A/N: This little plot bunny came to me this afternoon practically begging to be written down, and after a thorough series of tests to confirm that it wasn't a demon in disguise (as anything so cute can easily hide some malevolent purpose), the little furry bugger has been confirmed to be 100% cuddly lapin, as the French might call it.
A bit of extra inspiration from class today helped get this thing in gear (my borrowed computer for the day turned out to be #13, and then my teacher, who was drawing a diagram on the board to explain our latest textbook, somehow managed to criss-cross the thing enough to create an upside-down pentagram, looked up at the board, and then shouted "Oh look, I summoned Satan!". We then proceeded to somehow draw the laws of physics into the discussion when talking about the various guises used by the assigned book's characters, and somehow this led to the conclusion that, since a straight line technically isn't possible, not only is nothing (people included) able to be completely straight in all things, but furthermore, that the universe had lots of curves (the boy who stated this was then told by the teacher to go date the universe, then). Finally, as life, death, and morals were discussed, a quarter of the class shouted "Ghostbusters!" to answer a question of who to call in times of crisis, and all my mind could think of was that the Ghostbusters had no rock salt to help...although crossing the streams might do instead.).
DISCLAIMER: I do not own the Supernatural series, or anything affiliated with it, save for an emergency bottle of salt for the potential apocalypse, my share of my family's somewhat rampant varying degrees of ESP, and a silver pocketknife from my grandmother. As I have only officially started watching Supernatural as of last month, please, for the love of all that is holy and pie-related, do not douse me in holy oil and light me up with matches for (unintentional) mistakes or OOC moments, as I am, unfortunately, not flame-retardant. I also do not own either of the bands mentioned.
WARNING: Foul language, mention of violence, and of course, all the things that go bump in the night...and the adorable enigma that is Castiel (Everytime he shows up, the urge to reach into the screen and give him a warm blanket and a slice of fresh pie is overpowering. It must be the eyes.). Also, consider this a bit of an AU, since Pastor Jim is still alive in this speck of the universe.
It was a Thursday, as it turned out, and, as usual, the Winchesters were in their fair share (and possibly a smidgen more than is deserved) of ungodly bad luck.
The sky, which had been a lovely robin's egg blue only a few short hours before, was now, in the cooling presence of late evening, a rolling mass of lumpy clouds, boiling and simmering greyish white clumps, as if a zombie's skull had burst open and splattered the heavens with filthy, decaying gore. The Impala, which had only recently had a well-deserved pampering with a good cleaning, waxing, and replacement of the windshield after the last hunt had resulted in rather ugly (though thankfully, superficial) damage, was now facing the uncomfortable reality of the two men sitting inside, swearing every so often and talking in whispers as they wrapped bandages around blood-soaked arms and gave anxious glances at the tiny bundle lying on the backseat. The radio croaked, gargling a regurgitated mess of Lead Zeppelin and AC/DC into the air, the volume substantially lowered so as not to wake up their extra passenger. The backseat was covered in soot, ashes, a generous smattering of blood (Sam's, to be precise, considering he'd carried said extra passenger back to the car), and a clumps of dirt, tiny rocks, and pine needles from the forest.
"What do we do now?"
"How the hell should I know, this hasn't happened before! Angels don't turn into this!"
"Well, what are we supposed to do, then? We can't leave him like this, he'll be monster chow the second he's out of here. I don't even think he can fly yet."
"I'm not playing babysitter to featherball over there. The journal say anything?"
A rustle of fabric, a clank of metal as weapons banged against each other from inside the confines of a multi-pocketed duffel bag, a crackling, crinkling shiver as worn, yellowing pages were carefully turned. "Don't see anything, just the usual "divine messengers and angels of the Lord" stuff. Nothing in here suggests it's possible for him to become...this."
"Seriously? Dad had pages and pages of info on ghosts, demons, witches, werewolves, and all sorts of other unholy shit, but there's nothing for this?"
As Sam shook his head, Dean let his head fall back against the upholstery with a dull thud, jarring his already headache-plagued cranium with a fresh wave of agony. He looked again at the tiny being wrapped up in a tan trench coat and a bulky spare sleeping bag, the faintest tip of wing-shadow exposed over the rim of the collar by the half-light of weak, greyish twilight, and felt his head throb with pain as his mind tried to reject the bizarre reality before him.
Dean believed in what his senses could afford him, be it proof by the sight of wholly black eyes and unsettling grins, the smell of rotting flesh and ritual smoke and hot metal, the taste of sulfur in the air and blood on his tongue, the touch of graveyard mist on his face and the cool metal of a gun in his hands and his brother's hand on his shoulder, the sound of rasping, rattling, coughing, howling from the dead, the buried, and the restless...
But he did not believe, at least until tonight, that his somewhat emotionally-confused, puppy-eyed unofficial guardian angel and rescuer from the clawed grip of Hell could look this cute.
It wasn't even the cuddly, puppyish sort of cute. It was the sort of gentle, quiet inner sweetness that radiated a luminous glow of unconditional acceptance and affection. Dean wasn't quite sure if he should be amazed, or nauseated.
A baby angel. It couldn't have been a Shifter baby, or a hellhound puppy, or something else I could just give a hunk of meat and bone to and not worry about accidentally killing. It had to be a freaking angel, and Cas to boot. The halo brigade'll be on our asses before you can say "Cristo!".
It wasn't until a blunt, brief shock of dull pain suddenly exploded from his right shoulder that he realized that Sam had slugged him to get his attention, giving what appeared to be a healthy new set of slowly purpling bruises in the process. A tan finger pointed to the backseat's sole occupant, motioning in the vague way that often preceded worry and confusion in the face of a seemingly-impossible circumstance. "Dean, stop zoning out, we need to figure out a plan here."
Dean took stock of their current situation: his Baby looked like she'd been through the junkyard trash compactor and barely escaped with the paint job intact, Sam was holding a dislocated, half-shredded left shoulder (Dean had forced the last of the antiseptic ointment and bandage rolls on him) as he sorted through their mostly-depleted medical kit for their stock of painkillers, he himself was wrapped from his wrists to his biceps with healing salve and bandages for a rather unpleasant mauling by werewolf claws earlier, they were now officially out of both silver bullets and rock salt, and to top it all off, Castiel, self-proclaimed Angel of Thursday and on again/off again celestial bodyguard, was currently a tiny, winged baby swaddled only in his trench coat and (by Sam's doing, as the night was colder than a witch's tit and the car's heater had broken) a spare sleeping bag that had been given to them by Bobby the last time they'd met up.
Goddammit. We're knee-deep in crap, huh?
He'd just known today would be a day of supreme shittiness. The fact that breakfast at the latest town's diner did not serve so much as a speck of pie should have been considered the first warning sign that everything would go to Code Brown.
The rest of the day had only served to further prove him right. The werewolf that had been mauling hikers in recent months had been found, and while he'd been known to the townspeople only as the crazy old man who lived in the log cabin in the woods, he'd put up a hell of a fight, Dean would, albeit a tad grudgingly, admit. He'd shrieked like a banshee and cursed them to the bowels of Hell, refusing to leave his property, and when the moon had risen the scream of agony from the body transformation sounded like it could be heard for miles. Silver bullets had been used, only to lodge in tree trunks and even the ground as the canine behemoth had circled them in a blur of fangs and fur, yellow eyes glinting molten gold as jagged, filthy nails lashed out. Time had dragged on like the slow death of prolonged hanging, the werewolf using the forest as both refuge from the silver, and a hunting ground to leap out at them, tearing at flesh and leaving Dean with several new slices in his arms.
The Angel of Thursday had been summoned when several hundred pounds of mangy, half-starved bone and glowing, lamp like eyes had tackled Sam to the forest floor, prompting an instinctive psychic lashing out in response. The trees were flattened like unruly hair in a gale, the ground rumbled ominously. Blue-grey eyes had widened almost imperceptibly upon arrival, then the angel had moved in a whirl of shadow-cloaked wings and tan leather as Dean shouted for him to help, to get the damn furball off Sam before the teeth sink in-
They'd run out of bullets. Rock salt roared, then slowly dimmed to a trickle, then dried up in supply altogether as the surge of white grains exploded out the barrel end of shotguns and pistols, smearing a white-hot wave of heat across the gash Dean had made in its' side with his knife, and still the werewolf lunged and snarled, jaws snapping by a tan neck as Sam kicked and swore, slamming the butt of an emptied rifle into the socket of its' left eye-
The world had blasted apart in a mushroom cloud of light and sound, and Dean, having been flung backwards like a rag doll into a nearby tree, had shut his eyes instinctively, huddling into a ball to keep from having his eyes burned out of his skull as he shouted at Sam to not look, don't look and for the briefest second, the vessel Jimmy Novak had flickered like the grainy image of an old home video as the angel let loose and for a split second Dean could see, even through both his closed eyes and interlocking fingers over that, a searing light that cleansed the air with an ozone-crisp burn-
When Sam had called out for him, Dean had known it was alright to open his eyes, but the sight of the clearing still stole away his breath. The whole area had become an instantaneous clearing, barely ringed by a far-out, jagged ring of burnt, blackened trees with limbs thrown, cracked and askew, like broken shards of glass from a window that a rock had gone through. The werewolf was gone, reduced to nothing more than scattered ash, slowly blowing away in flakes of grey dust in the wind. The ground was hot beneath his singed shoes, burnt clean of old grass and with boiling earth, and Sam was there, leaning against a tree at the far edge for support, clutching a bundled up trench coat in the crook of his uninjured arm with a look of almost absurd confusion and worry. Wordlessly, he'd held out the mass of fabric, and it had taken Dean, still dazed with the angelic equivalent of a small hydrogen bomb, a few seconds to understand.
When it finally registered, he'd pointed wordlessly in the direction of the Impala, feeling suddenly as if he'd lost the ability to accurately express what he'd just witnessed.
Now, after several hours of bandaging, weapons cleaning, and trying to figure out what to do, all Dean could really think as he took in the events of the day was He's so damn small.
The trench coat had been molded into a sort of makeshift nest in the backseat, the sleeping bag pressed around securely to keep the mound of fabric in place. Nestled inside, the angel looked both comically tiny and achingly vulnerable, a tiny bundle of moon-blanched skin and a thick, sleep-mussed head of dark hair. Tiny, chubby fists were tucked beneath a soft, rounded chin, silvery clouds of mist flickering in and out of existence as fast as dying candle flames as the infant angel breathed deeply. A tiny set of wings, petal-soft and black as graveyard dirt in the deep South, flickered in the half-shadows of the Impala's interior, folding against the little angel's back like a protective shield.
A low rumbling noise came from next to him, and Dean blinked, trying to connect the proverbial dots. His mind, already swamped with thoughts, took a few seconds to remember that it was only Sam, who, in light of his brother musing without him, had apparently decided to catch up on sleep and snore like a foghorn while Dean took the first watch of the slowly aging night. Castiel was also on the proverbial flight to dreamland, cooing and squirming every so often, tiny feet kicking out slightly, only to curl back in again.
There was a barely audible snuffling noise fluttering in the air of the Impala, and it was only due to years of hunting to train his senses to around-the-clock alertness that let Dean know that Castiel was making little whimpering noises in his sleep, the tiny angel having been so quietly asleep these past few hours.
Dean stared for a moment, faint surprise bubbling up as tiny goosebumps appeared on Castiel's skin, and was forcibly reminded that, despite being a heavenly creation, his friend still currently resides in a human vessel, and is thus subject, to a certain degree, to human discomforts and physical handicaps.
Silently contemplating whether or not his brother is in a deep enough sleep to risk the quickly forming idea, he glanced over to the shotgun seat, regarding the thin stream of silvery drool bubbling up in the left corner of Sam's half-open mouth with careful scrutiny. Blackmail over 'chick flick' moments was dangerous when your only constant companion is your brother, after all.
But after several long minutes of observation, Sam remains only an unconscious Sasquatch of a man, head pillowed by the dashboard and his own long arms, the thick shirtsleeves preventing him from potentially leaving a sweaty faceprint on the surface in the morning.
Letting out a sigh of relief, he pulled his jacket from around himself, before reaching out and leaning over from the driver's seat to reach his goal. Carefully, drawing on muscle memory from half-remembered years of tucking the covers around Sam to preserve warmth in the cold dark motel rooms of a bygone pre-teen adolescence, the jacket was draped on and tucked around the tiny form, until only a tiny head peeped out, along with a small bit of a tiny fist, thumb firmly pressed into the little mouth as Nature's pacifier. Castiel cooed softly, shuffling in sweet sleep to curl up deeper under the aged leather.
Dean watched the sight silently, a smile, or a smirk (he couldn't quite tell which), threatening to form, and while he's never quite sure afterwards when he fell asleep, he did know that Sam would be poking fun at him for quite some time for this.
But the next morning dawned with an almost obnoxiously blue sky, and Sam didn't so much as blink upon checking the backseat to see how their other passenger had been doing. Dean wondered for one crazy second if he might be able to get away from admitting what he'd done, but the evidence is currently too obvious and it wasn't like the practiced disposal of a dead body; the deed had been done, and now Sam knew.
Judging by the glint in his eyes, Dean knew, with a sinking feeling, that he was never going to hear the end of this. As the Impala's engine purred a startup greeting and they discussed whether or not to contact Pastor Jim for advice on babysitting an infant divine messenger, he wondered vaguely if it would have been better to let the werewolf from last night maul him a bit more instead; it might have felt less embarrassing than this. It's too early in the day to be accused of 'chick flick' moments.
In the backseat of the Impala, Castiel merely yawned, briefly scanning the interior of the car to assess potential danger, and, seeing only the two hunters, curled back up beneath Dean's jacket and closed his eyes, briefly wondering why he was so comfortable.