Fic: "Kingfisher" [SPN, Dean/Castiel, PG]
Title: Kingfisher
Author: shane_mayhem
Rating: PG (for swearing and hints of potentially sexual situations)
Pairing: Castiel/Dean
Notes: inspired by a prompt on spn_kinkmeme. Includes hurt/comfort themes, wings, emotions, and fluff.
Spoilers: Very vague mid-S6.
Summary: A vignette in which Cas may be the wounded one, but they both inhabit barren lands.
The townsfolk of Joseph Creek, Oregon call it Dead Mountain. Rising ragged and almost bald among the pine and fir-cloaked shoulders of the Blue Mountains, it has a blighted look to it, as though it alone had blazed with fire in some season lost to memory, or been struck by the smouldering hand of some capricious and small-minded god. It has its own share of small-town legends associated with it that the older residents seem to be able to recall and change at a moment’s notice. Blood feud, Indian massacre (the victims and perpetrators changing with the passing of years), even something about a family of strange religious types whose father went crazy and sacrificed them all before killing himself. The stories, in the end, don’t matter. The mountain remains sullen and grey year round, and no one has any cause to go up there.
Joseph Creek is a deeply depressed former logging town that now mostly consists of a gas station, a truck stop, and a diner, so maybe no one notices the light shining out on top of the mountain, four, maybe five nights back. Like a beacon for ships at sea, that bright and that sudden, blazing out on the small, bare island of rock, then dark again.
If anyone noticed, they didn’t say anything about it, anyway.
~
The man drove three days to get here. It was lucky, he says, that he was just down in Utah at the time, not on the other side of the damn country. He had to park his car - a big, old, low-riding thing- more than two miles away, because that’s where any semblance of a useable road stops.
There are two buildings, if they can be called that, here. A barn with half a roof that’s probably more than a century old, and a slightly newer cabin that might have been a fire station. The cabin doesn’t have running water or electricity. It also doesn’t have much glass in the windows, or a proper bed of any kind. What it does have is an ancient and stalwart wood-burning stove, a table with lichen growing up under the veneer, and rats.
-You couldn’t have picked a better place to crash-land?
The man says.
-A place somewhere within two hundred miles of civilization?
He says this to no one, while he’s down the hill a ways, using a dull hatchet from the trunk of his car to hack long, thin branches off of fallen trees. The branches are twelve feet long, but they are so dry that they just snap.
-Fuck!
The man shouts. His hands are shaking.
~
-I don’t know what to do.
He later admits, this time not to himself.
-You gotta help me out here.
The figure that lies, breathing shallowly or not at all, on its side in the middle of the decaying barn, shifts slowly, and the motion makes the man wince. He doesn’t come closer, though. It’s as though he’s afraid.
-I just-
The figure on the ground is slighter than the man standing. In the waning high-altitude sunlight that seeps diffusely through the rotting beams, it appears to be of the same rough age, sex, and race. This man has his eyes shut in pain, and a cough wracks his body. The man standing makes a short sound of distress, and his hands twitch at his sides.
There is a rustling noise, a sound like many sheaves of slick papyrus being shuffled together. In the dusty light, feathers - enormous pinions almost the length of the man’s body - lift and spread slightly, weakly. The man on the ground turns his head to look up, and opens his eyes.
They glow as though they could reflect the light of the sun now mostly hidden behind the mountain’s back, before settling into a brilliant and unearthly blue.
- Dean, I’m sorry -
He begins, and his voice is rough and low, struggling in his pain to contain harmonies that might be beyond the scope of human hearing.
The man standing finally moves, swiftly, kneeling, keeping out of reach of the great wings as though he’s trying to pretend they’re not there.
- Shut up, Cas. You called, I came.
~
Later, the man comes back into the barn, where the moonlight is silvering the minutely trembling feathers to a glow like a midnight sea. He stares at the wings for a long time, his face contorted into a strange expression, almost like pain.
~
The next day, the man - Dean - drives down the side of the mountain to Joseph Creek. The car creaks and rumbles, and the dust is so thick, kicked up by the groaning tires, that he can barely see. He looks woefully at the car’s dirt-coated black finish when he finally pulls it into the gas station to buy supplies.
The old guy at the counter tries to make conversation, obviously curious at this newcomer and his dusty boots, his dust-filled hair, his youth and the hard lines around his eyes and mouth. But Dean doesn’t say much as he unloads his armfuls onto the counter: two roadside first aid kits, some scissors, needles and thread, rubbing alcohol, one box of feminine hygiene products, ten cans of Chef Boyardee chili, peanut butter, wonder bread, lighter fluid, a cheap camp saw, a box of matches, four gallons of water, a carton of Pediasure, two packages of AA batteries, a package of undershirts, some tacks, a roll of twine, and one of those tiny hammers marketed to housewives with flowers all over the handle.
At the truck stop he buys a cheap mess kit, five painter’s tarps, four knock-off Pendleton wool blankets, and a flat, wilted-looking burger from the deli.
He wolfs the burger on the drive back up, and sits for a long time in the car at its mostly-concealed parking spot halfway up the mountain. He packs as much of his supplies as he can into a large duffle and hikes the two miles up to the barn and cabin. He repeats this process twice, to carry everything up, and by the final hike, he is stumbling, his back bent, the weak light of his flashlight bobbing and weaving ahead of him. He nearly falls three or four times, and collapses in the straw of the barn with a groan when he arrives.
-Why aren’t you healed yet?
He asks, and the question contains equal parts anger and worry. The giant feathers shift with a sound like leaves shivering in the wind.
-Raphael’s blade...
The guttural voice begins, but cuts off with a hoarse, harsh bout of coughing, and Dean leans over, anger suddenly dissolved, reaching out a hand towards where a shoulder should be, under one enormous wing.
-Hey...hey. Easy.
The coughing gradually subsides, but the rattle in each breath is disturbingly loud, and Dean’s hands clench and unclench where he sits.
-You’re gonna be fine, Cas. Gonna get you all taken care of.
~
Dean is awake even before the tinny, electronic trill of a cell phone alarm goes off in the early morning. He shivers violently in the pre-dawn air, poking more firewood into the stove in the cabin. As it turns out, the stovepipe is rusted through and fills the cabin with smoke. He let the fire die in the evening so as not to asphyxiate in his sleep. Even swaddled in the Pendleton wool, he shook and shivered all night. He quickly eats a can of lukewarm chili, grabs his duffle, and crosses the rocky, cold ground to the barn.
He stares at the wings like a man warily eyeing the pacific surface of a river he must swim across. They glitter in the weak light of the rising sun like frost on a field, impossible in their size and solidity. The feathers lie upon each other like plates of armor, except where some are missing, or where, up near the great bony joints, they give way to stunted bristles where the flesh is scarred. Their color is indecipherable in this light - perhaps silver, or grey, blue or brown. He can see the huge flight feathers, pointed like blades, darken towards their tips. It may be markings, or it may be blood, he can’t yet tell.
After a moment, Dean pulls himself up straighter, nostrils flaring with a deep inhale, and steps forward, setting the duffle on the straw.
The wings are arranged thus: the left covers the body of the creature beneath, swaddling him head to foot in a shield of feathers. It curls limberly over his length, flexing with his breaths. The right wing splays outward behind his body, the wrist joint sharply angled down, making the wing tuck as much as it can. The bone between elbow and wrist, however, is nauseatingly crooked, and a thick crust of dark fluid coats the glimmering feathers.
The feathers shuffle softly and the angel peers out from under the left wing, raising it so that he may regard Dean with harrowed eyes.
Dean’s lips twist in something resembling a smile, and he kneels briskly, opening the duffle and beginning to pull out supplies.
-I’m gonna take a look at those stab wounds first, Cas, okay? Your uh...your wing looks broken, but I gotta make sure you’re not, uh...gonna bleed out first. Or whatever.
The left wing extends further, a canopy over the both of them now, like an arm stretching to help balance. The angel - Cas - lifts himself slightly, rolling carefully on his side so that his chest and belly face Dean. The broken wing twitches on the ground.
There is a strange puncture wound in the lower right side of the angel’s belly. The tattered shirt around it is brown with blood, but the wound itself leaks a bluish light. The sight of it makes the lines around Dean’s mouth draw tighter. He opens the shirt the angel’s wearing and uses one of the undershirts he’s bought to sponge the pale skin with rubbing alcohol. Dried blood runs in brownish rivers down the milky planes of the angel’s ribs, into the waistband of his trousers where a bony ridge of hip rises bare and exposed without the armor of his clothing. Dean averts his eyes and quickly opens the package of feminine hygiene products, ripping two of them out of their thin plastic wrapping and carefully pressing them to the pulsing light.
-I guess I...uh...expected more blood.
He sounds sheepish. The angel Cas makes a soft snorting sound, which turns into an almost-silent squeak of pain. Dean reaches out for a shoulder, but his fingers contact soft feathers instead, and he pulls his hand away, a breath whistling in between his teeth.
He puts the hand back slowly, sinking fingers into the fluff at the arch of the wing, tentative. Cas’ expression doesn’t change, but the wing shivers gently.
Dean clears his throat loudly, and tears the undershirt into long ropey strips with which he binds the pads in place over the angel’s belly. He leans in to pass the makeshift bandage around Cas’ slim waist, inhaling the warmth of feathers as he does. His cheeks redden, and he finishes quickly, sitting back on his haunches when he’s done.
Dust motes swirl in the rising sun, a filmy haze between the two of them like the soft membrane of a dream.
~
By the morning of the third day, Dean has haphazardly rigged three of the painter’s tarps together with twine, stretching them across the space of the barn between the still-sturdy wall studs. The tarps sag and gap in the middle, but might be enough to shed the majority of moisture if it rains. He struggled with them for quite a while, and twine crisscrosses the space above the prone angel like a confused spider’s web.
He also hiked down the side of the mountain until he found living trees, and cut the long, flexible whiplike staves which he now studiously, carefully binds to the broken wing as splints. His fingers tremble a little; they haven’t quite recovered from setting the bone. It was as thick as a human femur and he had to use some rope from the car, doubled back on itself through an alpine loop, to get leverage to pull the limb into place. It sounded like a muffled gunshot when the edges snapped together. Dean has set a lot of bones in his life, many of them his own. None of them ever sounded like that. The angel’s short, sharp cry of pain - existing mostly as a harmonic that left his ears ringing - he’s never heard anything quite like that, either.
His fingers constantly and compulsively smooth the downy feathers beneath the makeshift splints as he applies them. The feathers are soft as velvet, for the most part, and a shimmering non-color that makes them look like they are lit from within. Sometimes, the edges of them sting a little, though, as if there were tiny barbs hidden among them. As he works the torn-shirt bandages around the massive wing, the feathers ruffle, like a dog’s hackles. He smooths them back down. His fingers seem even more calloused and tan against the soft radiance.
-How’s that feel?
He asks when he’s done. His voice is hoarse and throaty.
The angel doesn’t answer, and Dean crawls around the splinted wing to find his face buried against the back of one hand, clutched in the straw. The straw is smouldering, just a little.
-Cas?
The angel doesn’t respond to the sound of his name. Dean reaches for his hand, turns it over, first and middle finger slotting across the pale wrist, feeling for a pulse. After a moment, he lets go, sitting back on his haunches and breathing a bit rapidly, eyes scanning the prone body, up and down, face pinched. Then, quickly, he loosens up the angel’s clothing - a dirty blue tie, a utilitarian black belt, a shabby suit jacket and tan trenchcoat which Dean pushes further off of his shoulders until stopped by the great wing joints. He pauses, and his hands scrub roughly through his short-clipped hair until they grip at the back of his own neck. He blows out a stuttered breath, then stands, moves to the angel’s feet and kneels again, removing strangely scuff-less black Oxfords and setting them aside.
-Okay, buddy, stay with me now.
Dean leans forward and down to look into Cas’ face, peering in under the edge of the uninjured wing.
-Hey.
His hand roughly, rapidly strokes through the dark, short hair on the side of the angel’s head. It is an unpractised, unconscious movement.
He stands and crosses from the barn to the cabin, returns with a blanket, which he maneuvers over as much of Cas’ body as he can cover.
Then he sits again, staring sightlessly over the arch of the angel’s wings into the distance.
~
Dean wakes in the middle of the night, shivering under his one blanket. The fire in the stove has gone out; he hasn’t patched the stovepipe yet. He swings his legs over the edge of the bench he’s using for a bed and gazes into the darkness at his feet for several moments.
Then, gathering up the blankets he’s sleeping on, he stumbles through the moonlit dimness to the barn.
The angel is not sleeping. He slowly lifts the uninjured wing, a glimmering tapestry of feather, muscle, and bone. Fully extended, the wing might easily go through the barn’s semi-roof. It curls instead, like a living tent, the gesture perfectly paired with the solemnly expectant look on the angel’s face, a face as still and stoic as any churchyard carving.
Dean trembles, almost undetectably.
-You’re awake.
He says, in a near-whisper. Blankets clutched to his chest, he takes a few hesitating steps closer.
-You feelin’ any better?
Cas nods, slowly, the tip of his tongue pushing out to wet parched lips.
-Yes. A little.
He doesn’t whisper, but his voice is so low it seems to rumble gently in the ground rather than the air.
Dean swallows thickly.
-You mind if I bunk here with you, then? I can keep a better eye on you that way. And besides. It’s really fuckin’ cold in that cabin.
He kneels down in the moldy straw and spreads out the blankets he was using to sleep on, crushing down the most prickly bits as best he can. He wraps the last blanket around himself and huddles within arm’s reach of the angel, but not touching. He suppresses a shiver.
Cas lets out a quiet huff of breath.
They lie there for a long moment, Dean with his eyes closed and his blanket clutched tight, Cas silently watching him with a hooded gaze. The papyrus sound of shifting feathers interrupts the night’s silence as Cas lifts his wing again.
The wing’s edge curves around Dean’s body and effortlessly flattens him, scooping him closer as though he weighs nothing. Unable to resist the muscular pull, Dean drags his blankets with him, protesting in a muffled voice.
- Fuck, Cas! You really, really don’t understand personal space, do you?
Under the canopy of the wing, he is inches from the angel’s face, the strange radiant heat of his body. Dean licks his lips several times, his eyes darting around as though trying to find something to light upon that isn’t part of an angel. Cas’ eyes are closed again, and he breathes steadily, but with a rattle that sounds more like distant broken machinery than anything organic.
Reflexively, Dean pushes upward on the surrounding wing, but it tightens down around them and doesn’t budge. The space inside is warmer than a fire-heated room. Perhaps because of this, Dean’s shirt is darkened with sweat beneath the arms and in the small of his back.
Inevitably, his eyes drop shut and he sleeps. As he does, one hand drifts from its mooring up against his chest and comes to rest on the angel’s arm.
~
Pale golden sunlight crests the ragged edge of the mountain, piercing the gloom of the cabin where Dean is cooking chili in a can on the stove and shaking up bottles of Pediasure. He hums a nameless song that occasionally breaks into a chorus of whistling. The morning air is still cool enough to make his breath frost on the walk back to the barn, but his face is flushed from the heat of the stove and his eyes are bright.
The angel stirs as he enters, weakly lifting his wing to look at him.
-Mornin’ sunshine.
Dean says, tipping chili into his mouth from the can. He chews, swallows, and wipes his mouth on his sleeve, setting the chili down to come closer to the angel, who lowers his head again. Glittering blue eyes regard Dean solemnly from their bruised hollows, and Dean puts a hand on his shoulder, his voice softening.
-You hungry at all, Cas?
-You know I don’t need to eat, Dean.
Comes the gravelly reply.
-Yeah, well, you also didn’t have wounds that didn’t heal or visible wings until just recently, either, so maybe things have changed.
He pulls out the bottle of Pediasure and shakes it a little in the angel’s direction, lifting his eyebrows.
-C’mon...vanilla-flavored! And good for you.
Cas’ expression becomes studious and he lets out a little whuff of acquiescence. Slowly, he reaches for the bottle, but his arm falls a bit short of the mark, and a twitch of lips that might be a grimace crosses his face fleetingly.
-Okay, okay...
Dean’s voice comes out rushed and quieter, and he tightens his fingers on the warm shoulder.
-Don’t go stretching that wound too much.
The neat row of stitches that underline the angel’s jutting collarbone haven’t split, but they march darkly and deeply across his pale skin, mapping the edges of a wound that inhibits the movement of his arm. Dean pops the plastic top off of the bottle.
-Lean back a little, if you can. There ya go. Now open up. It’s yummy, I promise.
Soft chapped lips part obediently, and like a surgeon making the first, crucial incision, Dean pours the milky liquid into the angel’s mouth. It pools there, dribbling slightly out the sides and down his stubbled jaw.
-Swallow, Cas. That’s how this works. Remember?
Awkwardly, Cas moves his throat, his expression matching Dean’s for concentration, then quickly mops the tiny leftover pearls from the corners of his mouth with his tongue. He narrows his eyes at nothing in particular as though reading a text in his mind, then looks back up at Dean and opens his mouth again.
A peculiar expression flickers across Dean’s face, his mouth twitching erratically for a moment. Silently, he tips the bottle to the angel’s lips, letting him swallow as quickly as he wants.
He ends up having to fetch the entire carton from the cabin, feeding Cas all of the bottles, one by one, as the uninjured wing stretches and flexes minutely with every hungry gulp. When all of the bottles lie empty (and in some cases, licked clean, which nearly caused Dean to drop one completely the first time it happened), the angel narrows his eyes again, his face regaining its analytic look. He licks his lips once more, slowly, and glances down at his own stomach as though pondering the sensation of having it filled. Then, apparently satisfied with some conclusion, he whuffs out another tiny breath and drops his head back onto its pillow of straw.
Dean stares at him for a moment, then shakes his head.
-Well, I hope you like peanut butter, ‘cuz you just cleaned us outta that stuff.
Cas makes no answer, but the air around him seems to thrum with a monotone low sound. His eyes are closed to bright blue slits, and Dean leans forward, ruffling a hand through the angel’s thick dark hair.
~
He sleeps under the shelter of Cas’ wing again that night. He tells Cas that it makes more sense this way - he can keep close, alert to any changes in the angel’s condition, and they both benefit from the shared heat.
When the angel has been still and quiet for a while, his eyes softly shut, Dean inches his fingers toward the gently breathing flank. His fingertips trace the edges of his makeshift bandage, feeling for the temperature of the surrounding skin. There is a tiny unconscious furrow of concentration in Dean’s brow, as he brushes his fingers outward across bared skin, tracing an exploratory line down the middle of Cas’ stomach. His lips are parted and he seems lost in thought. After several more moments of the angel’s continued stillness, Dean cautiously splays the palm of his hand over the slim, soft belly, and scoots himself an inch closer.
The angel doesn’t appear to wake, but the huge wing tenses instinctively, curling a little more around Dean’s body. Dean breathes out an choked-sounding sigh, and eventually lets his eyes close.
~
The next morning, Dean sits cross-legged before the angel and examines the wings more critically.
-Ya know, Cas, these are actually pretty awesome.
Cas arches an eyebrow and snorts.
-They are merely corporeal representations of the real thing. Translated into a form that your eyes expect to see.
Dean runs the palm of one hand down the leading edge of one of the glimmering flight feathers. He appears not to notice the subtle shiver that passes through the angel’s body at the motion.
-I’m pretty sure my eyes did not expect to see you turn up with actual, real, giant bird wings, dude.
The feathers across the backs of both wings fluff up.
-They’re not bird wings, Dean!
Dean laughs and reaches over to smooth down the ruffled feathers.
-Touchy, touchy!
He continues to stroke the wing, staring intrigued at the glow that seems to rise around his hand as he does. His own skin seems alight. It’s only when the angel trembles again that he withdraws the hand with an embarrassed look, as though just realizing that he’s been touching a part of Cas’ body.
-You uh...you feel that?
-Of course.
Dean clears his throat and looks at his hands, now entwined in his lap.
-So what is the deal with the birdman routine, anyway? How come I can suddenly see your wings? Or...you know, your fake wings, or whatever.
Cas stretches slightly, pushing himself up on one elbow. The wing arches and spreads, counter-balancing. Dean watches the movement, eyes flickering between the wing and the rumpled, unimpressive body of the angel as though trying to force the two together in his mind.
-I can fit them inside my vessel when I’m occupying it, but it takes more energy. Of all the parts of an angel, they are the most distinctly different. They have no direct translation into a human form. Normally, it’s not a problem. But when I was injured...I must have been unable to reoccupy my vessel without manifesting them in some way.
He shrugs lightly, and the wing lifts as well. Dean’s fingers twitch in his lap.
-Whaddya mean, they’re the only part that’s distinctly different? I thought you guys were all giant burning balls of light or something.
Cas tilts his head to the side.
-We were both created in God’s image, Dean. We are more similar than you might think.
He smiles then, a soft quirk of the corner of his lips.
-In a very rough sense, anyway.
They both fall silent for a long moment, but Dean’s eyes continue to trace the contours of the angel’s wings. The feathers seem to shift from silken to steelly-looking with the light, the minute movements like breathing that ripple across them. There are dark gaps in feathers, in some places, and places where they don’t lie together, but are bent or even broken. In addition to the obvious injury of the fractured right wing, there are mottled, bare spots across the backs of both wings, and even a few lumps along the crest of bone where they appear to have been broken before. Dean’s expression slowly opens into something unguarded and almost painful.
-Shit, I wonder what Mom woulda thought of this. She always told me angels were watching over me.
-They are, Dean. I am.
Dean scrubs a hand across his eyes, and his voice is momentarily muffled.
-Dude. That’s gay.
The uninjured wing shifts and shuffles, its pinions tracing lines in the straw. Slowly, hesitantly, it stretches out until the edges of the flight feathers touch Dean’s crossed knees. Dean stares down at it a bit nervously, but it doesn’t withdraw. Finally, with a sigh, Dean puts his hand on the feathers, and his fingers glow with warmth.
~
In the early morning of the sixth day, Dean drives down into town again. They are out of food, and he needs more undershirts for makeshift bandages. Cas’ wounds seem to be healing much better, but the angel is still stiff and sore, dizzy and weak if he moves too much or too suddenly, and Dean wants to re-bind everything, make sure it’s as clean as possible. He also needs to check his voicemail, as they get no service on the mountain.
Turning off of the state highway, he discovers the one-street stretch of downtown Joseph Creek. He pulls the rumbling giant of a car into a parking space in front of a diner-slash-gift shop, and orders the biggest, hottest breakfast he can afford. He shovels in eggs, hashbrowns, and sausage, then checks his voicemail over a cup of black coffee that the beaming middle-aged waitress never stops refilling. Twelve voicemails, all from his brother, Sam. He sighs and dials Sam’s number.
-Cas got in some kinda scuffle. We’re in Oregon. No, we’re okay. Yeah, he’s gonna be fine. Yeah, cell service is pretty bad up where we are. I’ll call you when I’m on my way. Okay?
He hangs up and leans back in the booth, surreptitiously opening the top button on his jeans under the cover of his long overshirt. He toys with the coffee mug and stares at the faded wildlife paintings on the far wall, lost in thought.
When he goes to pay, he can’t help but notice the overabundance of angel-themed kitsch for sale at the counter. Greeting cards, figurines, charms, books, nauseating Precious Moments framed pictures. He smirks in amusement, and on impulse buys a little silver angel-shaped pendant with a fake blue gem in the middle.
-You believe in angels, honey?
The waitress asks in her five-packs-a-day voice.
-Can’t really afford not to.
He replies.
-Oh I know, I know what you mean, sweetie. I feel them all the time. This loving presence, ya know? Gets me through the bad times, I tell ya.
-Yeah, I...uh...feel their presence all the time, too. Usually more bitchy than loving, though.
She gives him an odd look, and laughs uncertainly.
-God bless, honey.
She says as he leaves.
He hangs the angel pendant over the rear view mirror of his car.
~
Cas has propped himself up a bit more on a mound of straw, and the broken wing is bound against his body with the last of the undershirts. The binding seems to be somewhat symbolic, as the wing’s wrist joint arches well above his head, but the branch splints effectively brace the broken bone, and the binding helps to allow the wing to sag a bit without stressing the fracture. The uninjured wing is splayed out, the tips of its flight feathers nearly touching the barn’s far wall. The angel’s legs are covered by one of the Pendleton blankets, and his dark hair is completely dishevelled, but he looks up at Dean with all the serious dignity of a graven saint.
-Chow time, buddy.
Dean says, shaking up another bottle of Pediasure. Cas arches one eyebrow, but catches the bottle one-handed when it is tossed to him.
-I shouldn’t have need of this.
Dean shrugs one shoulder.
-Yeah, well you were hurt pretty badly. Maybe it’s affecting your vessel, too.
The angel hums thoughtfully and carefully opens the plastic bottle, tipping the contents into his mouth. He drinks messily, as though understanding the principle without quite having the technique. Milky fluid trickles down his dark-stubbled chin and the long line of his throat, pools in the dip of his clavicle, still bared by his unbuttoned, bloody shirt. Crouched in the straw, his hands inside the duffle bag, Dean watches the pearly rivulets as they trace stickily through the dust on Cas’ skin, down his chest to his belly. His mouth is slightly open, and he seems to have forgotten what he was looking for in the duffle.
-Cas, uh -
He says, hoarsely.
Cas finishes quickly - a bit too quickly - and looks a bit taken aback when a soft hiccup escapes his throat. Dean blinks several times, then shakes his head.
-You’re a mess, dude.
The words come out roughly but affectionately. He rummages in the bag for a relatively clean strip of cloth, and wets it with some of his water. He crosses to the angel, and kneels within the semi-circle of the uninjured wing, holding Cas’ jaw with one hand and wiping his sticky chin with the other. The angel watches him placidly, tipping his head down to follow Dean’s progress as he scrubs bare skin clean. His strokes become longer and slower, until his hand stills next to the bandage covering Cas’ wound.
They both look at the hand for what seems a long moment until Dean remembers himself and swiftly, playfully pokes the angel in the belly. Cas blinks at him in surprise. The wings ruffle.
-Anyway, you should eat more.
Dean stands quickly, his face a bit pink, and balls up the cloth, tossing it into the duffle bag. He jams his hands deep into his pockets, then yelps as long feathers poke him in the back.
-Hey!
He scowls, shakes a finger admonishingly.
-That’s freakin’ creepy, Cas. Knock it off.
The angel tilts his head again, watching as Dean stalks out of the barn. Frowning gently, he swishes the tip of the wing idly back and forth, tracing spirals in the dusty straw.
~
Dean stands in a small meadow on the southwest side of the mountain, arms folded against the light but chill breeze. Far below him, below the blasted bald and rocky head of the mountain, a grove of aspen glows in the light. The forest thickens and widens from there, covering the whole horizon, dissolving into haze, climbing the flanks of other, faraway mountains.
Above his head, two hawks ascend the columns of air, broad wings slipping them through the sky in dancing spirals around one another, fierce and joyous.
Echoing up from the valley, a bird cries with a sound like carefree laughter.
Dean runs a shaking hand through his hair.
~
The sun is low and golden. Cas has not moved in the intervening hours, his profile sharp and statuesque in the evening light as he stares into some other distance. Dean leans against one of the barn door beams for a few moments, silent, his teeth worrying the inside of his lower lip.
Cas looks at him eventually, his eyes moving first, then his head, and he draws the uninjured wing slightly closer to his body.
-Bet you can’t wait to give ‘em a nice big stretch.
Dean smiles.
The wing twitches as though in response to that, and Cas snorts softly.
-That is certainly true.
Dean fidgets with one sleeve, coming closer. His boot steps are uneven and hesitating, different from their customary heavy stalk. He crouches down, one hand indicating the bandaged wound on Cas’ belly.
-How’s it doing?
Cas looks down as though he had forgotten it was there, a light frown drawing his brows together.
-Much better. I’ll be fine.
Dean blows out a long breath.
-C’mere. Lay on your stomach.
The wings ruffle, the dark head tilts in confusion. Dean snorts a laugh, and motions insistently. Slowly, lifting his huge uninjured wing into a graceful arch, Cas turns himself over, lowering down onto the straw with care. Dean takes a very deep breath.
The sinking light makes a haze of the feathers, painting them in stripes of brighter gold where it falls through the slats of the decaying roof, the overhead beams, and the haphazard tarps. Dean’s hands sink into them, and the edges of his bones and tendons seem to glow for the briefest moment. Intently and methodically, he begins to straighten bent feathers, plucking the ones that have fallen out, smoothing over the gaps left behind. He begins at the edge of the uninjured wing and works towards the muscular joint where it meets Cas’ shoulder. The wing rises under his hand, like a cat arching its back. Cas stares at him, head resting lightly on one arm.
Where the wings meet the human back, still miraculously clothed in the angel’s dirty white dress shirt, there are two long, bulging bands of muscle that tense and flex as the wings move. Dean pauses there, hand skirting the edge of human flesh there as though marking where dry land becomes wild, uncharted sea. He moves instead to the broken wing, and even more gently, begins to groom it as well. The angel’s back bunches and stretches, body strange and lithe like an animal’s, as he shifts his weight to follow Dean’s movements with his head.
-Why are you doing this?
His voice is a quiet rumble, almost languid, but genuinely curious.
Dean’s hand stutters to a halt, withdrawing from where it had been enjoying the soft warmth of feathers.
-Whaddya mean? I just...thought I’d help you out.
His voice sounds oddly small, defiant.
-Thank you.
-What, you want me to stop or something?
-No. Please. It feels...very good.
Dean raises an eyebrow without looking at Cas, but slowly, he continues. He is kneeling by the angel’s head, the better to reach the expanse of the broken wing, and Cas slits his eyes and puts a hand on Dean’s knee.
Dean falters, and edges away from the touch.
The angel looks up at him.
-You enjoy it.
-What?
-You enjoy touch. Touching and working things, with your hands. Machines. People. You enjoy touching people, though you try to hide it. Why can you touch me, but I can’t touch you?
Dean stares at him as though he’s started speaking in tongues.
-What the hell are you talking about?
-You try to act like you hate it, but it’s because the opposite is true. You desire to be...touched.
-Jesus, Cas! Are you ever gonna learn not to say every awkward thing that comes into your head?
-But it’s true.
Dean lets out an incredulous noise.
-Well, okay, yeah. Everyone likes that stuff sometimes. But being a hunter hasn’t really made me the touchy-feely type...and besides, we totally talked about the whole personal space thing, Cas! You can’t just go putting hands on people and...staring into their souls and shit! It’s creepy!
-I don’t stare into people’s souls, Dean.
-What, just mine, then? Or do you angels just typically go around doing that kind of stuff with each other all the time?
-No. I’m a soldier. I’ve never been...bonded in any way.
-Bonded, huh? Like our profound bond?
-Yes.
Dean swallows loudly, fingers clutching in a dirty handful of straw. He tosses it away from him without looking at Cas’ open gaze.
-And what the hell does that mean, anyway? Your handprint was burned into my arm, for fuck’s sake! People kept asking me what it meant...women kept asking. I didn’t know what to say. And then you took it away! And you left. The hell kinda profound bond is that?
Cas sits up, one wing arching, the other straining awkwardly against its bonds.
- Dean, I rebuilt you, because I had carried your soul those long years out of Hell. I was supposed to give you to Michael to make suitable, but I didn’t. I couldn’t leave you, in your ruined body, alone! I used my grace to remake you. Part of my grace is inside of you, and always will be.
- Then why don’t I remember it?
Dean’s words ring in the rafters, sharp and loud. He clamps his teeth shut behind them, and stares, first into Cas’ eyes, then away, the muscles in his jaw twitching. His hands are balled into fists.
This time, when Cas touches him, he doesn’t move away. He hides his face in his palms, and curls forward against the hand on his chest.
-Do you want to remember it?
The angel’s voice is soft and low, and very near to Dean’s cheek.
-I don’t know!
But as the sunlight turns to purple dusk, Dean grips the hand that rests over his heart, intertwining their fingers with bruising strength.
~
That night the sunset over Dead Mountain looks like a spear of flame, blazing like a signal fire into the hearts of the deep grey and pink clouds. A deep thunder rolls through the valleys and echoes off of the peaks, but no storm breaks.
Inside a rickety barn, two great wings pump and spread, shimmering with a light of their own. Slowly, they arch and descend, each feather shot through with veins of gold, casting off blood and grime and the shredded remnants of bandages. Two dirty hands reach upward, clutching fistfuls of shining feathers, and hold on tight.
~
Dean leaves a day later, the way he came: the big car growling down the side of the mountain in a cloud of dust. In the trunk, he has packed up the remaining food and water, the tarps and first aid kits, as well as his usual gear in the duffle. The Pediasure is all gone, but he conscientiously packed out the plastic wrapping, as there was no place to throw it away in the decaying cabin. Finally, wrapped up in the remnants of old undershirts, tucked carefully by themselves in one corner of the spacious trunk, are five feathers, far too large to belong to any bird, that gleam even in darkness. They are an unnamed color, something like the sun setting over water on a summer day.
The passenger seat beside Dean is empty, but his face bears an expression of wary peace. He gives the angel pendant on his rearview mirror a playful flick and hums along with a Def Leppard mixtape as the road flashes by beneath him.
~
There are not very many inhabitants of Joseph Creek, Oregon, and on any given day, a number of those are truckers stopping for gas and greasy diner food on their way across the country. However, those that do reside in the tiny town, who have stared out at the same hills for years or decades, are faced with a peculiar conundrum all of a sudden.
Four old residents and a middle-aged waitress hold a long and puzzled conversation over endlessly refilled coffee. It could be that there’s something to this climate change business, or it could be that there’s some kind of weird foreign species invasion going on up there, or it could be something to do with radiation or government experiments. But at any rate, they’ll probably have to start calling the mountain something else.
The scarred top of Dead Mountain has bloomed, overnight, into a verdant meadow, a blush of wildflowers spread over its shoulders in a cloak of starry blue that’s visible from miles away.
Author: shane_mayhem
Rating: PG (for swearing and hints of potentially sexual situations)
Pairing: Castiel/Dean
Notes: inspired by a prompt on spn_kinkmeme. Includes hurt/comfort themes, wings, emotions, and fluff.
Spoilers: Very vague mid-S6.
Summary: A vignette in which Cas may be the wounded one, but they both inhabit barren lands.
The townsfolk of Joseph Creek, Oregon call it Dead Mountain. Rising ragged and almost bald among the pine and fir-cloaked shoulders of the Blue Mountains, it has a blighted look to it, as though it alone had blazed with fire in some season lost to memory, or been struck by the smouldering hand of some capricious and small-minded god. It has its own share of small-town legends associated with it that the older residents seem to be able to recall and change at a moment’s notice. Blood feud, Indian massacre (the victims and perpetrators changing with the passing of years), even something about a family of strange religious types whose father went crazy and sacrificed them all before killing himself. The stories, in the end, don’t matter. The mountain remains sullen and grey year round, and no one has any cause to go up there.
Joseph Creek is a deeply depressed former logging town that now mostly consists of a gas station, a truck stop, and a diner, so maybe no one notices the light shining out on top of the mountain, four, maybe five nights back. Like a beacon for ships at sea, that bright and that sudden, blazing out on the small, bare island of rock, then dark again.
If anyone noticed, they didn’t say anything about it, anyway.
~
The man drove three days to get here. It was lucky, he says, that he was just down in Utah at the time, not on the other side of the damn country. He had to park his car - a big, old, low-riding thing- more than two miles away, because that’s where any semblance of a useable road stops.
There are two buildings, if they can be called that, here. A barn with half a roof that’s probably more than a century old, and a slightly newer cabin that might have been a fire station. The cabin doesn’t have running water or electricity. It also doesn’t have much glass in the windows, or a proper bed of any kind. What it does have is an ancient and stalwart wood-burning stove, a table with lichen growing up under the veneer, and rats.
-You couldn’t have picked a better place to crash-land?
The man says.
-A place somewhere within two hundred miles of civilization?
He says this to no one, while he’s down the hill a ways, using a dull hatchet from the trunk of his car to hack long, thin branches off of fallen trees. The branches are twelve feet long, but they are so dry that they just snap.
-Fuck!
The man shouts. His hands are shaking.
~
-I don’t know what to do.
He later admits, this time not to himself.
-You gotta help me out here.
The figure that lies, breathing shallowly or not at all, on its side in the middle of the decaying barn, shifts slowly, and the motion makes the man wince. He doesn’t come closer, though. It’s as though he’s afraid.
-I just-
The figure on the ground is slighter than the man standing. In the waning high-altitude sunlight that seeps diffusely through the rotting beams, it appears to be of the same rough age, sex, and race. This man has his eyes shut in pain, and a cough wracks his body. The man standing makes a short sound of distress, and his hands twitch at his sides.
There is a rustling noise, a sound like many sheaves of slick papyrus being shuffled together. In the dusty light, feathers - enormous pinions almost the length of the man’s body - lift and spread slightly, weakly. The man on the ground turns his head to look up, and opens his eyes.
They glow as though they could reflect the light of the sun now mostly hidden behind the mountain’s back, before settling into a brilliant and unearthly blue.
- Dean, I’m sorry -
He begins, and his voice is rough and low, struggling in his pain to contain harmonies that might be beyond the scope of human hearing.
The man standing finally moves, swiftly, kneeling, keeping out of reach of the great wings as though he’s trying to pretend they’re not there.
- Shut up, Cas. You called, I came.
~
Later, the man comes back into the barn, where the moonlight is silvering the minutely trembling feathers to a glow like a midnight sea. He stares at the wings for a long time, his face contorted into a strange expression, almost like pain.
~
The next day, the man - Dean - drives down the side of the mountain to Joseph Creek. The car creaks and rumbles, and the dust is so thick, kicked up by the groaning tires, that he can barely see. He looks woefully at the car’s dirt-coated black finish when he finally pulls it into the gas station to buy supplies.
The old guy at the counter tries to make conversation, obviously curious at this newcomer and his dusty boots, his dust-filled hair, his youth and the hard lines around his eyes and mouth. But Dean doesn’t say much as he unloads his armfuls onto the counter: two roadside first aid kits, some scissors, needles and thread, rubbing alcohol, one box of feminine hygiene products, ten cans of Chef Boyardee chili, peanut butter, wonder bread, lighter fluid, a cheap camp saw, a box of matches, four gallons of water, a carton of Pediasure, two packages of AA batteries, a package of undershirts, some tacks, a roll of twine, and one of those tiny hammers marketed to housewives with flowers all over the handle.
At the truck stop he buys a cheap mess kit, five painter’s tarps, four knock-off Pendleton wool blankets, and a flat, wilted-looking burger from the deli.
He wolfs the burger on the drive back up, and sits for a long time in the car at its mostly-concealed parking spot halfway up the mountain. He packs as much of his supplies as he can into a large duffle and hikes the two miles up to the barn and cabin. He repeats this process twice, to carry everything up, and by the final hike, he is stumbling, his back bent, the weak light of his flashlight bobbing and weaving ahead of him. He nearly falls three or four times, and collapses in the straw of the barn with a groan when he arrives.
-Why aren’t you healed yet?
He asks, and the question contains equal parts anger and worry. The giant feathers shift with a sound like leaves shivering in the wind.
-Raphael’s blade...
The guttural voice begins, but cuts off with a hoarse, harsh bout of coughing, and Dean leans over, anger suddenly dissolved, reaching out a hand towards where a shoulder should be, under one enormous wing.
-Hey...hey. Easy.
The coughing gradually subsides, but the rattle in each breath is disturbingly loud, and Dean’s hands clench and unclench where he sits.
-You’re gonna be fine, Cas. Gonna get you all taken care of.
~
Dean is awake even before the tinny, electronic trill of a cell phone alarm goes off in the early morning. He shivers violently in the pre-dawn air, poking more firewood into the stove in the cabin. As it turns out, the stovepipe is rusted through and fills the cabin with smoke. He let the fire die in the evening so as not to asphyxiate in his sleep. Even swaddled in the Pendleton wool, he shook and shivered all night. He quickly eats a can of lukewarm chili, grabs his duffle, and crosses the rocky, cold ground to the barn.
He stares at the wings like a man warily eyeing the pacific surface of a river he must swim across. They glitter in the weak light of the rising sun like frost on a field, impossible in their size and solidity. The feathers lie upon each other like plates of armor, except where some are missing, or where, up near the great bony joints, they give way to stunted bristles where the flesh is scarred. Their color is indecipherable in this light - perhaps silver, or grey, blue or brown. He can see the huge flight feathers, pointed like blades, darken towards their tips. It may be markings, or it may be blood, he can’t yet tell.
After a moment, Dean pulls himself up straighter, nostrils flaring with a deep inhale, and steps forward, setting the duffle on the straw.
The wings are arranged thus: the left covers the body of the creature beneath, swaddling him head to foot in a shield of feathers. It curls limberly over his length, flexing with his breaths. The right wing splays outward behind his body, the wrist joint sharply angled down, making the wing tuck as much as it can. The bone between elbow and wrist, however, is nauseatingly crooked, and a thick crust of dark fluid coats the glimmering feathers.
The feathers shuffle softly and the angel peers out from under the left wing, raising it so that he may regard Dean with harrowed eyes.
Dean’s lips twist in something resembling a smile, and he kneels briskly, opening the duffle and beginning to pull out supplies.
-I’m gonna take a look at those stab wounds first, Cas, okay? Your uh...your wing looks broken, but I gotta make sure you’re not, uh...gonna bleed out first. Or whatever.
The left wing extends further, a canopy over the both of them now, like an arm stretching to help balance. The angel - Cas - lifts himself slightly, rolling carefully on his side so that his chest and belly face Dean. The broken wing twitches on the ground.
There is a strange puncture wound in the lower right side of the angel’s belly. The tattered shirt around it is brown with blood, but the wound itself leaks a bluish light. The sight of it makes the lines around Dean’s mouth draw tighter. He opens the shirt the angel’s wearing and uses one of the undershirts he’s bought to sponge the pale skin with rubbing alcohol. Dried blood runs in brownish rivers down the milky planes of the angel’s ribs, into the waistband of his trousers where a bony ridge of hip rises bare and exposed without the armor of his clothing. Dean averts his eyes and quickly opens the package of feminine hygiene products, ripping two of them out of their thin plastic wrapping and carefully pressing them to the pulsing light.
-I guess I...uh...expected more blood.
He sounds sheepish. The angel Cas makes a soft snorting sound, which turns into an almost-silent squeak of pain. Dean reaches out for a shoulder, but his fingers contact soft feathers instead, and he pulls his hand away, a breath whistling in between his teeth.
He puts the hand back slowly, sinking fingers into the fluff at the arch of the wing, tentative. Cas’ expression doesn’t change, but the wing shivers gently.
Dean clears his throat loudly, and tears the undershirt into long ropey strips with which he binds the pads in place over the angel’s belly. He leans in to pass the makeshift bandage around Cas’ slim waist, inhaling the warmth of feathers as he does. His cheeks redden, and he finishes quickly, sitting back on his haunches when he’s done.
Dust motes swirl in the rising sun, a filmy haze between the two of them like the soft membrane of a dream.
~
By the morning of the third day, Dean has haphazardly rigged three of the painter’s tarps together with twine, stretching them across the space of the barn between the still-sturdy wall studs. The tarps sag and gap in the middle, but might be enough to shed the majority of moisture if it rains. He struggled with them for quite a while, and twine crisscrosses the space above the prone angel like a confused spider’s web.
He also hiked down the side of the mountain until he found living trees, and cut the long, flexible whiplike staves which he now studiously, carefully binds to the broken wing as splints. His fingers tremble a little; they haven’t quite recovered from setting the bone. It was as thick as a human femur and he had to use some rope from the car, doubled back on itself through an alpine loop, to get leverage to pull the limb into place. It sounded like a muffled gunshot when the edges snapped together. Dean has set a lot of bones in his life, many of them his own. None of them ever sounded like that. The angel’s short, sharp cry of pain - existing mostly as a harmonic that left his ears ringing - he’s never heard anything quite like that, either.
His fingers constantly and compulsively smooth the downy feathers beneath the makeshift splints as he applies them. The feathers are soft as velvet, for the most part, and a shimmering non-color that makes them look like they are lit from within. Sometimes, the edges of them sting a little, though, as if there were tiny barbs hidden among them. As he works the torn-shirt bandages around the massive wing, the feathers ruffle, like a dog’s hackles. He smooths them back down. His fingers seem even more calloused and tan against the soft radiance.
-How’s that feel?
He asks when he’s done. His voice is hoarse and throaty.
The angel doesn’t answer, and Dean crawls around the splinted wing to find his face buried against the back of one hand, clutched in the straw. The straw is smouldering, just a little.
-Cas?
The angel doesn’t respond to the sound of his name. Dean reaches for his hand, turns it over, first and middle finger slotting across the pale wrist, feeling for a pulse. After a moment, he lets go, sitting back on his haunches and breathing a bit rapidly, eyes scanning the prone body, up and down, face pinched. Then, quickly, he loosens up the angel’s clothing - a dirty blue tie, a utilitarian black belt, a shabby suit jacket and tan trenchcoat which Dean pushes further off of his shoulders until stopped by the great wing joints. He pauses, and his hands scrub roughly through his short-clipped hair until they grip at the back of his own neck. He blows out a stuttered breath, then stands, moves to the angel’s feet and kneels again, removing strangely scuff-less black Oxfords and setting them aside.
-Okay, buddy, stay with me now.
Dean leans forward and down to look into Cas’ face, peering in under the edge of the uninjured wing.
-Hey.
His hand roughly, rapidly strokes through the dark, short hair on the side of the angel’s head. It is an unpractised, unconscious movement.
He stands and crosses from the barn to the cabin, returns with a blanket, which he maneuvers over as much of Cas’ body as he can cover.
Then he sits again, staring sightlessly over the arch of the angel’s wings into the distance.
~
Dean wakes in the middle of the night, shivering under his one blanket. The fire in the stove has gone out; he hasn’t patched the stovepipe yet. He swings his legs over the edge of the bench he’s using for a bed and gazes into the darkness at his feet for several moments.
Then, gathering up the blankets he’s sleeping on, he stumbles through the moonlit dimness to the barn.
The angel is not sleeping. He slowly lifts the uninjured wing, a glimmering tapestry of feather, muscle, and bone. Fully extended, the wing might easily go through the barn’s semi-roof. It curls instead, like a living tent, the gesture perfectly paired with the solemnly expectant look on the angel’s face, a face as still and stoic as any churchyard carving.
Dean trembles, almost undetectably.
-You’re awake.
He says, in a near-whisper. Blankets clutched to his chest, he takes a few hesitating steps closer.
-You feelin’ any better?
Cas nods, slowly, the tip of his tongue pushing out to wet parched lips.
-Yes. A little.
He doesn’t whisper, but his voice is so low it seems to rumble gently in the ground rather than the air.
Dean swallows thickly.
-You mind if I bunk here with you, then? I can keep a better eye on you that way. And besides. It’s really fuckin’ cold in that cabin.
He kneels down in the moldy straw and spreads out the blankets he was using to sleep on, crushing down the most prickly bits as best he can. He wraps the last blanket around himself and huddles within arm’s reach of the angel, but not touching. He suppresses a shiver.
Cas lets out a quiet huff of breath.
They lie there for a long moment, Dean with his eyes closed and his blanket clutched tight, Cas silently watching him with a hooded gaze. The papyrus sound of shifting feathers interrupts the night’s silence as Cas lifts his wing again.
The wing’s edge curves around Dean’s body and effortlessly flattens him, scooping him closer as though he weighs nothing. Unable to resist the muscular pull, Dean drags his blankets with him, protesting in a muffled voice.
- Fuck, Cas! You really, really don’t understand personal space, do you?
Under the canopy of the wing, he is inches from the angel’s face, the strange radiant heat of his body. Dean licks his lips several times, his eyes darting around as though trying to find something to light upon that isn’t part of an angel. Cas’ eyes are closed again, and he breathes steadily, but with a rattle that sounds more like distant broken machinery than anything organic.
Reflexively, Dean pushes upward on the surrounding wing, but it tightens down around them and doesn’t budge. The space inside is warmer than a fire-heated room. Perhaps because of this, Dean’s shirt is darkened with sweat beneath the arms and in the small of his back.
Inevitably, his eyes drop shut and he sleeps. As he does, one hand drifts from its mooring up against his chest and comes to rest on the angel’s arm.
~
Pale golden sunlight crests the ragged edge of the mountain, piercing the gloom of the cabin where Dean is cooking chili in a can on the stove and shaking up bottles of Pediasure. He hums a nameless song that occasionally breaks into a chorus of whistling. The morning air is still cool enough to make his breath frost on the walk back to the barn, but his face is flushed from the heat of the stove and his eyes are bright.
The angel stirs as he enters, weakly lifting his wing to look at him.
-Mornin’ sunshine.
Dean says, tipping chili into his mouth from the can. He chews, swallows, and wipes his mouth on his sleeve, setting the chili down to come closer to the angel, who lowers his head again. Glittering blue eyes regard Dean solemnly from their bruised hollows, and Dean puts a hand on his shoulder, his voice softening.
-You hungry at all, Cas?
-You know I don’t need to eat, Dean.
Comes the gravelly reply.
-Yeah, well, you also didn’t have wounds that didn’t heal or visible wings until just recently, either, so maybe things have changed.
He pulls out the bottle of Pediasure and shakes it a little in the angel’s direction, lifting his eyebrows.
-C’mon...vanilla-flavored! And good for you.
Cas’ expression becomes studious and he lets out a little whuff of acquiescence. Slowly, he reaches for the bottle, but his arm falls a bit short of the mark, and a twitch of lips that might be a grimace crosses his face fleetingly.
-Okay, okay...
Dean’s voice comes out rushed and quieter, and he tightens his fingers on the warm shoulder.
-Don’t go stretching that wound too much.
The neat row of stitches that underline the angel’s jutting collarbone haven’t split, but they march darkly and deeply across his pale skin, mapping the edges of a wound that inhibits the movement of his arm. Dean pops the plastic top off of the bottle.
-Lean back a little, if you can. There ya go. Now open up. It’s yummy, I promise.
Soft chapped lips part obediently, and like a surgeon making the first, crucial incision, Dean pours the milky liquid into the angel’s mouth. It pools there, dribbling slightly out the sides and down his stubbled jaw.
-Swallow, Cas. That’s how this works. Remember?
Awkwardly, Cas moves his throat, his expression matching Dean’s for concentration, then quickly mops the tiny leftover pearls from the corners of his mouth with his tongue. He narrows his eyes at nothing in particular as though reading a text in his mind, then looks back up at Dean and opens his mouth again.
A peculiar expression flickers across Dean’s face, his mouth twitching erratically for a moment. Silently, he tips the bottle to the angel’s lips, letting him swallow as quickly as he wants.
He ends up having to fetch the entire carton from the cabin, feeding Cas all of the bottles, one by one, as the uninjured wing stretches and flexes minutely with every hungry gulp. When all of the bottles lie empty (and in some cases, licked clean, which nearly caused Dean to drop one completely the first time it happened), the angel narrows his eyes again, his face regaining its analytic look. He licks his lips once more, slowly, and glances down at his own stomach as though pondering the sensation of having it filled. Then, apparently satisfied with some conclusion, he whuffs out another tiny breath and drops his head back onto its pillow of straw.
Dean stares at him for a moment, then shakes his head.
-Well, I hope you like peanut butter, ‘cuz you just cleaned us outta that stuff.
Cas makes no answer, but the air around him seems to thrum with a monotone low sound. His eyes are closed to bright blue slits, and Dean leans forward, ruffling a hand through the angel’s thick dark hair.
~
He sleeps under the shelter of Cas’ wing again that night. He tells Cas that it makes more sense this way - he can keep close, alert to any changes in the angel’s condition, and they both benefit from the shared heat.
When the angel has been still and quiet for a while, his eyes softly shut, Dean inches his fingers toward the gently breathing flank. His fingertips trace the edges of his makeshift bandage, feeling for the temperature of the surrounding skin. There is a tiny unconscious furrow of concentration in Dean’s brow, as he brushes his fingers outward across bared skin, tracing an exploratory line down the middle of Cas’ stomach. His lips are parted and he seems lost in thought. After several more moments of the angel’s continued stillness, Dean cautiously splays the palm of his hand over the slim, soft belly, and scoots himself an inch closer.
The angel doesn’t appear to wake, but the huge wing tenses instinctively, curling a little more around Dean’s body. Dean breathes out an choked-sounding sigh, and eventually lets his eyes close.
~
The next morning, Dean sits cross-legged before the angel and examines the wings more critically.
-Ya know, Cas, these are actually pretty awesome.
Cas arches an eyebrow and snorts.
-They are merely corporeal representations of the real thing. Translated into a form that your eyes expect to see.
Dean runs the palm of one hand down the leading edge of one of the glimmering flight feathers. He appears not to notice the subtle shiver that passes through the angel’s body at the motion.
-I’m pretty sure my eyes did not expect to see you turn up with actual, real, giant bird wings, dude.
The feathers across the backs of both wings fluff up.
-They’re not bird wings, Dean!
Dean laughs and reaches over to smooth down the ruffled feathers.
-Touchy, touchy!
He continues to stroke the wing, staring intrigued at the glow that seems to rise around his hand as he does. His own skin seems alight. It’s only when the angel trembles again that he withdraws the hand with an embarrassed look, as though just realizing that he’s been touching a part of Cas’ body.
-You uh...you feel that?
-Of course.
Dean clears his throat and looks at his hands, now entwined in his lap.
-So what is the deal with the birdman routine, anyway? How come I can suddenly see your wings? Or...you know, your fake wings, or whatever.
Cas stretches slightly, pushing himself up on one elbow. The wing arches and spreads, counter-balancing. Dean watches the movement, eyes flickering between the wing and the rumpled, unimpressive body of the angel as though trying to force the two together in his mind.
-I can fit them inside my vessel when I’m occupying it, but it takes more energy. Of all the parts of an angel, they are the most distinctly different. They have no direct translation into a human form. Normally, it’s not a problem. But when I was injured...I must have been unable to reoccupy my vessel without manifesting them in some way.
He shrugs lightly, and the wing lifts as well. Dean’s fingers twitch in his lap.
-Whaddya mean, they’re the only part that’s distinctly different? I thought you guys were all giant burning balls of light or something.
Cas tilts his head to the side.
-We were both created in God’s image, Dean. We are more similar than you might think.
He smiles then, a soft quirk of the corner of his lips.
-In a very rough sense, anyway.
They both fall silent for a long moment, but Dean’s eyes continue to trace the contours of the angel’s wings. The feathers seem to shift from silken to steelly-looking with the light, the minute movements like breathing that ripple across them. There are dark gaps in feathers, in some places, and places where they don’t lie together, but are bent or even broken. In addition to the obvious injury of the fractured right wing, there are mottled, bare spots across the backs of both wings, and even a few lumps along the crest of bone where they appear to have been broken before. Dean’s expression slowly opens into something unguarded and almost painful.
-Shit, I wonder what Mom woulda thought of this. She always told me angels were watching over me.
-They are, Dean. I am.
Dean scrubs a hand across his eyes, and his voice is momentarily muffled.
-Dude. That’s gay.
The uninjured wing shifts and shuffles, its pinions tracing lines in the straw. Slowly, hesitantly, it stretches out until the edges of the flight feathers touch Dean’s crossed knees. Dean stares down at it a bit nervously, but it doesn’t withdraw. Finally, with a sigh, Dean puts his hand on the feathers, and his fingers glow with warmth.
~
In the early morning of the sixth day, Dean drives down into town again. They are out of food, and he needs more undershirts for makeshift bandages. Cas’ wounds seem to be healing much better, but the angel is still stiff and sore, dizzy and weak if he moves too much or too suddenly, and Dean wants to re-bind everything, make sure it’s as clean as possible. He also needs to check his voicemail, as they get no service on the mountain.
Turning off of the state highway, he discovers the one-street stretch of downtown Joseph Creek. He pulls the rumbling giant of a car into a parking space in front of a diner-slash-gift shop, and orders the biggest, hottest breakfast he can afford. He shovels in eggs, hashbrowns, and sausage, then checks his voicemail over a cup of black coffee that the beaming middle-aged waitress never stops refilling. Twelve voicemails, all from his brother, Sam. He sighs and dials Sam’s number.
-Cas got in some kinda scuffle. We’re in Oregon. No, we’re okay. Yeah, he’s gonna be fine. Yeah, cell service is pretty bad up where we are. I’ll call you when I’m on my way. Okay?
He hangs up and leans back in the booth, surreptitiously opening the top button on his jeans under the cover of his long overshirt. He toys with the coffee mug and stares at the faded wildlife paintings on the far wall, lost in thought.
When he goes to pay, he can’t help but notice the overabundance of angel-themed kitsch for sale at the counter. Greeting cards, figurines, charms, books, nauseating Precious Moments framed pictures. He smirks in amusement, and on impulse buys a little silver angel-shaped pendant with a fake blue gem in the middle.
-You believe in angels, honey?
The waitress asks in her five-packs-a-day voice.
-Can’t really afford not to.
He replies.
-Oh I know, I know what you mean, sweetie. I feel them all the time. This loving presence, ya know? Gets me through the bad times, I tell ya.
-Yeah, I...uh...feel their presence all the time, too. Usually more bitchy than loving, though.
She gives him an odd look, and laughs uncertainly.
-God bless, honey.
She says as he leaves.
He hangs the angel pendant over the rear view mirror of his car.
~
Cas has propped himself up a bit more on a mound of straw, and the broken wing is bound against his body with the last of the undershirts. The binding seems to be somewhat symbolic, as the wing’s wrist joint arches well above his head, but the branch splints effectively brace the broken bone, and the binding helps to allow the wing to sag a bit without stressing the fracture. The uninjured wing is splayed out, the tips of its flight feathers nearly touching the barn’s far wall. The angel’s legs are covered by one of the Pendleton blankets, and his dark hair is completely dishevelled, but he looks up at Dean with all the serious dignity of a graven saint.
-Chow time, buddy.
Dean says, shaking up another bottle of Pediasure. Cas arches one eyebrow, but catches the bottle one-handed when it is tossed to him.
-I shouldn’t have need of this.
Dean shrugs one shoulder.
-Yeah, well you were hurt pretty badly. Maybe it’s affecting your vessel, too.
The angel hums thoughtfully and carefully opens the plastic bottle, tipping the contents into his mouth. He drinks messily, as though understanding the principle without quite having the technique. Milky fluid trickles down his dark-stubbled chin and the long line of his throat, pools in the dip of his clavicle, still bared by his unbuttoned, bloody shirt. Crouched in the straw, his hands inside the duffle bag, Dean watches the pearly rivulets as they trace stickily through the dust on Cas’ skin, down his chest to his belly. His mouth is slightly open, and he seems to have forgotten what he was looking for in the duffle.
-Cas, uh -
He says, hoarsely.
Cas finishes quickly - a bit too quickly - and looks a bit taken aback when a soft hiccup escapes his throat. Dean blinks several times, then shakes his head.
-You’re a mess, dude.
The words come out roughly but affectionately. He rummages in the bag for a relatively clean strip of cloth, and wets it with some of his water. He crosses to the angel, and kneels within the semi-circle of the uninjured wing, holding Cas’ jaw with one hand and wiping his sticky chin with the other. The angel watches him placidly, tipping his head down to follow Dean’s progress as he scrubs bare skin clean. His strokes become longer and slower, until his hand stills next to the bandage covering Cas’ wound.
They both look at the hand for what seems a long moment until Dean remembers himself and swiftly, playfully pokes the angel in the belly. Cas blinks at him in surprise. The wings ruffle.
-Anyway, you should eat more.
Dean stands quickly, his face a bit pink, and balls up the cloth, tossing it into the duffle bag. He jams his hands deep into his pockets, then yelps as long feathers poke him in the back.
-Hey!
He scowls, shakes a finger admonishingly.
-That’s freakin’ creepy, Cas. Knock it off.
The angel tilts his head again, watching as Dean stalks out of the barn. Frowning gently, he swishes the tip of the wing idly back and forth, tracing spirals in the dusty straw.
~
Dean stands in a small meadow on the southwest side of the mountain, arms folded against the light but chill breeze. Far below him, below the blasted bald and rocky head of the mountain, a grove of aspen glows in the light. The forest thickens and widens from there, covering the whole horizon, dissolving into haze, climbing the flanks of other, faraway mountains.
Above his head, two hawks ascend the columns of air, broad wings slipping them through the sky in dancing spirals around one another, fierce and joyous.
Echoing up from the valley, a bird cries with a sound like carefree laughter.
Dean runs a shaking hand through his hair.
~
The sun is low and golden. Cas has not moved in the intervening hours, his profile sharp and statuesque in the evening light as he stares into some other distance. Dean leans against one of the barn door beams for a few moments, silent, his teeth worrying the inside of his lower lip.
Cas looks at him eventually, his eyes moving first, then his head, and he draws the uninjured wing slightly closer to his body.
-Bet you can’t wait to give ‘em a nice big stretch.
Dean smiles.
The wing twitches as though in response to that, and Cas snorts softly.
-That is certainly true.
Dean fidgets with one sleeve, coming closer. His boot steps are uneven and hesitating, different from their customary heavy stalk. He crouches down, one hand indicating the bandaged wound on Cas’ belly.
-How’s it doing?
Cas looks down as though he had forgotten it was there, a light frown drawing his brows together.
-Much better. I’ll be fine.
Dean blows out a long breath.
-C’mere. Lay on your stomach.
The wings ruffle, the dark head tilts in confusion. Dean snorts a laugh, and motions insistently. Slowly, lifting his huge uninjured wing into a graceful arch, Cas turns himself over, lowering down onto the straw with care. Dean takes a very deep breath.
The sinking light makes a haze of the feathers, painting them in stripes of brighter gold where it falls through the slats of the decaying roof, the overhead beams, and the haphazard tarps. Dean’s hands sink into them, and the edges of his bones and tendons seem to glow for the briefest moment. Intently and methodically, he begins to straighten bent feathers, plucking the ones that have fallen out, smoothing over the gaps left behind. He begins at the edge of the uninjured wing and works towards the muscular joint where it meets Cas’ shoulder. The wing rises under his hand, like a cat arching its back. Cas stares at him, head resting lightly on one arm.
Where the wings meet the human back, still miraculously clothed in the angel’s dirty white dress shirt, there are two long, bulging bands of muscle that tense and flex as the wings move. Dean pauses there, hand skirting the edge of human flesh there as though marking where dry land becomes wild, uncharted sea. He moves instead to the broken wing, and even more gently, begins to groom it as well. The angel’s back bunches and stretches, body strange and lithe like an animal’s, as he shifts his weight to follow Dean’s movements with his head.
-Why are you doing this?
His voice is a quiet rumble, almost languid, but genuinely curious.
Dean’s hand stutters to a halt, withdrawing from where it had been enjoying the soft warmth of feathers.
-Whaddya mean? I just...thought I’d help you out.
His voice sounds oddly small, defiant.
-Thank you.
-What, you want me to stop or something?
-No. Please. It feels...very good.
Dean raises an eyebrow without looking at Cas, but slowly, he continues. He is kneeling by the angel’s head, the better to reach the expanse of the broken wing, and Cas slits his eyes and puts a hand on Dean’s knee.
Dean falters, and edges away from the touch.
The angel looks up at him.
-You enjoy it.
-What?
-You enjoy touch. Touching and working things, with your hands. Machines. People. You enjoy touching people, though you try to hide it. Why can you touch me, but I can’t touch you?
Dean stares at him as though he’s started speaking in tongues.
-What the hell are you talking about?
-You try to act like you hate it, but it’s because the opposite is true. You desire to be...touched.
-Jesus, Cas! Are you ever gonna learn not to say every awkward thing that comes into your head?
-But it’s true.
Dean lets out an incredulous noise.
-Well, okay, yeah. Everyone likes that stuff sometimes. But being a hunter hasn’t really made me the touchy-feely type...and besides, we totally talked about the whole personal space thing, Cas! You can’t just go putting hands on people and...staring into their souls and shit! It’s creepy!
-I don’t stare into people’s souls, Dean.
-What, just mine, then? Or do you angels just typically go around doing that kind of stuff with each other all the time?
-No. I’m a soldier. I’ve never been...bonded in any way.
-Bonded, huh? Like our profound bond?
-Yes.
Dean swallows loudly, fingers clutching in a dirty handful of straw. He tosses it away from him without looking at Cas’ open gaze.
-And what the hell does that mean, anyway? Your handprint was burned into my arm, for fuck’s sake! People kept asking me what it meant...women kept asking. I didn’t know what to say. And then you took it away! And you left. The hell kinda profound bond is that?
Cas sits up, one wing arching, the other straining awkwardly against its bonds.
- Dean, I rebuilt you, because I had carried your soul those long years out of Hell. I was supposed to give you to Michael to make suitable, but I didn’t. I couldn’t leave you, in your ruined body, alone! I used my grace to remake you. Part of my grace is inside of you, and always will be.
- Then why don’t I remember it?
Dean’s words ring in the rafters, sharp and loud. He clamps his teeth shut behind them, and stares, first into Cas’ eyes, then away, the muscles in his jaw twitching. His hands are balled into fists.
This time, when Cas touches him, he doesn’t move away. He hides his face in his palms, and curls forward against the hand on his chest.
-Do you want to remember it?
The angel’s voice is soft and low, and very near to Dean’s cheek.
-I don’t know!
But as the sunlight turns to purple dusk, Dean grips the hand that rests over his heart, intertwining their fingers with bruising strength.
~
That night the sunset over Dead Mountain looks like a spear of flame, blazing like a signal fire into the hearts of the deep grey and pink clouds. A deep thunder rolls through the valleys and echoes off of the peaks, but no storm breaks.
Inside a rickety barn, two great wings pump and spread, shimmering with a light of their own. Slowly, they arch and descend, each feather shot through with veins of gold, casting off blood and grime and the shredded remnants of bandages. Two dirty hands reach upward, clutching fistfuls of shining feathers, and hold on tight.
~
Dean leaves a day later, the way he came: the big car growling down the side of the mountain in a cloud of dust. In the trunk, he has packed up the remaining food and water, the tarps and first aid kits, as well as his usual gear in the duffle. The Pediasure is all gone, but he conscientiously packed out the plastic wrapping, as there was no place to throw it away in the decaying cabin. Finally, wrapped up in the remnants of old undershirts, tucked carefully by themselves in one corner of the spacious trunk, are five feathers, far too large to belong to any bird, that gleam even in darkness. They are an unnamed color, something like the sun setting over water on a summer day.
The passenger seat beside Dean is empty, but his face bears an expression of wary peace. He gives the angel pendant on his rearview mirror a playful flick and hums along with a Def Leppard mixtape as the road flashes by beneath him.
~
There are not very many inhabitants of Joseph Creek, Oregon, and on any given day, a number of those are truckers stopping for gas and greasy diner food on their way across the country. However, those that do reside in the tiny town, who have stared out at the same hills for years or decades, are faced with a peculiar conundrum all of a sudden.
Four old residents and a middle-aged waitress hold a long and puzzled conversation over endlessly refilled coffee. It could be that there’s something to this climate change business, or it could be that there’s some kind of weird foreign species invasion going on up there, or it could be something to do with radiation or government experiments. But at any rate, they’ll probably have to start calling the mountain something else.
The scarred top of Dead Mountain has bloomed, overnight, into a verdant meadow, a blush of wildflowers spread over its shoulders in a cloak of starry blue that’s visible from miles away.