There is a first time for everything and if there is anyone who knows that, it's Dean Winchester. But Dean Winchester's firsts are rarely the firsts of normal people; his first kiss, his first love embarrassing and normal, just like everyone else's. The first time he had sex or drove a car, younger than he should have been, trying to prove a point to someone much older who should have known better, but still pretty normal. But his other firsts? Not so much. The first death of his parent, sad undoubtedly but not normal, his first kill, his first ghost, his first demon, the first death of his brother. The first death of his own.
His first angel.
So many firsts that he thinks nothing can surprise him anymore. But this first is different. This first is power and control and everything he feels is missing from him his whole life, this is every childhood trauma opened up before him, cleansed and washed away. Anger over loss and failure, every sliced palm from a useless spell, every bullet wound, sleepless night and nightmare laid out before him like a banquet of inadequacy and disappointment, that he no longer has to eat from. Every bad decision he ever made written on a wall in his own blood that he can choose to wash clean. The control is absolute, and he's never felt it before, this first first. No other firsts matter anymore, nothing before would matter after this. The fearful child that lives inside him holds up to him every broken toy and broken promise, and he fixes them all.
Sam is watching him and Dean sees him for the first time. All of Sam's firsts fall away; Sam's first tooth, gone. Sam's first step, gone. Sam's first word, all of it gone. Sam Winchester, son of John and Mary and brother of Dean is gone and now Dean sees a forceful, frightened but singularly determined man in front of him. For the first time. And Sam is still watching him, like he is experiencing his own first, which he undeniably is. The Winchester boys standing so close but terminally lost. How can one first mean the end of everything, but it does, and deep down they both know it. Sam knows this first. He's had one of his own.
But Dean is glowing. He is enveloped in warmth and power, the universe shrinking down and all its energy concentrated into the very atoms of his being, his blood burning as it courses through him. There is nothing to say, he can't talk anyway, his voice is lost in the galaxies pulsing through his veins. Every part of him feels like creation and destruction, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega colliding and collapsing and reforming. He feels his body moving in ways it's never moved before. Another first. He stands like it's the first time he's ever stood by himself, he lifts his head, he throws his shoulders back and all the firsts he has ever felt merge and erupt into a crescendo of sound and light. And the world stops for one fleeting moment, there is no room in this existence for another first, none can rival this. And the world, and Dean and Sam Winchester will remember this first.
The first time Dean Winchester unfurls his wings.