Fic: "Feathers." PG-13.
Title: Feathers
Fandom: Supernatural
Character(s)/Pairing: Dean/Castiel, some Sam and some Bobby
Rating: PG-13
Length: 3222
Disclaimer: Not mine
-Written for quiddative for deancastiel's Everlasting Birthday Challenge!
-Author Notes: I could have added like 10,000 words by exploring the actual search for the feathers, so I'm sorry I didn't have time to do that. D: I also inadvertently put a little handprint!scar kink (not much, and it makes sense in the context of the story), so I hope that's okay. I'm not sure how well I answered the prompt and I totally re-imagined a pair of wings for this. Anyway, though, I really hope you enjoy it!
Prompt: Shamelessly ripping off from the manga, Tsubasa, Cas, whether due to Raphael or some freaky curse, loses all his feathers, which in turn causes him to lose all his memories. Dean, Sam, and Bobby have to find all his feathers/memories, before it's too late (what happens when time runs out is up to the author). Dean is heartbroken that Cas doesn't remember him and is determined to get all his memories back. Bonus points for Cas kissing Dean as the first thing he does after getting all his memories back.
Feathers
Sam was the first one to hear it: a soft whirring, like an engine, coming from somewhere far away. After only a few seconds it had gotten louder, spiraling towards them in a rushing wave of sound. There was a loud thud a moment later and the house shook from whatever had impacted.
“What the hell was that?” Bobby asked, making an abortive move towards the door. Sam and Dean shrugged, one half a beat after the other, and with some trepidation went to the door.
After only half a glance outside, Dean shot past Sam. “Cas!” he screamed. There was a dust cloud moving with the wind, swirling in little streams as the cloud started to dissipate. There was a crater, newly formed, in the middle of Bobby’s yard. Sam jogged over to where Dean knelt at the edge. In the middle of the crater was a naked body - Cas’ body. He was bruised all over, purple splotches spread ugly and thick across pale skin. And from his back extended what Sam assumed to be his wings. What was left of his wings. They didn’t look like a bird’s - they looked like the bare branches of a tree in winter, spines bunched closely, spreading out from his back like the bones of a bat’s wing, and they were charred, covered in what looked like ash.
“Holy fuck,” Dean said as Sam knelt down beside him. “What happened to him?” He swallowed and his adam’s apple bobbed on his throat, his hands convulsively clenching into fists. Cas coughed suddenly, trying to raise himself up on his arms. But they spasmed and the muscles, clearly weak, failed and he collapsed back onto the ground. “Go get him some clothes,” Dean said. His eyes moved over Cas’ back and he let out a shaky breath as he straightened up. “Or at least some pants and a towel - or that fucking snuggie you have.”
Sam stared at Cas for half a second longer before giving Dean a quick, silent nod and then running back toward the house.
Dean stepped down carefully into the crater. “Cas?” he said. “Cas, man, you alive?”
Castiel groaned and tried again to lift himself up. Dean caught him, hands braced on Cas’ chest as he helped push him into a sitting position. “What… What happened to me?” he asked, his voice cracking in a dry throat. He coughed, his body shaking. Dean jerked back as the frame of his wings shook with him.
“I don’t know,” Dean said. Cas wasn’t looking at him, his eyes on something on the ground by his thigh. “We heard a sound, me and Sam did, and then you cannonballed down here into Bobby’s yard. What’s going on? Are you… all right?”
Cas groaned, pressing the palm of one hand against his forehead. “I’m… I think I’ll recover,” he said. He coughed again and rubbed his temple with the tips of his fingers. “But I don’t. Who am I?” he asked. “I can’t remember anything. I saw light - blinding, blinding light and when I woke up you were here.” He looked around. “But other than that,” he said.
“You don’t… you don’t remember anything?” Dean asked, his voice flat. “You don’t remember me or Sam or Bobby, or the other angels, or the apocalypse? Not a damn thing?”
“Stop,” Castiel said, putting a firm hand on Dean’s arm. “You’re making my head ache. I’m sorry; I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Dean took a deep, heavy breath, his fingers curing around Cas’ shoulder. The implications of Cas showing up were stacking on top of one other in quick succession in his mind, and the thoughts of what that could mean - of Cas falling to the earth, of Cas falling - had him angry and scared. “Cas,” he said, his voice low. “It’s me. Come on; I know you remember me.”
But Cas didn’t answer. He picked up whatever had been on the ground beside him and held it up between two fingers. It was a single feather, small and white. It looked soft and fluffy, like it would be used to stuff a pillow or a quilt. Down, Dean’s mind supplied. As Cas lifted it to his face it started to glow, a faint golden shine centered in the shaft and extending outwards. They both stared. The feather vibrated in Cas’ hand like a tuning fork, and his eyes widened as the glow moved towards him. His mouth opened and he swallowed the tiny ball of golden light. The feather disintegrated between his fingers, leaving a fine, mealy fluff that floated off on the wind like dandelion seeds.
“Castiel,” he said to Dean. Some strength suddenly seemed to return to him and with Dean’s help he staggered to his feet. There was a bud on the left branch from his back, a soft, nubbly bump. He groaned as new growth, a soft, tiny feather, pushed its way out. “My name is Castiel.”
“It’s… amnesia, I think,” Dean said, pacing around Bobby’s kitchen.
Bobby eyed him from where he sat nursing a beer. “Right. So he doesn’t remember anything?”
“Nothing,” Dean said. “Except his name, now, because he ate a damn feather.”
They had all gathered in the kitchen after Dean had brought Cas inside, where he sat at the table absently rolling an orange in circles around a salt shaker. Sam had gotten his computer and Bobby had pulled down a few pertinent books, but so far they hadn’t found anything that would be useful.
It was Sam who said what the others were afraid to. “Do you think… this could be a-a punishment? That maybe the other angels did this to him? I mean… look at his wings. They’re… they’re practically destroyed.”
“No,” Dean said, looking over discreetly at Cas. He shook his head and crossed his arms, leaning back against the counter. It was the first time he’d been still since Castiel had come inside. “He’s strong; there’s no way he’d let those dicks do this to him.”
“Then could he have fallen?”
“No,” Dean said again, his voice taking on a sharper edge. “We would have seen a sign of it. Something.”
“Maybe he was… pushed.”
“What? Sam, don’t be an idiot.”
“His wings, they… They look like they burned up on re-entry.”
Bobby snorted, though there was no humor in it. “Wings? Look more like antlers now.”
Cas’ shoulders twitched self-consciously and Dean’s eyes snapped to him like a protective mother bear. “I do not think they burned,” Cas said, “if that is at all helpful.”
Sam looked up eagerly. “Are you starting to remember something?”
Cas shook his head. “No.” He moved his shoulders again in a twitchy, up-and-down motion, and the long, slender spines extending from his back shimmered and then disappeared, leaving two red welts in raised, jagged lines down his back. The other three stared at him in disbelief. “I can feel something else there,” he said. “Another set of wings.” He paused and looked down at the table, pushing the orange forward with his index finger. “And I think those are my wings. The shells you could see were something else.”
“He did say his name when he found that first feather,” Dean said. “Maybe the wings - if those things growing out of him even are an extra set of wings - didn’t burn up. Maybe somebody plucked him.”
Sam blinked, tapping his fingers against the edge of his computer. “You mean someone took the feathers?”
Dean shrugged defensively, looking at the floor. “I don’t know, Sam, maybe. Do you have any better ideas?”
Bobby looked across the table at Sam. “It’s not impossible,” he said. “I’ve heard of spells that could do that. Curses that take away all a person’s memories. And sometimes stores them in something.” He looked at Cas, slightly suspicious. “Hadn’t ever heard of anyone doing it to an angel, though.”
“But if we find the feathers,” Sam said, already looking excited, “then we can restore his memories. Right?”
Bobby nodded, adjusting the brim of his cap. “That’s usually how it works.”
“Great,” Dean said, rolling his eyes. “So now we have to find a bunch of lost feathers.”
As time went on, Cas’ strength waned, and though they didn’t know the cause of the curse, or its timeline, it was clear that they needed to find the missing feathers quickly. They were hidden everywhere: they found two in Rome, one in New Mexico, and one on a small, deserted island somewhere in the Pacific. Cas was never sure how he knew, but he could sense where they were somehow - some internal compass led him to them.
And each feather brought a new memory. A feather in Wales brought back memories of his vessel. A feather they found in an eider duck nest helped Cas remember the planes of heaven. Eventually, after nearly a year of searching, they had nearly found them all. All except for one.
Cas still didn’t have his memory of Dean.
He had come to remember Bobby and Sam fairly quickly in their search - and though he had some inkling that Sam had a brother - this important, shadowy figure intrinsically linked with Sam - he could not place that niggling feeling with Dean. And no matter what Dean did, Cas was still nervous around him, almost as though he didn’t trust him.
It didn’t help that Dean kept trying to fill in the blanks in his memories, or that he was constantly on edge, angry about what had happened to Cas and trying to cope with it. It hurt him, that Cas couldn’t remember him - even after he could remember Sam. He didn’t say anything and he laughed it off, acted like he wasn’t bothered by it. But to everyone except Cas, it was clear that it was wearing him down.
“I feel complete,” Cas said one evening; Bobby had already gone to bed, and Dean and Sam were with him in the kitchen, eating leftover slices of apple pie. “Are you sure we haven’t found all the feathers?”
Sam shook his head. “I think there would be… some sort of sign,” he said, pushing a piece of crust around his plate. Dean just grunted. “I think you would know, for certain, if you were through. Can you… can you pull out your other wings again?”
Cas nodded and after a moment of concentration the odd, feathery spines shimmered into corporeality. The long, bony spines had developed a thin, leathery webbing as more feathers were found, so for awhile, still only partially feathered, Cas had looked like a fluffy, albino bat. But now there was hardly a difference from a bird’s wings or traditionally portrayed angels’ wings - save for the hard frames that could still be felt under the feathers.
“They look complete,” Cas said, turning his head over his shoulder to peer at them. He turned around so Sam and Dean could both see.
“I guess,” Sam said, somewhat reluctantly. Dean shoveled the last bit of pie into his mouth, saving himself from answering. “Except…” Sam stood up and took a step over to Cas. “Right there,” he said. “A gap.”
Dean looked up. On the left side, the longest, sleekest feathers lay pointing down, extending in a declining line from Cas’ shoulder blades. But in the center of the line there was a hole, and when Sam lifted up the feathers above the line there was a small pore on the bone, where the final feather was meant to go. Dean swallowed. Sam smiled. “Hey look,” he said, “it’s you.”
Dean’s fork clattered against his plate as he stood up. “Yeah,” he said, “great. One to go. I’m going for a walk, Sammy; don’t bother waiting up.” He gave Sam and Cas a tight, aggravated smile and slid his chair hard back under the table. Their eyes followed him as he stomped outside.
“I didn’t mean to upset him,” Cas said quietly.
Sam sighed. “You didn’t,” he said. “I did.”
“I’m not consciously trying to repress him,” Cas said. His new wings, that Dean affectionately called back-antlers, shimmered again and went out of sight. Sam slid his hand through the air where they had been, but there was nothing there. “If I could remember him, I would. We’ve made new memories - I know him now, after this lost year, and if he helped us stop the apocalypse I’m grateful.”
Sam’s mouth turned down, a perfect lower case n. They’d agreed not to tell Cas much, and Dean was never one to open up anyway, so Castiel had never heard how he’d come to meet the Winchesters. It would be so much easier to explain, to tell him ‘pulled out of hell’ and ‘profound bond,’ but Bobby had warned in cases like this not to flood the victim with too much information. So Sam just nodded and tried to pull up a smile. “Hey. Why don’t you go talk to him?” he said. He nodded towards the door.
Cas looked at him for a moment before disappearing. Sam sighed and shook his head. They’d looked everywhere: where was that last damn feather?
“Hello, Dean.”
Dean turned around quickly, on full alert. “Cas,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“You were upset.”
Dean grimaced. “I wasn’t upset.”
“Sam said you were.”
“Yeah, well.” Dean shoved his hands down into his pockets. “Sam can go fuck himself.”
“I’m sure we’ll find the feather eventually,” he said.
“Right.” Dean looked away, obviously uncomfortable. “You have any sort of lead on it?”
Cas shook his head. “If it’s somewhere in this world, I can’t feel it.” Dean looked up to the sky, shifting his weight to one leg. “I have been wondering… why does it bother you so much that I can’t remember you?”
“I don’t care,” Dean said, still not looking at Cas.
“Oh. You act like you do.”
Dean gave him a tight smile and nodded in the most sardonic matter he could. “Well thanks for pointing that out,” he said. “I don’t care. We were friends, that’s all. And you’re not as much of a dick as the rest of the angels, so you were sort of our go-to guy.” Cas stood there, stiff and formal before him, looking at Dean like an inquisitive bird. Dean’s shoulders hunched up towards his ears and his brow wrinkled in consternation. “I’m going inside,” he said. “Goodnight.”
He started walking, but Cas didn’t move. Dean sighed and just pushed past him. Their shoulders bumped.
“Wait,” Cas said, grabbing Dean’s arm.
“What the hell, dude,” Dean said angrily, jerking out of Castiel’s reach.
“I felt it,” Cas said, his eyes wide and his pupils growing. Dean blinked a couple of times under that intensity.
“Felt what?” he asked. “The feather?”
“Yes,” Cas said, stepping as close as he could to Dean. Dean shuffled back warily but Cas followed. “I think it’s you. It’s in you.” He was staring hard at Dean’s shoulder and after a moment it clicked into place.
“No shit,” he murmured as he took off his coat. “We should have thought of this months ago. Bobby said not to tell you about your past, but what the hell could it hurt?” He rolled up his shirt sleeve and showed the handprint on his shoulder to Cas. One hand ghosted over it, not quite touching, and Dean shivered. “You did that,” he said. Cas lowered his face towards Dean’s shoulder, breathing out a warm gust of air across the scar. He swallowed as Cas’ eyes met his. “You gripped me tight,” he said. His shoulder started to glow and Cas’ lips were close, so fucking close, to the skin - heat moved up his arm in waves, and his shoulder buzzed with a tight, tingling electricity. “And you pulled me from Perdition.”
“I gripped you tight,” Cas said, and Dean couldn’t see if there was a feather or not, the light was too bright, but Cas’ breath was hot and soft. “I pulled you… from Perdition.” And Dean heard Cas swallow and a bolt of light shot upwards to the sky. He screamed as pain rippled up and down his arm, and Cas echoed it.
His head was thrown back and his scream spiraled out of sound as light burst from his open mouth and the sockets of his eyes. The big, bony wings ripped out of his back, tearing through his shirt and overcoat. They shone, brighter and brighter, golden and a searing white, and Dean moved his arm up to cover his eyes, trying to look at Cas so it didn’t hurt. The light flickered once and then snapped, with a dull sizzle. It shrank back into Cas and the wings - the heavy, beautiful things - grew twice as big as they were before they exploded.
Soft, downy feathers fell down like snow in a broad circle around Cas. Dean lowered his arm and gaped a moment as Castiel stood there, just swaying, his eyes tightly closed. “Cas,” he said.
And the eyes shot open. “Dean,” he said hoarsely. “I remember.”
Dean’s smile hiccupped once across his face before spreading out fully and he shook the down out of his hair. “I’m glad,” he said.
Cas was still staring at him and it was so familiar - and Dean was grateful for it, he realized, after it had been absent for so long - and so damn adorable and perfect that Dean grabbed him across his shoulders and bumped their bodies together in a half hug.
“Dean,” Cas said again, and something about his tone had changed. He was staring at Dean’s shoulder, where the shirt was still rolled up at his clavicle. It throbbed and Dean swallowed down his sudden trepidation thickly. Cas reached up and brushed a piece of feather from Dean’s nose and Dean swallowed again, audibly, and held onto tighter to Cas.
“I remember,” Cas said fiercely and with great, unstoppable intent he grabbed the back of Dean’s head and mashed their lips together.
And fuck, it was wonderful - hot and perfect and Cas was back, and Cas was his and Dean grabbed his face and pressed their chests together. And Cas held on, one hand on the nape of Dean’s neck and the other thrown haphazardly around his waist. His head tilted as Dean sucked in a breath and he blinked, eyelashes brushing across Dean’s cheek as he tugged Dean’s bottom lip between his teeth. Dean grunted, letting go of Cas’ face and grabbing his hips, aligning his pelvis with Cas’ and grinding a slow, heady circle against him. Cas moaned and put his hand on Dean’s shoulder and Dean’s eyes rolled back against that velvet feeling at Cas pulled his hair and fucked his mouth with a hot, perfect tongue.
“We should probably tell Sam your back antlers are gone,” Dean said, fingers trailing down Cas’ back, feeling the scabbed over welts where the wings had been, and a cold, viscous slime.
“Yes,” Cas agreed. “We will tell him. But.”
Dean pulled back and grinned. “Later?”
Cas nodded, and one final piece of down floated onto his long eyelashes. He blinked and Dean wiped it off his cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Yes,” he said. “Later.”
Thanks for reading!
Fandom: Supernatural
Character(s)/Pairing: Dean/Castiel, some Sam and some Bobby
Rating: PG-13
Length: 3222
Disclaimer: Not mine
-Written for quiddative for deancastiel's Everlasting Birthday Challenge!
-Author Notes: I could have added like 10,000 words by exploring the actual search for the feathers, so I'm sorry I didn't have time to do that. D: I also inadvertently put a little handprint!scar kink (not much, and it makes sense in the context of the story), so I hope that's okay. I'm not sure how well I answered the prompt and I totally re-imagined a pair of wings for this. Anyway, though, I really hope you enjoy it!
Prompt: Shamelessly ripping off from the manga, Tsubasa, Cas, whether due to Raphael or some freaky curse, loses all his feathers, which in turn causes him to lose all his memories. Dean, Sam, and Bobby have to find all his feathers/memories, before it's too late (what happens when time runs out is up to the author). Dean is heartbroken that Cas doesn't remember him and is determined to get all his memories back. Bonus points for Cas kissing Dean as the first thing he does after getting all his memories back.
Feathers
Sam was the first one to hear it: a soft whirring, like an engine, coming from somewhere far away. After only a few seconds it had gotten louder, spiraling towards them in a rushing wave of sound. There was a loud thud a moment later and the house shook from whatever had impacted.
“What the hell was that?” Bobby asked, making an abortive move towards the door. Sam and Dean shrugged, one half a beat after the other, and with some trepidation went to the door.
After only half a glance outside, Dean shot past Sam. “Cas!” he screamed. There was a dust cloud moving with the wind, swirling in little streams as the cloud started to dissipate. There was a crater, newly formed, in the middle of Bobby’s yard. Sam jogged over to where Dean knelt at the edge. In the middle of the crater was a naked body - Cas’ body. He was bruised all over, purple splotches spread ugly and thick across pale skin. And from his back extended what Sam assumed to be his wings. What was left of his wings. They didn’t look like a bird’s - they looked like the bare branches of a tree in winter, spines bunched closely, spreading out from his back like the bones of a bat’s wing, and they were charred, covered in what looked like ash.
“Holy fuck,” Dean said as Sam knelt down beside him. “What happened to him?” He swallowed and his adam’s apple bobbed on his throat, his hands convulsively clenching into fists. Cas coughed suddenly, trying to raise himself up on his arms. But they spasmed and the muscles, clearly weak, failed and he collapsed back onto the ground. “Go get him some clothes,” Dean said. His eyes moved over Cas’ back and he let out a shaky breath as he straightened up. “Or at least some pants and a towel - or that fucking snuggie you have.”
Sam stared at Cas for half a second longer before giving Dean a quick, silent nod and then running back toward the house.
Dean stepped down carefully into the crater. “Cas?” he said. “Cas, man, you alive?”
Castiel groaned and tried again to lift himself up. Dean caught him, hands braced on Cas’ chest as he helped push him into a sitting position. “What… What happened to me?” he asked, his voice cracking in a dry throat. He coughed, his body shaking. Dean jerked back as the frame of his wings shook with him.
“I don’t know,” Dean said. Cas wasn’t looking at him, his eyes on something on the ground by his thigh. “We heard a sound, me and Sam did, and then you cannonballed down here into Bobby’s yard. What’s going on? Are you… all right?”
Cas groaned, pressing the palm of one hand against his forehead. “I’m… I think I’ll recover,” he said. He coughed again and rubbed his temple with the tips of his fingers. “But I don’t. Who am I?” he asked. “I can’t remember anything. I saw light - blinding, blinding light and when I woke up you were here.” He looked around. “But other than that,” he said.
“You don’t… you don’t remember anything?” Dean asked, his voice flat. “You don’t remember me or Sam or Bobby, or the other angels, or the apocalypse? Not a damn thing?”
“Stop,” Castiel said, putting a firm hand on Dean’s arm. “You’re making my head ache. I’m sorry; I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Dean took a deep, heavy breath, his fingers curing around Cas’ shoulder. The implications of Cas showing up were stacking on top of one other in quick succession in his mind, and the thoughts of what that could mean - of Cas falling to the earth, of Cas falling - had him angry and scared. “Cas,” he said, his voice low. “It’s me. Come on; I know you remember me.”
But Cas didn’t answer. He picked up whatever had been on the ground beside him and held it up between two fingers. It was a single feather, small and white. It looked soft and fluffy, like it would be used to stuff a pillow or a quilt. Down, Dean’s mind supplied. As Cas lifted it to his face it started to glow, a faint golden shine centered in the shaft and extending outwards. They both stared. The feather vibrated in Cas’ hand like a tuning fork, and his eyes widened as the glow moved towards him. His mouth opened and he swallowed the tiny ball of golden light. The feather disintegrated between his fingers, leaving a fine, mealy fluff that floated off on the wind like dandelion seeds.
“Castiel,” he said to Dean. Some strength suddenly seemed to return to him and with Dean’s help he staggered to his feet. There was a bud on the left branch from his back, a soft, nubbly bump. He groaned as new growth, a soft, tiny feather, pushed its way out. “My name is Castiel.”
“It’s… amnesia, I think,” Dean said, pacing around Bobby’s kitchen.
Bobby eyed him from where he sat nursing a beer. “Right. So he doesn’t remember anything?”
“Nothing,” Dean said. “Except his name, now, because he ate a damn feather.”
They had all gathered in the kitchen after Dean had brought Cas inside, where he sat at the table absently rolling an orange in circles around a salt shaker. Sam had gotten his computer and Bobby had pulled down a few pertinent books, but so far they hadn’t found anything that would be useful.
It was Sam who said what the others were afraid to. “Do you think… this could be a-a punishment? That maybe the other angels did this to him? I mean… look at his wings. They’re… they’re practically destroyed.”
“No,” Dean said, looking over discreetly at Cas. He shook his head and crossed his arms, leaning back against the counter. It was the first time he’d been still since Castiel had come inside. “He’s strong; there’s no way he’d let those dicks do this to him.”
“Then could he have fallen?”
“No,” Dean said again, his voice taking on a sharper edge. “We would have seen a sign of it. Something.”
“Maybe he was… pushed.”
“What? Sam, don’t be an idiot.”
“His wings, they… They look like they burned up on re-entry.”
Bobby snorted, though there was no humor in it. “Wings? Look more like antlers now.”
Cas’ shoulders twitched self-consciously and Dean’s eyes snapped to him like a protective mother bear. “I do not think they burned,” Cas said, “if that is at all helpful.”
Sam looked up eagerly. “Are you starting to remember something?”
Cas shook his head. “No.” He moved his shoulders again in a twitchy, up-and-down motion, and the long, slender spines extending from his back shimmered and then disappeared, leaving two red welts in raised, jagged lines down his back. The other three stared at him in disbelief. “I can feel something else there,” he said. “Another set of wings.” He paused and looked down at the table, pushing the orange forward with his index finger. “And I think those are my wings. The shells you could see were something else.”
“He did say his name when he found that first feather,” Dean said. “Maybe the wings - if those things growing out of him even are an extra set of wings - didn’t burn up. Maybe somebody plucked him.”
Sam blinked, tapping his fingers against the edge of his computer. “You mean someone took the feathers?”
Dean shrugged defensively, looking at the floor. “I don’t know, Sam, maybe. Do you have any better ideas?”
Bobby looked across the table at Sam. “It’s not impossible,” he said. “I’ve heard of spells that could do that. Curses that take away all a person’s memories. And sometimes stores them in something.” He looked at Cas, slightly suspicious. “Hadn’t ever heard of anyone doing it to an angel, though.”
“But if we find the feathers,” Sam said, already looking excited, “then we can restore his memories. Right?”
Bobby nodded, adjusting the brim of his cap. “That’s usually how it works.”
“Great,” Dean said, rolling his eyes. “So now we have to find a bunch of lost feathers.”
As time went on, Cas’ strength waned, and though they didn’t know the cause of the curse, or its timeline, it was clear that they needed to find the missing feathers quickly. They were hidden everywhere: they found two in Rome, one in New Mexico, and one on a small, deserted island somewhere in the Pacific. Cas was never sure how he knew, but he could sense where they were somehow - some internal compass led him to them.
And each feather brought a new memory. A feather in Wales brought back memories of his vessel. A feather they found in an eider duck nest helped Cas remember the planes of heaven. Eventually, after nearly a year of searching, they had nearly found them all. All except for one.
Cas still didn’t have his memory of Dean.
He had come to remember Bobby and Sam fairly quickly in their search - and though he had some inkling that Sam had a brother - this important, shadowy figure intrinsically linked with Sam - he could not place that niggling feeling with Dean. And no matter what Dean did, Cas was still nervous around him, almost as though he didn’t trust him.
It didn’t help that Dean kept trying to fill in the blanks in his memories, or that he was constantly on edge, angry about what had happened to Cas and trying to cope with it. It hurt him, that Cas couldn’t remember him - even after he could remember Sam. He didn’t say anything and he laughed it off, acted like he wasn’t bothered by it. But to everyone except Cas, it was clear that it was wearing him down.
“I feel complete,” Cas said one evening; Bobby had already gone to bed, and Dean and Sam were with him in the kitchen, eating leftover slices of apple pie. “Are you sure we haven’t found all the feathers?”
Sam shook his head. “I think there would be… some sort of sign,” he said, pushing a piece of crust around his plate. Dean just grunted. “I think you would know, for certain, if you were through. Can you… can you pull out your other wings again?”
Cas nodded and after a moment of concentration the odd, feathery spines shimmered into corporeality. The long, bony spines had developed a thin, leathery webbing as more feathers were found, so for awhile, still only partially feathered, Cas had looked like a fluffy, albino bat. But now there was hardly a difference from a bird’s wings or traditionally portrayed angels’ wings - save for the hard frames that could still be felt under the feathers.
“They look complete,” Cas said, turning his head over his shoulder to peer at them. He turned around so Sam and Dean could both see.
“I guess,” Sam said, somewhat reluctantly. Dean shoveled the last bit of pie into his mouth, saving himself from answering. “Except…” Sam stood up and took a step over to Cas. “Right there,” he said. “A gap.”
Dean looked up. On the left side, the longest, sleekest feathers lay pointing down, extending in a declining line from Cas’ shoulder blades. But in the center of the line there was a hole, and when Sam lifted up the feathers above the line there was a small pore on the bone, where the final feather was meant to go. Dean swallowed. Sam smiled. “Hey look,” he said, “it’s you.”
Dean’s fork clattered against his plate as he stood up. “Yeah,” he said, “great. One to go. I’m going for a walk, Sammy; don’t bother waiting up.” He gave Sam and Cas a tight, aggravated smile and slid his chair hard back under the table. Their eyes followed him as he stomped outside.
“I didn’t mean to upset him,” Cas said quietly.
Sam sighed. “You didn’t,” he said. “I did.”
“I’m not consciously trying to repress him,” Cas said. His new wings, that Dean affectionately called back-antlers, shimmered again and went out of sight. Sam slid his hand through the air where they had been, but there was nothing there. “If I could remember him, I would. We’ve made new memories - I know him now, after this lost year, and if he helped us stop the apocalypse I’m grateful.”
Sam’s mouth turned down, a perfect lower case n. They’d agreed not to tell Cas much, and Dean was never one to open up anyway, so Castiel had never heard how he’d come to meet the Winchesters. It would be so much easier to explain, to tell him ‘pulled out of hell’ and ‘profound bond,’ but Bobby had warned in cases like this not to flood the victim with too much information. So Sam just nodded and tried to pull up a smile. “Hey. Why don’t you go talk to him?” he said. He nodded towards the door.
Cas looked at him for a moment before disappearing. Sam sighed and shook his head. They’d looked everywhere: where was that last damn feather?
“Hello, Dean.”
Dean turned around quickly, on full alert. “Cas,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“You were upset.”
Dean grimaced. “I wasn’t upset.”
“Sam said you were.”
“Yeah, well.” Dean shoved his hands down into his pockets. “Sam can go fuck himself.”
“I’m sure we’ll find the feather eventually,” he said.
“Right.” Dean looked away, obviously uncomfortable. “You have any sort of lead on it?”
Cas shook his head. “If it’s somewhere in this world, I can’t feel it.” Dean looked up to the sky, shifting his weight to one leg. “I have been wondering… why does it bother you so much that I can’t remember you?”
“I don’t care,” Dean said, still not looking at Cas.
“Oh. You act like you do.”
Dean gave him a tight smile and nodded in the most sardonic matter he could. “Well thanks for pointing that out,” he said. “I don’t care. We were friends, that’s all. And you’re not as much of a dick as the rest of the angels, so you were sort of our go-to guy.” Cas stood there, stiff and formal before him, looking at Dean like an inquisitive bird. Dean’s shoulders hunched up towards his ears and his brow wrinkled in consternation. “I’m going inside,” he said. “Goodnight.”
He started walking, but Cas didn’t move. Dean sighed and just pushed past him. Their shoulders bumped.
“Wait,” Cas said, grabbing Dean’s arm.
“What the hell, dude,” Dean said angrily, jerking out of Castiel’s reach.
“I felt it,” Cas said, his eyes wide and his pupils growing. Dean blinked a couple of times under that intensity.
“Felt what?” he asked. “The feather?”
“Yes,” Cas said, stepping as close as he could to Dean. Dean shuffled back warily but Cas followed. “I think it’s you. It’s in you.” He was staring hard at Dean’s shoulder and after a moment it clicked into place.
“No shit,” he murmured as he took off his coat. “We should have thought of this months ago. Bobby said not to tell you about your past, but what the hell could it hurt?” He rolled up his shirt sleeve and showed the handprint on his shoulder to Cas. One hand ghosted over it, not quite touching, and Dean shivered. “You did that,” he said. Cas lowered his face towards Dean’s shoulder, breathing out a warm gust of air across the scar. He swallowed as Cas’ eyes met his. “You gripped me tight,” he said. His shoulder started to glow and Cas’ lips were close, so fucking close, to the skin - heat moved up his arm in waves, and his shoulder buzzed with a tight, tingling electricity. “And you pulled me from Perdition.”
“I gripped you tight,” Cas said, and Dean couldn’t see if there was a feather or not, the light was too bright, but Cas’ breath was hot and soft. “I pulled you… from Perdition.” And Dean heard Cas swallow and a bolt of light shot upwards to the sky. He screamed as pain rippled up and down his arm, and Cas echoed it.
His head was thrown back and his scream spiraled out of sound as light burst from his open mouth and the sockets of his eyes. The big, bony wings ripped out of his back, tearing through his shirt and overcoat. They shone, brighter and brighter, golden and a searing white, and Dean moved his arm up to cover his eyes, trying to look at Cas so it didn’t hurt. The light flickered once and then snapped, with a dull sizzle. It shrank back into Cas and the wings - the heavy, beautiful things - grew twice as big as they were before they exploded.
Soft, downy feathers fell down like snow in a broad circle around Cas. Dean lowered his arm and gaped a moment as Castiel stood there, just swaying, his eyes tightly closed. “Cas,” he said.
And the eyes shot open. “Dean,” he said hoarsely. “I remember.”
Dean’s smile hiccupped once across his face before spreading out fully and he shook the down out of his hair. “I’m glad,” he said.
Cas was still staring at him and it was so familiar - and Dean was grateful for it, he realized, after it had been absent for so long - and so damn adorable and perfect that Dean grabbed him across his shoulders and bumped their bodies together in a half hug.
“Dean,” Cas said again, and something about his tone had changed. He was staring at Dean’s shoulder, where the shirt was still rolled up at his clavicle. It throbbed and Dean swallowed down his sudden trepidation thickly. Cas reached up and brushed a piece of feather from Dean’s nose and Dean swallowed again, audibly, and held onto tighter to Cas.
“I remember,” Cas said fiercely and with great, unstoppable intent he grabbed the back of Dean’s head and mashed their lips together.
And fuck, it was wonderful - hot and perfect and Cas was back, and Cas was his and Dean grabbed his face and pressed their chests together. And Cas held on, one hand on the nape of Dean’s neck and the other thrown haphazardly around his waist. His head tilted as Dean sucked in a breath and he blinked, eyelashes brushing across Dean’s cheek as he tugged Dean’s bottom lip between his teeth. Dean grunted, letting go of Cas’ face and grabbing his hips, aligning his pelvis with Cas’ and grinding a slow, heady circle against him. Cas moaned and put his hand on Dean’s shoulder and Dean’s eyes rolled back against that velvet feeling at Cas pulled his hair and fucked his mouth with a hot, perfect tongue.
“We should probably tell Sam your back antlers are gone,” Dean said, fingers trailing down Cas’ back, feeling the scabbed over welts where the wings had been, and a cold, viscous slime.
“Yes,” Cas agreed. “We will tell him. But.”
Dean pulled back and grinned. “Later?”
Cas nodded, and one final piece of down floated onto his long eyelashes. He blinked and Dean wiped it off his cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Yes,” he said. “Later.”
Thanks for reading!