Only Angels Have Wings - Gabe backstory - SPN
Title: Only Angels Have Wings
Characters/pairings: Gabriel; mentions of Michael, Lucifer, and Raphael; slight Loki/Odin
Word count: 384
Summary: When Gabriel fled Heaven, he had to hide his wings.
Loki doesn’t have wings.
Gabriel never thought all that much of his wings. Sure, in flight, he was a show-off, and he had reason. He was built perfectly for rapid take-off and hair-pin turns, and he was the only one of his brothers with a knack for hovering, but his wings were still nothing to theirs.
Michael’s feathers were a sleek, midnight black, and his wings were long and slender, tapering to points as sharp as razors. He was made for straight speed and decisive plunges. His wings were as beautiful and severe as he was.
Lucifer’s were a perfect, iridescent white. Raphael’s shone gold. Their wings were massive, with deep slots between each strong, elegant primary; designed to soar.
Gabriel’s were short, rounded things, and his primaries always looked a bit scruffy, however well he groomed. They were mottled tawny and auburn and grey, and they were freckled. He had actual freckles scattered over his feathers, and his brothers never quite teasing him about them.
They were still his wings.
When Gabriel first ran away, when he first built himself a body, he tucked his wings away good and deep. Any trace of them would be a dead giveaway to anyone else, and a painful reminder to him. He hid them away and forgot about them.
In Jötunheimr, once Fárbauti and Laufey had taken him as their own, he thought about them again. He learned to change the shape of the body he’d made, and he flew again, but he didn’t do it on his own wings. It was still too risky, so he made new wings, better wings, and different each time.
Jötunn don’t have wings.
When he met Odin, and they mixed their blood together and bound it with magic, Gabriel almost got his wings out. When he could taste the godliness flowing into him, that Odin shared, and it tasted so foreign and so much like Heaven, he almost couldn’t hold them in. He wanted to share that with Odin. He owed that much, at least, in return.
He pulled them back down deep, instead, and kept his secret. That was the beginning of the end for them, as soon as they had begun.
But the Æsir don’t have wings.
Only Angels have wings, and Loki is not an Angel.