brightly_lit: Feathers
Category:Dean/Castiel
Title: Feathers
Writer: brightly_lit
Alternate links: On AO3
Status of work: Complete
Characters and/or pairings: Dean/Cas, Sam, Jo, Ellen, Frank, Gordon, OFC
Rating: R for language and sex, more romantic than graphic
Warnings, kinks & contents: No warnings. Wing!kink.
Length: 17,750 words
Summary: In an alternate season 5 scenario, Dean, Sam, and twenty of their closest hunter friends stopped the apocalypse by closing the gates to heaven, hell, and purgatory. Now working with his former hunter buddies at Ellen's security company, Dean doesn't know what to make of his weird new coworker who always wears a trenchcoat and leaves behind feathers everywhere he goes. He especially doesn't know that, cut off from the power of heaven, the constantly falling feathers mean his new friend is dying.
Reccer's notes: Feathers is the first fic in an absolutely amazing series of 5 fics. All are wonderful, and each one stands perfectly on its own, so start here and you’ll want to read them all! The characterizations couldn’t be more spot-on, and it is hands-down the best, most real-feeling approach to Dean/Cas that I’ve ever seen. There’s a slow burn, a growing romantic tension, gorgeous sex, a beautifully angsty payoff, and a sweet resolution that makes you hunger for more-which you can have, in the subsequent fics! Watching Dean fall for Cas without knowing that’s what’s happening-it’s like brightly_lit crawled inside Dean’s mind and shone a light for all to see... it really did make me LOL, cry, want to hug Cas, want to hug Dean, and... need a cigarette. ;-) SO sexy, hilarious, heart-rending and just plain awesome.
[Short excerpt]“No,” Dean said, still reeling. “No. I thought I would always remember. I mean, it only lasted a second, but for that second, it was like there had never been anything else. It’s like you said; I knew ... everything, everything you ever felt or thought or experienced.” He groaned and held his head, which could not seem to comprehend the eternity he saw then, as if his flesh could not contain what his soul had taken in stride. He had been remade in that moment, soul as well as body, which came with an explosion of relief, for he’d thought he was entirely lost. In that eternal instant, Cas had carefully, deliberately put him together, cell by cell. He turned his haunted eyes to Cas in the darkness. “You. You made me.”