Chapter Text
The night had almost been perfect.
Dean, Sam and Charlie had all banded together to take down a massive collective of vampires terrorizing an obscure college town down in Oklahoma, a trying commitment that took them two painstaking weeks. They had managed to return to the bunker at ten the night they finished the job, and, as per Charlie's request and Dean's burning need, they all enjoyed a substantial amount of liquor in the Dean cave. Their drunken celebration carried deep into the night, but by the end of it, Dean was in his warm bed and astoundingly drunk, his favorite state of being.
He had spent half of a month working side by side with two of his favorite people and ended it off with an amazing night, what more could he ask for? They had enjoyed so few honest to god, classic, simple hunts lately. It was always some complicated deal with demons, or a hole in the middle of the world, or a deceased U.S. president, or whatever insane, world ending event the forces that be could come up with.
It was perfect until the night was suddenly split with a resounding, rattling roar across the entirety of the bunker, perhaps even all of Kansas. Dean immediately came to life, not carrying a hint of lethargy as he sprang to his feet, reaching for the pistol on his nightstand. The bedrooms of the bunker were entirely dark when the lights were turned off due to the lack of windows, so he did this fumbling entirely shrouded in an all consuming darkness. It took some time, but eventually Dean was out his bedroom door and sprinting down the hall towards the main room of the bunker, as if seeing it would ensure the safety of the entire building.
Sam and Charlie were already there, somehow, both huddled around someone that Dean couldn't quite see as his eyes adjusted to the light. He didn't need to see to know that it was Castiel, though. He could always somehow tell when Castiel was around these days, when he was, which was becoming rare. He could feel it in his chest, a dull warmth, almost invigorating.
Sam and Charlie turned to face Dean, stepping apart and allowing him to see Castiel. He was battered and tired looking, still in his usual outfit of most of a suit and his brown trench coat, now with a large rip in his left sleeve. Dean recognized the outline of something slumped behind him, black and shivering. Dean almost thought he had some sort of mangy animal in tow until Cas adjusted. They were wings, now recognizable as they twitched in the air by Cas's side, jet black where feathers were clear and varying shades of red in clearly wounded areas across them. Cas looked dejected, broken and miserable. Dean wanted so desperately to somehow protect him from the future, to fix it. But he couldn't.
"Cas...? What- Are you okay?" He asked, unable to form any other question.
"Not exactly, no."
Suddenly, it was Charlie's turn to talk. "What happened?"
"I was about to ask that, would you just back off?" Dean nearly snarled. Both Sam and Charlie gave him odd looks, and he suddenly realized that it was an odd thing to do. It had felt almost automatic, like cocking a shotgun. He had felt compelled by emotion to do something and he simply did it, verging on animalistic in his submission to his first instinct. "Listen, I... Okay, sorry. I'm hungover."
Cas gave him his own odd look, this one soft and curious rather than shocked or upset. He tilted his head to the side softly as if he were a confused puppy, his bruised skin reflecting a hint of light on his cheekbone. He resumed his prior position and explained, "I was fighting against evil beings, is that not what we do?"
"Haha, sarcasm. Cas, you're fucking hurt, who can rough up an angel like that? And since when the hell did you just walk around with wings?"
"I... I have been pursuing a small group of demons, they have been conspiring something. I dealt with it, but... At a cost. The angels aren't exactly pleased with me either, there are many ongoing conflicts I-... I am in distress, and I cannot seem to just send my wings back to the astral plane. So they are here, for now."
"I've seen you distressed before, Cas, and this has never happened. And why the hell didn't you tell us, we would have- I don't know, but I would have done something." Dean was genuinely yelling now, the way his father did, with waving gestures and a bloodthirsty look on his face. He had no idea why he was so angry, but he couldn't help it. It just kept pouring out of him like a boiling hot fountain, surely only worsened by the lingering effects of the whiskey.
Cas did not respond with the same biting anger, only an eerie stillness and quietness Dean had only ever seen before in panicked fawns ducking for cover in the brush. Dean felt like a complete and utter asshole.
"I am going to sleep now," Cas stated simply.
"You don't usually do that, are you sure you're okay?" Sam cut in, his tone genuine and warm.
Cas nodded once.
"Well I can take you to one of the spare rooms, sleeping is good. Can you heal those yourself?" Sam gestured to Cas's various injuries.
"I don't believe so, no."
"Oh, so you don't even have powers anymore? What gives?" Dean huffed.
Sam shot him his closest rendition of a withering glare, causing him to deflate softly. He turned back to Cas. "Come on, I can try and fix you up."
The two of them left the room side by side with Cas's wings dragging on the floor behind him.
Charlie looked to Dean awkwardly. "So..."
Dean ran a hand over his face. "That probably made me seem like such a dick."
"No, I get it. I would probably be pretty freaked out too if I were you. I mean- I was, but like, you know."
"Not really?"
"Oh whatever, you'll get it eventually. It's fine."
Dean gave her a incredulous look. "Okay, I guess... I'm going back to bed, my hangover is really kicking in." His hangover was barely noticeable yet, in fact he was sure he was still pretty drunk, just sobered up momentarily by the moment. Lying came far too easily to him. He should add that to the list of internal problems he needs to work on.
Dean stood, watching the machine spit dark coffee into the bottom of his worn down white mug. It spit out the coffee in small droplets at first, the old machine just beginning to whir to life before letting out a steady flow of his second favorite liquid. The moment the cup was full he turned off the machine and took a loop gulp of the coffee, enjoying the smooth burn of the too-hot liquid down his throat and across his tongue. It would leave a dull pain in his mouth for the rest of the day, but it was unquestionably worth it, especially after the night he had endured.
He took the cup to the war room, where he could hear Sam, Castiel and Charlie chatting idly, low murmurs carrying through the concrete hallways. Castiel was sitting in a chair with his wings awkwardly draped over the back, still wearing pajamas, for some reason. Sam and Charlie were both dressed, and Sam had a bag from a nearby convenience store in front of him.
"Did you go out?"
Everyone looked up to face Dean as he entered.
Sam smiled slightly. "Uh, yeah, Charlie just needed some stuff. I got you a donut."
Dean felt a grin pull at his cheeks, unable to help it. He immediately began digging in the bag and found the donut, simple with a strawberry glaze in a small plastic bag. It was perfect, letting off a delicious, sweet smell. "Thank you, man, this is sick."
As Dean ate, he quietly observed Cas as he spoke to the others, taking a seat across from him. His wings looked much better now than they had before, but still significantly injured. In the light, Dean could now see his individual feathers, all absurdly beautiful. They were a deep black, and those that were not disturbed looked silky smooth, as if painstakingly woven for the perfect soft appearance. They reflected the light in a way that showed off an array of colors which danced as the appendage moved. It reminded Dean of both a spill of gas in a rainy parking lot and the aurora borealis. He wanted to reach out and touch, to watch the colors dance even more intensely across the silky surface.
Dean remembered the first time he had seen the aurora borealis. He had been thirteen, dragged by his father all the way up north to alaska for the hunt of a particularly ambitious wendigo. It had been a quiet, solitary night. Sam was already in bed in the motel, his father was out god knows where doing god knows what and Dean was all alone, leaning against the unstable railing outside the room and staring up at the sky. He inhaled the familiar smell of cigarette smoke and frozen humanity around him, letting the cold trickle into his bones. He had initially only seen specks of color appearing, just here and there, before slowly the sky began to twist and bend in an array of shades, too enthralling to take his eyes away from. He had stood there, craning his neck up towards the sky in the bitterly cold night air for half an hour before the colors eventually faded away. He was hesitant to go back inside, hoping that perhaps the lights would return, but eventually he had grown far too close to developing frostbite. It was easily one of his fondest memories.
He had wanted to see it again his whole life, and he had caught it a few times, when he got particularly lucky. It had never hit him that same way again, mesmerizing and wonder-inducing. Cas's wings, he realized, caught that wonder all over again. Cas was... Well his wings were beautiful.
It wasn't weird to find angelic wings beautiful, surely. Any person would. They were like, from heaven, maybe. He wasn't exactly sure how it worked but he was pretty sure the wings were heaven-based.
In a break in the conversation, Dean gestured to Cas' wings. "So um, how does this work?"
"What do you mean?" Castiel huffed, sounding both irritated and tired.
Dean felt a little bad, but not so much so that he was at all discouraged. "Your wings. They're out because you're... "Distressed" as you said. Where are they usually?"
Castiel waved his hand in the air in a vague motion. "An astral plane beyond your comprehension."
Sam rolled his eyes, "You would probably know this stuff if you did any research on angels, Dean, just saying."
"What, like you? So I can learn to make his feathers all shiny and pretty? I'm good." Dean mocked.
The room went quite quiet for a moment.
Charlie eventually spoke. "I think it's nice Sam figured out what to do."
Dean sighed. "Right, yeah, it's great."
Cas gave him a slightly smoldering look across the table, a hand squeezing at the extra fabric in his bee-patterned yellow pajama pants irritatedly.
"So, like, do you know how to do all that stuff now? Are you like- an angel groomer now?" He asked Sam, trying to sound nonchalant after his extremely subtle outburst.
"I just patched up where he was hurt and googled like, two things. I might get more into it though, I don't want him to like, be in pain."
"Unpreened wings are not particularly painful, but thank you."
Cas's deep rumble of a voice sounded particularly soothing as he reassured his lack of constant suffering, and Dean struggled to force himself not to lean closer as if waiting for more.
"'Preened?' Like a bird?" Charlie chuckled softly.
"Yes," Cas answered simply.
"Do angels usually do that sort of stuff?" Sam questioned, his tone light.
"Yes, preening is common, a frequent task too, lots of upkeep."
"Really? I had no idea. I guess I always forget that angels are like, a whole other species. I'm super knowledgeable about near-human species, though," Charlie explained.
"What the hell does that even mean? Is that like a weird sex thing?" Dean groaned.
"What? No!"
"It sounds like a weird sex thing."
"No. Just like- from geek stuff, you know. Shut up. Plus he's literally a dude, I'm not any more into him than you are."
Dean felt his heart sink for a moment, which was... Odd. He wasn't interested in Charlie whatsoever, and he was fully aware she was a lesbian prior. Something just felt off, wrong. He felt suddenly on edge, and he felt as if everyone at the table could see it on his face.
"You're so weird Charles... I never even implied that."
"You know me." Charlie grinned.
Dean strolled into the library, a beer in hand, as he would under any other circumstances. The evening had felt longer than all others, dragging on in one boring chunk of extended time. He had seen almost every corner of the bunker on his idle stroll around, a last resort to quell his boredom.
As he approached a table, he immediately recognized Cas and Sam. Cas was sitting in a chair with his back facing to Sam, both of them sideways to the table. His tattered wings draped over the back of the wooden chair, offering Sam full access. He was going through the feathers with some small comb device, the movements of his hands gentle but almost impersonal. It clearly wasn't particularly intimate, simply one friend helping another, yet it made something in Dean feel odd.
Cas hadn't let Dean touch his wings once since he had returned to the bunker, even though he desperately itched to and had asked multiple times. It was somewhat ridiculous that Sam had the audacity to comb through the feathers as if Cas was his personal pet angel while Dean had no chance of even the smallest touch.
Dean practically stormed out of the room, holding back his surely visible anger. He felt so ridiculous being so completely upset by something, but he couldn't quite help it. He paced his room like a man gone mad, quickly finishing his bottle and going back to the kitchen to replace it with a new one.
On his way to the kitchen, he could hear the low rumble of Cas's voice from the library as he spoke to Sam. He paused, listening in.
"I don't want to hurt him."
"I know you don't, man. It's complicated, he gets it. The last thing Dean would ever do is stay annoyed with you. You're special in his books."
"Well I suppose that makes me very lucky."
It was true, Dean was oddly... Fond, of Castiel, for lack of a better word. He excused worse behavior, he felt much more gratefulness for his loyalty than he had ever felt for anyone else's. When Castiel was not around he was often tempted to pray to him, simply to remind him he was there. He almost missed him then, he thought, or something like it. Missing Cas weighed on him like a second shadow at times, dark and heavy.
Dean Winchester had lived a long life without any sense of consistency whatsoever, he didn't need it, but god he wanted it. He loved waking up in the bunker multiple days in a row, and when Cas appeared regularly. When Cas was gone one of his few constants was missing, and he couldn't help but feel his gaping absence to the fullest extent.
They hadn't received notice of any potential hunts all week, and Dean was growing increasingly antsy. It wasn't impossible for them to get a week off, but it felt so infrequent that Dean wasn't sure to do with himself once he had the free time. He had spent a few nights at a nearby bar, mostly for the women. He had felt drawn to the idea of talking to someone beautiful, perhaps taking her to a hotel nearby, as he sure as hell wasn't taking a woman back to his bunker. He wasn't exactly sure why he had felt the initial pull of it, because once he had actually begun a conversation with someone, he felt utterly disinterested. He tried other women, other nights, but it continued. He simply wasn't interested.
He eventually gave up, leaving him in his current situation, lazing around the Dean cave with Sam and Castiel.
Charlie was out doing something or other, as she often was when she had so much free time. Apparently nerdy events were everywhere, including kansas.
Castiel had seemed increasingly human lately, sleeping, wearing pajamas, behaving sleepy or lazy as if he were just like himself or Sam. He was obviously feeling off too, more withdrawn, slightly down, even. His injuries seemed to be healing though, atleast. Sam had stopped trying to bandage his massive wings after a few days of recovery, letting Dean get even fuller looks of them.
Cas was next to him on the large leather sofa, one wing draped over the arm and one awkwardly flopped next to him. Dean could so easily just reach out and...
Cas immediately lurched away the moment Dean grabbed at one of his feathers, a sharp motion that seemed to shock even Sam. They both gave Dean a look like he had just pulled his dick out in public and started singing the ABCs.
"I- Sorry, didn't know that wasn't allowed, jesus..."
"You've got to be careful, Dean. You're such a dick sometimes..." Sam complained.
"Okay, okay. I said I was sorry."
"Yeah but it's serious, you can't just-..."
"Well sorry I don't know every single thing about angels ever!" Dean shouted.
Sam and Cas looked to one another as if exchanging a myriad of words with one hint of eye contact. Cas slowly rose to his feet and left the room.
"Are you leaving? Cas- dude, come back. I was joking around."
"Stop, Dean. Let him go."
"What, are you gonna send him out of the room like a kid just because I got annoyed or something? I didn't know you two could communicate telepathically now..."
"That's not what it's like."
"Then what is it like, Sam? Because from where I'm standing you've been all up in his feathers, brushing them or whatever you even do, and now he's acting all weird, and getting upset when I touch him-"
"He was upset because you touched his wings, not because you touched him. It's just different."
"I just- I thought he said I was the one he had a 'more profound bond' with, and now suddenly he's all..."
"Are you jealous?"
"No. Ew. I'm just fucking- I don't know, concerned. Does he not trust me anymore or something."
"Probably not after that."
"It wasn't even a big deal, he was just being weird," Dean retorted.
"You don't even know what you're talking about, Dean. Just leave it alone."
"Then explain it to me!"
"I feel like that's up to Cas," Sam sighed.
"Well he's not going to, and now apparently I'm hurting him just because I don't know."
"Don't say 'apparently' like it's not real, Dean. He- he's fragile or something right now, you don't need to be a dick."
"I don't fucking mean to be! I just don't- what am I supposed to do here? Just watch you take care of him? It's Cas."
"Just... Don't touch his wings without asking, don't make mean comments, that's kind of it. I don't know why you would think that was okay in the first place."
"I was just curious, okay? Is that a crime?"
Sam groaned, rubbing a hand over his face exasperatedly.
"I- I'm not gonna sit here and say I don't feel bad." Dean cringed as he said it, but he knew he had to. Sam had continuously encouraged him to be open about his true emotions with him whenever possible to avoid his usual rampaging, and he wanted to try, at the very least. "I don't... I don't want Cas to be freaked out by me, or hurt, or whatever. I just want- I don't fucking know, to make it better. And I just seem to keep fucking it up."
Sam looked at him again, his gaze softening. "He's going through a lot right now and you... You have your own whole weird thing going on, it's complicated, probably."
"Nothing's going on with me," Dean sharply defended himself.
"Really? Because you've been acting weird, bothering Cas every five seconds and going to that shitty bar down the street every night."
"I actually gave up on the bar- that's not the point. I- I guess I've been a little off, maybe?"
Sam gave him an oddly knowing look, which Dean could not interpret whatsoever.
Dean needed a drink.