Kintsugi

by A Deed Without a Name

At a certain stage in courtship rituals involving at least one angel, they're expected to show their partner their wings. Lucifer and Dean reached that stage months ago. After all the damage Lucifer has taken, though, he can't bring himself to display his wings. Not without encouragement, at least. WARNING: Contains Ducifer, wing!kink, fluffy, and loads of headcanon

Kintsugi (noun): To repair with gold; the [Japanese] art of repairing metal [or pottery] with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.

Have an AU S12 (no British assholes, woo!), tons of headcanon, and some Ducifer. Because I felt like writing something fluffy and happy, and because Ducifer is a rarepair that deserves some attention.

Also, this fic is dedicated to the wonderful decemberdove, who edited Home is Where the Heart is so diligently for me. I do believe we discussed this concept (the wing thing) at some point in the distant past.

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If somebody'd told Dean, when he was twenty-eight, that he'd be dating the Devil himself within ten years, he would've laughed in their face.

Mostly because he didn't think that he'd known the Devil was a real thing back then. That'd been before angels (and one angel in particular) had started popping into his life on a regular basis, so he hadn't put much stock in Biblical stuff. He'd known about demons, and that was pretty much it. And Hell, of course.

Come to think of it, he'd been kinda preoccupied with the whole crossroads deal thing when he was twenty-eight, hadn't he? He'd just taken it for granted he wouldn't be around in a year, much less ten. He definitely hadn't been thinking about who - or what - he might be in a relationship with by then.

At twenty-eight, he probably would've laughed no matter what somebody told him about his life now. Things had changed, to say the least. Back in the day, Dean would've been skeptical about him and Sam finding a permanent home, especially considering that that home was a massive underground bunker chock-full of lore and supplies. Never mind the other stuff; he would've flat-out rejected it. God and His sister deciding to spend most of their free time in a few of the bunker's spare rooms after talking through their differences? His mother coming back to life? Not one, but two angels coming home to roost with them - and one taking an interest in him? The King of Hell dropping in whenever he felt like it?

Yeah. Ridiculous.

And that last one was just annoying. He had to remember to check the bunker's warding one of these days, so that he could try and figure out how Crowley kept getting in.

Things were good, though. Weird, but good. Definitely way better than they'd been when Dean was twenty-eight, though he wouldn't exactly call that a high bar.

He was getting to know his mom, for one. And she was awesome. Kinda rattled about suddenly living with her adult (hunter) sons, two angels, and a pair of all-powerful deities more than thirty years after she remembered herself dying, but she was adjusting. He was glad she was here.

Things were awkward with Chuck, and really awkward with Amara. Just how the hell were you supposed to relate to gods? Especially ones that were, unsurprisingly, just as petty and unstable as people? At least all Dean's freaky, complicated feelings for Amara seemed to have eased off. And he guessed he didn't come into contact with either of them all that often, since they seemed way more interested in spending time with each other. Weird as it was, he saw a lot of himself and Sam in the two of them.

Speaking of Sam. Dean was pretty sure he hadn't seen him this happy in years. He had plenty of free time to read and geek out to his heart's content, and he'd even talked about going back to school. Dean hung out with him plenty, glad to be able to do normal things with his brother like watching TV and going to see movies. Not that they'd stopped hunting. They went out whenever they found a case, and sometimes Mom or Castiel or both went with them.

Castiel seemed fine, too. Fantastic, actually. He still wasn't back up to full Grace power, might never would be, but to Dean it looked like he'd found a comfortable balance between human and angel. He hunted solo a lot, liking to help people. Dean was happy to have him around when he was in the bunker - it was nice to do normal stuff with him, too. Him and Sam had gotten pretty close lately. Turned out he liked a lot of the same nerdy stuff that Sam did.

Crowley, again, was annoying. Seeing as he was back in charge of legions of demons and soul collecting and Hell itself, you'd think he'd have better things to do than pop into the bunker at the worst possible times. Apparently not, though. Dean was tempted to ask Chuck or Amara to just erase him from existence, but he wasn't clear on the etiquette for that kinda thing, and they seemed okay with letting the infernal monarchy stand for now. He guessed he couldn't blame them; things were organized, at least. Plus, he suspected that Amara might see Crowley as some sort of father figure. Not that he'd ever say anything about that. Him accusing somebody of having daddy issues would be a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.

And then there was Lucifer. Somehow both the best and the weirdest part of all this new stuff Dean had found himself in the middle of.

After Amara had forced him out of the body he'd been sharing with Castiel, he'd found himself a new vessel to hole up in. Or not exactly a "new" vessel, Dean supposed. It was the one he'd been wearing back at the height of the apocalypse, before he'd possessed Sam and ultimately been dragged back into the Cage by him. The scruffy blonde. Sam'd once pointed out that he looked just a little bit like Jeffrey Dahmer, appropriately enough, and Dean had never been able to unsee it.

Apparently, Crowley's demons had had that body in cold storage since he'd shucked it off seven years ago. They'd cleaned it up - the festering sores that'd covered it the last time he'd seen it were gone. According to Lucifer, they'd also tempered it into the next best thing to a true vessel, so that it hold could him, or any archangel, indefinitely without the Grace burning through.

He'd never said what he'd had to promise Hell in order to get full rights to a hot commodity like that. Dean couldn't help but wonder if it had to do with why - and how - Crowley kept rearing his ugly head every couple of days.

Dean hadn't exactly been happy to see that familiar face when he opened the bunker's front door to it, a few days after Chuck and Amara had moved in. Lucifer's face, not Crowley's. There were only bad memories associated with it. It was the one that'd grinned maliciously at Dean after the Colt had failed to kill Lucifer, and when Sam, drunk on demon blood, had come to accept him. He was sure the guy standing in front of him was the one Sam had seen when he'd been grappling with his memories of the Cage. That hallucination hadn't been the real Lucifer, but it'd come from the torture that the real one'd put Sam through.

Dean had slammed the door, then locked it, then gone to check the wards and runes and spells meant to keep things like him out. And either it'd all been strong enough to stop an archangel back then or Lucifer just had better manners than Crowley, because he stayed outside. While everybody inside the bunker argued about what to do with him.

Dean, obviously, was just totally against letting him in, and no one was surprised that Sam felt exactly the same way, if not stronger. Mom sided with them. They hadn't gotten around to telling her about the apocalypse at that point, because there was so much else to catch up on first, so she didn't know all of what Lucifer had put them through. But she was their mom, and there was a seriously negative stigma attached to the name "Lucifer."

Chuck, Amara, and Castiel were for opening the door. Dean got Chuck and Amara. It was pretty much entirely their fault that Lucifer was the way he was today, Chuck's more directly than Amara's, so they felt bad. Castiel surprised Dean, though. Lucifer had made him explode once, beaten him up, and taken over his vessel and made him a prisoner inside it. He'd agreed to that last one, but he'd been under duress, and it' been a last resort. Apparently, though, he'd gotten to know Lucifer fairly well while they'd been sharing headspace. He sympathized with him. He didn't think he was dangerous.

It was three against three, so it should've been equal. But even if God, His sister, and His angel hadn't pulled rank, they were still Lucifer's father, aunt, and brother. So Lucifer got to come in.

"I've got no idea what you're doing here, and honestly, I don't give a rat's ass," Dean had said bluntly when he opened the door to the Prince of Darkness. "But if you wanna stay here, there are gonna be some rules. You stay in your goddamn room, you don't talk to anybody but your dad, and you keep the hell away from Sam and Cas. Especially Sam. I see you anywhere near either of them, I've got a holy oil Molotov with your name on it."

"Why, Dean - it almost sounds like you don't trust me," Lucifer replied, half-smiling.

"We don't need anything from you this time, so I can treat you however the hell I want. Dean turned his back on him, something he never would've felt comfortable doing if everybody else hadn't been just right inside the door. "And speaking of your dad, him and the rest of your screwed-up family are the only reason I'm not slapping an angel-banishing rune on the wall as we speak, so stow your issues and play nice."

Much to Dean's surprise, Lucifer actually followed every single one of the rules that he'd laid down for him. He hardly ever saw him out of the room he'd chosen, he didn't bother Sam, Castiel, Mom, Dean himself, or any of the visitors they occasionally had (mostly hunters seeking advice and cautious angels wanting to consult their decidedly-retired father about the management of Heaven), and he didn't pick any major end-of-the-world fights with Chuck. It was clear that the little heart-to-heart Sam and Dean had forced them to have the last time they'd been living in the bunker together hadn't healed any of Lucifer's wounds, though. Dean was pretty sure that Chuck put out reconciliation feelers as soon as Lucifer moved in, and that Lucifer shot him down every time he tried to initiate anything. He still hated the father who'd locked him in the Cage for millions of years with all the passion and fire of a primordial sun. But at least he did it quietly.

Dean hadn't known why Lucifer had chosen to come here when he'd first shown up, but the longer he was in the bunker, the more he got it. This was the only place he thought he'd be safe, and all the beings he knew best were gathered here. He'd created the demon race, but they wouldn't've been interested in taking him back on as a leader, now that Crowley had proven he could claw his way back to the top in any situation and would punish anybody who hadn't helped him once he got there. He was an angel, but Heaven would pitch him back down to Earth the second he set foot there, if they didn't kill him or Cage him up again. He could've gone any other place on the planet, but Crowley considered him a threat and, to the angels, he was still the Adversary. Anywhere but here, he'd be in danger.

Plus, here, there was his father, even though he hated him. His aunt, even though he'd beat her back in the Beginning, capital B, and borne the Mark that'd kept her locked up. His true vessel, even though he'd jumped back into the Cage with Lucifer along for the ride. Michael's true vessel. The only brother who didn't blindly despise him. Everyone who might possibly tolerate his presence, everyone he'd once loved or at least not hated. Dean understood. And with that understanding came something he'd never thought he'd feel for the Devil: sympathy.

He'd been listening to the Stones a lot lately. Sue him.

Just because he felt sorry for the guy didn't mean he was about to let him off his leash, though. He was still Lucifer, after all. Everything he'd done was burned permanently into Dean's mind. That was why it was a shock when the person he considered the least likely to shed tears over Lucifer tried to convince him to reach out to him.

"What the hell d'you mean, talk to him?" Dean had demanded, having slid all the way to the far end of the couch in order to glare at Sam. They'd stuck the couch in his room to watch TV on, since sitting on the bed was a little weird.

"Just that," Sam replied. "Somebody needs to talk to him. I know him, probably a lot better than you do, and something's wrong. He doesn't come out of his room much, which is your fault, by the way, and when he does, he's just..." Sam trailed off, gesturing vaguely as he tried to come up with the right word and Dean silently fumed about being criticized for grounding Lucifer. "Flat. Quiet. There's no...spark."

"Okay. I just..." Dean shook his head. "How is this a problem, exactly?"

"He's not in chains in the dungeon," Sam said. "And even if he was, he came to us, specifically. He lives here now. He's dependent on us. He's our responsibility."

"We don't owe him anything," Dean argued. "Sam. D'you remember what he did to you?"

"No," Sam replied dryly. "Not much. Thank god. But he's totally powerless now, with Chuck around, and...we kinda do owe him. He helped with Amara, even if it wasn't effective. Plus, he's been on his best behavior since he got here."

"And so why've I gotta be the one to tell Satan he needs a Prozac prescription?" asked Dean, who, by now, knew better than to set himself up against Sam's oversized bleeding heart.

"Because he doesn't know Mom at all," Sam began, ticking the inhabitants of the bunker off on the fingers of one hand, "he barely knows Amara, no way is he gonna listen to Chuck, and he's got a hold on me and Cas both. He tortured me in Hell, he's related to Cas, and he's possessed both of us before. So..." He shrugged helplessly. "That just leaves you."

So Dean went to talk to Lucifer. Over beers that he conjured up for the two of them, after Dean grudgingly told him he didn't need to stay in his room all the time anymore. He didn't find out what the problem that Sam had noticed was, because Lucifer was as smooth a talker as he remembered him being. Even when he came right out and asked him directly, he danced away from a real answer. It was annoying, and made Dean start feeling like this'd been a waste of time.

Something unexpected came up, though: the Mark of Cain. Or, really, the Mark of Lucifer, since he'd been the first bearer. The only other person Dean had met who knew what it was like to carry it had been Cain himself, and they hadn't had many chances to sit down and talk. Even if they had, he hadn't been all that personable. Lucifer, though...despite himself, Dean found himself relating to him as they talked. They'd been through the same thing. He knew what it did to you. Their experiences hadn't been exactly identical, since Dean was human and Lucifer was an angel, but it evened out. If the effects hadn't hit Lucifer as hard or as early as they had Dean, he'd had it longer. God had saddled him with it as soon as Amara had been sealed away, since it was the lock and key to her prison, and he'd borne it through the Creation and his rebellion against God and the founding of Hell and the making of the first demon and the whole thing with the Garden of Eden, all the way to when Cain had traded himself for Abel. Dean was a little foggy on the timeline for all that stuff, but he was at least aware that it was a long-ass time.

"I thought it was an honor, at first," Lucifer said, staring down at the bottle his hands were wrapped around with the ghost of a smirk on his face. "And when it started doing stuff to me, I didn't know what was going on. I thought it was all me. Pretty sure He did, too. He'd made things like me before, but none of them had ever had the Mark, since it'd never occurred to him to lock his sister up before."

"When'd you figure it out?" Dean asked. At this point, he'd all but forgotten just who he was talking to.

"When I gave it to Cain," Lucifer replied. "I started seeing myself in him - I never had before, he actually reminded me a lot more of Michael to begin with - he started making some of the same choices I had. I knew what was going on then. He laughed. "I mean, not that I cared. I hated Cain. He was human. Then he was a demon, and he was more useful that way, but he disgusted me more. At least I didn't have to deal with him too much. I was busy making my Princes, and he was off building more Knights. Then he decided to play house for a while. That definitely ended well for him." He took a drink. "I guess all knowing did for me was to make me hate my father more. Which was kind of a miracle, thinking back on it. I hadn't thought it was possible to hate him any more than I already did, but once I realized I could blame him for everything..."

"Guess you could argue that He didn't know when He slapped it on you," Dean said, clearing his throat. "But He had to've figured it out 'round the same time you did, if not sooner. And he still wrote out the whole apocalypse scenario - which he couldn't even be bothered to see through, I might add - and stuck you in the Cage, even knowing it wasn't your fault."

"See? See?" Lucifer gestured at Dean with his bottle. "My thoughts exactly." He settled back in his chair, eyeing Dean over the mouth of his beer for a few seconds before declaring, "I like you, Dean."

"Great," Dean deadpanned, then drained what was left in his own bottle. Lucifer laughed. A silence that was almost comfortable passed, then Dean said, "I didn't know what I was getting into, either. All I knew was that I needed the Mark to use the First Blade, and that the First Blade was the only way to put Abaddon down for good. Which needed to happen."

"Mm. I remember Abby. I can see how she'd be a problem."

"Crowley took me to get it," Dean continued. "That shoulda been my first clue it wasn't a good idea. Then Cain tried to warn me, I guess, but I was dead-set. I thought it was the only way."

"It wasn't," Lucifer replied, "but it was one of the very few. Princes might be more powerful, but Knights are definitely way sturdier." He looked away, eyes unfocused, and put the tip of his thumb in this mouth, absentmindedly nipping at his nail. Dean noticed, with a start, that all the nails on both his hands were ragged from chewing. Could archangels have nervous habits? "I know how mad you were right afterwards, but your brother did the best thing he could've, getting rid of the Mark."

"Did he, now."

"It might sound hypocritical, coming from me," Lucifer said, looking at him, "but that thing was evil. It was a symbol of the perversion of the natural order of things, of the first act of violence, of the original betrayal between siblings. As long as it was around, history would've kept on repeating itself."

"I don't get why it had the effect it did," Dean said.

"Because we're creatures of light, Dean," Lucifer replied. "Creations of God. And the Mark was the door to the Darkness's cell. Her essence, and Her memory of what my father did to Her, leaked through and poisoned us." He picked at the wrapper on his beer bottle. "Plus, it was never meant to be traded around. Every time it passed from one person to another, it got weaker. More leaked out. Cain fell faster than I did, and you fell faster than him. If Sam had convinced you to pawn it off on another poor sap instead of just burning it off your arm, Amara might've been able to break out on her own."

"That...makes sense, I guess." Lucifer had refilled or replaced his bottle at some point, so Dean took another drink. It was good.

"So." Lucifer spun his bottle so that it rattled on the table, caught it. "I know it's gone. For good. But sometimes, I..." He hesitated, and Dean didn't get the sense that he was playing one of his usual games. This really was hard for him to say. "Can still feel it."

Ice formed in Dean's core, and it wasn't because of the cold beer he'd just swallowed. He looked away, unable to make eye contact with Lucifer, and for the first time since Amara had escaped, quietly admitted, "Me, too."

"It scarred your soul." Lucifer's voice was gentle. "Just like it scarred my Grace."

Dean was not about to literally bare his soul to Satan. So he did what he usually did with Sam or Castiel when the conversation got too heavy: he changed the subject.

"Y'know, Cas's told me that he can't really taste human food, per se," he said, then nodded to Lucifer's beer. "That good for you?"

Lucifer glanced down at it, then smiled.

"No," he said. "But I can't let you drink alone, can I?"

That evening, after the conversation had finished and Lucifer had wandered off somewhere, Sam found Dean in his room.

"So..." He leaned cautiously through the doorway. "How'd it go?"

"Awesome," Dean replied, not taking his eyes off the game he was playing on his phone. "We're best friends now. We shared a milkshake down at the drugstore, then he made me a bracelet."

There was a pause from Sam. Then an awkward "Uh..."

"What'd you expect, Sammy?" Dean put his phone down and sat up. "He's still the King of All Douchebags. I didn't find out whatever the hell it is that's bothering him - pun completely intended, by the way."

"Well, Cas said you guys were in the library talking for almost two hours."

"Shut up." Dean flopped back down against his pillows. There was another pause.

"Speaking of Cas, me and him are gonna watch a movie or something," Sam said eventually. "Wanna join us?"

"Nah - been trying to beat this level for forty-five minutes, and I'm damned if I'm gonna walk away from that kinda investment," Dean replied. "You kids have fun."

Sam left. Dean waited until he was gone, then snorted, turned his phone off, and rolled over on his stomach. Fucking Lucifer.

That wasn't the last conversation they had, though, him and the Devil. Lucifer was free to come out of his room now, and even if he didn't take advantage of that as often as Dean had been expecting him to, he could still be spotted drifting through the shadowy halls of the bunker at least a couple times a day. Which was really creepy, because his Grace shown out of his eyes in the dark. And it was red. Coming across that, half-asleep, when you got up to take a leak in the middle of the night, was enough to make a guy ruin his boxers.

The other thing about when Lucifer was out was that, if he caught sight of Dean, or could get someone who wasn't Sam or Castiel to tell him if he was in the bunker and where he was if so, he made a beeline for him. A slow, cautious, meandering beeline, which was really how most bees moved, in Dean's opinion. He seemed to think they were pals after the chat they'd had, and Dean assumed the wariness came from his awareness of how many reasons he'd given Dean over the years to try and kill him.

He probably should've nipped it in the bud the first time Lucifer sought him out, but if he was bothering him, then he was leaving Sam alone. He'd kind of expected said Sam to be less than pleased about him chumming it up with the thing that had tortured his soul into a state of insanity, but...he almost encouraged it.

"I just don't get why you want me to keep talking to him."

"You can do other stuff, too. You hang out with me and Cas all the time - hang out with Lucifer whenever we're busy."

"But he...in Hell. In the Cage. Maybe you don't remember it all, but I know you know what he did to you."

"He's not the same guy who did that anymore. Angel. Whatever." And that cryptic Dr. Phil bullshit was all Sam had to say on the matter.

So that was two reasons not to discourage Lucifer, or at least one and a half. A third was that Crowley seemed to be kind of afraid of him, so even when he was in the bunker, he steered clear of whatever area Lucifer was in. A fourth was in his ability to summon practically anything Dean asked for as long as it was relatively small, but he tried not to exploit that too much because it seemed to tire him out. And a fifth...well, it would've killed Dean to admit it out loud, but Lucifer was just damn good company.

He was funny. His sense of humor was quick, razor-sharp, and dry as a bone, a lot like Dean's own. He had issues that made Dean feel like the poster child for good emotional health in comparison, but he didn't talk about them so much that it got obnoxious. And even if his taste in entertainment didn't match up exactly with Dean's, he could at least appreciate the things Dean liked. He was fun to be around, when Dean could put all the stuff he'd put them through over the years out of his mind. The more time he spent with Lucifer, the easier it got to do that.

Before Dean knew what was happening, he was showing Lucifer his favorite movies and music and TV shows. He was taking book recommendations from him - and actually following them, which was more than he usually did for Sam. He was properly introducing him to his mother, since she was afraid of him and, honestly, who could blame her?

Dean even let Lucifer touch him, after a while. He just didn't even think about it. Their hips pressed together while they were watching something. Lucifer stood behind him and put his hands (the nails of which had started looking less chewed-on, Dean noticed) on Dean's own, guiding him while he was chopping stuff up for dinner - because apparently he, or maybe his vessel, knew how to cook. Lucifer silently gave him a backrub that might've been Grace-infused after a particularly-trying hunt, when he hadn't been able to stop complaining because nothing (not aspirin, not ice, not a heating pad, not a hot shower, not bedrest, not booze, nothing) had been able to fix whatever it was he'd done to himself. Except that. It'd put him right to sleep, too.

Months passed. Things were great. Dean felt more comfortable than he ever would've dreamed was possible with Lucifer, even granting him the prestigious title of "best friend after Cas" in a conversation with Mom, who then dryly remarked that that title would be even more prestigious if Dean had more friends than Lucifer and Castiel. He started seeking Lucifer out, rather than waiting to be found by him. Sometimes he dreamed about him. But Dean refused to acknowledge the cold, hard fact that he was head over heels for Satan until he and Lucifer started hunting together.

He still hunted with Sam and Castiel all the time. And Mom. But there was a lot of hunting to be done, even in these quiet times. Monsters got cocky, they bred, their populations grew and they went off the reservation. They needed all hands on deck sometimes, and Lucifer's hands were very useful.

Dean had been getting the sense for a while now that Lucifer was tired of being cooped up in the bunker. It probably seemed huge to something (who was he kidding? Lucifer was a someone), used to the cramped confines of the Cage, but Lucifer was also a creature of the sky. He was really reluctant to leave, though. Dean got that, with how much practically the entire universe hated him. So in order to officially get Lucifer on his roster of hunting partners, Dean found himself in the unique position of promising an archangel that he'd protect him.

They didn't go all that far from the bunker the first time, and it was just a ghost case. As Lucifer got more confident, they took on bigger, badder hunts in more distant locations. Nobody besides the things they were hunting bothered them. Dean liked to flatter himself by assuming that no angel, demon, or human hunter wanted to go through him to get at Lucifer, but it was more likely that Chuck had somehow gotten the word out that his one-time favorite child was back under his divine protection.

A hunt eventually rolled around, like it always did, where Dean got hurt. Maybe he'd gotten cocky, maybe the monster had gotten lucky, maybe he'd just been a little off his game that night. The main point was that he'd gotten injured. Pretty badly, actually. To the point where he might've been in some real trouble if he'd been hunting with Sam or Mom instead of one of their angels.

He blacked out when the blow caught him. When he came to less than a minute later, the wound and all the blood that had gushed out of it were gone. So was the monster. And Lucifer had his arms around him, hugging Dean like he was a life preserver and they were out in the middle of the ocean. They were close enough that Dean could feel him shaking slightly. So slightly, in fact, that it might've just been Dean's imagination.

"Uh, Luc?" Dean had unconsciously come up with the nickname a while ago. Uncomfortable, he patted Lucifer's back. "Buddy? What're you doing?"

Lucifer immediately released him, sitting back so they could see each other. He regarded Dean seriously and without any hint of embarrassment. Not as far as he could tell in the dim light of the dirty warehouse they were in, at least. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Dean replied. "Of course. Seems like you healed me up real good." He experimentally rubbed the side of his neck, where the flesh had been torn wide open. Good as new. "Seriously, though." He was tempted to ignore the hug, like he did most awkward or complicated things. But something in him wouldn't allow that. "Why were you...holding me like that?"

Lucifer took in a breath, then blew it loudly out, a show Dean knew was for him. He looked away, eyes glowing faintly scarlet. Dean wasn't sure when that'd stopped being creepy to him.

"Dean," he began, slowly. "Over the course of my long, long, long, long life...I've lost everything. My brothers and sisters. Michael. My father's love. My freedom. My shot at ruling the world. The respect of my demons." He looked at him again, and it seemed to Dean like his eyes were glowing brighter than was typical for this amount of light. "I don't think I could handle it if I wound up losing you, too."

Dean blinked at him, not sure how to respond to that or even how to feel about it. The warmth pooling in his stomach was, he was sure, unrelated. He opened his mouth for no particular reason. It was a surprise to him when something came out: "Well, I don't plan on going anywhere."

Lucifer slowly closed his eyes, shutting off the glow. Then the hug started back up again, and this time, Dean didn't ask about it.

That night, they had sex for the first time. For Dean, it was a rediscovery of certain long-forgotten areas of his body and the feelings they could produce. Guys were a rare treat for him. When he started feeling an itch he couldn't scratch by himself, he usually zeroed in on a woman. It was actually kinda refreshing, being with another man for the first time in years.

Not that he was only interested in Lucifer because he was in a male vessel, and not that physical attraction to that vessel made up a large portion of what Dean was feeling. In his experience, angels were basically genderless, so Lucifer wasn't really a dude and could just have easily wound up inside a woman. An ugly woman, even. Dean would've wanted him anyway. As he told Lucifer once they were finished, he'd fallen for him. Hard.

They wrapped up the hunt pretty quick after that, and even had enough time to do it twice more before heading home. Coming into the bunker with the strap of his duffel bag slung over one shoulder, Dean was walking on clouds and beaming like an idiot. Both the clouds and the smile vanished when he noticed Chuck waiting for him in the hallway that led to his room.

"Hey, Dean," Chuck greeted casually, pushing off the wall he'd been leaning against and approaching him with his hands in the pockets of his jeans. "Could I have a word?"

"If this is the 'get your hands off my daughter' talk," Dean replied, slowing to a stop, "I've heard it before, and I'm not totally sure you've got the right to be giving it."

"Uh, no." Chuck shook his head. "It's not that."

"Is it the 'break her heart and I'll make you regret it' one, then?" Dean asked. "Because ditto." He was aware that this was thin ice he was skating on here. Chuck could literally snap his fingers and make it so that he'd never been born, which was why Dean usually tried not to get too sassy with him. Maybe the whole thing with Lucifer had fried his brain.

"Yeah, I've got no doubt you've heard both of those before," Chuck replied, a touch of dryness to his tone as he looked down at his feet. "And...I've got no doubt that you're correct about me having no right to give them."

Dean shifted his weight and adjusted the strap of his duffel bag on his shoulder, putting his free hand on his hip. Sounded like he might want to hear this after all.

"He's not gonna like me meddling," Chuck continued, "but I can't help myself. I need to make sure that you understand how carefully you need to handle him."

"You're talking about Lucifer?" Dean asked, just to make sure they were on the same page. When Chuck nodded, he said, "I'll treat him right." He was proud of himself for managing not to add Unlike you did.

"I don't think you get it," Chuck said, moving to block Dean's path again when he tried to walk past him and get to his room. "Lucifer is - damaged goods."

"Wow," Dean said, all the budding respect that'd cropped up for Chuck when he'd admitted he had no parental right to Lucifer shriveling up and dying. "And I don't care. So am I - we match."

"That came out wrong." Chuck kept pace with Dean, walking backwards in front of him when he started moving again.

"I'll say," Dean agreed.

"Just, please - listen to me." Chuck must've seen something in Dean's eyes or face to make him think that that wasn't going to happen, because he snapped his fingers, making Dean tense in anticipation, and, suddenly, they were in a bar. Or maybe a restaurant. Whatever it was, it was generic, empty, and made Dean really uncomfortable. It only took him a second to figure out why: there were no windows or doors that he could see.

"What the f - where the hell are we?" Dean stumbled back a few steps from Chuck, looking wildly around and accidentally dropping his duffel. It'd been a few years since he'd been teleported, so this came as something of a shock.

"Let's just call it my...thinking space." Chuck slid into one of the booths and gave Dean a smile, calm as could be. "It's a pocket dimension. I pinched reality, and filled the pinch with this." He spread his arms to indicate what Dean had decided was definitely a bar. "Funny story. I was going to ride out my sister's wrath in here, while she, y'know, destroyed all of Creation, until Metatron - "

"This ain't making me like you any more," Dean cut in. And there he went again. He needed to try a lot harder to watch his smart mouth around God.

Chuck raised his hands, dipping his head in acknowledgement. "Fair enough. What I was going to say is I don't use this place so much anymore, so I figured I'd dust it off and we could have a private conversation here."

"About Lucifer."

"About Lucifer," Chuck confirmed. "So take a seat." He gestured to the booth across from himself. Dean figured he didn't have much of a choice - he was sure he couldn't leave without Chuck zapping him out. So he sat.

"So what's so important for you to tell me about dating Luc?" Dean asked.

"Courting," Chuck corrected. "Not dating. He's an angel, so - did you just call him 'Luke'?" He smiled. "That's adorable."

"Can we please try and stay on topic here?" Dean just wanted to get this over with as soon as possible. And as soon as it was over with, Dean was going to track down Lucifer and bitch to him about what an overbearing weirdo his dad was. He was positive he'd be sympathetic.

"Right, right. Sorry." Chuck folded his hands on the table in front of him, looking at Dean seriously. "Lucifer has...perhaps, been through the most pain and suffering of any being currently still active and in existence, and I take full responsibility for my hand in that. He had to endure being poisoned by the Mark, fighting a war against me and almost every other angel in Heaven, losing that war, being cast out of Heaven, falling from grace. Being hunted to the ends of the universe. Being trapped in Hell."

"I know all that. He's told me all that. What's your point?"

"My point is that Lucifer hasn't taken a mate since Michael," Chuck replied. "And since Amara and I made up, and didn't put him back in the Cage, he's lost every purpose he might've had before - you probably noticed how mopey he was when he first got here. So you need every pair of kid gloves you've got on when you're dealing with him."

Dean was quiet for a minute, staring down at the table and thinking that over. He hadn't known that Lucifer and Michael were "mates," but if that was true, it said a lot as to why Lucifer'd been out of the dating pool since then. Dean could only imagine how difficult it'd be to get past the kind of betrayal that Michael had inflicted on Lucifer. After all, they weren't just mates, they were -

"Wait a minute," Dean blurted, head jerking up. "Aren't they - weren't they brothers?"

"Oh, calm down, it's not nearly as big a deal for them as it is for you guys," Chuck scoffed, waving a hand. "Plus, you don't have a leg to stand on. I think you know what I'm talking about."

"Wh - "

"Anyway," Chuck continued forcefully. Dean glared, affronted, confused, and uncomfortable. "It's especially momentous because he's decided to court a human. Your race was the focal point for his entire rebellion." He shrugged. "Granted, because of the Mark, he had to hate something, but still." He sighed. "No matter what, this'll be rough on him. Especially with his poor wings."

"What's wrong with his wings?" Dean asked.

"You haven't seen them yet?" Chuck looked faintly surprised, then shook his head. "Never mind. None of my business. I guess what I'm trying to say is, even though I royally screwed up with Lucifer, even though I know he doesn't want me meddling and I know I don't deserve to...I'm gonna ask you to please treat my boy right. Please."

"I will." Dean had no trouble agreeing to that, since it was something he'd already been going to do.

"Promise?" Chuck asked him.

"Yeah, I promise."

"Good." Chuck sat back, looking satisfied. "I'm gonna hold you to that, you know."

Before Dean could reply to that, Chuck snapped his fingers, and he was in his room. Alone except for his duffel bag, which was back on his shoulder. He took a second for the disorientation to wear off, then dumped the bag on the bed and went to find Lucifer. He wasn't pleased when he heard about the conversation that his father had had with, apparently, the man he was courting. In fact, he was so un-pleased about it that, for the first time since he'd arrived at the bunker, he sought out Chuck to talk to him.

"You better hope you didn't just re-trigger the apocalypse," Sam said when Dean went to catch up him and Castiel. As usual, they were together, which made his life easier.

"Well, you set it off the first time," Dean replied. "So if I did, then that just makes us even."

Thankfully, Lucifer and Chuck didn't wind up trying to kill each other. Actually, when Lucifer came back to Dean's room (where he basically lived now) after a couple hours, he looked less angry than he had when he'd left. Much less angry. He was vague on what, exactly, had passed between him and his father, but their relationship seemed less strained from that point onward than it had before. Not that that was saying a whole lot.

So Dean and Lucifer's courtship proceeded. It was totally different from every relationship Dean had ever been in before, because it was an official one with an angel. An archangel, no less. There were all sorts of rules that Lucifer felt compelled to follow, and Dean had to humor him if he didn't want to risk a major argument. Most of the steps he had to take were pretty easy to humor, fortunately.

First of all, there was the announcement of their courtship. If things'd been normal, that announcement would've been delivered to every angel in Heaven, but things'd pretty much never been normal for either of them. So they just told everybody in the bunker. Sam, Castiel, Chuck, Amara, Mom, and Crowley, who happened to be skulking around in there at the time. After they cornered him to appease Lucifer's instincts, he snidely promised to send them flowers before teleporting away. And he actually did: a bouquet of weird purple lily-things arrived a week later.

"So they're konjac flowers," Lucifer said, leaning over an open book on botany that they had found in the bunker's library. He hadn't recognized them, either, and neither of them had felt like asking Chuck, who undoubtedly would have known. "Also called voodoo lilies or...devil's tongue."

"Oh, wow. That's real cute."

The next step would've been to get God's blessing and permission, which they'd already done. Then establishing a nesting space - also already done, it was Dean's room and, more generally, the bunker as a whole. Then exchanging gifts. Lucifer did much better on that one than Dean did, but apparently he was actually supposed to, so Dean didn't feel quite as bad as he might've otherwise. And, of course, there was plenty of sex before, during, and after each and every step.

All of that brought Dean up to where he was now. Where things, as previously mentioned, were weird, but good. At least until very, very recently, when they'd just gone back to being weird. The courtship had sort of...stalled out a while back. It'd happened quietly, and with Dean knowing as little as he did about how angels mated, he wasn't totally sure it hadn't been intentional on Lucifer's part. That and the fact that it didn't seem to be bothering him had led to Dean keeping his mouth shut. Then, as of a few days ago, he'd started getting irritable.

He'd literally teleported out of Dean's arms when he'd snuggled up close to him on what was now their bed while they were watching a movie, feeling frisky and wanting to start something. There'd been a rustling of feathers, Dean had gotten a faceful of wind that smelled vaguely ashy, and then he was left staring, stunned, at where Lucifer had pressed himself against the wall on the opposite side of the room. Lucifer glared back, a hint of red light in his eyes.

"Don't. Touch. Me," he hissed. Literally hissed. There seemed to be a lot of snake in him; maybe that was why he'd chosen to enter Eden as one.

"Uh." Dean slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position, not taking his puzzled gaze off Lucifer. "Okay..." His instincts warned him that now was not the time for a stupid joke, but that'd rarely stopped him before. "Whatsamatter? Is it your time of the month?"

That failed to lighten the mood. It brought Lucifer back to the bed, but not in the way Dean had wanted. He loomed over him, eyes fully crimson now and a subtle but not at all pleasant light seeming to ooze from every pore in his body. Dean was forcibly reminded, all of a sudden, that demons were made when a human soul went through unspeakable torture, and that Lucifer had created the very first and very worst of them.

"What's the matter with you?" he challenged, voice low. "Do you really need your brains screwed out every few hours that badly? If you suck so much at controlling yourself, maybe you'd be better off with another filthy monkey than an archangel. At least you wouldn't have to work so hard then."

Ouch. Dean stared up at him, unblinking. It'd been ages since Lucifer had talked to him like that. In fact, maybe he never had, even though other angels had never seen a problem with it.

Lucifer seemed to realize he'd crossed a line, because his eyes started to soften. He abruptly turned around and headed for the door before it could get too far, though. Dean climbed off the bed and followed him.

"Luc." He kept his voice soft, concerned. This was so out of character for him as he'd been lately that something had to've triggered it. "What's wrong?"

Lucifer stopped. Encouraged, Dean reached for one of his shoulders, but shrank back when he flatly said, "Lay a hand on me and I'll roast you alive from the inside out, then feed you to your family."

He probably couldn't do that, with Chuck around. But because of the faint possibility that he could, Dean let him go without another word.

He just kept on being prickly after that incident. It didn't take Dean long to draw a connection between that and what had happened to their courtships, since nothing else had changed. It was too much of a coincidence for that not to be the cause.

Once he'd figured it out, Dean had a few different options. He could try talking to Lucifer directly, which was what Sam suggested when Dean mentioned the issue to him, but he knew him well enough to be aware that he wouldn't get anywhere with him unless he went the conversation already knowing what the specific problem was. There wasn't any information on angelic courtship rituals online or in the bunker's library; he'd checked thoroughly early on. Lucifer seemed to be getting pretty close to Amara these days, the two of them bonding over having been imprisoned by God for an eternity, but Dean doubted that she knew much about angels. Chuck, of course, would've been able to answer his questions, but the idea of asking Lucifer's dad for advice on how to get him back in the sack just grossed Dean out. So that left Castiel.

Dean went looking for him in Sam's room, since it seemed like that was where he spent most of his time while he was in the bunker. Sam was gone today - he and Mom had headed out on a supply run - but Castiel was still in his room. On his bed, reading a book with an expression of intense concentration on his face. Dean tilted his head in order to get a look at the title as he came in. A Clash of Kings. So Sam'd gotten him into that, obviously.

"Hello, Dean," Castiel greeted in his gravelly voice, setting his book aside and glancing over at Dean. "What can I do for you?"

"I've got...a question," Dean said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "About Lucifer." They'd been together for months, and it'd been well over a year since Lucifer had last been a legitimate threat, but it was still so weird to talk about him in such normal terms. As a boyfriend.

"Right. Of course." Castiel swung his legs over the side of Sam's bed so that he and Dean were facing each other. "I was wondering when you were going to come and talk to me about that."

"Wait, you knew?" Dean was fully aware that the bunker's community was a small, close-knit one, but it'd still somehow slipped his mind that other people might've noticed what was going on with him and Lucifer. "How come you didn't come and talk to me, then?"

"I would've, if you'd been claimed by an angel at or below my rank," Castiel replied. "Or even one above it by a certain degree. A Grigori, for example, or a Virtue - not that there are any of either of those left, as far as I know." Castiel looked up at Dean, then stood and gestured for him to follow him over to the couch. "But it's not my place to interfere with an archangel's courtship. Especially one of the two Greater Archangels."

"Okay," Dean admitted as they sat down on the couch together. "You lost me." It wasn't directly related to him and Lucifer, but he was curious anyway. Dean really didn't know much about angelic hierarchy. There wasn't a lot of information on it out there, and Lucifer didn't like to talk about his brethren.

"There were four archangels, to begin with," Castiel said, sounding like he was rattling off something he'd memorized for a class. "Michael and Lucifer were the two Greater, Raphael and Gabriel were the two Lesser."

"What was the difference?"

"Power level, duties, abilities," Castiel replied. "And physiology. Every angel below archangel - seraph, like me, cherub, scribe - has one pair of wings. Gabriel and Raphael had two. Michael and Lucifer both have three."

"So...six wings." That was kinda weird, but Dean decided he didn't really care. Not like he'd ever see them, beyond shadows cast by Grace-light or lightning. "Okay. Thanks for the angel-ology lesson, but let's get back to what's wrong with Lucifer now."

"Actually, Lucifer's wings have a lot to do with what's wrong with him," Castiel replied. Dean's puzzlement at that must've come through on his face, because Castiel cleared his throat and elaborated. "No matter what caste an angel belongs to, when they choose a mate, they'll reach a point in their courtship where they display their wings to their mate. An angel's wings are the most important and vulnerable part of us, so it's an act of trust and faith. Plus they're also our main erogenous zone." Castiel said that last part really, really fast, coughing when he was done. Dean almost asked him to repeat it, but he could just ask Lucifer about it once he'd patched up the rift between them. "This step is, of course, difficult to complete if an angel's wings are damaged or missing."

"Chuck mentioned something to me about Lucifer's wings," Dean said. He put his elbow on the arm of the couch and chewed thoughtfully on his thumbnail. "But aren't pretty much all you guys missing your wings right now? After Metatron closed up Heaven and threw everybody out?"

"Not exactly," Castiel replied. "Go - Chuck gave them back to us as sort of an...apology present, I suppose, but they were fledgling-sized. They have to grow. It'll be much faster than it was the first time, but..." Castiel twisted his head to glance ruefully over his shoulder, presumably looking at those baby-wings. Which, of course, Dean couldn't see. "It'll still be at least two years before I'm in any condition to start courting who I've chosen."

That immediately piqued Dean's interest. He felt like he was still pretty close to Castiel, despite all the time that he'd been spending with Lucifer, and he hadn't seemed interested in anyone at all to him. He hadn't even responded to Dean's efforts to play wingman on their shared hunts, when they ran into pretty waitresses and witnesses. Which would make sense if he really did have a crush.

"You wanna court somebody?" Dean asked, taking his nail out of his mouth and grinning at Castiel. He scooted closer to him on the couch. "I'm gonna assume it's somebody I know."

"Well, yes." Castiel looked uncomfortable.

"Then who is it?" Dean asked.

"I'd rather not say until it's official," Castiel replied, squinting. "It's not exactly conventional."

"Neither are me and Lucifer," Dean pointed out.

"But my choice is - well, they're an abomination."

Dean sat back, leaving Castiel alone for a second as he flipped through his mental Rolodex. Eventually, he shook his head and stated, "That seriously describes so many people we know. And things."

"Mm."

"Wanna narrow it down a little for me?"

"Didn't you come here to talk about Lucifer?" Castiel basically demanded.

"Yeah." Dean took the not-so-subtle hint and pulled his nose out of Castiel's own personal beeswax. He'd find out who he was into sooner or later anyway. "He's still got his wings. He teleports all the time - and that's what you guys use 'em for, right? How come he hasn't shown them to me?"

"All three sets of Lucifer's wings are still present," Castiel acknowledged, "but he fought a war. A long, violent war. After losing, he was tortured. Then he fell. When he was forced into the Cage, he did not go quietly. And then he was alone there, with nothing but demons for company and no reason to care for himself."

"He's scarred," Dean realized quietly.

"Heavily," Castiel confirmed. "Both his wings and his Grace have taken a lot of damage over the years - his wings moreso. I've got no way of knowing exactly what Lucifer is thinking or feeling right now, but if I had to guess...I'd say he's ashamed. No one's seen his wings up close since he left Michael, and that was before everything happened to them. He's probably afraid that..." Castiel hesitated. "If he lets you see how broken he is, you won't find him attractive. You'll no longer think he's mate material. You'll abandon him, like everyone else has."

Dean blinked, momentarily lost for words. Something about that prompted Castiel to add, "I did have the opportunity to gain a greater understanding of Lucifer recently, when he possessed my vessel. He's much more fragile than you would imagine."

"Can't Chuck heal him?" Dean asked. "I mean, he gave you and all the other angels a brand-new pair of wings. Hell - he's brought you specifically back to life more than once."

"...I don't know if he could or not," Castiel admitted. "Chuck can still exert some power over Lucifer, but he became a lot like Amara when he rebelled, in that he no longer had total control over him - other angels had to put Lucifer in the Cage. And even if Chuck could affect him enough to heal his wings, I doubt Lucifer would want him to." Castiel looked down at his own hands. "It may not seem like it, but he carries a lot of guilt for everything he's done. He sees those scars and the pain they cause him as his cross to bear. So to speak."

Dean blew out a deep breath, rubbing a hand over his face. "Sounds like you know him way better than I do, Cas."

"He is my brother," Castiel pointed out, almost apologetically. "I'm sure you know Sam better than I do. And I think I already brought up that Lucifer and I also shared a body for several months." He cleared his throat and lowered his voice. "But you've been one with him, too. In a very different sense. You know him in a way I never will. And because of that, you're the only one who can convince him to continue your courtship."

"I don't know what to say to him, though," Dean admitted. "I mean - I've been full-frontal with him tons of times." He wouldn't usually get this graphic with Castiel, but he was the one who'd brought up Dean and Lucifer having sex. "He's seen all my scars. And I've got a lot." He pulled up his shirt for emphasis, exposing the pale, freckled skin of his stomach and chest. It'd been marked too many times to count since Castiel had pulled him out of Hell, by claws, fangs, spines, quills, knives, bullets, thorns, rocks, asphalt, broken glass, acid, fire, and everything else he couldn't remember right now.

"But you're human," Castiel replied. "By definition, you're imperfect. Vulnerable. Lucifer's an angel. A fallen one, but still an angel." He quirked an eyebrow. "I could put it another way, too. Would you be comfortable being so 'full-frontal' with Lucifer if that - " He nodded to Dean's groin. " - had been mutilated?"

Dean was quiet. That did indeed put it in a new light for him. He remembered what Castiel had said about angels' wings being erogenous zones, and his own long-held assumption that angels were sexless in their true forms. Maybe wings were as close as angels got to actual junk. If that were the case...he and Lucifer hadn't really had sex yet, from Lucifer's perspective.

"I get it now," Dean told Castiel quietly, after working all that out. "Thanks." He stood up. "I'm gonna go...talk to Lucifer."

"Be gentle," Castiel instructed. "I'm sure that goes against your every instinct when it comes to him - but you wouldn't even be with him in the first place if you couldn't go against your instincts."

Dean left Sam's room, but didn't go looking for Lucifer right away. From what Castiel had said and the understanding that he'd come to on his own, he was going to have to demonstrate to Lucifer how much he cared about him. He needed to make him feel loved, to show him that he'd find him attractive no matter what, to get him to understand that Dean couldn't care less what state his wings were in. So Dean did something he'd never done before: he tried to be romantic.

Maybe he'd done it a few times before. Like when he'd been with Lisa, and a few other girls. But all of those relationships had ended years and years ago, so he was rusty as hell. He wasn't sure that any of his ideas were good ones, and there was no guarantee that Lucifer would even appreciate his efforts. Maybe it'd just piss him off even more. But Dean was determined to at least try.

He dug up candles. A lot of candles. He found plain white ones in one of the bunker's storerooms, alongside tiny ones in jars and little tins. Like you'd put in a jack o'lantern. He managed to rustle up some bigger, richly-colored decorative candles in some of the unused bedrooms, and there was a really old scented candle at the very top of one of the kitchen cabinets. The label said it was supposed to smell like pine, but Dean couldn't pick up anything like that when he opened the lid. He knew for a fact that there were more scented candles in Mom's room, and probably Sam's, too, but he didn't feel like stealing those.

Lucifer liked flowers, didn't he? He'd been interested enough in the ugly ones that Crowley had sent to look their species up in the library. And he'd diligently taken care of the Venus flytrap that Dean had gotten him (thinking it was cool and also kind of reminded of Lucifer himself by it) during the gift-giving phase. The flytrap wasn't exactly a flower, but Dean went outside the bunker to pick wildflowers anyway. There were some purple ones and some yellow ones and some white ones - none of them were useful in spells or signs of the presence of certain creatures and spirits, so he didn't know their names. He gathered a good-sized bunch, then plopped them in a mason jar full of water on his bedside table.

The last touch he could think of was to get out the bottle of three-hundred-year-old Scotch that Lucifer had given him - again, during the gift-giving phase. Apparently, its sealed cask had gone down with a ship that had sunk back in the 1700s. Lucifer had found it on the seafloor and bottled it himself. So it didn't have a label. Dean set the old-fashioned-looking glass bottle on his desk with two tumblers. Drinking wasn't anywhere near as enjoyable for Lucifer as it was for him, but it was all about the thought behind the gesture. Behind all the gestures.

After lighting all the candles and making sure their flames couldn't reach anything flammable, Dean checked the bunker for Crowley, not wanting even the possibility of an interruption. He called Sam and asked him and Mom to stay out for a few more hours. He left Castiel where he was, not worried about him and not willing to kick him out right after he'd helped him. Chuck and Amara...he couldn't do anything about them. So he just ignored them and hoped they wouldn't interfere. With all that accomplished, he went and looked for Lucifer.

He found him in one of the armories. They had two, and Sam had speculated that this one - with its badass-but-not-super-practical weapons all over the walls and in glass cases - had been intended to show off, while the other, more boring one was for actual use. They'd deemed only a few official Men of Letters weapons usable back when they'd first moved in, and none of them had come out of this armory. Lucifer was looking at one that hadn't made the cut when Dean walked in: a huge two-handed sword, shiny silver metal all over, hanging point-down on the wall by its narrow quillons.

Lucifer glanced over his shoulder as Dean approached him. He'd probably known he was coming when he was still three hallways away, and the fact that he hadn't teleported off was encouraging. So was the expression on his face. Looked like he was in one of his rare good moods right now.

"This is an angelic weapon," Lucifer commented as soon as Dean was within hearing distance, gesturing to the sword.

"That'd explain why I couldn't budge it so much as an inch when I tried to lift it off the wall," Dean replied, coming to a stop next to him with his hands in his pockets. They both stared up at the sword for a second, then Dean looked at Lucifer. "I...listen, I've gotta talk to you."

Lucifer sighed, putting a hand to his face and rubbing. "I'm sorry, Dean." When he dropped that hand, he looked tired. "I know I've been a dick lately. How I've been acting isn't fair to you - especially after everything you've done for me." He turned towards Dean. "I mean, it's not like you did anything wrong, and it's not your fault, and there's nothing you can do to - "

"Maybe there is something I can do to fix it, though," Dean interrupted. He stepped closer to Lucifer, put both hands on his shoulders. He didn't think twice about touching him. "You've gotta show me your wings first, though."

Lucifer's face didn't change when Dean said that, but just about every other muscle in his vessel tensed. Dean felt it under his hands. He swallowed, and waited.

Eventually, Lucifer tilted his head, birdlike. Dean had seen Castiel make the same gesture; must be an angel thing. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Dean had expected him to deny it, but he'd also expected the denial to be a lot more believable. He was the Father of Lies, after all.

"I went and talked to Cas," Dean said. "Since you obviously weren't gonna tell me what was up with you." A bit of the frustration he'd been feeling lately leaked into his voice, which he supposed he was okay with. "It's time for me to see 'em. Has been for a long time, according to him."

"So did he also tell you why I've been putting it off?" Lucifer's voice was tight, and Dean hoped he hadn't just made up his mind to explode Castiel. Again. Maybe he should've said that Chuck was the one who'd told him about his wings.

"He did," Dean confirmed. "Didn't go into detail or anything, but he gave me the gist." He took a half-step closer to Lucifer, tentatively. He stayed put. "I don't care, though. I'm not an angel - it's not a big deal to me."

"So you don't understand why it's such a big deal for me," Lucifer surmised. He felt like he was made of rock, where Dean was touching him.

"That's not it at all," Dean said, immediately shaking his head. He supposed that this was going about as well as he could've expected it to. "I do understand. Much as I can, at least. I know exactly how important this is to you, and that we can't move forward 'til you do it." He attempted a smile. "Plus, I get how hard it is for you. Easy enough to figure all that out just from how you've been acting recently."

Lucifer didn't respond at first, looking away from Dean. The eyes of his vessel were aimed at the big angel sword on the wall, but the faraway look in them told Dean that he wasn't seeing it. Eventually, he rolled his shoulders, and Dean let his hands fall off of them.

"This is my problem," Lucifer said. "Only mine. Cas had no right to tell you about my wings."

"Well, according to him, he did. Since I went and asked him myself," Dean replied. "He's your family, and - jeez, Luc, the two of you shared a body for months. He knows pretty much everything about you, and he wants to help you." Lucifer looked unmoved, which brought Dean's frustration back to the surface. "Were you planning on telling me about your wings? 'Cause I've barely even seen you since you threatened to turn me into a pot roast."

"Yes. I would've," Lucifer said. "Eventually. I just - I need more time, Dean."

"Can you stand more time?" Dean demanded. "Only been about two months since we did the present thing and didn't go onto the next step, and the way you're going, you're gonna cook everybody in the bunker before the week's out."

Lucifer didn't say anything. He just stared at Dean, hard, and folded his arms across his chest. Dean took his not having flapped off yet as a desire to be talked into this. So he kept on going.

"And even if you can stick it out 'til you feel good about yourself all on your own," Dean continued, "I'm not an angel. Pretty sure I mentioned that already. I'm pushing forty, and with all the hits I've taken over the years, I've got no idea what kinda physical shape I'm in. I can at least guarantee my liver looks like a piece of beef jerky. I don't know how long I can wait for you."

"I can heal you," Lucifer broke in, but Dean, who knew that already, just angrily shook his head.

"That's not the point, Luc," he said. "The point's that I don't wanna wait. 'Specially cause I've got no idea how long it might take you to psych yourself up." He blew out a breath, closing his eyes for a second to gather his thoughts. "I want you back now. I've missed you."

Silence. Then a weary, "I miss you, too."

"You said that this was only your problem," Dean said. "But it's not. We're courting, you chose me to be your mate. And when you did that, you made me a part of everything that goes on with you, forever. So not only is it my job to help you with this." Once again, he moved closer to Lucifer. They could kiss now if they wanted to. "It's my right."

That was basically Dean's ending point, so he was quiet after that. Lucifer studied him for around thirty seconds. Then he shut his eyes, smirking with one side of his mouth.

"You can be very convincing when you want, can't you?" he asked softly, raising a hand to touch Dean's face. Dean took that as a cue to lean in and press his lips against Lucifer's.

He was pretty sure that he'd never get used to - or tired of - the way that Lucifer tasted and felt. For starters, he was always so hot. Not "normal human being" hot - more like "steak right off the grill" or "fresh coffee" hot. And he tasted...Dean had never had lightning in his mouth before, but he imagined the flavor would be similar to that of Lucifer's tongue, which he had had in his mouth. It wasn't ozone or metal. It was just wild and primordial and set every nerve in his body to singing.

There was a hint of sulfur, presumably picked up in Hell. But it was buried by that lightning taste, and a little bit of salt and something like cinnamon. The cinnamon always reminded Dean of apple pie, even buried in the middle of all that other stuff.

Lucifer didn't resist the kiss at all. In fact, he let Dean take the lead, which was something he almost never did. They usually spent a lot more time fighting for dominance when they kissed. Dean wasn't sure if he should be alarmed or relieved by how the fight seemed to have gone out of Lucifer.

"I love you," Dean said softly after he'd brought the kiss to an end. It was the first time he'd said it out loud. "Come back to our bedroom and lemme show you how much."

Lucifer heaved a sigh. "Well, I guess I don't have anything better to do." With that declaration of unbridled enthusiasm, he put his arms loosely around Dean, and then they were back in his bedroom. Their bedroom. The flames of all the candles, still lit and still safe, shivered for a couple seconds in a wind that must have come off the wings Dean still couldn't see.

Lucifer seemed a little surprised once they were in the room, which Dean saw on his face when he stepped back from him. He looked at the candles, then the flowers, then the Scotch. Then the bed. Dean suddenly wished that he'd made it, but maybe there wouldn't've been much point in that. Whenever Lucifer was in it, he tended to kick all the covers up into a nest shape.

"Why did you do all this?" Lucifer asked eventually.

"I wanted to."

Lucifer turned to him, smiling faintly. "You keep saying you're not an angel," he said, "but, you know, decorating your nest to try and impress your mate is actually a very angelic thing to do, Dean."

"Well, did it work?" Dean wanted to know.

"I guess it did." Lucifer reached for Dean for the first time in days, and they kissed again as he pulled him close. When things started heating up after a few minutes, they went for each other's clothes. Lucifer would undress the two of them instantly with a snap of his fingers when he was feeling impatient, but today, he seemed content to do it by hand.

Mouth slightly open so that he could pant against Lucifer's, lips feeling swollen even fuller than they usually were from the archangel's teeth, Dean let his T-shirt be pulled off of him. While Lucifer's hands went to the button of his jeans, he grabbed his olive-drab button down. He tended to dress a lot like Dean did - he thought he always had, in this vessel.

Before long, Dean was down to his boxers and Lucifer was completely shirtless. Dean planted both hands on his chest and pulled away from him, breaking the kiss that they'd been in the middle of. He didn't want to do that - he felt like he was drowning in the flavor and scent and sheer presence of Lucifer, which was usually when things started getting really good. But he couldn't let either of them forget why they were doing this.

"Show me your wings," Dean said, breathing hard. Lucifer was reluctant: he stepped back, putting himself out of Dean's reach. It didn't look like a conscious movement. "It's gotta happen sooner or later, doesn't it? Wouldn't you rather get it over with?"

That wasn't completely true, Dean knew. It didn't have to happen sooner or later. Lucifer could break off their courtship, he could leave. Dean could die of old age before he saw him again. He didn't say any of that out loud, though, because maybe it wouldn't happen if he didn't give Lucifer the idea.

"Fine," Lucifer said, walking over to the bed and sinking down onto the edge of the mattress. "Just remember you asked for it."

And then Dean could see his wings.

They basically just blinked into existence for him. At the same time, though, it was kind of like they unfolded from right between Lucifer's shoulder blades, coming out from inside of his vessel to settle, folded like birds' wings were when they weren't flying, against his bare back. Maybe he'd put them up after teleporting here, hoping that Dean would just forget about making him display them.

The first thing that got to Dean was how big they were. He was good at judging sizes and distances, and he estimated that Lucifer's full span was somewhere around eighteen or nineteen feet. Or, at least, it would've been. If his wings were intact.

The long flight feathers on the ends were missing in big patches, which cut pretty deeply into their spread. Dean could see that even with how tightly Lucifer had them folded against his back. He could also see the ropy scars that meandered around the upper parts of his wings, and the burn scars on the outer edges, and the inexplicable bald patches that broke up the downy-looking, singed feathers, and the deep furrow that came in on the side of his left wing and would've cut it in half if it'd been any deeper. It looked like he'd caught a big, heavy sword there.

The feathers were heavily discolored, for the most part. They were definitely clean, but they'd been stained by what looked like blood and smoke and maybe plain old dirt. Plus, they'd been burned black in a lot of places, and gone a limp gray with all the color leached out of them, and, of course, gotten pulled out.

But there were a few that'd somehow escaped whatever had happened to all the others, clustered together in tiny patches, and that was how Dean could tell that Lucifer's wings had started off a brilliant, luminescent white. That meshed with most of the mythology surrounding him, which Dean was only familiar with because of all the research he and Sam had done back in the thick of the apocalypse. He'd read that Lucifer was the most beautiful angel, the brightest. He'd been called the Morning Star for a reason.

Dean had been slowly walking around to the other side of the bed in order to get a better look at Lucifer's wings. When he climbed onto the mattress, Lucifer flinched, but to his credit, he didn't fly off. Just waited, tense, as Dean crawled across the bed towards him.

Even as torn up as they were, Lucifer's wings were still really big. The tops reached the crown of his head, they crossed the small of his back, and even with him leaning forward slightly, the remaining flight feathers were spread out over Dean's duvet, bent in an uncomfortable-looking way. He could barely even see Lucifer behind them.

Dean went up on his knees when he reached him, being careful not to kneel on any of his feathers. Lucifer flinched again when Dean touched him, wings trembling under his hand. He steered clear of all the scars, just gently stroking the fluffy little feathers. Despite the way they looked, they were powder-soft, and Dean could feel that even through his calluses. He hesitated for a second, then reached under Lucifer's wings. They stayed tight against his back at first, then spread slightly to allow Dean in. He wrapped his arms around Lucifer's torso. He rested his face against the side of his neck. There were mounds of feathers and scar tissue on either side of his head - the tops of Lucifer's wings - and he could smell them. Ash, blood, sulfur.

Dean sucked in a deep breath, feeling the heavily-muscled bases of Lucifer's wings against his chest as it inflated. Lucifer was hot, as per usual. He wasn't flinching or shaking anymore, just sitting there. Since he couldn't see his face, Dean couldn't tell if he was relieved, surprised, confused, or what.

"I'm not gonna lie to you and tell you you look fine," Dean said quietly, after he'd been holding Lucifer for a minute or two. "You've got scars. A lot. But they don't make you ugly."

"It's not your job to boost my self-esteem, Dean," Lucifer mumbled. "All that I have to do here is display, and all you've got to do is look. You don't have to tell me I'm pretty."

"What if I wanna tell you you're pretty?" Dean countered, turning his head slightly in order to press a kiss to the side of Lucifer's neck. He was smiling, but he sobered immediately, holding Lucifer a little more tightly as he kept talking. "They don't make you pretty, either, though. They make you strong." Lucifer was quiet, letting him talk. "I'm all scarred up, too, and all of 'em have come from wounds that didn't kill me. That healed. All of these..." He turned his head again, in the other direction this time, so he could look at all the marks that patchworked Lucifer's wings. "...mean you survived whatever caused them. You didn't die, you didn't lose your wings, and they're covered in proof of everything you were tough enough to go through without breaking."

Lucifer put a hand on one of the ones Dean had on his chest, squeezing. Then he folded his wings again, but over Dean this time, covering him completely with a hot blanket of soft, smoky-smelling feathers and giving him a kind of backwards hug.

"Do you really believe that?" he asked quietly.

"Can't you guys tell when somebody's lying?" Dean asked. "Yeah. Course I believe it, Luc. I'm not gonna pull things outta my ass just to make you feel better - not right now." He settled his chin on Lucifer's shoulder. "I want you. I'll always want you. I wanna be your mate, and now that you've let me see your wings, I feel even more special about you choosing me." Chuck had implied that it was practically a miracle Lucifer had chosen anybody at all to mate with, especially a human. Dean agreed wholeheartedly. "And I feel pretty lucky that you made it through all of what happened to you to be here with me."

"I know you're trying, Dean, but I don't really have any use for your pity."

"It's not pity," Dean retorted. "I would've thought that you knew me better than that, but - even if it was pity, when's the last time you had somebody feel sorry for you? Huh? Never? What's wrong with sympathy?" Lucifer didn't have a dry response to that one. Dean forced himself to soften his voice as he kept going. "You've been strong for a long damn time. Clearly. But you don't have to be that way with me, if you don't want to."

Lucifer loudly forced a gust of air out through his wings. The wings that'd been folded so tightly against Dean and himself relaxed a little, and he turned his own head to make eye contact with Dean. Or to try, at least. He couldn't manage it without doing something nasty to his vessel's neck.

"I've been alive a long time," Lucifer started neutrally. "I'm not going to give you an exact number, because it'd be totally meaningless to you, with the way your brain works - that's not an insult, it's a fact," he quickly tacked on, sounding annoyed, when he caught Dean's scowl. "There are some things meat's just not good at processing, Dean. So I'm just going to say that I'm really old. Only my father, Amara, and Michael are older. Even with how long I was locked in the Cage, I've seen and heard and experienced a lot of things. So what you're saying shouldn't make me feel better at all." He still had a hand on one of Dean's, and he squeezed it again, gripping it tightly. "But, somehow, it is."

Dean couldn't help but smile at that, feeling a warm flood of satisfaction and affection in his chest. He gave Lucifer's hair a nuzzle. He'd been keeping the semi in his boxers (which always popped up whenever he was alone in the bedroom with Lucifer, these days) to himself so far because of how serious the conversation was, but now he rested his hips against Lucifer's pelvis and let the hardness speak for itself.

Lucifer let out a purr that sounded more like a growl. Dean felt it vibrating in his sternum, then turned his head to watch with interest as all the remaining feathers on Lucifer's wings lifted and fluffed up. Like he had goosebumps. Remembering what Castiel had yammered out as fast as he could about wings, Dean wondered if this was the angelic version of a boner. Just thinking about that was enough to bring Dean all the way up to full attention.

"I'd ask if you were ready to go," Lucifer said huskily, "but I think you've already answered that question." His wings moved around Dean, and the three layers of fabric between them - boxers, jeans, and boxers again - disappeared, leaving nothing but skin-on-skin contact all over.

"Almost," Dean replied. "But Cas told me that you've got three sets of wings, and I'd kinda like to see the other two before we get started."

Lucifer heaved a sigh, then unfolded his wings from around Dean. Dean took his arms from around Lucifer and scooted backwards on the bed so he'd be able to see the other pairs when they appeared.

"I guess, technically, I do have to display all my wings for this part of the courtship to count," he said. "Just don't touch these until I tell you you can. Okay?"

"Do they hurt?" Dean couldn't stop himself from imagining wings with fresh or at least open wounds stretching across them. Blood and infection. Broken bones poking through the skin.

"No, they're not anywhere near as damaged as the outer pair are," Lucifer replied. "For the most part. They're just a lot more sensitive."

As Dean watched, legs crossed and hands resting on his knees, Lucifer spread his wings wider and lifted them higher. He didn't seem concerned about the candles; a few of his patchy flight feathers got close to the ones on Dean's nightstand, but the flames just leaned away from him. Dean was so busy staring at that that he almost missed it when a second pair of wings unfolded from underneath the first.

These were white, too, and it was much easier to tell on them, since they were only singed around the edges. Other than the fairly-large bald patch, riddled with pockmarks, near the top of one, that seemed to be all that was wrong with them. So Dean could see the glistening iridescence that covered every feather, making these wings look like fire opals. Pink-orange and neon green and magenta and indigo sparkled in the candlelight.

This set of wings wasn't as big as the original ones. The span was something more like twelve to fourteen feet rather than nineteen, the flight feathers were shorter. But those flight feathers looked like they were edged with flame. Dean saw red, orange, yellow, blue, and white. He swore they glowed and shifted under his gaze, moving like the actual fire that surrounded him and Lucifer right now.

These were the wings of an archangel. Dean swallowed, and all he could manage was a breathy, "Whoa."

The flaming, glittering wings hitched slightly, and it felt like a cannonball dropped into Dean's stomach when he realized that Lucifer had totally misunderstood his exclamation.

"Please lemme touch," Dean said, voice both quiet and rushed as he went up onto his knees again. "Please. Luc, you know me, I ain't girly, but - they're beautiful. They're so beautiful."

Lucifer peeked over the edge of one of his larger wings. "Do you...mean that?"

"How long's it been since you took a look at 'em?" Dean asked in response, incredulous. "They're gorgeous. They look like freakin' jewels."

"Oh - right. I forgot how much you monkeys like shiny things." It easily could've been an insult, but Lucifer's tone was light and teasing. "Since you asked so nicely, you can touch." He spread the wings a little further. "I...think I want you to, actually."

So Dean touched, and those iridescent white feathers were just as soft as the ones on the first set of wings. The flesh and muscle that they covered was as hot as the rest of Lucifer. Dean stroked and petted, from the thumb-thing at the top of each wing down to the tips of the flight feathers, and Lucifer made noises that he'd learned meant pleasure. Eventually, he wound up on that bald patch.

"Okay if I ask how you got this?" Dean murmured. Lucifer mumbled something in Enochian. He'd been slowly teaching Dean the basics of that, but he didn't recognize any of the words that he'd just used. "What?"

"I was plucked," Lucifer replied, "and skewered with superheated angel blades. They pinned me to the rack that they had me on like that. The entire wing used to be bald and full of holes, but they healed me so they could do it over and over again. Eventually, there was only that left, when I escaped."

"Other angels did that to you?" Castiel had said that he'd been tortured after he lost the war that he'd started.

"Naomi and her proteges," Lucifer confirmed. "There was a time when they thought I could be reset. When that inevitably failed, they just wanted to punish me."

Lucifer's sudden shift to a more formal way of talking didn't go over Dean's head. He sounded like Castiel had when he'd first come down - like Castiel still sounded sometimes, honestly. And since he'd answered in Enochian at first, all of this was probably bringing up some pretty vivid memories of what'd happened to him in the past. Of who he'd been back then.

Dean wasn't exactly unfamiliar with that. He was no stranger to torture or what it did to a person - or an angel, in this case. He knew how much damage even remembering it could do. You didn't want to spend too much time back there, having those sorts of things done to you.

"Guess I shouldn't've asked that," Dean said softly, going back to stroking Lucifer's wings. He jumped at the touch, almost certainly remembering some much rougher treatment of those wings, but then slowly relaxed as Dean kept on petting. "You're okay, though. You're here, with me." And Dean was here with Lucifer. "We're not in Heaven." Or in Hell. "You don't ever have to go back there, if you don't wanna. And Naomi's dead. The Mark's gone..." From both of them, forever. "...nobody and nothing's ever gonna hurt you again." He leaned in to kiss Lucifer's scarred wing. The feathers tickled his nose, and he swallowed the sneeze that he felt coming on. "I won't let 'em."

Lucifer didn't answer. Just lifted the iridescent wings away from Dean's careful hands. Dean guiltily bit the inside of one cheek, running back over what he'd just said to figure out where he'd gone wrong, until Lucifer unfolded his third and final pair of wings.

These ones were colored like a sunrise. They were small, only about six feet at full spread, and they looked like clouds reflecting the multicolored light of dawn. Gold, red, orange, pink, gray, indigo, soft blue, peach, amber, white. And they were crisscrossed with thin, precise-looking scars, but those were almost lost in all the beautiful colors. Just looking at these wings brought back raw, visceral memories of just about every time Dean had ever watched day break, exhausted and hurt and sticky with blood after a long night of hunting. They were fluffier than the other two pairs, and shaped a little differently. Dean didn't think they were meant for flying.

"Touch." Lucifer whispered it, so Dean almost didn't catch it. "You can touch them, Dean. Please touch me."

Dean reached out yet again. His fingertips had barely met the feathers - which felt like he thought clouds might - before Lucifer was shuddering and crying out, all six wings ruffling and puffing up. He stood up, then turned and climbed onto the bed in order to sit with Dean. This was the first time Dean had gotten to see his erection since they'd gotten started. Lucifer's cock was flushed and engorged, veins standing out and the skin dusky. Dean had enough experience with other guys to know that Lucifer was very impressive in both girth and length. Had a nice curve, too. Or his vessel did. Whatever.

The mushroom head was wet from where he'd been leaking precome. The erect cock and the wings looked good together somehow, meshed well. Dean had never seen him so beautiful. Arousal and eagerness thrilled through him when Lucifer took hold of him and jerked him towards himself. Their dicks bumped against each other, and Dean's twitched. Precome slicked his own head.

"I'm here with you," Lucifer agreed roughly, cupping the base of Dean's skull so that he could kiss him. Dean tried not to just melt into a puddle of pure horniness and need when Lucifer's tongue parted his lips and darted into his mouth. "You said you weren't going to let anyone hurt me."

"I won't," Dean promised fiercely. His hands were on Lucifer's shoulders, the feathers of his wings brushing Dean's knuckles.

"Will you let me fuck you?"

Dean grinned. "Get thee behind me, Satan," he replied.

"Not this time." Lucifer dropped his hands to Dean's hips, probably to stop him from turning around. "I want to be able to see your face."

"Whatever you want." Dean nodded, actually pleased with Lucifer's chosen position because it meant he'd be able to touch his wings during sex. "So, you want me to grab the lube in the nightstand, or are you gonna poof some up?"

"Neither," Lucifer replied with a slight smile. They'd done this before, so it took Dean less than a second to realize what he wanted. He groaned.

"Oh, c'mon," he said. "I hate that."

"Saliva's more than enough with me," Lucifer pointed out reasonably. "Have you ever had any pain?"

"No, but - seriously." Dean poked his bottom lip out a little. "Sucking a dick? It's humiliating."

"Oh, but you're so good at it!" Lucifer was openly grinning now. "And look at you." He put a thumb on Dean's full lower lip, puffy again from all the rough kissing. The nail was ragged; he'd been biting them again. "It's like you were made for it."

Dean exaggerated his pout until Lucifer laughed and took his hand away. His wings rustled, which gave him an idea.

"Okay, fine," he said, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I'll slick you up. But you can't touch me with your hands while I'm doing it." Lucifer really liked to touch him while he was blowing him. That hadn't taken long to figure out. "You can only use your wings."

Lucifer hesitated. Dean waited. Eventually, he gave a slow nod. "Okay. Deal."

Lucifer scooted backwards over the rumpled bedcovers until he was leaning up against the pillows and headboard of Dean's bed. Dean followed on his hands and knees. He watched as he got settled and spread his legs, then dropped to his elbows and moved in closer. A bundle of long, soft, flexible things laid themselves against the back of his head and guided him to Lucifer's cock - Lucifer's flight feathers, his wingtip. He was holding up his end of the bargain, so Dean wrapped a hand around the thick base of Lucifer's member and opened his mouth.

He just licked the head, first of all, tonguing the slit and getting the taste of Lucifer's jizz in his mouth. It tasted a lot like normal precome (thin, salty, kinda bitter), but it also tasted like Lucifer's mouth. Dean assumed all the fluids that came out of his vessel would have that unique flavor.

The feathers on the back of his head spread like fingers, and Lucifer grunted appreciatively above him. The tip of another wing came down and stroked the side of Dean's face as he took Lucifer's whole head into his mouth, folding the lips that he'd been admiring a minute ago around the rounded, bulbous shape of it. The feathers on his head and face must belong to the largest pair of wings, because the familiar smokey smell of them filled Dean's nose as he slowly moved his mouth down Lucifer's shaft.

When he was about halfway down, a third wing draped itself over his back. He closed his eyes, moving his tongue and his lips and trying hard not to choke as he fought for another inch, or at least half of one. He hadn't really given a lot of blowjobs over the years. He'd never taken anybody all the way to the hilt, even when he'd been with smaller guys, and he'd only ever finished women with his mouth. So he wasn't great at controlling his gag reflex. Or at fitting a cock that felt big enough to split his lips all the way back to his ears in his mouth without clipping it with his teeth. Lucifer had never complained, though.

Unable to swallow, Dean drooled down the section of Lucifer's dick that he couldn't get into his mouth. That was fine, since his spit was the only lubricant they were using today. And it let him work the bottom half of the shaft with his hand, pumping with a rhythm that offset the bobbing of his head, so that his fist and his lips always met in the middle.

The feathers that surrounded his head went up and down with him, stroking him eagerly as he made loud slurping noises - not on purpose, just because he couldn't help it. It was a good thing he wasn't all that ticklish. The wing on his back sort of curled around him and squeezed. Eventually, as Dean's throat and jaw were starting to get sore, Lucifer stopped just moaning and grunting and actually spoke up.

"Okay...that's probably good." The one wing lifted away from his back and the other two gently drew his face off of the cock he'd been sucking. "I don't want to finish in this end of you."

"That's sure romantic, Luc," Dean said, slurring a little because his lips and tongue were kind of numb.

"Do you want me to coax you onto the cock you just spent five minutes getting ready for yourself?" Lucifer countered, smiling. "Or would you rather hurry up and get on it?"

"Yeah, okay." Dean straightened up and scooted forward, putting his hands on Lucifer's shoulders yet again to steady himself as he climbed into his lap. Lucifer reached for one of his hips, but Dean swatted his hand away. "No, I don't want your hands on me while I'm riding your dick - only your wings."

"Still?"

"Yeah. Still." Lifting himself up, Dean teased the slippery tip of Lucifer's cock with his own tight, puckered entrance. They were exactly the same height, so in this position, Dean was staring down at Lucifer and Lucifer was looking up at him. "You wanna hold me, you do it with your wings."

"What if I want to jerk you off?" Lucifer asked.

"Well, I can do that myself," Dean answered, grinning. "But if you've got your heart set on it, then use feathers. Might be kinda neat - I've never had a wingjob before."

"I've never - " Lucifer cut himself off with a loud gasp that ended in a cry as Dean suddenly dropped himself down onto his cock. There was an immediate and familiar flash of feeling in his ass. It happened every time; automatic Grace magic, cleaning him and easing the way and healing any pain before he could even feel it. Just one of the many benefits of bumping uglies with an angel, as far as Dean was concerned.

"Ooh," he said. He wiggled slightly, grinding his prostate against Lucifer's cock, and felt his eyelids flutter as he sucked in a shuddering breath. "Damn. Forgot how big you are."

"It hasn't been that long," Lucifer replied quietly, but there was a note of insecurity in his voice.

Instead of responding, Dean began to roll his hips, earning a groan from Lucifer. He closed his eyes, starting to pant as he picked up the pace and built a steady rhythm. They snapped open again, though, when a wing curled around him for the second time. One of the top wings was draped around his shoulders, pulling him against Lucifer. He could feel the bald patches and scars on the underside against the skin of his upper back. He glanced down when another wing traced his spine, from the small of his back to his tailbone (right above where he was impaled by Lucifer), with its tip, and saw that it was a middle opal-and-fire one.

Remembering how Lucifer had reacted the last time that he'd touched them, and how sensitive he'd said they were, Dean reached around behind him to lay a hand on one of the smallest pair of wings. The ones that looked like a sunrise. He grinned when Lucifer literally twitched inside of him.

"Cas also told me that angel wings are an erogenous zone," Dean purred into Lucifer's ear, giving one of the feathers a gentle tug.

"Remind me to blow him up again later," Lucifer gasped, after yelping. "I'll be picking his teeth out of my hair for weeks, but it'll be worth it."

"You want me to stop touching you there, then?" Lucifer responded to that with a powerful upward thrust that had Dean seeing stars. "G-guess that's a no."

They kissed fiercely for a couple seconds, coming away with mouths open and wet. Lucifer kept thrusting up into Dean, and Dean moved himself, their bodies working against each other and sweat gathering between their bare skin. He rubbed and stroked Lucifer's wing, and eventually moved his other hand to the other one so it wouldn't feel neglected. He buried his fingers in the feathers and combed out to their tips, all six of Lucifer's wings shaking like leaves on a windy day when he did that. Lucifer aimed for Dean's prostate with every stroke, and he was a good shot. The candle flames wavered around them, and the room was filled with the sounds of pleasure that both of them were making.

By now, Dean was used to long, exhausted, satisfying sex with Lucifer. He could last for a long time, and because Dean wouldn't normally have had the stamina to keep up with him, he was sure that there was something Grace-related going on. Not that he had any problem with that. Sex with Lucifer was the best sex he'd ever had. And he had plenty of time to explore every inch of Lucifer's smallest, most sensitive set of wings.

All six were arranged in a kind of V on Lucifer's back, so the bases of the pair that Dean was handling were the closest together. His right hand slowly wandered down the length of the one it was on to the bottom, and he found something interesting between and slightly below that wing and the other. There was a tuft of feathers covering a little bump. The bump felt...hot, and kind of swollen, like a nipple or a really tiny dick. Lucifer kind of started shivering when Dean touched it so, on a whim, he gave it a squeeze.

Fluid spattered out onto his fingers and palm. Lucifer's wings instantly snapped out to their full span - all six of them, which almost knocked some of Dean's weapons off the walls and put out a lot of the candles with the gust that came off them. And Lucifer keened. That sound must've been something close to his true voice: it deafened Dean for a minute, but not before he heard glass breaking somewhere.

"What - what the hell 's that?" Dean panted loudly over the ringing in his ears. He brought his hand back so he could take a look at the stuff covering it. It was thick and oily, sticking his fingers together, and clear. It glistened in the ruby Gracelight coming from Lucifer's eyes - not that there was a lot of that, since Lucifer's pupils were blown wide, almost covering the red irises. Dean stared at it. It almost reminded him of... "Dude. Did you just come out of your back?"

"You found my preen gland," Lucifer ground out. "That's oil. For my wings."

"Oh - like with birds." Dean brought his hand to his face and sniffed it.

"No, birds are like me. I pred - aauugh, Dean." The last was a groan of arousal, because Dean'd started licking his fingers. Lightning, sulfur, salt, cinnamon. He could've done without the texture, but the flavor was great. It was basically a concentrated version of Lucifer's spit and precome.

"If it's for preening your wings, seems like it's in a pretty awkward spot," Dean commented, putting his index finger in his mouth. He'd stopped bouncing on Lucifer's cock. He'd reached the point where he couldn't fuck himself and talk at the same time.

"We do it in groups. Or, ideally, with our mate."

Sam probably would've found it interesting, how angels were such social creatures. Dean might, too. Later, though. In his current state, all he could bring himself to care about was the fact that Lucifer basically had a clit in the middle of his back. For all intents and purposes.

"Well, I'm your mate now," Dean said, pulling his finger out of his mouth with an obscene wet popping noise. That had been on purpose. "Or I'm gonna be. So I'll preen you. You'll have to tell me how to do it, though."

Lucifer had brought his wings back in. They shook when Dean said that, and he groaned again.

"What? Was that hot or something?"

"You're not an angel," Lucifer replied, "so you don't get it. But yes. That was very, very hot, Dean."

"How 'bout this?" Dean's clean hand was still on Lucifer's wing. He moved it down to his preen gland, very lightly rubbing it and the feathers that surrounded it. He put his oil-covered hand on the wing it'd been on before, dragging his fingers through the feathers. Lucifer spread it wide for him as he started moving his hips again.

Instead of actually answering Dean's question, Lucifer just hissed through his teeth. He started moving his own hips, too, and wrapped both sets of larger wings loosely around Dean, and brought the small, dawn-colored wing around to the front. Dean looked down, sucking in a sharp breath as Lucifer brushed his cock with it. It...basically felt like having his dick tickled with a feather duster. Not that Dean had experience with that or anything. But then the feathers that were too fluffy and oddly-shaped to be for flying wrapped around his shaft, prehensile like fingers, and started to pump, and goddamn was that good.

"S'posed to slot with another angel's," Lucifer explained in a breathless mumble. "You don't have wings. So."

"This's fine," Dean gasped before kissing him. Like that, it didn't take either of them long to come.

Dean's orgasms with Lucifer were always simultaneous, and this one was no exception. Lucifer shot his load inside Dean, filling him even further than that giant cock of his already had. His twitching wings locked tight around Dean, cocooning him against himself. His preen gland wept onto Dean's fingers. Red light poured out of him as his Grace flared with pleasure, and he babbled in Enochian, like he usually did. Most of it was too fast for Dean to pick out, but "tight" and "good" (both in a sexual sense - there was no real translation in English) were constants, so he recognized those.

At the same time, Dean came so hard he swore he felt his prostate wither against Lucifer's member. He painted both of their stomachs, his cock being trapped between them, and covered the wing that Lucifer had used to jerk him off. There was a lot; he'd been more pent up than he thought.

When they were both done, they just sat for a while, recovering and basking in the afterglow while wrapped in Lucifer's wings. Lucifer moved to pull himself out of Dean, but that was it for what felt like close to an hour. Dean dozed for a while, just feeling so safe and warm and satisfied. And desperately needing to recoup some of the energy he'd lost; he was, after all, only human.

Eventually, he was feeling good enough to talk. "Pretty sure that was the best orgasm I ever had," he mumbled.

"Mm," Lucifer replied, lazily rubbing Dean's back with one of the wings he was using to hold him. "Definitely made my top ten."

"Ooh-hoo, I'm flattered." Lucifer had to've had millions of orgasms, after all. "So..." Dean hesitated. "What d'you guys usually do? After?" Usually, Dean crashed for three to six hours, then ate something like an eighth of his body weight at the nearest restaurant to make up for all the calories he'd burned during angel-sex. But this time was different.

"Angels, you mean?" Lucifer asked. "We care for each other. Which means me putting back everything you just wrung out of that frail human body of yours..." The wings around Dean's body flexed, and then he was well-rested and full. He'd be asking Lucifer to just do that from now on. "...and you cleaning me up."

"Yeah, you're a mess," Dean agreed readily. So was he. So was the bed - sweat, come, oil. Feathers. Just a few, though. They reminded him that cleaning Lucifer up probably meant preening his wings, which excited him, but that could wait for a little while. For now, he put his arms loosely around Lucifer's neck and leaned back to study him. He always liked to drink him in post-coital. His wings opened around Dean like a flower, and he could see them out of the corners of his eyes. Which roved over Lucifer, steadily. His relaxed face, his rumpled hair, his sweat-sheened skin, his softly-glowing eyes. His wings. Something swelled up in Dean's chest, pressing on him from the inside out so hard it hurt, and before he knew what was happening, he'd blurted out, "Fuck, you're beautiful."

"Now who's being romantic?" Lucifer asked. "And I thought I was a mess."

"You are," Dean said. "That's why you're beautiful, 'cause you're a...that did not come out right." He pulled his hands back and pressed the heels into his eyes, frustrated. It wasn't like he was out of touch with his emotions or anything. He knew exactly how he felt. He wasn't even bad at talking - he was witty as hell and knew it. The problem was that it just wasn't coming to him, how to say this in particular. "Shit. I'm no good at this." He dropped his hands and looked at Lucifer. "You've gotta teach me some more Enochian, 'cause I think it'd sound way better in that."

"Well, you're stuck with English for now," Lucifer pointed out. "Just try. I really want to hear what you have to say."

"Okay." Chewing on the inside of his bottom lip, Dean sat and thought, then tried again. "I love...every single part of you." He turned, and ran a hand gently along the top edge of one of Lucifer's heavily-scarred, once-white wings. "I think I love the scars most of all. 'Cause - I might be repeating myself here, but they show me how somebody, a lot of somebodies, tried to break you over and over and how you kept on putting yourself back together. A little stronger each time. And that takes a hell of a lot more resilience than just staying whole from the beginning." He looked down at his knees. "I love that you're strong enough not to need me, but you went after me anyway. You didn't have to. I sure as hell didn't ask for it. But you are one of the best things that's ever happened to me, if not the best, period." Dean closed his eyes and sighed. "I want you...to love the scars, too. I know you think they make you ugly, and you think they make you bad. You think you deserve 'em, 'cause of all the horrible, evil stuff you've done. And I'm not denying you did some horrible, evil stuff - some of it was to me and my family. I'm not saying you shouldn't take responsibility, either. But in the beginning, you were sick, and after that, you'd been hurt. And nobody, including you, Luc, has ever done anything so bad they deserved to be punished forever." He swallowed. "Plus, I think you're ready to stop punishing yourself. If you weren't...you wouldn't've come here, and you wouldn't've chosen me."

That was a hell of a lot more than Dean had thought he'd had to say. It'd just kept coming. Some of it had been muddled, but for the most part, he felt he'd been pretty articulate, and he'd definitely meant every word. He was too afraid to look at Lucifer, though. He was half-expecting to be teleported, still naked, to Antarctica, either for touching too many nerves or for missing the mark by too much. Instead, he heard Lucifer shifting, laying down. Then he grabbed Dean and guided him until he was laying on top of him and, once more, engulfed in his wings.

"After I was forced into the Cage," Lucifer began softly, "Father set things in motion. Mapped bloodlines, dispatched cherubim, dictated to Metatron. All so that, one day, a special human would be born. One who would release me, and heal me and finally make me whole again when I became one with him. He intended for it to be Sam, of course, but he was off. For about the millionth time. Not by as much as usual, though." Dean opened his eyes to see Lucifer smiling gently at him. "Because clearly, it's you. It was always you." He kissed him, and Dean didn't hesitate for so much as a second before kissing back. "I love you. And I suppose..." He lifted one of the largest wings, eyeing it critically. "...I can learn to love these, too. With time. And some...minor cosmetic adjustments." He shrugged, lowering it back onto Dean. "At least they're more attractive than those stubby bald things Cas is planning on flashing your brother with."

Dean was so absorbed with relief and bliss and affection that it took a little bit for that very last comment to register.

"Wait. What?"