… watching him with their beady eyes… The horror movie vibes just keep on coming.

When Garth had suggested that Dean take his vacation in the cabin, he’d casually also mentioned that he’d heard that the woods surrounding the area are haunted. That probably should have been a red flag, and Dean considers that most people would have been put off, but he doesn’t believe in ghosts anyway. And so the guy who owns the cabin is weirdly into birdwatching? Who is Dean to judge on eccentric hobbies when his own sits parked right outside.

His boots thump satisfyingly on the wood as he crosses the room and peers out of the window, checking on his car. He sighs in disappointment at the state he sees her in – she should be gleaming in the dappled light filtering through the trees, but the drive through the rough paths winding through the forest has dulled her paintwork and covered her in dirt. Some fallen leaves lie scattered on her dusty hood.

“Sorry, Baby,” he says aloud, “I’ll give you a good clean tomorrow.”

It’s not like he has a packed itinerary. Spending a few hours washing and waxing the car will be a good start to his first full day out here – he could blast some tunes from his cassette collection and really take his time. Hell, he could even sing along and nobody will be there to tell him to stop (unless the ‘ghosts’ in the forest have a problem with his singing), nobody will tell him to turn the volume down, or to stop spending so much time on ‘just a car’. The thought fills him with a bubbling kind of excitement that he hasn’t felt in a while, and he figures that getting so excited about something as mundane as singing along to music while he washes his car is the biggest indication of just how bad he’d let things get.

Dean moves away from the window and goes to the armchair that his duffel bag currently sits on. One of the first things he did when he got here was to throw his bag in one chair and fall heavily into the other, and he can’t wait to dump himself back into it later with a beer. For now, he’s heading back out. He passed by a small town on his way here, so he’ll drive back there, stock up with everything he needs, and cover Baby over with something to keep her clean for the rest of his stay.

He hopes there’s somewhere he can grab a decent burger before he spends the next two weeks cooking ‘real’ food for himself. As much as he loves convenience food (and he does love it, oh so much) he’s actually been looking forward to the chance to lay out some ingredients and whip up something delicious. It’ll be nice. He’s always loved to cook, but the last few years had him working so much it kept him out of the kitchen.

It didn’t help that whenever he so much as suggested cooking he got shot down with a condescending, ‘that’s not a man’s job, don’t be silly’ – a sentiment that always joined the echoes of the crap his dad would say to him when he was a kid, even when Dean’s cooking was the only thing that kept Sam fed.  

With a sigh Dean pulls himself out of his musing and taps a hand on top of his trusty duffel bag. Before anything else he should at least unpack, and probably explore some more. Maybe the unsettling horror movie vibes will fade if he makes himself feel more at home…

Most of the items in his bag were already packed way in advance for his original plans during these two weeks, so he can’t really remember what’s inside. He should have at least checked before throwing it in the back of the car, but the thought had been too painful and his decision to come at all too last-minute.

He doesn’t suspect unpacking will take long.

The cabin is a spacious two-story building, with the living room and a kitchen on the ground floor, and only one bedroom, an office, and a bathroom on the first floor.

Dean takes the stairs two at a time and peeks into the first room he comes across at the top, whistling at what he sees.

The bathroom is huge, almost comically big, tiled in shades of dark grey and green, that features a deep free-standing bathtub that could easily fit two adults, and a separate walk-in shower cubicle. A long mirror hangs over a double sink and a couple of wooden cabinets, and down a small step is the toilet.

The whole cabin itself is decorated with dark wood and muted colors in a classy way that feels like it should be the ‘after’ images in a home renovation catalogue or something. It wasn’t even that expensive to rent – but Dean suspects that’s because of the remote location and the whole haunted woods thing.

Next to the bathroom is the bedroom, and of course there’s a king-sized bed. Dean throws his duffel first and then launches himself next to it, landing his entire body face down on the soft mattress. It’s comfy, but not as good as his memory foam back home, even if his bed is much smaller.

He thinks of his tiny apartment back in the city and sighs into the sheets under his face.

Apartment for one. Cabin for one.

You chose this, he reminds himself, his inner voice sounding just a shade judgier than he would like. You’re the one that broke up with her.

Yeah, yeah.

Dean pushes himself up with a groan and gets back to his feet, looking around like he should have before he faceplanted the bed. Again, he appreciates all the wood and the dark greens and browns – it makes the place feel homely. He’s not one for interior design or whatever, but it’s something he probably would have chosen himself if he had to decorate somewhere. He hadn’t realized it before, but it kinda reminds him of driving through the forest to get here – like the shadows under the trees.

The closet is built into the wall, which is good because the bed takes up most of the room, and there’s a chunky wooden desk in the corner. Dean is about to lean over for his bag when he notices something white on the desk. Huh. A note.

It reads:

‘Dean Winchester,

Welcome to Cabin Plume – please make yourself comfortable and treat it as you would your own home.

This cabin has helped me many times in the past to understand myself and escape from the world outside. It’s where I lived out the best years of my life. Despite me personally no longer needing its magic, the people who I have rented it to have found it enlightening, and it has been the temporary home to many writers and people wanting to find themselves within this special location. I hope that it can give you the same experience.

Just as a caution – please do not wander into the woods alone. Do not be alarmed if you hear noises from within the trees, as while you are in the grounds of the cabin, you are perfectly safe, but do not be tempted to follow them and investigate. There are no paths beyond this point, and it is very easy to get lost and turned around.

These woods are very special, as they are home to many species of birds you wouldn’t find living together elsewhere, and if you are lucky, you may be able to spot some. Again, please do not be tempted to seek them out or follow them any further than the gate at the bottom of the garden.

Lastly, I make this offer to everyone that stays here – this cabin is something I am looking to sell to the right buyer, so please take that into consideration during your stay and do not hesitate to contact me about purchasing. I’m sure we can work out some kind of deal. I built this cabin myself so I am not looking to make money on it, I just want it to go to someone who will love it like I did.

My number is on the back of this note.

Enjoy your vacation,

Cain.’

Dean flips over the note and pulls his phone out his pocket to punch the number in. It’s not like he’s even considering buying the place – but the number could be useful if an appliance breaks down, or he needs directions. Or gets lost in the woods…

The ominous repeated warnings about going into the forest should have set off alarm bells, but all it’s done is made him want to go inside and investigate. At least the cabin’s weird bird theme makes sense with the cryptic message about the birds… but now he’s made the place sound like fucking Narnia or something and Dean can’t help but be curious.

The bed dips down when Dean sits heavily on the end, rereading the note one more time before he stuffs it into the side pocket of his duffel bag. The phrases about ‘finding yourself’ are rattling around his mind, and he finds himself wondering if that’s what he’s here to do. He feels like he hasn’t ‘been himself’ for a long time, so maybe this will be the chance to find out what that means.

He shakes his head and returns to unpacking – Sammy would be clapping a hand on his back and telling him he’s proud of him for all this introspective crap.

Just as Dean suspected, unpacking doesn’t take long. He hangs up his clothes, shoves his underwear in a drawer, puts his toiletry bag in the bathroom, and feels nothing but a sour kind of guilt during the whole thing. These are the clothes he should have been taking on his vacation with Amara. These are the clothes that he should have been proposing in. The suit he’d packed for that very task is hanging in the closet, and he can’t even look at it. The fucking ring is still in the pocket. He’d been torn over whether to hang the suit up at all, but the empty bag folds down to fit under the bed better, so out it came.

Dean scrubs a hand through his hair and tries to shake off the guilt before it threatens to ruin his first day. He feels guilt, but not regret, and he knows that’s an important distinction he needs to latch onto.

In the long pause Dean notices that there are no bird paintings in the room. He looks at every wall and rechecks the desk, but there are no paintings at all. Come to think of it there hadn’t been any in the bathroom either. Weird. He does notice that even though there are no paintings, there are feathers carved into the wooden doors on the closet, on the headboard, and even more carved into the desk legs. They’re so detailed… If Cain really built this himself, he must have spent a crazy amount of time on it. Going to this much trouble on a cabin in the middle of nowhere is an odd choice, but again, who is he to judge when he spends that much time and care on his own car.

Dean picks up the couple of books of his own that he brought with him, that he unearthed from the very bottom of his bag (hidden from Amara) and takes them into the office next door. The desk in this room is much bigger and plainer, and a large leather desk chair sits tucked underneath it. There are a couple of green armchairs nestled between two bookcases, with a tiny table between them, and Dean places his books there. He can imagine getting lost in a book or two in here, or maybe even taking a book downstairs to read beside the roaring fire. He’s struck once again by the simple excitement of being able to choose how to spend his own time.

A wide window sits above the desk, offering a great view of the tree line around the garden that it overlooks. Dean presses his nose to the glass just in case he can spy any of the birds that the note mentioned, but everything out there is still.

He'll explore the garden later, and definitely not take a tiny peek into the woods…  

Dean leans back and his attention is caught by another one of the bird paintings next to the window – one of a crow. He didn’t see any crows in the city, mostly just pigeons, but he’s seen a few videos online of them doing cool stuff like using tools, or that one where a crow rolls down a snowy car, just for the fun of it. He peers closer. Dean’s not an artist, but even he can appreciate how the way that it’s been painted emphasizes all the brushstrokes in the feathers, making a raised texture that he kinda wants to run his finger over. The crow stands on a branch, with its head tilted to one side, and its bright eyes focused straight ahead, almost as if it’s looking out of the frame at Dean.

Something moves in Dean’s peripheral vision and a feeling like being watched skates across his shoulders. His gaze darts back to the window. Is there something there? Dean opens the window wide and leans out, staring hard at the trees surrounding the garden, but nothing moves, and all he can hear is the gentle swish of the leaves swaying in the breeze.

Dean shakes himself all over to brush off the strange feeling and returns to the bedroom, trying to remind himself that he doesn’t believe in ghosts. His cell phone is a comforting weight in his palm as he picks it up off the bed and fires off a text to Charlie.

-Message to: Charlie (QueenofMoondor)-

---------------Dean: I got 14 days. When does all the bad stuff in horror movies usually start?

-Charlie: it can’t be that bad!

-Charlie: and you’ve got loads of time anyway – you’re in the nice phase when everything is going great, then act 2 is the warmup, and it’s act 3 when the carnage begins - that’ll probably be the last couple of days :)

-Charlie: but you don’t need to worry cause you have so much Final Girl Energy

-Charlie: you’re the one that gets to drive away at the end :)

---------------Dean: … Thanks Charlie you know just how to make me feel better about all this.

-Charlie: noooo I’m kidding I’m kidding !!!

-Charlie: or am I???

-Charlie: no I promise I am

-Charlie: is it really that bad??

---------------Dean: It’s just a bit… weird. There’s something off.

-Charlie: you know I’d have come with you if I could have taken the time off work :( I want to star in my own horror movie

-Charlie: ok but serious for a sec - don’t worry. I said before that this is gonna feel weird because you’ve got so much extra free time and you haven’t got anyone bossing you around or yelling at you or tearing you down at every opportunity

-Charlie: shit sorry sorry I know I said I’d stop mentioning her. I will I promise. she just makes me so >:(

-Charlie: [grumpycatmeme.jpg]

---------------Dean (edited): Yeah I know. It’s just all a lot to think about right now… why else would I be in this $5 budget horror movie? I just wanna get away from it all for a while. Not have to think about any of it.

-Charlie: valid. valid. I really hope you have a great vacation Dean, you deserve it after all the shit you’ve been through. when you get back I want to hear all about it, sit me down with a slideshow of photos and some popcorn!!

-Charlie: I really missed my best friend yknow

---------------Dean: Thanks Charlie. I mean it.

---------------Dean: Also if I don’t call you after two weeks get someone down here because I’ve probably been eaten by birds.

-Charlie: asdfghjkl

-Charlie: what ?????

---------------Dean: Long story. I’ll take photos and explain during the slideshow.

-Charlie: lmao I’ll hold you to that! this is a story I need but I g2g my asshole manager keeps looking at me… I think he knows I’m texting – I love you!!

---------------Dean: I know.

---------------Dean: And I missed you too.

-Charlie: [catonabranch_hanginthere.jpg]

Dean’s still smiling even as he throws his phone back onto the bed. It means a lot to him that Charlie is still his friend even though he virtually cut her out of his life for two years. Despite repeatedly telling Amara that Charlie is gay, and that they practically grew up together so she’s more like a sister to him anyway, she would get upset whenever they spoke. She would freeze him out until he apologized and promised not to talk to her anymore, until he eventually just stopped altogether. It still pains him to think of how he let someone manipulate him like that and cut out his oldest friend. But he couldn’t stand it when Amara deliberately shut him out. It reminded him of how desperately he’d wanted his dad’s attention as a kid, and then would barely get more than a glance before he headed back out again.

Don’t shut me out. Don’t ignore me. I’m here. Please!

Dean scrubs his hands over his face and leans backwards until his back hits the mattress. How did he let his life get so messed up? He hadn’t even noticed he’d been living in hell for two years.

A shape catches Dean’s attention on the ceiling, and he looks harder at the dark wooden panels. Huh. The whole thing is covered in detailed carvings of huge feathers, like the ceiling is made from them. It seems like a strange thing to work so hard on when they’re in a place that nobody will ever really see them, but nobody can say that Cain didn’t fully commit to his theme. It’s getting more and more impressive that he built the place himself. Dean can appreciate a solid bit of manual labor, and the joy of working on something you’re passionate about, so he kinda gets it. He remembers the joy of working on something with his hands, getting them dirty, wiping sweat from his forehead, and being able to physically see the results of the work at the end of the day.

He never should have let Amara talk him out of quitting his job at the garage in favor of office work, but he’d been so desperate to be the man that she wanted.

Dean traces a finger in the air around the shape of one of the feathers on the ceiling.

Maybe… Maybe when he got home, he’d go out and find another mechanic job…

It’d mean money might be tight for a while but…

Dean pushes himself to his feet again and shoves his phone in his pocket. He’ll have plenty of time for all this ‘what is my life now’ crap over the coming days, so he should probably postpone the existential crisis from his very first night.

He walks back down the stairs, which creak loudly every couple of steps, and grabs his car keys from where he’d thrown them on the kitchen table earlier.

There are only two rooms on the ground floor – the living room, containing the backdoor to the garden, and a basic kitchen with a dining table off to one side. He intends to go straight from the kitchen to the car, but his feet take him on a detour to peer out of the long floor to ceiling windows that make up the back wall of the living room.

He’s hoping to take a photo of one of the ‘strange birds’ to send to Charlie, along with some photos of all the bird paintings and books. There’s no way she’ll believe that he’s practically staying in a Scooby Doo episode unless she sees it with her own eyes, and he’s already excited for the slideshow he’s absolutely going to do. But again, nothing moves. He stands there for a moment longer, completely still, and nearly turns away in disappointment before a flash of something shifting catches his eye in one of the trees closest to the garden. Again, that feeling of being watched sinks through him.

Although Dean strains his eyes, he can’t see anything unusual, and though the feeling of being watched persists, he tries to tell himself that he’s being stupid. It’s got to be just the shadows in the trees and his conversation with Charlie about horror movies playing on his mind.

Gravel crunches under Baby’s tires as Dean carefully backs her away from the cabin, turns her around, and sets off back down the hill. The ‘roads’ are mostly just made up of dirt and stones, cutting a path through the trees, so it’s a bumpy journey in a classic car – it’s a good thing he’s only doing this once before the end of his vacation.

“Sorry Baby,” he says aloud, grip tense on the steering wheel.

Eventually the hill evens out, the trees thin, and Dean leaves the path behind as he exits out onto a real road. A sign directs him onwards to a place called ‘Oakton’, not too far away, and he figures that’s where he’s headed. Fields of grass flank both sides of the smooth road, and Dean finally feels his stiff shoulders relax – memories of haunted forests and being watched fading with every mile under the tires.

Oakton is a… cozy place? Dean doesn’t know how else to describe it. There are cafes everywhere, and not even the chain ones – real independent little coffee shops with couches and lowlighting and a buzz of customers that Dean can see through the windows. Flowers hang in baskets from most of the streetlights, spilling vines over the sides, and sit in colorful pots outside of buildings. Just on his way through the main street he passes by a launderette, a library, a pharmacy, some kind of pet shop, and a bakery that nearly has him immediately pulling over when the smell drifts through his open window. A place like this would usually be ringing the Stepford Wives alarm bell in his head, but somehow it feels less manufactured and more like the people who live here just take good care of it.

A short drive further finally brings him to the other end of the town, where he passed by the large supermarket on his way to the cabin a few hours ago. He parks in a spot furthest away from the building, on a completely empty row, making sure Baby has her space. The door creaks loudly as Dean steps out and he takes comfort in the familiar noise. If everything else in his life changes at least Baby and her rumbles and creaks will always stay the same.

A jolly jingle announces his entry through the automatic doors as Dean pushes his cart through, and it’s both ridiculous and charming at the same time.

Time to shop.

Dean reasons with himself that he’s technically on vacation right now, and he’s going to be doing a lot of cooking, so he’s going to need a collection of different ingredients, and he’s trying to stock up for his entire trip…

He pulls a box of pop-tarts off the shelf and tosses it into the cart.

Yep. Lots of ingredients.

A big box of sugary cereal.

Lots of healthy cooking.

A jumbo size bag of chips goes in. Another in a different flavor. A third just in case. A big box of beer slots into place.

Eventually Dean makes it to the fresh produce aisle, and he takes a photo of all the vegetables that he loads into the cart, hiding the junk food underneath. He quickly fires it off to Sam in a message, and he’s only just tucked his cell phone away when he feels it buzz in his pocket. He smiles to himself as he checks the display.

-Message to: Sam (Sammy)-

---------------Dean: [3546790.IMG]

-Sam: Who are you and what have you done with my brother?

---------------Dean: I’m gonna be so healthy I’ll get 3 new health bars added to my stats page for all this. Maybe a whole extra life.

-Sam: Oh there he is.

---------------Dean: I’m gonna food MacGyver the shit out of it all.

-Sam: I’m pretty sure that’s just called cooking, Dean.

---------------Dean: Food MacGyver.

-Sam: [rolling eyes emoji] [laughing emoji]

-Sam: How’s the wilderness life treating you?

---------------Dean: It’s actually better than I expected. I’m living like a forest prince.

---------------Dean: [MESSAGE DELETED]

---------------Dean: That was me admitting you were right about this trip being good for me, but I just can’t look at it.

-Sam: Too late, I screenshotted it and I’m showing Eileen.

-Sam: She says who are you and what have you done with Dean [laughing emoji]

---------------Dean: Yeah yeah yeah.

---------------Dean: I’m not replying to you two anymore, I’m going to go pay for my stuff.

---------------Dean: Tell Eileen I love her.

-Sam: And not me? Jerk.

Dean fires off his final reply, and shoves his phone back in his pocket, smiling at the familiar back-and-forth between them that never gets old.

He’s finally about to head to the checkouts to pay for his haul when a display of items at the end of an aisle makes him pause – a large cardboard bird perches above a basket full of bags of birdseed. He thinks of the note Cain left him, about all the birds, and how it specifically told him not to go looking for them in the woods… but it never mentioned anything about not luring them in himself. It would make a great photo for Charlie.

It won’t fit into the cart without crushing something, so Dean grabs a bag and holds it by his side as he pushes one-handed the rest of the way.

The guy at the checkout seems to be a little older than Dean is, with a smattering of grey in his dark beard, and a well-practiced customer service smile. It shouldn’t make Dean’s hands feel sweaty when he directs that smile at him – he knows they’re fake as hell – but Dean’s really only just started letting himself come to terms with the whole finding men attractive is a ‘bisexual thing’ and that it’s okay and he’s doing his best.

The guy beeps through his items while Dean transfers them into paper bags and tries to remember how his tongue works so he can say something. (Never has this problem with women.)  “Hey, uh, I’m new in town and I wanted to know if there’re any good diners around here,” Dean finally manages to say. “Somewhere that’s like, yeah, you might have a heart attack, but man is it a good way to go – any place like that?”

The guy behind the checkout (his nametag says Cesar) gives him another easy customer service smile as he works. “Sounds like you’re talkin’ about Benny’s. It’s not too far from here, just turn right out the parking lot, go straight on, you can’t miss it.”

“Thanks, man.”

“So, new in town, huh?”

“Well, maybe not in town exactly. I’m staying in the cabin on the hill. Uh, can’t remember the name of it right now… Fancy sounding… Cabin Plumb?”

“Cabin Plume?” Cesar’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s it.”

Cesar lets out a little whistle. “Watch out for those woods back there. There’s something strange in ‘em.”

“So I’ve been told,” Dean says with a shrug. “But it’s fine. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Well, jus’ be careful. Cain’s been trying to sell that place for years. We get a lot of the people who go up there come through here and they’re usually spooked away after a few days. Never see the same ones twice.”

Dean grins. “Can’t scare me away that easy.”

Cesar smiles back, and this one loses its artificial edge. “You sound like my husband-”

Dean fumbles and drops his wallet.

“-he’s always saying he doesn’t believe in ghosts, and then he’s the one hiding his face in my shoulder when we watch anything even remotely scary.”

Only then does Dean notice the ring on Cesar’s finger, silver and plain, shining in the artificial light of the store. Dean feels so thrown off-balance that he feels like he missed a step walking down the stairs. He hopes that none of his revelation that men can casually mention their husbands is coming off like disapproval, instead of the worldview changing epiphany that he’s actually having.

Dean clears his throat, tries to unstick the words that catch there. “Yeah- I uh- yeah. I mean. I’d probably be the same for my- uh- if I got a boyfriend. I don’t blink at horror movies, so I’d- I’d be the same for him. If he was scared.”

Ceaser’s customer service persona seems to melt away before Dean’s eyes, as the smile he receives is warm and genuine, and there’s a satisfied glint in his eyes.

Wait.

Did he… did he know?

How did he…?

“You have a good evening,” Cesar says, as he hands Dean his receipt. “Hope the cabin treats you well.”

“Thanks,” Dean replies, still feeling like he’s had a rug ripped from underneath him. “Yeah, you, uh- you too. To the evening thing.”

As he’s leaving Dean wishes he could be at all any way normal interacting with good looking guys. It wasn’t even that Dean wanted to flirt – the guy’s got a husband, he’s not sleazy – but it’s just all so new to him and he’d like to be able to at least have a conversation without sounding like he’s never spoken to anyone in his life before.

He’d pushed that entire part of himself so far down while he was growing up, choosing to only pursue women or face the wrath of his dad, that he skipped the whole ‘awkward teenager talking to cute boys’ phase completely – so maybe he’s just having it now in his mid-thirties instead.

When Dean makes it back to his car, he puts all the chilled stuff in his cooler in the trunk, and jigsaws everything else in. He can’t spend too long at the diner, or his stuff’ll go warm, but he’s got to have a burger now. Especially after whatever… all that was.

The drive is blessedly short – Dean knows he’s gone the right way when he sees a classic looking diner and a bright red neon sign on the roof that says ‘Benny’s’. The smell alone is enough to make Dean’s eyes close in silent appreciation as soon as he gets out the car.

The place is bustling but not too crowded when Dean enters – and the whole place reminds him of many others just like it that his dad dragged him and Sam to during their childhood. Moving around a lot for his dad’s work (odd jobs he did wherever he could do them) meant a lot of time on the road, which meant a lot of time in roadside diners. It smells like home. A collection of people sit on stools at the counter, chatting between themselves and with the grinning man who bustles behind there working food orders. He’s wearing a grease-stained white apron and has piercingly blue eyes.

Dean takes a seat in a booth and orders a burger and a coffee from a woman with long dark hair pulled into a braid over one shoulder (her nametag says Andrea), and he’s able to do it without tripping over any of his words. He even throws in a friendly wink! At least he’s not lost his touch completely.

He’s almost finished his burger when Andrea comes back to refill his coffee cup, and for the second time in less than an hour Dean notices a ring flash on someone’s finger.

Seriously? Is everyone married in this town?

He tries not to let the thought of the engagement ring in the pocket of his suit back at the cabin weigh on his mind, but it’s difficult when constant reminders of marriage are assaulting him from all directions in just one afternoon.

Dean leans back in his seat with a contented sigh, his burger and fries nothing more than crumbs on his plate and a delicious memory. Despite how badly he wants to stay for dessert (he loves diner pie) he’s very aware of the cold stuff in his car, and that he should be getting back as soon as possible.

He makes eye contact with Andrea as she bustles past him, and she gives him a smile as she stops. “The bill?” she guesses.

“Please. Wish I could stay longer,” Dean says with obvious regret, “that burger was awesome, and if I had time I’d try and fit in second, but I gotta get going.”

“No problem. And I’ll be sure to pass on your compliments to my husband Benny, he’s the chef behind the counter over there,” Andrea adds fondly, gesturing with a tilt of her head in his direction.

“He make a pie as good as his burgers?”

“The best.”

Dean sighs sadly. “Damn.”

“We could always fix you up a piece to go?” Andrea pulls out her notebook from her apron pocket and rips off a piece of paper, placing it next to Dean.

“That’s okay, I’ll save it as a treat for when I’m on my way home and pass by again.”

“Oh, you’re not from around here?”

“Nah. I’m staying on a hill over at Cabin-”

“-Plume?” she finishes for him, surprise in her voice.

“Yeah,” Dean says with a frown. “Don’t tell me the woods are haunted, I already know.”

Andrea laughs lightly. “You say that now, but I’ve met a few of the writers who’ve stayed there, and they say the same thing a few days before they get out of there as fast as they can.”

Dean flashes her a grin. “C’mon, don’t I look like I’m made out of tougher stuff than some writers?” He places a bundle of notes next to the bill, making sure he’s added a decent tip.

“Guess we’ll find out,” she says with amusement.

Dean takes a quick trip to the bathroom, and then just as he’s leaving the diner he hears an urgent, “Hey, wait! Pie guy!” and turns to see Andrea approaching him with a white box in her hands.

She hands it over to him gently. “Benny says this is on the house, as a good luck gift for staying at the cabin.”

The box is warm and smells amazing. When Dean peeks inside there’s a pie in there, golden in color, with red cherries and jam poking out between the crisscrossed pie crust. “Jesus, that’s a whole freakin’ pie!” He looks up in surprise at the man behind the counter who waves with a toothy grin before he goes back to cooking. “I can’t have this for free, you’ve gotta take something for it.”

Andrea waves him off as if she’s shooing him away. “Just remember to stay out of the woods and come back to visit us before you go so you can tell us about it.”

“Thank you. Really, thanks. I will,” Dean promises, leaving the diner with something more valuable than his entire trunk of stuff.

His drive back to the cabin is difficult to concentrate on when there’s such an amazing smell wafting from the box on the seat next to him, but Dean does what he can. It helps that there’s practically no other traffic around here, on account of it being at the ass-end-of-nowhere.

By the time he pulls up to the front door the sun has started to set, and the shadows beneath the trees intensify as the light fades. Dean begins to understand just how dark it’s going to get as soon as the sun dips down completely, and even he’s got to admit that it’s gonna get a bit creepy…

That sensation of being watched seeps back as Dean unlocks the front door and he shudders involuntarily. Which just serves to piss him off. “Would you stop that?” he yells at nobody.

“Don’t believe in fucking ghosts,” he mumbles, as he pops open the trunk and starts to take his bags inside one by one. “They’re not real,” he says, as he heaves the big bag of birdseed out, closes the trunk, and carries it into the kitchen. Finally, he picks up the pie box from the front seat and holds it under one arm. “You’re not real!” he adds, louder, jabbing an accusatory finger at the trees nearby.

A flurry of wingbeats and a shrill bird squawk answers him, coming from the direction he pointed to, that nearly makes Dean drop the box. “Shit!” he curses, grabbing the box with both hands and slamming Baby’s door with his foot. “Sorry, Baby.”

Must have been one of the birds that lives in the forest.

Dean stares at the spot for a moment, but there’s nothing but deepening shadows, and he belatedly realizes that the feeling of being watched has gone away.

He carries the pie inside with a feeling of self-satisfaction. Of course it’s not ghosts. Just the creepy birds.

Fuck, now he’s not sure which is worse.

Dean puts all his food shopping away, and he’s pleased with his haul. The kitchen is modern in design, and clearly made either by or for someone who liked to cook, so he’s excited to try it all out tomorrow. Once again, he’s grateful for the electricity and running water in this place – he doubts that he’d last long without them, since he’s not really here for the whole ‘survival experience’. There’s even decent wi-fi, which makes him regret not bringing his laptop. He hasn’t come across a generator or anything like that yet, so he’s not entirely sure where the electricity is coming from… but he’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The bag of birdseed sits next to the counter and Dean thinks of the bird that he startled earlier. If there’s already one nearby maybe it’ll come back, and he can take a photo on his first night for Charlie’s slideshow. He’s going out into the garden anyway, so it can’t hurt to leave some out for now. Dean pours some seed into a bowl that he found in one of the cupboards and takes it out back with him.

Just outside the back door there’s an honest-to-god porch swing bench that he’s absolutely going to sit on with a beer as soon as they’ve chilled in the fridge a little, and he’s hoping it’s something he can do every evening while the weather’s nice like this. The garden extends quite a long way out from the cabin, surrounded by trees on all sides, and contains something large covered over by a green tarp that he spied earlier (please be a grill, please be a grill) and what looks like two beehives at the very end of the garden. A path of stones runs through the grass straight up the middle, but stops just before the beehives, and a tall wooden fence encircles the whole thing. Just to really drive home the ‘do not cross the boundary, do not enter the forest, danger beyond this point’ message.

Dean places the bowl of seeds down and yanks the tarp away from whatever it had been covering. Score! A clean, well-cared for brick-built grill that’s just begging to be used.

And a tarp to cover Baby with.

The tarp gets folded up and put into the living room, ready to use tomorrow once he’s washed the car, and then Dean locks the front door – securing himself in for his first night.

He detours into the kitchen on his way back to the garden, to cut himself a slice of pie and grab a beer from the fridge, but nearly drops them both when he looks through the window. A black bird is poking its beak enthusiastically into the seed bowl.

Dean hurries to the back door, and tries to be gentle, but as soon as he opens the door the bird jumps in surprise and flaps its wings so violently to launch itself into the air that it knocks the bowl over with a clatter.

The seeds spill everywhere.

Damn.

Dean rests his beer bottle and bowl of pie on the swing bench – knowing that not even creepy birds or evil ghosts could keep him from coming back for beer and pie – and sighs loudly at the mess. He crouches down to place the seed bowl the correct way up again and does what he can to scoop the seeds back in, but there’s a few left over in the cracks between the wooden decking, and he’s worried that if he leaves them like that they might rot or something.

He rests on the balls of his feet in a crouch as he picks out what he can with his fingers, but its slow going and his fingers are too big to get some of the smaller seeds. A motion in the corner of his eye makes Dean look up under his lashes, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever keeps on flying away, and he sees the same black bird again, perching on a branch in one of the trees nearest to him. Dean keeps his head low, pretending not to look, and that same feeling of being watched that he’s felt on and off all day returns.

Has it been the same bird this whole time?

Dean slowly lifts his head, to get a better look, and the bird retreats into the shadows once more.

“C’mon man,” he says aloud, wondering at what point he needs to be worried about himself that he’s speaking to a bird like it can understand him. “Stop with the vanishing act. I’m not gonna hurt you. I put out all this seed for you, didn’t I? And this is your mess I’m cleaning up.”

Nothing moves, nothing answers.

Dean rolls his eyes and returns to his task. The only seeds left now are too small for his fingers to reach between the wood, but he tries to pluck out one more that he thinks he might be able to get. He immediately flinches back sharply with a hiss of pain. He pulls his finger close to try and see of the son of a bitch he knows is in there, and presses hard until the tiny piece of wood is pushed out. A bead of blood seeps out of the wound left behind and Dean sucks his fingertip straight into his mouth. Goddamn splinters…

A loud squawk makes Dean jump so hard that he falls backwards onto his ass with a yelp he will deny making to his dying day.

The bird from before stands right in front of him, regards him for a moment, then ducks its head. Even when Dean moves to sit more comfortably it doesn’t take off into the trees this time.

“Shit, you scared me,” Dean admits, willing his heart to slow down.

No such thing as ghosts, he reminds himself, looking at the very real flesh-and-blood bird.

It tilts its head to one side and blinks its beady eyes at him with undisguised curiosity, staring so intensely that it brings back that strange feeling of being watched that prickles the back of Dean’s neck.

And then it clicks exactly what kind of bird he’s looking at. “You’re a crow,” he says, “like in the painting.” He remembers the crow that he’d seen in the office, and it looks the same, even down to the way it tilts its head. It seems bigger than the crow in the painting though, or maybe that’s just because Dean has never seen one this close before, with feathers that shine like oil in the fading light.

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Dean says again, trying to use his most gentle voice, sat completely still on the porch. “I really don’t know shit about birds,” he admits with a touch of frustration, hoping to keep the crow there long enough to be able to take a photo. Charlie will never believe he got this close to a wild bird. “Uh… slow blinking? Is that a thing?” Dean blinks deliberately and slowly at the crow. “Shit, wait, I think that’s for cats.”

The crow clacks its beak while Dean tries to gently reach for his cell phone in his back pocket, then hops back from him, tensing as if it’s about to fly away.

“Wait, don’t go, uh- what do crows say… cuh-caw?”

“Caw!” the crow replies, making Dean jump violently.

“Christ,” he breathes out, as the crow clacks its beak again. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were fucking with me.”

It’s strange because he doesn’t get the feeling that the crow is scared – it’s more like it doesn’t trust Dean. Like it’s suspicious of him. Almost as if proving his point, the crow’s eyes narrow, as if assessing him, but they’re back to normal again so quickly he wonders if he made that up. He doesn’t know much about birds, but he’s pretty sure they don’t narrow their eyes at people.

He must be really fucking lonely if he’s projecting this much human behavior on a bird. There’s a word for it that he told Sammy when he kept having nightmares about the rabbits in Watership Down, but he can’t remember it right now.

After a moment the crow hops a little closer to Dean, and then a little closer still, right by his feet. It tilts its head, side to side, and finally bends its beak down to pluck out the small seeds that Dean couldn’t get. Its sharp beak picks them out one by one and drops them into the bowl.

Plink, plink, plink.

Dean doesn’t feel like his brain has caught up with what he’s seeing.

He already knows that crows are intelligent, but this is on a whole other level.

Eventually the crow hops around the area, looking down into the cracks in the wood, but it seems satisfied that it’s got them all as it rustles its wings proudly and taps its beak against the full bowl.

“Uh, yeah, thanks,” Dean says almost in a daze. “Good boy?”

The crow clacks its beak a few times and the feathers around its neck rise, almost as if offended.

“Okay, okay, touchy. You’re not a dog, I get it.”

The crow’s feathers lie flat, but it taps its beak against the bowl again, looking up at him as if expectantly.

“What? You got your seeds back.”

The crow taps its beak more insistently, the sound loud in the silence.

“If I’d have known you were going to be this needy for a reward, I’d have shooed you away. I thought you were helping out of the goodness of your heart,” Dean huffs, split between enjoying talking to the bird as if it can understand him, and knowing that if Sam could see him now, he’d be questioning his sanity.

God, if Amara could see him now – she’d be pleased that Dean dumped her.

That’s actually a comforting thought.

The crow’s feathers puff up again and it places its beak at the base of the bowl, tilting its head in a way that makes the bowl wobble precariously, like it’s about to push it over.

“Woah, woah, woah! Don’t do that! Hey, how about uh… how about this, huh?” Dean leans over and snaps off a piece of the thick crust from around his slice of pie and holds it out in front of him like a peace offering. The crow hops back slightly. “I don’t know whether crows should eat pie… but I’m pretty sure you’re like pigeons and you’ll eat anything. This’ll blow your little bird mind.” Dean crouches down low and pops it into the seed bowl. He stays there but holds very still.

After a moment of hesitation, the crow returns to the edge of the bowl and eyes Dean warily. Then in one smooth movement it reaches inside, lifts the whole piece of crust in its beak, and flies away with a couple of hard flaps of its wings, back into the trees it came from.

Dean lets out a breath - the disappointment he feels is immediate and ridiculous. What did he expect? A thank you?

“You’re welcome,” he says to himself, heading back over to the porch bench. He sits down heavily, and swings back and forth a little with the motion it makes. Haunted woods or not, that was really fucking weird. Dean tries to shake the encounter from his mind, pops the cap off his beer bottle on the edge of the bench, and rubs a thumb over the tiny chip in the wood that he makes, careful of splinters this time. He probably shouldn’t do that again – he should have brought a bottle opener out here with him. Guilt settles in with the disappointment and the loneliness.

Maybe coming out here all alone for two whole weeks was a bad idea.

He’s not even a day in and he’s talking to birds.

Dean plays with the bottle cap between his fingers as he watches the sun go down beneath the treetops.

He’s a people person. He needs people.

Dean lifts the beer bottle to his mouth and nearly chokes when the crow glides smoothly onto the porch by his feet.

“Caw!” the crow says, with a rustle of its wings.

It looks happy.

Dean coughs and smiles. “Hey again to you too. Yeah, everyone loves pie. It’s universal. You can’t have any more though – this piece is mine.”

The crow clacks its beak in something like disapproval and Dean is seriously impressed by how intelligent crows are.

He crams a spoonful of pie into his mouth as if to punctuate his point, and nearly moans at the taste. “Yep. Sorry, dude. This is way too good to be giving out to birds. Cherry is my favorite flavor, and this is all for me.”

The crow flaps its wings and settles onto the railing that Dean had been leaning against earlier, making them more eye-level. It tilts its head again, almost studying him, and Dean feels weirdly scrutinized under its gaze.

“Take a photo,” he mumbles around his mouthful of pie, “it’ll last longer.”

The crow tilts its head even further. It’s kinda cute.

Talking of photos… Dean shimmies his cell phone out of his back pocket and the crow immediately tenses as if to fly away again.

“Woah, hey, it’s just a phone, I just wanna take a picture.”

The crow hops further away on the railing as Dean holds out his phone in front of him. It clacks its beak angrily as its feathers rise up, tensing with its wings open – about to fly.

“Okay, okay, no photos.” Dean quickly places his cell back onto the bench beside him, without even having been able to take one sneaky photo. “Never thought haunted birds would be camera shy, but whatever, I’ll leave it there, okay?”

The crow relaxes as it slowly moves back into its previous position, and Dean wonders what could have happened to a bird to make it that suspicious and angry with cell phones. Maybe it’s been abused by humans at some point? It would make sense if it had been someone’s pet, and that’s how it seems so well trained, almost like it understands English.

He’s heard of people who abuse animals to make them perform tricks on videos for views. Maybe that’s what happened.

Dean feels bad for the little guy – or girl, he supposes.

If he gets the crow to trust him enough, he might be able to get a photo for Charlie, and even take a video showing off how smart it is. Gives him another project for his vacation – Doctor Dolittle this shit.

He scoffs out a laugh at himself for that, just at how ridiculous it sounds.

“Caw!” the crow says, seemingly less grumpy now.

Dean takes a swig of his beer and remembers the bottle cap. He picks it up and holds it out to the crow. “Crows like shiny things, right? I might be thinking of magpies though…” He throws it gently out onto the decking between them. “Anyway, you can have this.” The next part he says slowly, wondering how much the crow will understand, “For you. Present. Friends. Do you talk? Or is that just a parrot thing… I don’t know much about birds…” He points at himself. “Dean.”

The crow stares at him for a long time.

“Just parrots. Noted.”

The crow shuffles its wings a little, looks down at the bottle cap, looks back up at Dean, and then hops down with a tiny flap. It picks the cap up into its beak with careful, deliberate movements and stares at him as if he’s suddenly going to be caught in a trap – clearly wary.

Dean laughs. “I’m not gonna do anything to you – dude, I just shared my pie with you, we’re basically best friends now.”

Finally, the crow takes off back into the air in a flurry of wingbeats and glides smoothly into the trees again, its black feathers blending into the shadows so well it almost looks like it becomes a shadow itself.

Dean lets out an amused huff and takes another longer swig of his beer.

He hadn’t expected to be making friends with the local wildlife, but it certainly gives him something to do. He wonders if the other birds in the forest were rehomed from abusive households too, and maybe that’s why Cain built the cabin in the first place? Kinda weird to put a load of birds of different species all in one place though, but probably easier to take care of them all? Spreading the rumor it’s haunted is a good way to keep people out of your bird sanctuary, he supposes. But then why would Cain leave and want to sell the place? And who’s looking after them now?

Dean shivers in the chill, now that the sun has fully set, and finishes off his beer and pie quickly.

He takes his bottle and bowl inside, along with the bowl of seeds, and places them on the kitchen counter to clear up tomorrow. But when he returns to the back door to lock up, he pauses. There on the porch, where the seed bowl had been before, just visible in the light spilling out of the windows, is a small shiny stone. Dean opens the door, reaches down for it, and looks around.

He can’t see anything in the deep shadows of the garden, and he can’t even see the trees at all anymore, hidden in the darkness – but a familiar feeling of being watched settles over him. Dean smiles.

Chapter Text

The opening notes of Blaze Of Glory playing out loudly from the cell phone next to him wakes Dean the same way as it does every morning. He blindly smacks a hand repeatedly on the surface of the table beside him, trying to find his phone to get it to shut up, but then he remembers that he hasn’t got to be worried about getting chewed out over letting his alarm run on too long. His hand lingers in the air, listening to the music, with his eyes still closed against the sunlight filtering through the curtains.

Sometimes it feels like Dean will turn around and see Amara next to him and realize that he’s still in hell. He never came to his senses. He never broke up with her. He never got out.

When Dean does finally open his eyes, he’s greeted with the sight of the beautifully carved feathers on the ceiling and his heart rate slows. Oh, maybe he gets why Cain put so much work into them now.

Even though the bed is ridiculously big Dean ended up sleeping on the same side he always does. In a moment of pure indulgence, he rolls under the sheet right into the middle of the bed and opens out his arms either side of him. After another moment he opens out his legs too, like he did when he was a little kid and got to sleep in a double for the first time. Dad had told him he was old enough now and had got them a motel room with two doubles and a pull-out, instead of just sharing a double with Sam. He’d been so excited and felt so grown up. Then Sam told him that he looked like a starfish, and Dean scoffed that he was just jealous because he got the big bed all to himself. (He’d ended up sharing it with his little brother again anyway.)

Dean smiles at old memories as he finally rolls back and shuts off the alarm.

He sits up and grabs his cell phone but pauses before he gets out of the bed. The little stone that the crow gave him shines in the growing morning sunlight on the side table. He reaches out and picks it up carefully – it looks like it might be some kind of crystal or something, or a piece of sanded down glass.

Wait until Charlie finds out he’s performed a gift exchange with a freaking crow.

Dean sets it down gently and scratches his stomach with a yawn as he pads down the hall to the bathroom.

It’s as impressive now as it was last night; the tub is so wide and deep that two people could comfortably lie across from each other, and the shower extends across one entire wall. The toilet being on a separate level to everything else, divided by the step, means that it’s in no danger of being anywhere near the water, since the rest of the room looks like it was built to be entirely waterproof. Did Cain have an entire swim team up here or something?

The tiles are cold under Dean’s feet, and he hops into the shower quickly. The huge glass screen fogs up while Dean showers, and he lazily draws a feather into the condensation with his fingertip, enjoying the hot spray on his head and shoulders. After a moment he draws something else – round head, oval body, sharp beak, judgy beady eyes, little clawed feet, tail, wings… His cartoony crow doesn’t really resemble the real thing at all until Dean adds two angry eyebrows above the eyes. Much better.

Dean finishes his shower, uses the toilet, and cleans his teeth, feeling lighter than he has in a long time. He even got to pick which sink out of the two he wanted to clean his teeth in, which feels like the pinnacle of luxury to someone who currently lives in a one-bedroom apartment that has the internal space of a glorified closet.

Once he’s fully dressed in the same shirt-under-a-flannel-button-down-and-jeans combo as yesterday (in a different color) he snoops through the cabinet that’s nestled inside the closet. The top drawer contains the underwear and socks that he threw in there yesterday, in the one under that is only a very well-worn copy of the bible, and the third reveals a rolled-up piece of tan colored material. Dean pulls it out and flaps it open. A trench coat. He raises his eyebrows. Cabin in the woods with a trench coat in the closet… Unless Columbo stayed here one weekend that’s giving off some major creeper energy. He rolls it back up and puts it back.

He resolves to search the other rooms when he’s had some coffee.

Dean noticed the coffee maker yesterday, and even just the simple act of waiting for the coffee to be ready, the kitchen filling with the fresh aroma, feels different here somehow. More relaxed.

The first sip is heavenly, and Dean closes his eyes in appreciation.

Other than washing Baby he doesn’t have any plans for today. Maybe snooping around would be fun. If he finds anything else on a similar creepy theme to the trench coat he’s packing up and leaving immediately though.

Dean peeks out of the kitchen window while he finishes his coffee. Morning dew clings to the grass in the garden, sparkling in the rising sun, and a thin mist hovers over it all – obscuring his view of the trees. It’s pretty, in a rustic wilderness kind of way. He’s heard the phrase picture-postcard before, but never really thought it applied to anywhere until now. He never had views like this in the city. Amara would have hated being so far away from all her fancy restaurants and boutiques.

Kinda makes him like it even more.

A familiar tug of guilt pulses in Dean’s chest and he tries his best to ignore it.

Downing the rest of the coffee burns Dean’s mouth a little, but he swipes a hand over his lips and places the cup in the sink along with the dirty dishes from last night. There are a bunch of cabinets under the kitchen counter that he hasn’t looked in yet, and he’s hopeful that one of them is a dishwasher…

Sam would call him lazy but sue him.

He already knows the first cabinet is where he put all his shopping yesterday, and the ones above the counter are where the dishes, mugs and glasses are from. But the rest are a mystery.

Opening each door one by one is an interesting game – he doesn’t find a dishwasher, but he does discover a washing machine, a bunch of cleaning supplies, a flare gun (loaded), and a small white feather. At least he doesn’t have to worry about doing his laundry now. He leaves the cleaning supplies and the flare gun where they are, but he hesitates before he shuts the door on the little feather. He must really be losing it if he’s starting to feel bad for inanimate objects, but it seems sad to leave it there now he’s found it, at the very back of the dark cabinet, forgotten and dusty. Dean sighs and gets down onto his knees. The cabinet is so deep that he has to climb inside to reach the feather, and he immediately has to hold back a sneeze from all the dust he disturbs that goes straight up his nose. He gently lifts the feather and tries to shimmy backwards, back out again, but straightens up too fast.

He curses loudly as his head collides with something above him.

But… it didn’t feel like the wooden panel he’d expect to be the ceiling of the cabinet – or even the stone counter it sits under. He’d bumped into some kind of object.

Dean blindly gropes in the area and jumps when he feels something hard and smooth under his fingers. When he tries to pull it free, he’s met with resistance and realizes there’s tape holding it in place. Dean flips over, lying on his back, and pulls his cell phone out of his pocket to light up the area.

There’s a leather-bound book, and right next to it is a small silver key.

Dean doesn’t hesitate to pull the tape away and free them from the roof of the cabinet, despite someone obviously going out of their way to cleverly hide them.

After carefully shuffling back out of the cabinet, mindful of hitting his head again, Dean places the book, the key, and the feather onto the kitchen table. The book is a hardback, bound in brown leather, with the title ‘Werewolves and Other Were Creatures’ embossed in black on the front. The leather looks so old that it’s faded and peeled in places. The key is extremely small, and Dean can’t think of any lock that he’s seen so far that would fit a key that tiny. When he picks it up to examine it closer, he realizes that there’s a feather carved into the handle. Freaking feathers again. So, it clearly unlocks something in this cabin… But what?

Dean shoves the key in his pocket and reaches to open the book, his fingertips just grazing the front cover, when he jumps in surprise at his cell phone ringing loudly.

Charlie’s name is on the screen when Dean lifts it up, and he accepts the call with a smile.

“Charlie, what the fuck, isn’t it the middle of the night where you are?”

“Hello to you too, mom,” Charlie whines. She makes the noise of a child sticking their tongue out.

Dean laughs and pushes away from the table, mystery unimportant for now, and walks slowly back into the living room while he speaks. “Someone’s gotta call you out on your garbage sleep schedule.”

“Hey, like yours is much better.”

“Do as I say, not as I do, Padawan.”

“Yeah, yeah. But who needs sleep when Moondoor Online just updated? Downloaded that sucker immediately and lost track of time. The flying mounts that they’ve been teasing literally for forever have finally been released. Flying. Mounts. It, like” – Charlie noisily sucks on a soda straw – “changes the whole game.”

Dean frowns at the momentary feeling of foreboding that cuts through his amusement. Why does everything seem to be circling back to this theme of birds and flying and feathers?

“By the time I turned the game off,” Charlie continues enthusiastically, her energy running as high as always, “I realized that you’d probably just be waking up now, and I thought, hey, let’s give my buddy, my pal, my bestie, Dean Winchester, a call to see how he’s getting on in the murder-cabin.”

Dean huffs a laugh. “Sorry, Charlie, thanks for calling. As you can hear, I am still alive.”

“An important detail I have noted, yes,” Charlie says, in her best impression of a telephone operator, “thank you for confirming.” 

“Can I speak with your manager? I’m giving you a one-star rating for sass.”

Charlie snorts. “Okay, really though, how is it?”

Dean’s just trying to figure out where to start when she adds gently, “Last time we talked I was a little worried about you…”

As always, the overbearing need to not burden anyone with his problems flips a switch in his brain and Dean immediately waves his hand in the air, as if Charlie can see. “Nah, I’m fine. Great even. You just caught me at the wrong time before. It’s been great to just hang out here and not have any schedule. I’m doing great.”

“It’s a little unconvincing when you say great that many times… You sure you’re okay?”

“Really! I’m fine. I’m better than fine,” Dean says. Despite everything not being fine or great Dean makes sure he puts enough conviction into his voice to make it sound like it’s the truest thing he’s ever said.

Charlie doesn’t need him to start talking through his problems on the phone when she’s up so late already, and he doesn’t want her to worry about him either. His problems are his problems. He just has to live with the consequences of his actions and deal with it. (His inner voice sounds eerily like his dad when he gives himself these kinds of pep talks.)

Charlie makes a concerned humming noise but when he offers nothing else to her, she sighs. “Okay, Mr. There-is-no-war-in-Ba-Sing-Se.”

“I am fine! I’m embracing the wilderness. I’m becoming one with nature,” Dean says, completely changing the subject and hoping that she lets it drop. “I’m even making friends with the wildlife!”

“I thought you were worried about the birds eating you?” Charlie laughs.

“They might still. I’m on good terms with one of them though, and I’m going to get him to convince his buddies not to,” Dean fires off, relaxing into the easy banter now that they’ve steered away from the serious crap.

“Talking to the animals already? Dean, you’ve been there for one day and you’re going full Fluttershy.” There’s another loud slurp of soda, some shuffling of clothing, and Charlie’s voice gets quieter as it gets further away when she adds, “And you’re taking photos for my slideshow for when you get back, right?”

“Of course,” Dean says, even though he hasn’t taken a single one yet. It’s on the tip of his tongue to tell her about the crow, the abandoned bird sanctuary in the woods, and about the mysterious book and key he found, but… it feels like he should keep it a secret, even if he’s not sure why. It’ll only keep her from going to bed sooner, he reasons, trying not to think about why it seems important to not tell anyone – even Charlie – about any of this.

Dean stares out of the huge living room windows, leaning his side against the cool glass. The mist is starting to lift, and he can see the tree line now at the bottom of the garden, though as always nothing appears to move in them except their own leaves.

He wonders where the crow is, or where all the birds that live there are, and why Cain even built the cabin in the first place if he was just going to abandon them all.

There’s something going on, he can feel it.

For now, it’s his problem – his case to work.

“Those better be the sounds of you getting ready for bed,” Dean says eventually, shifting topics again.

Charlie’s reply sounds far away and is garbled by a toothbrush and a mouthful of toothpaste when says, “Uh-huh, hopefully grab a quick four hours before I gotta get up for work.”

“Charlie.”

Distantly Dean hears a loud spit, a tap run, and then a door closes. “Flying mounts, Dean!” she repeats, her voice loud and clear again now that she must be back at her phone. “I got to ride a dragon! Please tell me that you’re going to renew your subscription when you get back. Once you hit level fifty you can buy a dragon and take off into the beautiful pixelated sky! We could go flying together!”

“You know how I feel about flying,” Dean grumbles.

Charlie laughs so violently she snorts. “Oh boy, do I! You squeezed my hand so hard that entire flight I thought I was gonna need corrective surgery after. You looked like you were either about to pass out or throw up the whole time.”

“Humans flying just isn’t right! We should keep our feet on the ground, where they’re supposed to be.”

“I’m pretty sure everyone in the plane heard you the first few hundred times you yelled that to me.”

Dean smiles softly. Charlie had insisted that they fly to the beach for her twenty-first birthday, so that’s what they did, even though he’d freaked out for the entire flight.

Back when they were younger Dad would often drag him and Sammy across the country for his work, but no matter how long they’d been away Charlie would be there waiting when they got back. She’d race out of the house next door as soon as she saw the car pull back up, begging to hear about all the scummy motels they’d stayed in like they’d been on a big fun adventure.

Amara had taken him away from her for two whole years and still there she was waiting for him to come back, just like when they were kids.

“Anyway,” Charlie continues, still sounding way too high energy for someone about to go to bed, “you have to download it again because Dorothy has already agreed to download it again too.”

“Dorothy? Agreed to play Moondor Online again?”

“I know! She gets so stressed out whenever she’s in a battle she forgets which buttons to press, it’s seriously adorable. She’d just rather be bench pressing cows and running on hamster wheels, or whatever it is they do at gyms these days, than be sat playing video games.” Charlie’s voice is thick with affection and Dean can hear her smiling, even through the phone. “Last time we played Mario she kept flicking up her controller every time she made Luigi jump, and I can’t tell if it was just a reflex or if she thinks that it makes him jump higher. I didn’t want to make her feel self-conscious, so I didn’t mention it.”

On one hand, knowing Charlie had a loving girlfriend during the time that Dean had effectively ghosted her and won the shittiest best friend award was a relief and a comfort, but on the other hand he had effectively ruined his first impressions with her before they’d even met.

Dean suppresses a sigh. “I don’t think Dorothy is going to want to play if she knows I’m going to be there.”

“No, she’ll be totally fine with it!” Charlie says with even less conviction than Dean had used to tell her that he’s fine.

“Charlie. I’m pretty sure she’ll kick me off a dragon mid-flight.”

A long pause and then, “Okay, maybe- but it’s not like she hates you or anything! She just doesn’t know you like I do, and she never met Amara, so she’s never been subjected to the Mind Flayer in person, and she just doesn’t want to see me hurt again-” Charlie sucks in a little breath and Dean slumps against the window, feeling guilt plummet through his chest like a stone.

“Charlie-”

“I just want my best friend and my girlfriend to get along.” The way she says it makes it clear there’s no room for arguing, and he can clearly picture her folding her arms and pouting like the way she did when she asked him to fly to the beach with her all those years ago.

Guilt churns uncomfortably in his stomach as Dean swipes a hand down his face. Usually, he’d brush off a conversation like this, complaining about Charlie dragging him into a ‘chick flick moment’, but he can hear the sincerity in her voice. He knows what he did hurt her, and he can’t take it back. He’s lucky that after everything he still has a friend at all who cares about him, and being dismissive now would only hurt her again and prove Dorothy right.

He lets his eyes fall on the two armchairs in the living room. Despite everything being clearly built for two, there’s something extremely lonely about this cabin.

He can’t take it back, but he can try to be better.

“Okay, put the pout away, I’ll download it when I get back.”

“Yes!”

“I’ll even let Dorothy kick me off whatever dragon she wants, however high she wants it to go, and clear the air between us. How about that?”

“She’ll love that!”

“No need to sound so enthusiastic about it,” Dean says with a smile.

Charlie laughs loudly. “Love you, Dean.”

“I know,” he replies, as he always does. “No go get some sleep, the game will still be there tomorrow.”

“Talk soon, don’t let the birds eat you.”

“I’ll do my best. Good luck with a sleep deprived day at work.”

“Later, Bird-Food.” Charlie makes a kissy noise down the phone and hangs up.

Dean takes a deep breath as he puts his cell phone back into his pocket. Conversations with Charlie are always so high-energy, and this time he’s been left with a confusing mixture of guilt and brotherly protectiveness, ironically both aimed at himself.

He hasn’t thought of their trip to the beach in a long time – sand between his toes, ocean spreading off to the horizon… back when he’d felt young and invincible.

He wonders how he ever lost that feeling.

Dean finally makes his way back into the kitchen and spies the book and the feather on the table where he left them. He taps on his pocket to check the key is still in there, and feels the shape of it through the denim, surprised that none of it was just his morning brain making up a Scooby Doo episode.

He grabs the book and sets it onto one of the armchairs for later, figuring he’ll get the fire going and settle down with his mystery book, a beer, and another slice of pie.

For now, his stomach is demanding attention.

Whipping up pancakes is something Dean’s been doing since he was old enough to work the stove… or probably before he was old enough really – he used to stand on a chair because he couldn’t reach. In no time at all he’s got a batter mixture made from the ingredients he bought at the store, and he’s appreciating the smell as he cooks each side and flips it in the air. So many of their pancakes would end up on the floor when they were kids, when Sam would ask to try and flip them too – even though Dean knew his little brother was all gangly limbs and terrible hand eye coordination, he could never say no.

Once there’s a small stack, glistening with a smothering of syrup, Dean grabs the plate and takes it to the back porch. When he first opens the back door the morning chill is still in the air, and he shudders as he steps out onto the wooden decking.

His shirt and flannel seem a little thin now, but Dean can’t be bothered to go back inside for a jacket. He’ll warm up once he starts eating. The steam wafting off the hot pancakes curls into the air, and he heaves in an appreciative deep breath at both the sugary smell of his breakfast and the specific earthy scent that comes from the forest.

Eventually he takes a seat on the porch swing, balancing the plate in one hand and brandishing a fork in the other, and shoves a big helping of fluffy pancake into his mouth, humming with enjoyment. He’s certain that if he can start every morning like this it’ll be a great couple of weeks.

Maybe pancakes every day would be a bad idea for his waistline, since he’s not exactly going to be doing much exercise. Unless… he goes for some hikes in the woods…

He chews thoughtfully as his attention wanders back to the tree line, still shrouded in the last clinging shreds of mist and shadow. Considering how many birds he imagines must be in there, it’s surprising that he can’t hear any bird song, and he wonders how deep in there the sanctuary must be. If there’s a sanctuary at all. But it’s the only explanation Dean has been able to come up with that makes sense.

He’s down to his last pancake, about to dig in, when a movement catches the corner of his eye. He looks up on instinct, just in time to see a flash of black feathers in the tree nearest to him, but it’s gone so quickly Dean’s not sure if he just imagined it.

“Hey, Crow,” he says into the silence, feeling silly, “you there?”

No answering call comes to him, and no crow flies down, and Dean tries not to feel weirdly lonely and rejected by that. It’s just a bird.

“I bet you’ve never made any stupid decisions in your little bird life,” he mumbles. “I bet everything’s just great in the trees, flying around, eating worms, not a care in the world.” Dean shakes his head. “Yeah. Must be nice.”

He waits, fork still hovering in the air, but he doesn’t see any sign of the crow again.

The pancake has gone cold by the time he eats it.

Chapter Text

Baby’s trunk is still a little messy with some of the stuff that Dean managed to grab from Amara’s apartment that he hasn’t transferred over to his new apartment yet. (Despite living with her for over a year there hadn’t been much there that was his anyway.) He rummages for a moment before he finds the bottles of classic car wash and wax for Baby’s precious paintwork, so he grabs them and sets them aside.

There’s a water hose rolled up against the back of the cabin that’s long enough to extend all the way around to the front, so he uncoils and pulls it to the car, grateful that he hasn’t had to try and find a way to drive into the garden. He couldn’t find a bucket, but he did find a copper watering can hiding in the foliage of a shrub out back, and that’ll be good enough. He couldn’t think of what to use in place of a sponge either, so he cut one of the cabin’s spare towels in half – one for washing, one for polishing – and is pretty sure that once he’s disposed of the evidence Cain will never notice one missing.

Dean fills up the watering can with some hot water, adds some of the premium car soap (only the best for Baby) and places them beside the car, while the pieces of the cut-up towel sit slung over his shoulder.

Bobby would always give him a gruff teasing about how fussy he is ‘washing a damn car’, back when he still worked at the Singer yard, but he’d been taking good care of her his whole life and the results spoke for themselves when she still looked this good after all this time. She’d been practically neglected when he lived with Amara, sitting in the garage all covered up and unused. Living in the city meant there hadn’t been much point to driving a car – it had been all cab rides and subways.

And anyway, Baby is a car meant for the open road, not hemmed in by narrow streets and high-rises.

Dean pulls out his old portable cassette player from the trunk, places it on the ground, a safe distance away from the water, and loads it up with one of his favorite mix tapes. Sam always grumbles about how old fashioned and out of touch he is for still using cassettes, but there’s just something more alive about the music that comes from something physical. None of this digital downloadable shit. He hits play and immediately cranks the volume dial up, letting the twang of guitars and deep drumbeats of his favorite classic rock tracks blare out at maximum.

For a moment Dean just hums along, nodding his head, but the music is infectious, and he can’t stop himself from strumming on an invisible guitar and singing along loudly.

He moves his fingers along pretend strings, pressing on chords he vaguely remembers, and lets his muscle memory take over. He hasn’t played a real guitar in so long; he really needs to start taking lessons again. Amara couldn’t stand to hear him practice, so she convinced him that it would be better to just sell his guitar so they could spend the money on an air fryer instead.

Fuck that air fryer.

It's exhilarating to know that he can be as loud as he wants, since there’s nobody around for miles that would hear him. Boldened by the thought, Dean strums even more energetically on his air-guitar and pretends to throw it up in the air and catch it, winking at the imaginary crowd all cheering for him.

He gestures at the trees surrounding him and claps his hands. “Thank you!” he yells over the deafening volume of his tape blasting out into the forest. “You’ve all been such an amazing audience!”

Dean finally turns to go back inside for a beer, the only missing element for washing his car, when that familiar feeling of being watched prickles the back of his neck. He whips his head up to see the crow perched on the roof of the cabin. As soon as their eyes lock it flaps its wings frantically and scrambles to keep its footing before it’s forced to glide down to the ground.

Embarrassment flares uncomfortably through Dean as he hastily turns the volume down on his cassette player to a low murmur, feeling foolish to be caught indulging in silly fantasies, even by just a bird.

“Of course you’re here now,” Dean says, irritation lacing through his voice, wishing he could just stop worrying for one second about how he presents himself. He knows he’s got some serious issues to work through when even an animal watching him makes him feel like he’s let his guard down too far.

He tries not to imagine what Amara would have said if she’d have caught him like that. Their entire relationship was built upon her falling so completely for the lie that he’s not the kind of guy who stays in spooky old cabins in the woods and plays air-guitar while he sings along to old mixtapes. Charlie and Sam were the only ones he ever felt comfortable enough with to relax, while with Amara he got so used to playing the part that he forgot how to drop the act.

The crow shuffles its wings tightly to its sides and stares down at its clawed feet.

Immediately Dean’s embarrassment and misplaced irritation is snuffed out. Poor thing is just a bird checking out the noise, that’s all.

“Ah, sorry,” Dean says, softer this time. “I’m not mad at you, I just…” He barks a bitter laugh and sits down heavily next to the cassette player as he switches it off. The silence feels jarring after the music.

The crow lifts its head up and tilts it to the side.

“I dunno, man. It’s so stupid. I’m out here in the middle of fucking nowhere, and I still can’t just… let go. My dad’s been dead for years and I can still picture how he’d look at me if he caught me doing any of that shit. And my ex,” Dean scoffs, flicking a piece of gravel from his boots, “she’d have probably given me the cold shoulder for a couple of days just for goofing off a little. Every time she saw through the cracks, she’d try to train that shit out of me, like a dog trainer with a clicker. She knew exactly what buttons to press to keep me from doing something she didn’t approve of.” Dean lifts his knees up and hangs his head between them. “It’s like they’re haunting me, and I don’t know how to get it to stop. I mean, there’s literally just me and you here, and I can’t…” Dean sighs roughly. “The whole point of this trip was to ‘find myself’, or whatever.”

The crow coos a soft sound, but Dean ignores it and squeezes his eyes shut. “I’ve always been a good son, a big brother, a respectable boyfriend… anything I needed to be to everyone else. I mean, shit, I only really came to terms with the whole ‘being bisexual’ thing recently. I didn’t even know there was a word for what I felt, man. Just always pushed it down. No time for that when I knew my dad would have kicked me out if I’d have even hinted at being anything other than straight as a freaking arrow,” Dean rants.

Again, the crow coos, and again, Dean ignores it.

“How am I supposed to find myself, when I don’t even know who I am?”

The sound of something tapping loudly and insistently brings Dean’s face back out from between his knees. The crow is jabbing its beak over and over against his boot.

“Wh- hey!” Dean waves his hand to shoo the bird away, but it nimbly hops back before he can make contact. “Cut that out. These aren’t new, but I don’t want holes in them either.”

“Caw-Caw!” The crow says, staring right at him with such intense eye contact that Dean is a little startled.

When he’d been a teenager, still getting dragged around from motel to motel with his dad and his brother, he’d started learning how to hustle pool to earn a bit of extra money. His situation didn’t exactly lend itself to getting a steady job, but the amount dad left with them (if he left any at all) never stretched very far. He often had to take Sammy to the bars with him – his puppy-dog eyes and begging Dean not to leave him alone in the room shouldn’t have worked, but it did. Every time. So, he’d learned how to keep one eye on the game, and one eye on his little brother. He got so used to always staying vigilant, being hyper aware if anyone was watching them too closely, that he started developing a bit of a sense for it. Like he could almost feel someone’s gaze on him. More than once it had saved them from getting thrown out of a bar, or getting the shit kicked out of them for the money they’d won… Or worse.

Which is why it makes no sense that he should feel the weight of a bird’s stare in the same way.

Or… maybe not so much in the same way as the creeps from the bars. This is different. Intense, but not threatening. Like it’s really listening.

The eye contact ends abruptly when the crow pushes itself up into the air with a few flaps of its broad wings and whips off into the trees.

“Freaky bird…” Dean mumbles. He feels a little wrung out from pouring his heart out like that, and a hint of shame claws its way up into his chest. He shouldn’t have said any of that stuff out loud, no matter how many times he’s thought it. But it was like once he started, he just couldn’t stop. Maybe Sam was right, and he does need a therapist, or – and he likes this option much better than sitting on some shrink’s couch – he could just go to a pet shop and buy a parakeet when he gets home. Clearly the chick-flick word-vomit just pours out of him when he talks to animals.

But somehow… the thought of talking to a different bird just doesn’t sit right.

His ass is starting to hurt from the hard ground and Dean snorts a laugh at the irony of how dismissive he is of a therapist’s couch when he’s here in the woods, sat in the dirt, telling a wild crow his problems.

His impression of the weird crow is currently sliding wildly between it being impressive or being straight up creepy. If it wasn’t so scared of his phone he’d take a bunch of videos for Charlie, so that when he tells her he met a super smart crow he’ll have the evidence to back it up. She’ll never believe him. Or maybe she will? He knows literally nothing about birds, so maybe everyone else already knows that crows are all this smart? … Whoever trained this one basically taught it to understand English.

Dean is about to get back to his feet, and finally fetch that beer, when the crow comes gliding back down, landing gracefully by Dean’s boots again. The canopy isn’t as thick just outside the cabin, making a small clearing, so the sunshine that’s crested over the trees catches the crow’s shining obsidian feathers and the glass object in its beak.

The crow does a funny little walk as it comes closer, then places the item down by Dean’s side. Its chest is heaving like it’s trying to get its breath back, and Dean wonders just how far and fast it flew.

When Dean doesn’t react, the crow hops forwards, picks the object back up in its beak, and makes a tilting movement with its head – almost like its rolling its eyes with its body. It stretches its neck up and prods his arm insistently with the thing in its beak and Dean finally gets the message.

“For me?”

The crow makes that strange rolling movement again and prods him a little harder.

“Okay, okay, thanks for the…” He reaches and gently takes the object from the crow’s beak, but when he opens his hand to have a look, he can’t help but take in a sharp breath.

In his palm is a small glass compass with silver tin around the edge. The needle in the center has a green arrow at the end that quivers a little as he moves his hand, forever pointing north.

“Are- are you kidding me?” Dean finally manages, his eyebrows scrunched together in a mixture of shock and awe. “A compass- there’s no fucking way-”

The crow puffs out its chest and ruffles its wings, head held high.

“Because I said I was here to find myself?”

Dean swears it almost nods at him, but that would be impossible. Not as if that would be any more impossible than it bringing him a compass because it recognized what he said though…

“How are you understanding any of this?” he asks, though he doesn’t expect an answer.  “It’s crazy. This is crazy.”

“Caw,” the crow replies, nibbling its beak under one of its wings.

“And I can keep this?”

“Caw.”

“I’m taking that as a yes.” Dean pockets the compass as he pushes himself to his feet with a groan. One of his knees clicks as he straightens up (as much as his bent-out knees will let him anyway) and damn, sometimes he feels old already in his thirties.

He takes a quick glance at the cassette player but decides against turning the music back on. The fake audience was fine, but he’s still unsure if he can handle a real one – animal or not. He only takes one step before he hears a click, and the music plays out softly behind him.

Dean whips around to see the crow with its beak poised just above the play button. Its glassy black eyes blink up at him and it tilts its head to the side in a gesture of feigned innocence.

“Really?”

The crow looks straight up at him and makes a soft sort of cooing sound.

“Okay, you’re super smart, I get it. Or maybe these woods really are haunted and you’re just something my lonely brain cooked up,” Dean says. “Oh shit, maybe I got cabin fever after only one day.”

The crow taps its beak a few times against the cassette player and ruffles its wings, the gesture full of energy, like laughter. Can birds find something funny?

“Fine, the music can stay on, but I’m not singing again,” Dean says firmly. He feels his eyebrows hike up as he watches the crow bite the volume dial.

There’s no way…

It holds eye contact with him for a beat before it twists its head to turn the dial – turning the music back up to max.

“Holy shit…” Dean can feel the way the grin takes over his mouth before he can stop it. “You’re a stubborn son of a bitch!” he yells over the music. “Fine! I’ll grab a beer and sing while I wash my car. Happy?”

“Caw-Caw!” The crow flaps its wings happily and uses its beak to turn the volume back down a little.

Dean shakes his head as he walks to the cabin. It feels like the crow is genuinely replying to him – goddamn smartest animal he’s ever met. Maybe he’s totally lost it, but this is one of the nicest almost-conversations he’s ever had.

Just as he gets to the doorway he pauses and turns back. “I don’t know how much you really understand, and how much is me treating you like a- like a Pokémon or whatever, or maybe you really are a ghost- but, uh… thanks. For the company, and the compass.” Dean taps his pocket and then clears his throat. “Yeah, anyway, don’t tell anyone I get sappy like this.”

He disappears inside and finally grabs his beer from the fridge, cracking off the top (using a bottle opener this time), and plays with the metal between his fingers for a moment before he puts it in his pocket alongside the compass. At the last second, he also tips out another bowl of bird seed from the giant bag and carries that out with him along with the beer.

When Dean gets back outside the crow has gone.

Rejection crashes into him like a wave and he hates the sensation. He should be used to people leaving by now, he thinks bitterly. And this is just a bird! It can’t understand anything of what he’s saying, even though it really looks like it does.

He needs to get over himself and come back to reality.

Dean puts down the bowl of bird seed by the door and takes a swig of his beer before he places the bottle beside it with a solid clunk.

Birds who understand English and make friends are about as real as ghosts are.

Dean is back at the car and just about to plunge the towel into the soapy water when a muffled squawk comes from somewhere above him.

The crow shoots over the roof of the cabin, wings wide, and turns gracefully in mid-air, gliding to a stop nearby, and landing with a little hop. (Dean’s not entirely sure why he gets the impression that it’s showing off, but that’s what it seems like.) It places down a large bundle of moss from its beak, pokes and prods at it a few times, and then settles down onto its makeshift nest. Like it just brought out a camping chair to sit with him.

Huh.

It came back.

Dean finds himself smiling again and he shakes his head. “You’re so weird,” he says, but there’s affection thick in his voice.

A chirp answers him, and it’s the first time he’s heard that kind of sound from the crow. It settles down comfortably into the moss, making itself look like a round feathery black ball.

Dean goes back for another sip of his beer and brings the bowl of birdseed over with him, placing it nearby the crow. “You seemed to enjoy it before the pie came out.”

The crow looks up at him hopefully.

“I created a monster. No, dude. No pie right now, I’m saving it for later,” Dean says, full of amusement. “When I’m heading back through Oakton, I need to tell Benny his pie is so good that even the wildlife is obsessed with it. I wonder if I can take a batch home with me to freeze…”

The crow’s beak falls back down sadly, and for a split-second Dean thinks it’s because he mentioned going home, but then remembers that this is a bird – he just wants pie and heard the word ‘no’.

“Talking about food, since I’ve stolen the tarp from the grill, I’m gonna fire it up later before it gets too dusty, so if you’re lucky and you come back, you could try one of my famous burgers,” he says, like this is a normal conversation to have with a crow. “Wait, can crows eat cooked meat? Raw? Do crows eat meat at all?” He should really read one of the books from the cabin – there’s so many, there’s probably a whole freaking book about each kind of bird. Or he could at least Google it, if nothing else. “You ate the pie alright, so I guess I was right before, about you eating anything. Like rats.”

The crow stands up in the nest and opens its wings wide, squawking over and over in indignation, and Dean chuckles, knowing he said that to deliberately see if it understood.

He doesn’t know why he finds it so funny to get a reaction out of the crow, but he just can’t stop finding it endearing that this thing will yell at him like he can’t just be scooped up into his arms at any time like a feathery football.

“Touchy,” Dean says, as the crow finally settles back down. He can feel the weight of its glare and it only adds to his amusement.

Dean once again almost plunges the towel into the soapy water in the watering can before he pauses. He straightens back up and looks down at his clothes, thinking. He’s already rolled up both sleeves of his shirt, but it’ll probably still get wet, and there’s only a couple of pairs of jeans in the closet – does he really want to get car soap on them? If they stain that’ll only leave him with one pair. And this is one of his favorite shirts. (As if he doesn’t love all his flannel shirts.)

He wouldn’t normally wash his car in his good clothes for fear of them staining – he’s got shirts and jeans covered in rips and grease that he would usually wear. (Or the shorts that he pretends he doesn’t own and would never wear unless he was absolutely sure nobody was going to see him in them.) But he didn’t think he had any choice before.

But a crazy idea popped into his head, and now he’s genuinely considering it…

Since he’s already set on singing and dancing like nobody’s watching – even though he does currently technically have an audience of one – what does it matter how he’s dressed for it? Or not dressed. If he doesn’t want any of his clothes to be ruined, or get soaking wet, then what’s his alternative?

No clothes.

Well, except his underwear.

It’s not like a bird is going to know the difference.

And there’s nobody around for miles.

Dean looks around, as if to make sure, but the surrounding forest is as silent as always, and nobody has a reason to come up the path that leads here unless they’re coming to the cabin.

The rock music that’s still blaring out in the background feels like it’s deliberately spurring him on – guitar riffs and drumbeats and lyrics about freedom and living life your own way.

“This is your fault,” Dean says, placing the towel onto Baby’s roof and pointing an accusatory finger at the crow. “Making me feel like I’ve got my free will back. Amara would have lost her fucking mind if I’d done something like this while we were going out.”

The crow tips its head to one side again, eyes bright and curious.

Dean opens the car door, shrugs off his button-down shirt, then folds it and places it on the seat. After a slight hesitation he grabs the hem of his t-shirt with both hands and flips it over his head in one smooth move. He leans down and yanks off both of his boots without unlacing them, unzips his pants, and pushes them down, folding them in his hands. Finally, he’s left standing in just his boxer shorts. It’s warm enough now to wash the car in just those, and then he can just put all his clothes back on afterwards, clean and dry.

A part of him feels like a total ass for standing practically naked in a forest, but the music is still playing, he’s got nobody to answer to, and he can do what he wants.

Fuck it.

Sunlight filters through the surrounding trees in bright stripes and in patches that almost shimmer on the ground, burning away any remaining wisps of mist. It looks like a scene from a fairytale storybook, like the ones Dean would read to Sammy when they were children, when dad hadn’t come back to the motel for the night. It was usually the only way to distract him enough from asking when dad would be coming back for them – the answer to that Dean never knew.

Even though he doesn’t believe in ghosts, there’s something about this forest that does seem otherworldly somehow. Goosebumps prickle momentarily down Dean’s arms, but the clearing around the cabin is warming up quickly, and he shakes them out as he adjusts to the temperature.

Dean bends into the car to finally place his jeans on top of the bundle of his other clothes, then shuts the car door just as he hears a strangled cut-off squeak from behind him. He turns in concern to see the crow with both wings fully extended across its face.

“Are you serious? Your owners taught you modesty? Who the hell teaches a bird that?” he says with a bark of a laugh. “Sorry Crow, but I think your previous owners were total douchebags.” He tries to ignore the sudden embarrassment that’s crawling under his skin. It’s just a bird, he reminds himself, just a bird. The crow’s previous owners had not only given it a cell phone phobia, but taught it to be a prude too? Wow.

“You can look, y’know. If they ever hurt you to train you or whatever, I won’t do that. I won’t hurt you,” Dean says, conviction making his voice firm. He shoves his boots back on and waits, but the crow’s wings stay firmly in place.

Dean laughs even harder. “Man, they did a real number on you.” He steps over to the mossy nest and crouches down. “C’mon, we’re friends. It’s okay,” he says slowly, remembering how it seemed to understand the word ‘friend’ last time. “And anyway, not to brag, but I’ve been told I look good in my underwear.” Dean considers reaching out and patting its head – they’re so close, and it’s not looking – but it seems like a weirdly invasive jerk move to do to an animal that he’s trying to build trust with.

He'd probably just get pecked or something anyway.

Dean stays where he is and takes a better look at the bird while he’s this close. Its feathers seem to be all black from a distance, but looking closer, some of them shine in the light and reveal a slightly blue sheen to them. The wings that are concealing its face are fanned out in a way that show all the individual feathers that make up the limb, and they’re all glossy and perfectly in place. It’s funny how a bird can look so plain and simple from a distance, but if you take time to look closer there’s a lot more going on. There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere, and Sam would be able to make something up like that on the spot. But hey, he’s just a guy with a GED coming out of a bad break up, washing his car in his underwear in the middle of a forest. Sammy’s the metaphor guy.

Dean chuckles to himself and goes back to the car. “Suit yourself.”

For a long while Dean sings and sways along with the music as he wipes the soapy towel methodically across the car, getting louder when one of his favorites comes on, and holding his hand up towards his mouth occasionally like he’s singing into an imaginary microphone.

Dean’s been singing instead of washing the car for almost an entire song, so he screws his eyes shut, throws the soapy towel on Baby’s roof, and pretends to grab a microphone with both hands for the final few lines. “‘My heart is like an open highway’,” he sings loudly along with the music, “‘like Frankie said, I did it my wa-y! I just want to live while I'm ali-ve! It's – my – life!’”

When he opens his eyes again it’s to see the crow staring at him intensely from above its lowered wings.

Dean grins and wipes an arm across his forehead. “Jesus, I’m sweating,” he huffs, realizing how out of breath he is. “I see you changed your mind about watching the performance.”

The crow slowly lowers its wings completely, but looks away, almost like it’s guilty to have been caught. “Caw,” it says lowly, like a grumble.

Dean laughs again as he returns to the doorstep to have a drink of his beer. “It’s so weird that your owners taught you to do that, crows don’t even wear clothes, you guys don’t even understand what being naked is – you’re freaking naked all the time.”

“Caw-caw-caw!” the crow says, glancing back at him – it sounds like laughter.

Dean replaces his bottle on the ground with a clink, still smiling.

All the soap washes away easily with the hose pipe, falling off Baby onto the ground and leaving her gleaming and black, just as she deserves. Dean is about to turn the water off when he gets another idea and instead turns the pressure down, sticks his thumb over the nozzle to spread out the spray finely, and arcs it over the crow.

The crow gives a single loud squawk and jumps so hard that it almost falls out of the nest. All its feathers puff out and it shakes them to try and get them to lie flat again, clacking its beak at him.

Dean thinks that he can tell that it isn’t really pissed off, it’s just doing a good impression of it.

“Sorry, buddy.” Dean shakes his head like a guilty man getting caught. “Couldn’t resist.”

The crow settles back down.

Dean does it again.

He almost doubles over laughing when the crow hops out of its nest squawking and flapping and comes over to peck at his boots.

“Sorry, sorry! Your feathers all fluffy and angry is cute.”

The crow completely freezes and somehow its feathers puff out even further.

Dean reaches a hesitant hand down. “Can I touch?” he says gently. As if that’s broken the weird spell it was under the crow ducks down and hops back to the nest before his fingers can make contact. “Yeah, guess I deserve that,” Dean concedes.

“I used to do that whenever me and Sammy had to wash this car for our dad. Sam would do the same thing – jump backwards and scream and it was damn funny every time,” Dean says, while he walks around the car and examines the paintwork closely to make sure all the soap is gone. When he’s satisfied, he finally turns off the water and uses the dry towel to begin wiping the car down. “I’ve always treated this car better than dad did. I used to think it was some big honor that he let us wash her, but when I grew up, I realized he just couldn’t be bothered to do it. There’s nothing more satisfying than getting your hands dirty and seeing a difference you can make with a beautiful, classy lady like this. It’s why I loved my job at Bobby’s.”

Dean is aware that he’s basically talking to himself, but it’s kinda therapeutic in a way that he doesn’t want to examine too closely to be able to finally get some of this stuff off his chest.

He pulls back from the car and wipes his arm across his forehead again, it slides with all the sweat. Gross. “I’ll give her a wax and then it looks like I’ll be having another shower. I’m sweating from freaking everywhere.”

The crow makes a slight chirping sound, but when Dean looks over it deliberately looks away.

“I said I was sorry, c’mon. You can have a big piece of pie after burgers, how about that?”

“Caw.”

“Yeah, I thought that would work. I can be bribed pretty easy with pie too. Universal language.”

Dean isn’t sure he’s even going to bother putting his clothes back on before he goes for his shower, he doesn’t want them to get all sweaty.

“I bet birds don’t sweat”– a totally normal thing to wonder – “‘cause how would a bird even get clean afterwards? It’s not like you guys have tiny showers.”

The crow tilts its head to one side, holds eye contact for a moment, and then hops out of its nest. It takes a few steps, then drops down onto the dusty forest floor, puffing out all its feathers as it rolls, flaps, and wriggles around. With a final shake of all its feathers it hops back into the nest. Looking as smug as a bird possibly can.

“Dude. That’s disgusting,” Dean manages around laughter.

The crow turns its beak around and nibbles on the underside of its wing, straightening the feathers, and yet still somehow radiates self-satisfaction.

“Yeah, yeah, point made, smartass. Dust baths for birds. Think I’ll stick to the hot water, thanks.” Dean returns his attention to the car and hums. “Hey, y’think Cain’ll notice if two of his towels go missing? I should have brought out an extra one for the wax.”

Dean belatedly realizes that once he’s waxed the car, he’ll be finished with the whole task, and it’ll be over. Suddenly he’s a little sad about that.

Dean rubs a hand at the back of his neck. “Maybe it’s just the company, but I haven’t enjoyed washing my car this much in years,” he admits, more able to tell the truth when it’s not like the crow will understand anyway. “I complain about the sweat, but that’s how you know you’re working hard, man. I’m just out of shape from all that time sat at a desk recently.” He takes a deep breath, puffing it out of his nose loudly. “I really want my old job back. This kind of satisfaction of working on cars and seeing them come to life under your hands – I miss that. I used to be this happy all the time when I worked at the yard. Why’d I ever give that up?”

But Dean knows why.

“I should message Bobby while I’m thinking about it, before I chicken out. See if he’ll have me back. Haven’t really spoken to him much in two years though, and he’s even grumpier than you… Don’t know if he’ll even want me back.” He glances at the crow, remembering its thing about cell phones. They’re having such a good time; he doesn’t want to scare it away and be alone again… “Maybe later. I know how you feel about cell phones, and it’s all folded up inside my pants anyway. I’ll just go get the towel for now,” he says, as if the crow will understand a word he’s saying.

Dean goes back inside the cabin, throws off his muddy boots in the doorway, and heads straight upstairs. There’s a cupboard inside the bathroom that has piles of brown towels inside, but there’s a whole bunch of them, so Dean is still confident Cain won’t notice two going missing.

He takes the opportunity to have a bathroom break and looks at himself in the mirror while he washes his hands. His freckles are coming out already and he’s only been out in the sun for a few hours. He looks sweaty and still kinda stupid in nothing but his underwear, but he looks happier than he’s seen himself for a while.

With the spare towel slung over one shoulder Dean shoves his boots back on and steps back outside. The crow is still settled in its nest, still covered in a thin layer of dust from the ground, but something about it seems different somehow. Dean shakes the feeling off as he reaches the car, ready to apply the wax to his towel, but he pauses. That ‘off’ feeling returns when he notices the car door is open.

With a sense of panic Dean throws open the door the rest of the way, hoping it hasn’t been slightly ajar this whole time, or the soapy water will have got in and ruined the interior. But the inside is completely dry. He runs a hand over the leather, just to check, but there’s not even a hint of damp.

As he’s straightening back up, brows scrunched in confusion, he notices something. There’s his cell phone, sitting on top of his pile of clothes.

That… can’t be right.

He left his cell phone in his pocket, didn’t he? Dean pulls the cell phone out from the car slowly and unlocks it, staring at the screen like it will give him answers.

If it’s here now, then he must have taken it out of his pocket when he undressed earlier and forgotten about it. He must have placed it safely on top of the pile when he folded up all his clothes without even thinking about it, then he just didn’t close the car door properly when he shut it, probably distracted by the music. The wind must have blown it open wider while he was in the cabin.

(There hasn’t even been a breeze this whole time.)

He’s just lucky none of the water got in, that would have been a disaster.

Dean suddenly becomes aware that he’s holding his phone while the crow is around, and he looks over in concern, ready to throw it back into the car. But the crow tilts its head again and shuffles its wings, almost in a clear effort to look casual.

“You uh, you don’t mind the cell phone now?”

The crow tilts its head further.

“‘Cause whatever bullshit your previous owners did to you to take videos of you, I won’t do that.” Dean doesn’t mention that he still intends to get a photo to show Charlie, and that secretly deep down he wants a photo so that when he leaves, he can have a reminder of the little bird friend that he made. “Okay, cool,” he says, feeling a warmth settle in his chest that he’s earned some trust.

Dean sends off a quick message to Bobby before he can get in his head too much about it.

-Message to: Bobby (Real Dad)-

---------------Dean: Hey Bobby, I know it’s been a while, and I know I’ve got a lot of explaining to do, but I’m back in town in a couple of weeks and I’d like to come talk to you. If you’re free. About where I’ve been and if you need any extra help around the yard. In the way of a job? Let me know, or tell me to piss off, I know I’ve been an idiot and don’t expect anything.

Dean knows he should have put an apology in there somewhere, but he really wants to say it to Bobby’s face instead of through a screen. The reply comes sooner than he expected, and he opens the message warily.

-Bobby: Okay. Bobby.

 ---------------Dean: So I can have my old job back?

-Bobby: Let’s talk first. Bobby.

-Bobby: And yeah you’ve been an idiot but that don’t make you any less my boy. Bobby.

Dean can’t stop grinning. “Fuck yes,” he says, all breathless with excitement and overwhelmed with his love for the man who took them in when dad died. “Dude, things are finally starting to look up!” He turns to the crow, still grinning, and it lifts its beak into the air like its pleased.

Dean places his phone back into the car, makes sure the door is shut this time, and finally waxes Baby down. He sings and sways while he wipes the wax onto the shining paintwork, making her practically sparkle, and throws the towel onto the pile with the other pieces when he’s finally done.

The crow watches him the whole time.

Dean wipes his forehead with the back of his arm again. “I know I’ve been complaining about it, but there are a few good ways to sweat. Working on cars like this is almost at the top of my list.” He wiggles his eyebrows at the crow. “Something else is at the very top.”

The crow dips its head down into the mossy nest with a squeak.

“No way did you understand that,” Dean says with a laugh, “damn, gotta remember to censor myself more.”

It slowly dawns on him just how much has changed in the few hours he’s been out here – how awkwardly everything started, and how much easier it all is now.

It takes him a little while to pack away the cassette player and the bottles of car wash and wax back into Baby’s trunk, then wrestle with the tarp into covering her as best it can – it’s a little smaller than she is. But when he’s done, Dean can’t stop feeling the glow of satisfaction of doing a good job, that he’s had a fun time with a friend (even if that friend is a bird), and that Bobby is still talking to him. He might even get his old job back!

Dean puts the piles of towels in the trash and the empty bottle of beer into the kitchen and then comes back out to see the crow staring at him from its nest. “Guess I’ll see you later, then. Maybe.” He still feels a little insane to be talking like this to a crow, but it’s feeling more natural as time goes on. Dean gathers up his clothes and his phone into his arms. “You’re not bad company, Crow.”

“Caw,” the crow says.

“Oh, nearly forgot.” Dean balances his bundle in one arm and digs into the pocket of his jeans with his other hand, then throws out the bottlecap from earlier. The crow reaches forwards and tucks it into the moss with a speed that both shocks and impresses him. “So crows do like shiny stuff. You might even get another later.”

By the time Dean gets to the doorway, ready to shut the door behind him, the crow and its nest are gone.

But this time Dean doesn’t feel sad about it. It’s gone off to do whatever crows do, and for some reason he’s sure it will be back later.

He smiles as he walks back up the staircase and dumps his clothes onto the bed. There’s so much dry sweat on him that he’s pretty sure that in the history of showers, this is going to be the best one he’s ever had. God, it’s going to feel so good.

Dean is just about to leave the room when something about his cell phone catches his eye. It’s sat on top of his pile of clothes, screen facing down, but it looks like there’s something on the back. When he picks it up to look closer, tilting it to catch the light better, he can feel that same ‘off’ feeling from earlier trickling back into him, sliding down his neck.

Dean checks his own hands, trying to make sense of it, but they’ve only ever been wet, dry, or waxy this whole time.

At no point have they been dusty.

But there on the back of his phone is some dried-on dust, in the clear shape of a thumb print.

Chapter Text

Showers suck when it’s nothing but hot water and over-thinking. Dean tries his best to enjoy the process, but it’s all methodical – the satisfaction he was looking forward to just isn't there when all he can think about is whatever Jason Voorhees weirdo is lurking in the forest.

He’s pretty sure that the crow wouldn’t have been sat there all relaxed if somebody had wandered out of the trees, since it barely tolerated his presence when they first met, and Dean was actively trying to make friends. There’s no way it would have been settled in its nest like that if a stranger had come over to his car and walked right by it. But… Dean remembered thinking that there was something that seemed different about the crow when he came back out of the cabin. Maybe it had just been his imagination, but something about it had been off somehow.

Dean scrubs a hand roughly through his hair as he applies the shampoo.

Nothing about this makes any sense.

If – and it’s still a big if – somebody did open the car door and pick up his cell phone, they didn’t even take it with them. What would be the point of leaving it behind? Dean even went through every inch of his phone before he got in the shower, checking through the messages, settings, apps, call logs… and he couldn’t find anything out of place. It looked exactly as it had when he’d locked it earlier.

Except the thumb print.

Hey, maybe there are ghosts after all!

Dean lets the spray hit the top of his shoulders, wishing he could enjoy the heat on his sore muscles that are unused to manual labor again, but he’s stuck trying to make sense of it all. His cell phone appearing on top of his clothes he could rationalize – but the thumb print makes it all fall apart. That can’t have been from his hand.

This is stupid, he’s just going around in circles!

This is the kind of mental gymnastics he should have been doing in a bath, he thinks, glancing over at the huge tub while he dries himself. He can’t remember the last time he had a bath. Amara’s apartment was too small for one, and now so is his. He should at least try to have one before he leaves. It’ll probably take a long time to fill though…

Dean returns to the bedroom and glares at his cell phone, still sitting innocently on the bed. He grabs his clothes and puts them on with more force than is necessary, irritably shoving his arms back into his shirt sleeves while he tries to stop thinking about it all, but he knows the thumb print is still there and it’s driving him crazy.

With a huff Dean grabs it and rubs the back of it vigorously against his shirt. When he pulls it forward and examines the case in the light, he can see all the scratches that he’s used to – but no more thumb print.

There. Gone.

Dean shoves it into his back pocket and ruffles his still damp hair.

Problem solved.

When he gets back down to the kitchen, he’s almost surprised to see the feather still on the table where he left it earlier – finding the weird items in the cabinet feels like a million years ago. He pats down his jeans and feels the tiny key still in the front pocket, relieved that through all his taking them off and putting them back on again he didn’t lose it.

This might be one mystery that he can solve. There has to be some clues.

Dean downs an entire glass of water in a few thirsty gulps, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and takes the feather with him into the living room.

The mystery book is heavier than he remembers, and he’s shocked that tape held it upside down for so long. Dean runs a hand over the title, embossed in bold black against the faded brown leather – ‘Werewolves and Other Were Creatures’. Why would anyone go to such weirdly extreme lengths to hide a fantasy novel? Does anything surrounding this cabin make sense? He’s starting to understand why the other renters left after such a short time, and why the residents of Oakton steer clear.

Dean places the little white feather on the mantel surrounding the fireplace, underneath the huge painting of the swan and the sparrow. The feather is so white it could have come from a swan, he considers, taking a step back and examining the painting. The wingspan on that bird must be huge compared to his little crow friend. Seeing the sparrow flying beside it does put it into perspective. Dean peers closer. Something he didn’t notice before is how bright and vibrant the sparrow looks compared to the swan and the sky – as if they’d been painted at different times, and the sparrow had been added much later. He touches a gentle fingertip against the paintwork, feeling the rough ridges from each stroke. The swan and the sky are far more faded than the sparrow, sure, but both have been painted with care and such attention to detail that it’s like he expects to feel soft feathers instead of paint.

Dean settles into one of the dark green armchairs and pulls the werewolf book onto his lap. He casts one forlorn look at the empty fireplace and resolves to bring in some firewood for it later – he’s seen the store for it around the back. It’s a little too early to be setting off the fire, he reasons, he just wants to feel like he’s in some old-timey movie where the detective sits by the roaring fire with his case notes and a glass of whiskey.

Not like he’s got the whiskey either anyway.

The spine of the old book creaks loudly when Dean opens it, and he jumps when a couple of pieces of paper fall straight out into his lap. One has been folded into a small square, but the corners are so dog-eared, and the edge creases so delicate, that it’s clear that it’s been opened and re-folded many times. The other is a photograph, worn and dotted with tiny spots where it looks like water has fallen onto the ink.

It's the swan!

Dean looks at the photo in his hand and then back up at the painting – it’s the exact same bird in the exact same pose! It’s a huge white bird with a bright orange beak, and its big wings are spread wide open in flight – fanned out in a way that make them look like some kind of angel wings. This photo must have been the reference for the painting. But... there’s no sparrow on the photo. He turns it over and the words, ‘Mute Swan (Cygnus Olor)’, are written in pencil on the back. It’s interesting, but not much of a clue. Dean flips it over a few times and holds it up the light, but it’s just a regular photograph of a regular swan flying in the sky.

The photo goes gently onto the side table beside him and Dean turns his attention to the folded-up paper. When he opens it out carefully, he’s worried that the whole thing will fall apart. The creases are so deep that it’s barely holding itself together.

Words written in a neatly flowing script read:

‘To my beloved Cain,

You told me that it didn’t matter to you, that you love me anyway, but I want you to be sure.

You keep telling me about the nest you’re going to build us, about the life you think we can lead together, and I want that so badly, I truly do, even if someone like me doesn’t deserve it with someone like you.

I’ve loved you since the first time we met, when you threw that slice of bread at me, and it hit me straight in the face. (And it was a rather large slice.) Your brother couldn’t stop laughing, but you apologized so profusely, cradled my face so tenderly, and I just knew – you were the one.

We deserve happiness, don’t we?

I know how much you love books, so please consider this an addition to your collection.

If after everything you still carry love for me in your heart, then I would only ask one thing of you. To stay.

Always Yours,

Colette’.

Dean lets out a long breath. No wonder the book had been so well hidden, that felt like reading someone’s diary or something. And he can’t shake the thought that something bad had happened to Colette. He doesn’t even know why. Maybe it’s because if Cain really did build the cabin for her, then where is she now? He already said that he’s been trying to sell the place, and he’s clearly been renting it out instead of living here himself…

At least some of this is starting to make sense – how the cabin had clearly been built with two people in mind, since that's how Cain had designed it. But this whole place has always seemed so lonely. What could have happened…

And what did she mean when she said that Cain had thrown bread at her when they first met? That can’t be right. Maybe some kind of joke between them? Dean has flirted with girls in some unusual ways over the years, but he’s never thrown a slice of bread at someone’s face.

He lets his eyes roam over the letter again, catching on the final sentences: ‘I would only ask one thing of you. To stay’.

The chair creaks a little as Dean leans back and stares at the ceiling, making sure the paper stays carefully cradled in his hands. He’s never experienced the kind of unconditional love in this letter. It practically oozes out of the words, like he can feel the imprint of it left over in the ink.

All his life he’s flirted with love – he’s had casual flings and one-night stands, but he never let himself fall in deep. With Amara, she used to tell him that they loved each other... but she said a lot of things that weren’t true.

At a certain point Dean just went along with it, but had he ever truly loved her?

Folding the letter back up feels wrong somehow, but he doesn’t want it to get damaged, so Dean folds it carefully along the deep creases and places it gently on the table beside the photo.

The book is still in his lap, and Dean finally returns his attention to it. He checks out the list of contents and immediately decides this probably isn’t a book he’s going to enjoy. With chapter titles like ‘Chromosomes and the Genetic Makeup of the Were creature’, ‘Infection and Spread’, and ‘Cellular Effects in Shifting’, this is one of the weirdest fiction books he’s ever seen. Why would Colette gift Cain a book like this? And then why would he tape it under a kitchen cabinet with a key that doesn’t unlock anything?

Just when this cabin couldn’t get any fucking weirder it does.

A quick flick through the book reveals long walls of text in an extremely small font. Jesus. It looks drier than a desert.

There are a lot of scientific terms and chemical compounds littered throughout the text, and after flicking for a while his eyes kind of glaze over. Occasionally Dean catches a glimpse of the word ‘were creature’ and that reignites his interest, but it never seems to go anywhere except throwing it in with more science-y crap. At times it even says ‘monster’.

Instead of fiction, he’s starting to gain the distinct impression that somebody wrote this with full seriousness and sincerity, there’s no way this is some kind of parody or make-believe – it’s clearly been well researched, and he can visibly see how many hundreds of thousands of words must be in this thing.

Whoever wrote this really believed in what they were trying to sell here.

But, c’mon, werewolves? Were... creatures? That’d be like saying the Tooth Fairy is real.

Dean snorts and keeps flicking, but nothing else about the extremely boring book leaps out at him, so he snaps it shut.

If he had a girlfriend (or boyfriend, his mind supplies) that gifted him a book like this he’d wonder what he’d done wrong, but Colette did say that Cain loved books, and Dean can see what kind of other books are in his collection. He glances over at the bookcase on the other side of the room. Maybe the man just has weird taste.

He sighs and looks back down at the book in his hands. After a moment of hesitation, he slots the letter and the photo back inside and heaves himself out of the chair to place it on the mantle next to the feather. He pulls the key out of his pocket and leaves it on top of the book. Should he tape them back where he found them before he leaves? Or just admit to Cain that he found them by accident?

That sounds like a problem for Future Dean… a decision he’ll make at the end of his vacation.

For now, Dean leaves them where they are and takes another look at the swan painting.

With his mystery book being a bust, and his mood down in his boots from thinking about what could have happened to Cain and Colette, Dean turns to the bookcase that extends around the room. Since he’s got time, he’ll at least find something about crows, and then he won’t accidentally feed it something poisonous or whatever. Anyway, it might be interesting to learn about his new little buddy. Especially since he gave him a freaking compass as a gift! It’s the least he could do.

The titles are all in alphabetical order, which is either impressive or creepy, so Dean starts at the top and starts running a finger over the spines as he goes.

He freezes when his finger hits a huge book titled, ‘Birds of Cabin Plume’. That’s exactly what he’s looking for!

There has to be something about crows in there.  

Dean pulls at the spine to take it out of the bookcase and nearly falls over backwards when it flies off the shelf with no resistance – not the weight he was expecting for a book that big. He mutters curses while he regains his balance and holds it out in front of him.

The ‘book’ is hollow, he can feel it. It’s made of some kind of thin wooden board that’s been painted to look like a real book. Dean knocks on it a couple of times, and the sound confirms it. The ‘front cover’ of the book is painted entirely green, except for a circle in the center that has a small replica of the cabin itself painted inside it. From everything that Dean has learned about Cain so far, this has to be his work. The cabin painting is so detailed for something so tiny. Dean almost expects to see an Impala parked out front, or a crow perched on the roof.

Dean tries to pry it open, but the lid won’t budge.

What?

Turning it over reveals a line of carved feathers into the wood where the pages would be, and there nestled among them is a tiny keyhole.

“Okay, is this a prank? Am I getting punked?” Dean yells, throwing one arm in the air and turning around on the spot. He peers up into every corner of the room, checking for hidden cameras, and whips his head around towards the front door. He’s expecting someone to jump out at any moment and tell him that this is all a setup, because, c’mon. This is getting insane. This can’t be real.

A firm knock at the door makes Dean jump so badly he nearly drops the pretend book.

“No- No fucking way,” he yelps, equal parts disappointed and annoyed. Did Garth really set this whole thing up?

Dean places the wooden book onto the mantle, underneath the swan painting, and makes his way to the door, swinging it open with force. “Garth, if that’s you and this whole thing has been a prank- I swear to-”

“Well, hello to you too,” a woman says, standing on the doorstep. She’s shorter than he is, but she stands upright with confidence. Her hair is cut extremely short, and even though her expression is stern, the lines at the corners of her eyes suggests she smiles a lot. A golden star shines on her dark brown coat that says ‘SHERIFF’.

Chapter Text

“Shit, sorry Sheriff thought you were… someone else.” At least it’s not Garth laughing at him, but seeing the Sheriff on the doorstep isn’t much better.

“I’m from Oakton,” she says, her stern expression remaining, “Sheriff Jody Mills.” Jody offers out a hand to shake and Dean takes it.

“Dean Winchester,” he offers back, shaking firmly. “You, uh- you want to come in?”

Jody hesitates just long enough for Dean to remember that everyone in town is convinced that the place is haunted. “Thank you,” she says eventually, as she steps inside and darts quick looks around the room.

For some reason Dean suddenly wants to hide all the stuff he’s found. He hopes that if he doesn’t draw attention to any of it, she won’t notice – but then again, it’s not like she’d know what she was looking at anyway.

He takes a steadying breath, shuts the door behind her with a click and follows her into the living room.

“So, what can I do for you, Sheriff? Take a seat. You want a drink?”

“No, thank you, I won’t stay long. I’m here because I ran into a couple of people in town who were talking about you renting this place out, and I just wanted to see how you were doing,” Jody says, her voice a mixture of concern and authority.

Something about her no-nonsense attitude banishes the strange events of the day, like an anchor back to reality, and Dean appreciates the reminder that things make sense out there in the world beyond the spooky cabin. But then again, she’s still eyeing the room with distrust, and Dean can’t believe that someone this grounded seems so ready to believe in the supernatural.

Dean catches the moment when she suddenly notices all the bird paintings around the room – her lips pinch and her eyebrows furrow as her eyes dart across to each one. “They seemed worried about you,” Jody adds, as if she’s starting to agree.

“Oh,” Dean says stupidly, at a sudden loss for words at the realization that the people he’d met so briefly in Oakton cared enough about him to worry and talk about him with the Sheriff. He mostly runs on the assumption that if he’s not actively around people they forget he exists, so knowing that they’d taken a shine to him, even from the brief time they’d interacted, warms something deep in Dean’s heart, thawing out something Amara had iced over. “Well, yeah, I’m doing fine. Great, actually.” He inwardly winces at hearing the same phrase he used with Charlie pop back out.

Jody seems as unconvinced as Charlie was as she takes another look around, and he can’t blame her, it still sounds just as fake as when he said it this morning, maybe even more so now. But she doesn’t follow up with any kind of comment, caught up in examining the room, and Dean’s sure that this must be her first time inside the cabin with how uncomfortable she seems.

“Talk of the town, am I?” Dean says with a wink, mostly just to break the silence.

Jody seems to regain her composure, and her face finally breaks into a brief smile. “Well, not many people who come up here stay all that long. But I’m sure you know that already. Cesar said he warned you, and Benny said that Andrea warned you, but you were quite stubborn about going. They didn’t want you to be carried off by ghosts just because you were trying to prove a point.”

Dean scoffs as he immediately responds with, “I don’t believe in ghosts.” But he suddenly finds himself less certain of his words than he had been yesterday.

“Probably for the best if you’re staying here.” Jody takes a few steps over towards the fireplace and Dean again feels the insane impulse to hide everything from her. She ignores all the objects on the mantle and looks up at the swan and the sparrow painting.

“I know. They’re kinda creepy,” Dean says, gesturing at the birds, “but you get used to them after a while. At first, I kept thinking their eyes were gonna follow me around the room, like something out of a Scooby Doo episode.”

“My Deputy would say exactly the same,” Jody says, with her first bit of warmth. “They’re certainly a… unique way to furnish a space.” She casts another look around. “It’s cozier than I thought it would be, though. Cain did a good job.”

That gets Dean’s attention. “You knew Cain?”

“In a way. I was a little young to have met him in person, but I knew of him at least. I think everyone in Oakton did. He’d show up from time to time to buy supplies and disappear back here again. Did that for years.” Jody puts her hands on her hips, seemingly more comfortable the longer she spends in the cabin without bursting into flames or whatever it is the people in town think happens here.

“Mysterious guy…” Dean says.

“Sure seems that way. Nobody really knew much about him. He mentioned his wife sometimes, but she never came with him. She was even more mysterious than he was.”

“Colette,” spills out of Dean’s mouth before he can stop it, and Jody looks at him sharply, her eyebrows pinching together.

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Just, uh, something I read. On an old… note. Didn’t realize they got married is all.”

Jody sighs. “It’s not a happy story I’m afraid. He never said as much, but we all figured she died, because he suddenly put this place up for private rent and totally disappeared. Nobody knew what happened to her, but y’know how stuff passes around in these kinds of small towns…”

Dean can only imagine the sort of stuff everyone in Oakton would have been saying about Cain after that. “He didn’t kill her,” he blurts. “I mean, he just doesn’t seem like the type. He loved her.”

“You got all that from a note?”

“I can just tell,” Dean says firmly.

There’s a brief silence and then a smile flickers back onto Jody’s face. “Well, honestly, I never thought so either." She shrugs. “Either way, one day he just never came back, the rumors flew, and then nobody would set foot close to the cabin after that. Except the out-of-towners that Cain managed to get to rent it.” Jody gives him a brief look. “And none of them ever lasted long.”

“Well, like I said,” Dean says with a huff, “I don’t believe in ghosts, so I’ve been fine.”

“You hold onto that,” Jody says, her tone turning serious again. “I don’t want to freak you out, but there’s something about this whole area that’s a little strange. People would leave and say that they felt… watched.”

“Oh, that’ll just be the crow.”

“The… crow?”

“Yeah, it hangs around here and likes to stare at you out of the trees. It’s a little off-putting at first, but I think it’s just shy or something. Grumpy. Likes shiny stuff. Bit of an attitude for something so small and fluffy.” Dean doesn’t notice he’s speaking so fondly until he notices Jody looking at him strangely. “It’s harmless,” he adds, clearing his throat.

“Never heard anything about a crow, but a couple of the writers said they’d seen a huge eagle after a couple of days, one said she’d taken a walk through the woods and seen a flamingo, and one of them even told Benny that he’d seen a penguin in there! Impossible I know,” Jody says with a small shake of her head. “But writers have big imaginations, right? And I’m sure this place gets pretty spooky on your own. It must be easy to imagine things that aren’t really there.” She’s trying to put on an air of reassurance now, her expression and tone warmer than before.

“Like the ghosts,” Dean says, with a grin that doesn’t reach his eyes. What the fuck is up with this cabin? Cain said in his letter that there would be birds from species he wouldn’t expect to see in the woods, but a penguin?

Once again, a tiny curl of doubt creeps into him as to whether the crow is some kind of figment of his imagination – his broken mind trying to cope with calling it off with Amara and finding himself alone again – but Dean pats the pocket of his jeans that the compass is in. It’s still there. His gift is still there. He didn’t give it to his damn self. The crow has to be real.

“Like the ghosts,” Jody agrees. “If you don’t believe in them, then don’t let the small-town gossip sway you from your vacation. I really just wanted to check you were okay out here. My Deputy’s been wanting to rent this place out for a weekend getaway for years, but she talks tougher than she really is, and she couldn’t ever quite bring herself to do it.” Jody says with a laugh. “She’s very jealous of you. I think she’d like you.”

“Hey now Sheriff, that’s the second time you’ve mentioned her, you trying to set me up with someone?”

Jody laughs even harder. “Hardly. The Deputy’s my wife.”

“O-Oh.”

“Oh?” Jody repeats, her expression darkening.

“No, no, shit- it’s not like that,” Dean says hastily, realizing how that sounded. “I’m just not used to people saying- I mean, where I’m from, I’ve never been able to- I just… uh- I’ve never been to a place as... accepting as this.” Dean wants to slap a palm over his face to get himself to stop tripping over his words instead of just saying the one thing that he wants to – I’ve been a closeted bisexual pretty much my whole life and it’s kind of changing my entire world view to hear people admit their sexuality so casually.

Immediately Jody visibly softens – her whole demeanor seems to melt and lose all its edge. “Well, it’s not perfect, but Oakton’s always been a pretty diverse town. It’s as safe as I can make it, and I’m proud of that. You’d be very welcome there if you ever decided you liked the area and wanted to stay.”

Dean swallows down his compulsion to backtrack and deny everything that he’s very clearly just implied that she’s correctly picked up on. He needs to get better at this, and she just told him outright that she has a wife – he’s safe, he can do this. He takes a breath. Why is this shit so hard to talk about? He hopes one day he can be like Jody and Cesar, and just say it out loud without any fear (or hearing his dad’s voice in the back of his head calling him slurs). “Thanks, Sheriff,” he says eventually. “I appreciate that.” He meets her eyes, trying to convey just how grateful he is. “But also, listen,” he adds with a frown, “you’re the third person who I’ve met from Oakton who’s got a ring on their finger, what the hell is in the water there that everyone is married? You guys allergic to single people?”

Jody laughs loudly and claps him on the shoulder. “Yeah, you’d definitely get on with Donna.” She takes a small pad of paper out of her pocket and scribbles something on it, then passes it over to him. “Despite what you’ve told me, the truth of it is that something about this place scares everyone off, so if you see experience anything strange, you call my number, and I’ll be here as soon as I can.”

Dean wants to laugh. The irony is that he’s experienced a lot of strange stuff since coming here. Where would he even begin? He hesitates for a fraction of a second, toying with the idea of explaining everything he’s seen and found so far. What would be the harm in telling her? But the impulse dies almost as quickly as it comes, and Dean just inclines his head politely. “Thanks. Appreciate it. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Jody stares at him a beat longer, and Dean wonders if she can sense there’s something he’s not telling her. But the moment passes, and she begins to make her way back to the door. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” As soon as she steps out onto the doorstep, her boots crunching on fallen leaves, she stops and turns back to face him. “I hope you’ll come back through Oakton on your trip home, I know a few people who’ll want to know how you got on. Me and Donna included.”

“Count on it. There’s no way I can leave without another one of Benny’s burgers and a slice of homemade pie.”

“Well, good luck then, enjoy your vacation. Remember, you’ve got my number if you need it.”

Dean feels the urge to roll his eyes say ‘yes, mom’ and understands a little of what Charlie puts up with when he starts to mother-hen her. But he’s never had it this way around before. Bobby has his own gruff but sincere parental form of affection, and Charlie and Sam both have theirs as his younger siblings, but he’s never had someone make him feel like he’s about to get the ‘give me a call when you get home so I know you’re safe’ line. His own mom died before he could have any solid memories of her – she’s just a hazy concept of motherly love – so he’s at a loss for what to say or do here.

Finally, Dean reaches out a hand to shake and Jody takes it firmly. “The first ghost I see I’ll be putting your number straight in.”

Jody swats his hand away. “Don’t even joke about it!” she says, her stern expression returning. “I mean it. Just be careful. I wouldn’t be doing my job as Sheriff if I didn’t look out for everyone in the area, even on this godforsaken hill.” She visibly shudders and moves away from the cabin, back to her car, parked near the tarp covered silhouette of Baby. “Good luck, Dean!” she calls out to him as she climbs in and shuts the door.

“Thanks Sheriff!” Dean replies, even though she can’t hear him in the car.

Gravel crunches noisily as she swings out, and with a final wave goodbye, Dean watches the car disappear into the shadows of the tree lined path, back down the hill.

Dean lets out a long breath and re-enters the cabin, clicking the door shut softly behind him.

The whole visit has left him with a lingering kind of warmth that he holds onto. Dean knows he’s always been good with people and found that he’s the sort of person that can make friends wherever he goes, but the last couple of years with Amara had seemed to grind that away from him. She never liked him going anywhere without her, so he never had a chance to make many new friends or socialize with new people. His life had become so insulated with just Amara, her friends, and his coworkers… and she’d convinced him that was all he needed.

He hadn’t even realized how much he missed this. How amazing it is to him that people would take time out of their day to think about him, or like Jody, come to visit just to see if he’s okay. Sam’s always been his number one priority (it still hurts when he realizes how Amara managed to change even that) – so he’s used to being the older brother and letting Sam be the one that people treat more gently. But here he’s not the Older Brother. He’s not Amara’s Boyfriend. He’s Just Dean.

Dean pats the compass in his pocket again.

Despite what he said to the crow, maybe he’s slowly starting to figure out who that is.

When Dean turns back to the mantle he’s almost surprised to see the stuff he found before, sitting right where he left it all. It almost feels like it should be gone – like he’s let the real world back in, and all the secrets and mysteries shouldn’t exist anymore. But they’re all still there.

Dean picks up the fake book once more, determination rising in him to figure out what happened here. If he can find out what the mystery is behind the cabin and Colette’s disappearance, maybe he can change the way the town views the cabin and Cain himself. Maybe he’d even move back in.

“Seems like you’ve been waiting for someone as stubborn as me,” he says – to the cabin? To the ghost of Colette?

He’s not leaving until he’s got to the bottom of all this.

The small key Dean found in the cupboard fits inside the lock perfectly, and it turns with a smooth tick. “Cain, you escape-room loving son of a bitch,” he mutters, as he pulls the wooden lid open with a creak.

Dean is taken aback when he realizes that he’s looking at a big pile of faded photographs, same in size and style as the one of the swan from before. Photos? That’s it?

He falls heavily into his favorite armchair, pulling the fake book onto his lap, and lifts out the pile. The first few photos are more of the swan – but maybe it’s a totally different one? It’s not like Dean would be able to tell, and don’t they all look the same? Something about it seems the same in every picture, though. Maybe the eyes? The swan always seems to be looking at whoever is taking the photo, in every shot. He doesn’t know anything about animal photography, but that feels impressive.

Each swan photo has the same handwritten note on the back with its species name, and what Dean assumes is the scientific name right next to it. He flicks them to the back of the pile and feels his eyebrows go up to his hairline at the first photo that isn’t just the swan.

That’s the cabin, but it’s surrounded by all kinds of birds. Impossible birds. There’s a flamingo, standing on one leg by the door, and an honest to God penguin stood on the doorstep – just like Jody said the writer had seen! An array of birds are perched on the roof, where the crow was earlier, of all sorts of sizes and species. A big owl, a brightly colored parrot, some smaller birds Dean doesn’t know the names of, and a hulking vulture… all sat next to each other like they’re posing for the photo or something. Right in the center, in front of the door, is the swan, and next to it is a golden eagle, though it looks smaller than Dean would expect for a bird like that. It’s-

Then he spots it.

The crow!

Dean brings the photo closer to his face, but that’s definitely the crow! It’s sat next to the swan on its other side, a small bundle of black feathers that almost blends in with the gravel underneath it, and Dean thinks it looks even smaller than he remembers. (Maybe it’s not even the same crow? But again, there’s something about the eyes that seems familiar…) The closest bird on its other side is a rooster, but it’s some distance away, like the gap between them is deliberate. It seems insane to think that, but the others are all so close to each other, it makes the gap obvious. Some weird flare of defensiveness makes him frown. What do those other birds have against the crow?

Dean turns the photo over and the handwritten note on the back says, ‘Flock Plume’. When he turns it back over, he belatedly realizes that all the birds are looking straight ahead at the camera. He shudders.

Fucking creepy.

So, it looks like Cain really did build some kind of bird sanctuary in the woods. That’s the only way Dean can think that he could have brought that many birds of that many kinds of species together like that. But some of them shouldn’t even be able to survive in this kind of forest environment – a penguin?! – and Dean’s pretty sure those big birds are mostly carnivores and would probably eat one of those tiny birds sitting nearby if they were in the wild. How did Cain manage to find all these tame birds and bring them together like this without anybody noticing?

That photo finally goes to the back of the pile too and Dean flicks through the rest, realizing they’re all more reference photos for the paintings around the cabin. That’s a bird he’s seen in a painting going up the stairs, that one’s in the living room, that one too, that’s from one of the bird paintings in the kitchen…

When he comes across the photo of the eagle, he realizes why it looked smaller than he would have expected, as he can see it better in a clearer image – it’s just young. These must have been taken some time ago. The state of the edges of the photos and the faded colors makes sense now too.

Dean finally gets to a photo of a bird that he recognizes well. “Hey, buddy!” he says out loud, weirdly happy to see it, like he’s come across a photo of an old friend. He understands why the painting has always seemed a bit different to the real thing, because now he knows these are all from the past, he can see how much younger the bird is in the photo to how it is in real life. Smaller and fluffier.

On the back it reads, ‘American Crow (Corvus Brachyrhynchos)’.

Try to say that five times fast.

It’s a bit of a surprise that he didn’t feel the telltale sensation of the crow watching him and Jody before while they were outside the cabin, but he figures the bird must have a home somewhere in the forest with all the others and isn’t just watching Dean every hour of the day.

He’s been wanting to go into the forest anyway, but now he’s got an incentive – to see if the birds are all still there, and to check if they’re okay. He can’t help but imagine all these birds in abandoned cages and dusty food bowls.

At least the crow seems to be coming and going as it pleases.

A photo catches Dean’s eye, just before he’s about to put them down, that he almost missed because he flicked through them so quickly. He pulls it out for a closer look and feels his eyes widen. Oh… That’s them.

A young couple stand in front of a mostly finished wooden cabin that Dean recognizes, even in it’s partially built state. The camera is so far away that he can’t see them clearly, but the man has his dark hair a similar length to Sam’s, pulled back behind his ears, with a thick dark beard covering the bottom of his face. His clothes are a simple shirt and loose-fitting pants, both covered in sawdust. His one hand is raised up to wave at the camera, while his other is around the waist of the woman next to him. The woman at his side is almost as tall as he is, with a slender frame, wearing a long white dress and a white cape of some kind that goes up behind her shoulders and falls all the way down her back to the ground. She’s also waving at the camera. They’re too far away to make out their expressions clearly, but they seem to radiate happiness by their body language alone.

There’s no surprise when Dean turns over the photo and it says, ‘Me and Colette. Outside our future nest – Cabin Plume.’

There’s no way he killed her, and there’s no way she ‘haunts the cabin’, whatever the residents of Oakton think.

But something did happen. And what’s with all the birds?

When Dean turns it back around, he realizes there’s a date written in the bottom corner, and he squints at it making sure he’s read it right – that was just over twenty years ago! But that would make the crow over 20 years old… Do they even live that long?

Dean scratches his head as he puts the photos back into the box and replaces it onto the mantle. This place just keeps getting weirder. Every time he thinks a question will be answered he ends up with five new ones. He’s not even sure why he’s bothered about pursuing all of this, but there’s always been something about a mystery that he’s never been able to resist – he thinks maybe he could have made a good detective if he hadn’t got into fixing cars… saving people, solving crimes… or something.

With one last look around at the bird paintings, lingering on the swan and the sparrow, Dean leaves the living room to make himself some late lunch.

------------------------

Dean busies himself during the afternoon with some small jobs he’s been meaning to do. He collects some firewood from the store next to the back of the cabin and even has a go at chopping some himself. He’s surprised at how quickly he picks up the right angle and power to get a clean cut, considering he’s never handled an axe before, and replenishes the store for another day. The firewood goes into the empty fireplace for later, now that Dean is determined to sit with a beer and read a less confusing (or fake) bird book later.

It's a slow afternoon after all that excitement and Dean tries to remember that’s what he came on this vacation for in the first place.

He cleans the bathroom a little, washes the dishes from his lunch, and generally tries not to let his thoughts linger on anything to do with the cabin and its previous occupants. (His brain refuses to get this memo however, and questions won’t stop rattling around inside his brain no matter how much he tries to shut it up.) He gets his cell phone out, almost about to ring Sam and bring him in on it all, when he decides against it and puts the phone away. It’s the same reason that he felt he couldn’t tell Charlie or Jody – he doesn’t want to bring anyone else into his problems. He’s sure that Sam would drop everything and jump into the online research for him surrounding the cabin and the town, but he’s been working hard lately to take on as much overtime as he can to save up for all the baby stuff him and Eileen are going to need. Dean doesn’t want to distract him.

But now that he’s thinking of his little brother Dean can’t stop himself from getting his phone back out and firing off a quick message.

 -Message to: Sam (Sammy)-

---------------Dean: I need to tell you that I chopped firewood with an axe earlier and still have all my limbs and fingers attached because I need to brag about it but there’s nobody here

---------------Dean: If I make Baby Winchester a wooden crib and bring it back with me what are the chances that Eileen will use it?

The response is almost immediate and Dean smiles at how Sammy never changes – when he sees Dean’s name pop up on his screen he always replies right away, no matter what he’s doing. (It reaffirms Dean’s decision not to tell him any of the weird stuff about the cabin, though it sure would be useful to have all that research done for him.)

-Sam: It’s not that we don’t trust your newly discovered passion for woodworking, but when you preface asking if you can make our baby a crib with the surprise that you still have all your limbs attached…

---------------Dean: Damn. Betrayed by my own funnies.

-Sam: Glad it sounds like you’re having fun! [grinning emoji]

---------------Dean: I am – it’s been really good for me. I even sent a message to Bobby

-Sam: What!! Dean that’s great news! I’ve been telling both of you stubborn idiots to get in touch with each other for ages. Can’t believe it took you being stuck in the middle of nowhere to finally do it!

Dean thinks about how he almost chickened out of it. If his cell phone hadn’t been in such easy reach, he might never have sent that message. He’s only as stubborn as Bobby is, and he’s aware enough to know that it’s something he picked up from him, so they could have stayed not talking forever if Dean hadn’t finally swallowed his pride and just done it. Talking with the crow had really put some stuff into perspective… he should give it an extra big slice of pie later as thanks. But thinking of that moment makes him remember the thumb print on his phone, and a cold thread of anxiety curls back into his chest.

He must take a while to respond because his phone buzzes again in his hand.

-Sam: What did he say?

---------------Dean: Yeah yeah yeah. You’re starting to sound just like him yknow. I asked if I might be able to get my old job back and he said we could talk about it in person

Dean smiles. ‘That don’t make you any less my boy’, Bobby had said. 

---------------Dean: It was good to hear from him again

-Sam: We’ll have to meet up at Bobby’s, all three of us, when you get back.

---------------Dean: Hell yeah and dad-to-be can provide the beer. Thems the rules

-Sam: You suck.

---------------Dean: YOU suck

-Sam: [laughing emoji] Okay I’ll provide the beer, as long as you bring the snacks.

---------------Dean: Deal

-Sam: Well just don’t get eaten by any bears before then, be safe.

---------------Dean: Always am

When another message doesn’t come through Dean pockets his cell phone, feeling a renewed sense of adventure and energy.

He’ll be safe. But he’s also got time to kill, a forest to investigate, and a mystery to solve.

------------------------

The fence surrounding the garden is taller than Dean is, so it’s impossible to see over the top when standing close. Seems like a deliberate move to keep people from peeking over into the forest.

Dean walks the entire perimeter of the garden, nearly stumbling over the corner of one of the old beehives on his way past. It seems a shame to see something like that so shabby and unloved, when it should be buzzing with life and activity. He imagines it would be pretty cool to be able to make your own honey.

The fence is too tall to try and climb, Dean thinks, running his hand over the wooden panel in front of him. It feels as solid and well made as everything else Cain has done with the cabin. Curse his stupidly good carpentry.

He’d been hoping to get into the woods from here, but he’s just going to have to approach it from the front of the cabin, and skirt around the outside…

Just as Dean goes to move away, he notices something strange. There’s something on the panel at the end of the path. He quickly moves over to the part of the fence, in the very center of the circle enclosing the garden, and touches his fingertips to the wood.

There are feathers carved here.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Dean mutters aloud.

In the middle of the cluster of carved feathers is a tiny keyhole.

It takes Dean less than a minute to race back up the path to the cabin, grab the key, and run back. He’s out of breath when he puts the key into the lock, both from the run and from the excitement.

There’s no way this key unlocks the fake book and the fence…

It slides in easily and clicks when it turns, revealing a hidden gate that swings outwards with a small creak.

“Holy shit,” Dean says under his breath.

Trees loom in front of him, huge and full of leaves, while beneath the canopy is nothing but shadows. The sunlight from earlier in the day has been hidden behind a thick layer of gray clouds, making it even darker than usual, so he can barely see anything inside. The path that runs down the garden ends here.

Dean has been warned about the forest multiple times, but he’s on the edge of something here, and he thinks there might be answers inside. Plus, he’s just kinda curious about it all. Dean Winchester doesn’t turn tail and back down.

At least, the Dean Winchester he’s becoming again doesn’t.

Fuck it.

He takes a step out beyond the gate, into the woods, and something small, fast and dark, comes straight out of the shadows aiming for his head.

Chapter Text

Dean yelps as he’s forced to take a few steps back, raising his arms up to his face protectively as something sharp catches in his hair and flaps violently around his head. “Ow! What the- fucking- hey!” He raises a hand to bat away his attacker as it squawks loudly.

“Knock it off!” Dean yells over the chaotic sounds of squawking and wingbeats in his ears. “You stopped me! Alright already! I’m not going in!”

The noise and the flapping finally calm down, and Dean lets out a long breath as he lowers his arms and opens his eyes. “Jesus,” he hisses.

The familiar crow is on the garden path, and it’s puffed up more than Dean has seen it so far, with both of its broad black wings flared wide. It’s amazing how a bird can look so angry, but it manages it.

“Hey, what the fuck was that?” Dean says curtly, running a hand through his hair and glaring at the crow. He runs his fingers over his scalp, checking for scratches, and examines his shirt for any rips, but his clothing is intact and nothing hurts. It must have been trying to scare him, not hurt him. But still…

“That was uncalled for, man.”

“Caw!” The crow walks all the way around him and hops through the gateway to the forest, then gestures out its wings even wider, as if trying to block him. Crows are large birds, sure, but it still doesn’t come up any taller than mid-shin, so it’s not exactly the intimidating effect Dean thinks it’s going for. As if sensing Dean’s thoughts the crow raises its beak up even higher and puffs out all its feathers again.

Even if Dean could physically easily move past it, he does get the message. “Fine,” he grumbles, “you win.” They stare each other down for a moment until the crow finally shakes its entire body, from head to tail, and its feathers momentarily puff up even further before they start to lie flat again. Dean suppresses the smile threatening to break through his frown. He just can’t stay mad when it looks so cute all fluffy and puffy like that.

But he can’t let cuteness stop him from being mad at that kind of behavior.

Dean looks away and bites the inside of his cheek to stop his smile. When he looks back, he frowns and gestures at the gate. “I was only going in for a small look. Did that really need you trying to pluck my eyes out?”

“Caw-Caw!” The crow flaps its wings a few times, clearly still angry.

And yeah, Dean’s been told multiple times not to go in there, but a guy gets curious is all.

“Okay! Fine! Cool it, Cogsworth, I get it. The West Wing is forbidden. Nothing at all in the West Wing,” Dean says with a roll of his eyes. He crosses his arms and uses a firm voice to add, “But that was still not cool.”

The crow lowers its wings, dips its head down, and even its tail droops to the ground. It walks slowly through the gate and back around Dean, while its long feathery tail drags along behind it. As soon as it’s in front of him again it peers up at him with big glassy eyes, shining black with a hint of clear-skies blue around the edges, doing the best impression of a kicked puppy Dean has ever seen.

“Don’t go all sad bird routine on me, man, you nearly clawed me to pieces and messed up my hair,” Dean says, arms still crossed over his chest, trying his best to resist the temptation to bend down and pet the sad little thing. He knows that it wasn’t trying to hurt him, not really, because it could have done so easily if it had wanted to. The claws on the ends of its feet are long and sharp and yet Dean has escaped without a single scratch.

The crow tilts its head a little to the side and lets out a soft cooing sound, which combined with the big glassy eyes looking up at him, is just about the cutest thing Dean’s ever seen.

Goddamn it.

Dean lets out a noisy breath as he crouches down, balancing on the balls of his feet. He already knows that all his irritation has evaporated completely. He just can’t stay mad at his little bird friend. “Just don’t do that again, okay? You don’t want me going in the woods- fine- but I wasn’t going to freaking explode or whatever for taking a single step inside.”

The crow hops towards Dean tentatively and tilts its head even further, letting out a quiet chirp.

How is he supposed to resist that?

“Don’t look at me like that.” Dean reaches out a hand and pets the top of the crow’s head gently. It flinches at first, and he’s about to pull his hand back, but almost instantly it moves back in and leans its head eagerly into his touch. “Yeah, you’re forgiven. We’re still friends,” Dean says softly, stroking its head with the direction of the tiny feathers.

He eventually runs his hand further down its neck and strokes across its silky back feathers, amazed at how soft it feels. Even in the gray light from the cloud-covered sky, Dean can see how shiny and almost iridescent its longer feathers are as he smooths his hand across them over and over. Crow feathers are pretty in a way that he thinks a lot of people would miss unless they’ve been lucky enough to be this close to one.

“Don’t know why it’s that important I don’t go in, though,” Dean grumbles, running careful fingers over the longest feathers of the crow’s powerful wings. Its eyes are closed, and it keeps butting its head forwards whenever Dean’s hand hasn’t been there for long enough. A smile finally breaks through his frown, and he laughs a little. “What have I done? Now you’re going to want head pats all the time.”

The crow cracks open one eye huffily, clicking its beak a couple of times, but it quickly loses composure and tilts its head back, eyes closed again, as Dean scratches a finger in between the feathers on the back of its neck. “I think you’d be purring if you could,” he says with amusement as the happy bird leans even further into his touch.

Dean eventually stands back up with a groan at his creaky knees, and the crow hops forwards, pecking at his boots. “I knew it. Addicted to these magic fingers. You’re not the first.”

It pecks at his boots even harder, making Dean laugh as he takes a few steps away and reaches out for the gate to pull it closed, using the key as a handle. He pauses as he stands before the invisible division between the cabin and the woods. What is with this place… What could be in there?

Dean is about to pull again but freezes when he thinks he spots something. He looks harder and thinks he can make out the shape of something in the shadows – the shape of a huge bird? – sat on a branch nearby. Staring straight at him with a flash of golden yellow eyes.

The crow behind him pulls sharply at his jeans with its beak and Dean turns to look down at it, flapping a hand to shoo it off. “I’m getting there, bossy.”

When he looks back into the forest, there’s nothing there but endless tree trunks and leaves.

A chill runs through him.

Finally, Dean pulls the gate closed, twists the key out, and puts it into the same pocket as the compass. He’s not exactly giving up on a trip into the forest, but he’s just going to have to time it to when he knows the crow isn’t going to be around. Not that he can possibly know when that is, since it seems to appear out of nowhere most of the time.

Dean leans back on his heels. “Can’t stay here all day, buddy. If I’m not allowed in the forest,” he says pointedly, “then I’ve got no reason to stick around.”

The crow grumbles a flat sounding, “Caw.”

Dean laughs loudly and starts walking back down the path. “Yeah, well, serves you right for messing up my hair.”

He only notices that the crow isn’t beside him anymore when something large and heavy lands on his shoulder, gripping tightly. Dean jumps so hard he nearly trips over his own feet. “Shit! I swear one of these days you’re going to give me a heart attack.”

“Caw!” the crow says, as if denying it.

Dean clears his throat, turning to look at the bird perched on his shoulder. “So, there’s this thing called Personal Space…” His statement is met with a tilted head. Of course it is. “Just because I pet you one time doesn’t mean you can use me as your own personal human-sized taxi you- hey!”

The crow pushes its beak up into Dean’s hair.

Dean immediately reaches up to push it off his shoulder, but before he can, he realizes what it’s doing. With careful, gentle motions of its beak, it’s nibbling and moving around his hair. Dean’s seen the crow doing the same thing to its own wings, and he’s even seen the pigeons in the city doing it too. Grooming? He’s still not clued up on bird behavior. Not that he didn’t try and learn something earlier, but the first book he tried to read was too boring, and not really about birds anyway, and the second was fake, so he gained no extra bird-related knowledge for his troubles.

The crow is methodical in its movements, careful with its sharp beak and his scalp, and eventually flaps over to his other shoulder to do the other side too. Dean even dips his chin down so that it can gain better access to the top of his head.

He feels kinda stupid.

But at the same time, it’s kinda sweet too.

Eventually the crow glides back down to the ground and peers up at its work, like it’s appraising him. After a long inspection, it ducks its head down and shuffles its wings, the feathers going all puffy again.

Is that good or bad?

Dean grins. “I think you made it worse, but thank you.”

“Caw!”

“First time I’ve ever had my hair styled by a crow,” Dean says with a shake of his head as he starts walking again. “Y’know, I should really give you a name… I keep calling you Crow, but that’s a little impersonal. You should have a name.”

The crow hops along next to him, trying to keep up with Dean’s long strides, and he slows down a little. “You’d need a name that goes with crow, though, like Cathy or Carl… I suppose I’d need to know if you were a girl or boy first…”

The crow rapidly hops a few paces in front of Dean and flares up its wings, squawking loudly with what Dean can only describe as indignation.

“I didn’t say I was gonna check!”

The crow settles back down, and Dean crouches next to it again, petting it gently on the head. “You seem like a guy to me anyway. Don’t know why.” He chuckles. “Actually, when I was growing up, I always wanted a friend like Scooby Doo. Man, it crushed me when I realized talking dogs don’t exist. But hey, you understand English, so you’re part-way there.”

The crow leans into his touch again and Dean gives it a final pat before he straightens back up.

“It’s so weird… You can’t talk back to me, but I sometimes feel like if you could, you would.”

“Caw.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d say that.”

Dean pauses for a moment, just watching the bird – its head is tilted to one side again as it peers up at him, and its wings ruffle occasionally like it just can’t stay still.

“I really am losing it, aren’t I? I don’t know much about birds, but this” – he gestures rapidly between them – “us having a conversation? It’s really not possible.” Dean makes a noise of frustration and looks up at the cloudy, gray sky hanging over the garden. “There’s that whole thing about how lonely people end up with a million cats, and I think I get it. You kid yourself that you’re talking to someone, and it takes the edge off feeling alone.” He kicks a stone from the path into the grass. “Instead of crazy-cat-lady I’ll be crazy-bird-guy.”

When Dean looks back down, he sees that the crow is staring at him so intensely that he can feel it prickling the back of his neck. He almost takes a step back with the intensity of it. “What?” he says.

The crow stares and stares. There’s so much intelligence in its shiny eyes, and now Dean’s noticed it, he can still see the faint ring of blue around the edges. Eventually it looks down at itself, examines each wing that it holds out to one side briefly, and it puffs up, clacking its beak with visible frustration. It chatters in a string of caws as it hops in a small circle, its feathery tail flicking angrily as it goes, as if it’s arguing with itself…

“Whoa- hey, what’s up?” A surge of alarm thumps painfully in Dean’s chest.

The crow finally stops and braces down on its legs to launch itself at Dean again, flapping its broad wings a few times to give it a boost, and lands on his shoulder. It nuzzles the side of its softly feathered face into his cheek, careful with its sharp beak.

The alarm from earlier melts into something warm and honeyed, and it makes Dean laugh. “So, you’ve secretly been a big sap this whole time. Who would’ve thought.” He’d never understood how people got so attached to the animals in their lives – he’d never had a dog or a cat – but he’s starting to understand now. “I’ve been needing a shave, so you better watch your feathers don’t get filed off by my stubble.”

“Caw,” it says softly, as it nuzzles harder, making Dean laugh again.

“Okay, okay,” Dean says, giving it a pat on the head before he holds up his arm in a crook for the crow to jump onto. It does, and Dean gently lowers it to the ground where it hops back off. “It’s a good thing I’m not allergic to feathers, dude.” He narrows his eyes. “Wait, you don’t have fleas, do you? Can birds get fleas?”

The crow tilts its head again and almost deliberately nibbles its beak underneath each wing, then brings up one of its clawed feet to scratch furiously at its neck.

Dean scrubs at his face and hair. “Hey, what the fuck! Are you serious?”

“Caw-Caw-Caw!” the crow chatters, hopping away up the garden path.

“Fuck you, Crow,” Dean says, his tone full of warmth, as he follows.

By the time Dean makes it to the large grill, the crow is already there, perched on the bricks surrounding it. The overhang from the porch has kept the leaves from the surrounding trees out, but it’s a bit dustier than he’d like for cooking on, and there’s an old layer of charcoal coating everything. He wants to scrub it off before he fires it up, but whatever he uses to clean it is going to get covered in black… He wonders if Cain would notice if one more towel went missing…

“I’ll be back,” Dean mutters, running back to the cabin.

By now it’s a familiar journey up to the bathroom and into the cabinet to pull a towel from the pile. At this point it’ll be noticeable that there are less towels than there should be, and Dean accepts that he should probably replace them when he leaves. He could buy some from Oakton on his way through and then swing back to drop them off. He feels a spark of sadness at the thought of leaving, so he pushes it out of his mind and heads back out.

The sky is even darker when he reemerges, and there’s a fresh, sharp scent in the air, but Dean continues with his cleaning plans.

It takes some effort, some dish soap from the kitchen, and a blast from the hose pipe, but the grill itself and the surrounding bricks look clean and ready to use by the time Dean is done. (The crow wisely stayed further back this time, sitting on the porch swing nearby, out of range from the water spray.)

He steps back to admire his work and the crow rejoins him.

“I can’t build one, but it looks like I can clean one up real nice,” Dean says, pride in his voice.

“Caw,” the crow says.

“I’m taking that as agreement.”

“Caw.”

After a small pause of companionable silence Dean clears his throat and looks down at the bird by his side. “Y’know… I thought I saw something, in the woods before. Big thing. Golden eyes. Is that why you kept me out?”

The crow looks at him sharply.

“Listen – to you that thing is basically Godzilla, but to me, it’s just an overgrown chicken. I can handle myself. It doesn’t scare me. And if it’s bothering you, I can put it on the grill.” Dean holds his hands out over the clean pit, as if there’s a fire already burning inside. “That goes for any of the birds out there. If they’re bullying you, then just bring ‘em to me. We’re friends, so I’ll look out for you.”

The crow blinks up at him for such a long time, eyes even glassier than ever, that it gives Dean the insane thought that it’s about to cry – even though he’s almost certain that birds can’t do that. He’s about to ask if it’s okay, when it suddenly hops a few paces away from him. It chirps softly, motioning between them with its beak.

Dean takes a few steps closer. “What?”

The crow hops away another few paces, and motions between them again.

“Oh, okay. You taking me somewhere?” Dean asks, as the crow brings them from the porch and back out onto the garden path. Its wings are unable to keep still at its sides, rustling and flapping slightly, and its tail is flicking up and down with a kind of nervous energy. It turns and locks its eyes on Dean’s, and they still seem so incredibly sad. It keeps hopping forwards and checking over its shoulder every few steps to make sure Dean is following.

Is it taking him back to the forest?

Suddenly the crow stops, and when Dean takes a hesitant step closer it opens its wings and warns him back.

There’s something charged and significant about this moment. Dean feels it in the air. He thinks he can hear distant thunder.

The crow settles and stills completely.

“Crow?” he says hesitantly, resisting the urge to move forwards again, concerned about its strange behavior. He feels a droplet of water hit his nose and he rubs it away. Another raindrop hits his cheek.

The crow closes its eyes. For a moment nothing happens, and then it almost looks like its edges are… blurring-?

Chapter Text

A sudden flash of lightning whites out Dean’s vision for a second just as he hears a loud squawk of surprise. When he blinks his eyes clear, the crow is disappearing over the fence surrounding the garden – back into the forest – and he calls out after it, but a rumble of thunder drowns out his voice. The spots of rain rapidly turn into a deluge that crashes down around him.

Dean curses loudly as he sprints back up the path to get under the shelter of the porch. He jumps up onto the wooden decking, tries not to slip with his wet boots, and breathes a heavy sigh of relief when he’s made it out of the rain. He turns around and his eyes widen at the scene in front of him. Rain pours and pours beyond the overhang, slamming loudly onto the cabin and into the garden, and another flash of lightning bathes everything in an eerie white glow. The downpour creates a rapid drumbeat as it falls in sheets into the forest surrounding him, hitting leaves and tree trunks, and he can even hear it tapping onto the abandoned bee hives.

It’s almost overwhelming to hear it coming from every direction at once, drumming onto every leaf in the forest, coupled with a distant rumble of thunder… but somehow, it’s also one of the most relaxing sounds he’s ever heard at the same time. The sky had been gray all morning, but he hadn’t been expecting a storm like this – he’s never experienced rain like it. Water spills over the roof, running in multiple tiny waterfalls onto the ground, and the view of the garden beyond goes hazy through the heavy downpour. Flashes of lightning illuminate the entire garden from time to time.

“Crow?” Dean calls out, turning around on the spot to see if he can spot his friend coming back. “Hey, Crow? You okay? It’s just a storm!”

No reply. No sign of it anywhere.

Must have taken shelter under the trees…

Dean ruffles some of the water out of his hair, but otherwise he’s dry under the canopy. He ran fast enough to avoid getting too wet, since only his hair and the tops of his shoulders are damp, but the rain is coming down so fast he’s lucky he isn’t totally soaked. The grill is right at the edge, so it’s free from most of the rain, but some stray droplets are blowing in occasionally, and it it’s still wet from when he cleaned it. There’s no hope of the sun drying it off like he’d hoped either. If he hadn’t stole the tarp that usually covers it to protect Baby, he’d be feeling a lot less guilty right now, but he’s just got to hope that it stays dry enough to not go rusty. He’s not sure how he’d confess to ruining the grill just so that his car stays clean.

He'd been really excited for homemade burgers too…

For a moment Dean just stands and watches the steady downpour outside of his shelter. It’s a humbling sight. Even the air itself smells different from before – sharp and ozone-y – and he can’t believe he’s got to hand it to all those ridiculous candle companies that sell people the ‘smell of rain’, because it really is fucking amazing. He’s going to be one of those suckers buying a candle like that when he goes home, he just knows it. Hoping that it’ll transport him back to this moment or something. (But he’s pretty sure those kinds of smells are just synthetic garbage, and it won’t really be like this at all.)

“Well, Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Dean mumbles, as he watches the rain pour, suddenly feeling stupid to be saying it to himself rather than the crow. It felt way better when he was talking to something – even if that something was a bird. Crazy-bird-guy, he thinks.

He tries to catch sight of the crow again, hoping to encourage it to stay under the wooden canopy until the rain stops, but he can’t see it anywhere. He tries not to take it personally, because it’s lived its entire life so far without using the cabin as shelter, so it doesn’t need Dean to take care of it.

It doesn’t need Dean to worry about it.

It’ll be fine.

But still…

Dean tries to push his concerns aside, but he can’t help but wonder what the hell was going on before the rain started. The crow had been acting so strangely. Maybe it could sense the storm? He’s pretty sure that animals are supposed to know when stuff like that is going to happen, because he saw it in one of those lame animal documentaries that Sam used to watch all the time. That must have been what the weird sense of anticipation was all about. But why bring him out from under the shelter just for him to get rained on?

The way it had been looking at him though… leading him there on purpose… and the way it had gone kind of blurry… No, that’s stupid. He had to have been seeing things.

It just felt like there was something important going on.

But what?

“Crow!” Dean calls again, though his voice is swallowed up immediately by the noise of the rain.

No answer.

After another moment he finally turns and heads back inside, and as soon as the door closes, the cacophony of noise dampens into a soft pattering. Damn, this place even has great sound proofing. Is there anything Cain can’t do?

Dean slips off his boots and rubs his damp shoulders as he moves further into the living room. It’s kinda ironic that he’d specifically removed his shirt earlier to stop it from getting wet when he washed the car, and now he’s wet anyway. He sighs. All his plans just got swept away by the freaking rain. At least he’ll be able to enjoy a book by the fire later, like he’d wanted, but he’s suddenly craving a TV and a movie. Makes sense that it’s all books and no TV in the cabin, when the people who mostly stayed here were writers, but he’d kill to watch an Indiana Jones marathon or something with the rain softly tapping in the background.

In the end Dean cooks himself an extremely boring (but healthy) meal of noodles and fresh vegetables, knowing the beefburger mince will keep for a drier day. He’s determined to cook them outside on the grill.

After he’s cleared away and washed the dishes, Dean gets comfortable in his pajamas – a ratty old dark gray band t-shirt, loose soft pants covered in hotdogs, and a long gray robe. The print on the front of the t-shirt has faded so much he can’t even remember what band used to be on there, and the stitching on the sleeves has started to fray. There’s even a tiny hole by the hem that he keeps making bigger because he can’t stop messing with it, like when he was losing his baby teeth and couldn’t stop poking his tongue in the gaps they left. (He had of course never received any money from the ‘Tooth Fairy’ as a child, he remembers bitterly, though he’d always made sure Sammy did.) Dean absentmindedly pokes his finger through the hole again and wiggles his fingertip through to the other side, even though he knows he’s making it worse, and scoffs at his own terrible impulse control.

Amara used to tell him that his choice of sleepwear was ‘terribly unsexy’, but it’s been a long time since he cared about being sexy over comfortable when he’s going to bed, so even despite her disdain, the well-loved ensemble remained. Those acts of rebellion seem tiny to him now, but he’s proud of himself for them. If he hadn’t kept any of his sense of self, there’s no way he’d even be here at all.

Dean shuts the closet door harder than necessary, pointedly ignoring the suit he can see hanging at the end of the other clothes.

He makes his way over to the bedside table and places down his new compass next to the small glass stone that the crow gave him on his first night. The little gifts strangely make him feel like there’s someone here rooting for him – the weird bird that he somehow befriended. Dean prods the compass to make the arrow inside spin gently. He hopes the crow is doing alright out there in the rain. He told himself he wouldn’t worry, but he’s bothered about how quickly it disappeared, and how strangely it had been acting. He doesn’t like the thought of it being alone out there scared of the storm. And then there’s that huge bird he’d spotted inside the forest that could probably eat a crow if it wanted to. It could even be the eagle from the photos – all grown up now, like the crow is.

He really needs to see that bird sanctuary for himself.

Dean goes through all the rooms upstairs and closes the blinds and curtains, further shutting out the sounds of the ongoing storm, and returns to the living room. His socks make a soft thud on every wooden step as he descends the stairs, and he has to steady himself when he nearly slips at the bottom. Turns out that wooden floors and socks don’t mix, but it’s not like he had the foresight to bring slippers with him. When he originally packed the bag, he thought he’d be staying in a fancy hotel room with his new fiancé. (A thought that makes him shudder now.)

Dean catches sight of the eagle painting on the far side of the living room as he regains his balance, and slowly moves towards it, folding his arms across his chest. The eyes look about the right color for what he thinks he saw, though this close he can see a darker ring of brown around the edge of the gold. Dean idly wonders if the blue ring that he noticed earlier would also be on the crow’s painting… maybe he’ll check later. The attention to detail that Cain put into them is amazing, so he wouldn’t be surprised. He never knew that bird eyes had those kinds of extra colors in them. When he gets home, he’s absolutely going to watch some more animal documentaries – Sammy will think aliens have replaced him when he asks for recommendations, but it’ll be fun to see his face. Or they could spend some brotherly time together before the baby arrives and watch them together…

Dean returns his attention to the painting. The eagle has dark brown feathers flecked with spots of white, and its grey and yellow beak is sharp and hooked, clearly meant for ripping into prey. He obviously knows that some birds are carnivores, but that beak and its long talons look so designed for violence that it’s a startling reminder. It stares intensely straight ahead with cold eyes, and just like the others, it almost like it’s looking right out of the frame at him. But of all the bird paintings he’s seen, this one feels the most off-putting. Meaner somehow. It already looks big in the painting, sat on a branch, but even from just the silhouette earlier he knows it’s a lot bigger now. More powerful looking. It’s not just the eyes, something about the way this bird holds itself is different to the others, head held high, like it’s got some kind of superiority complex. He shouldn’t be thinking about committing violence towards animals, but if he finds out that it’s done anything to the crow, he knows that there’s an axe in the firewood store out the back.

Anyway, shouldn’t a cabin like this have a gun? There was the flare gun he found in the cabinet under the sink, but he’s surprised there isn’t a hunting rifle somewhere. Maybe it's locked behind a secret panel in the wall or something. Or there’s a whole armory of guns hidden behind a bookcase that slides open if he pulls on the correct book. Dean snorts with amusement. When he was a kid watching Saturday morning cartoons before Sam had woken up yet, he always yelled at the TV whenever he spotted a book that was a brighter color than the rest, as if he could tell Scooby and the gang that pulling on them was always the key to the secret door.

He meant it as a funny little joke, but he realizes that he really can’t rule it out. Dean runs a finger down the seam between the bookcase and the wall and hums. It doesn’t look like it’s attached, so he doesn’t think it can be a door, but Cain’s weird hide-and-seek funhouse has surprised him multiple times, so who knows.

Then again, he’s not sure that he’d trust writers with a fully loaded gun, so maybe there just isn’t one. For all he knows they don’t even get bears out here.

Dean returns to closing the blinds and curtains, and with the outside finally completely shut out he turns his attention to getting the fire going, excited for his night ahead. He’s kind of amazed at how early he’s getting ready to settle down and relax, but it’s not like there’s a whole lot else to do in the cabin. God, he needs a TV.

He supposes he could just drive back into Oakton and see if he can pick up a second-hand one or something, but then he’ll have to wash all the dust and dirt off the car again… He’ll leave it on the table as an option if he gets desperate enough.

But there is something charming and old-timey about not being able to just turn a TV on, and he did promise himself to lean hard into the ‘cabin in the middle of nowhere’ life. Maybe he’ll even try writing something, since that’s apparently what everyone else does when they stay here (for the couple of days they last anyway). He could be a writer, sure. It would make a good record of his stay anyway, since he still hasn’t taken any photos yet for Charlie.

He should really try and read more of the book about Were Monsters or whatever that Colette left for Cain too, since it must be important in some way. He moves the items, including the book, from the mantle onto the side table and tries to start the fire with the firewood he placed there earlier.

Once the fire is finally roaring in the hearth, Dean grabs his bowl of leftover pie, places a couple of open bottles of beer on the side table, next to the book, and sits down heavily into his favorite armchair with a satisfied groan. Washing the car is more physical than he remembers, and it’s been a long time since he did such a thorough top-to-bottom job of it. He’s going to ache tomorrow, he thinks with a wince, but that’s another one of tomorrow-Dean’s problems. For now, he relaxes further into the comfy chair, feeling the heat from the fire wash over him, and lets himself enjoy the moment.

Dean dips his spoon into the huge slab of pie in his bowl and closes his eyes with appreciation when he brings it back to his mouth. He’s determined to eat it before it goes stale and not waste a single crumb – it’s freaking homemade cherry pie. It’s just a shame that the crow couldn’t have another piece, considering how much it loved it. It’s not even like he can leave a piece outside, because it’ll just get soggy.

He really needs to stop imagining his crow friend huddled up all wet and sad under a tree somewhere, because it makes him want to get out there and find it.

It’s a bird. It’ll be fine.

Dean chews more vigorously on his pie, trying to convince himself not to throw a jacket on and go back out there after he’s just got comfy, when he knows realistically that trying to find a bird in all that rain and darkness would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. He forcibly puts it all out of his mind as he texts both Charlie and Sam, just checking in and seeing how they are. He looks at his emails (nothing new), swipes down for a while on a couple of social media apps (even though he never posts anything), and simply takes in the ambience while he eats.

A big drop of cherry jam lands on Dean’s hotdog pants as his head lolls down and he blinks awake, cursing softly. He’s already feeling a little sick at how much he’s eaten, but he’s not wasting good pie filling, so he swipes a thumb through it and sucks it into his mouth. Truly the most unsexy he’s ever been. Reaching new heights. Now he’s eating pants-jam.

He snorts. “Pants-jam,” he says aloud with a chuckle, as he feels his eyelids starting to flutter closed again. “Always funny when there’s nobody here to laugh,” he mumbles sleepily. “The crow… would have found that… funny.”

The rain is still pattering against the windows, but the noise of it is very muted and far away, the beer bottles are empty, the log burning fire beside him is hot and popping occasionally, and Dean can’t remember the last time he felt this cozy…

------------------------

When he wakes up the fire has long gone out and he’s still somehow clutching the pie bowl to his chest in an iron grip.

“Jesus,” Dean groans, hearing multiple cracks when he rises out of the chair with difficulty.

He scrubs a hand over his face as he shuffles to the kitchen, and something clicks in his neck when he twists it side to side – his prediction about aching is already coming true. Dean dumps his bowl in the sink and goes to leave when he spots the big bag of birdseed, still propped up by the fridge. After a moment of hesitation, he retrieves the bowl, scoops out some seeds with it, and swirls them around in the remnants of cherry jam in the bottom.

The storm is still raging when Dean opens the back door slightly, thunder rumbling lowly and rain lashing down, but he places the bowl of seed just outside of the cabin, where it will hopefully be safe from the wind and rain. He quickly grabs the two beer bottlecaps from the trash and places them beside the bowl, looks out across the hazy garden, then closes out the storm once more.

At least now if the crow comes back, it’ll have a tasty snack and know that Dean doesn’t hold any bad feelings for it flying away when the storm started.

He hesitates before he walks away from the door. Why does he feel like he’s not going to see it again? Why does it feel so final?

Just as Dean flicks off the light, he swears he hears the distant sound of an eagle screech, but when he pauses and listens hard all he can hear is muffled rumbles of thunder.

Dean pulls his robe tighter around himself and shuffles upstairs to his room.

------------------------

The rain doesn’t stop.

The thunder and lightning have faded away, and the intensity of the rain has calmed down, but it’s still pouring steadily.

Dean stares out of his bedroom window, trying to decide what his plans are for the day. It’s not like he can do anything outside now, and he’s starting to realize that there’s not a whole lot to do inside the cabin that’ll keep him occupied. Sam and Charlie both replied to his messages from last night, so he responds to them, and checks his emails again, but he’s drawing a blank on what else he’s going to do today.

At least he’s grateful of the hot shower on his sore muscles, aching in places he didn’t even know he could ache, and he stands for a while under the amazing spray.

Once he’s dressed Dean descends the staircase, watching out for the inevitable slip at the end, and throws open the curtains in the living room.

Gray skies and rain greet him on the other side of the glass.

He sighs loudly. No TV. No computers. Just endless shelves of books. Now he knows why most of the people who rented out the cabin were writers. His attention catches on the Were Creatures book from last night, and he wonders if he’s ready to trudge through the science jargon word-soup. It’ll keep him busy at least.

At the other end of the room Dean excitedly throws open the curtains in front of the glass leading out to the back of the cabin, to check the bowl he left out last night. But the seed is still there, and even the bottlecaps are still where he left them.

Something cold squeezes around his chest.

He opens the door a little and pokes his head out. “Crow!” he calls. There’s no answer, just the endless pattering of rain. He leaves the seed and bottlecaps there, just in case, but something tells him that they’ll remain untouched.

The glass door clicks shut, and Dean pushes down the urge to punch it. Fuck! Why’d he let himself get so attached. Stupid stupid stupid. He presses his forehead against the cool glass and clenches his eyes shut for a moment.

“Suck it up, Winchester,” he whispers to himself, “you came here alone in the first place. It’s nothing new.”

Dean draws in a deep breath, lets it go slowly, and pushes himself away from the window.

The rest of the morning is lazy and relaxed, but there’s a cold shard of something nestling in Dean’s heart that he’s struggling to ignore. It shouldn’t surprise him that a bird can’t hang around with him for his whole vacation, but it was just the circumstances that feel off. The way it acted just felt… different. And then there was the strangeness of seeing the eagle and how it felt like the crow was deliberately trying to keep him away… And he’s almost sure that he heard something that sounded like an eagle when he went to bed. Now each time Dean sees the eagle painting, he can only focus on the sharp beak and talons, and he keeps thinking about how powerless a crow would be against them.

Or it’s simpler than that, and the crow just left him. It was here and now it’s not – it’s done what birds do and has flown away, and he should never have let himself get attached in the first place. It’s why Dean never cared when dad moved them around, while Sammy used to cry about it – Dean never bothered making new friends.

“Shit,” he says, with a shake of his head.

Since he’s stuck inside with nothing but his thoughts for company (and they’re doing their best to piss him off and go around in circles) Dean grabs the pile of photos and flicks through them again, just in case he missed anything. When he gets to the eagle photo, a perfect miniature of the larger painting, he flips it over to see, ‘Golden Eagle (Aquila Chrysaetos)’, written on the back. Golden eagle… makes sense why it looks so smug. There probably isn’t a thing in the forest that bird couldn’t take down.

Unless there really are bears in there.

Dean puts the photo of Cain and Colette waving in front of the half-finished cabin at the front again and replaces them on the mantle, adding the small key and the white feather to the small pile. He’s even surer than ever that they were very much in love and there’s no way Cain was involved in her disappearance, and yet Dean still has no solid evidence to back that up other than a distant photo and vibes.

There has to be something about the book, this cabin, Cain and Colette, and the birds. There’s a link somewhere between all of it. Dean grabs Cain’s book and sits down on the couch, pulling it onto his lap, and glares at the leather cover like he can uncover its secrets through sheer willpower alone.

Dean pulls out his cell phone and fires off a quick message.

-Message to: Sam (Sammy)-

---------------Dean: I’m going to start a research project (don’t ask, long story) what are your tips?

There’s enough of a wait for a reply that Dean ends up wandering back over to the mantle and flicking through the photos again. When his phone buzzes he’s just flicked to the photo of the crow, so he leaves it on the top of the pile as he returns to his phone.

-Sam: Aren’t you supposed to be on vacation? What’s the research about?

---------------Dean: all books and no TV makes Dean a dull boy

-Sam: No TV?! [laughing emoji] Yeah, no wonder you’re hitting the books. It would help if I knew what the research was about?

---------------Dean: all books and no TV makes Dean a dull boy

-Sam: haha very funny

---------------Dean: lol it’s just about birds and shit. It’s boring, but there’s nothing else to do sooo

-Sam: Not boring! Birds are interesting actually. There are all sorts of species and dynamics and behaviors.

-Sam: Are there binoculars there? You could start a bird watching diary!

---------------Dean: you would be great friends with the guy who rents out this cabin you big nerd

-Sam: Dean you say that like you’re not the person who can quote multiple movies by heart.

---------------Dean: uh excuse me. I’m a cool nerd. But yeah, I found this really big book and even though it’s drier than licking sand I thought it would be cool to do some research with it

-Sam: Well, the easiest thing to do is to break it down into topics you want to cover, areas you want to focus on, questions you want answers to. I found it easier to turn it all into bubble charts. Use different colors for different topics…

Sam sends so many messages about how to research, including small anecdotes from when he was in college, pulling all-nighters in the library, that all Dean can do is watch them flashing up on his screen and smile.

-Sam: Oops kind of went off a little there. Is any of that useful at least?

---------------Dean: Sorry I fell asleep, just reading back through this wall of text

-Sam: JERK

Dean laughs at his cell phone and fires back his usual response. Then he adds one more message before he puts the phone down.

---------------Dean: Thanks, Sammy.

-Sam: [smiling emoji] Any time, enjoy your research. Let me know how it goes!

Dean had to work two jobs to secretly earn enough to help pay for Sam’s college tuition. He swore Bobby to secrecy and made it seem as if he was the one paying the bills, but although he helped, Dean was the one who worked himself into the ground to pay for as much of it as he could. Bobby called him an idiot for it repeatedly, but he’d already done so much for them, taking them in after dad died, that Dean couldn’t put that burden on him too. It was his responsibility to get his baby brother through college.

He's never regretted it.

Dean makes his way back upstairs and heads straight for the study. All this organizing-his-research stuff relies upon having paper and a pen, but so far, he hasn’t seen either. Maybe there’s a drawer he missed in the desk or something.

The first thing Dean sees as he enters the study is the big painting of the crow on the wall. He tries not to look, but again, he’s drawn over by how life-like it is and how well Cain managed to capture all the details. There’s the blue ring at the edge of its eyes! The longer Dean looks the more he faces up to the humiliating truth that he misses a bird, and that he broke his own rule of not making new friends.

The crow in the painting is so much younger – now that he’s more familiar with it he can clearly see it – and he remembers the big group photo where it’s by itself. Why would the other birds avoid a young crow, but sit next to a vulture or an eagle? It doesn’t make any sense.

It reminds him of when he’d eat his lunch at school on his own – the biggest consequence of the whole not-making-friends thing.

Dean eventually turns back to the desk, but to his disappointment there’s no drawer. It’s blocky and simple, and Dean thinks one side might even be a little taller than the other. It really is a basic piece of furniture compared to everything else in the cabin, which is strange. Maybe it was the first thing that Cain built? It just seems like there’s a huge leap in quality and detail between this piece and how complex the rest of the building is. Just as Dean is about to give up, he decides to run his hands underneath the desk, remembering at the last minute how he found the key and the book in the kitchen. His fingertips run over something strange in the wood. “If this is a secret message or something I swear to God,” he mutters, as he crouches down and looks up. A simple swan outline is scratched into the smooth surface underneath the desk and the initials, ‘C + C’, are carved just below it.

Dean stands back up and smiles. They really did build a home here, didn’t they?

He’s about to return to the living room empty handed when he remembers that there’s another desk in the cabin – and it’s much fancier than this one.

The desk in the bedroom.

Dean pads across to the bedroom and even as he approaches the desk he immediately knows where this is going. He lets out a loud bark of amusement as soon as he spots the carved feathers all over the legs, feeling an intense sense of deja vu. “I know your game now,” he says, sliding down to his knees and running his hands over the feathers on the first leg. It doesn’t take long to find the hidden keyhole.

“Knew it,” he says as he jumps up and races down the stairs (slips at the bottom) and grabs the key.

When he returns to the keyhole the tiny key slides in easily and clicks when he turns it, popping out a small hidden chamber in the front right leg of the desk.

Dean curses in surprise as the compartment pulls out heavier than he expected, and he nearly drops it, but he successfully places it on top of the desk and has a look inside. He frowns and pulls out a thin, long bottle of dark amber liquid – a bottle of whiskey? The top has been sealed over with wax, and the handmade label declares that it’s from a vintage collection. Shit, this stuff looks expensive. And strong.

Why would there be a hidden bottle of whiskey in the desk? Dean turns the compartment upside down and shakes it, but it’s completely empty. He loves a good drink, sure, but he’d secretly been hoping for something a little more exciting. A treasure map. A pile of jewels. A handwritten note…

Whiskey is great, but not exactly interesting. Though hiding it inside a desk is the exact kind of weirdness that Dean is starting to become very familiar with. And kinda fond of.

So, he looks across to the left leg, also carved with feathers, and squints at it suspiciously. There’s no way. No way.

Couldn’t be…

There it is! There’s another fucking keyhole!

Dean grabs the key and shoves it into this new keyhole, his excitement reignited and thrumming in his veins. This time he’s more prepared when the compartment in the leg pops free and he places it up onto the desk next to its twin. He leans over to look inside and sees that there’s a small collection of objects at the bottom.

Dean pulls everything out to find a couple of photographs rolled up into a tube and a leather cord tied into a necklace with a clip at the end. The clip is empty, and Dean pinches it open and closed a few times before he places it down. He unfurls the photos eagerly and flattens them out onto the dark wood of the desk.

The first photo is of Cain, standing in front of the completed cabin, laughing. A swan is on the ground beside him caught mid-action, flapping its huge white wings forwards. Cain is wearing a knitted brown sweatshirt that shows up the leather cord around his neck, ending in a small but brilliantly white feather held by the clip.

Dean looks over at the necklace on the desk and lifts it up for a closer look, but he can already tell it’s the same one. With startling clarity, he remembers the feather that’s currently sitting on the mantle downstairs. The one he found at the back of the cabinet in the kitchen. He bets that’s the same feather.

The second photo shows Colette standing behind the cabin – Dean can see the beehives in the background of the shot (looking in much better condition than they do now) – and it looks like back then there was no fence encircling the garden. He can see the forest behind her. Colette has her long brown hair loose around her shoulders and is still wearing that same high-collared white cloak from before, though now Dean thinks it looks like it’s made of feathers. She’s holding a baby in her arms, wrapped in a white knitted blanket, and is peering down with a look so full of love that it almost steals Dean’s breath away. There’s no doubt in his mind that this must be her child. (He wonders if his own mother ever looked at him like that.) He can see her face more clearly than in the other photos, now that she’s closer in the frame, and she looks pale, with pronounced dark circles under her kind looking eyes. Even her lips, smiling softly, are a concerning shade of blue.

The baby in her arms has closed eyes and skin almost as pale as the white blanket that it’s wrapped in.

Shit…

Dean places the photos back onto the desk and scrubs his hands vigorously through his hair, runs them down over his face, and takes a deep breath. He turns the photo over and it says, ‘Colette and baby Connor’, on the back.

Shit shit shit.

He shouldn’t assume the worst, but the sinking feeling in his gut tells him otherwise. He knows a lot about shoving painful memories into a locked drawer – even if these are more physical and literal than the ones he keeps in his head. The photos had been locked away where nobody would ever see them, unless they had the key that only Cain knew about. They were clearly meant for his eyes only.

Dean suddenly feels like an intruder into all of this, and guilt swells up behind his ribs for pursuing things, when he should have just left it all alone. Not that he could have known where all of this was headed. But he’d suspected.

A particularly fierce gust of wind slams a scattering of rain onto the window, snapping Dean’s attention away from the photos. He slowly wanders over to look out of it. The garden is still shrouded in the sheets of rain driving down, looking unnaturally dark for the time of day, and even through the fierce wind the fence that encircles the garden is holding firm and solid. But no birds sit on top of it, no feeling of being watched prickles the back of Dean’s neck, and no eyes watch him from the shadows.

He’s really well and truly alone again. Of his own making.

He wouldn’t even be here if he’d just married Amara like he was supposed to… He’d been about to propose! The ring is still in his suit pocket! They’d have been married. Would their life together have involved even a fraction of the happiness that he’s seen with Cain and Colette? Would they eventually have had a baby too? Dean attempts to push the painful memories away as he returns to the desk, and sighs so forcefully it comes out as a rumbling groan.

What’s he even supposed to do with the photos now? He can’t just roll them back up and put them back into the leg of the desk – that feels so impersonal and wrong. But if Cain locked them away in there to keep them private, then it’s not like he can just leave them out for the next renter to look at either.

What a mess.

That whiskey bottle is suddenly looking extremely appealing…

Dean grabs his cell phone, intending to finally just call Cain and just ask him what the fuck is going on, but when he opens his contacts, he’s floored by the stupid fucking alphabetized system showing him Amara’s name in big bold letters right at the top.

He should have deleted her number.

The urge to dial is almost overwhelming.

Dean flings the device onto the bed and lets out another loud noise of frustration as he paces back and forth. This place was supposed to be relaxing! It was supposed to make things clearer, not make them more complicated! At another turn, he spots something flash with a tiny glint of light on the bedside table, and he stalks over to it. Oh. It’s the little compass. Dean picks it up carefully, holding it in the palm of his hand. The metal casing is cool against his skin, and he taps the glass again to make the arrow inside wiggle.

‘Finding myself’ he remembers saying.

Well, what if he doesn’t like what he finds? What if it’s too late to be that person again?

Dean returns to the desk and twists the top off the bottle of whiskey.

------------------------

He’s never drinking again.

Dean opens his eyes a crack, then shuts them again immediately. The room is dark except for the sunshine bleeding out from behind the edges of the curtains, meaning the storm has finally passed, but it’s still too much. His head is pounding like a hammer relentlessly hitting his skull, and his mouth feels dry and fuzzy. When he attempts to sit up, still with his eyes closed, his stomach protests so violently that he has to breathe shakily through the urge to throw up until it passes.

He's never drinking ever ever again.

Once the world finally stops spinning and he’s sure he’s not in any danger of losing the contents of his stomach (probably entirely whiskey) Dean looks down at himself – he’s under the duvet, but still in the day’s clothes, except his boots. He’s not sure he’s well enough to get out of bed and change into his pajamas, so he just accepts it and moves on. It’s not like it’s his bed anyway. He takes a deep breath and goes to rub his eyes, when he realizes he’s clutching something in his hand. When he opens his fist there’s a small black feather resting on his palm.

Huh.

The entire evening is a blur, but he thinks he remembers drinking long into the night. Dean tries hard, but only vague shapes and fuzzy nothingness comes back to him. Did he see the crow again? He hopes he didn’t pluck that out of the bird itself and hurt it. But he also hopes he didn’t just find it on the floor and go to bed holding it. That would be weird.

God, he really can’t remember.

Dean looks over at the desk and winces when he spots what remains of the whiskey. No wonder he feels so bad. But something small next to the bottle catches his attention, and Dean feels the urge to throw up slam into him so quickly that he nearly does it – the black velvet ring box, that should be in his suit pocket in the closet, is sat open and completely empty.

What the hell!

He can’t remember what happened! Dean presses his hands hard onto his eyelids and rubs vigorously, but he can’t think what he did with it. On one hand, it’s kind of a relief, because it’s not like he ever intended on using it, and keeping it was only like poking at a bruise… but on the other hand he hadn’t decided what he was going to do with it, and now… It’s gone. 

Dean flops back down to the bed and his head hits the pillow with a soft thud. It rattles his brain and makes him groan, feeling the hammer come back in full force against his skull.

He picks the feather back up and blindly places it onto his bedside table, but his hand knocks into something that he wasn’t expecting, and he sits back up in surprise. A glass of water. He was too drunk to undress himself, but not too drunk to remember to pour himself a glass of water before he passed out? Dean immediately gulps down a few mouthfuls, coughs, and swipes his lips with the back of his hand. It’s cool and refreshing and it helps immediately. It’s unusual for him to remember to take care of himself like that, but he’s grateful for it.

Dean lies back down, more carefully this time, and lets out a long breath. He should try and sleep it off and see if he remembers anything more when he wakes up.

The last thing that comes into his mind as he drifts back off feels like the memory of a dream – it’s a wispy thought that fades away like smoke as he tries to grab onto it. He thinks he remembers a dream of feeling strong arms lifting him up, carrying him, and a voice that he could feel rumbling against his cheek, apologizing and telling him that he deserves happiness.

------------------------

Dean wakes up a few times to shuffle into the bathroom and pee, but each time he returns to the bedroom he goes back to bed and sleeps. Eventually the daylight surrounding the curtains fades back into darkness.

------------------------

Finally, the next time Dean wakes up he knows immediately that he’s feeling better – he’s hungry.

Daylight is brightening the room again, so he must have slept for the whole day. (His stomach rumbling confirms this as true.)

Dean rolls out of bed and stretches his arms above his head, to work out the stiffness from his limbs. Thankfully his head feels back to normal, and although his stomach is empty, it’s no longer angry at him for all the alcohol that he poured into it.

“Sorry,” Dean mumbles, patting his stomach. The word sorry seems to ping familiarity in his brain, but he can’t think why. Did somebody apologize to him recently? Apparently, the holes in his memory only got worse after all that sleep. He should check his phone to make sure that he didn’t drunk dial anyone… Hopefully not Amara. God, tell him he didn’t drunk dial his ex. When he checks his call log, he slumps with relief to find no new calls. At least he didn’t go that far.

He lets out a breath and stares up at the fancy feathered ceiling. It’s not like all the complex feelings are gone, and Dean knows it’s a terrible way to cope with them, but the whiskey blackout sure did help to stuff them all back into their boxes.

Terrible, but effective.

Both Sammy and Charlie will kill him if they find out about this.

Dean makes his way over to the desk and lifts the empty ring box to look at it more closely. He still feels conflicted about its disappearance, but the relief is still clearly there. For now, he places it back down next to the photos and the necklace, glad to see them where they should be. Seeing Cain with the feather hanging from the necklace in the photo makes Dean suddenly remember the black feather that he was holding, and he dashes back to the bedside table. There it is, right next to the empty glass of water.

The necklace looked kinda cool on Cain, with the white feather hanging from the clip on the end, so Dean opens the clip and attaches his black one to it. He’s still drawing a blank on how he got it in the first place, but it does look cool, and if it’s one of the crow’s feathers that would be even better. He could keep the feather when he leaves, as a reminder of his time here, even if he puts the necklace back where he found it. And it would be a physical souvenir to show to Charlie that he’s not lying about making friends with a crow. It would be nice to see it again before he goes though, and make it a happy reminder, rather than yet another painful one…

It looks like the black feather goes even better with the leather cord than the white did (in his opinion) and he loops it around his neck experimentally. Black doesn’t show up very well on his dark shirt, but there’s a red one in the closet that it would look really badass over.

Dean takes it off and drapes it carefully onto the bed, laying out his fresh clothes beside it that he’s going to wear after his shower. He feels sticky and gross and he’s wearing clothes that he’s slept in for over twenty-four hours, so even though his stomach is protesting, it has to be a shower before anything else.

After the shower, the first mouthful of sugary cereal is the best thing Dean thinks he’s ever experienced. He finishes the entire bowl quickly and then makes himself a couple of slices of toast, slathered in peanut butter and jelly. Finally, he feels full and satisfied and human again.

The feather necklace swings forwards when Dean leans over the sink to wash the dishes, and he thinks the black looks as cool as he expected over the red. He grins. If he takes the feather home, he’ll have to make something like this to put it on.

When he returns to the living room Dean looks over at the items he’s found over his few days. He told Sam that he was going to do a research paper, and he’s gonna do that even without the paper – he’ll write the notes on his phone. He’s going to read through that book before he leaves, by going through a few chapters a day.

Except today.

Today’s game plan goes like this: arm himself with the flare gun, the compass, and the axe. Go into the forest. Find the bird sanctuary.  

Dean shoves his boots on with determination. He’s tired of missing a giant puzzle piece to all of this – he’s going to see what’s going on with all those birds with his own eyes. And maybe he’ll find the crow there and-

Something heavy slams into the window.

Dean hisses a curse and whips around.

Through the long windows he can see two feathered shapes on the patio. A large brown bird has its wings spread wide and its yellow beak is open wide as it lets loose a series of loud triumphant screeches. Its taloned foot is at the throat of a much smaller black bird beneath it, on its back against the floor.

Dean’s body responds before his brain catches up with what he’s seeing, as he sprints to the door and rips it open. “Hey!”

At Dean’s entrance onto the scene the larger bird – the golden eagle – springs backwards, and flaps hard to push itself back into the air with another screech. It flies in a circle, holding out its large wings to keep it gliding in a tight turn.

The crow hasn’t moved. Dean crouches down and reaches out, just as it finally pulls itself back up to its feet. “Shit, man, what are you doing fighting that thing? Are you okay?” With his heart still hammering in his chest Dean only distantly registers that asking a bird these kinds of questions is ridiculous.

The crow looks at him with narrowed eyes and caws loudly, flaring its wings out like a warning. It gestures with its beak back at the door.

“Are you kidding? You’re out here doing a Godzilla versus Kong and you want me to go back inside?”

The crow angles its beak as if in confirmation, always keeping an eye on the wheeling eagle.

Dean shakes his head. “No way, man. I’m not leaving you out here alone with that thing. Birds who bully you go on the grill, remember?”

The crow finally turns to him fully and its whole body does that motion of rolling its eyes, while its feathers puff up happily.

The eagle takes the distraction to twist in the air and dive straight towards Dean like an arrow.

It’s aiming for him, not the crow?

Dean throws up his arms to brace for the impact when a black blur slams up into the diving eagle, just before it reaches him, throwing it wildly off course. Both birds tumble to the ground in a flurry of feathers and squawks.

“Crow!” Dean yells, his voice splintering with the force. Fear for the much smaller bird thumps painfully through his chest as he surges towards them, and he feels an icy shard piercing him at the sound of the crow calling out in unmistakable pain. The eagle has once again pinned it to the ground and is tearing at its wings with its sharp beak.

At this rate he won’t get there in time before the thing has torn the crow’s wings off. Dean looks around wildly, but there’s nothing he can use. In a moment of fear-induced genius he tears at the laces on one of his boots, rips it off, and throws it as hard as he can towards the eagle. It connects with a loud thump and knocks it away from the crow.

“Yeah, you like that? I’ve got another one where that came from,” Dean yells, sticking up the leg with his boot still on.

But the impact seems to have done nothing except anger the eagle further because it’s turning tightly in the sky again, screeching repeatedly in fury.

Dean slides down to his knees to check on the crow, just as it struggles again to its feet, blood shining wetly in patches on its black feathers. It gives him a brief glance before it limps forwards in front of him and opens out its wings as far as they will stretch – impressive, but nothing on the eagle. There are patches of feathers missing at the bend where the wings connect to its body and Dean realizes that the eagle really was trying to tear them off.

“Caw! Caw!” the crow calls out, almost like a challenge.

It’s protecting him…

Dean feels a smile pulling through the adrenaline, and a surge of pride rises for his weird bird friend. “You crazy son of a bitch,” he says, “that thing’s twice your size and you still want to take it on?”

“Caw.” The crow glances back at Dean again, lifting its beak up high, and Dean can see blood welling between the feathers on its neck.

The urge to scoop it up and protect it makes his fingers twitch, just as the eagle screeches again and takes that same tight twisting turn that it did last time.

It dives.

“It’s coming back! Stay down!” Dean shouts, about to throw himself forwards to curl protectively over the crow, but before he can, the crow flings itself into the air. It’s a blur of pure black as it launches up and once again connects with the eagle in mid-dive. This time they tussle and bite at each other as they flap wildly to stay in flight, gliding away in circles, and then come back together in a clash of claws and beaks.

Blood flicks down onto the grass.

Dean feels powerless, watching them fight in a place he can’t reach. He cups his hands around his mouth and yells as loud as he can, “Bite him! Scratch his eyes out!”

The crow seems to land a decent blow, because the eagle calls out in pain for a second, and Dean cheers. But the success is short lived. The eagle lunges out with both of its taloned feet and grabs the crow’s wings in both of its powerful claws, pinning them out and keeping it from flapping. There’s a horrifying moment where they both seem to be suspended in the air, but finally gravity takes over and they plummet towards the ground, with the eagle forcing the struggling, squawking crow straight down.

“No!”

The two birds slam into the ground, making a dull thud that makes Dean wince even as he’s surging forwards to break them apart again. This time he kicks the eagle, throwing as much momentum into it as he can, but he’s using the foot with no boot on, so it’s not as effective as it could have been. Thankfully it’s still enough to send the large bird flying off the crow and slam it hard onto the garden path. It rises slowly, hissing, and lifts its wings in a challenge, but Dean rips off his other boot and brandishes it like a weapon. “Fuck off!”

Dean is so focused on the eagle that he doesn’t notice the crow staggering to its feet until it limps in front of him again. It struggles to lift its own wings, while a low, dangerous hissing noise escapes its beak. Its whole body is visibly shaking.

Dean shifts his attention back to the eagle and holds the boot in a throwing stance. “Well, come on then,” he snaps.

The eagle screeches one last time at them both, fury in its tone and blazing golden eyes, and then it flaps hard into the air. After a couple of circles of the garden it wheels off back over the treetops of the forest, and dives down into the trees.

“Yeah, I thought so.”

Dean only watches long enough to make sure it’s gone before he crouches back down to the crow. “We showed hi-”

The crow is deathly still in the grass.

Its wings are lying limp and flat on the ground, and Dean feels panic seize his heart. “No, no, no,” he mutters, placing a hand on its back and giving it a gentle shake. The bird is unresponsive, and a cold chill passes through him at how delicate and small it suddenly feels. “Crow, hey, c’mon buddy!” There’s wet beneath Dean’s hand, and when he turns it over to look, his palm is covered in red.

It’s not… It can’t be…

Finally, the crow stirs and weakly flaps its wings.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Dean breathes out, with relief so strong that it forms a lump at the back of his throat. He gently cups the crow in his hands, carefully pinning its wings to its sides, and runs back to the house, careful not to jostle it too much.

He brings the crow inside the living room and closes the door behind him with his elbow, not trusting that the eagle won’t come back. The crow is still so limp in his hands, but he can feel it breathing with small expansions and contractions of its chest, and that’s good enough for Dean.

“Don’t die,” he mutters, “don’t die, don’t die.” He places the crow as gently as he can onto the kitchen table and looks down at his red hands before he turns around in a circle and tries to organise his racing thoughts into something helpful.

He left his boots outside.

Not helpful, Dean thinks, nearly rubbing a hand through his hair before he remembers the blood on them.

“There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom,” he says aloud. Good start.

Dean scoops the crow back up and takes it upstairs with him. It does seem to be a little more alert now, and he starts to hope that it’s not in imminent danger of dying anymore. He just needs to stop the blood somehow.

Dean places the crow inside one of the two sinks and pulls the first aid kit out of the cabinet from underneath it. After a second of hesitation, he turns around to the cupboard full of towels (or what’s left of the pile anyway) and Dean grabs one, tucking it underneath the crow. (He’ll buy new ones!) At least it’s comfy now, but it’s still not moving much.

The first aid kit contains band aids, some dressings, and bandages, but Dean hovers his hands uselessly over the contents. How is he supposed to attach any of this to something with feathers? Dean finally rolls out one of the bandages and does his best to gently wrap it around the small body. It doesn’t resist, still mostly limp, and Dean bites his lip with worry as he works.

He won’t let the crow die.

“I think you need stitches… Fuck! I don’t know shit about birds, I don’t know what I’m doing,” Dean snaps with frustration. “I don’t know how to patch you up with all these feathers in the way.”

He should have read some of the goddamn bird books.

The books!

He should call Cain! He’s the guy who owns all the bird books! He’ll know what to do to help.

“I’ll be back,” Dean says as he leaves the bathroom and takes the stairs two at a time. (His socks are too dirty to slip on the wooden floor at the bottom.) Spurred on by his plan, Dean races into the kitchen to grab his cell phone from the table and can barely unlock it with his shaking fingers. He scrolls down to ‘Cain’ in his contacts, and is about to press the call button, when he hears a crash from upstairs.

Dean frowns. Has the crow escaped the sink? It’ll do so much more damage to itself – if he needs to wrap it completely in the towel to keep it still he will.

His phone goes into his back pocket, and Dean races back up the stairs.

But when he gets to the bathroom the crow is gone.

Dean looks around in confusion and spots a smear of blood on the floor that he must have missed when he entered. The blood smear leads straight out of the room, and Dean follows it as his confusion and worry grows. In the hallway the bandage that he wrapped around the crow is abandoned on the floor, soaked with blood. As Dean bends down to pick it up, he jumps back startled when the smear of blood ends, and a trail of bloody human-shaped footprints begins.

“What the fuck…”

There are noises coming from the bedroom. The footprints lead there.

Dean can’t stop his body from moving forwards, remembering what he thought when he first got to the cabin – that this place felt like something out of a horror movie.

Finally, he reaches the bedroom. The footprints go straight inside, but the door is closed. Dean can definitely hear something like rustling from beyond the door. Fuck. He steels himself, reaches for the handle, and takes a breath, with adrenaline still beating his heartbeat like a drum.

He pushes the door open.

Inside the bedroom is a man, doing up the last button on a long tan coloured trench coat. He straightens up and the first thing Dean notices is the clear-skies-blue of his eyes, staring straight into his own. His hair is dark and messy, and the corners of his full lips are turned down into something pinched and pained that match the sad tilt of his eyebrows.

His skin is covered in scratches – there’s a particularly deep and nasty one right underneath the man’s chin, slowly dripping blood. The trench coat covers most of him, but from the bare skin above and below the material, it’s clear that that’s all he’s wearing. The bloody footprints lead up to his bare feet.

Dean opens his mouth, but no sound comes out.

There’s a man in his bedroom. There’s a naked man in his bedroom. There’s a naked man in his bedroom instead of a crow.

As if the thought of the crow is what shifts his attention, Dean realises that there’s something large and black behind the man. Two large feathery somethings. That are moving.

Not possible, his brain supplies to the conclusion he comes to. Not. Possible. Blood drips steadily from the tips of the longest feathers, almost dragging on the floor behind him, and Dean realises that if he had either of his boots still on, he would be brandishing them like weapons again right now. He does however go into a defensive stance. “Who the fuck are you,” Dean hisses, though he can barely hear his own voice through the sound of static rushing through his ears, “and what the fuck is going on?”

Dean can see that the man’s whole body is trembling, as he places both of his shaking hands into the pockets of his coat. He smiles sadly, and with a deep rumble says, “Hello, Dean.”

Chapter Text

The strange man holds Dean’s gaze for a moment, until he eventually casts his eyes down, and a deep crease forms between his eyebrows. “I know this is a lot to process,” he says, now firmly staring at the wooden floor below Dean’s feet.

Blood continues to run in a bright red line from the deep cut on the man’s neck, while another scratch on his cheek oozes steadily, blood drips to the floor around him in steady plinks, and he’s bearing his weight strangely like he’s struggling to stay standing. These are facts – things Dean can see and understand. What he’s struggling with is that there should be a crow where a man is standing. And on his back are…

“A lot to process?” Dean eventually manages, a strangled laugh bubbling in his chest. “Buddy, I’m putting two and two together here and getting ten.” He goes to scrub his hands down his face but catches sight of the dried blood (from the crow? From the man?) still covering his hands at the last second. He rubs them vigorously on his jeans instead, just to do something with them. “This is impossible.”

“Dean, I-”

“You are impossible,” he hisses, jabbing a finger towards the man. “And stop saying my name like you know me.”

The man’s downcast expression crumples even further, twisting in pain, and the things-behind-him press themselves even tighter to his back. “My apologies,” he rumbles.

Dean desperately wants to down the rest of the whiskey still sitting on the desk nearby.

After a long pause the man finally peeks back up, and Dean is once again startled to see that very specific shade of clear-skies-blue in his eyes…

“Will it help if you also know my name?” he asks, with a small tilt of his head.

Dean is momentarily stunned speechless by how much this guy suddenly resembles the crow – it would do that little motion all the time. Shit… Everything about this situation is completely fucked up, but Dean’s traitorous heart pounds with a beat of familiar affection. “No,” he says, pushing all of that down, like he’s good at.

Another pause passes between them until the man tilts his head even further and says, “My name is Castiel.”

“I didn’t wanna know!” Dean throws his hands in the air.

“If you’ll just let me explain…”

Dean closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. When he opens them again everything is still the same. “Look, I don’t know what kind of fever-dream trip I’m having here, but-”

“Dean-” The man – Castiel – stops himself, takes a breath, and starts again, “-I promise I can explain everything if you give me a chance.” He pulls his hands from his pockets and holds them up in a calming gesture as he takes a hesitant step forward, but immediately stumbles. He braces himself on the end of the bed to stop from completely crumpling to the floor, while the things-on-his-back snap out behind him like counterweights. They glisten with blood and some of the feathers look painfully twisted and bent. They drip even more red onto the floor.

Whether this is possible or not, those wounds look all too real. Dean can even smell the copper tang of the blood in the air.

Dean hasn’t even realised he’s instinctively reached out to help, until he snaps his outstretched hand back to his side. “Shit man, you’re gonna bleed out…”

“I’ll be fine,” Castiel grunts, holding still there for a moment before he grits his teeth and pushes himself back upright. He holds an arm braced across his ribs. “It seems that Michael really didn’t hold back this time.”

“Michael?” Dean repeats, immediately aware of the human name and what it most likely means. It feels as if his entire world view is shifting at once.  “No way. No fucking way- that homicidal eagle is like this too? Are you kidding? It’s not possible… Stuff like this… it’s in the movies! It’s not real.”

Castiel folds the black feathery shapes closer to him again with a wince, holding them tight against his back like he can hide them if he tries hard enough. “Believe me, I wish we weren’t like this either.”

Dean looks up at the carved feathers in the ceiling. If the eagle is the same as Castiel, and he said ‘we’, then that would mean…

“So… The other birds- the ones in the forest- the ones in the paintings… all those species that shouldn’t live together, is because…” He watches Castiel’s expression carefully, but he holds Dean’s gaze and doesn’t waver – he’s serious. “Oh, come on!” Dean yells, throwing his hands in the air. “This is crazy!”

“I understand this is hard to accept,” Castiel says, sympathy making his voice softer, “but there are a lot of secrets in this world, and our existence is one of them.” He coughs and grips tighter on the coat over his ribs.

Dean doesn’t reply. He turns around and stomps out into the hallway to take a deep breath.

Okay. Okay… Okay.

He can handle this. It feels like his brain is on fire, but he hates how this actually starts to explain some of the weird stuff that hadn’t been making sense before. Dean takes one more deep breath in through his nose and out of his mouth, and then returns to the bedroom, staying close to the doorway, and far away from Castiel.

In his absence, Castiel has moved – he’s got one hand pressed against the closet door, keeping him propped up, while the other still holds onto his ribs tightly. His face is pale, and pain is etched into the lines at the corners of his eyes and lips. Droplets of blood are still dripping onto on the floor around him and there are patches of dark red starting to bloom in patches across his trench coat, where more cuts are clearly scattered across his skin.

Dean thinks he’s earned the right to feel angry, but his goddamn concern is overriding it. “Look pal, you really need to stop the bleeding – you look like shit.”

Castiel huffs a croaky, bitter laugh. “The benefit of having a body that changes shape is that it heals quickly.”

“Yeah well, good for you Wolverine, but it looks like you’re bleeding faster than you can heal. Stop being stubborn and just put some damn bandages on.”

“My name is Cast-”

“Not to mention you’re making a mess on the floor, and the stains are going to be a bitch to get out of your coat. There’s a first aid box in the bathroom. You should at least patch up that cut on your neck.”

Castiel brings up the hand from around his ribs to his neck, places it gently to the cut still weeping steadily, then pulls his fingers back to examine the blood covering them. “Ah. It’s deeper than I thought. Michael really was trying to kill me. Your shoe must have knocked him away before he could catch an artery.”

Dean has a sudden vivid memory of how panicked he was when he saw that eagle on top of the struggling crow, and how much desperation he’d put into throwing his shoe at the larger bird. It makes his brain hurt when he remembers that the crow from back then and the man standing in front of him now are supposedly one and the same.

“Yeah, well,” Dean snaps, trying to push the thought away, “that’s what happens when you try to fight a freaking eagle when you’re half his size.”

“Michael wanted to kill you, Dean. That’s what he came to the cabin to do. I just got in his way. I couldn’t let him… He considers you a threat to the flock and he wanted you gone.”

“What? Threat to the… I didn’t even know you guys weren’t normal birds until like, two seconds ago!”

“You had his most loyal member of the flock lying and disobeying orders.” At Dean’s confused expression Castiel adds, “I was never even supposed to show myself, let alone interact with you, and I definitely wasn’t supposed to lie about it.” A tiny smile tilts up the corner of Castiel’s lips.

Dean swallows painfully, his mouth gone completely dry. “So, you really are… the crow?”

“Yes.”

“You’re the crow.”

“Yes.” Castiel’s eyes close as he lets out a small shaky breath. The feathers behind him rustle as they move agitatedly.

“I can’t believe I thought I made friends with a freaking bird, and all this time you were-”

Castiel’s eyes snap open. “Dean, I am still your friend.”

“You’re a bird,” Dean says, ignoring Castiel. “But you’re also…” He gestures a hand towards him. “A guy? So, you’re, what, some kinda werewolf that turns into a crow instead of a wolf? A werebird? Werecrow?”

Castiel’s eyes narrow and he tilts his head, again looking so much like the crow it makes Dean feel even more confused. “Yes,” he eventually says, but the agreement comes hesitantly, like there’s more he wants to explain, but he knows Dean doesn’t want to hear it right now.

“But you don’t need a full moon to, uh- to… change?”

“No.”

“You gonna say anything that isn’t a one-word answer?”

Castiel sighs and leans even more of his weight onto the arm currently holding him upright. “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know!” Dean yells, running both hands through his hair and no longer caring about the blood on them. “Anything that isn’t a lie!”

“I-”

Dean gasps. “Holy shit, you were there while I washed my car! In my freaking underwear!”

“I tried to look away, if you’ll recall,” Castiel says, the first bit of colour returning to his cheeks that Dean has seen.

“No way are you weaselling your way out of this on technicalities man, that’s so fucking creepy!” Dean says, pointing with an accusatory finger at him.

“In my defence,” Castiel says, clearing his throat and regaining some composure, “I tried my best not to look, but things spiralled out of my control there, and you were so upset…”

“Don’t turn this back on me.”

“Like I said,” Castiel says, a note of impatience in his voice, “there is a lot to explain.” He coughs again wetly, and that tiny quirk of his lips returns – the ghost of a smile. “To me – to my bird instincts – you’re a… close friend. I struggled to stay strict about the boundaries between us from a human perspective, but then you were the one that strengthened our relationship. You gave me gifts, you danced, you sang, you groomed my wings… you’re even wearing my feather,” he points out.

“I was just being nice, I didn’t know what any of that crap meant!” Dean pulls hard at the cord around his neck, hears a snap that sounds like a whip-crack in the silence, and throws the necklace onto the desk.

Castiel flinches so hard that Dean visibly sees him struggle to stay upright. Something shatters in his expression for a second before it shuts down into complete and utter neutrality. His skin is paler than ever, and his eyes are dull when he glances at Dean before looking away. “I understand,” he says.

Dean feels an instant stab of regret. But it’s too late to take it back. Besides, the guy deserves it for lying to him and tricking him.

Right?

After a moment Castiel takes a deep breath and manages to push himself away from the closet. He grips a hand around his middle again and takes a step forwards. “Move out of the way, please.”

“What?”

“I’m leaving,” Castiel says, coughing again.

“To get the first aid kit?”

“No, I’m leaving the cabin, if you’ll just move out of the doorway.”

Dean blinks in surprise. “The hell you are. Dude, are you crazy? You can barely stand! You’ll never even make it down the stairs.”

Castiel’s mouth pinches in a tight line as he takes another wobbly step. “I’ll take my chances.”

“Hey, look- stop.”

Castiel turns the full force of his gaze on Dean – the blue of his eyes looking more like a summer storm now – as he slowly draws himself up to his full height. The black wings (real freaking wings!) behind him puff up in an achingly familiar way, until he opens them out behind him, slowly extending them until they seem to fill the room. The light from the window pours in behind him and illuminates the edges of the black feathers, spread out wide, like he’s some kind of avenging angel.

Dean feels pinned in place.

Slowly Castiel walks forwards, one step at a time. He nearly stumbles as he gets closer, but one of his huge wings flaps and he regains his balance.

Blood splatters the wooden floor from the force of the flap and continues to steadily drip from the ends of some of the feathers.

Dean still can’t move, and now he feels like he can’t breathe either, eyes roaming between Castiel’s face to the impossible wings outstretched either side of him.

“You wanted me to tell you something that wasn’t a lie,” Castiel says, his voice rumbling and deep, “then here it is – the few days I’ve spent being your friend have been the best days of my life.” He jabs a finger weakly into Dean’s chest. “There’s… your… truth…” His eyes roll, and flicker closed, and his wings sag down to the ground.

Dean barely has time to react as Castiel drops like a puppet whose strings have been cut, but he manages to reach out and grab his torso to stop him from falling to the floor just in time.

“Shit.”

Chapter Text

Turns out that bird people don’t weigh very much. Dean is half carrying, half dragging Castiel towards the bathroom, only because the wings on his back are kind of in the way to lift him up properly. (Wings, he thinks again, real fucking wings!). He should be a deadweight in Dean’s arms, out stone-cold like this, but he’s surprisingly light. A small voice in the back of Dean’s mind assumes that’s because of the whole being able to fly thing – wouldn’t be able to get off the ground if you were heavy. But it’s too weird to think about. People shouldn’t fly. People shouldn’t have wings. For now, he needs to focus on getting him to the bathroom without making his wounds worse.

He’s still pissed off, and this situation is all kinds of weird, but this Castiel guy is real, and he’s in trouble because of him – the least Dean can do is help.

Dean follows the trail of drying bloody footprints down the hall until they turn back into the smears of a bird dragging itself along the floor.

He keeps going.

It's lucky that going to the gym was the only hobby of his that Amara actively encouraged, because even though Castiel is considerably lighter than he was expecting, by the time Dean gets to the bathroom he’s still out of breath.

The first thing he notices is the bloody towel in the sink. The crow that once sat in it is currently a man with wings in a trench coat. A man that he’s holding right now.

Dean tightens his hold, moves further into the bathroom, and gently places Castiel down in the huge shower cubicle, propping him up to sit with his back against the largest of the shower’s walls. His head lolls to the side so Dean immediately pulls off his plaid outer shirt, bundles it into a ball, and gently wedges it behind Castiel’s neck to keep his head upright.

The most important thing right now is to assess the damage and stop the bleeding. What would Dr Sexy do? Dean tries to imagine this being in an episode, but he thinks that it would most likely end with lots of screaming and running from the man with the giant wings. The thought makes him frown. Okay, dial it back. If this were a normal guy in a normal hospital, what would Dr Sexy do… Hm. It would probably fade to black just as the doctor is about to do the important stuff, and then the shot would come back to his patient – Castiel – fully bandaged up and thanking him on a job well done and inviting him out to dinner after his shift and- yeah, this isn’t helping.

If Dean were fixing a car he’d go from the most important problem to the least, so that’s how he’s going to work.

It’s not like he’s had reason to perform much first aid in his life, but Sammy tripped over his gangly legs a lot while he was hitting his teenage growth spurt (like he had no awareness of how tall he was getting) and he would scrape his knees whenever he hit the deck. Dad told him that it would toughen him up, but Dean always cleaned his scrapes and kept a supply of band aids ready.

If someone needs him, he’ll do his best to help.

Even if the circumstances are this strange.

Dean reaches out to arrange Castiel’s… extra appendages… in a way that doesn’t look painful and wrong, but he hesitates for a second, fingers hovering above glossy blood-stained feathers. It doesn’t feel right to touch them without permission. But the guy is unconscious and needs medical attention… Dean tells himself that it’s like if he had to give someone mouth-to-mouth – it’s better than being dead.

The solidity of the bone underneath the top edge of the feathers is a shock at first – it’s kinda like a long, thin, feathery arm with too many elbows. Dean knows that they’re part of an animal’s (bird-person’s?) skeleton or whatever, but feeling that fact is weirder than he expected. They’re completely limp and even colder than the rest of him, which Dean’s sure is not a good sign. He tries to clear his mind and not dwell on it as he attempts to position them so they’re lying in a more natural position, and not all twisted and dragging on the floor. They want to fold inwards when he moves them around, like a paper fan with muscle memory, but some of the feathers are pointing in weird directions, and they’re still weeping blood. Probably best to keep them stretched out, clean them, and bandage them as best he can before he folds them back up. Not that he knows the first thing about how to care for giant bird wings on people.

Dean takes a second to breathe, rubbing his temples vigorously. By now he really doesn’t care about the blood everywhere, it’s probably all in his hair too from how often he’s ran his hands through it. The whole bathroom is filled with the sharp coppery scent of blood, so he’s going to have to scrub everything, including himself, after all of this anyway.

Now that Castiel is safely propped up Dean leaves him there and goes to the first aid kit beside the twin sinks.

‘Michael wanted to kill you,’ Dean hears in his head, rumbling in Castiel’s voice, as he picks up the green box with shaking hands. ‘I couldn’t let him…’

Dean slams a fist down next to it, breathes deeply, and brings it with him to place by Castiel’s side. He grabs yet another new towel from the cabinet, in a moment of inspiration, not caring if this one gets wrecked too, and returns to the shower. He drops to his knees and lets out a hiss of pain as they connect with the cold tiles, but he disregards it immediately and rummages through the first aid box to find what he needs with one hand, while he carefully wipes Castiel’s neck with the towel with the other.

The bleeding has slowed down significantly, which he assumes is good. Unless that means he’s running out of blood or something…

Dean finally grabs the right packet – one with a large bandage inside – and tears the plastic open with his teeth. The towel gets dropped into Castiel’s lap while Dean uses both hands to unwind the bandage and place the pad carefully against the deep wound on his neck, holding it in place, while he does his best to wind around the gauze. Not too tight, not too loose. This would be much easier if Castiel was conscious… Wait, is the guy even breathing – fuck, why didn’t he check that he’s still breathing? The dude’s cold as ice and pale as a ghost! Shit, shit, shit. Dean’s blood runs icy and his heart pounds painfully with dread as he places two fingers firmly up under Castiel’s chin to feel a pulse. For one horrifying second, he doesn’t think he feels anything, but he moves his hand slightly and suddenly there’s a weak, steady beat against his fingers.

Dean lets out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank fuck,” he breathes.

He hastily removes his fingers, trying not to think of the sharp, solid line of the guy’s jaw.

When Dean ties the bandage in place he can’t help his gaze moving up to the rest of Castiel’s face. People are supposed to look peaceful when they’re unconscious, but his face seems somehow even more sad now than it was before – frozen in misery. The creases beneath his eyes are deeper than ever, and the downward tilt to his eyebrows persists. He has a good-looking face though, pops into Dean’s brain before he can flick it away, and he refocuses at his task with a frown. The bird man is not hot, he thinks firmly.

The bandage stays in place as Dean leans back.

Most of the other wounds are no longer actively bleeding or weeping sluggishly, so he hopes that with that major one under control the rest will be easy to patch up and help Castiel do his magical healing act.

Focus. What’s next?

The wings had been bleeding so heavily that blood had been literally dripping off the ends of the feathers, so Dean moves his attention to them. He doesn’t know anything about bird wings, but this close they kinda look like a mess – he can see tears in the feathers, places where they’re sticking up the wrong way, gaps that reveal flesh on the arm-wing-bone thing, and so much blood. A flash of memory comes to him of the whole wingspan being opened wide back in the bedroom, and how it had flickered something like awe and fear into the pit of his stomach. How the crow had opened those same wings wide to ward off the eagle and defend him. Though they’d been a hell of a lot smaller then.

Dean picks up the towel from before and wets it in the sink, wringing it out as best he can, so he can use it to wipe gently at the feathers and clean them. The blood is starting to dry and make them sticky, so Dean uses the damp towel to get it off, periodically running back to the sink to rinse and wring it out again. The water that swirls down the drain is alarmingly red.

He’d watched the eagle gripping at the crow’s wings multiple times with its talons and tearing at them with its beak. It had obviously done some serious damage.

(Michael and Castiel, Dean reminds himself, not eagle and crow.)

Dean continues to wipe at the wings as gently as he can, but as he’s working a few feathers fall out around them, floating down in a mixture of long and tiny fluffy things. Scattering black against the green tiles.

He can’t help but think of the feather he’d been wearing around his neck all morning. The one he’d thrown away.

Castiel’s stricken expression.

Dean grits his teeth and keeps working. Definitely not the time to examine any of that shit.

As the blood comes away Dean does his best to move some of the wonky feathers back into place, weirdly impressed at how neatly they nestle between each other with perfect alignment. (At least in the places where the feathers aren’t missing.) He shifts across the floor on his knees to reach the end of the first wing and can’t believe how long they are. He’d got a taste of how large the wingspan is in the bedroom, but seeing them this close, how far they stretch out, it’s really something. He supposes they’d have to be big to support a person flying, like how the guy doesn’t weigh much. It’s like he’s a whole other species or something. Probably is.

“Shoulda started my research paper,” Dean mutters wryly, thinking of ‘Werewolves and Other Were Creatures’ sitting in the living room unread, that probably would have explained all of this. He gently wipes the very tip of the longest feather – the one that looks like it’s longer than his whole freaking leg – and runs a finger down the soft edge. “This is crazy,” he whispers.

He isn’t sure how long he sits there on the bathroom floor going through each feather and wiping away the blood. His fingertips start going numb. But he can see the glossy sheen returning to the wings as the sticky blood is wiped away and how order is restored with each feather that he gently coaxes back into place. He puts a couple of small dressings on the wounds on the arm of the wing, over patches of skin where the feathers are missing.

One down.

Dean painstakingly repeats the process on the other wing, even though his fingertips are totally numb. He knows he needs to be extra careful now, not being able to feel properly, and he’s trying his best to focus, but his brain feels like it’s vibrating in his skull with everything he’s learned.

Werewolves exist, but sometimes they’re birds.

Okay.

His little crow friend is actually this naked guy in a trench coat with wings.

Sure.

And what he thought was a bird sanctuary in the woods is actually a whole ‘flock’ of people just like this apparently.

But where does the cabin fit into all this? And Cain and Colette?

He thinks of the big group photo outside of the cabin with all the birds on it, the photo of Cain and the swan, Colette’s cryptic letter, and gifting him the Were Creatures book… even the swan painting itself being the biggest of them all. Could Colette herself have been the swan? She’d been one of them too? That makes the most sense, even if it shouldn’t. But what about Cain? And their baby?

Dean has so many questions he can’t even focus on them all.

He bites his lip as he returns to the sink to rinse the towel again, and as he’s wringing it out he looks over his shoulder at the motionless Castiel. He’s still propped up against the shower tiles, head resting on Dean’s own shirt, with his huge black wings shining like the paint on Baby’s car after a good wash. When Dean looks closely, he can even see a subtle flash of blueish iridescence. Maybe it’s his imagination, but the guy does look a little more peaceful now – his features seem to have relaxed a little. Less sad.

Dean stares for a moment longer before he comes back to himself and shakes the towel out over the sink. When he kneels back down next to Castiel he realizes how painful they’ve gotten from the cold unyielding tiles. He’s only in his thirties but his knees already pop and creak, so this will be doing them no favors. He scoffs a little and wipes the towel gently on the biggest elbow looking joint in the wing. Truthfully, he actually kinda missed these kinds of aches and pains when he worked in the office job Amara forced him to take.

Once Dean is satisfied that the blood is wiped out as well as it can be for now, he decides to fold the wings closer to Castiel’s body for some warmth. It takes surprisingly little effort to get the huge wings to fold inwards, since that’s naturally how they want to go, and it’s a very surreal feeling to be moving such large wings around like it’s nothing. As Dean leans Castiel forwards slightly, to make sure they’re folding right, he notices a large patch of blood staining the back of the trench coat. Dean leans Castiel out further and curses. He didn’t even notice an injury here.

The back of the coat has a flap that sits above the wings, held in place by a couple of large buttons, that lifts and reveals a separate piece of the fabric between them, being held together by another button. That must be how he gets the coat on around the wings. Without thinking Dean undoes the buttons, throws the flap of fabric to the ground, and undoes the final button to reveal a large section of Castiel’s bare back and shoulder-blades. It’s a shock to see where it shifts from regular human skin to a scattering of tiny feathers across the thick joint of muscle and bone that connects the wings to his body. Some of the skin next to his left wing is torn and raw, and Dean has a vivid memory of holding the weak and limp crow in his hands, realizing that the eagle had been trying to tear his wing off.

“Jesus,” Dean hisses, bracing Castiel’s chest with one hand so he can wipe gently at the blood with his other. It’s a bit of juggling act to keep him steady and wrap a bandage around the thick joint between his wing and back, but Dean just about manages it. Sweat is beading in his hairline and dripping down his face with the effort, but he’s eventually able to replace the shirt behind Castiel’s neck and lay him back against the shower wall again.

He glances at Castiel’s face and thinks there might be a little more color to his cheeks.

There are some dark, damp patches on the sleeves and chest of the trench coat, and Dean knows he’s going to have to pull it down to see the cuts underneath. But Dean also knows that Castiel is naked underneath the coat.

He swallows, even though his mouth is dry. It predictably does nothing.

Dean eventually reaches out and touches the collar of the trench coat, reminding himself that the guy is only here right now because he literally threw himself at the thing that wanted to kill him. Again, a vivid flash of memory comes to him of the crow slamming into the much larger eagle mid-dive to throw him off course, and having to watch with horror as they both crashed into the ground with a sickening thud.

Dean swallows again and steels himself. This isn’t weird. This isn’t weird because he owes the guy. And sure, he’s totally naked under the coat, but that just means he can treat the wounds quicker with less layers to take off.

With the fabric at the back already undone Dean can slip the coat over Castiel’s shoulders, sliding it down over his arms carefully. He can’t help but notice how surprisingly toned he is as Dean helps the baggy trench coat down. (What, do they have a whole freaking gym in that forest or something?) It slides down his chest as Dean tugs, letting it pool in his lap, and now he feels like a creep for also noticing that the guy’s chest is broad. So solid and wide.

Dean clears his throat and tries to shift back into professional mode as a heat, that has nothing to do with how hard he’s working, prickles across the back of his neck. He reaches into the first aid box for some wound cleaning wipes, tears open the packets, and throws the empty packaging with the others scattered around the floor. The scratches across Castiel’s chest and arms are already mostly scabbed over, which proves that he wasn’t lying about the whole healing fast thing, but Dean wipes each one gently anyway, cleaning away the trails of dried blood. He puts dressings on a couple of the deeper scratches on his shoulders and smooths down the edges of the adhesive carefully.

Then he notices the bruising across Castiel’s ribs.

Dean remembers how he’d been holding his arm across his ribs for a while, and now he can see why. The bruises are a deep angry purple with yellow blooming at the center. It must have been when Michael had slammed him down from the sky, straight into the ground. If his shallow cuts have already scabbed over, but this still looks that angry… shit, are his ribs broken? What if he’d have punctured a lung? Bled internally? Castiel could have freaking died.

To protect him.

Dean reaches out a fingertip to the angry bruise before he can stop himself, ghosting a feather-light touch there.

“…Dean?”

Dean snatches his hand back. He looks up and his eyes meet barely squinted open blue. “Hey, welcome back to the land of the living,” he says as casually as he can and not like he was touching the guy’s naked torso a second ago.

Castiel seems confused as he attempts to sit up a little straighter, wincing with pain as he moves his bruised and wounded body. He reaches up slowly and removes Dean’s shirt from behind his neck, looking down at it with wide eyes that return to Dean before going back to the shirt again.

Dean feels strangely vulnerable in just his t-shirt, like he wants to snatch his overshirt back and shove it on and tell Castiel that it’s nothing to get excited about he just had to find a way to keep his head up straight and this was the first thing he could think of.

Castiel suddenly jolts a little as his wings rustle behind him. He must feel that they’re bandaged up, because his eyes open even wider in a panic, and he attempts to unfurl them to look at them.

“Don’t, uh, don’t move them around too much – the bandages’ll fall off. I’m not a doctor, so it’s a bit of a shitty job.”

“You…” Castiel breathes, carefully extending a wing to look at the bandages wrapped around the wounds. He touches a bandage and runs a hand through his clean, damp feathers. “You… did this?” his voice is soft and gentle, hitched with emotion – rumbling even deeper than before.

The heat at the back of Dean’s neck returns. “Yeah, well. Like I said. Not a doctor. Or a vet. It was just to keep you from bleeding out all over the floor.”

Castiel’s hand flies to where the cut had been on his neck, touching the bandage instead, and his eyes snap up to Dean’s – the full intensity of his gaze locked in place again.

Has this guy never heard of how inappropriate it is to make intense as fuck eye contact like that with someone you barely know?

“Thank you,” Castiel croaks.

Dean looks until he can’t stand it anymore, and he finally straightens up, bringing the towel with him back to the sinks. He dumps it in the same one as the towel that the crow (still Castiel) had been sitting in before and it lands with a damp squelch. He braces his hands on either side of the sink and lets out a long breath. “Come on. We both know that I should be the one thanking you. You saved my life first. You heal fast or whatever, you didn’t even need me doing this.”

Castiel shakes his head and his pale lips pinch into a thin line. “No. I was being stubborn before. If you hadn’t helped me” – he touches his neck again – “I would have been too weak to heal it all at once. My body would have tried anyway, and I’d probably be dead now.”

Dean doesn’t know what his face is doing, but it must be doing something because Castiel’s eyebrows pull together to form a deep crease between them.

“You don’t think you’re worth saving,” he rumbles.

Dean scowls. “I think that you don’t know a damn thing about me.”

Castiel’s entire body sags, his wings unfolding and lying flat on the tiles. He laughs once, humorlessly, and places a palm flat against the bruise across his ribs. “All this time,” he says, “I’ve been desperate to be able to talk to you. And so far, all I’ve done is made you angry.”

A painful feeling pulses in Dean’s chest, and he knows it’s tinged with guilt. He goes to snap something back but he’s suddenly very aware of the strong smell of blood, that Castiel is still incredibly pale, that he’s sitting half naked on cold tiles, and probably has a broken rib or two. Dean closes his mouth with an audible click and scrubs a hand through his hair again. “We can continue this later, but you should rest first. And it’ll be a hell of a lot easier to get you into the bedroom while you’re conscious.”

“The… bedroom?” Castiel looks around, as if he’s only just now noticing that they’re not in the bedroom anymore. He tilts his head. “You… brought me in here?”

“Well, yeah. I wasn’t gonna leave you passed out on the floor dying, man. I’m pissed off with you for the lies, but I’m not… what?”

“Nothing. Just. Thank you.”

“Jesus. I think you’re the one who thinks he’s not worth saving!”

“Because I’m not,” Castiel says with certainty. Like it’s nothing. Like it’s the absolute truth. Like he’s been told that so many times before he really does believe it. He lifts his bandaged wings up and folds them delicately against his back, then pulls his coat up over his shoulders. Castiel glances at Dean’s chest, so quickly that he almost misses it, and he once again thinks of the feather he tore off from around his neck and threw away. “Crows are nothing but bad omens.”

Dean feels like he needs to apologize, but he’s not even sure what for. Instead, his guilt morphs into irritation and he jabs a finger towards Castiel. “Well, it’s a good thing you’re only part crow then.”

Castiel’s eyebrows push together, and he tilts his head again.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Dean continues, at Castiel’s confusion. “C’mon, man, I know nothing about this, but even I can see you’re only part bird. So that means you’re part human too. That’s gotta count for something. And so what if crows are bad luck. I’m all human and my luck’s been shit. You’re not special.”

Castiel blinks at him and then the corners of his mouth twitch into the beginnings of a smile.

Oh. He has a nice smile.

Stop that, Dean thinks.

“Listen, I still want that explanation you promised me, but for now go rest and do your superpower healing thing-”

“It’s not a superpower.”

“-and you’ll tell me everything when I’m sure you’re not about to pass out from blood loss or get hypothermia. And I mean everything,” Dean adds, his tone stern.

Castiel narrows his eyes and Dean expects an argument, but whether he realizes how cold he is, or how much his ribs are hurting, he finally sags back against the tiles and lets out a deep breath. “Okay.”

Dean can’t help but feel sorry for the guy, and he tries desperately to hold onto the anger and indignation he had before. It’s simmering below the surface, but all the heat has gone out of it for now. The trench coat is hanging off Castiel’s shoulders, without the extra fabric to hold it together at the back, and he’s covered in Dean’s amateur attempts at bandages and dressings.

“Well. Good,” Dean says. “Heal first, talk later.”

Castiel scrunches his eyes shut as he tries to push himself to his feet, but he falters and sways.

Dean holds out a hand to help, then immediately pulls it back slightly. “You a serial killer?”

Castiel stares at his hand, then up at Dean. He seems more surprised by the offer of help than he does the strange question. “No.”

“You plannin’ on becoming a serial killer?”

“No.”

“You got any other magic powers I should know about?”

“They’re not- no. I can transform my shape into a crow, so my body heals faster because my cells are used to dramatically shifting around, that’s all.”

“So, no desire to drink my blood? Wait, that’s vampires. Eat human flesh? What do werebirds even do? It’s not like you guys’ll be howling at the moon.”

“You’re asking me if I’m a monster?” Castiel says calmly, his blue eyes intense, expression unreadable.

Guilt flares inside Dean. So far Castiel has been nothing but kind and sad, and he hasn’t felt threatened by him once (besides that show he put on in the bedroom, but he kinda deserved that and it was as cool as fuck). There’s a lot they need to talk about. Yeah, he lied, and yeah, he can turn into a bird, but does that make him a monster?

‘The few days I’ve spent being your friend have been the best days of my life’.

Dean fully extends his hand back out and wriggles his fingers in invitation. “Monster’s a strong word. I’ve definitely known some people I’d describe as monsters, but so far, you’re not one of ‘em.”

Castiel shrugs the wings against his back like a person would shrug their shoulders and gives them a significant look. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Just get up here,” Dean says, unwilling to go into all of this while the guy is still half naked on the floor. “Heal first, talk later, remember?”

Castiel appears to let it go for now, but there’s still a hard look in his eyes as he finally reaches out and grabs onto Dean’s outstretched hand.

Dean pulls a little harder than necessary, because he forgot how much lighter Castiel is than he looks, and he nearly stumbles forwards right into Dean as he gets to his feet. Instead Castiel reaches out his other hand and grips Dean’s shoulder tightly to regain his balance.

Despite how weak he currently is, the force of the grip on Dean’s shoulder is almost painful.

Now that they’re standing this close it’s easy to see their height difference – not a huge amount, but noticeable. They stand like that for a beat before Dean remembers that they’re still holding hands, and he lets go just as Castiel does.

There’s just something about that bright blue gaze that’s almost hypnotic… Maybe that’s a secret power he doesn’t know about.

Castiel turns around and seems to take in the chaos of the bathroom – the dried blood everywhere, the fallen feathers, the towels in the sinks, the plastic wrappers that Dean had torn off the bandages and thrown to the floor… His perpetual frown returns. “I should help you clean up first.”

Dean sighs. “Castiel-” he starts, about to argue, but the words catch in his throat at Castiel’s reaction.

The effect is immediate.

The wings previously pulled in tight behind his back open out a little as every single feather puffs out at once, like someone put his hand on a live wire. Even the tiny feathers nearer the base of his wings stick out and make them look extra fluffy. Castiel hastily tries in vain to push the feathers down, while a vivid red blooms across his nose that makes him look significantly healthier. “My apologies,” he rumbles, running his hands repeatedly over his wings to smooth them back out.

Fluffy puffy crow…

“Holy shit,” Dean breathes, as if everything is finally and rightfully clicking into place. Amusement washes through him and he laughs. “It really is you. I mean, I knew it was, because I have eyes, and you told me. But…” Dean shakes his head as he laughs and thinks of how he would tease the crow to make his feathers puff out just like that. Just like that. “It’s really… you.”

Another, softer smile tugs at the corners of Castiel’s lips, as if he can’t help but laugh along with whatever has Dean amused, even if he’s not explaining himself very well. He continues to smooth down his feathers and turns away slightly. “Yes. The crow is me.” His almost-smile fades. “And I am sorry about deceiving you. Truly. I was supposed to watch you and try to scare you away like the other humans, but I was… curious about you. You seemed different. Michael has forbidden any of us to have any contact with humans, but… I suppose I just couldn’t help myself.”

Dean considers this for a moment and lets it sink in. He thinks of the first night that they met – when he offered out a bowl of birdseed, and the crow (Castiel) knocked it over, but helped him pick it up, how nervous and scared he’d been… how he’d warmed up after Dean had let him have some of his pie. How Dean himself had been the one to declare that they were friends. “So, what you’re saying is that the free food had nothing to do with it?”

Castiel laughs, a lighter sound than his rumbling voice, and Dean feels a curl of warm pride. He doesn’t seem like someone who laughs very much. “That did help,” he acknowledges.

“And then the bottlecap sealed the deal? What, did I give you the bird equivalent of a friendship necklace?”

Castiel’s smile stays as his wings rustle slightly behind him, and there’s good humor in the lines in the corners of his eyes. “Something like that,” he says.

The birdman is not hot.

Dean backs away towards the doorway. “You uh- you look like you’re about to fall asleep on your feet, so I’m gonna get you some clothes to borrow that aren’t covered in blood. I’ll leave you to uh- yeah- y’know. Bathroom and all. I’ll be in the bedroom.”

He shuts the bathroom door behind him and marches down the corridor, ignoring the blood stains on the floor and his buzzing thoughts.

Even the bedroom floor has bloody footprints over it and blood splatters everywhere. What a mess. At least the cabin is made of wood, so it shouldn’t be too hard to clean. He’s sure he saw all sorts of cleaning products in the cabinet under the sink, and he assumes he’ll have plenty of time while Castiel is sleeping off the whole nearly-dying-thing.

Dean searches through the closet for something for Castiel to wear, but he can’t give him anything that has to go over his head because of the wings. The only button-down shirts he bought with him he doesn’t particularly want to cut open at the back… Dean flicks across each option one by one over the rail. No, no, no… He reaches the very end and stops. The suit.

By the time Dean races back upstairs he nearly collides with Castiel emerging from the bathroom and manages to pull the scissors away just in time. “Woah, don’t want to add accidental stab wound to your list of injuries.”

Castiel tilts his head, holding himself up with a hand on the doorframe. He looks like he’s one strong wind away from falling over. He’ll probably have to run a hand along the wall the whole way to the bedroom just to stay upright.

Dean tucks the scissors into the back pocket of his jeans and holds out his arm. “C’mon, lean on me, I’ll be waiting all day for you to hobble your way down this corridor otherwise.”

“I-” Castiel starts, but cuts off when Dean doesn’t wait for what he assumes will be his insistence on doing it himself, and slips his arm underneath his shoulder. Castiel jumps in surprise as his wing stretches out and wraps around Dean’s back at the same time that his arm reaches along his shoulders. “Sorry,” he rumbles, drawing the wing away.

“Nah, leave it. Balances us out better.”  

The wing stays.

They make their way slowly to the bedroom, but it’s much easier with Castiel being able to walk than when Dean was half dragging him. It’s still odd that hes so much lighter than he looks, but he’s warmer than he was before, and more solid, held against Dean’s side. Wing pressed tightly behind him.

When they get inside the bedroom Dean directs Castiel to the end of the bed, beside the shirt and the suit pants that he’s laid out there. He pulls the scissors from his pocket, twirls them around his finger for a moment like they’re a gun in an old Western, and cuts two huge slits in the back of the shirt, running almost all the way from the collar down to the seam at the bottom. He shoves his arm experimentally through one of the holes. Looks like it’ll work.

Castiel is still watching him with curiosity and Dean is reminded once again of the many times the crow looked at him in the same way.

“There we go. Winchester shirt alteration services complete. This should fit your wings through it now, and the pants are there too. I know a suit isn’t exactly the comfiest thing to wear in bed, but they’re dry and clean and they’ll keep you warm.”

Castiel takes the shirt from him and looks down at it reverently. “Thank you, Dean.”

“Don’t mention it. Not like I was planning on wearing it anytime soon. I- holy shit! Wait for me to leave the room!”

Castiel pauses in removing his coat. “Why?”

“Dude! You’re freaking naked under there!”

“I’ve seen you naked,” Castiel points out.

“Yeah,” Dean says, his heart pounding in his ears, “don’t remind me. And anyway, that was different because I was wearing underwear.”

“I see.”

“Okay. Good. So, I’ll just go and get you a glass of water and some painkillers while you change and I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Dean?”

Dean pauses on his way out of the room. “Yeah?”

Castiel holds eye contact with him as his wings twitch on his back, rustling a little as they move restlessly.

As a crow Dean knows that it’s something he did when he seemed happy.  

Castiel’s expression goes soft as he looks away. “It’s just nice to finally be able to say your name and you can understand me.”

“Oh.” Dean is stunned into silence for a moment, then he huffs out a laugh. “I can’t believe you and that tiny freakin’ badass that fought an eagle are the same person… bird… bird-person.”

“You think… I was…” Castiel’s wings flare out a little as every single feather fluffs up again. He quickly tries to smooth down the feathers in a fluster.

Dean laughs louder, grinning. “That’s for watching me wash my car with no clothes on.” He finally leaves the room and pulls the door closed behind him. “Man, I can already tell that’s never gonna get old,” he mutters as he goes downstairs.

For some reason, despite the insanity and the intensity of the last few hours, he feels… lighter.

Dean stops and stares at the painting of the swan and the sparrow as he reaches the living room. The two birds flying together in the bright blue sky.

There’s still a lot he needs to know, and he’s still hurt by the idea that he’d been lied to – but, Castiel seems… nice. Weird. But nice. It doesn’t feel like he led Dean on for some kind of nefarious purpose. Unless this is all still part of the lie…

Guess he’ll find out.

Chapter Text

Dean doesn’t mean to linger in the kitchen, but he washes his hands, fills a glass with water, grabs some Tylenol from the kitchen drawer, and he loiters. He knows he’s just delaying going back up to the bedroom, and unless he plans on staying in the kitchen like an avoidant loser for the rest of the day he’ll have to go back up eventually, but…

Now that he’s doing normal things in a normal room again, it feels like the last few hours almost didn’t happen. It’s the same kind of feeling that he’d had when the Sheriff showed up at the door. Like everything makes sense again, and all the secret keyholes and birds turning into people belong in fairytales and the movies.

The light, happier feeling from before has faded away, and Dean wonders if it was just some kind of lingering adrenaline rush – because now all he can feel is the creeping coldness of doubt. Did all of that really happen? Has he finally lost it? Is he in some kind of whiskey-induced coma?

His biggest fear, the one he can barely even admit to himself, is that he’ll jolt awake and still be lying next to Amara. What if he never broke up with her, never got out, never came to cabin, never started feeling alive again…

Maybe that’s the only way any of this really makes sense – Dean’s sleeping subconscious came up with a cabin filled with feathers and mysteries because he grew up on Scooby Doo episodes, and he invented a hot guy who would be his friend that can turn into a crow, because…

Honestly, he’s not entirely sure why his subconscious would do that.

Because he’s lonely?

(Dean mentally kicks himself and reminds himself that Castiel is not hot. But his inner voice doesn’t sound very convincing.)

Whether any of this shit is really happening or not, it certainly feels real. Dean knows he’s only going to be able to kid himself that this is all in his head for so long. Can’t blame a guy for trying to protect himself from feeling his entire worldview change in a few hours, but he’s just gonna have to deal with it.

Heaving out a huge sigh Dean stares out of the window above the sink – one hand tightly gripping the glass of water, the other the Tylenol. Afternoon sunlight illuminates the garden and the leaves on the surrounding trees flicker in the breeze to create a scene pulled straight out of a Disney movie. It all looks idyllic and perfect. The only thing that looks a little off is the extremely out-of-place pair of brown boots lying haphazardly in the grass from where he threw them earlier. He’s sure if he went over and looked there’d be a bunch of loose feathers scattered in the grass too from where the two birds were both tearing them out of each other. If Dean thinks hard enough, he can almost still hear the screeches of pain and fury.

One of those birds is currently upstairs in the bedroom, he thinks.

How did he end up in this situation?

If he is still alive – if he’s not just dreaming – if he’s really stumbled into this other world, this is going to make for a crazy story for Charlie when he gets home.

Shit, should he even talk about any of this when he gets home? It’s not like he has evidence that any of this really happened (he wonders if that’s why Castiel always seemed so avoidant of his cell phone), and it would make him sound insane if he explained any of this out loud to someone. What did Castiel say before? That they’re a secret? He’s pretty sure he said something like that.

Does that mean he shouldn’t tell Sammy either?

Could he go home and face Sam and not tell him about any of this?

No way could he do that.

Dean hasn’t really thought about going home for a while, and the thought stirs up some mixed emotions that he doesn’t care to untangle right now, so he focuses on his current task again.

Water. Painkillers. Birdman.

When Dean finally pulls his attention away from the window, turning back towards the rest of the kitchen, he spots some drops of blood on the wooden floor and adds that to the mental list of places he needs to clean. It’s gonna be a long afternoon of scrubbing. Before that he hopes that Castiel stays conscious enough to answer at least a couple of his questions before he powers down to recharge or whatever it is he’ll do.

Dean knows he ran away from reality for two years while he was with Amara and he let her decide what his world looked like and how he experienced it. Well, now this is him deciding he’s done with that. He takes a deep breath, straightens up and squares his shoulders, and feels a stubborn sense of acceptance settling over him. If bird people exist, then fine. One just saved his ass. They exist. Dean’s just gonna have to navigate this new world and find a way to live with the knowledge that it’s not all as simple as it appears – sometimes the fairytales are real.

He thinks maybe he just needs to give himself time to process this all properly. And get some answers. He takes the stairs slowly, his socks thumping dully on each step, and between the rhythm and the concentration it takes not to spill the water he finds it easy to let his mind empty. For now, just focus on each task as it comes.

Outside of the bedroom Dean pauses.

Should he just go in? Knock? Not like he has any hands free to do that anyway.

Eventually he takes a breath and uses his foot to push open the door.

Castiel is wearing the suit at least, but he’s curled up on the floor, with one black wing pulled tight against his back and the other reaching over himself like a bandaged feathery blanket. His head rests on his own bundled-up bloodstained coat and his eyes are closed. He doesn’t even stir when Dean enters.

Something catches in Dean’s throat.

He looks… vulnerable and sad.

The guy is clearly asleep, but Dean can’t leave him on the floor like that. The bed’s right there!

Dean walks over to him and nudges him with his foot, conscious of his hands still being full. “Hey, buddy, c’mon, wake up.”

Castiel stirs as his wing blanket retreats behind his back, and he gingerly sits upright. His hair is even messier than before, flat on one side, and he blinks his blue eyes a few times before he seems to be able to focus on Dean. “My apologies,” he says sleepily, “both transforming and healing require a lot of energy.”

His skin is still pale and ashen, but even just from that brief nap he looks a little more alive than before.

“Well, you’ll rest a lot better in the bed,” Dean says.

Castiel looks away sheepishly. “I didn’t want to presume.”

“You’re injured, man, I wouldn’t make you sleep on the floor.”

“I didn’t want to steal your nest- uh, bed- your bed.” Castiel shakes his head and rubs his eyes, still seeming half asleep.

Dean catches the strange little slip-up and can’t understand why he finds it funny instead of creepy. “There’s a perfectly good couch downstairs for people who aren’t currently in the process of healing injuries that nearly killed them, okay? I’ll be fine there for now. You’re not stealing my bed; I’m telling you to go and get in.”

Now that Castiel is sat up and looking more alert Dean can see how well the shirt and pants suit him – it’s lucky that they’re a similar size so that they fit. The shirt sleeves are buttoned down over Castiel’s wrists, likely to cover the scratches on his arms and keep them clean, and Dean’s not sure why he’s a little disappointed that they’re not rolled up. He has a vivid flash of memory at how muscled Castiel’s arms are, from back in the bathroom, and he mentally wants to shake himself.

What the fuck is wrong with him?

Dean forcibly turns his attention to the bandages that he can see on Castiel’s wings and on his neck, and latches onto his relief and pride that they all seem to have held in place well, despite his limited first aid experience.

Eventually Dean bends down and passes the glass of water to Castiel, trying hard not to snap his hand back when their fingers touch, then pops out the medication that he’ll need, and almost throws them into Castiel’s other hand.

“You had Tylenol before?” Dean asks in a harsher tone than he intended.

Castiel stares at him with narrow eyes and holds his gaze intensely while he throws the medication into his mouth and swallows them dry. “Yes,” he says, biting back. (For some reason his pissy tone while looking sleepy as hell makes Dean want to smile.) After a moment, his point made, Castiel chases the pills down with a few gulps of water.

Dean holds up his hands in surrender. “Just checking, Sensitive Sally. Didn’t know if you guys used crushed acorns and unicorn hair or something.”

“That would be an incredible waste of unicorn hair.”

Dean nearly chokes on air. “Are you kidding? You’re kidding right? Unicorns are real too?”

“They fly down on rainbows,” Castiel says solemnly, “and sparkle in the sun.” His face remains completely serious, but Dean slowly realizes that he’s been had.

“You little shit,” Dean says, warmth stirring in his chest.

A tiny smile quirks up the corners of Castiel’s lips and Dean turns away before it makes him smile back. Out of reflex and no other reason.

Castiel’s wings rustle happily behind his back, drawing Dean’s attention to the bandages again, white against his black feathers, and guilt tramples down his good mood.

“Just get into the bed already,” Dean says, only realizing how harshly it came out, when Castiel’s wings go still and his smile fades.

Ah, fuck.

Dean wants to smack his own forehead.

He’s always said that he’s not good at the whole ‘feelings’ thing (although Sam says that’s just the echoes of Dad in him talking.) It’s why he’s always referred to them as ‘chick flick moments’ to excuse himself from having to work on it, and it’s why he never had a stable long-term relationship before Amara. She’d trained this sort of shit out of him, while they were together. If he said something harsher than he intended, she would make sure he regretted it with her sharp tongue, and she would completely ignore him if he did something she didn’t like, knowing he’d come running back with promises to change and do better.

“Yes, of course,” Castiel mutters as he pushes himself to his feet, seemingly stronger than he’d been before, but he still a little wobbly when he’s standing fully upright. The huge wings on his back are light, but they must still affect his balance when he’s feeling weak.

He somehow has the same goddamn kicked-puppy-look that his bird-self had down to a science. Dean remembers how badly he’d wanted to scoop that sad crow up into his arms and make him feel better. How the hell can a grown man be giving him that same feeling? Dean groans internally at how confusing this all still is.

Castiel places the glass of water on the bedside table, frowns at something there for a second, then finally climbs into the bed with a loud rustle of the sheets.

Dean is still working out how he can squash down the guilt buzzing around in his gut, whilst reminding himself that he’s supposed to still be mad that he was tricked, and trying to ignore the concern that’s overriding it all.

God, he needs another glass of whiskey.

Castiel shimmies himself noisily over in the bed, right into the center, and sits up with his back and wings pressing slightly against the wooden headboard, carved with feathers. He looks a little silly there in his shirt, covered in bandages, messy hair still sticking up on one side, while he gently manipulates his wings into a comfortable position.

Sitting down and sleeping must be kind of annoying with how big his wings are, Dean muses. Maybe it would be easier to sleep as a bird? He wonders if the wings get in the way much… He’s sure he’d constantly be knocking shit over when he turned around if he had wings. Or catching them on doorways. Is that why… everything in the cabin has been built so open? The rooms are all so big and spacious, almost weirdly so, with wide doorways and big windows… Built for people with wings…

Dean is deep in thought when he crosses over to the bedside table and places down the packet of Tylenol beside the glass of water, just in case Castiel needs another dose at some point. But just as Dean is about to move away, he notices the other objects on the table. They must have been what Castiel was looking at before: his gifts from the crow. His gifts from Castiel himself.

Dean bites his lip. Maybe it would be better (easier) if he just sticks to the main questions he wants to ask about the lies and the whole birdman thing and then walks straight out the room. Let the guy sleep and heal, then go back into the woods when he’s feeling better. Things could go back to how they were before, and Dean can enjoy the rest of his vacation. Minus his crow friend.

Is that what he wants?

Can Castiel even go back now that the crazy eagle guy tried to murder him?

Dean knows he shouldn’t make things more complicated – should stick to the important questions – but he picks up the compass and holds it out on his palm. “Why’d you give me this?”

Castiel somehow seems even smaller now that he’s settled in the center of the huge bed. The elbows of his wings are held up high behind his shoulders, so that the longest feathers trail out and spill over the edges of the bed either side of him. He tilts his head (birdlike), as if caught off-guard by the question. “It seemed as if you needed it more than me.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question.”

Castiel sighs. “You want the long answer.”

“Long as it’s true.”

Castiel holds his gaze for a moment, while guilt and frustration flash through his eyes. Eventually his expression evens out into neutrality once more and he says, “Cain gave me that compass a long time ago. Back when Colette was Flock Leader.”

So, Colette had been one of them! “I fucking knew it. The swan…”

“How do you know that?”

“Cain loved his secrets and hiding places apparently, and I’ve somehow been stumbling across them all. Piecing it all together I finally got that one plus one equals swan.”

“I did notice that you’d found the key that unlocks the gate out into the forest. I originally assumed that Cain had taken it with him when he left, because I never came across it while I stayed here, but it looks like he hid it instead.” Castiel shakes his head. “He played a dangerous game leaving all those secrets to find if someone was curious and stubborn enough to discover them.”

“Hey, I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted,” Dean says, folding his arms. He feels a little exposed and seen, and it’s doing something strange to his stomach.

“You seemed very determined to go through the gate and explore the forest. I could see then that you dislike letting things go when you want to do something, and it’s not a bad trait to have, but if I hadn’t stopped you Michael would have killed you right there for trespassing.”

“Oh, so that’s why you almost took my eyes out flapping around my head and pecking at my boots,” Dean says. He happily falls back on his old pal sarcasm while he’s realizing that this birdman saved his freaking life twice.

Castiel doesn’t pout, but he comes very close to it. “Yes. I was warning you away. And I apologized at the time.”

Dean thinks of the crow fixing his hair and nuzzling into his cheek and kinda wants the ground to open beneath him. “Look, I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you, but your shtick to make yourself seem scary and intimidating doesn’t work. You’re the size of a small cat. I could have scooped you up and put you under my arm like a football. Just, so you know.”

Castiel’s wings puff up slightly behind him as his eyes narrow again. “It worked to keep you out, didn’t it?”

“Only because I let you.”

Castiel’s wings puff up further even as he adds a scowl and his scrunchy eyebrows to the mix, and Dean wonders if that means he’s enjoying this kind of bickering as much as he is. (Even if he doesn’t want to admit it.)

Neither of them say anything, while Dean can feel a grin stretching out his lips that he decides he’s done fighting. Castiel looks away to smooth down his feathers, but it looks like the corners of his mouth are twitching. “There are many secrets Cain built into this cabin,” he says eventually. “Hiding spots. Doors. He said it would be fun for Colette to discover them.” He fixes his gaze up at the ceiling. “Maybe…” He glances at Dean quickly, then returns his attention to the ceiling. “Once I’ve recovered you could show me the ones you’ve found, and I can show you the ones you’re missing?” His voice, despite being so deep and gravelly, seems hesitant and wary.

Oh. Is this a roundabout way of seeing if he can stay here after he recovers? A way of asking to spend time with him?

Dean must take too long to respond because eventually Castiel sighs and clasps his hands in front of him on the bed. “Apologies, I got distracted from my story. Colette was the only member of the flock who treated me like I belonged there,” he says, “she ‘took me under her wing’, so to speak.”

Dean feels like he’s missed an important moment, but he doesn’t know how to get it back. Does he want to get it back? How would he even have responded if he’d been given the time?

“After meeting Cain, she fell in love quickly. He would hike through the forest frequently, either with his brother or alone, and Colette would make sure to be there whenever she saw him. We’re forbidden to expose our secret to humans, but she was Flock Leader, and she tended to make her own rules. So, she made sure he was alone one day, and she revealed her biggest secret. I’d never believed in love at first sight until I saw what they had,” Castiel admitted softly.

Dean thinks of the letter he found inside the Were Creatures book – and how he’d almost been able to feel the love written into the page. The photo of them smiling together. The huge painting of the swan in the living room. He doesn’t doubt, even for a second, that Cain accepted her right away.

“Eventually they decided they couldn’t be apart anymore, but the flock would never accept a human, so Cain decided to build the cabin nearby. They built their nest together,” Castiel continues, “and I often sneaked out from the flock to come here and help them. But I was young, and my internal compass had yet to develop, so I kept getting lost in the forest. There are no paths in there, and it all looks so similar… Colette found me circling the trees once, calling sadly over and over, because I was so lost. I thought going above the trees would help, but then I couldn’t find my way back to the flock either, and I’d somehow flown in the opposite direction. My small wings were so tired, so she let me ride on her back the rest of the way.” Castiel smiles a little while he speaks, and Dean can hear the affection in his deep voice.

This is the most Castiel has said all at once so far. There’s something comforting and warm about the timbre of his voice that makes Dean feel like he could sit here and listen to it for the rest of the night. But the more Castiel talks, the more tired he’s starting to look.

“A swan with a crow on its back?” Dean says suddenly, the mental image of it being silly enough to finally have him interject. “That must have been a sight.”

Castiel chuckles quietly. “Yes, I imagine so – to a human. But we all transform into so many different species of birds, it’s not that unusual to see a larger bird giving a ride to a whole group of the smallest of us. Colette used to do it often. Though nobody would share the ride if I was there.”

Dean frowns, remembering the photo of the whole flock in front of the cabin, and how there had been a deliberate gap between the crow and the other birds, besides the swan. Fuck those other birds.

“After that particular incident, Cain handed me that compass and told me that he’d built the cabin directly south-east of the flock’s nest, so if I followed the compass, I’d always reach it,” Castiel says. “So, when you said you wanted to ‘find yourself’, and you seemed so lost… I thought… it might cheer you up. Maybe you could find your way with it, like I did.” Castiel squeezes his clasped hands so tightly his knuckles go white. “A ridiculous notion, I know, but-”

“It helped,” Dean says, his voice thick with an emotion he doesn’t recognize. His own grip on the compass is almost painful. “It helped a lot. To think someone – anyone – cared that much. Wanted to help me, and not even get any recognition for it.”

Castiel’s whole body seems to relax and lose tension as he lets out a long breath. “I’m glad.”

There’s a long pause before Dean turns, picks the stone up too, and offers the two items back to Castiel. “You, uh… you can have them back if you want them? If they have sentimental value or whatever.”

Castiel looks horrified and his wings tighten up behind his back in the bed. “You… don’t want them?”

“Well, it kinda feels like you gave them to me under false pretenses or whatever, so if they mean a lot to you, you can have them back.”

“No. Those are gifts, they’re for you to keep. But of course I’ll have them back if you don’t want them.” Castiel speaks in an even tone, but he looks a little bit like he might throw up.

“Hey, I just didn’t want to feel like I was stealing your most valued possessions or something. But, if you’re okay with it, then I’ll keep ‘em,” Dean says with a shrug. “They’re cool.” He places the compass back onto the table and holds the glass stone towards the ceiling. It’s a very light shade of green, almost like glass, and smooth and cold to the touch. “So, what’s the deal with the stone? That got some kind of backstory too?”

“Gift exchange,” Castiel says simply, “you gave me the bottlecap, I gave you the stone. And I thought it was pretty, like-” He coughs and winces, one hand moving to rest on his ribs again. “It’s just to signify the start of a… friendship.”

“Huh. Man, crows are weird…” Dean jumps, realizing what he said. “Shit, sorry, I’m just used to saying that kinda stuff when you were a bird and it didn’t matter, and now you’re… y’know…” – a man – “a person. With people feelings.”

“I still have ‘people feelings’ when I’m a crow, Dean,” Castiel says. His use of air quotes with his fingers should be lame and dorky, but it suits him somehow.

“Really?” Dean replaces the stone onto the table, right next to the compass. “So is that how it works? The shape changes, but the inside doesn’t? At all?”

“I’m the same, no matter what form I take. Although I do exhibit more natural bird behaviors when in my crow form. And I will have seemed more like a regular bird to you because I was actively pretending to be a real crow, to not make you suspicious.”

“Oh, I was plenty suspicious, man.” Dean chuckles. “I know nothing about crows, but looking back now, I’m pretty sure they don’t do half the stuff you did. For one, it always looked like you could understand me, and I had to do some real mental gymnastics to make that make sense.”

Castiel hums doubtfully, his eyebrows scrunching together again. “I thought I did a good job mimicking their behavior. Although admittedly, I’ve never met a real crow, but I’m certain I-”

“Wait, wait. You’ve never met a real crow? How’d you even guess how to act?”

“I’ve read books about them.”

Dean laughs, and Castiel’s frown deepens, but his wings twitch behind him, making soft rustling sounds.

“So, let me get this straight,” Dean says, laughter still dancing in his voice, “you were doing a bad impression of a crow, but I had no idea what a good impression would be, so it worked.”

“I still think my mimicry of a crow was accurate,” Castiel huffs. He looks tired.

Dean shakes his head with amusement, as he finally walks away from the bed. “Okay, buddy, whatever you say.”

Castiel’s wings twitch again, and he reaches around to smooth the feathers down, but he stops as he winces at the movement and coughs a few times.

Dean almost winces with him, remembering the state of the bruises on his ribs. “I have so many more questions, but you really need to sleep before you pass out again. I’ll be downstairs if you need me – don’t be a martyr and be up here dying or something. I left you the Tylenol, and I’ll bring you some food later.”

Castiel is slowly lowering himself into lying down in the bed when he sits up again. “Pie?”

Dean laughs before he can stop himself. “No pie. Sorry, man. I already ate it all while you were out avoiding the rain the other day.”

Huh… since when did he accept that it’s part of a normal conversation to casually talk about when the person in front of him had been in the shape of a bird?

His day could not get any fucking weirder.

“You snooze, you lose,” Dean continues. “It’ll be edible though. You can eat, like, more normal people stuff than just pie, right?”

The withering look Castiel shoots him while he settles back down into the sheets sends a jolt of something bright and warm straight into Dean’s chest and he laughs again.

“You’re the first werebird I’ve ever met, I gotta check these things.”

Castiel finally finishes shuffling around and ends up lying on his side, facing Dean, with the sheets pulled up to his chin. His wings are tucked underneath the sheets too, resting out on the bed behind him.

An awkward silence fills the room, while Dean desperately tries not to ask the million more questions that he’s barely holding back. With a willpower that he’s surprised he possesses, Dean eventually turns to leave. “Okay, well, heal up.”

“Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“You called me buddy before… Does that mean that you consider us to be friends again?” The question is asked with almost deliberate neutrality, but there’s a tone of hope ringing underneath that catches Dean by surprise.

Castiel… he still really wants to be friends? With Dean? Why? He’s been kind of an asshole.

Talking to this guy gives him emotional whiplash.

“I say that to everyone,” Dean says quickly. “I call a lot of people buddy. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Oh,” Castiel rumbles. After a moment he adds, “Does it bother you that we’re different species?”

No.

“Maybe.”

“I see.” Castiel’s wings draw in sharply as he closes his eyes, looking even paler and more tired than before. “Thank you, Dean. For everything. Goodnight.”

“Uh, yeah. Have a- uh- a good sleep.” Dean once again experiences that strange feeling of missing an important moment and not knowing how to get it back, but he shakes himself out of it as he steps into the hallway and clicks the bedroom door shut behind him.

Chapter Text

Castiel sleeps. Dean cleans. He did a Google search on his cellphone for how to successfully get blood stains out of wooden flooring, so he’s expecting the FBI to break the door down any second. Nothing says ‘hey, I’m a serial killer’ more than an internet search for how to clear up blood coming from a person staying in a cabin in the woods in the middle of goddamn nowhere.

It’s helpful that there’s a cabinet under the sink full of cleaning supplies, but even with a bucket full of chemicals it still takes a lot of effort and scrubbing to get the blood off the floor. Every time Dean thinks he’s got it all he sees a spot that he missed. It helps to clear his mind though – gives him something to focus on.

He gets the hosepipe out for the blood scattered onto the wooden decking outside the back and remembers how the last time he used it was when he cleaned up the grill with the crow. (Something that feels like it happened days ago.)

It’s uncanny to look back on their interactions now, knowing that the whole time the crow had really been Castiel in a different shape. He did a lot of stuff a real bird would never do – understanding everything Dean said, bird-laughing at his jokes, narrowing his eyes at him when he got annoyed… Dean can’t believe he ever fell for the act. But in his defense, he did come up with some pretty rational explanations for these behaviors, and he also just thought that the crow was extremely fucking weird. (That judgement has so far stuck to the human-shaped-Castiel too.) It’s not surprising that he’d always felt the weight of the crow’s stare, when he had been much more than a bird all along.

Funnily, that habit doesn’t even seem exclusive to the crow – Castiel seems to stare just as intensely and just as much in either form.

Thinking back, Dean wonders if Castiel tried to reveal his secret back when they’d finished cleaning off the grill. That strange ‘off’ feeling had been so strong, and it was probably because Castiel had completely dropped the bird act. Dean’s sure of it. Then there’d been that insane fraction of a second where he’d thought that the crow’s edges had started to look kinda fuzzy. Maybe that’s how the ‘transformation’ or whatever starts? But he’d been interrupted by the rain, and that’s when he’d stayed away for a while.

Had Michael known what he’d been trying to do? Had he threatened him? Kept him prisoner?

Dean shakes his head and returns to the present, directing the hosepipe towards any spots of blood he finds. The water hits the deck with a satisfying splatter and washes away the red easily. He doesn’t need to, but Dean walks out over the path into the garden with the hose too, to wash away the blood flecks on the grass.

He retrieves his boots from where he threw them and slips them straight back on.

It turns out that he’d been right about the feathers. Scatterings of black and brown feathers stick out amongst the grass from where the two birds had been tearing at each other. More black than brown, Dean realizes grimly, looking out at the evidence of their fight.

There are clumps of tiny fluffy feathers, sticky with blood, that he washes away with the hose, but the larger intact black feathers he reaches down and picks up. He washes each one carefully in the spray and slides them into his back pocket. (Dean gathers all the brown feathers in a pile and crushes them under his boot.)

Eventually all the blood gets washed away from the stone path and the grass, with Dean reaching down periodically to pocket another intact black feather. He doesn’t even know what Castiel would want with his old feathers, but it just seems wrong to leave them out here.

Dean wipes a hand across his forehead. It feels like very little time has passed since breakfast, but the sun is already starting to sink in the sky. It’s all been one big blur. He takes a deep breath, inhaling the comforting woody scent of the forest and the tang of damp earth.

What a day.

The hose gets put back once he’s certain the evidence of the fight has been washed and cleared away, and Dean returns inside. He toes his boots off at the back door and leaves them there, which he tells himself is just because they got a little wet and muddy from the garden, but really, he knows is just in case he needs to use them to fight off any future homicidal eagle attacks.

Dean places the bundle of black feathers into a line on the kitchen table, to help them dry out, and returns to the cabinet under the sink to rummage around for the detergent he’ll need to run the washing machine. He just needs to have a shower and then he can finally put his blood-stained clothes into the washing machine and clean them too. Will that be enough to get rid of the blood though? He hopes his clothes aren’t ruined.

Reluctantly, Dean makes another Google search on his phone, for how to get blood stains out of clothing. Damn, the FBI are really gonna be out for him soon. It’s not even like they’d believe him if he told them the truth – two werebirds were fighting each other, don’t worry about it.

He huffs a laugh while he imagines trying to explain all this over the phone to Jody, since she’d told him to call her if anything weird happened, but he’s pretty sure this is way outside of what she meant. It’s frustrating that he can’t talk about any of this with anyone. Well, anyone except the guy upstairs.

Dean runs a hand through his hair and grimaces when he realizes that it feels a little stiff in places where blood has dried in. He ruffles it and feels it flake away. How the hell is Castiel even alive after losing this much blood? It’s starting to dawn on him just how bad the situation had been in the bathroom – just how close Castiel had come to never waking up again. He could have died. Dean holds out his hands in front of him and opens and closes them a few times, remembering the feel of Castiel’s pale, icy skin. At least the bandages had helped slow the blood flow. When Castiel said that Dean had saved his life, it looks like he hadn’t been exaggerating.

And hey, if Castiel saved his life and then Dean saved his, that means they’re even. No life debts that either of them needs to repay.

The cabin is as quiet as always, but suddenly the stillness and the silence get under Dean’s skin like an itch. He shrugs the feeling off as he walks over to the sink. He pours himself a glass of water, downs it in one go, slams the glass onto the counter, and pulls his cellphone back out. Fuck it, he’s going to call Cain. He should have done this days ago.

Dean pointedly ignores Amara’s name as he pulls up his contacts list, and scrolls down to Cain, but he hesitates before he presses the call button. He’s spotted the name just underneath… Should he call? Dean groans as he taps on that name instead and pushes the phone to his ear before he can change his mind.

Each ring of the dial tone weakens his resolve, and he’s just about to hang up, when someone finally answers.

“Dean?” Charlie sounds out of breath and worried.

“Hey, Charlie. Sorry, I know you must be at work right now…”

“No, it’s fine, I saw your name and told my manager it was a family emergency. Ran out back. I know you wouldn’t ring unless it was important – you okay?”

A sense of calm washes through Dean at the sound of her familiar voice, and he lets out a long breath. “Yeah. Yeah, I hope I didn’t worry you too bad. I just- I need some advice- or just to talk? I don’t know. I don’t know why I called, when I can’t even talk about the thing I want to talk about.”

“If you wanted to reassure me, the whole rambling thing isn’t working. You don’t ramble unless something’s got you really rattled, Dean,” Charlie says, her voice still thick with concern. “What’s going on over there? Is it Amara? ‘Cause if she’s harassing you, I know a bunch of ways to hack into her accounts and make her miserable.”

“Wait, wait, wait. I’ll try to explain best as I can. Do not go diving straight into illegal cyber-crimes.”

“Hey, it’s only illegal if you get caught.”

Dean laughs. “I knew calling you was a good idea.”

“Calling me is always a good idea,” Charlie fires back. “So, what’s the sitch? ‘Cause I’m still a little worried over here Mr. Mysterious.”

Dean’s not entirely sure how to start, or to explain, without telling her too much. He should have thought this through before calling her. “Uh…” he starts. It’ll be okay, he just needs to stay vague. “There’s this guy-”

“Oh my god,” Charlie squeaks. “You met someone!”

Dean nearly chokes. “All I said was that there’s a guy!”

“Yeah, in your met someone you like voice.”

“I don’t even have a voice like that! I sound the same as always.”

“How the hell did you meet someone all the way out there?” Charlie goes on, ignoring him. “I thought you were in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. What is he, a hiker? Forest inspector?”

Dean squeezes his eyes shut and rubs them vigorously with his fingers. He should have been vaguer. Well, might as well keep going now. “He’s a… bird… watcher. A birdwatcher.”

“Birdwatcher? Huh. Doesn’t sound like your usual type.”

Dean’s eyebrows rise. “My ‘usual type’?”

“Yeah, you know, for the ladies, dark and sexy,” Charlie says, appreciation in her voice. “Which, I totally agree with by the way. And for the men, dark and sexy, and badass. It’s totally a thing with you. But hey, I’m not judging, if you have a crush on a birdwatcher, you have a crush on a birdwatcher.”

Dean opens his mouth for his kneejerk reaction to deny it – the conditioning of years of repressing about to come flying out – but he stops himself just in time.

He remembers the day when Charlie casually dropped out that she only likes girls, when they’d both been staring at their high school cheerleader team instead of the football game. It had been playing on Dean’s mind all day, and then when they’d been walking home, he’d timidly confessed to her that he likes girls, but that he thinks he might like guys too. He’d panicked immediately after, feeling like he might throw up with the horror that his dad might find out, and made her swear never to talk about it with him again. And she never did. Even when he dragged her to a wrestling match to watch Gunner Lawless, or when they watched endless Dr Sexy boxsets on their sleepovers, or watched Empire for the hundredth time for the Han Solo scenes. She would sometimes give him a knowing look, but she never mentioned it.

It was only after breaking up with Amara, when Charlie had generously let Dean back into his life, that he’d brought the subject back up with her. She’d sounded so proud of him and enthusiastically sent him a bunch of links to websites about bisexuality.

He’s still getting used to this whole thing, but Charlie being so casual about it all helps more than she realizes.

“Okay, fine,” Dean says eventually, even though the urge to change the subject is still pressing down on him, “maybe I have a type. But the bird guy is not in there at all. Definitely not my type. It’s not like that. He’s the opposite of badass. And I do not have a ‘crush’ on him – I’m not a twelve-year-old girl.”

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

“Look, the dude’s… really weird.”

Dean remembers the crow using his whole body to slam into the eagle as it dove, and the sight of Castiel, wings unfurled, with the sunlight behind him, making him look edged by fire.

Not badass at all, he thinks, unconvincingly.

“Really weird? I bet you both get along well.”

Dean groans. “Don’t start.”

“Okay, okay, sorry.” Charlie still sounds like she doesn’t believe him at all. “If you don’t have a crush on him, then what’s the problem?”

“I think we were something kinda like… friends? But then… I don’t know. It’s really hard to explain.” Dean looks out of the window while he thinks about what he wants to say, and how he’s going to say it. “I found out that I didn’t really know him at all. He lied to me.”

Charlie hums sadly. “A big lie?”

Dean tries not to laugh. “Pretty big, yeah.”

Charlie is silent for a moment and Dean can almost imagine her chewing on her thumbnail – a habit she’s had since she was a kid – until she finally says, “Do you think he did it on purpose? To deliberately hurt you?”

“No,” Dean says immediately, shocked at how quickly it flew out. “His uh- family- they’re really controlling. He’d be… punished if he didn’t keep up the lie.” Nearly got me and himself killed. “He’s apologized, but I just… I don’t know if I can get over it.”

“I’m not here to tell you what to feel, and only you know if it’s something you can’t forgive or not. But, to me, it sounds like he was in a tricky situation there – does he betray his family and risk the punishment, or does he do what they say and live the easier life to keep them happy?” Charlie’s voice is soft and serious, in a way that Dean isn’t used to hearing. She’s speaking carefully, as if she’s considering each word that she uses. “You can’t blame someone for being emotionally or physically manipulated, when it’s not their fault. They’re put into this situation where it’s just easier to lie – or to cut someone out. But I don’t think that kind of mistake defines them. Especially if they’ve found the strength to get out of there and own up to it and apologize.”

Dean grips his cellphone tightly and closes his eyes as shame and regret churns in his stomach bitterly.

“I don’t think I could stay mad at someone like that,” Charlie continues, in the same serious tone. “If someone realized that their decision hurt you and apologized… well, don’t you think that person deserves a second chance?”

“Yeah…” Dean says quietly, meaning it. “I think that they do.”

Charlie is right. She’s so fucking right and he knows it. He’s known it all along – he can feel it in how easily he agrees.

It’s not exactly the same kind of situation – it’s not like Dean has ever had to lie about turning into a bird to anyone – but he’d been forced to make decisions that he hadn’t wanted to. Cut people out of his life that he hadn’t wanted to.

They’d both had to fight for their free will.

Getting out of his relationship with Amara had been like dragging himself out of a tar pit, but at least she hadn’t tried to kill him afterwards.

Dean lets out a long breath. “So, he’s Zuko and I’m Katara?”

“I was thinking more that he’s Zuko and you’re Uncle Iroh, but your way works too. Just please don’t go on a life-changing field trip to murder his controlling family. I can’t condone revenge quests when I’m in earshot of my employer.”

Charlie successfully breaks the tension, and Dean huffs out a long laugh.

“Like I said,” Charlie says softly, a smile in her voice, “it’s your choice, but I don’t need to tell you that I’m a big believer in second chances.”

“I’ll never stop being grateful that you are, Red.”

“Then go make up with your bird man!”

Dean nearly laughs again at how accurate that description is. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll go talk to him. No promises.” After a pause Dean adds, “Thanks for answering the phone.”

“Of course! What else is family for?”

“I know I don’t say it enough, but you know I love you, right?”

“I know,” Charlie replies instantly. “Now please have fun with your schoolgirl crush!” She makes kissy noises that cut off abruptly as she ends the call.

Dean sighs fondly as he brings the cellphone down from his ear.

He feels simultaneously better and worse. Better because the anger and the betrayal has mostly dissolved, and worse because now he realizes just how much of a giant asshole he’s been.

The best way he knows how to start making amends is with food. Castiel said that it takes a lot of energy to heal, so he’ll probably be hungry when he wakes up, and if there’s one thing that’s always made him feel better, it’s a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Along with pie, it’s a universal hit (to Dean anyway). Comfort food.

He still wants the full story from Castiel when he’s ready to tell it, but for now, Dean is sure that his lie wasn’t ever meant to get this far and this messed up. Castiel had just been following the same orders he always had. For some reason things just went differently this time.

(The ‘for some reason’ being that Dean is a lonely bastard who needs social interaction and made friends with the first living being he encountered. And he doesn’t believe in ghosts.)

Dean smiles to himself as he assembles the two sandwiches, layering the peanut butter and jelly on thick. He stands at the kitchen counter and eats his own in a few hungry bites, then takes the other one on a plate back upstairs.

He hesitates as he’s walking down the corridor, feeling a little silly as he approaches the bedroom door.  He’s holding the plate with both hands, while the sandwich on top is cut diagonally across to make triangles.

God, this is lame.

Thank you for nearly dying for me, here’s a pb and j I cut into triangles, sorry I’ve been a dick.

Dean nearly turns around and heads back down, but he’s at the spot where the blood smears had turned into human footprints, and he remembers how freaked out he’d been. He cleaned up here earlier when he scrubbed the whole cabin, so the blood’s all gone, but Dean can see it clearly in his mind.

He marches himself the rest of the way to the door and knocks softly.

No answer.

He knocks harder.

Still no answer.

Feeling a thread of panic worm its way into his veins Dean opens the door slowly. “Castiel?” he whispers. “You okay in there?”

The room is darker than it was, since the sun is no longer blazing directly through the curtains, so all Dean can see of Castiel is a dark lump in the center of the bed. One of his black wings is folded over and covers him, and it rises and falls rhythmically.

Just a human-shaped lump and a curtain of feathers, but at least he’s breathing.

Dean hovers uncertainly for a moment watching the rise and fall of the wing. The other is still stretched out on the bed behind him. The room is warm and dark, and it smells a little like the forest does. Comforting and woody. Dean blinks as he realizes that he’s being a creep – staring at the guy while he’s sleeping, standing in the middle of the room with the plate still gripped tightly in both hands.

Eventually Dean places the plate down on the desk, hoping that Castiel will see it when he wakes up. It sits right next to the feather necklace, the pile of secret photos, the almost-empty bottle of whisky, and the bloody folded up trench coat. Dean picks the coat up carefully, sure that he can get the blood out of it if he puts it with everything else in the washing machine. Which reminds him that he needs to grab something clean to wear when he gets out of the shower too.

Conscious of not waking Castiel, Dean creeps over to the closet and picks out his pajamas. It’s a shame he didn’t bring any spare that Castiel could wear instead of his old suit. He glances guiltily back over at the curtain of feathers. Well… he needs to get new towels from Oakton anyway, so if he goes into town tomorrow he could buy a few new outfits for Castiel to wear too. And some pajamas. And some freaking underwear. Oh, shit, he really needs to let him borrow some underwear when he wakes up.

Not that Dean is taking it for granted that Castiel is staying here. Does he want him to stay here? It’s not like he would send him back to the guy that tried to kill him. And he did ask if Dean would show him what he’s discovered in the cabin… so maybe he wants to stay?

Dean nearly groans out loud as he folds his pajamas over his arm and closes the closet door gently. It's all too much of a guessing game without being able to talk to Castiel about any of this.

He casts one last look at the feathery lump in the bed as he leaves the bedroom, clicking the door shut behind him.

So much for his apology sandwich.

------------------------

Dean finally has a shower in the fully cleaned and well-scrubbed bathroom. He’s made sure that there isn’t even a trace of the drama that happened there a few hours ago, but it still plays on his mind as he’s standing under the spray. Castiel had been propped up against these very tiles, bleeding out and dying.

He tilts his head up to the water, letting it hit his closed eyes, and scrubs his hands over his face. This is yet another one of those times that he regrets not filling the tub and letting it soak his worries away until the water goes cold. Maybe tomorrow.

Despite wiping the worst of the blood off Castiel with the towel as best he could, Dean is sure that he’ll need to wash properly at some point too – whenever the wounds have healed enough to take the bandages off, he supposes. He distantly wonders whether a shower or a bath would be better, and what happens to feathers when they get wet anyway? Dean remembers the crow taking a dust bath in front of Baby, that time when he’d asked how birds stay clean, and for a second he imagines the human-shaped Castiel rolling around in the dirt instead, still wearing Dean’s old suit. A bark of laughter escapes him at the mental image, even if it makes him feel a little bit crazy to be laughing to himself in the shower.

It feels like something Castiel would do to make a point – he seems stubborn like that.

Or he might do it to make Dean laugh.

Despite how much Dean has tried not to think of how he’d washed Baby in nothing but his underwear, the memory of the crow rolling around in the dust, and thinking of the human-shaped Castiel doing it instead, prickles at something else in Dean’s mind. Dusty crow… Dusty person… Dusty thumbprint…

“Holy shit,” Dean mutters, realization hitting him like a truck. He braces a hand against the tiles. “Holy fucking shit!”

The thumbprint on the back of his cellphone!

He knew he hadn’t left the phone on top of his clothes, he knew he hadn’t left the door open, he fucking knew it! It hadn’t made any sense at the time, but now – now he knows. There’s only one person who had heard him mention sending a message to Bobby, who could possibly have set that up, and left a dusty thumbprint behind.

A flash of red-hot anger hits him – because who the hell does Castiel think he is meddling with what Dean does or doesn’t do? It’s none of his damn business.

But…

It’s only after Dean has muttered curses under his breath a few times, and furiously scrubbed shampoo into his hair, that he crests the hill of his anger into admitting that if Castiel hadn’t moved his cellphone, he probably wouldn’t have gotten back in touch with Bobby at all. He would have put it off and they still wouldn’t be talking.

Castiel had said that transforming used up a lot of energy, and yet he’d flipped to human-shape and back again within a few minutes, just so he could nudge Dean into sending a message…

Dean can feel the way his eyebrows are pinching together tightly, matching his conflicted thoughts, as he eventually turns the water off, dries himself, and changes into his favorite ratty band shirt and hotdog pants.

He bundles up his bloody clothes along with the trench coat and makes his way back out into the corridor, but he pauses before heading downstairs. The bedroom door is still closed and Dean wonders if Castiel has woken up and seen his sandwich yet.

------------------------

There’s something that feels wrong about putting his hands into the pockets of Castiel’s trench coat – like Dean’s invading his privacy – but he has to check there’s nothing in there before he puts it into the washing machine. The first pocket is empty, but when Dean slides his hand into the second one he touches something. Paper? He pulls out a photograph. The corners are all curled in, and it’s creased so badly that the lines almost obscure the image entirely. It’s clearly old and very well loved. Dean wants to leave it at that and simply put it onto the kitchen table to give to Castiel later, but he can’t stop himself from peeking at the photo as he goes to turn it over. He flips it back in surprise.

He has to peer closely to see the picture properly, bringing it right up by his face, but there are two very young boys in the center of the photo, with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Two identical boys, that both look like Castiel. Their blue eyes are the same bright shade, both have messy dark hair, but one boy is smiling widely and the other has a softer, shyer smile. Behind their backs are small feathery wings spread out. The boy with the wide smile has a pair of grey wings, while the boy with the shy smile has a pair of jet-black wings.

One must be Castiel himself, while the other must be… a twin? Are they not both crows?

Dean instantly feels guilty for once again invading people’s privacy with these old photos he shouldn’t be looking at. He carefully places the photo beside the line of Castiel’s old feathers and turns back to his original task.

After following Google’s advice and soaking the worst of the bloodstains with lemon juice for a while, Dean finally loads all the clothes into the washing machine. Now he can hear it whirring rhythmically from his seat in the living room. The ‘Werewolves and Other Were Creatures’ book is on his lap, and an open beer is on the table next to him. He settles back into his favorite armchair, loosens his shoulders, and lets out a long breath. He will learn something from this book even if he has to sit here with it all night.

This time, when Dean cracks the book open he goes straight to the contents page, and even though he spots the same dry topics he saw before about cells and DNA and stuff, he keeps scanning down the page. There’s a whole section of the book titled ‘Were Creatures’ that seems like a good place to start. The chapters in that part of the book look like they’re all about a specific kind of species: ‘Werecats’, ‘Weredeer’, ‘Wererodents’… it just keeps going and sounds increasingly insane. Finally at the end of the list is a chapter titled ‘Werebirds’.

“Bingo,” Dean says, flicking straight to it. It’s almost funny how the truth has been in this book this whole time, if only he’d known what to look for.

The pages in this part of the book look well-worn and Dean can imagine that Cain probably read through this the same as he is. It makes him feel strangely connected to this stranger he’s never met – two humans years apart getting sucked into this world that they hadn’t even known existed. (He tries not to dwell on the idea that Cain probably took it a million times better than he did.)

Dean reads…

Werebirds are one of the rarest species of Were Creatures. They spend their time primarily in flocks deep inside of forests, away from humans, though they are not averse to humans by nature. In fact, it has been documented that they will impersonate real birds to spend time around humans occasionally, unlike most other species of Were.

The bloodline is especially thin in the modern era, and it’s been hypothesized that it may be the next to fade away. Those affected by the curse are highly scattered around the world, with flocks dwindling due to deforestation and hunters, creating a rapid decline in numbers. Arguably, the leading factor to these numbers is the low chance of passing over the Werebird curse to a child conceived between a Were and a human, and the mortality rate of such rare hybrid births. While the Werebird curse has only a 12% of passing over into such a child, if the gene is successfully inherited it causes the mother’s immune system to attack itself, triggering a reaction not dissimilar to an autoimmune disorder. This results in a 98% mortality rate for both the child and mother affected. (See section 5: Werebirds and Mates).

Dean sighs deeply and looks back up at the painting above the fireplace, where the swan and the sparrow are frozen in flight against a bright blue sky. Twelve percent… That would mean the chances of their kid not being a werebird and dying would have been eighty-eight percent. And yet…

Now Dean can’t get the image of that photograph of Colette and Connor out of his mind. Even though they’d both been so pale, and Colette must have known what it meant for them both, she’d been smiling at her baby so sweetly. So full of love for the baby she wouldn’t get to know, and who would never even make it to a single birthday. He thinks of that letter she wrote Cain, nestled into the Were Creature book, and how fragile it had looked – clearly from being opened and folded so many times. How often did Cain read that letter after she died? Dean thinks of what Castiel told him, about how they’d built the cabin together, and how Cain had built all the little hidden places into it because he thought Colette would enjoy it.

Shit…

Well, now he knows why Cain rents out this place instead of staying here.

Dean doesn’t think he could live here either if it were him.

His eyes feel hot and itchy suddenly, and he swallows a huge gulp of his beer to force down the lump in his throat.

Dean takes another deep breath and returns to the book. He flicks to the section five that was mentioned, but only gets as far as reading the line, ‘Werebirds will mate for life’, which has been underlined a few times with a pen, before he turns back to where he was before.

Maybe later.

For now, he goes back to the introduction and keeps reading…

Due to the high mortality rate in successful hybrid births, and the conception of a child impossible between two Werebird parents, the curse must be transferred via bite to increase their numbers. However, even the Bite comes with multiple risks and complications. Curse transference is only ever successful when conducted on the night of a full moon, when the Werebird’s teeth has pierced human skin, with a 70% chance of success. (See Section 3: Werebirds on the Full Moon.) Once transferred the curse then acts as an infection in the human body. The infected human will undergo a metamorphosis that will either successfully integrate itself into their genetic code and alter their body to accommodate the extra appendages and cellular shift (see section 2: Cellular Abnormalities: Wings and Hollow Bones) or it will trigger an autoimmune disorder response. There has been no recorded account of a human surviving an unsuccessful Bite.

Dean’s not sure why he’s so surprised by all of this – he’s seen plenty of werewolf movies – but seeing it all written out in black and white, so scientifically, is really something else. He has to remind himself multiple times that this isn’t fiction. This is freaking real.

He wants to keep reading the introduction, but he’s weirdly curious about the full moon thing. Do they go rabid or something? Turn into half man half… bird… creatures? (Monsters?)

Dean flicks straight to section three.

But it’s not there.

He turns back a page, into the end of section two, and flips it over again – but it goes straight into section four. What the hell? Dean flicks between the pages again, just to be sure the paper isn’t sticking together, and finally notices the remnants of torn paper inside the inner crease of the book.

Dean frowns as he runs a fingertip over the torn edges, and a sense of foreboding makes him shudder.

Someone’s ripped out the whole section about Werebirds during the full moon.

That can’t be good.

Dean’s frown persists as he turns back to the introduction again…

Werebirds have a unique distinction amongst other Were Creature species – their animal shapes are diverse and varied, even amongst members of the same family. Where other Were species have their animal shapes determined by environmental factors and are usually the same depending on location, Werebirds can seemingly be any species of bird, regardless of suitability in that environment. Though their animal shapes are fixed in the same way as the other Were species, they lack the location-based cohesion that the others do, meaning flocks can contain a multitude of different species of bird. This has provided some speculation on what causes this phenomenon, with the most believed theory to be that the bird somehow reflects something intrinsic about that individual’s soul. Whether these creatures even contain souls is a highly debated topic (see Chapter 5: Monsters) but Werebirds are highly superstitious and that has perpetuated this theory amongst them. This has led to many flocks choosing their Flock Leader based on their bird-shape over whether they would be suitable for the role and has also led to the prejudiced banishment of others, especially Corvidae.

Dean might not know much about birds, but he knows what a Corvid is, so he can guess what Corvidae means. It settles something cold and uncomfortable in his stomach to think about how Castiel might have been treated his whole life. Especially once Michael took over from Colette. That dick eagle is someone that he’d definitely describe as ‘not suitable for the role’. Amongst other things.

There’s a lot more to the Werebirds chapter (even if section three is missing) and even more he hasn’t read about yet in the general parts of the book, but goddamn he needs a break. Dean closes the book with a snap, places it on the table next to him, and stretches his arms high above his head as he stands. He arches his back and groans at a satisfying crack that he feels tingling down his spine. Leaning over engines for hours has left him with joints full of Pop Rocks, even if he’d been banished to an office chair for the last couple of years. You can take the man out of the garage, but you can’t take the years of posture abuse out of the man.

Dean rubs the back of his neck as he shuffles to the stairs, stifling a yawn. He basically had a whiskey-induced blackout for a whole twenty-four hours, but he feels like he’s been physically and emotionally through something profound since then, and now he just wants to curl up and sleep again. He’s not entirely looking forward to sleeping on the couch, but it’s still only right that Castiel has the bed.

The King-sized bed. That could easily fit two people.

Dean banishes that unexpected thought as he goes to the bathroom to pee.

He can’t help but notice that the bedroom door is still closed as he returns to the corridor, and for a second he wonders if he should maybe just poke his head in and check that the guy is still breathing. Or if he’s discovered the sandwich yet.

It would be pretty embarrassing if Castiel wakes up though, with Dean looking like he was watching him sleeping…

After hesitating for another moment, Dean eventually heads back downstairs. He turns his head to look at the paintings of the birds on his way down the creaky wooden steps, now armed with the added context that these birds had all been part of Colette’s flock. Cain basically painted her whole family and hung them up in their cabin. Now it makes sense why there are no bird paintings in the bedroom or bathroom, Dean realizes with a snort. That’d be weird.

After going out and getting a little more firewood, Dean lights up the fireplace and settles back down into his armchair. It’s a dangerous game to play to be sitting by the fire with a book again when he’s already sleepy, but he’s sure it’ll be fine. He’ll just read a little more and then go sleep on the couch…

------------------------

Amara is standing at the grill. She’s as tall and elegant as always, wearing a black dress that clings to her figure, with a gaping neckline that plunges down low. She used to wear that kind of dress all the time, even when they were just going to the freaking store. She admitted to him one day that she loved to wear things that would ‘make people jealous’. It explained why she treated Dean like he was one of those gross little purse dogs on her arm whenever they went anywhere.

She briefly turns around to wave at him, all fake sweetness, and then flips something on the grill with a pair of barbecue tongues. It sizzles.

Dean feels his blood run cold.

What the hell is she doing out here? How did she find him?

She shouldn’t be here. He broke up with her – he remembers breaking up with her. He remembers walking out of her apartment with his single duffle bag of stuff, while she stood in the doorway, mascara streaking down her face, screaming after him that he’ll never find anyone that will love him like she does. The last thing she ever said to him was that without her… he’ll be alone forever.

He attempts to say something, but the moment he opens his mouth he doubles over into a violent coughing fit. He covers his mouth as he coughs, until it eventually subsides into a wheeze, and when it’s finally over he looks down at his bright red palm. Blood. He chokes in shock and coughs wetly into his hand again. What… What’s happening to him?

Amara shakes her head, making her glossy dark curls bounce. She clicks her tongue with distaste. “You’re making so much noise while I’m trying to cook.”

“I-” Dean starts to say, but he suddenly feels a sharp stab of pain in his chest that has him coughing again. As soon as it’s over he clutches a hand to his chest, but there’s something wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. He gasps, but it feels like he can’t breathe around the blood in his mouth.

There’s a hole where his heart should be.

Crimson blood pours steadily from the wound like a waterfall over his shirt, down his pants, and pools on the floor by his feet.

He can’t- No, that can’t be right-

Shit, is he dying?

Dean tries to say something – anything – but again, nothing comes out of his mouth but more blood and choking.

“Stop that,” Amara snaps, “it’s disgusting.”

Dean presses both hands over the hole in his chest, but it does nothing to stem the steady blood flow pouring out of the open wound. Fuck! How the hell is he still alive? Shouldn’t he be dead already?

“There now, it’s cooked.” Amara turns to him with a wicked smile that flicks up the corners of her ruby lips. She holds up the barbecue tongues that she’s been using, and Dean's eyes widen in horror to see what she’s been cooking on the grill.

“My… heart…” he finally manages to croak out, blood still leaking from the corners of his mouth.

“Yours?” Amara says icily. “Oh, please. It’s been mine since we met. We have a special bond, you and I, and you’ll never have that with anyone else. Nobody will ever love you like I do. You can’t fight our connection. I know that you’ll come crawling back to me eventually, so why fight it?”

Dean’s hands are shaking.

“You’re nothing without me,” Amara almost purrs. “You know this. How many times did I tell you?”

Dean falls to his knees and rattles in a wet breath. “My heart… isn’t yours…” His voice is weak and he’s unsure how much he really believes what he’s saying. “I’m better off… without… you…”

“Liar!” Amara hisses. She throws his heart back onto the grill with a sickening sizzle. “Who else will want this?”

Dean crumples down to the floor, no longer able to hold himself up at all. “Fuck… you…”

“You’re nothing! How dare-” Amara starts, but sound of a crow cawing repeatedly cuts her off.

“Caw! Caw! Caw!” the Crow – Castiel – calls out noisily as he swoops down into the garden. He's a blur of black feathers as he dives straight at the grill and grabs onto the heart with his talons, despite Amara’s yells of outrage. He straightens out from his dive, and circles back to flap at her head with his wings, still making angry crow noises. Amara shrieks as she covers her head with her arms, until eventually Crow-Castiel leaves her to fly towards Dean, with the heart clutched protectively in his claws.

Even though he can barely lift his head off the ground, Dean smiles weakly as Crow-Castiel lands carefully near him. He feels like he blinks extra slowly and suddenly the Crow is now human-shaped Castiel, wearing both Dean’s suit and his trench coat, kneeling closely by his side. His huge black wings spread out widely to block the view of both Amara and the grill, and suddenly all the noise of them is gone too.

It's just him and Castiel.

Dean’s whole body finally stops shaking as he takes a rattling breath and the comforting scent of the forest cuts through the coppery stink of blood.

Castiel cradles the heart so gently and tenderly in his palms, despite getting his hands covered in blood. He holds it out for Dean to take back.

Dean shakes his head. Castiel should go – Amara might hurt him. Isn’t she shocked to see a man with wings? What if she tells someone about him? He could be in danger.

“You need… to… go,” Dean eventually whispers.

Castiel doesn’t say anything, but his eyebrows scrunch together in clear disagreement, and he gives Dean a stubborn look that he’s starting to recognize.

Dean kinda wants to laugh, despite the situation (maybe because of it) and he wonders… if his heart were in his chest, would it be feeling warm now right now? Would it beat harder?

“Go…” Dean says again, worried about the silence from Amara. Shouldn’t she be making a fuss? What if she tries to attack Castiel like the eagle did, and Dean isn’t able to help him bandage his wounds this time?

Castiel finally speaks. He says, “Is that really what you want?” His voice sounds as deep and gravelly as usual, but something about it just isn’t as powerful as before – like Dean’s hearing it from behind glass.

Dean wants to say yes. He does. He would rather keep someone safe than examine what it is that he actually wants.

But…

Dean hesitates and Castiel’s eyebrows smooth out from angry to sad almost instantly. His blue eyes are as bright and magnetic as ever, drawing Dean’s gaze effortlessly, as he moves his hands closer, holding the charred heart directly over the cavern in Dean’s chest.

“Just ask me to stay,” Castiel says. Like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

The heart in his hands beats.

------------------------

Dean wakes with a violent gasp.

He paws at his chest furiously with both hands, gripping at his soft sleeping shirt. There’s solid skin and bone underneath, where before there had been a bleeding hole. He rubs the back of his mouth roughly and wipes away the drool that had escaped in a gross line down to his chin, but there’s no blood.

His heart is pounding in his chest (where it should be) and Dean takes a moment to just breathe and let himself realize that it had just been a dream.

Dean closes his eyes and breathes slowly in through his nose, and out through his mouth.

It had been a fucking nightmare.

Something bangs upstairs.

Dean jolts upright and his eyes fly open.

What now?

He’s tempted to stay here and leave it, but what if it was Castiel falling out of bed? Or falling over on his way to the bathroom? What if he’s passed out again?

The memory of Castiel trying to give him back his heart is fresh in Dean’s mind. Just ask me to stay.

Dean rises quickly from the chair and takes the stairs two at a time. He doesn’t know where all the urgency has come from, but he’s suddenly very sure he needs to check that Castiel is okay.

As Dean walks towards the bedroom he can hear shuffling noises, the sound of the wooden floorboards creaking, and he speeds up.

When he finally throws open the bedroom door Dean stops short in confusion as he’s blasted with a chilly breeze coming from the open window. He’s just in time to see a flash of his own white shirt and black feathers as Castiel launches himself out of it.

Chapter Text

“Shit- Wait!” Dean is running before he even registers that his legs are moving, racing around the bed, straight to the open window. He leans his torso out as far as it will go. “Hey!”

There’s no reply and the garden is full of shadows. The only light source is from the moon and the faint glow bleeding out from the living room windows, so Dean can’t see Castiel down there at all. For all he knows the guy flew off, straight back to his flock, and now he’ll never see him again.

Dean groans and slams a hand onto the window frame in his frustration.

No.

Fuck this.

He might have learned how to give in and roll over while he was with Amara, but the real Dean Winchester doesn’t surrender that easy.

“Castiel!” Dean yells, hoping that gets his attention. “You lying asshole! You said we were gonna talk!” He braces his hands on the wall and swings a leg over so that he’s straddling the frame. The canopy that stretches out over the patio is just below him, so if he lets himself fall he should be able to stand on that, and then it’s just another short fall to the ground. Theoretically.

Dean carefully twists himself around so that he’s sitting with both legs hanging outside of the window. He’s lucky the openings were built ridiculously big to accommodate people with wings flying in and out of them – but unlucky that Castiel seems to have used them for their intended purpose.

He takes a deep breath, ready to maneuver himself down to the wooden overhang. It should be just a small drop…

“Dean, stop! What are you doing?” Castiel’s voice comes frantically from the darkness below.

“Coming after you, what does it look like?” Dean snaps, inching his weight forwards.

“Dean,” Castiel says again, a warning in his voice that turns it almost into a growl. “Go back inside. You’ll fall.”

“Then stay here and catch me,” Dean says immediately.

Just ask me to stay.

Shit.

The memory of his nightmare catches him so off-guard that Dean pitches forward faster than he intended, and his fingers slip from their grip on the window frame. He yelps as he slams into the canopy at the wrong angle, rolls down, and goes straight over the edge.

Dean thinks he hears someone call his name, but it feels like all the sound has been sucked out of the world – his own heartbeat thuds loudly in his ears and a spike of adrenaline and fear makes him hold his breath. But instead of the slam to the floor and the explosion of pain that he expects to feel, Dean has landed on something much softer. He still ends up on the ground, but the softer thing is beneath him and broke his fall enough that he doesn’t feel any pain.

The soft thing underneath him groans.

Dean hastily pushes himself up, and by the light of the moon can just about see the outline of Castiel below him. He’s on his back, wings unfurled on the ground, with Dean’s hands either side of his head and his knees touching both of Castiel’s hips.

For a second they both freeze.

The rapid thudding of Dean’s heartbeat in his ears hasn’t gone away yet, and it must be the adrenaline that makes it beat even faster. It’s hard to tell in the darkness, his eyes haven’t adjusted yet, but it looks like Castiel’s wide blue eyes are locked onto his own.

Dean unfreezes and scrambles to his feet. “Jesus, what the fuck were you doing just leaving like that?” He scrubs a hand violently through his hair as he paces away angrily. “I can’t believe you were just gonna leave me in the middle of the night! Shit, seriously, you just got better from nearly dying, what are you doing jumping out of windows? And what did you try and catch me for, when you’re still feeling weak? Are you crazy?” Dean stomps back and offers out a hand with a scowl.

Castiel looks a little dazed, but he eventually grabs hold of Dean’s hand, once again letting himself be pulled up. He flaps both of his wings with a small snap as he gets to his feet, before they fold back into their neat position behind him. Dean can’t help but watch curiously, and sees that while the bandages are all gone there are still plenty of gaps from missing feathers, where Michael must have pulled them out in the fight.

Castiel must notice the staring because he drops Dean’s hand and turns away self-consciously, pulling his wings in even tighter, like he did before, as if he wants them to disappear.

“I’m crazy?” Castiel says thinly, glancing back at Dean with a flash of his blue eyes. “You just jumped out of the same window. And I’m sure you’ve noticed, but only one of us has wings.”

“I’ve noticed all those missing feathers,” Dean shoots back, “and I know not to jump out a plane with holes in your ‘chute. Anyway, I wouldn’t have had to jump out the window if you hadn’t done it first.”

Castiel’s eyebrows scrunch together. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“You jump, I jump, Rose.”

The furrow between Castiel’s eyebrows gets even deeper and Dean sighs before he has to explain the plot of The Titanic movie. “Look, you said we were gonna talk in the morning, and then you try to take off in the middle of the night. That’s not cool, man.”

Castiel’s face smooths out into an emotionless mask as he looks up at the sky. “I got sick of waiting for you to kick me out.” He states it as a fact, but Dean feels it like a physical blow to his gut. “I knew as soon as my wounds healed, you would get all the information you wanted out of me, and then you would send me away. I decided to go on my own terms. I’ll beg for Michael’s forgiveness and promise to move my nest even further out of the main flock. If he is feeling merciful he’ll let me back in. If he isn’t I will be exiled or executed.”

Exiled or… executed?

Wait a fucking minute.

What if Dean hadn’t woken up from his nightmare? What if he hadn’t gone upstairs to investigate the noise? Would he have gone to see him the next morning and found an empty bed?

Dean can’t speak. A stronger blast of cold air blows around the garden, rustling the surrounding leaves loudly. He’s feeling chilled standing there in just his ratty sleeping gear and socks, but what strikes ice into his very core is a guilt so strong that it chokes him.  

“I-” Dean starts.

“I understand your revulsion, Dean. It’s alright, you don’t have to justify it. I already told you; crows are bad luck – they’re bad omens – they bring nothing but misery. I’ve been scaring humans away from our flock for many years, and I will continue to do so if Michael lets me.” Castiel straightens his shirt and stands tall, but there is something infinitely sad shining in his eyes.

“No, I-”

“I’m glad you’re unhurt, but please don’t jump out of any windows again. It will be better if you forget about Werebirds and Were Creatures, forget about… all of it.” Castiel seems to be struggling, but he clears his throat and continues more steadily, “Go back to living your life the way that you want to, now that you’re free. I hope you continue to find joy in dancing and singing while you wash your car. You are a kind, loving man who deserves happiness.”

“Would you just-”

“It was a lot of fun, getting to know you. Goodbye, De-”

Castiel is finally silenced by the hand that Dean smacks over his mouth. His eyes open wide, and his wings flare out a little, but he doesn’t resist or pull away.

Dean breathes rapidly, as if he’s been running, but it’s just more adrenaline, pumping through him at the thought of permanently losing this self-sacrificing idiot birdman. “Listen to me. I don’t hate you, and I don’t want to kick you out. Jesus, is that really what you think? I… I know I haven’t done a very good job at… any of this. But I’ve been dealing with a lot of shit lately, and I came here to get away from it all… and then instead, I found you.”

Castiel frowns so hard that Dean can feel it under his hand. He tilts his head, as if to move away, but Dean moves closer and presses a little harder. The breath that Castiel huffs out of his nose tickles over Dean’s skin. His lips are pressing against his palm.

“No, listen- shit, that came out wrong.”

The intense urge to drop his hand and go back into the cabin, just to escape having this conversation, is like a physical itch under Dean’s skin. It feels like he’s peeling back the layers and flaying himself alive.

“What I mean is, you let me talk about all that stuff, and you listened to me, and man, getting it off my chest felt awesome. You didn’t have to keep coming back – you knew you were going to get into so much trouble for coming back – but you did anyway. These couple of weeks at the cabin were supposed to be for getting away from all my problems, and instead you helped me face them. Look, I know I’ve been a huge dick about all this…”

Dean wants to explain that he’s been gaslit, manipulated and lied to for two solid miserable years and yeah, that’s given him some trust issues. He wants to tell Castiel that he’s been having trouble forgiving him because he can see how alike their situations are, and that the person Dean is always most angry with is himself.

But instead, Dean grits his teeth and says nothing.

Castiel stares, almost unblinkingly, into Dean’s eyes. Blue like a summer sky. He’s just a tiny bit shorter than Dean, but the difference seems much more noticeable when they’re standing this close. His wings look like they’re trembling, still flared out slightly, even while the rest of him is completely and utterly still.

The bandage on Castiel’s neck stands out bright white amongst the gloom of the night, and Dean remembers how deep the wound beneath had been, pouring with blood. It’s hard to tell in the darkness, but it looks like the smaller, shallower scratches on Castiel’s face have completely disappeared. Dean wonders if the one on his neck will disappear too – or if it will scar.

You are a kind, loving man who deserves happiness , Castiel had said.

Fuck.

Dean feels heat crawling up his neck.

“I already told you, I don’t care about any of that superstitious crap, okay?” Dean finally says, softly. “I care that you lied to me.”

Castiel immediately looks away, down to the ground, and his wings droop sadly.

“But I know why you did it,” Dean continues, dipping his head down to capture Castiel’s line of sight again. Once he has his gaze he brings him back up. “I was never gonna kick you out. I was being a stubborn asshole, but I wouldn’t do that. I’m not- freaked out by you or whatever. Dude, you nearly died for me. If that doesn’t deserve a second chance, I don’t know what does.”

Castiel’s eyebrows are scrunching together tightly again, making it impossible for Dean to know what he’s thinking.

The guy is like a walking contradiction: stoic but sassy, sarcastic but earnest, no freaking self-worth, but believes Dean is worth saving.

At Castiel’s continued silence Dean’s heart sinks. He’s not buying what he’s selling, is he? That stubborn crow. Dean gets that he must be wary, especially if he really believes all the crap that he was saying before, but how can he make him see that he’s telling the truth?

The deep furrows on Castiel’s forehead smooth out as his expression relaxes once more and his wings tuck back in behind him neatly. He clears his throat and lifts his hands up to gently tug at Dean’s wrist.

Dean immediately whips his hand away and takes a step back. “Sorry.”

“Thank you, Dean,” Castiel says, with no inflection.

Dean sighs. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

Castiel hesitates before answering quietly, “I want to.”

“Well, that’s a start at least,” Dean concedes, for now. “Anyway, I thought all this would be obvious from my apology sandwich. I don’t make them for just anyone.”

“Apology… sandwich?”

“Yeah, didn’t you see it? I left it on the desk. The finest pb and j.”

Castiel shakes his head. “I didn’t like to look at the desk,” he mutters cryptically. Dean doesn’t have chance to wonder what that means before Castiel continues, “However, even if I’d have seen it, I’m not sure I’d have gotten all of that from a sandwich.”

“Pb and j,” Dean says again, gesturing with both hands. “C’mon. It says all that and more.”

“I see. I haven’t had one before, so I suppose I wouldn’t know.” The corners of Castiel’s mouth soften slightly – so it’s not quite a smile, but it’s not not a smile either.

It’s almost painful to think that he could have missed Castiel leaving, and most likely never seen him again.

“You really think Michael would have taken you back?” Dean blurts.

“Hm. Michael is extremely petty and proud… Returning to the flock with injuries, especially from a crow and a human, will have made him furious.”

Dean snorts. “Hell yeah.”

“So, he most likely would have exiled me, which is itself a kind of death sentence, but if he’d have chosen execution, the best I could have hoped for would have been a quick, merciful death.” Castiel states the fact that he might have been killed with a detached kind of disinterest.

“Holy shit,” Dean says, and before he can stop himself adds, “and you still went without even saying goodbye?”

Castiel’s wings ruffle behind him, and his eyes narrow. “I was still under the impression that you hated me and saw me as nothing but a monster, and I had already thanked you for everything, if you recall. In my eyes you would see my absence in the morning as a blessing.”

“As a…” Dean takes a deep breath. “Listen to me.” He jabs a finger in Castiel’s direction but thinks the strength of the gesture might be lost in the dark. “You’re not a monster, Cas. Alright, you can turn into a crow, well so what? My little brother can burp the alphabet. You lied, it sucks, I was mad about it, but I get it now – you didn’t have much of a choice. And I don’t give a fuck what the world says about crows – us meeting has been the best luck I’ve had in a long time.”

Castiel sucks in a sharp breath that Dean can hear loudly in the quiet night, and his black wings flap out with a snap. Even in the lowlight it’s clear to see how every single feather puffs out.

“What?” Dean says after the long silence.

“You… called me… Cas?”

“That’s what you got from all of that?” Dean lets out a huff of laughter, letting all the tension fade away. “I’m a nickname guy, and Castiel is a mouthful. If you don’t like it I can-”

“I like it,” Cas says quickly.

“Okay, good.” They stand in silence again while Cas’s feathers eventually flatten down, and Dean remembers how much fun he had getting them to fluff up when he was a crow. He clears his throat and turns back to the cabin. “We should probably keep talking inside. It’s cold out here, you’re still recovering, and- oh, fuck!” Dean groans loudly.

“What?”

 “The keys. They’re in the kitchen, and I locked the back door before I sat down earlier.” Dean gestures widely at the cabin. “We’re locked out.”

“The window is still open,” Cas points out.

“That’s not exactly helpful when we’re down here.”

Cas tilts his head and lifts a single eyebrow as he opens out both of his wings slowly, unfurling them to their impressive full length either side of him.

It’s really freaking cool, but it makes the missing feathers stand out even worse than ever.

Dean shakes his head. “You can’t fly up there, you’re still recovering.”

“I can’t?” Cas says, lifting his chin.

“Okay, okay, I’m sure you can, but that doesn’t mean you should, Mr. Insulted Birdhood. You’re missing a bunch of feathers, and I’m no bird expert, but I get the feeling that they all do stuff to get you off the ground.”

Cas considers this for a moment and eventually folds his wings back in, with an expression that looks suspiciously like a pout. “Then how are we getting back inside? I’m not strong enough to transform into my crow form yet, either.”

Dean hums in thought, looking at the distance to the window.

“If you give me a leg up onto the overhang of the porch, I’ll be able to climb into the window from there.”

“Dean…”

“Hey, if I fall, you could just catch me again?”

“Of course,” Cas says instantly.

(Just ask me to stay.)

Dean tries not to examine the feeling of warmth that settles into his chest as they both make their way to just underneath the wooden overhang. “Oh, hey, uh- weird question, but can Werebirds… go into dreams?”

“Into… dreams?”

“Yeah, could you go into someone else’s dream if you were dreaming at the same time?”

Dean coordinates their positions – directing Cas to stand with his hands clasped together as a platform for Dean to put his foot onto – while Cas says, “No, I said before that Werebirds only possess a few extra abilities that differ from humans. We can assume our bird forms, we have our wings, with extra muscles in our backs to use them, and our bodies heal quickly.” He hesitates a little before adding, “Most of us also have pneumatic bones.”

“Pneumatic? Like the drill?”

“It means the bones contain air sacs. They’re hollow. Helps with breathing and staying airborne during flight,” Cas explains, almost reluctantly.

That explains why Cas has always felt so light despite how large his wings are.

“Huh. Oh, okay, cool. Just wondered,” Dean says casually.

Which means that his Dream-Cas had just been part of his subconscious after all. Something he’s absolutely not examining right now.

Dean slots his foot onto Cas’s hands and steadies himself. The elbow of a wing reaches up slowly, tentatively, for Dean to hold onto to keep his balance, and he grips it gently, noting how warm and soft it feels.

“Thanks, man.”

The wing quivers.

“On my signal, push up hard with your hands, and I’ll reach out and grab for the porch,” Dean says.

Cas nods.

Before Dean gives the signal he pauses. Something has been rattling around in his mind for a little while, and now he suddenly realizes what it is. “You didn’t mention the full moon before, when you were talking about what’s special about Werebirds,” he says, and notices how Cas’s entire body locks up with tension. “What happens on the full moo- woah!”

Dean is thrust upwards, and he reaches out quickly to grab the wooden overhang. His hands close firmly over the edge and he hauls himself up while he still has the momentum from Cas’s boost.

Dean stands up carefully, aware that he’s already crashed onto the porch once and it was probably not designed to support a human’s body weight. When he’s certain he’s not going to fall straight through the wood, he leans over the edge. “What happened to waiting for the signal?”

“I thought you gave it,” Cas says evenly, an inky blur in the darkness below, visible only by his borrowed white shirt.

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t think this conversation is over,” Dean mumbles as he makes his way carefully over to the open window. It’s higher than he thought – he’s just a little shorter than the gap, even with his arms fully stretched up. Damn, he’s going to have to jump to cover the last few inches, and then blindly reach out for the window frame to grab it and be able pull himself inside.

Dean readies himself by crouching and rubbing his palms vigorously together. He’s probably got one shot at this, two at most, before he breaks the porch.

With one last breath Dean pushes himself up as hard as he can, jumps, and reaches up for the sill. Got it! His fingers latch on, but he’s not got a good enough grip, and he immediately slips off. He lands hard back onto the porch, and it creaks ominously.

“Dammit,” Dean hisses, shaking his hands.

“Dean? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I just need to hang on better next time.” Dean takes another breath and crouches again, ready to make another jump.

The porch creaks loudly.

Dean jumps.

This time when his fingers catch onto the window frame he knows he’s got a better grip, and he hauls himself up before his arms get too tired. In one swift motion Dean is through the window and crashing down onto the wooden floor of the bedroom in a heap. He stays sprawled there for a moment and huffs out a relieved laugh. He’s never taking his gym trips for granted ever again.

“Dean?” Cas’s voice is muffled through the window, but it has an edge of worry.

Dean eventually climbs back to his feet and sticks his head out of the window. “Easy,” he calls down. “I’ll grab the keys and let you in the back door, hold on.”

The large window shuts closed with a firm click, and suddenly Dean has a flash of fear that Cas might take off again now that he’s alone. Would he do that? It doesn’t seem like something he would do… But then Dean hadn’t expected him to try and sneak off in the middle of the night either.

Now that he’s back inside, he can feel how icy cold his skin is. He grabs his fluffy robe out of the closet with a shiver, and just as he’s about to close the door, he spots the suit jacket. Cas has only been wearing a thin shirt this whole time, so he’s probably cold too. Dean snatches up the scissors from the desk and cuts two long slits in the back of the jacket, identical to the ones he made on the shirt. It doesn’t matter if he can never wear it again, he doesn’t need it, and he’s sure it’ll look better on Cas anyway.

Dean places the scissors back onto the desk with a clunk and steps back to examine the small collection of items. The apology sandwich still sits untouched on its plate, there’s the photos, the (worryingly low) bottle of whiskey, the empty ring box, and the feather necklace. He lost the ring and gained the feather in the same blackout drunk night, so maybe Cas knows what happened there? Something else to ask him about. Dean picks up the pure black feather and touches it gently. He’s pretty sure it must be from the crow version of Cas – it looks like one of the long feathers on his current wings, shrunk down to a miniature size.

He should probably read a book about bird wings or something, he’s sure all the feathers have got names and purposes and stuff.

Cas had said that he didn’t like looking at the desk… could it be because of the feather? Dean vaguely remembers a flash of something crushed and heartbroken passing over Cas’s face when he threw it over there. Is that why he thought he hated him? Is it some Werebird rejection thing?

Well, even if it is, he’s not sure he’s quite at the point of wearing best friend necklaces with the guy… but maybe Dean can make it look like he’s serious about trying to be friendlier at least. He carries it over to where the shiny stone and the compass sit on the bedside table and adds it to the small pile.

Dean throws the modified suit jacket over one arm and picks up the sandwich plate as he makes his way out of the room.

His stupid socks nearly make him slip at the bottom of the stairs again and he curses aloud as he gets his balance back without throwing the sandwich into the air.

As Dean approaches the back door he can see Cas lit softly from the light in the living room, shining over him through the large windows. He’s looking at the ground, his face lined with uncertainty, and his wings are flicking in and out like a person might pace back and forth.

Dean quickly puts the sandwich in the kitchen, grabs the key, and returns to the door. He taps rapidly on the glass, making Cas jump, before he finally unlocks it. “Mission complete,” he says, swinging the door open. “I uh- I got this for you too. Figured you might be cold. It’s got the same cuts on the back as your shirt, so it’ll fit your wings through it.”

Cas receives the suit jacket with wide-eyed reverence. “Thank you, Dean.”

“Don’t mention it,” Dean says, as he closes the door behind them both, finally shutting out the cold wind and the dark shadows of the forest.

They both stand there awkwardly for a moment before Dean gets the hint and hurries to the kitchen, leaving Cas alone to manhandle his wings into the jacket.

Considering it’s currently – Dean checks his phone – three am – he’s not tired at all, and he’s pretty sure Cas will be feeling the same way. Maybe now, in the quiet of the night, is a good time to have a long talk about everything, and finally get all the facts. Dean still has a bunch of questions, and only ever seems to gain new ones the more they interact.

Well, if they’re going to have a long conversation he’s going to need something to warm him up and keep him going. He grabs a pot of hot chocolate powder and sets up a pan of milk to heat up on the stove. He’s just rummaging around in the cabinet for a couple of mugs when he hears Cas enter the kitchen.

“Hey Cas, you want some hot-” Dean nearly drops the mugs he’s holding. Something about the full suit, the tousled dark hair, bright blue eyes, and black wings… just works. “Whew, look at you, lookin’ sharp,” he says, gesturing both mugs at him, which is possibly the dorkiest thing he’s ever said and done.

Jesus.

But Dean is rewarded with one of Cas’s rare smiles. “I appreciate you sacrificing your clothing like this.”

“It’s fine, I don’t need them anymore. Can’t have you running around the place naked.”

“I’ve been well informed that would be ‘inappropriate’.” Cas does the finger quotes thing again and Dean turns his attention back to putting hot chocolate powder into the mugs, to hide his amused smile.

“I was thinking of going into town tomorrow to buy you some clothes,” Dean says while he measures out the correct amount of powder and then adds more anyway.  “And replace some of the towels I’ve ruined. Could see about getting a TV or something while I’m there too. Something tells me we’ll be spending a lot of time here together while we wait for Michael to cool off, and we’re gonna need movies.” Dean moves over to the pan of warming milk and stirs gently.

“You can’t use your money on me like that,” Cas says.

“I ‘can’t?’” Dean echoes, turning around with his eyebrows as high as they can go.

Cas rolls his eyes while his wings ruffle behind him. “I see what you’re doing.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Dean says brightly, grinning down at the milk.

“You’re a stubborn man.”

“You’re a stubborn crow.”

Cas sighs loudly behind him and Dean keeps smiling while he stirs.

The milk is finally steaming, so Dean turns off the heat and pours it carefully into each mug, whisking out the lumps like he used to do for Sammy. When he picks up the finished hot chocolates and turns around Cas is standing by the kitchen table with the photo from his coat pocket in his hands. He’s staring at it with sad, watery eyes, and glances up as Dean approaches. He looks pale.

“You pulled this out of my pocket?”

“Shit, yeah, let me explain,” Dean says hurriedly, as he places the mugs down next to the row of black feathers. “I washed your coat with the rest of the blood stained clothes, but they’re all still in the washing machine – I’m going to hang them all out on the line in the morning. I didn’t want anything in your pockets to get ruined, so I had to check there was nothing in there first. Sorry man, I really didn’t mean to snoop.”

Cas gazes back down at the photo and nods, seemingly accepting Dean’s explanation and apology.

Dean brings the sandwich over, takes a seat at the small kitchen table, and scoops the line of Cas’s old feathers into a neat pile. “You wanna talk about it?”

Cas looks like he might not have heard him at first, then finally nods again and sits down on the chair opposite Dean. The chairs have extremely narrow backs to them, which Dean had never questioned before, but as Cas settles down and positions his wings either side of the narrow backrest, he understands.

Cas places the photo down as Dean nudges his sandwich and the mug of steaming hot chocolate towards him.

“I didn’t know if you liked hot chocolate, but according to my brother I make the best hot chocolate in the whole world. Although, the review might have only been that good because he was five at the time.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.” Cas does one of his nearly-there-smiles as he pulls the plate closer and holds his mug between both hands. He takes a deep breath. “To talk about Jimmy means I may as well tell you my whole story, if you want to hear it…”

Chapter Text

Steam swirls and curls up from Cas’s mug, clutched tightly between his hands, as he stares at it with an unfocused gaze. “You’re sure you want to hear my story? It’s not a particularly happy one.”

Dean scratches at a stain on the wooden table, feeling like a bit of an asshole for putting him in this situation in the first place. “Hey, look. You seriously don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, you don’t owe me anything. Our life debts are repaid-”

“Our life debts?”

“-and I know I said I wanted the truth, but I get that some stuff can stay private.”

The sweet scent of chocolate is thick in the air, along with that specific earthy smell that always clings to Cas, while outside the kitchen window is pitch black. A clock on the wall nearby ticks loudly in the silence. Somehow, despite the heavy atmosphere, it’s kinda cozy. Just the two of them at the table in the middle of the night.

Cas eventually tilts his head in his usual bird-like way. “No, I think I want to tell you.”

“Then lay it on me.”

Cas looks like he’s going to make a comment, but instead simply rolls his eyes and says, “My mother came from a small flock a long way from here, in a forest beside a mountain…”

Dean is immediately captivated, brought in by the deep gravel of Cas’s voice and the cadence he uses when telling stories.

“The flock was mostly made up of elders, and they hadn’t added to their number in many years, so it was at extreme risk of dying out.” Cas sighs. “I don’t know that much about my father – mother never even told me his name – all she told me was that he was a man of faith from a nearby village, who had been ‘gullible enough’ to believe that she was an angel.”

Dean can easily imagine how somebody religious would believe that these people with real freaking wings on their backs must be angels, hell he’d even made the comparison himself a few times, but… There’s something about tricking a guy into having sex because he thinks he’s been given the gift of fucking an angel or whatever, that really rubs Dean the wrong way.

“I can tell by your expression that you find it as disturbing as I do that she would mislead someone like that,” Cas muses, peering at Dean over the top of his mug. He takes a noisy sip of his hot chocolate, and his eyes open wide in surprise. “Oh… this is very good.”

A flare of pride curls warmly in Dean’s chest and he hides his expression by taking a sip himself. “Nah, you’re just saying that.”

“Your brother was right; this is the best hot chocolate in the world.”

“Hey, c’mon, don’t tease me.”

“No, I mean it, Dean. This is” – Cas takes another long, noisy sip, closing his eyes briefly – “what I imagine comfort tastes like.”

“Comfort doesn’t have a taste.”

“It does now.”

The heat in Dean’s chest flares even hotter and he smothers the soft smile that’s threatening to break out over his face, by pushing it into a playful grin instead. “Then I’ll make some more tomorrow. Flattery will get you everywhere.” He winks.

Cas takes another longer sip, his eyes roaming across Dean’s face the whole time, until he finally swallows and says, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Dean nearly chokes on his drink.

Is that- no, it can’t be… is he… flirting? Is Cas flirting with him? Wait, did Dean start it? Shit, did he flirt first?

Dean desperately tries to remind himself that he doesn’t find the birdman hot, but he’s not sure he can keep lying to himself anymore. Cas is sitting across the table from him with his messy dark hair and kind blue eyes, dark stubble across his strong jawline, wearing a suit that’s a little snug on his broad shoulders, with his badass black feathery wings folded neatly behind his back…

Okay, maybe he’s a little hot.

Another long swing of his drink does very little to help with how dry Dean’s mouth has suddenly become.

He clears his throat. “So, what happened then?” he prompts, hoping that if they get back to talking he can put off examining any of what the hell he’s feeling.

Cas seems to blink back to himself and continues with his story like there hadn’t been any interruption, “Mother’s tryst with my father had been successful, of course. She told me that the whole flock celebrated long into the night when it was announced, and she was immediately given the comfiest nest, the largest share of the food… We don’t have doctors the same way that humans do, but there are certain members of our flocks that we call Healers, who treat our injuries and illnesses. Imagine everyone’s shock when a few months later the Healer confirmed twins.

“After that, she was treated like royalty. Two additions to the flock! How lucky she was,” Cas says bitterly. He lets out a long breath through his nose. “She later gave birth to two healthy human babies. My twin brother Jimmy came first, and then myself not long after.”

Wait… Dean’s eyebrows furrow together as he replays what Cas just said. “Did you just say… human?”

Cas’s wings rustle agitatedly behind him, and he flaps them out a little before he folds them back in tighter. “Yes.”

“Hold up. You were human?”

“A long time ago, yes.”

“Then how…” Dean says but trails off as he suddenly remembers the book. The Bite. She didn’t…

“The only way to transfer the curse over to a human is to bite them during the full moon,” Cas explains, not realizing that Dean already knows this, “but it carries many risks. Not many humans survive it. But mother didn’t want human children, she wanted werebirds, so she waited for the next full moon after we were born, and then she bit us both.”

“She really… Shit…” Dean hisses quietly. He can’t believe anyone would do that to their own children. To any children! Who would risk their lives like that? They obviously survived it, because both of the smiling boys in the photo have wings, and Cas is literally sitting here right now, but that doesn’t change the fact that their mother had risked their lives on a freaking gamble of odds. Just to get the kind of children that she wanted.

“I’ve been told that it’s a very unpleasant process to endure, but I have no recollection of it, thankfully. Your entire cellular structure changes to be able to switch between bird and human shape, your wings and wing muscles grow in, your bones change… The most dangerous part of all is what it does to your heart – it learns to beat faster, to keep the blood flowing into the extra set of limbs.” Cas’s voice is steady, but he looks distant again, staring at nothing. “It changes your species, from the inside out.”

Dean remembers reading about that in the book, but hearing it firsthand makes it feel way more real. “Shit…” he repeats, seemingly out of words. He remembers how icy cold Cas’s wings had felt when he’d been on the bathroom floor, and how weakly his heart had been beating. To have been that close to death and still try and escape out the window as soon as he could… he must have really thought that Dean hated him.

Despite that, Cas still caught him when he fell.

He saw Dean climbing out the window like a dumbass and he could have just kept going, but he came back.

Dean examines Cas while he seems to be stuck in his memories and won’t notice the scrutiny – he looks pale again, tired and worn, hunched over his hot chocolate, and still wearing the thick bandage that Dean wrapped around his neck. The urge to tell him to eat his sandwich and bundle him back into bed is surprisingly strong.

He seems like the kind of guy who would care about everyone else before himself but never receives that kind of treatment in return. Which, admittedly, is something Dean has also been guilty of, but he’s going to try harder to turn that around.

“The survivability is fairly low for the transformation process, but somehow we both pulled through, and we were successfully infected with the werebird curse,” Cas rumbles, breaking the silence. “Subjecting children to endure the Bite is extremely taboo, but because it ‘worked out’ all three of us were allowed to stay in the flock. Mother probably thought her problems were over then. She could go back to being treated like the savior she thought herself to be, and live out the rest of her life in luxury… But at that time, we hadn’t yet changed shape and revealed our bird forms.

“Jimmy had light gray wings, with two distinctive black bands running across the outside, making it easy to tell that he could be nothing but a rock dove – what humans would call a common pigeon. But I was more difficult to identify. There are several bird species with all-over black wings. The rest of the flock would have most likely suspected that I may be a member of the corvid family, but nobody would have wanted to voice those suspicions out loud, in fear of inviting in the bad luck.”

Dean immediately frowns and opens his mouth, but Cas quickly speaks over him. “I understand that you might not believe in it, but it’s all I’ve ever known. Crows are a bad omen. They’re bad luck. That’s just the truth.”

“Fuck that. Say it all you want, but it’s just superstitious bullshit, and the other werebirds were dicks for making you think otherwise.”

“What you’re saying is that I should question everything I’ve ever been told and experienced throughout my whole life, and that I should deny the teachings that have been passed down through countless generations of my species?”

“Well, yeah,” Dean says simply, because it is simple. He slaps the table for emphasis when he says, “It’s – all – lies.”

“I see, so my ancestors were all wrong, because you say so?”

“Damn straight. And who the hell decided all that bad luck crap anyway? What’d they have against crows? A crow steal someone’s ancient lunch money, or what?”

“In the old stories-”

“Oh, right, the old stories. Always true, the old stories. Never anything made up in those.”

“When I’ve finished telling you about my past, then you’ll understand,” Cas almost growls.

“Then keep going and I’ll prove you wrong.”

Cas glares at him with narrow eyes and a scowl, and Dean stares stubbornly right back. He hadn’t even noticed that Cas’s wings had begun to arch upwards, but he glances at them, and it reminds him of the way that as a crow he would open his wings and clack his beak.

After a long moment Cas huffs, his wings fold back in, and he takes another sip of his hot chocolate. Immediately his expression softens slightly, and his feathers puff out a little before he shivers them back down smooth – as if he just can’t hold onto his irritation while enjoying the warm chocolatey drink that Dean made him.

Good, Dean thinks, taking a large gulp of his own.

There’s probably something weird about how much Dean enjoys their bickering. If he’d spoken back to Amara in the same way that he’s spoken to Cas, she’d have given him the silent treatment for days, until he promised not to do it again.

It’s different with Cas – it’s fun. Even when he’s doing his angry-bird routine. Maybe especially then.

“Jimmy and I were inseparable growing up,” Cas continues. “We would scamper around the mountains together and Jimmy would climb trees and jump off to glide down, even while I told him not to… Despite it all, I look back on those times with fondness. I realize now that I was treated with more indifference by the flock than Jimmy was, as they were all wary of my potential bird form, but as a child I had no idea that I was being punished for something that hadn’t even happened yet. As we grew older we were both desperate to be able to fly with everyone as birds, but we had to wait. Children are naturally unable to make the transformation, even those born as werebirds, because of the strain it puts on the heart. Jimmy was much more impatient about it than I was. You can’t force nature though, and we’d only be able to change shape when our bodies were ready.”

Dean nods. “Bird-people-puberty.”

Cas makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough.

“Uh, shit, sorry, didn’t mean to say that out loud,” Dean hastily adds, not wanting Cas to think he’s not taking this seriously.

“It wouldn’t be inaccurate to call it that,” Cas says, a hint of warmth in his voice, before he takes another long drink of his hot chocolate. “We would both lie awake at night whispering about how badly we wished for the day that we would be able to fly together. Jimmy would often declare that I was going to be a ‘much cooler’ bird than he was, and that he couldn’t wait to see what I would be. As an adult I wonder if he said those things because he’d heard the others talking about me. I suppose I’ll never know.”

As an older brother himself, Dean gets it.

There were many times growing up that he and Sam would be lying awake in whatever crappy motel dad had left them in, hearing their neighbors through the paper-thin walls, and the hum of the lights outside the window, and Dean would confidently declare, ‘Dad’ll be back soon Sammy, don’t worry, we’ll go home soon’. Even when he had no idea. He would always make sure his little brother didn’t have to worry about these things. Dean would do all the worrying for him.

He gets it.

“Jimmy was seven when he changed his shape for the first time, and just as the others had suspected, he was a rock dove. An excited little rock dove,” Cas says fondly, though his hands have clenched so strongly around his mug that his knuckles have turned white. “I was so pleased for my brother, and seeing him flying freely through the sky is something I will never forget.

“But it was too soon. His heart couldn’t cope with the change, and he got extremely unwell. The Healer forbade him anymore transformations, certain that if he ever did it again his heart would simply give up. But Jimmy…” Cas shakes his head, so much sadness in the gesture, and his voice comes out strained. “He remained optimistic. He’d lie in our family nest, pale and pained, and he’d tell me that by the time I could change he’d be better again, and we would be able to fly together – just like we always said we would.”

Cas takes a deep shuddering breath, his eyes shining. It takes him a long moment to compose himself enough to continue and rasp out, “Jimmy died a year later, the day that I first changed into my crow form.” His black wings seem to involuntarily fold closer to his body again as he lifts his head and stares, unseeing, at the ceiling. “I woke up one day and I just… knew I could do it. It’s impossible to describe. Of course, I went straight to Jimmy and told him. Despite his condition he was still so happy for me, and I finally transformed into a bird – revealing the crow. Probably just as the flock had been expecting.

“If he’d suspected what hardships being a corvid meant for me going forwards, he never showed it. He smiled as he pet my head feathers and he laughed as he weakly threw me into the air to get me to fly. It was the most alive that I’d seen him in a whole year, and I flew out over the mountains our flock called home, feeling lighter and happier than I had been in a long time.

“My small wings wouldn’t carry me far though, so it hadn’t been that long when I came back to the nest, but immediately I knew that something was drastically wrong. The flock saw me coming and they cringed away from me, they wouldn’t let me back to my family’s nest, and they just kept shooing me away. Only later did I learn that Jimmy was dead. The worst part is that while I’d been flying, I kept expecting him to join me… but he never did, and now he never would.” Cas rumbles brokenly, his voice scratched raw with emotion, still staring straight up at the ceiling. “How had everything I had ever known come crashing down in such a short time? Just from one transformation. The way they would all look at me…”

“Cas…”

“They sent my mother and I into exile after that. She blamed me for everything and would frequently remind me that it was all my fault.” Cas picks up the photo of him and his brother and places it gently into the middle of the table. “One of the flock’s Scouts used to take a lot of photos with an instant camera, and he let us take all our family photos with us. Although my mother kept them all from me, I was able to sneak this one into my pocket when she wasn’t looking, and now it’s the only picture I have of us both.”

The overwhelming sadness Dean is experiencing for this man that he’s only just met feels like an icy stab to the gut. He remembers how long it had taken to earn the crow’s trust, and then how scared Cas had been when revealing himself, and how little it had taken to shatter his desire for friendship when Dean had seemingly confirmed that he was just like everybody else and rejected him.

No wonder he’d jumped out the window to get away.

“So, you see,” Cas rumbles, his voice cracking, “that’s how I know that crows really are cursed with bad luck. That’s how I know that they’re bad omens and bringers of death, just like the stories say they are, because it’s my fault that my own brother is dead.”

Dean impulsively reaches across and grabs Cas’s hands from around his mug, squeezing them tightly in between his own. “No,” he says, voice thick with emotion. “No. It’s not your fault, Cas. Fuck anyone who ever said that to you! It is not your fault. Y’hear me?”

Cas’s wings flare out a little like he’s been startled, his blue eyes wide.

Dean squeezes his hands even tighter. “There’s no reason, there’s no grand plan, sometimes it’s just someone’s time.”

“But…”

“Listen, my mom died not long after my brother was born, when I was a really little kid. Died in a car accident. Got totaled by a truck hitting her from the side. My dad kept the wrecked car for years in a friend’s scrap yard, rusting and broken, and he couldn’t even look at it. But when I got old enough I fixed her up. Brought her back to life. It wasn’t the car’s fault that my mom died any more than it’s yours that Jimmy did.”

Cas looks deep in thought for a moment and Dean wonders if he’s finally got through to him. “Your car… The one outside, that you take such good care of…”

“That’s her. I fixed her up pretty good, huh.” Dean suddenly realizes that he’s basically holding Cas’s hands and lets them go quickly, snatching his hands back to his side of the table to hastily down the last of his hot chocolate.

Cas touches the bandage around his neck. “Yes. You seem to be good at that,” he whispers, so quietly that Dean isn’t sure he even said anything at all.

“What?”

Cas shakes his head. “Nothing.”

Dean runs a hand through his hair. “Ah, look, I don’t know if I’m explaining this very well. I feel like a dick, talking about my car right after you told me all this personal stuff. I just mean, I don’t drive Baby around thinking that she’s some kind of herald of death, and you shouldn’t be thinking that about yourself either.”

Cas opens his mouth, probably to disagree, if Dean is reading the crease between his eyebrows correctly.

“I have a little brother,” Dean says, hastily cutting in, “I mentioned him a few times already I know. But I practically raised Sammy when our dad left us in crummy motels for days or weeks at a time while he was chasing odd jobs and spending everything he earned at the races. I was the one getting money for Sam’s textbooks, so he wouldn’t fall behind on his schoolwork, I was the one making sure he had food to eat, ‘cause he was growing freakishly tall. I was still a kid myself, but I would wash dishes at a restaurant for a few dollars, I’d pick litter off the streets, I’d clean windows, cars, mow lawns, hustled a bit of pool when I got older… And now he’s all grown up and doesn’t need me anymore. He’s got a wife and a baby on the way, and I’m so proud of him… Anyway, I’m getting off topic, what I’m trying to say is that even though I love him, if anything ever happened to me and he blamed himself the way that you do, I’d kick his ass from the other side.”  

Cas’s lips twitch into a wobbly smile. “I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.”

Dean shrugs. “I’d make an exception.”

There’s still an air of melancholy and pain surrounding Cas, but his eyes aren’t shining with unshed tears anymore. He looks like he still doesn’t believe much of what Dean has said – but if he’s been able to put even just a crack into the lies and garbage that Cas has been told his whole life, then that’s enough for now.

There’s still the question of how the hell Cas came to be in Colette’s flock after all of that, and what happened to his mom, but he needs to go and get some rest. They’ve got time to talk more. Dean’s here for another week and a half. (That thought makes his chest tight, so he shoves it away.)

“For now, eat your sandwich and go to bed, alright. I’ll make us pancakes for breakfast, and you can hang around the cabin healing up while I go into town for some supplies,” Dean says. He expects some kind of sass about being bossed around, or about being left behind while Dean goes into town, but Cas seems so drained of energy that he just reaches over for the sandwich without comment. He lifts the sandwich to his mouth, but before he takes a bite, gestures with it to the pile of his old feathers.

“I’ve been meaning to ask about those,” Cas says.

“Oh yeah, they’re the feathers that got pulled out in your fight with Michael- the undamaged ones anyway.”

“You kept them?” Cas says quietly, his sandwich still hovering in the air near his mouth.

“Well, I didn’t know if you’d want them back or not, so I cleaned them up. I don’t know what you’d do with them, though. Not like you can stick them back in,” Dean says, feeling embarrassed suddenly. “Can you?”

“If only I could. They have to grow back in. With how quickly I heal they’ll most likely come through tonight and be ready to… um… they’ll just be back by the morning.”

“Awesome. Shiny new feathers by the morning.”

“Yes,” Cas says, but his wings twitch and rustle behind him.

“I crushed Michael’s feathers, in case you’re wondering what I did with those. Should have set them on fire,” Dean grumbles.

Cas’s wings rustle more loudly, with some of the feathers fluffing out. He gets them under control before he says, “Thank you, Dean, but I really have no use for the old feathers. You can just get rid of them.”

Dean frowns. He knows that they’re kinda useless in a practical sense, but throwing them out feels like a crime. Cas lost them in a badass fight with a freaking eagle twice his size, and Dean carefully saved and cleaned each one… No way is he throwing them out. He carefully drags the pile over to his side of the table. “Hey, if you don’t want them I’ll have them.”

Cas tilts his head in the way that makes Dean very aware that he’s part bird. “You crushed Michael’s… and want to keep mine?”

“I mean, if that’s not too weird. Kinda in the dark over here at what any of this stuff means to werebirds…”

Cas’s wings fluff up again, and Dean is sure there’s some extra color to his cheeks. “It means…” He hesitates. “That you would like to be friends.”

Dean pats his pile of black feathers. “Then I’m keeping ‘em.”

Cas smiles so widely the corners of his eyes crinkle, and his wings fluff out even more. It’s the happiest Dean has seen him. Dean smiles back widely before he can stop himself but quickly smothers it down. He’s done with the emotional moments for tonight. No more sappy stuff.

Cas finally bites into his sandwich. Immediately his eyes widen, and he hums a happy noise as he chews. “Can you make me another one of these tomorrow, too?” he manages to say, mostly garbled, around his mouthful of peanut butter and jelly.

“Sure can, buddy.”

They’re both quiet while Cas eats his sandwich, and his feathers gradually smooth back down. It’s a companiable kind of silence though, and Dean doesn’t mind it at all.

Dean gets up first and puts their empty mugs and the plate into the sink. He’s just rinsing out the mugs with some water (he’ll wash them properly tomorrow) when there’s a groan of pain from behind him. He whips around to see Cas slowly rising from his chair, his face pinched in pain, with an arm gripped tightly around his ribs.

“Hey, you okay?” Dean rushes over and grabs hold of his elbow, helping to steady him as he straightens up.

“My ribs… have yet to heal… all the way,” Cas explains.

Dean remembers the angry purple bruise that had been on Cas’s ribs from the fight. A guy falling onto him out of a window probably didn’t help with the whole healing thing either… Guilt gnaws at Dean’s stomach again, and he has to remind himself that if he hadn’t tried climbing out the window Cas wouldn’t have come back, and he could have been exiled or dead by the morning anyway.

“Lean on me, c’mon,” Dean says gruffly, his guilt and the reminder of how close he’d been to never seeing Cas again making it come out harsher than he intended. He positions himself by Cas’s side, offering his shoulder to help him the way that they did before. But Cas hesitates. “I thought we were friends now,” Dean adds, softer, flashing him a grin, “so let me help.”

Cas rolls his eyes but leans over to his side while Dean hooks an arm around the back of shoulders, just above his wings, letting him take on some of his weight (even if he doesn’t weigh much in the first place). That earthy smell is even stronger again as he leans in, reminding Dean of the forest surrounding the cabin, and as they get closer it’s easy to see the lines of pain marking Cas’s face. Dean settles them both into a comfortable position, noting that Cas feels pleasantly warm to the touch, even through his layers of his clothing. Maybe werebirds usually run extra warm?

They move forward a step, but the steadiness feels off compared to last time, and Dean realizes why.

“You can put your, uh” – Dean clears his throat – “wing around me like last time, if you want. Helped with the balance.”

Slowly a large black wing extends around Dean’s back and curves around that whole side of his body.

That feels better.

Slowly they hobble into the living room, Cas grimacing with discomfort, and Dean mumbling encouragement. The wing clenches around Dean’s body like a whole other freaking arm – he can feel the ‘elbow’ digging into his back, but there’s another joint that also looks like an elbow up by the back of his head? They can’t both be elbows, right? Maybe the second joint is more like a wrist? He should really read one of these books… Or he could just ask the literal bird man tomorrow?

The fire that had been previously blazing in the fireplace is nothing more than cold, black ash now, and the Were Creatures book is lying exactly where Dean left it earlier. Cas doesn’t notice it. But he does glance at the painting of the swan and the sparrow as they pass it, and Dean thinks his wing clutches around him even tighter.

They make it up the stairs extremely slowly and carefully, shuffling down the hall with Dean’s various encouragements of ‘nearly there, you’re doing great’, and finally Dean lowers Cas onto the bed. His eyes are already drooping closed as Dean steps back.

“I’ll probably sleep for a long time,” Cas says sleepily as he shuffles down into the bed, his wings moving around to get comfortable.

“That’s cool, just let me know when you’re up, and whatever time it is we’ll still have pancakes.”

“Thank you, Dean. I’ll need to change into my crow form tomorrow too,” Cas mumbles with a yawn.

Dean can’t help the immediate excited smile that flashes onto his face. “Wait, really?”

Cas huffs out a quiet laugh, then winces at the action, and Dean recovers quickly, adding, “It’s just, uh- been a while, y’know. I miss the little guy.”

“Dean, that ‘little guy’ is still me,” Cas says. His voice rumbles even deeper while he’s on the edge of falling to sleep, and it’s rich with a fond warmth like warm honey.

“You know what I mean,” Dean huffs, moving away from the bed. “Well, maybe you’re just a little guy in either form to me.”

“You’re only slightly taller than me…”

“It’s enough.”

Cas finally stops wriggling about and sighs deeply, closing his eyes.

Dean stands in the doorway, ready to leave, when he turns back. “Hey, Cas?”

“Hm?”

“Thanks for telling me all that stuff about your past, and about your brother.”

“Thank you for telling me about your mother,” Cas says quietly. “And for listening. I think Jimmy would have liked you.”

Dean nearly leaves and once again stops himself. “And hey, look, I know I said before that I don’t hate you, but…”

The sounds of slow, deep breathing suddenly stop, as if Cas is holding his breath.

“That’s not really enough. It’s not enough to say something like that.” Dean shuffles his feet and rubs his hands on his thighs, just for something to do with the build-up of nervous energy running through him. Why is this sort of stuff so hard? The guy literally just bared his soul – his flock rejected him, his mother rejected him, he thinks he caused his brother’s death… and Dean can’t even say one nice thing.

“What I mean is, I like you.” Dean cringes internally. “God, it makes me sound like I just jumped out of Sesame Street, but I mean it. I like the person-shaped-you and I like the crow-shaped-you. And what I said before about how meeting you has been the best luck I’ve had in a long time – it’s true. Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say, goodnight.” Dean can feel the back of his neck blazing and he turns on his heels to finally leave.

“Dean, wait.”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you,” Cas whispers, voice thick with emotion.

Dean suddenly clearly understands the difference between now and the last time they were like this, when Cas was thanking him and already planning to run away. Back then there’d been a cold emptiness in his words, but now…

“So, no jumping out of windows as soon as my back is turned this time.”

“I promise.” There’s a smile in Cas’s voice, even if Dean can’t see his face in the darkness of the room, and it makes Dean smile too as he finally leaves and closes the door.

Now that all the excitement is over Dean practically collapses onto the couch as soon as he’s downstairs again. The couch is kinda lumpy and hard, and it’s not really big enough for a full-grown man to be sleeping on, but right now he doesn’t care. Even though he draws the thin spare blanket close around himself, and he’s still wearing his robe, without the fire it’s colder than he thought it would be.

Despite the chill, Dean can feel himself almost immediately slipping into unconsciousness, and he wonders if his brain just needs a break after all the overload of adrenaline and information. You and me both, buddy, he thinks, curling up into a ball.

The last thing Dean sees, before he finally loses his battle with consciousness, is the swan and sparrow painting. “Don’ worry ‘bout Cas,” he slurs, looking directly at the swan-shaped Colette and barely able to form the words as he falls into oblivion, “I got ‘im.”

Chapter Text

The soft, distant sound of someone singing wakes Castiel slowly. At first he wonders how he could possibly be hearing any of the flock singing from his nest, he should be too far away, until he cracks opens his eyes and remembers that he’s in Cain’s cabin.

Dean is singing.

Castiel can’t make out the words, and he probably wouldn’t know the song anyway, but he can hear Dean’s deep voice rising and falling in time to the music from somewhere downstairs.

A slow smile spreads across Castiel’s lips as he flips onto his back, careful of his wings, settles deeper into the pillows, and stares up at the carved feathers on the ceiling. Getting to hear Dean singing (although it is off-key) feels like a privilege. He remembers Dean saying something about how his ex would hate it when he did things like that, and it makes Castiel so angry to think that he pushed down this joyous side of himself for anyone.

He might have missed this, if Dean hadn’t caught him leaving last night…

Dean had been right about his wings – the gaps in the feathers had made his descent a lot faster than it should have been, and so his landing had been hard on his knees. That had slowed him down long enough to hear Dean following him, though with the way he’d been yelling, Castiel would be surprised if the whole forest hadn’t heard him.

His entire life has been about being an unwanted burden, and he couldn’t bear to be that for Dean too. The thought of Dean sending him away hurt in a different way to anything else he’s ever experienced. He’d have rather gone back to Michael than experience that. And he nearly did.

He might have still, if Dean hadn’t fallen.

What else could he have done but catch him when he fell? It didn’t matter that he thought Dean still considered him a monster beneath it all, or that when he ultimately sent him away (which was only a matter of time) it would crush his heart… Castiel wouldn’t let him fall.

Now here he is.

He’s never told anyone about Jimmy before, not even Colette, but it all came pouring out of him so easily. He’d expected disgust and horror when he revealed that it was his fault that his brother died, but Dean wouldn’t even accept that as the truth in the first place.

Stubborn, funny, kind-hearted Dean, who befriended a strange crow, befriended an even stranger man, sings to himself, and calls his car ‘Baby’ even after it had such a prominent involvement in his mother’s death…

It’s been extremely difficult to argue with his bird instincts and tell himself that Dean hasn’t actively been courting him this whole time, even if it seemed like he has, but even so… the fondness sitting thick and warm in his chest like honey won’t go away.

Castiel finally sits up with a resigned sigh, careful of his aching body.

Sunlight is streaming through the closed curtains, which seems right because according to Castiel’s internal clock it feels like sometime just after noon. He hadn’t meant to sleep for this long, and will apologize to Dean for keeping him waiting, but his body had a lot of damage to heal.

He stretches both his arms and wings up as high as they can go, hears something pop, and feels his wing tips brush the ceiling. His whole body feels stiff, and he knows he really needs to go for a fly today to loosen up and chase away the odd jittery sensation under his skin. It’s been so long since he was in his bird form.

With a deep breath Castiel lets himself feel an awareness of his body that extends all the way from his head, to the ends of his wings, and down to his toes, assessing any lingering injuries.

Thankfully his ribs seem to have knitted back together significantly, although a dull ache remains. Not too bad considering how badly damaged they’d been. He’s sure that the worst of it should finally be healed by the end of the day. The wound on his neck should have fully healed now too, he guesses, as he scratches idly at the bandage. Though he won’t know how badly it’s scarred until he can see it in a mirror. It had been so deep… it certainly would have been fatal if Dean hadn’t stemmed the bleeding enough for his accelerated healing to take over.

Dean had taken so much care to treat all his wounds, even the ones on his wings, and he’d even wiped away the blood. The disparity between how he’d kept him alive so carefully and the memory of him throwing away his feather necklace is one of the reasons Castiel can’t quite trust him again yet.

Of all his physical injuries, that soul-deep rejection is still the one that hurts the most.

But…

“What I mean is, I like you.” Dean had said, as if it wasn’t the sweetest, most beautiful thing Castiel had ever heard in his entire life. “I like the person-shaped-you and I like the crow-shaped-you.”

It really seemed like he meant it too.

He never thought he’d hear anyone say something like that, let alone from someone who he considers to be his ma-

Castiel shakes off his memories, chastising himself for thinking about Dean like that, and tries to refocus.

Mostly he just feels tired and achy, but after telling Dean about Jimmy he does strangely feel a little lighter and less burdened. More at peace.

Castiel continues to sit quietly for another moment, until a burning itch begins to make its presence known in his wings.

Ah, of course…

Castiel extends both his wings and sighs at the sight of the many new pin feathers in the gaps that the old feathers left behind. Dean has told him multiple times that he doesn’t know anything about birds, which is why he obviously had no idea how the new feathers would come in, and Castiel would like to keep it that way. If he can get rid of the chalky casings before he goes downstairs to meet Dean he can unravel the new feathers out and he’ll never have to see how ugly his wings look with the disgusting, itchy gray spikes amongst his black plumage.

But he can’t take the casings off here – it gets everywhere, and he would send himself into exile if Dean caught sight of any of that in his nest.

Castiel frowns. Not nest, he reminds himself. Bedroom.

It’s just so easy to think of this as Dean’s nest, when it smells so much of him.

Castiel’s own nest is nothing more than a tiny one-roomed cabin, built amongst the trees, but he has a lot of affection for it. It’s extremely basic, right on the edge of the flock boundaries, but he still wishes he could show it to Dean. He’s tried to make it as comfy as he can, furnished and decorated with some of the things that the humans have left behind in Cain’s cabin, and he has an extensive collection of shiny stones that he’s very proud of. But Michael would never allow Dean anywhere close to the flock. It would be impossible.

Even so, the urge to show it to him persists.

Castiel lets out a long sigh, trying to ignore both the compulsion to scratch at his pin feathers and his irrational crow instincts.

Cain was the one who taught the flock how to build and craft with wood and helped them all to build their nests. After Castiel’s early years had been spent inside a cave, and then sleeping in trees during exile, being able to live comfortably in a small cabin is a luxury that he has never taken for granted.

Cain had often invited Castiel to come and live with him and Colette while they’d been building, but he hadn’t wanted to be too close to them for too long after… what had happened with Jimmy. So he always refused and insisted that he wanted to live in his own nest and be independent. He hadn’t even accepted Cain’s offer to make his cabin special and nicer than the others – Castiel just wanted to live in peace and not draw any unnecessary attention to himself. Being part of a flock again at all was enough. Instead, Cain added a few secret hiding places into the walls of Castiel’s cabin, marked with feather carvings, just like he’d done for Colette in theirs.

That’s where Dean’s gifts are hiding. Michael could tear his nest apart and he wouldn’t find them.

His treasured bottlecap collection. And a ring.

Once his ribs have fully healed he can sneak back in and retrieve them all unseen, without risking the wrath of Michael. Castiel can be almost invisible in the dark – he’s sure he can do it. Dean won’t like that idea, so he simply won’t tell him, and then he won’t have to worry.

It’s not lying if it’s just factual omission.

Dean is still downstairs singing loudly, and Castiel lets himself smile.

Despite discovering Castiel’s true nature, despite finding out about what happened to Jimmy… Dean is still here.

He stayed.

That’s got to count for something.

Castiel almost absentmindedly reaches into his wing and scratches at a cluster of pin feathers before he stops himself just in time – he needs to get rid of them before anything else.

Mind made up, Castiel throws off the blanket and climbs out of bed, but as soon as his feet hit the wooden floor he hisses at a sharp stab of pain in his ribs. Maybe not as healed as he thought. Not significant enough to stop him from changing shape later though.

Castiel uses the bathroom and takes some time to splash cold water on his face while he’s at the sink. He gasps at the shock of cold and looks up into the mirror as the water drips down his face. The shadows under his eyes don’t seem as pronounced as they were yesterday, face a little brighter, but he rubs a hand over his dark, scratchy stubble and knows he needs a shave before he can truly start to look more like himself again.

The thick bandage around his neck is stubborn to come off, since Dean tied it so well, but it finally unravels and Castiel is left staring at a bright white line slicing across his skin. He raises and lowers his chin, watching the scar stretch with the movements. It’s fully healed at least, and it looks like his chin will hide it most of the time – it’ll probably only be noticeable if he lifts his head up, or somebody gets close. Castiel rubs his hand over the freshly healed skin and gives it all a good scratch, glad to finally have the bandages off. He places them next to the sink and looks at them for a moment, realizing that these strips of fabric helped save his life.

Castiel returns his attention to the mirror.

He’s still wearing the suit that Dean gave to him, and although it sits a little snugly on his shoulders, it’s probably the nicest clothing that he owns now. Thinking of Dean cutting slits in the back to accommodate his wings brings back that warm fond feeling from earlier, and Castiel smiles again to himself. It had been strange to be sleeping in clothes at all, since he usually sleeps naked, but they had also smelt like Dean, so it had been nicer than he expected.

His wings have fluffed up while he’s been thinking about Dean, and now the spiky pin feathers just look even more noticeable and wrong.

Where should he remove the casings? The shower?

Castiel glances over at the shower and half-formed memories drift in and out of his mind of the night that Dean found out about him and treated his injuries. He only vaguely remembers being laid carefully into the sink as a crow, and how he knew he had no choice but to finally show Dean the truth – it would be impossible to treat his injuries in his bird form, and in Dean’s panic Castiel was worried he’d end up trying to take him to a vet. His whole body aches anew from the memory of how he’d managed to drag himself down the corridor, until he finally found enough energy to transform and hobble into the bedroom, covering himself with his favorite coat just in time for Dean to return and find him.

Castiel shudders and tries to force the traumatic memories from his mind.

Eventually he climbs into the huge bathtub, and brings his left wing forward with a rustle, rubbing the chalky pin feather casings between his fingers until it crumbles and falls into the tub like dust. Once he’s done he’ll wash it all down the drain, and Dean will never know.

It takes a while because each pin feather must be removed individually and carefully, then the new feather underneath is released and unravels out to its full width. The largest feathers are especially tricky, because the casings are so long, but Castiel is well practiced with those, the smallest feathers near his back are the worst because there are so many clustered together, and they’re in a tricky place for him to reach.

Castiel lets out a long, contented breath as he removes the casings one by one, feeling the itch dampen with each removal. The base of the tub is getting increasingly covered in fine dust, and Castiel regrets not taking the suit off first, knowing he’ll have to give himself a good brush down before seeing Dean again.

When all the large feathers have been released Castiel knows he can’t avoid the smallest ones any longer and attempts to reach around to the downy feathers by his shoulder blades. Pain lances through him immediately and he groans in pain as he bends over double and grips at his ribs.

He’s not sure how long he stays there like that until a familiar voice comes through the door, “Cas? You in there? Noticed you weren’t in the bedroom. You still want pancakes?”

Normally Castiel feels a thrill to hear Dean use the new nickname that he’s been bestowed, but now it fills him with dread.

Dean can’t see him like this.

Castiel grits his teeth and once more attempts to reach around by his shoulder blades, knowing that if he can just get these last few pin feathers he can pretend they were never even there. The pain that explodes in his ribs almost takes his breath away. He wants to say he’s fine, he wants to tell Dean to go ahead and make pancakes, that he’ll be down in a minute… but the itch is turning into an unpleasant burn that won’t stop until the casings are removed.

Maybe he could ask Dean to bring some kind of kitchen implement and he could use it to scratch them off that way? It would be highly suspicious though, and he wouldn’t really be able to think of a good reason why he would need something like that in the bathroom.

A wave of intense irritation radiates out from the remaining pin feathers and Cas clenches his fists so hard he thinks his nails might draw blood from his palms.

It’s no good.

He can’t let Dean see, but he can’t remain like this without help.

Can he really ask Dean to preen his pin feathers away? Surely he’ll be too disgusted.

“Cas?” Dean’s voice sounds even closer to the door, as his concern clearly grows at the continued silence. “You okay?”

The last time he’d struggled with his ribs Dean had said ‘let me help’.

He could do this.

Castiel sighs. “No.”

“Oh. Uh- can I come in?”

An even bigger sigh. “Yes.”

“Okay, I’m coming in.”

Dean peeks around the slowly opening door – he’s still wearing his pajamas and robe – and then visibly pauses at the sight of Castiel sitting, fully clothed, in the bathtub.

“Uh, you know you need water to have a bath, right? And it helps if you take your clothes off,” Dean says, voice light, but there’s concern in a tightness around his eyes.

Castiel hangs his head until his chin hits his chest. Shame sits like a cold stone in his gut and he’s suddenly unable to voice his request. His wings are angled away from Dean so he won’t be able to see the pin feathers, and he can’t bring himself to reveal them. He should tell Dean this was a mistake and ask him to bring a fork instead.

Dean moves closer to the tub and kneels. “Hey, c’mon. What’s going on? Is it like, a bird-people thing?”

Castiel glances up and sees Dean’s expression is pinched with worry – he can’t remember the last time anybody has ever looked at him like that.

Reluctantly Castiel says, “I need some assistance. My ribs are still quite damaged…”

Dean waits for a moment for Castiel to continue, but he doesn’t. He often speaks during the silences that Castiel leaves, and this time is no different. “Yeah? They looked pretty bad. The whole” – Dean waves a hand in the air – “falling on you thing probably didn’t help either, sorry.”

Castiel shakes his head. “No, I’m glad I caught you.”

“Oh, and hey, just noticed, no bandage,” Dean says, as he reaches out and nearly touches Castiel’s neck, before he hastily pulls his hand back.

“Yes, it left a scar, but it’s not too noticeable.” Castiel tilts his head, and Dean leans in slightly for a closer look. Castiel’s heart beats loudly. It’s nice to have him close. Another wave of itchy burning pulses through his wings and he winces as he tries to get back on track. “Before, when I said that the new feathers would grow in through the night, I didn’t exactly explain what form they’d take when they did.”

“Okay?” Dean says slowly, moving back.

“When a new feather comes in, it grows out inside a casing, and then that casing needs to be crumbled away to release the new feather. These are pin feathers. In real birds this process takes much longer, but for werebirds replacing new feathers is far more rapid.”

Dean nods with his eyebrows furrowed, like he’s taking all this in, but not entirely sure where it’s going. His eyes keep glancing over at Castiel’s wings.

“The pain in my ribs is preventing me from reaching the downy feathers by my shoulder blades, and I need some help…”

Understanding makes Dean’s eyes widen slightly. “Oh. Uh. You can’t just leave them until you’re feeling better?”

Castiel closes his eyes as another onslaught of itching hits him. “It’s extremely unpleasant,” he says, voice strained.

Dean stands, and Castiel is sure he’s going to leave the bathroom. Pin feathers are deeply unattractive, especially amongst his plain black plumage, and he’s asking Dean to do something that requires a bond of trust and affection. Besides, nobody would want to preen a crow’s wings. This was a mistake.

Castiel opens his mouth to request the fork instead, but before he can say anything Dean pulls his robe off, rolls it into a bundle, and throws it over by the sinks, leaving him in just a worn-looking t-shirt and the endearing pants with hot dogs all over them.

“Tell me what to do,” Dean says, kneeling back down.

For a moment Castiel is unable to speak. His heart thumps almost painfully in his chest and his words catch in his throat.

He is endlessly fascinated by this man.

Eventually Castiel shakes himself back into the moment and extends out his wings, moving around in the bathtub so that the backs are facing Dean. He hears the moment that Dean spots the pin feathers from a hitch in his breathing. There had been a lot of missing feathers near where human skin meets wing – in the areas where Michael had tried to tear them off – so there are a lot of pin feathers in their place now. The spiky cluster of casings must look somewhat monstrous to someone who’s never seen anything like it before.

The thought makes Castiel’s wings droop slightly, before he lifts them up again to give Dean better access – if he even still wants to go through with this.

“The casings will fall away easily, they just need to be pinched and rolled between your fingers,” Castiel says, trying not to betray just how nervous he is. “They’ll flake apart. That’s why I’m sat in the bath tub,” he adds seriously.

Dean lets out a tiny snort of amusement at that, and Castiel feels a spark of hope and levity worm its way under his skin. Nobody has ever found him as funny as Dean does. In fact, nobody has ever found him funny at all.

Castiel is facing away from Dean, and expecting him to start working on the casings, so he jerks violently when he feels the pad of Dean’s finger tentatively poke into one of the holes in his suit and touch the spot where the skin across his shoulder blades turns into feathers. Right at the connection to his wings. A shiver races through his entire body and leaves him a little dazed at the sensation. He’s even more surprised when he realizes that both of his wings have extended out as far as they can go and are arcing backwards, subconsciously chasing the touch.

“Oh okay, wow, down Bessie,” Dean says with another laugh, batting playfully at the wings doing their best to sandwich him between them.

Castiel clears his throat and pulls them back in, holding them more tightly locked into a position that Dean can reach. “It’s sensitive there.”

“Sorry,” Dean says, though he doesn’t sound it.

Castiel settles back down, and steels himself better for the next touch that comes where he’s expecting it.

But this time the sensation is less like a livewire and more like liquid relief, turning his bones to jelly. Each pin feather that gets crushed and flaked away dampens the itching in a way that his own hands have never done. It’s beyond the simple relief of removing the casings and opening out the feathers – it’s somehow deeper than that. It feels like being cared for. Castiel knows that there’s nobody on the entire planet that he would want here doing this other than Dean.

It feels right.

Dean is extremely careful and works methodically across the cluster of casings. He opens out each new feather gently after freeing it and pushes his fingers deep into the downy plumage to put them into place without even being asked. His fingers feel like blissful cool relief against his irritated skin under the new feathers, and Castiel bites his lip to stop a long sigh from escaping.

Dean doesn’t say anything, unusually quiet, but Castiel isn’t sure he’s capable of speech right now, so he’s glad of it.

Castiel doesn’t know how long they stay like that – time seems to do something strange when all he can focus on is the perfect relief Dean’s fingers are providing him. He hasn’t even noticed that he’s closed his eyes until Dean’s voice brings him back to his senses.

“I… think I got them all,” Dean says quietly.

“They feel much better, and the itching has stopped,” Castiel says, voice much rougher than he’s used to, “thank you.”

“Well, they definitely look better,” Dean says, as he ruffles his hands through the feathers one last time.

Only then does Castiel realize that every single feather is fluffed out again, and he takes a long deep breath to try and flatten them back down. It doesn’t work.

Dean finally stands up from his knees with a pained groan. “Note to self, porn lies, don’t kneel on bathroom tiles.” He walks over to the sinks, rinses his hands, replaces his robe, and ties it closed. “They’ve probably got a bunch of pillows down there, just out of shot,” he mumbles, rambling.

Castiel nods, though he really has no idea what he’s agreeing with.

Dean clears his throat and rubs the back of his neck. “So that felt… good?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Castiel rumbles, his whole body sinking further into the tub.

A slight redness blooms across Dean’s nose, drawing attention to his freckles, and strangely, Castiel is hit with the sudden urge to count them. He shakes the thought away.

“I’ll uh, go into the bedroom to get dressed,” Dean says, as he’s backing out of the bathroom, “now that I can get to the closet.” He bumps into the doorframe and curses under his breath. “And then I’ll cook us some pancakes,” he adds, as he disappears into the corridor.

Castiel takes a while to get his breath back, feeling like he needs some time to pull himself back together.

Preening has never felt like that before.

And there’s a… situation in his slacks that he’s only just now becoming aware of.

Must be because it was done by someone else.

By Dean. His-

Castiel stands abruptly, roughly shakes out his wings, and brushes down his suit. Dean has made his feelings on that quite clear, he thinks, giving himself a mental cold shower and shutting down his bird instincts before they run away with him again. He hadn’t meant to perform any of the courting acts on purpose – he said so himself – so Castiel would have to stop thinking about him like that.

He’s just happy that they’re at least friends again. That’s more than he deserves.

After washing the pin feather casings down the drain Castiel finally leaves the bathroom and follows a delicious smell down into the kitchen.

Dean is standing at the stove, dressed in another ensemble of jeans, t-shirt and an overshirt. (Castiel wonders how many of them he owns.) His music is on again, and he’s singing along with the lyrics while he sways his hips in time to the beat. Pancake batter is sizzling in the pan in front of him and he flicks it up in the air to catch it again expertly when it flips over.

Although Castiel still hasn’t announced his presence Dean must feel his gaze because he turns around and smiles. “Hey, Cas.”

“Hello, Dean.”

“Take a seat, pancakes are nearly done,” Dean says over his shoulder as he turns down the volume on his music and adds the cooked pancake to a tall stack.

Castiel sits down at the table in the same chair he sat in last night, lowering himself gently, careful of his ribs. There’s a plate and a set of cutlery in front of him, and the photo of himself and Jimmy sits beside them, like Dean knew he was going to take this seat. It’s a small touch that warms his heart.

“Thank you again, for earlier,” Castiel rumbles sincerely. He knows it must have been an unpleasant task for Dean.

Dean is still facing away from him, but it looks like his shoulders tense for a second. “No problem, buddy,” he says, voice unusually high. “Don’t mention it.”

Oh. Yes, not talking about it is probably for the best.

Dean splits the pancake tower into two smaller stacks and places one in front of Castiel. It’s still steaming and smells delicious.

“Pick your poison,” Dean says, “syrup, or honey?”

Castiel’s nose wrinkles.

“It’s just a phrase,” Dean clarifies, with a small laugh.

“Honey then, please,” Castiel says.

“You got it.” Dean grabs a glass jar out of a cupboard and places it by Castiel’s plate of pancakes. He pulls out a plastic bottle for himself and squeezes a steady stream of gloopy amber syrup over his breakfast.

Castiel raises an eyebrow at the amount he uses.

Dean’s already cramming a forkful of pancake into his mouth when he says, “What? I like syrup.” He grins while his cheeks bulge out with food like a chipmunk.

It makes Castiel smile down at his own pancakes, while he drizzles some honey over them with a spoon. At the first bite he closes his eyes in appreciation. “Are you sure you’re human? The way you can cook is almost supernatural. I don’t think it’s possible for you to make anything bad.”

Dean swallows his huge mouthful, and his grin turns a shade bashful. “That’s just ‘cause you’ve not got much else to judge it by. You eat worms.” He shrugs. “And everyone loves pancakes.”

Castiel points his fork at him and narrows his eyes. “Do you ever just accept a compliment?”

“Nope,” Dean says happily, shoving in another huge amount of food into his mouth. “Do you?”

Castiel narrows his eyes even further and bites into another piece of pancake while Dean’s playful grin returns.

“And I only eat worms when I’m in my crow form,” Castiel adds.

“Dude, that’s gross.”

There’s a companiable silence while they eat, so Castiel takes the opportunity to pick up the honey jar and examine the label. It looks like something Dean would have picked up from Oakton – it says it was collected from local beehives. “Cain loved bees,” Castiel says suddenly, “he used to donate jars of it to the flock from the beehives in the garden.”

“Oh yeah, I noticed those. Looks like they’re falling apart.”

Castiel hums sadly. “I think he’d be sad to see the condition they’re in now.”

“You should just stay here and take them on,” Dean says, like it’s that simple. “Bring them back to life. I’ve got Cain’s number, I could call him and tell him you’re gonna stay here. Better than going back to Michael,” he adds, as he stabs a piece of pancake rather violently.

Castiel blinks in surprise. Stay here? He couldn’t. It’s not his nest. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about beekeeping…” he says, instead of the instant refusal that was supposed to come out.

Dean looks encouraged and leans forward slightly. “I mean, Cain’s got a pretty big library back there. Must be something about bees in all that. And then you’d be safe here, right?”

“Safe from Michael… yes. But werebirds can’t live alone. We’re a social species. Living alone breaks us in some fundamental way.”

Dean visibly deflates and leans back in his chair again. “Shit… So, you’ll have to go back in the end anyway, or go crazy?”

“Yes.” Castiel has already come to terms with this, but it’s interesting to see Dean so bothered by the knowledge. “That’s why exile is such an effective punishment. If done to a pair, it’s not life-threatening, but to a single werebird – that’s essentially condemning them to a slow, miserable death.”

Dean looks extremely troubled by this and stabs another piece of pancake with considerable force. “That’s not fair,” he eventually says.

Castiel’s lips pinch together, and his wings rustle behind him as they twitch, but he doesn’t respond. Nothing about any of this is fair. He’s lived his whole life desperately wishing for someone like Dean, and then he comes into his life for this brief moment in time only, before Castiel has to face the consequences of enjoying a slice of happiness.

He should just make sure to enjoy it while he can.

Dean finally finishes his entire stack of pancakes and licks the syrup from his fork.

Enjoy it while I can, Castiel thinks again, unabashedly watching.

“Oh, hey, the washing’s out on the line,” Dean says, clearly changing topic, as he places his fork with a clatter onto his empty plate. “So your coat will be dry and ready to wear again later.”

“Thank you, Dean.”

“Before that, you said you had to be a crow again today?” There’s a note of hesitation in Dean’s voice, like he’s still getting used to talking about someone changing their shape so casually.

Castiel nods. “I need to stretch my wings and fly, and the longer I don’t transform the worse I’ll feel.”

“What’s it like, flying?” Dean blurts. “I mean, ‘cause, I have a fear of flying, but whenever I see you do it, it always looks like fun.”

Castiel tilts his head to the side. “You’ve flown?”

“In a plane,” Dean clarifies. “Not like the way you do.” He flaps his hands in the air.

Castiel feels the idea of Dean with wings crash fully formed into his brain all at once and tries desperately to control his own wings from fluffing out. He needs to lock that thought deep down and throw away the key – it’s too painful to imagine being able to stay with him and fly together.

After a moment of desperate internal struggle (though Castiel is able to keep his expression entirely neutral) he lets his wings unfold slightly and flap, to mimic the motion Dean made.

Dean rolls his eyes. “Yeah, okay, Mr. Actual-Wings, you do it better.”

Castiel lets a smug smile twitch onto his lips and then pulls his wings back in. “To be honest, in answer to your question, I’m not sure how to describe it.”

“How can you not know how to describe it?”

“It’s more of a feeling.”

“Alright, then. What’s it like having wings?”

Castiel hums in thought as he finishes his own pancakes.

Dean laughs. “You don’t know how to describe that one either?”

“If a man with no arms asked you what it was like to have arms, how would you respond?”

“I’d say, it’s awesome.”

“That would be extremely useful and evocative for him, I’m sure.”

Dean laughs even harder and Castiel feels the welcomed return of the warm feeling in his chest, thicker and sweeter than the real honey he’s just eaten.

“Alright, come back to me with an answer after you’ve gone for a fly,” Dean says. “And then I’m still taking a trip into town later for some supplies. Some new towels, definitely more ingredients since I’ll be cooking for two from now on…”

Dean talks to himself about the various things he wants to buy from Oakton as he clears away their plates and washes them in the sink.

He said it so casually – ‘cooking for two’ – but Castiel feels a lump forming in his throat at the domesticity of it.

“More pie?” Castiel suggests.

“Oh, hell yes, more diner pie!”

“I’ve never been in a car before, I’m looking forward to the trip,” Castiel says, thinking of the shiny car sat out in front of the cabin.

Dean drops a plate into the sink with a splash and turns around, his foamy hands dripping water onto the floor. “You’re not coming.”

Castiel frowns and his wings draw in tightly. “Why not?”

“‘Why not?’ Dude, what if someone sees you!”

“Dean,” Castiel says, locking eyes with him. “My other form is that of a regular crow. If somebody saw me they’d have no reason to think I wasn’t a real bird.”

Dean opens his mouth, closes it again, and finally huffs, “I hadn’t thought of the whole robots in disguise thing.”

“Then I can come?”

“Yeah, you can come,” Dean says with a defeated sigh, though Castiel can see the excited shine in his eyes. “If you’ve never been in a car before, you’ll love Baby, she glides across the road like it’s water. But we’re watching videos of real crows on my phone before we go, so you can do your act better.” Dean returns to the washing, but the slope of his shoulders looks relaxed and happy.

“I’m going to transform,” Castiel says, standing from the table.

Dean is rubbing his hands on a towel when he whips around. “Here?”

“No, I’m going upstairs. I’ll need to be naked for the change, and we’ve already established your opinions on nudity.”

“Hey man, I’m no prude. You can’t just- strip, y’know,” Dean says, looking away.

Castiel tilts his head. “Anybody? Or me specifically?”

Dean pushes his shoulder gently, teasingly. “Just go upstairs and change already, I want to see my crow friend.”

“Your crow friend is still me, Dean-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I still like him better though – he can’t sass me back.”

“In words,” Castiel says, letting himself be pushed from the room and thinking of pecking at Dean’s boots the first opportunity he gets. He stops suddenly and Dean does too. “Do you really like me as a crow better?”

Dean looks into his eyes, but Castiel doesn’t know what he’s searching for – maybe he wants to know if he’s still joking or not.

“I meant what I said before,” Dean says quietly, his expression and tone serious. “Crow or person, you’re still Cas. You’re still the first person I’ve ever felt like I can really be myself around…”

Castiel’s eyes widen.

Dean pushes him gently again, clearly mindful of his ribs. “Now go get your feathers on. If you open the bedroom window, you can fly out to me when you’re ready, and I’ll wait for you by the beehives.”

Castiel lets himself be moved again and continues to head upstairs this time, a contented smile on his face the whole time.

Back in the bedroom Castiel throws the window open and watches as Dean walks across the garden to the beehives. He turns, waves, and gives him a double thumbs-up.

That’s all the encouragement that Castiel needs.

He steps away from the window, far enough that he will no longer be seen from the outside, and carefully removes his borrowed suit, folding it neatly onto the bed.

All at once a familiar tingly feeling spreads rapidly through Castiel’s whole body, and it’s almost funny how easily he’s able to slip into the transformation, knowing that Dean is out there waiting for him to fly over.

His cells stretch, move around, and shrink, while feathers burst out from every pore. Most of the transformation is foreign information that gets blocked by his brain, so even though it must take a few minutes, it feels like a blink before he’s stood on his tiny crow legs, ruffling his wings and letting his feathers all fall into place.

It’s not a painful process, but it does feel strange after having not done it in a while. He’d been worried that his ribs might hurt, but the transformation seems to have sped up the healing process, and he barely feels the dull ache anymore.

The room looks huge from his new vantage point, but still familiar, and the scent of Dean is even more pleasing than it was in his human shape. He’s still the same person, no matter what form he’s in, but his avian instincts are always heightened like this. For better or worse.

Castiel shakes his entire body, letting his feathers fluff up and lie flat again, and flaps his wings in an experimental flutter.

He’s ready.

Taking off requires little to no effort – in one fluid move he’s gliding out of the bedroom window, and diving through the air towards Dean.