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Summer is always bad.
A long, dry summer?
That’s a fucking tinderbox.
When the forest goes up, Dean’s not surprised, but he refuses to be resigned. The wind’s blowing the right way to give his crew some time, and that’s what has him pressing the fire line closer. When the wind inevitably changes direction, they start a careful backburn. They hold the line and call in an aerial attack before the fire can jump the line.
It’s intense, backbreaking work, but Dean considers the extra distance in the fire line worth it. This section of the forest is old. Old as balls, as Legolas might say, and just seeing the immense specimens has Dean thinking of Mirkwood. It’s a long hard day followed by a long hard night, and even though they have to get up to do it all over again only a few hours later, his crew holds fast through skill and luck.
Between the mop up and the cold trailing, they stay out there a damn long time, crushing embers and destroying brush.
When all is finally said and done, Dean comes back out during his precious free time for another look at the stretch of forest they saved. He hikes up the trail they’d driven up too many times, and he takes a long moment to simply lean back and look up.
And up.
And up.
Light streams down through the canopy, and butterflies dance high above between the leaves. The breeze murmurs, stroking coolness against his heated, sweaty face. The air smells more of smoke and ash than damp or moss, but it doesn’t reek of death, either.
He lets himself feel proud, and then he turns around and hikes back. When he arrives home to find all the dishes in his sink are actually washed and back in his cabinet, well, he gets absentminded while stressed sometimes. He must have done that earlier.
The next morning, he wakes up, stretches, and grumbles his way into his shower. The warm spray relaxes his shoulders as he runs through his to-do list before he has to step up from On Call to On Duty. Laundry. Definitely has to do laundry.
Except, he discovers quickly, no, he doesn’t. His laundry basket is absolutely empty.
Which, okay. Kinda weird. He’s sure he didn’t do that.
Unnervingly sure.
He finds his clothes neatly folded in his dresser. He gives them a sniff test, and they’re fine. The sweat stains are even gone from his workout clothes.
Dean investigates closer, but no, these aren’t new. They’re old, just clean. Cleaner than he’s been able to get them, honestly.
A little freaked by this point, he makes a couple phone calls. He dials everyone with a spare or emergency key to his apartment, but absolutely no one fesses up to doing him any favors.
At this point, it’s starting to be less a favor and more a blow to his sense of reality.
His next shift comes all too soon. When Dean plops into exhaustion at the end of it, he thinks nothing of the state of his home, two days abandoned.
And then he touches the damp soil of his potted plants.
“Okay, what the fuck,” he says aloud.
After another round of calls to the obvious culprits, Dean realizes what’s actually happening. This time, despite Sam being hours away, Dean calls his shitty little brother.
“This is the weirdest prank you’ve ever pulled,” Dean says the moment Sam answers. “I mean, kudos for finding something Mom can’t yell at you for, but what the fuck, Sammy.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I immediately want to know.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “Who are you getting to break into my place to do my chores?”
“Uh... No one?”
They go back and forth like this for a little while until Dean actually believes him. And if it’s not Sam, and it’s not any of his fellow firefighters or his neighbors...
Then yeah, Dean has no idea what the fuck is happening.
Sam gets Dean to run through the whole situation again. Sam makes humming noises. When Dean is done, Sam makes no noises at all.
Dean waits.
“Okay, so get this,” Sam says after a minute. “It’s kinda nuts, but I’ve found a test you could try.”
“I already tried all the stuff for footprints and fingerprints,” Dean says. “Installed a camera too, and I got nothing.”
“Do you have a piece of iron?” Sam asks.
“Uh. Probably?”
“Put out two dirty dishes on the counter, put a piece of iron on top of one, and see if both of them still get cleaned.”
“I’m gonna go and ask the obvious question of why?”
“Because it kind of sounds like you’ve got brownies or something?”
“Okay, where did I lose you, because I haven’t been baking.”
“No, like, brownies, the little people.”
“No Girl Scouts either.”
Sam’s eye roll is audible over the line. “I mean like sprites. Fairies.”
“...right. Because that was the most reasonable assumption.”
“Just try it, okay? If you already have cameras up, I can’t think of anything else to try.”
“If this turns out to be Stage Two of whatever weirdass prank you’ve got going, I’m going to wedgie you into next year, you got it?”
“Got it,” Sam answers, completely disinterested in the threat. “Tell me how it goes.”
The plate with the iron nail on it doesn’t get cleaned.
“Yeah, I think you’ve got fairies,” Sam says, half-laughing.
“Dude, this is not funny.”
“It is a little funny.”
“I want to know what the fuck is going on.”
“Are you sure you’re not the one trying to prank me?” Sam asks. “This is a pretty good set up.”
“I fucking swear to god...”
Swallowing his pride, Dean googles a bit more about fairies. There’s a disturbing amount of warnings about not spurning gifts and so on, but also enough info for Dean to escalate to stage two.
He leaves a saucer of milk out on the counter, and in the morning, the saucer is empty. Unlike the rest of his dishes, it’s still on the counter instead of tucked away in its proper cabinet.
Okay.
Okay, cool.
Dean has fairies.
Once he makes that leap, it’s not hard to connect the rest of the dots, however surreal those dots may be. Or how bizarre the picture those lines form.
His next day off with weather permitting, Dean hikes back up to the forest and the massive tree, the most impressive one around. He slings his collapsible cloth cooler off his shoulder, uncaps a full gallon of whole milk, and sets it down at the base of the trunk.
Absolutely nothing happens.
Dean moves the milk deeper into the shade before resting the ice packs on either side of the plastic jug.
He sits on rocks and roots.
He leans against the trunk.
He nods off against the bark.
There’s a man. His eyes are Blue. Not the color: the concept. His wings are what a butterfly’s aspire to be, and a crown of golden blossoms circles his brow. His rustic clothing suits him, fine cloth in a rough fashion.
The man smiles down at Dean.
Dean smiles back up.
The man reaches down to help Dean to his feet. His hand is soft and warm and firm, alive in a way that needs no pulse. His fingers at once wrap firmly around Dean’s wrist, and can barely encompass Dean’s thumb.
“Hello, Dean,” says the man with Blue for eyes.
“Hey,” Dean says. “I brought you milk.”
The man smiles wider. “An unnecessary but welcome gift.”
Dean shrugs, moving only his shoulders. He keeps his hand where it is, held by the other man, holding the other man aloft. “I mean, so’s cleaning my house.”
“You saved our home,” the man replies. He touches the bark of the tree, and Dean looks up to see archways and structures that would put Lothlorien to shame.
“Wow,” Dean breathes.
The man with Blue for eyes pulls on Dean’s hand and leads him upwards. They stroll though towering halls. They lean over balcony railings. They rest atop a tower adorned with the fallen tears of stars, sparkling beneath the moon. Venturing lower, they enter the tree proper through a crack and wander the city, Dean’s guide offering a steady stream of history throughout the impromptu tour.
When Dean yawns from the late hour, the man presses a cup of folded twilight into Dean’s free hand. Dean drinks deep, smacking his lips around the aftertaste of dusk, and they continue on. There’s a ball held in Dean’s honor tonight, he soon discovers, which sounds stuffy and kinda absurd, but is actually a rocking time once they arrive.
Dean sings loud and proud to songs he’s always known in the back of his mind. His guide and host plays an instrument strung with victory cries, and they dance from night to morn to night again, until Dean collapses into the man’s waiting arms.
The man takes him to bed, and Dean takes the man with him. The pillows are stuffed with the first sighs of a thousand snow leopards and, mercifully, Dean isn’t allergic. It’s a really good pillow, be it beneath his head or under his hips.
“Damn good party,” Dean praises between long stretches of kisses. He strokes his fingers along the inside of the man’s wings, and his fingertips come away with a faint sparkle, a minor grittiness of fairy dust. Somehow, they roll across the dandelion puff bed without the wings ever impeding them. They wrestle each other into positions meant for admiring, Dean with his arms flexed, the man with his back arched and wings flared.
Nights blur together with singing and dancing, with music and aching feet. The days evaporate in the heat of lust. Dawn and dusk never seem to come, all transitions vanished. Songs turn to moans, sex to dancing.
They dance until Dean can no longer stand on his feet, and then they fuck until Dean can no longer stand at all.
Only then goes the man gather Dean up in his arms, so strong and steady, and he sees Dean outside the bark boundary of the city proper and back out into the sprawling parapets and pavilions beneath the sky.
“You’re welcome to return,” the man with Blue for eyes tells him. He holds Dean tight and kisses him goodbye.
Dean jerks awake with a start. He flails, almost falling onto his side. Slapping his jeans, he groggily identifies the buzzing against his thigh as his phone. It’s only an email notification.
Dean stands. He stretches. He checks his phone again, abruptly certain the date is wrong, but it isn’t. Today is today, nothing more, nothing else.
Frowning, Dean bends to pick up the ice packs. Still cold, they chill his fingers, but the milk jug bounces away at a touch, empty.
Dean makes sleep a greater priority than usual, but beyond leaving him slightly better rested, nothing changes. A nagging sense of being interrupted mid-dream sticks with him, a sense that no night of sleep or quick nap can relieve.
He thinks he’s forgetting something, but he’s not sure what. He remembers to set out the nightly saucer of milk whenever he isn’t at the fire station, so that can’t be it.
Winter passes in this strange discontentment. At the first thaw of spring, Dean hikes up into the forest as soon as he can. The gallon of milk fits nicely among the roots, but before Dean can even sit down, the man with Blue for eyes is already there, pulling Dean back up.
“Cas,” Dean says, abruptly remembering that much of the name.
At once standing in Dean’s palm and at a nearly equal height before him, Cas smiles widely. “Hello, Dean.”
They catch each other up on the events of the long winter, but little seems important, not when compared to basking in the other’s presence. Cas’ clothing is different now, although how, Dean couldn’t say. His wings are absolutely radiant, and Dean completely embarrasses himself saying so.
The look on Cas’ face is still absolutely worth it.
Dean turns around in his kitchen, mid-sentence, his mouth open, his tongue awaiting words from his brain.
Nothing comes.
Dean had just been... He’d been...
He could have sworn he’d meant to take that hike today.
Or... Did he take that hike?
He distinctly remembers reaching the tree. Beyond that, he wants to say...
He wants to say...
Never mind. He’ll remember at some point.
Dean buys a great deal of milk. Whole gallons of it, way too much for a man living alone, but it never does last until its expiration date.
At some point, it’s been an entire year since he’s washed his dishes or done his laundry.
Two years.
Five.
It’s another summer, another forest fire, and Dean is getting too old to be out in the woods doing this. That doesn’t stop him. If anything, he goes harder than he has in years past.
He has a forest to protect.
“Our defender,” Cas calls him, praises him. Typically in bed, face-to-face, just to watch Dean blush.
“Honestly, you don’t feel like people who need protecting,” Dean answers at some later point.
“We don’t,” Cas readily admits, “but I would hate to have to rebuild.”
“Yeah,” Dean says, flopping on his back underneath the dew-crystal canopy of Cas’ bed. “It’s a seriously nice place you’ve got.”
Cas props himself up on one elbow. He raises an eyebrow at Dean. “Nice?” he echoes.
“Dramatic understatement,” Dean assures him. “Way better than my place.”
Cas hums noncommittally.
The next night—or maybe the one after that, or the one after that, definitely in the same month, though—Dean thinks to ask, “You’re not the one cleaning my place, right? You’re sending someone else to do that?”
“There are many of us who wish to show gratitude,” Cas replies, a non-answer that’s answer enough. “Why? Do you wish for me to show my thanks in that way?”
“I like this way,” Dean promises. “But I was thinking...”
“Yes?”
“Maybe you could come visit me too.”
Draped against Dean’s side, perched on Dean’s shoulder, Cas watches TV, enraptured, and murmurs every passing thought into Dean’s ear. That night, just the one night, Dean sucks Cas with gentle, tiny kisses, and Cas embraces Dean’s cock with his entire body.
It’s good, doubtlessly good, but even Dean’s memory foam mattress isn’t as good as Cas’ setup back home.
Years, and years, and years.
Dean discovers through sheer happenstance that he’s never gotten married, never truly changed or progressed very far. Settled down with a family and kids, Sam worries about him over the phone, but Dean waves those concerns away time and time again.
He’s happy.
Even when Dean’s aging body confines him to a desk job, retirement looming, he still ventures up to his beloved spot. One frosty winter, he bundles up tight, grabs a walking stick, and journeys up with a cooler heavy and straining with every variety of eggnog he could get his hands on.
Once in the woods, he can’t stay long out in the cold, only a few (months) minutes.
It’s a risky business even so: on his way down, he slips and breaks his leg.
There are no more walks into the woods after that.
By the time Dean retires, he’d been told countless times that he talks to himself. Mostly nonsense, it seems. Snatches of songs, bit of poems. An odd word, if it is a word, one he uses like a name while muttering to himself.
Castiel is making me a gift, he says often. Castiel, Castiel, Castiel.
Retirement suits Dean poorly. It’s fully possible it has never suited anyone worse.
He’s waiting for something, that’s all he knows. It’s not for Sam to visit, or his niece or nephews. That happens with enough regularity.
Mostly, Dean’s waiting to stop waiting. He’s tired and he wants to be happy again. He wants all the pieces of nonsense in his head to fit properly into the world, or maybe he wants the world to fit into that nonsense.
Either way, he waits.
Dean’s reduced mobility wanes further. His leg hurts, all the time. His joints ache and his back is a joke. To his immense surprise, Sam dies first. Dean makes it through the funeral without crying, his nephew Robert pushing him in a wheelchair from pew to podium. Dean does a reading for the service, although he can’t remember actually reading it. So much of that day is a blur. He even sleeps through the flight home, too exhausted to be frightened.
He’s done waiting, he decides.
The climb is torturous. He was right to begin early in the morning, because it takes an eon to shuffle up the forest path. Brown leaves snag in the cut tennis balls adorning the base of his walker.
Sometimes, he stops.
Sometimes, he leans.
Most of the time, he regrets the heavy pint of milk in the basket of his walker.
All of the time, he regrets not bringing some water, too.
The day itself is chilly enough, but Dean works up a sweat nearly to the point of fever by the time the tree comes into view. He staggers nearer, closer.
When the towering trunk is almost within reach, Dean lets himself fall.
Castiel catches him against his chest.
Dean sighs out the weight of years.
Castiel holds him tighter.
“Sorry,” Dean says. “Got impatient.”
“It’s all right,” Castiel answers. “They’re almost done.”
“Yeah?”
Castiel nods, and carries him up to see.
The wings are Green.
“I can finish them while you wear them,” Castiel supposes.
“You don’t mind?”
Castiel shakes his head. “It would be worth the effort if it meant I could stop waiting.”
Dean kisses him long and deep. He sheds his layers, a cardigan, a Henley, an undershirt. He stands up straight, his spine creaking back into alignment, his height unfolding as it hasn’t in years.
Castiel presses his face against Dean’s shoulder blades. It takes him a few moments, but tears of joy are difficult to summon on command, for all they can bind a soul together. With this fresh wetness against Dean’s skin, Castiel presses the wings in place.
“Oh,” Dean says.
He turns around.
Castiel looks at him. Waits for him.
Dean processes his entire life anew.
“Oh, wow,” Dean says.
“Was it truly a gift?” Castiel asks, worry clear across his face, across the slant of his wings and the Blue of his eyes.
Looking over his shoulder, Dean flaps his wings once, twice.
He takes Castiel’s hand.
It takes Dean even longer than it had Castiel, but eventually, the tears do come. He only needs the two. One for Castiel’s finger, and one for his own. Twin, shining bands, to join two souls together.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Worth the wait.”
They smile, clasp hands, and fly home, together.