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There’s this thing about falling--you usually have a pretty clear idea when you’re going to hit the ground.
Then there’s another thing, and it’s about falling from grace. It’s like you’re Alice and just went into this rabbit hole, shock and wonder, then fear slowly creeping into you when falling doesn’t stop. It’ll have to eventually, but you’ll never get the warning in time.
Sometimes when Dean looks at Cas when the angel doesn’t see him, he thinks of silly little Alice, who isn’t even properly scared of hitting the bottom of the hole, and he thinks Cas should know better than that. On the other hand, a winged creature can’t know much about falling, can he? You can’t fall if you still have wings. Oh, you probably can furl them and sink through the air, but you don’t fall, because when you’re falling you don’t get to make a choice. Gravity’s a harsh mistress and all that. But when you have wings, you have to make an effort to actually hit the ground.
Maybe Cas thinks it’s inevitable, a logical progression of events in his angelic clockwork brain. A series of acts of defiance, and now there’s no other option, no other way but to struggle on, taint the wings and close them, and fall, and fall, spinning and wondering, with no ground in sight. It’s probably Dean’s fault, isn’t it. Or maybe Cas fully realizes what it means to fall, knows perfectly well about being broken and breakable, and that one is certainly Dean’s fault.
They sit in a motel room, TV quietly buzzing in the background, in this weird bubble of near-silence when everything is said and done, some new disaster hasn’t struck yet, and none of them quite knows what to do with themselves. Sam has gone off somewhere without explaining himself, and for once Dean let him do that. He regrets it a bit now, because it leaves him alone with a fallen--falling--angel he doesn’t know what to do with.
Cas is restless, dirty trenchcoat fluttering behind him as he touches various things in the room as if he doesn’t quite understand their purpose; a chair, a table, a bed cover. Somehow he still fills the room with his presence despite being small and hunched and tired, somehow he’s still like a thunderstorm and air before it. It won’t be long now, Dean thinks, not long at all before it all burns out like a candle, all the grace and otherness leaving behind--what?
“Hey, Cas,” he says and it sounds like his throat is full of sand.
Cas inclines his head slightly in his direction without quite looking at him. There’s a bowl full of apples on the table. They’re a bit overripe, peel full of brown spots, but Cas picks one anyway, turning it in his fingers as if unsure what to do with it.
“You okay?”
“Yes.” The word is heavy like a coffin lid. Then Cas looks in his direction and something shifts, something breaks. He shuffles a bit, his shoulders sag, and all the power and the storm is suddenly gone, leaving something fragile, bleached of color. “No.”
Dean isn’t sitting so far away, he could reach and touch, and he thinks he’s allowed now. He doesn’t, though.
“Does it hurt?” Dean asks, because he’s not able to stop himself so well anymore.
“No,” Cas says, looks away, picks at the apple until reddish peel reveals white-yellow flesh underneath. “Not quite,” he amends quietly. “It’s like...”
He trails off, his expression too open and vulnerable. Dean’s hand itches again and this time he can’t stop, it’s like falling and drowning, he reaches out and buries his fingers in the fabric of the trenchcoat at Cas’ elbow. The angel feels feverishly warm.
“Like what?”
“I can’t describe that,” Cas says, and sounds frustrated. As if another inability to communicate meant something. “It’s falling apart, there,” he presses his palm to the center of his chest. “I can’t stop it.” He trembles under Dean’s fingers. “I’d like it to stop.”
“Hell, I’d give your grace back to you if I could.”
It’s open and honest, not something he wants, but something he’d like to be able to do. With his grace Cas would leave again, but whole. It’s not sand in Dean’s mouth, it’s a whole desert, and the words he can’t stop are spilling through. He still hasn’t let go of Cas’ elbow. He curls his fingers and digs in, and Cas leans into him just a little.
“No.” It’s quiet, just a rumble in the angel’s chest, but Dean can feel it reverberating through his body. “I don’t care for it much anymore. I don’t believe it has done me much good lately.” He looks down at Dean and his mouth quirks, just a little, and even though he still looks pale and breakable there’s something behind it, like a promise, like a whispered ‘we’ll be all right in the end.’
“Oh, come on, Cas,” Dean says, because he won’t leave anything alone, not ever. “You can’t just give up like that.”
“I’m fine, Dean.” Cas’ fingers are sticky when they brush Dean’s cheek. Then he moves away with a flutter of feathers, drops the apple on the table. It rolls toward Dean, leaving smudges of juice behind, something broken and half-rotten that still fills Dean’s nostrils with summer-fall sweet fragrance.
“It’s a rotten deal, being human,” Dean says, catching the apple. It feels too soft under his fingers. It went bad in places, white giving way to brown. “You should know. Maybe we could find a way, try again.”
“Dean.” Cas’ voice is patient, weary at the edges. His back is turned to Dean, shoulders set. “I don’t want to. I deserve it, every second of it. The fall from grace.” The words are soft, carry too well. Dean wants to stand up, close the distance, bury himself in the trenchcoat and summer and thunderstorm, feel the searing warmth again. He stays in place. “There is nothing left in Heaven for me--”
His voice breaks and Dean moves, his head spinning, there’s a shriek of wind in his ears and he can’t stop, he can’t, there’s nothing to hold on when you’re falling through the air and you have no wings to carry you. It’s dumb to jump from a height when you can’t fly, isn’t it. Cas tenses under his hands.
“I’m scared, Dean,” he says, a whisper, a full-body shudder. “I just--”
“You want this to be over,” Dean says, presses his cheek to Cas’ shoulder, presses his fingers in. He doesn’t know how to rationalize it away anymore. He’d just like to be the brave one for once. “One way or another. Right?”
“Yes.” Dean can see Cas’ hands balling into fists and then relaxing again. “I don’t know how it’ll feel in a minute, or in an hour. I’d just like it to end. Is it like what it feels to be human?” He sounds young, old, ageless, lost.
“Don’t you remember?” Dean asks, curious despite himself.
“It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t myself. The memory--isn’t clear.” Cas sighs, hunches under Dean’s weight, or maybe that’s what’s keeping him upright. “It would be too easy otherwise.” There a glint of humor underneath all the weariness. “Redemption is not supposed to be easy and neither is falling.”
No shit, Dean wants to say. Screw that, he wants to say. I’d make it easy for you, if I could. Just one thing. One little thing so it wouldn’t break you in half, not again. Sometimes he lies awake at night and thinks about white hospital clothes, sometimes he thinks about picking up a sodden trenchcoat from the reservoir. Sometimes he thinks about running through an endless forest, about a hand gripping his wrist and then letting go. He thinks about all they had to give up, again and again. It seems unfair. Wasn’t it all enough, how much will be enough?
He wonders what shade of blue Cas’ eyes will be, whether it’ll change.
“Will you miss it? Your grace, I mean.”
Cas huffs, as if Dean is being ridiculous. “Humans miss things they cannot have all the time.”
Dean lets go, steps away. His palms burn, his throat is almost too dry to speak, all the water in the world wouldn’t make his voice smooth, words easy to get out. It chokes him, it drowns him, nearly forces him to his knees, and he doesn’t even have good sense to resist it. He’s lost, he’s always been, so much more lost than his half-fallen angel who won’t be angelic for much longer. “Then why aren’t you fighting?”
Cas finally turns away and looks him in the eye. “Because missing things is something different than wanting them back,” he says softly. “It’s for the better, Dean.”
The sun is setting, Dean can feel the warmth on his back, can see the shadows dancing on the wall behind Cas’ back.
“Can I,” he says, has to cough and start again. He didn’t even know what he wanted, just that he wanted. “Can I see?”
It’s ridiculous, soppy, it’s freaking grade-A chick flick material, all they lack is romantic music in the background and soft lightning. All they have is red sunlight setting cheap motel wallpaper on fire, turning Cas’ skin to gold. The angel somehow knows at once what he wants.
The wings are a shadow at first, something he’s seen, otherworldly, familiar. He remember the moment he’d seen them for the first time in stark, vivid detail--after all if he were to pinpoint the exact moment everything changed, it’d be this. They make a sound, soft rustling of shadowy feathers, and everything smells like a thunderstorm again. Dean steps forward as if jerked on invisible strings, touches Cas’ cheek rough with stubble, his shoulder, reluctantly reaches further to touch the shadow, and it isn’t like a shadow at all. It’s solid under his fingers, smooth and slick, warm. Alive in a vibrant, electric way.
Then it’s not a shadow anymore, it’s real, the reality that knocks the air out of your lungs. He’d never admit it, not in a million years, but he thought about Cas’ wings, thought they would be as weird and messy as the rest of the angel, slightly out of touch, something beautiful and ill-kept. They’re dark, the color of smoke, of a thundercloud, and oh, he thought they’d be like that. They gleam like gasoline on water. Some of the smaller feathers near Cas’ back are missing, most of them are out of place. Pinions are almost as long as Dean’s elbow, sharp and narrow, their ends dull and fraying. There are places where it looks like some of them were violently torn out, empty spaces between pinions, and Dean thinks that if Cas were a bird, he’d never fly again.
It’s fitting in a way that leaves a bitter taste in Dean’s mouth.
“Why would you want them gone?” The question is out of his mouth before he can stop it. He starts to sense a pattern here, oh God, he’s so fucking lost. His fingers move, tuck a feather into place, and Cas’ eyes flutter closed for a second.
“They’re just a symbol,” Cas says softly. “In fact, they’re not even real.”
It suddenly hits Dean how close they are. His hand drops, and Cas turns a little, feathers melting back into shadows. Dean wants to step away, but somehow he can’t, his fingers keep moving on their own volition, smoothing out the collar of Cas’ trenchcoat, tangling into short hair at the base of his neck. It doesn’t seem outrageous anymore. Maybe they’re too tired for that as well.
“What are you going to do?”
From this close, the question sounds shockingly intimate.
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to figure it out, won’t I?” Dean feels Cas smile for the first time in days, feels more than sees it. “The uncertainty is what we fear, and what we envy. Though I know that one well enough, I suppose,” Cas adds after a moment, darker.
“You could stay,” Dean says, hopeful, and it feels like a violation, it feels liberating.
“Could I?” There’s a dry press of lips against Dean’s temple, a slow exhale warm on skin.
“Yeah,” Dean’s voice breaks in half, he breaks in half, it’s been long enough in the making. “You know, if you want. To learn the ropes. Would be nice to see familiar faces, I guess. Safety in numbers.” He’s babbling, he knows it, knows that a string of words is as feeble a defense as any. “Until you’re sure.”
“There is one and only thing I’m sure about, Dean.”
The admission is almost inaudible, lost in a rush of blood in Dean’s ears.