I... well, I can't say I've never written something like this before, but I've certainly never posted it. Nonexplicit wing!kink and implied oil!kink ahead; this exists in that same, strange, grey zone as softcore furry porn, I suppose, for the purposes of a bestiality warning.
Inspired by a prompt from the kinkmeme.
:::
As Castiel understood Sam Winchester's account, the situation was as follows:
People in a northern Chicago suburb had been disappearing; simultaneously, horrifyingly warped bodies that came up human and animal on DNA panels had been turning up in swamps and ponds in a suburb just half an hour south. A local hunter, upon stumbling onto one of the corpses, had discovered a hex bag around a protruding maybe-limb and passed the word on to Garth, who had in turn notified Sam and Dean, who were in Gary on a salt-and-burn at the time. Neither of them had known what to make of the not-human things, but hex bags meant witches, so they'd ganked the ghost in Gary, jumped on I-94 just south of Chicago, and arrived in Deerfield an hour or so later.
In the week that followed, they had established three things: one, that Deerfield was a terrible place, two, that the dump sites were being used on a rotating basis, and three, that the bodies showing up at the dump sites were starting to look less like Lovecraftian horrors and more like a skinshifter caught fatally between shapes. Sensing that they were on a timer, Sam had gone to the local library to research what might cause the mutations while Dean staked out the next dump site on the rotation.
There, Sam had explained, was where things started to go wrong. Dean had called at about four in the afternoon to tell Sam that the bad guys had shown up in a midsize BMW and dropped off a body, but there were signs that it had been frozen for some time. Moreover, the bad guys had been students at a nearby high school— a football player and a 'basement denizen', to be precise, both free of demonic possession. Sam had not elaborated on what a 'basement denizen' was, but its presence in alliance with the football player was apparently unnatural and thus indicative of a very powerful and/or very charismatic leader. Dean, intending to locate the leader, had followed them back to the high school and had been preparing to break in when he'd ended the call with Sam.
That call had been three days ago; since then, Dean had neither appeared nor called, the high school had been closed due to a chemical fire in the science wing, and someone had just reported that a 'barking bird-dinosaur-man' had attacked their 'Maltie-poo' (Castiel was still at a total loss as to what the latter creature might be) in a park not far from the next dump site on the rotation Sam and Dean had worked out. "Best guess is that they finally did it," Sam had said, looking grim. "Made their… thing, whatever it was they were working on, and set it loose. I don't know if Dean's gone to ground or if he's hunting it, but… maybe if we find the thing, we'll find Dean, too."
Castiel had, of course, immediately volunteered to assist in the hunt— though he and Dean were by no means a typical 'couple' and frequently worked independently of one another for days or even weeks at a time, Castiel cared deeply about his partner— so Sam had delegated him to search the park where the woman had reported the animal attack. The park, when he had arrived sometime around sundown, had been quiet and mostly empty. A suspiciously pungent, smoke-filled Mercedes-Benz had pulled out of the vacant lot just as he'd backwinged to a landing near a tall, wooden sign, and he'd only encountered one jogger on the gravel loop surrounding a small, verdant wetland. For the jogger's safety, he'd waited until the woman had departed to begin his sweep of the wetland.
In hindsight, he should have known that hunting alone for a thing after nightfall would invariably result in being ambushed by said thing; nothing involving the Winchesters in any capacity could have gone otherwise.
Lifting his face out of the cold, wet earth with a groan, Castiel flexed each of his limbs and heaved a sigh of relief when no sources of significant pain presented themselves. Something moved in the reeds nearby; Castiel glanced up in time to see birdlike, taloned toes very delicately, verydeliberately stepping over the intangible, invisible sprawl of his left wing. A jingling, ring-shaped thing dropped to the earth and was pushed at Castiel's face and hand, almost like an offering.
Castiel risked a glance upward at the owner of the feet. He couldn't discern much— the creature was backlit by the dull orange of a cloudy Chicago night sky— but its silhouette looked mostly humanoid, well-formed, and pleasingly symmetrical, at least from the shoulders up. It seemed to have broad, powerful wings where a human should have arms, however, and narrow but sturdy legs ending in those long, clawed toes.
The creature nimbly hopped aside to avoid Castiel's folding wing as he pulled himself into a seated position. Clucking softly, it watched him until he was settled and then pushed its dropped object at him again, its posture almost… beseeching?
The thing, when Castiel picked it up and ran his hands around it, proved to be a small dog collar, complete with tags and a portion of still-attached leash. "Thank you," he said, because what else did one say when presented with apology dog accessories by a potentially dangerous alchemical experiment?
His gratitude seemed to please the creature; it fluffed up and flagged its long, feathered tail, radiating smugness.
Castiel's phone chose that moment to ring. Both he and the creature startled, but when it made no move to attack him or the source of the noise, Castiel slowly, slowly reached into his coat pocket and drew the phone out. "I found it," he said quietly upon answering, holding the phone in front of his face instead of at his ear just in case the creature took belated issue with the device.
"What?!" Sam's voice squawked over the line, tinny and small. The creature's head tipped attentively. "You found it?!"
"It ambushed me," Castiel replied, and, before Sam could interject with another pointless 'what?!', added: "It can see my wings, and it has presented me with the collar and leash from a small dog. I think it's apologizing."
The collar jangled as it was kicked aside, apparently to make room for the creature. Toes so close to Castiel's crossed legs that its claws scraped faintly over his jeans, it settled back on its heels and supported itself using the wrists of its wings (where, Castiel noted, there was a sturdy, clawed thumb where a typical bird's alula might have been) as it carefully nestled down nearer Castiel and the phone.
In the dim light from the phone, the creature's shadowed form resolved into dark, muted, slaty blue-grey breast feathers capped by a throat patch of rich, burnt orange plumage, all fluffed against the Chicago night chill. Castiel followed the tawny feathers up to the creature's jawline, which was…
"Father help us," Castiel breathed. He knew that jawline, that chin, those cheekbones— had rebuilt them, traced them, worshipped them in quiet moments with hands and lips.
"What? What?"
Green eyes fluttered closed and full lips curved in a relieved smile; when Castiel lifted a hand, Dean did not hesitate to press his cheek into the touch. "Sam, I found Dean. The bird creature— it's Dean."
Cars, even ones as spacious as the Impala, were not made for wings.
Scratch that, Dean thought as he watched the relief of Castiel's right wing ghost through the side panel in a stretch— cars were not made forphysical people with wings. Angels plainly had an unfair advantage and were thus exempt from pity.
"Home sweet underground home, Dean," Sam announced from the driver's seat as the Impala came to a halt. Dean, still robbed of human speech by whatever the fuck the dead alchemist and her dead witch friends had done, made a rude sound (mimicry of non-word noises, he had learned, was an extremely viable option). After waking up feathery and then enduring three swampy days of hiding from aging Stepford wives armed with rabid, vicious purse rats, his reward was getting stuck lying on his back like some kind of overgrown Thanksgiving turkey in the back seat of his own car for nearly ten hours. If that wasn't justification for being just a bit shitty, nothing was. "I made some calls, and there's a guy in Wichita with a manuscript that matches some of the fragments we recovered from the high school. I figured I'd drop you and Cas off here."
Dean didn't have any objections to that. He was stubborn, yes, but he wasn't stupid, and a giant bird-man was not going to win Sam any points in Wichita. He did direct a questioning look at Cas, though, and was surprised when the angel responded with the raised eyebrow.
That was the 'post-hunt fuck' eyebrow. What the hell did Cas think he was doing, trying that on now? Dean tried to make his confusion known while Cas helped him out of the Impala's back seat, but the angel seemed oblivious. "I will search the library for relevant material once Dean is… settled," Cas informed Sam. "Good luck in Wichita."
Sam glanced between Dean and Cas for a few quiet moments. "I'm not going to ask," he said at length, dropping his hand to the wheel. "I'll call when I've made sense of the manuscript."
With that, the Impala rumbled away.
"Dean," said Cas as soon as it was out of sight, and unfurled.
Caught off guard, Dean could only stare in awe as the imprint on the universe of Cas' wings arced, coiled, and flickered over his head in a sort of fan-shaped display that was… well, Dean wasn't sure what it was, but something about it spoke of potency and attraction to some deep-seated part of his brain. Without words, though, the noise that escaped his mouth wasn't much more than a garbled bleat of confusion— what the hell was Cas doing now?
"Dean," Cas said again, and then produced a rippling cascade of birdsong. The sounds, perfectly replicated as they spilled from Cas' very human lips, were electrifying in the weirdest way possible. The fanned feathers over Cas' head shivered and fluttered in time with the sounds, drawing Dean's eyes along the curled edge plumes. "Come with me, Dean," Cas entreated, voice back to its gravelly rumble just long enough to speak before suddenly bubbling over with the sound of the Impala's freshly-tuned engine at a lazy, sultry idle.
Okay. Weirdly exciting bird noise was one fucking thing, but the Impala was entirely another, and Dean would deny to his dying day the noise of helpless arousal that escaped him. Bolting past Cas into the bunker, he half flailed, half flapped, half flopped down the flight of stairs and into the library, hoping to get to his room because he was a bird-man with a boner and this was so fuckin awkward. Castiel was there in a clap of wings and a gust of wind, though, waiting in the library, coat and blazer cast to the side, shirt and pants unbuttoned, and Dean could no more refuse the mesmerizing divots of Cas' hips or the curl of Cas' feathers than he could turn down homemade apple pie fresh from the oven. He tried, of course— croaked in mortified not-quite-protest, cloaked himself in his wings, tried to explain without words that he wanted (oh yes he wanted) but surely they shouldn't, he wasn't normal—
"I am an Angel of the Lord, Dean," Castiel growled, stepping into Dean's space so that those curved plumes arced over Dean's head like a canopy. "I am a multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent— to love you as you are now is no stranger than loving you before these changes were wrought." A second set of wings flared behind him, broad and powerful, and flickered away again. "May I, Dean?"
Dean nodded, then groaned as Cas' fingers rucked themselves into the feathers of his wings.
Hey hey mama, said the way you move, gon' make you sweat, gon' make you groove, promised Robert Plant's voice on Cas's lips, and Dean had never been harder in his fuckin life. He could feel his own feathers ruffling, his tail fanning, but none of it mattered— Cas was hypnotic, feathers shivering and hips swaying as Plant's wails became the chorus of 'Miss You'. He whined when Cas pulled away, fingers trailing all the way to the very tips of his flight feathers.
Smirking, the angel beckoned with one finger and blazing blue eyes. "Come and get me, then," he purred.
The Impala's engine was back as soon as Dean advanced on Castiel, no longer idling but roaring, and the sound sent delicious vibrations through the ruffled feathers of Dean's neck as Castiel ran his lips over them. Deft hands slid along Dean's sides and buried fingers in the little feathers lining the undersides of his wings; Dean moaned and then squeaked as something hot and wet spilled down his sides.
Castiel went rigid and tense as soon as his fingertips found the spreading damp. "Dean."
Dean let out a shameless moan; there were some things he never questioned, and the top-shelf vintage of the 'about to get savagely fucked by an Angel of the Lord' voice was at the very, very top of that list.
Sam had learned to accept a lot of weirdness in his life. Dogs talked, Oz was an actual place, and just three months ago, his brother had spent about half a week in North Shore Chicago as some kind of bird chimera thing, so he'd had plenty of practice. There were, however, some things that really pushed the limits of his willingness to adapt.
His brother, sprawled out in nothing but his boxers in bed and visibly turned on by the half-naked holy tax accountant scuffing his feet on the carpet and making car noises at the foot of said bed, was absolutely one of those things.
"Oh my God, what are y— Dean, seriously?" Sam hissed, slapping a hand over his eyes. He had to fumble around blindly before he could deposit their carry-out on the crappy motel table. "Is this a kinky angel thing? What the fuck, dude?"
The foot-shuffling and rumbling engine noises stopped. "It is not a 'kinky angel thing'. It is a courtship dance," Castiel replied in his usual flat, gravelly tone.
"Cas, I told you to stop calling it that; it's weird, okay? And you can consider this payback for the chick you banged on my back seat back in Omaha, bitch!" Dean snipped. Sam heard cheap blankets and sheets shifting; when he risked lifting his hand, Dean was sitting on the bed wrapped in a bed sheet toga and Cas… Cas was staring at Dean like he'd stared at the burgers at that metal joint in Chicago Dean had dragged them to.
Better than the 'courtship dance', at least. "Don't blame me when you and David Attenborough here were the ones taking up the room, jerk." Turning to Castiel (who was still staring), he asked, "You wanna explain the 'courtship' thing? I thought we'd… you know, fixed that part."
Sam had barely gotten back from Wichita three months ago when he'd been greeted by Cas and a fully-human Dean. They'd explained that Dean's transformation had been a success due to the unintentional involvement of a angel's stolen Grace— whose, Cas hadn't been sure— and that the remnants of that Grace, though too weak for Cas to pick up on easily, had been just strong enough to be the 'glue' holding the transformation in place. According to Cas, it had taken only a few minutes of prodding before things simply 'unravelled' and Dean returned to his proper form.
They still hadn't told Sam what kind of prodding had been involved or how they'd figured out the Grace thing if it'd been too weak to detect, but some instinct had told Sam that he really didn't want to know. At any rate, the feathers and claws and squawking were supposed to be well and truly banished.
"I undid the physical transformation," Cas replied, "but removing all of the Grace and reversing some of the psychological changes would have been dangerous."
Sam raised an eyebrow at Dean, who blushed and scowled. "That still doesn't…"
"Male superb lyrebirds entice females to intercourse with a display of plumage and mimicry. As material from a female of the species had provided much of the 'coding' for the transforma—"
"Nope," Dean said, standing from the bed and pulling his sheet-toga tight around himself. He was very intentionally avoiding the area above and around Cas' shoulders. "Not here for this, and don't you try that flirty feather shit on me, angel, I swear to God I'll pluck those stupid—" The Impala's throaty purr rumbled out of Cas and Dean turned a shade of red Sam hadn't seen since that one Rhonda chick like a billion years back. "Cas, Cas, that's not fuckin fair, dude, you can't just Baby at me every time you want—" No matter how he tried, Dean's eyes kept going back to the empty space around Cas' head and shoulders, tracking an invisible something like a cat watching a toy.
Castiel revved. Dean whimpered.
Sam decided to eat in the car.
:::
Sorry not sorry about mocking Deerfield. I'm so glad to be away from that place.
The metal burger joint is Kuma's Corner (or Kuma's Too near Diversey, if you're an El rider). Their burgers are a RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE- I break my kosher-pescetarian diet once a year on my birthday specifically to enjoy their Led Zeppelin burger. Go check out their menu if you get the chance; going to this place whilst visiting the city is just as important as experiencing proper deep dish pizza, in my opinion.
(I was THIS CLOSE to going with a superb bird-of-paradise rather than the superb lyrebird. THIS. CLOSE.)