Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are the property of Eric Kripke. Sadly, I do not own any of these guys.
"Hey, Cas, what do your wings look like?"
Dean had intended it to be an innocent question. The trench-coated angel had just arrived in the Winchester brothers' motel room, seeing as he had nowhere else to be at that moment and they needed help taking on a potentially high number of demonic possessions in the area. Obviously an angel, slowly losing his smiting powers or not, was much more useful in a fight against demons than two humans with one demon-killing knife between them, so Dean hadn't hesitated to send a prayer up to the holy tax accountant. Plus, he actually kind of enjoyed Cas's company (not that he would admit that to anybody.)
The older Winchester was boredly staring at the ceiling, waiting for Sam to work whatever magic he always used to pull up information and lore Dean couldn't dream of finding, and his idle mind chose that moment to randomly remind him that he had always wanted to know what angels' wings looked like. Not shadows on the walls of an old barn or charred marks in concrete, but real, living wings. After all, he'd been surrounded by angels, both good and evil, pretty much twenty-four/seven for over a year now, and he still had yet to see one's wings in person. And since there just so happened to be a friendly angel standing right there in the room with them, now seemed as good a time as any.
But when Castiel's face suddenly seemed to fall, his posture tensing as if he was preparing for an attack, Dean started to second-guess the timing of that question.
"Cas? Something wrong?"
"I… I need to go check on something. Call me when it's time to take down the demons and I will meet you there. Excuse me."
And then he was gone with a rustle of feathers, leaving a stunned and confused Dean staring at the space where he had been standing just moments ago.
"What was that all about?" Sam asked, looking up from his computer once he realized Cas had left for no reason at all.
"Hell if I know," Dean said with a snort, trying to play it off like he didn't care but secretly worrying he might have upset the angel somehow. "Cas is strange, you know that."
Sam nodded. "That he is."
And then, much to Dean's jealousy, the younger Winchester appeared to just leave it at that. Well that wasn't going to fly for Dean. Even if he had to wait until after the hunt was finished, he was going to find out what was going on with Castiel – whether the angel liked it or not.
The group of people Dean and Sam had been tracking did indeed turn out to be possessed by demons, and it was a good thing Cas was helping them because those bastards were strong. Both brothers got tossed around, punched, kicked, and slashed at more times than they cared to count; by the time they got back to the motel Dean's clothes were saturated with blood from a multitude of gashes on his chest and back, and Sam had dislocated his shoulder and needed to ask Castiel pop it back in while Dean disposed of the bodies. Even the angel hadn't gotten away unscathed, but despite the fact that he wasn't strong enough to waste grace on Sam and Dean's minor wounds, all the cuts and scrapes he received had still healed themselves only seconds later. However, for some reason he seemed to be carrying himself even more stiffly than usual now, which Dean thought was weird but didn't comment on for the moment.
Once they reached the motel, Sam let Castiel and Dean out of the car and told them he was going to the pharmacy to pick up some more supplies for the first aid kit, and maybe try to "borrow" some antibiotics from the ER on the way since both brothers were covered in slashes from old weapons that had cut into who-knows-what-else before them.
Then the Impala zoomed off into the night, and Dean and Cas were left alone in awkward silence outside of the room. The hunter unlocked the door and gestured for the angel to enter, raising an eyebrow when it almost seemed to take effort for Castiel to walk the few steps through the door. When he passed through the doorframe and winced despite not even touching it, Dean decided that enough was enough.
"Alright, spill it," he said, coming into the room and flicking on the lights before closing the door behind the two of them.
"Spill what?" Cas replied, tilting his head the way he always did when Dean confused him. "I'm not holding anything."
"Where are you hurt?"
Castiel's eyes widened a fraction of an inch, and he hesitated a half-second too long before saying, "I am not injured."
"Bullshit."
"This has nothing to do with the defecation of –"
"Cas! Stow the innocent act. You're part of our team now, and like it or not, that means you tell one of us whenever you get hurt. I don't care how invincible you think you are, if you go into battle wounded and we don't know about it, you put all three of us at risk. Now where. Are. You. Hurt?"
Castiel stared at Dean for a few seconds and then closed his eyes, sighing as he bowed his head in defeat.
"My right wing…"
Dean blinked. That wasn't the answer he'd expected.
"Your wing?"
"Yes. It's an old battle wound that never completely healed; while we were fighting the demons one of them managed to reopen it."
"Alright, let me see."
"Wh… What?"
"Let me see your wing. Make it visible or whatever. I don't know a whole lot about angel healthcare, but I'll patch it up the best I can."
"That won't be necessary."
"Cas. We just talked about this." He was starting to get frustrated now. Why did Cas have to make even treating a minor injury as difficult as pulling teeth? Did all angels just live to make humans' lives more complicated than necessary? Actually, probably not; only the Winchesters seemed to be so lucky.
"I know, but I…" The angel's voice dropped to a barely audible level. "Please. I don't want you to see them."
"I'm sorry then, Cas," Dean answered, his own voice softening slightly when he realized that for some reason the angel looked truly embarrassed. "But it's gotta be done. Someone has to help you if your grace isn't patching this up for you, and I don't know a lot of other hunters or angels who will."
Castiel looked miserably up at Dean, almost as if he expected the hunter to ridicule him for something, and then nodded and allowed his wings to manifest behind him.
For a moment, Dean forgot how to breathe. He had seen the shadows of Castiel's wings last year, so he expected them to be impressive, but this took all of his expectations and blew them completely out of the water. The great black appendages were each almost three times as long as Castiel's body, sprouting from the middle of his back between his shoulder blades and extending out so far that they rested across both Dean and Sam's beds and bent against the walls of the room, drooping so low when relaxed that the tips brushed the floor. Shiny coal-colored feathers covered them from base to tips, sleek and soft and thick, and even in the motel room's dim lamplight Dean could make out a bluish sheen that made the wings resemble a raven's.
Awestruck and temporarily forgetting why he had asked Cas to reveal his wings in the first place, Dean stepped forward, stroking a hand down a long, ropey silver scar that ran down the inside edge of the left one. The silken feathers beneath his fingers, cool like water and yet completely dry, were unlike anything he'd ever felt before. The light touch immediately elicited a gasp of surprise from the angel, and then the wing seemed to twitch out of the hunter's reach of its own accord.
"Sorry," Dean muttered, coming back to himself when he saw how affronted Castiel looked. "Where's the cut?"
Cas gestured to the back side of his right wing, and Dean moved behind him and pulled out a small suture kit and a bottle of alcohol from the first aid kit, finding the angry four-inch-long "battle wound" Cas must have been referring to. It was just above the base of the wing, so close that had the enemy's aim been a little off they would have cut the skin of his back instead, and it was red and puckered in a way that meant it had been unattended for far too long. Dean sighed, knowing this was going to hurt, and reached his hand underneath the enormous appendage to pat Castiel's shoulder.
"I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, Cas – this is probably gonna hurt like a bitch. But I need you to hold your wing still, okay? I don't need you sending me flying into a wall or something while I'm trying to stitch this closed."
"Alright." Cas nodded and pulled his wing in close to his body, grabbing the outer edge as if to physically prevent it from flinching away, and straightened his posture. "I'm ready."
Dean did his best to be quick and painless, but he still saw the way Cas's entire body shuddered when he rubbed an alcohol-saturated cotton ball up and down the edges of the wound. He had thought it would be difficult to stitch through feathers, but luckily whatever had caused the injury had torn out the feathers around it too, so it was almost exactly like stitching up human skin. Castiel didn't make a sound, although he did grip onto the blanket so hard his knuckles were white, and by the time Dean finished putting in the last stitch he was visibly trembling.
"Alright, you're good," Dean said softly, watching with more than a little guilt as Castiel took a moment to bring his breathing under control – he didn't even need to breathe, so it was a little worrisome that he was in enough pain to warrant deep breathing like that – and then turned toward Dean with a curt nod.
"Thank you, Dean. It should heal very quickly now that the edges of the wound are sealed."
Even as he spoke, Dean saw the thin line of red flesh begin to glow, and before his eyes it sealed itself from one end to the other, threads of suture falling out onto the bedspread one by one until only a thin silver line, much like the one Dean had seen earlier, remained among the black pinions.
"Wow, Cas! That's… those wings are incredible, man!" And he hadn't really noticed it before, seeing as he'd been worried about his friend's welfare, but his heart was actually beating pretty hard as he stared at the soft expanse of feathers before him.
Castiel snorted, a very human sound of bitterness and disbelief, and shook his head.
"My wings are not anywhere near incredible, Dean. They are abhorrent. I was the leader of the garrison that laid siege to Hell; any angel worthy of that kind of authority should have wings as white as snow, clean and shining and straight from one pinion to the next – not black and rough and scarred. To willingly display my wings in their current state would be the equivalent of a four-star general presenting himself before all his troops in a filthy, rumpled uniform without bathing or shaving – something to be punished, not admired."
He looked away from Dean, not willing to meet his eyes anymore. "That is why I only showed you their shadows when we first met; I was afraid you would reject me as your ally if you saw how tainted I already was even back then."
"Tainted?" he spat, raising an eyebrow. "How in the hell does having some off-colored wings make you tainted? It just makes you different!"
"'Different' is not something to be proud of when you're an angel," Cas said softly, and for the first time in possibly the entire time he'd known the angel, Dean was positive he looked sad. "My wings are blackened and scarred because I wasn't competent enough to defend myself and my garrison in Hell. The fact that their lives were lost rests on my shoulders, as does the entire beginning of the Apocalypse. Fate may have chosen you to save the world, Dean, but it was my fault you were not saved in time to start with – mine and mine alone."
The angel's words were hissed between clenched teeth, almost as if they caused him physical pain, and the thought that he truly seemed to believe all of the things he was saying about himself made Dean's heart ache. Had he really been such a dick to Cas that the angel really believed Dean could hate him after all this time? After all Cas had done for them? For him?
Before he even knew what he was doing, Dean had grabbed hold of Castiel's coat and pulled him closer, crushing their lips together as he wrapped his arms around the angel's neck and shoulders. His deep blue eyes widened dramatically, and he acted like he might pull away for just an instant before giving in to it, closing his eyes and melting against the hunter as they slowly and gently explored each other's mouths.
It felt strange; Dean had never kissed a man before, and the feeling of Castiel's stubble catching on his own was unnerving, but not unpleasant. The angel's mouth tasted fresh and earthy, like mint and rainwater, and although he was obviously inexperienced with kissing, he was very willing and caught on fairly quickly, carefully imitating Dean's movements with his own tongue and warm, plush lips so well that the hunter actually moaned with pleasure himself.
When they finally broke apart, Cas's cheeks were flushed and his pupils were large, his hair messier than usual where Dean's hands had raked through it, and he tilted his head and stared at the hunter as if trying to solve some great mathematical equation.
"Dean, why did –"
"I never want to hear you say anything like that again, you understand me?" Dean cut in, gripping Castiel's wrist in both hands. "Your wings are fucking beautiful, and I don't care how girly that sounds, because it's the truth! And I don't give a damn what those winged dicks you call brothers say, you are the least tainted angel I've ever met. Now I know I'm probably not on God's Top Ten list or anything – hell, I've never even willingly been to church other than the times Pastor Jim took us – but I've read from the Bible a time or two, and it always describes angels as being servants of God and defenders of humanity, not one or the other.
"So you got some battle scars doing His work and saving me from Hell. So what? If you ask me, the fact that you were the only one of them willing to actually come down here and mingle with humans, learn about us and be our friend and even protect us from your own family, makes you a better angel than any one of them can claim to be."
Castiel smiled softly, leaning forward to embrace Dean and gently pressing his soft pink lips to the hunter's again. "Thank you, Dean. That means more to me than you know."
Dean returned the embrace and the kiss, just a little weirded out by how right it suddenly felt to be so close to each other. "Any time." He idly stroked a hand through the downy black feathers of Cas's wing, laughing when he took his hand away and the angel whined and leaned further into the touch. "Oh, and Cas?"
"Mmmh?" the angel mumbled into Dean's collarbone, too blissed-out from having his sensitive wings rubbed to come up with anything more coherent.
"We might wanna call Sam and tell him to get a separate room before he sees something he'll regret."