"Uriel, it's time to wake up."

He remembered the pain. A hot blade plunging through his being and shattering his grace into atoms. Uriel died by Anna's hand, yet here he was.

This wasn't right.

Why—How was he alive?

He reached up, ran a hand down the back of his head and felt smooth skin. No hair. He was inside his host. Uriel lifted his right hand in front of his face and turned it slowly, studying the deep brown skin that wasn't his. This man had entrusted his body to him and so he respected that, kept good care of it for the most part. However, it hadn't changed his views on mud-monkeys.

"Uriel, open your eyes."

The voice echoed in his ears. It was soft and warm, like the feeling he got when he held his blade. A feeling of raw power. Eons ago he would've said the voice was familiar, but years had passed and some memories faded. Memories of an angel who chose banishment over pain and was buried within the earth itself.

"If you won't open your eyes then do as I say and squeeze your hand."

He did. He squeezed his right hand as if there were something there, even though Uriel knew there wasn't. He was alone in an empty motel room with only his host. The cotton bed sheets wrinkled under him and his shirt hung from the bathroom door knob. The walls were a hideous canary yellow but he would admit the motel room had its charms. A Bible, a Qur'an, and a Tanakh sat on a small desk shoved into the corner, with their pages open as if someone had just been reading them moments ago.

"Now scream."

Wh—

Pain lanced through his being and he felt as if he'd shattered all over again. Uriel screamed in agony as hot knives plunged through his back, needles stabbed at his shoulder blades and fire burnt his eyes. He tried to look upwards but saw only a vague shape surrounded by flames. After a second, he closed his eyes and chose to trust it.

Uriel squeezed his hand tighter as it pulled him upward and dragged him through earth and lava, through soft green grass that tickled his face and heavy pouring rain that cooled the heat of his skin. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself back in the motel with its ugly walls and the outdated Wendy's menu stuck to the bar fridge.

This time, it was real.

"Where am I?" Uriel said, gripping the sheets and bunching them in his hands. The curtains lifted in the air as wind blew through an open rear window. The coolness of it sent a shiver down his spine and made his nose twitch. If his Father had had something to do with it, he would've called it a miracle, but this was not one of those times. Uriel tried to stand and immediately fell backwards onto the bed as the weight of a planet began to push him down.

She scowled and shoved him down when he tried to stand. He still couldn't see her, which she supposed was a good thing. Uriel wasn't whole yet and the more he moved, the harder it was to push the atoms back together. "Stop moving. Your wings are not healed yet."

The voice. He blinked, pushing through the veil that shielded humans from seeing their true forms, and looked up. A humanoid shape as tall as the ceiling stared down at him, its hand on his chest. An angel? No, this was not the work of an angel. He shook his head and blinked again but the figure didn't move. "Who are you?"

"I am me."

"How am I alive?"

"I intercepted you before you could enter the Empty Place. Sweet Uriel, you fell, didn't you? You lost your way."

Uriel reached up as it lifted its hand, allowing him to move, and the figure leant down. He touched the flames and came away unscathed. Odd. He trailed his ring and middle finger down its jaw till he found a small chin and the neck beneath it. The flames flickered and shrank into the being while skin and hair formed under his fingers with each caress. Soon enough, iridescent blue eyes looked upon him.

"I think I remember," he murmured. She smiled at that. "Chariel."

"Hello, Uriel."

Where her wings should've been was empty space. She has no wings, he reminded himself, they were torn off by Michael and destroyed. He stood and she solidified before him, tilting her head and studying him as if she couldn't believe Uriel would ever lower himself to finding a human host. "You were banished."

"Yes. And yourself?"

He sighed and looked away. She'd never believe it even if he told her what happened. Who would? When Lucifer began to doubt, Uriel was one of the first to plant his sword and say 'no'. Anyone who saw him now would probably think he was merely playing the role of the insider and hadn't betrayed his garrison. He crossed his arms over his bare chest and tapped his foot against the carpet, wearing nothing but a pair of dress pants. This meatsuit had its advantages, yes, but the care it took to keep intact was more than Uriel desired to perform. "I followed in Lucifer's—"

His legs crumpled beneath him and Uriel fell sideways, finding the weight of his wings and the burning sensation that still remained too much to bear. This was wrong. He couldn't be this weak. It was pathetic. He caught himself before his head struck the ground and stayed there, clutching the bed so as to not fall further.

Exhaustion set in after a few moments. His grip loosened and he lowered his head to the floor in search of relief from the agony of reformation. He wanted to ask why, why she collected him and went to all this trouble for an angel who wouldn't have thought twice before destroying her, but Uriel already knew the answer. It was in the way she looked at him, and part of the answer to why she'd fallen.

"Shh," she murmured, and slid one arm around his chest and the other under his legs. She lifted Uriel onto the bed, careful to lay him down without touching where his wings joined his shoulder blades. "Everything will be alright."

"I'm so tired," Uriel said. She slid the pillow under his head and he reached for her cheek, grazing it with his fingers. It's been so many eons since they were last together, since their garrisons were intact and whole. "I feel like a human."

"Go back to sleep then."

"No."

He'd always been stubborn. It was the Specialist in him. After Sodom and Gomorrah, Uriel found himself in search of the next fight or a new war. When Anna noticed his newly developed restlessness, she told him to find an outlet; a conversation with Lucifer led him to sparring, and that guided him to her. There was no better way to still the anger and hatred that had been sparked within him than to fight and redirect it. His frustrations, his weariness, it was all vented in the shadows where Anna and the others could not see.

"I'm not going to fight you while you're still healing."

Uriel coughed and covered his mouth to hide a laugh. Was that what she thought he desired? Perhaps she'd forgotten what came after the fighting. The pleasure they'd found through something as simple as touch. "Who said anything about fighting?"

"I've missed you," Chariel whispered against his cheek. She laced her fingers between his and squeezed his hand. His breath was warm against her skin and for a moment, it felt as if they'd never fallen at all. Father had called it banishment, as did Michael; no one but them knew it'd been a self-imposed exile for this exact reason. Too much time spent amongst humans led to emotions. Emotions led to suffering and pain, neither of which went hand in hand with an angel. "My beautiful flame."

He slid his hand free and seized her hips, lifting her onto the bed to straddle him. So many years spent wondering if she'd died already, searching for any sign of her grace, and here she'd been waiting for him all along. All those millennia playing his role, guiding the garrison when Anna was gone, with no one to lean on but Castiel — and if he was being honest, who could even talk to Castiel in those days, when he was merely a soldier with no hint of disobedience? Till Anna fell, Castiel had been the perfect son and far from trustworthy when it came to speaking of his angelic issues.

"Everything will be better soon." She kissed him softly, his — the host's — lips dragging against hers and sending sparks through her body. Each touch made her tingle, every second left her wanting and needing more. Every beat of her heart, the noise of blood rushing around the body she'd been placed in permanently, felt powerful. "And I promise, you won't be alone anymore."

With his defenses down and his being vulnerable and exposed, she could finish healing him. Chariel traced the line of his shoulders, knitting together the fragments of wing and fixing them into place. He groaned beneath her, firm hands gliding down her spine and unaware she could feel everything. Every brush of the wind against her arms, the cotton of her dress teasing the hollow of her neck, the bite of his nails digging into her skin, was a note on the music sheet of her soul. It teased and tormented, distracted her and drove her towards madness via her inability to escape the meatsuit, yet it also surpassed everything she thought she knew about what it meant to be a human.

"Don't make promises you can't keep, Chariel." Her sudden return, his resurrection, this was all too good to be true. If he blinked again, would she disappear and leave him alone in this motel room? Or would he fall asleep only to return to the Big Empty and dissolve into nothingness?

The half-lidded look of lust on her face dropped and turned to a scowl for the few seconds it took her to seize his hand with her own and press it to her ass. God help her, she loved the feel of his hands on her body. She always had. From the night they realised their wings were more than just transportation, Chariel found herself addicted to him. She hitched the bottom half of her dress up to reveal scarred muscled thighs, turned nut-brown by the sun, and proceeded to splay her fingers over his chest. "This is real, Uriel, it's not a meatsuit."

It's her, wingnut. He wasn't dead and lost in the Emptiness. He was alive, intact, and she had a body of her own. A body he could touch and hold. Uriel rolled them over and planted one arm against the mattress. The way she looked at him, eyes filled with awe and lust, made his being ache and his host's heart pound faster. Nobody had looked at him like that in eons, not since the garrisons had been formed and their ranks decided. Even Castiel, his brother and friend, had never shown awe and respect the way she did unto him as if he were God himself. "Don't leave me again," he murmured, "please."

"Why would I ever want to?"

A/N: Written for hurt/comfort bingo round 8. The prompt was 'wings'.