Thy Fearful Symmetry - pt. 2
Title: Thy Fearful Symmetry
Word Count: 8211
Warnings: none, really
masterpost | part 1
THY FEARFUL SYMMETRY
part 2
“Dude did you just... did you just sigh? Like. Wistfully?”
Sam at least looks contrite when Dean whirls around to look at him, but he doesn’t take back his question. “What the fuck,” Dean says, which makes Sam look down into his tea. “I wasn’t sighing.” He sinks down further in the booth, legs stretching out until he hits Sam’s feet. He doesn’t move and Sam’s eyes dart up to his. He frowns but Dean just raises an eyebrow and takes another bite of his pie. Sam watches, an expression on his face Dean categorizes as vague disgust, as a bit of the blueberry filling falls off his fork onto his chin. He wipes at it, smearing it, then licks it off with the back of his tongue. Sam rolls his eyes and Dean grins. But it works; Sam’s foot moves.
“Whatever,” he says, shifting in his seat. “You sighed.”
“I didn’t sigh.”
“Dean you were staring out a window.” He glances at Dean significantly then looks at the window on their right, putting his elbow on the table and resting his chin in his hand. He shakes his head - and that is a damn lustrous head of hair, christ, Dean wonders, does he grow it out just for moments like this? - and then sighs. It’s so deep his whole body moves with it and he blinks a couple of times, fluttering his eyelashes.
“Like that,” Dean says flatly. “I sighed - like that.” Sam nods. “I am not a mooning teenage girl.”
Sam ignores this and takes a long drag of his tea. “Dean,” he says, using his understanding voice, “If you... want to talk about it - “
“Ahh! No. No; let me stop you right there Mr. caring-and-sharing. I don’t need to talk about shit.” He takes another bite of his pie and smiles. “Except telling the waitress I want another slice.”
Sam rolls his eyes again, but he doesn’t say anything else about it. The dreams about Cas keep coming, every night, and finally - last night - Cas managed to communicate with him. All he could say was I am lost. Dean had been worried before, he wasn’t going to deny that, but after that dream he starting slipping into an actual honest as fuck freak-out. It didn’t help, either, that he’d had more of those tiger dreams, too. Now, Jesus, he didn’t mind telling Sam that he’d had some dreams of Cas, and he even didn’t mind - well, mostly didn’t mind- telling him that he’d had some dreams with Cas, but he’d be damned before he ever - and he meant ever - told Sam that sometimes he had creepy sex dreams with Tigerstiel, and that sometimes he even liked it. Goddamn, just thinking about it made it seem even creepier.
Suddenly, though, Dean’s phone starts to ring and he digs it out of his pocket. “Hello?”
“Dean.”
His mind goes blank at the familiar, gravelly voice. Cas, he thinks, holy shit, it’s Castiel.
“Cas!” he says, so loud that both Sam and the guy in the next booth behind them peer over to stare at him.
“Cas, hey, are you all right?” He clears his throat and throws Sam a quick look, promising to fill him in after the conversation is finished. “We haven’t heard from you since... since Sam came back. I mean, uh. Except the dreams. Where are you?”
Castiel is silent for a long minute and Dean’s starting to wonder if Cas hung up on him. “Dean,” he says again, something like uncertainty creeping into his voice. “I... You were praying for me.”
Jesus, is everyone going to get on his goddamn case today? He wasn’t praying to Castiel and he wasn’t sighing wistfully about it, either; he was just fucking thinking.
“Can you get your ass over here, Cas? We just want to make sure you’re okay. Tell me you’re okay.”
“I am...” His voice shakes a little before he awkwardly clears his throat. It’s a sound Dean’s not entirely sure he’s ever heard Cas make before. “I believe I am okay. But I...” His tone sounds pained. “Saving Sam took more out of me than I had expected. Something happened to my grace. Something I fear may be... permanent.”
Dean’s stomach fell into his feet. “Permanent? Cas, what happened? Cas, man, where are you?”
“I am at Bobby Singer’s.” He is silent again, for a long, tense moment. “Are you and Sam coming this way anytime soon?”
Dean mentally takes stock of what they have to do and how quickly they can get it done. “Yeah,” he says. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
Dean drives faster than Sam’s ever seen him drive before, racing to get to Bobby’s - and to Cas.
“How is he?” Sam asks, trying to keep his voice low. Dean’s already worried, already drawn tight, and Sam doesn’t want to exasperate that.
“I don’t know,” Bobby answers, sounding tired. “He kind of just showed up here, told me you were safe, and then collapsed. He’s been in and out of it all day and I got to tell you, Sam, I ain’t got a clue what to do for him. He’s burning up, and he’s pale as death.”
Sam swallows and looks over at Dean, sitting white-knuckled at the wheel. “We’re coming as fast as we can, Bobby. As fast as we can.”
They pull into Bobby’s the next day, and as soon as the engine’s off Dean’s out of the car, racing inside. “Where the hell is that dumb bastard?” Dean asks, almost running straight into Bobby in his haste.
“Sitting on the couch,” Bobby answers. “He’s awake now, so go on in.” Dean nods and walks off. Sam’s right behind him, and Bobby sighs. “He been like this ever since that angelic idjit called him?”
Sam nods. “Yeah, he’s...” He looks away, brows knitted in consternation. “Dean’s just worried. And I am, too, Bobby. Whatever Cas did to get me out, it hurt him. It hurt him bad. We’re just...” He laughs, self-deprecatingly, and says “I guess me and Dean just gravitate towards guilt. We’re Winchesters, we can’t help it.”
“Yeah,” Bobby says, watching Sam go into the living room, “you’re Winchesters, all right.”
Cas sits up as soon as he sees Sam enter. “Sam,” he says weakly, looking worriedly from one brother to the other. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, Cas, I’m fine, man. It’s you we’re worried about.”
“Yeah,” Dean echoes gruffly. “What the hell’s the matter with you anyway?”
Cas lets out a long breath and eases himself back down onto the couch. Dean is perched beside him, his ass half-off the couch. His hands hover close to Cas’s body but never touch him. He’s still wearing the suit and trenchcoat, and his forehead is wet with sweat, his hair plastered to the skin. His face is a pale, ashy gray. “When I went into the pit to save Sam,” he explains, his voice hoarse, “I went alone. I was stronger, but.” He groans. “My grace was... infected. When I returned to earth, my vessel could not longer contain it.”
“Could no longer contain it? What the hell does that mean?” Dean asks.
“It’s gone,” Cas answers flatly. “To get away from the taint of hell, my grace left my body. In... simpler terms,” he says in response to Dean’s blank look, “it exploded. Out of me.”
“No grace,” Sam says, looking worried. “Would that make you human?”
“Not yet,” Cas says. “It happened very quickly and I had no time to adjust. I may become human, but. There is a chance that I... won’t.”
“Won’t,” Dean repeats, “what do you mean won’t?”
Cas has just enough energy to give Dean a withering look. “I mean that I won’t be an angel, I won’t be human. I won’t be anything.”
The color drains from Dean’s face.
“W-well, is there...” Sam licks his lips thoughtfully. “Is there anyway to fix it?”
“If we managed to find my grace, then maybe,” Cas says.
“Okay then!” Dean says, standing up. “That’s all we have to do. That’s what we’re going to do.”
Sam and Cas share a look. “Don’t get me wrong, Dean,” Sam tells his brother, “I want to help Cas as much as you do, but.” He looks down at the floor and sighs. “How are we even supposed to find his grace?”
Castiel coughs. “I can sense it,” he says.
“See?” Dean tilts his chin up stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest. Sam rolls his eyes. “Cas can sense it.”
There’s some argument as to the pragmatism of the idea, but with Cas only getting worse and Dean’s lack of patience positively correlated to the severity of Cas’s symptoms, Sam doesn’t see that they have much of a choice.
It’s time to turn to google.
“What exactly are you looking for?” Dean asks intrusively, leaning over Sam’s shoulder to look at the screen of his laptop.
Sam cracks his knuckles. “I don’t know,” he says, again, slowly, trying not to lose his patience with his brother. “Anything... strange. Anything that might look like it’s related to angels, or to grace, or...” He sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair. “Just. Anything strange, Dean. We don’t exactly have a lot to go on right now.”
Dean leans in closer, looking at what Sam’s got pulled up in his browser. “You’re looking at libraries?” he asks, giving his brother an incredulous look.
Sam’s shoulders raise defensively. “For a reason, Dean,” he says. “I think this might be a lead.”
“Visitors at an all time high,” Dean reads. He levels Sam with a flat look. “Yeah, Sam, real suspicious.”
“Look, Dean, I know it’s a long shot, but I’ve just got a feeling. It can't hurt to check it out.”
“Here’s where Sam’s little feeling got us,” Dean says, putting the car in park. “You getting any vibes from your grace, Cas?”
“I...” Cas coughs once, and then promptly passes out.
“Cas!” Dean throws the door open and jumps out of the car. He opens the door to the backseat and shimmies inside, pulling at Cas, trying to wake him up. “Goddamnit, Cas,” he says, wiping the sweat off Cas’s brow. “What the hell did you have to go and pass out for?”
“Is he okay?” Sam asks worriedly, twisting around to look at Cas and his brother, piled in the back of the Impala.
Dean ignores him in favor of slapping Cas’s cheek with the back of one hand. “Wake up,” he says. He grits his teeth, fisting his hands into the lapels of Cas’s coat. “Damn it, Cas, wake up. Wake up.” There’s no response - nothing - and Sam can see the panic settling in: his face going slack, his shoulders getting tight.
With a low growl, Deans eyes snap shut and he curls his fists tighter into Cas’s clothes. He’s lifting Cas, the angel’s body raised and pressed against Dean’s. “You have to wake up,” Dean says. “You asshole. You don’t get to check out on us now.”
Whatever he’d done, or said, apparently works, because just as Sam’s about to try to pull Dean away to keep him from suffocating Cas, there’s a gasp and Cas is jerking awake. His eyes are wild and his mouth is open wide. He reaches out for Dean immediately, his hand clamping down on Dean’s shoulder, directly over the handprint.
“Dean,” Cas rasps out. He is breathing hard, his face growing even paler. His eyes burn a bright, electric blue until the glow takes up the whole eyeball.
“What’s happening, Cas?” Sam asks worriedly. “What are you doing to Dean?”
Before he can pull them apart, however, there’s a bright flash of light. He covers his eyes; Dean shouts.
Which, Sam notices after he blinks his eyes open, is probably because of the new pair of enormous wings that have erupted from his back.
“What the fuck,” Sam says stupidly, staring slack-jawed at his brother’s back.
Dean’s wings - and holy shit, Sam’s not ever going to be used to thinking that - flutter a little, trying to stretch out in the cramped space of the car.
“Cas...,” Dean says, his voice much higher-pitched than normal. Sam can’t tell if it’s because of anger or panic. “Did you just give me... wings. Sam, do I have wings?”
“Uh...” Sam rubs the back of his neck and clears his throat nervously. “Yeah. You kind of do.”
“This wasn’t my intention, Dean,” Cas says. He still looks weak and Sam remembers suddenly that they need to figure out if the piece of grace is there or not. And soon. “When I regain my strength, I can fix it.”
“Okay, great, but, um. We need to figure out if this is the right place or not. Cas, can you...” Sam’s mouth twists down and he makes swirly motions with his hands, trying to find an accurate description of what he wants to say. “Can you sense your grace here?”
Cas’s eyes close for a moment. “Yes,” he says, opening them and fixing his gaze on Sam. “Yes, it’s here.”
Sam breathes out in relief. “Great. Okay, Dean, you wait in the car with Cas. I’m going to go in and - “
“Wait,” Cas says. “You won’t know what it is. You need me.”
Dean snorts. “I think that Sam’ll be able to find a piece of souped up angel grace. Not like the library’s gonna be crawling with those.”
Cas relents, because he’s too weak to do much of anything besides sit in the car, anyway. And Dean turns out to be right - after talking to a few patrons Sam finds out that the reason the library’s been so popular lately is that the stories in the books are coming to life. Someone had a conversation with Eleanor Roosevelt after browsing through her biography. A little boy got to meet Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web. But nothing ever lasted - anything that happened only happened in the confines of the library. Once a reader left the building, the visions of whatever they’d been reading disappeared.
Sam’s chatting with a young woman at the reception desk when he notices a pencil caddy full of bookmarks. There’s a long, white feather between a robot bookmark and a piece of construction paper with “READING IT IS FUN!” scribbled on it in crayon. He gives the librarian a friendly goodbye and surreptitiously pockets the feather on his way out.
“Sam!” Dean calls from the car as soon as he’s in sight. “Did you get it? Are we good?”
“Yeah,” Sam calls back. He has to hold back laughter when he gets to the car; Dean is pressed up against the window, feathers fanned out behind him. The left wing is hitched up at his side, and the right is draped over the driver’s seat.
Dean opens the door and beckons Sam forward. “Okay great, now get it back to Cas right the hell now so I can get rid of these damn things.”
Sam climbs in the car on the driver’s side, waving off Dean’s token protests. There’s barely enough room for both Cas and newly-winged Dean in the backseat, and there’s a moment of awkward shuffling as they try to get situated so they can both look at Sam. Dean’s wing ends up wrapped around behind Cas, and Sam bites his lip to stifle his grin at that. It’s kind of freaking adorable, and more than that it will probably make great fodder to hold over Dean. If Sam chose to do that, of course.
“Here,” Sam says, pulling the feather out of his pocket and holding it up for Cas to inspect. “Your, uh, grace.”
“Yes,” Cas rumbles, looking both relieved and vaguely constipated. He holds his hand out, palm up, and Sam gives him the feather.
It raises up, floating about an inch about his hand. There’s a golden light surrounding it, glowing outward in a sphere around the feather. Cas opens his mouth, wider than seems humanly possible. Dean grunts - possibly in confusion. The feather shimmers, vibrating gently in Cas’s grasp. Then, without warning, it bursts outward into the light and Cas sucks the nebulous, golden cloud into his mouth. And then he swallows it.
“Okay,” Dean says, slowly, letting the word hang heavy in the air, “so I’m betting this day can’t get any weirder - since already I got wings and Cas can unhinge his jaw like a fucking snake.”
As though in response, Cas burps.
They make it into a motel without anyone noticing Dean’s new limbs, but as soon as Cas walks in, he collapses on the nearest bed.
“Great,” Dean says. He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes and groans, taking a seat on the other bed. “Now what the hell are we supposed to do?”
“Stop griping,” Sam says. “We’ll just have to wait for Cas to wake up.” He gives Dean a quick grin that immediately has Dean suspicious. “I’ll go get us some food,” he says, jangling the keys to the Impala. Dean is already unhappy enough that he had to relinquish the keys to the car for the ride to the motel; Sam can’t helping rubbing it in - just a little. “Be back soon.”
It takes Sam nearly an hour to find somewhere to grab some food and then get back. When we walks in, Dean’s on the phone and Cas is still laid out flat on his stomach, asleep.
Dean looks up, then says, “Oh, sorry, Lisa, Sam’s back. I’ll call you back.” He hangs up and looks over at the bag Sam’s carrying with interest.
“That Lisa?” Sam asks, rhetorically. He sits down at the little table provided and starts unpacking the food. “You tell her what’s going on?”
“Hell no,” Dean scoffs, tearing open a carton of fried rice. He grabs the chopsticks Sam holds on and starts digging in.
“I don’t know,” Sam says, his tone light. “Some people are really into that sort of thing.”
“What, wings?” Dean’s mouth is full of food as he rolls his eyes.
“Yours are exceptional.” The brothers both look up to see Cas, sitting up on the bed, his hair in a messy halo on his head, sticking up with unusual ferocity. His eyes droop and his tie is badly askew. A chopstick hangs from Dean’s mouth as he stares at Cas. Castiel just tilts his head up and looks down at the Winchesters with narrowed eyes.
“Uh...” Dean lets the chopstick drop and clears his throat. “What?”
“Your wings,” Cas clarifies unnecessarily. He raises one hand and lets it drift down the tips of Dean’s feathers with unusual gentleness. Dean shivers, open-mouthed, with what Sam suspects may be pleasure. Sam just finds it a little creepy. Castiel wets his lips, still transfixed by the feathers under his fingertips. “They are beautiful.”
Sam resists the urge he has to look away. “Um. You’re still going to take them away, right?”
Cas draws his hand back quickly, something close to color rising in his cheeks. “Of course,” he says, indignantly.
“Why’d you give them to me anyway?” Dean asks.
“It wasn’t intentional,” Cas starts, but Dean interrupts.
“I really fucking hope it wasn’t intentional,” he snorts.
Cas gives him a dark look but doesn’t respond. “When I pulled you from the pit, I remade you - rebuilt your body. It seems that some of my grace was woven in. In my weakened state, I... responded to that. I tried to draw it to me.” He looks away from Dean and wets his upper lip with the flat of his tongue. He’s been doing things like that more lately, Sam notices - little involuntary motions, things a human might do without even thinking about it. That, he thinks, probably doesn’t bode well. “It had... unexpected results.”
“Yeah, I’ll say.” Dean looks down with a scowl. “So you’re saying I have... a piece of you. Inside me?”
“You could put it like that, yes.”
“Then get it out!”
“It isn’t that simple,” Cas explains. He looks as much in a snit as Dean does. Sam’s starting to think maybe the library needs a little more investigating. “I don’t know what might happen to you if I take it away. And at any rate I’m not strong enough yet.”
Dean’s flagging attention perks up at that, and his eyes dart to Cas’s, sharp and alert. “What the hell do you mean you’re not strong enough? You just got another piece back. Are you going to be able to get these things off me or not?”
“Yes,” Cas says with emphasis. “I will. But I’m going to need to rest more. I should be able to do it by the morning.”
Dean groans, his face in his hands. “You mean I have to sleep on these things?”
He does have to sleep on them; and it’s an experience none of them want to repeat. Cas, still dressed in everything down to his shoes, falls asleep face first on the bed again. He grunts when Sam pokes him but refuses to wake even with both brothers calling to him. Dean, by virtue of taking up the most space, gets a bed to himself. Sam has either the floor or Cas’s bed to choose from, so he shoves the angel over and tries to make do with the large lump that keeps trying to roll into the middle.
Dean tries to sleep on his stomach, but he still isn’t used to the feathers that keep brushing against him. Even though the wings are corporeal, they went straight through his clothing without ripping it. The only explanation Cas had given before he’d gone unconscious again was that it had to do with their metaphysical properties. Or, as Dean has put it, because of angel magic. The wings rustle all night, and occasionally if Dean gets too uncomfortable, one of them flings out and hits either the window or the nightstand between the beds.
Sam wakes up early, before Dean or Cas. Cas is still sleeping like the dead beside him, not moving, the only sign he’s awake at all the slight wheezy breath coming out of his nose. Dean is hovering above his bed, his wings flapping gently to keep him aloft. It takes Sam a moment to realize what he’s seeing. He blinks and rubs hard at his eyes. His brother’s still in the air. The wings are flapping hard enough to keep him elevated, and Sam realizes with a start that it’s probably what woke him up.
“Dean,” he hisses. “Dean! Wake up.”
The wings flap again and Dean grunts. His eyes open blearily and his legs stretch. They’re just hanging in the air, pointing down to the bed. It must be a disconcerting feeling - and really damn uncomfortable, Sam thinks - because Dean shakes his head and his muscles bunch up and, moving back to his conscious control, the wings stop flapping. He falls back onto the bed, spitting out a curse as he does.
“Cas!” he yells, trying to sit up, the wings getting in his way, bent awkwardly and trailing over the side of the bed. “Cas, get your ass up and get these things off me!”
Cas stirs from beside Sam. He sits up, eyes looking around blearily before focusing in on Dean. After the few moments of struggle Dean seems to have gotten his wings under control and he’s standing, looking furiously over at Cas. “I’m awake,” he says, his voice hoarse. There are dark circles under his eyes and a mark on his face from a wrinkle in the pillowcase. He stands and goes over to Dean. “Are you... certain you want me to remove them? Because I - “
“What the fuck,” Dean says. Sam snorts to himself. “Yes,” he says, emphasizing the word by poking Cas with his index finger. “I want them gone.”
Cas sighs as though he’s being greatly put-upon, and then rolls his shoulders. “Very well,” he says. He raises his hands and cups the air around Dean’s shoulders. Dean looks from his right side to his left, the feathers in his wings fluffing up a little in what Sam guesses is concern. Cas closes his eyes and he takes a breath so deep his body moves from it. And then the wings recede.
Sam can’t quite see it happen, only hears Dean’s gasp, and notices a golden light surrounding his brother. He blinks a few times and looks back, and just like that the wings are gone - the only thing left of them is a single white feather, that Cas surreptitiously tucks into the pocket of his coat.
After resting, Cas seems to have regained a lot of his strength. He seems to have a better idea of where his grace is, too, because the next day they have a new lead and a destination.
“So how do you know this is the right place?” Dean asks around the hunk of burger in his mouth. He licks some ketchup off his teeth and then shoves a fry in his mouth. “You picking up some sort of signal or something?”
Cas looks up from his plate of fried fish, a hushpuppy still between his thumb and index finger. “Yes,” he says. He looks over at Sam beside him. Sam just shrugs. “We’ve been over this already, Dean.”
“Yeah, I know,” Dean says, popping one finger after another in his mouth, sucking off all the burger detritus. “I just don’t see how it has anything to do with you or your grace. Hell, I don’t see how it’s a case at all.”
Sam sucks down the last of his milkshake and then sighs at his brother. “It is a little suspicious, Dean. All the women in this town going after the same guy?”
Dean shrugs. “Maybe he has a magic cock.”
Sam rolls his eyes. Cas just says “We can ask him when we get there.”
They finish their lunch without much more conversation until Dean says, “Hey Cas. I have something to ask you.”
“What is it, Dean?”
“Since you pulled me out of the pit and stuff some of your angel grace in me, wouldn’t Sam have some, too? And why can’t you just take it out of us? Wouldn’t that make you stronger faster?”
That’s something Sam hadn’t even thought of, and he turns to Cas, curious.
But Castiel shakes his head. “I didn’t have to rebuild Sam’s body as I had to rebuild yours. He has a small piece of my grace in order to... help him. Cope with the memories of hell. I do not wish to take that away.”
Sam’s torn between being really fucking grateful and a little freaked Cas did that without his permission.
“And,” Cas continues, “I do not want to risk unmaking you. The grace inside you does create a sort of bond between us, but I can’t tell what would happen if it were removed. As it seems to be causing you no problems, I decided that as long as I could retain enough strength to stay alive, it would be best to just leave it inside you”
“Oh, uh.” Dean shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Thanks for that, man.”
Cas doesn’t seem to hear the discomfort. “You’re welcome.”
Sam grins at his brother, unable to help himself when Dean is already visibly embarrassed. He teases Dean about Castiel all the way to the impala, which is where Dean’s admittedly limited patience breaks.
Dean sighs angrily. “Dammit, Sammy, are you ever going to let this go?”
“I don’t know,” Sams says with a shrug. He slings open the door to the Impala and slides his long body onto the seat. “Are you ever going to forgive me for eating cheesy puffs in the car?”
“Wha--” Dean glares. “Sam, a child - a fucking child - would realize that when you eat those things, you get that orange junk all over your goddamn hands. Do we have a sink in the car, Sam? Can you wash them before you put your greasy orange hands all over my baby?”
Sam rolls his eyes and lets out a huff of air; in the backseat, Cas doesn’t quite manage to hide his laugh.
Their destination is a small town somewhere Dean’s never heard of in Louisiana. They check into a little motel and do a little googling. A young man named Cameron Barlow had gone from being an unfortunate looking IT worker to being the most desired man in the entire town. From the interviews they’d read, the most desired man in the entire parish.
“So what do we think?” Dean asks, closing the internet browser and then shutting the laptop. “That somehow this guy got a hold of one of Cas’s pieces of grace and it made him hot shit to all the girls who never used to give him the time of day?”
“Looks like it,” Sam sighs. “And even if it doesn’t seem likely, something about this pinged on Cas’s radar, so we might as well check it out.”
Dean shrugs. “I guess so. What’s the plan?”
The article they read listed his employer, and it doesn’t take long to get a phone number for that. Sam calls, hoping to either talk to the guy or find out where he lives, but as soon as someone answers he starts yelling, telling them he has no idea where Cameron is, he hasn’t shown up to work, try his mother’s house and for the love of God stop calling.
“Um.” Sam clears his throat, taking a moment to process all the information that was just screamed at him. “Could you... tell me how to find his mother, please?” The guy spits out an address and then hangs up.
“Did you talk to him?” Castiel asks as Sam puts away his phone.
Sam shakes his head. “No. But the guy I talked to said we should try his mom’s.” Dean snorts in derisive amusement and Sam gives him a dirty look. “He said she lived on Front Street, number 204. Going in as reporters would probably be the easiest cover. We can pretend to want to write another article on him.”
“Sounds good to me,” Dean says. He stands up, stretching, and slaps Cas on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”
The town is so small they don’t really even need a map; it takes less than ten minutes to get there and soon they’re pulling up into a small driveway at the front of a squat brick house with a wooden porch and an overgrown lawn.
“Let us do the talking,” Dean tells Cas as they get out of the car. “Okay? Don’t mention anything about lost grace or what the hell we’re really doing here.”
Cas nods. “Very well, Dean.”
Dean seems pleased by the acquiescence. Sam rolls his eyes but doesn’t comment. They walk up to the door and ring the bell. After a moment or two a short woman with curly, graying hair opens the door. She squints up at Sam, who’s at least a foot taller than her, then puts on the glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. “Yes?” she asks.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Sam says, giving her his friendliest smile, “we’re looking for Cameron Barlow. Are you his mother?”
Her face falls and tears well up in her eyes. “Oh, my poor boy. Yes, I’m...” She takes out a handkerchief and blows her nose, then sticks it back in the breast pocket of her shirt. “I’m Edna Barlow,” she says. “But Cameron isn’t here, I’m afraid. He’s been missing since the day before yesterday.”
“We just want to ask you a few questions,” Sam says. “Would it be all right if we came in?”
“I suppose so,” she says, shuffling back and pushing the door open wider. “Are y’all reporters?”
Sam nods as they all come in. Cas closes the door gently behind him. “We are,” Sam says as they follow Edna into a sitting room. The room is small but crowded - it looks well cared for, but very lived in. Bookcases are built into the far wall, and there are two big windows with little bench window seats to their right. There’s an expensive looking flatscreen television mounted to the wall, and an old, squashy brown loveseat with hibiscus-printed throw pillows piled on top of it. A wicker basket full of old Cat Fancy and Food Network magazines is right beside the sofa, with a big, glass top coffee table in front of it. There’s a big leather armchair set catty-corner near the bookshelves, and a tall floor lamp stands beside it, the shade covered with what looks like a gauzy red scarf.
Edna takes a seat in the armchair and gestures toward the sofa. Dean plops down immediately, and Sam sits beside him. Cas just stands awkwardly near the windows.
“Now what can I help you with, boys?” she asks. There are pictures hanging on every wall; some of them are generic paintings of pretty landscapes, but most of them are of a young man with a marked resemblance to Edna. She looks over at the one closest to her and sighs. “You said you were here to do a little piece on my Cameron?”
“That’s right,” Dean says. “Could you, uh... tell us maybe how the whole thing started? I mean with the girls. Did anything strange happen? Did he mention finding anything or... maybe seeing something weird?”
Edna’s brows furrow and she frowns, shaking her head. “No,” she says. “He never mentioned anything like that to me. And he would have, you know, I’m sure he would have.” She leans forward, and cups a hand around her mouth conspiratorially, as though sharing a secret. “You see, he’s never been very popular with girls. He’s shy. But our neighbors - the Johnstons, right next door - have a pretty daughter, about his age, named Kelly. Her mother’s sick so she’s over pretty often checking in on her, and whenever Cameron was over here for dinner he’d always sit on the porch to try to get a look at her. She was friendly to him, of course, but I don’t ever think she knew how he felt.” She dabs at her eyes with her handkerchief. “I thought it was all very romantic.”
Dean coughs to cover a laugh and Sam jabs him with the point of his elbow. Sam licks his lips and scoots forward. “So he was interested in this girl - Kelly, right?” Edna nods. “What happened? Did he talk to her? Did he get another girlfriend to make her jealous?”
She shrugs. “I have no idea!” she says. “He likes to go for walks, you know, long walks out near his uncle’s place. Lot of swampland out there. And one day he goes out, moping about that girl. He comes back, same as always, but that’s when this whole thing started. He’s sitting on the porch, just like usual, but when Kelly’s getting into her car and Cameron waves, she just stops. And she stares at him, and stares at him, and stares at him, like the girl’s never seen him before in her life! I’ll tell you what, it had poor Cameron blushing like I’d never seen him before.
“And she wasn’t the only one, either. Girls all over town started staring at him, and it wasn’t too long before they started doing more than that, too.” Edna nods. “Yep, everything in a skirt started going after my boy. Flat out chasing him, near about. We went down to the grocery store, and had to be ten girls trying to grab him. Even the cashier was climbing over her register, saying she’d finally found her prince charming.”
Sam and Dean exchange looks. “Had anything like this ever happened to him before?”
“Oh no!” Edna says, laughing. “It was always the opposite. Cameron could already even talk to a pretty girl; and I hate to say it, but they never really took the time to talk to him, either. But I told him if he was just patient it would happen. They’d see just how special he was.” She sighs and looks off towards the door, her expression suddenly speculative. “It was funny the cashier said that, actually - the he was her ‘prince charming.’ Because, you see, that’s what I’d always told Cameron. I’d told him that he just had to be patient; that the right girl would find him one day, she just might have to kiss a few frogs first.”
“Do you have any idea where Cameron might have gone?” Dean asks. “You said he was missing - do you think he might have run away, trying to get away from whatever the hell’s happening?”
“Maybe,” she says. She reaches down and pulls a lever that raises her footrest. She shifts in her seat, getting comfortable, then props her feet, clad in fuzzy pink house shoes, up on the foot rest. She looks even smaller, nestled in the chair, and Sam feels a pang of sympathy for her and her missing son. “He was eating up all the attention at first.” She smiles indulgently. “Of course he would, though, I can’t blame him for that. But it was getting worse and worse, and I think it was really starting to get to him. He told me he was going for a walk, just to clear his head.” She sniffs. “Even promised to be back for supper. But I haven’t seen him since.”
“Well, could you tell us where he’d have gone for this walk?” Dean asks. “We want to find him for, uh... For an interview.”
“All right,” Edna says, “but my brother already looked for him and couldn’t find anything. I’ll give you the address, though. I told the police he was missing, but they said that I’m worrying too much - told me that once things settle down a bit, he’ll come home. I just pray nothing’s happened to him.”
Running through a swamp is exhausting, Sam decides. They are all muddy and miserable - even Cas, who practically makes it his job to ignore any physical unpleasantness he encounters, is actively projecting irritation.
They’d found Cameron Barlow after about an hour of searching. They’d heard voices, and followed them to find two women yelling at each other, arguing over who got to kiss him next. It turns out that Cameron had found a piece of Cas’s grace - another feather - and had used whatever mojo it held to give himself his own fairy tale ending. It had backfired, though, and instead of turning from a frog into a man, he’d started turning from a man into a frog. They’d gotten the feather from him, Cas had fixed the frog problem, and then they’d all trekked back to the car.
"Fuck," Dean says, reaching down to pick up the key to their room from where it lay on the ground. Sam aims a quick glare at the back of his brother's head, matted down and crusted with mud. Dean is Dean however, so he doesn't notice, not that he would care if he did of course, but Sam figures he might be racking up some good karma for at least trying to chastise him. Dean scratches at a bug bite, red and inflamed, on the back of his neck. "Welcome home, boys," he says, unlocking the door and pulling down the handle, pushing it open with his shoulder. He doesn't look back as Cas and Sam follow him inside, slipping off his jacket and dropping it down on the bed nearest the door.
The set of his shoulders is stiff under his t-shirt and he stalks into the bathroom and shuts the door hard enough to rattle the watercolor painting on the wall. It's of a vase of flowers, soft reds and blues and yellows, their heads bent gently towards the ground. It's not exactly cheery.
Sam sighs and sinks down in the chair by the air conditioning unit. Cas extends one hand and pushes and the door slowly closes behind him. He stands in front of it for a moment, staring down at the carpet at his feet. Sam watches him, notices the way his hands clench at his sides, the way he's stiff - naturally, humanly stiff, his muscles tense and the movement automatic. He probably doesn't even realize he's doing it.
The sound of water rushes in from the bathroom and Castiel's eyes dart towards the door. His lips part and for a second Sam thinks he's going to say something - but then his eyes just flicker downward again and the room stays silent.
It's pretty awkward, actually, but Sam tries not to let it bother him. He opens his laptop and turns it on. Cas, predictably, doesn't move. It's not that he doesn't like Cas - he does, really, but he's never going to have the relationship with Cas that Dean does. And Cas is more subdued than usual, anyway, after ingesting another piece of grace.
"What?" Castiel asks, noticing Sam's eyes on him.
Sam shakes his head. "Uh, nothing. Nothing, sorry."
Castiel blinks like what he really wants to do is roll his eyes.
Dean's shower doesn't take long, and he's strolling out of the bathroom a few minutes later, one of the towels slung around his waist. He grabs his bag and ducks back into the bathroom long enough to change.
"Your turn," he tells Sam, taking a seat on one of the beds. He scratches his neck again and looks over at Cas. "Hey," he says, beckoning Cas over with a jerk of his head, "can you heal this bug bite for me? Hurts like a son of a bitch."
His eyes narrow. "It's nothing but a minor inconvenience, Dean." Which is Cas-speak for no.
Dean falls back onto the bed. "Come on, Cas," he whines. "Fix it."
Sam can hardly believe that Dean would have the audacity to even ask - but then, he thinks, no, of course he can believe it, because it’s Dean. And of course Dean, being Dean and kind of a dick even at the best of times, would ask Cas to use his mojo - if he even had it still - to heal something as insignificant as a bug bite.
Cas rolls his eyes but goes over to Dean. “Right here,” Dean says, pointing to the back of his neck.
“I’m... not sure I can,” Cas says.
Dean snorts. “Sure you can. You just ate another one of those feathers, right? I thought you were getting stronger.”
“I am.”
“Then you can fix it.”
Cas lets out a breath similar to a sigh, then holds two fingers up to Dean’s neck. His brows furrow and he touches the bite. It takes about half a second of concentration, then Cas is pulling his fingers back, looking surprised to see the skin he’d just been touching unblemished. “Oh,” he says, his arm falling slowly to his side.
Dean looks up at him, beaming. “See?” he says. He stands up and pats Cas on the shoulder. “Knew you could do it. Now Sam, you go get a shower because dude - you reek. And Cas, get some sleep or whatever the hell it is you need to do to recharge.” He holds up his cell phone and shakes it a little. “I gotta call Lisa.”
Dean has a dream that night.
Air snaps around him and he opens his eyes. He’s standing on a beach - it’s empty of everything, of any signs of sentient life other than himself. The clean, white sand stretches on for as far as he can see in three directions, and in front of him is the ocean. Deep, endless blue. It’s calm, except for one patch of roiling water a little way off from shore. He shades his eyes and looks out, trying to see what’s interrupting the peaceful, secluded paradise.
The water swirls around in a circle, faster and faster until it makes a whirlpool. Whitecapped waves crash around in, churning up the water. The center of the pool pulls downward further and further and Dean wonders if it’ll drain the whole ocean dry.
But then he catches sight of something else. Something golden and pointed, peeking out above the water.
The whole beach seems to catch its breath, waiting, and after a moment of anticipatory stillness something bursts, whole and newly born, out above the water.
“Cas,” Dean breathes, so startled he takes an involuntary step back. It’s Castiel, but not as Dean’s ever seen him before. He has three pairs of huge, golden wings, the feathers irridescent and sharp, catching every beam of light and shining so bright it seems like they’re burning. His upper torso is naked - clean, pale skin with water droplets sliding down in bold, blasphemous little trails. His arms seem normal, but they end in hands like Dean’s never seen on any man - with long, thin fingers that end in pointed, steely claws.
And from his navel down, his body is covered in shiny green scales. It starts as just a smattering, a few here and there, set distinct from the skin. But the further down Dean looks, the thicker they get, until it’s not skin at all anymore - it’s just thick scales, in a dewy emerald green. Where his legs should be there’s a thick tail. It’s not small, it’s gigantic, like a dragon’s, curling around twice, spiraling into a huge, dark fin. And it takes Dean a moment to realize, struck dumb as he is, but Cas isn’t regular sized. He’s enormous, the size of a building, rising out of the water like some winged Godzilla.
Dean hiccups nervously, stumbling backwards further. Cas’s eyes snap open and they shoot straight to Dean.
“Dean,” he thinks. His eyes start to glow, and then they erupt into beams of blinding light. He thrashes, hard, his tail hitting the water with loud smacks. His mouth opens and light beams out. His wings spread out wide, and he rises up further like some ancient aquatic god.
He’s not sure why he does it, but something compels him to move closer and Dean runs, nearly tripping over his own feet in the loose sand, down to the water’s edge. The waves hit him hard and he watches as the sky turns a dark, ominous gray. Thunderheads gather behind Cas and the ocean turns dark and more turbulent.
Dean stands, despite the water pummeling him. And his eyes never leave Cas. The waves keep at it, hitting him over and over until he can’t remember the feeling of ever being dry. His body soaks up the water and he feels something inside him crumble. The water froths, and as each subsequent wave hits him he breathes in, and he feels a part of himself recede with it towards the ocean. His clothes disappear, torn apart by the force of the water, and he stands naked in the sand, baptized by the salty waves. The foam clings to his skin and he shivers. It becomes him, and he melts into the water, until he dissolves into the ocean, nothing more than foam.
part 3
Word Count: 8211
Warnings: none, really
masterpost | part 1
THY FEARFUL SYMMETRY
part 2
“Dude did you just... did you just sigh? Like. Wistfully?”
Sam at least looks contrite when Dean whirls around to look at him, but he doesn’t take back his question. “What the fuck,” Dean says, which makes Sam look down into his tea. “I wasn’t sighing.” He sinks down further in the booth, legs stretching out until he hits Sam’s feet. He doesn’t move and Sam’s eyes dart up to his. He frowns but Dean just raises an eyebrow and takes another bite of his pie. Sam watches, an expression on his face Dean categorizes as vague disgust, as a bit of the blueberry filling falls off his fork onto his chin. He wipes at it, smearing it, then licks it off with the back of his tongue. Sam rolls his eyes and Dean grins. But it works; Sam’s foot moves.
“Whatever,” he says, shifting in his seat. “You sighed.”
“I didn’t sigh.”
“Dean you were staring out a window.” He glances at Dean significantly then looks at the window on their right, putting his elbow on the table and resting his chin in his hand. He shakes his head - and that is a damn lustrous head of hair, christ, Dean wonders, does he grow it out just for moments like this? - and then sighs. It’s so deep his whole body moves with it and he blinks a couple of times, fluttering his eyelashes.
“Like that,” Dean says flatly. “I sighed - like that.” Sam nods. “I am not a mooning teenage girl.”
Sam ignores this and takes a long drag of his tea. “Dean,” he says, using his understanding voice, “If you... want to talk about it - “
“Ahh! No. No; let me stop you right there Mr. caring-and-sharing. I don’t need to talk about shit.” He takes another bite of his pie and smiles. “Except telling the waitress I want another slice.”
Sam rolls his eyes again, but he doesn’t say anything else about it. The dreams about Cas keep coming, every night, and finally - last night - Cas managed to communicate with him. All he could say was I am lost. Dean had been worried before, he wasn’t going to deny that, but after that dream he starting slipping into an actual honest as fuck freak-out. It didn’t help, either, that he’d had more of those tiger dreams, too. Now, Jesus, he didn’t mind telling Sam that he’d had some dreams of Cas, and he even didn’t mind - well, mostly didn’t mind- telling him that he’d had some dreams with Cas, but he’d be damned before he ever - and he meant ever - told Sam that sometimes he had creepy sex dreams with Tigerstiel, and that sometimes he even liked it. Goddamn, just thinking about it made it seem even creepier.
Suddenly, though, Dean’s phone starts to ring and he digs it out of his pocket. “Hello?”
“Dean.”
His mind goes blank at the familiar, gravelly voice. Cas, he thinks, holy shit, it’s Castiel.
“Cas!” he says, so loud that both Sam and the guy in the next booth behind them peer over to stare at him.
“Cas, hey, are you all right?” He clears his throat and throws Sam a quick look, promising to fill him in after the conversation is finished. “We haven’t heard from you since... since Sam came back. I mean, uh. Except the dreams. Where are you?”
Castiel is silent for a long minute and Dean’s starting to wonder if Cas hung up on him. “Dean,” he says again, something like uncertainty creeping into his voice. “I... You were praying for me.”
Jesus, is everyone going to get on his goddamn case today? He wasn’t praying to Castiel and he wasn’t sighing wistfully about it, either; he was just fucking thinking.
“Can you get your ass over here, Cas? We just want to make sure you’re okay. Tell me you’re okay.”
“I am...” His voice shakes a little before he awkwardly clears his throat. It’s a sound Dean’s not entirely sure he’s ever heard Cas make before. “I believe I am okay. But I...” His tone sounds pained. “Saving Sam took more out of me than I had expected. Something happened to my grace. Something I fear may be... permanent.”
Dean’s stomach fell into his feet. “Permanent? Cas, what happened? Cas, man, where are you?”
“I am at Bobby Singer’s.” He is silent again, for a long, tense moment. “Are you and Sam coming this way anytime soon?”
Dean mentally takes stock of what they have to do and how quickly they can get it done. “Yeah,” he says. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
Dean drives faster than Sam’s ever seen him drive before, racing to get to Bobby’s - and to Cas.
“How is he?” Sam asks, trying to keep his voice low. Dean’s already worried, already drawn tight, and Sam doesn’t want to exasperate that.
“I don’t know,” Bobby answers, sounding tired. “He kind of just showed up here, told me you were safe, and then collapsed. He’s been in and out of it all day and I got to tell you, Sam, I ain’t got a clue what to do for him. He’s burning up, and he’s pale as death.”
Sam swallows and looks over at Dean, sitting white-knuckled at the wheel. “We’re coming as fast as we can, Bobby. As fast as we can.”
They pull into Bobby’s the next day, and as soon as the engine’s off Dean’s out of the car, racing inside. “Where the hell is that dumb bastard?” Dean asks, almost running straight into Bobby in his haste.
“Sitting on the couch,” Bobby answers. “He’s awake now, so go on in.” Dean nods and walks off. Sam’s right behind him, and Bobby sighs. “He been like this ever since that angelic idjit called him?”
Sam nods. “Yeah, he’s...” He looks away, brows knitted in consternation. “Dean’s just worried. And I am, too, Bobby. Whatever Cas did to get me out, it hurt him. It hurt him bad. We’re just...” He laughs, self-deprecatingly, and says “I guess me and Dean just gravitate towards guilt. We’re Winchesters, we can’t help it.”
“Yeah,” Bobby says, watching Sam go into the living room, “you’re Winchesters, all right.”
Cas sits up as soon as he sees Sam enter. “Sam,” he says weakly, looking worriedly from one brother to the other. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, Cas, I’m fine, man. It’s you we’re worried about.”
“Yeah,” Dean echoes gruffly. “What the hell’s the matter with you anyway?”
Cas lets out a long breath and eases himself back down onto the couch. Dean is perched beside him, his ass half-off the couch. His hands hover close to Cas’s body but never touch him. He’s still wearing the suit and trenchcoat, and his forehead is wet with sweat, his hair plastered to the skin. His face is a pale, ashy gray. “When I went into the pit to save Sam,” he explains, his voice hoarse, “I went alone. I was stronger, but.” He groans. “My grace was... infected. When I returned to earth, my vessel could not longer contain it.”
“Could no longer contain it? What the hell does that mean?” Dean asks.
“It’s gone,” Cas answers flatly. “To get away from the taint of hell, my grace left my body. In... simpler terms,” he says in response to Dean’s blank look, “it exploded. Out of me.”
“No grace,” Sam says, looking worried. “Would that make you human?”
“Not yet,” Cas says. “It happened very quickly and I had no time to adjust. I may become human, but. There is a chance that I... won’t.”
“Won’t,” Dean repeats, “what do you mean won’t?”
Cas has just enough energy to give Dean a withering look. “I mean that I won’t be an angel, I won’t be human. I won’t be anything.”
The color drains from Dean’s face.
“W-well, is there...” Sam licks his lips thoughtfully. “Is there anyway to fix it?”
“If we managed to find my grace, then maybe,” Cas says.
“Okay then!” Dean says, standing up. “That’s all we have to do. That’s what we’re going to do.”
Sam and Cas share a look. “Don’t get me wrong, Dean,” Sam tells his brother, “I want to help Cas as much as you do, but.” He looks down at the floor and sighs. “How are we even supposed to find his grace?”
Castiel coughs. “I can sense it,” he says.
“See?” Dean tilts his chin up stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest. Sam rolls his eyes. “Cas can sense it.”
There’s some argument as to the pragmatism of the idea, but with Cas only getting worse and Dean’s lack of patience positively correlated to the severity of Cas’s symptoms, Sam doesn’t see that they have much of a choice.
It’s time to turn to google.
“What exactly are you looking for?” Dean asks intrusively, leaning over Sam’s shoulder to look at the screen of his laptop.
Sam cracks his knuckles. “I don’t know,” he says, again, slowly, trying not to lose his patience with his brother. “Anything... strange. Anything that might look like it’s related to angels, or to grace, or...” He sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair. “Just. Anything strange, Dean. We don’t exactly have a lot to go on right now.”
Dean leans in closer, looking at what Sam’s got pulled up in his browser. “You’re looking at libraries?” he asks, giving his brother an incredulous look.
Sam’s shoulders raise defensively. “For a reason, Dean,” he says. “I think this might be a lead.”
“Visitors at an all time high,” Dean reads. He levels Sam with a flat look. “Yeah, Sam, real suspicious.”
“Look, Dean, I know it’s a long shot, but I’ve just got a feeling. It can't hurt to check it out.”
“Here’s where Sam’s little feeling got us,” Dean says, putting the car in park. “You getting any vibes from your grace, Cas?”
“I...” Cas coughs once, and then promptly passes out.
“Cas!” Dean throws the door open and jumps out of the car. He opens the door to the backseat and shimmies inside, pulling at Cas, trying to wake him up. “Goddamnit, Cas,” he says, wiping the sweat off Cas’s brow. “What the hell did you have to go and pass out for?”
“Is he okay?” Sam asks worriedly, twisting around to look at Cas and his brother, piled in the back of the Impala.
Dean ignores him in favor of slapping Cas’s cheek with the back of one hand. “Wake up,” he says. He grits his teeth, fisting his hands into the lapels of Cas’s coat. “Damn it, Cas, wake up. Wake up.” There’s no response - nothing - and Sam can see the panic settling in: his face going slack, his shoulders getting tight.
With a low growl, Deans eyes snap shut and he curls his fists tighter into Cas’s clothes. He’s lifting Cas, the angel’s body raised and pressed against Dean’s. “You have to wake up,” Dean says. “You asshole. You don’t get to check out on us now.”
Whatever he’d done, or said, apparently works, because just as Sam’s about to try to pull Dean away to keep him from suffocating Cas, there’s a gasp and Cas is jerking awake. His eyes are wild and his mouth is open wide. He reaches out for Dean immediately, his hand clamping down on Dean’s shoulder, directly over the handprint.
“Dean,” Cas rasps out. He is breathing hard, his face growing even paler. His eyes burn a bright, electric blue until the glow takes up the whole eyeball.
“What’s happening, Cas?” Sam asks worriedly. “What are you doing to Dean?”
Before he can pull them apart, however, there’s a bright flash of light. He covers his eyes; Dean shouts.
Which, Sam notices after he blinks his eyes open, is probably because of the new pair of enormous wings that have erupted from his back.
“What the fuck,” Sam says stupidly, staring slack-jawed at his brother’s back.
Dean’s wings - and holy shit, Sam’s not ever going to be used to thinking that - flutter a little, trying to stretch out in the cramped space of the car.
“Cas...,” Dean says, his voice much higher-pitched than normal. Sam can’t tell if it’s because of anger or panic. “Did you just give me... wings. Sam, do I have wings?”
“Uh...” Sam rubs the back of his neck and clears his throat nervously. “Yeah. You kind of do.”
“This wasn’t my intention, Dean,” Cas says. He still looks weak and Sam remembers suddenly that they need to figure out if the piece of grace is there or not. And soon. “When I regain my strength, I can fix it.”
“Okay, great, but, um. We need to figure out if this is the right place or not. Cas, can you...” Sam’s mouth twists down and he makes swirly motions with his hands, trying to find an accurate description of what he wants to say. “Can you sense your grace here?”
Cas’s eyes close for a moment. “Yes,” he says, opening them and fixing his gaze on Sam. “Yes, it’s here.”
Sam breathes out in relief. “Great. Okay, Dean, you wait in the car with Cas. I’m going to go in and - “
“Wait,” Cas says. “You won’t know what it is. You need me.”
Dean snorts. “I think that Sam’ll be able to find a piece of souped up angel grace. Not like the library’s gonna be crawling with those.”
Cas relents, because he’s too weak to do much of anything besides sit in the car, anyway. And Dean turns out to be right - after talking to a few patrons Sam finds out that the reason the library’s been so popular lately is that the stories in the books are coming to life. Someone had a conversation with Eleanor Roosevelt after browsing through her biography. A little boy got to meet Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web. But nothing ever lasted - anything that happened only happened in the confines of the library. Once a reader left the building, the visions of whatever they’d been reading disappeared.
Sam’s chatting with a young woman at the reception desk when he notices a pencil caddy full of bookmarks. There’s a long, white feather between a robot bookmark and a piece of construction paper with “READING IT IS FUN!” scribbled on it in crayon. He gives the librarian a friendly goodbye and surreptitiously pockets the feather on his way out.
“Sam!” Dean calls from the car as soon as he’s in sight. “Did you get it? Are we good?”
“Yeah,” Sam calls back. He has to hold back laughter when he gets to the car; Dean is pressed up against the window, feathers fanned out behind him. The left wing is hitched up at his side, and the right is draped over the driver’s seat.
Dean opens the door and beckons Sam forward. “Okay great, now get it back to Cas right the hell now so I can get rid of these damn things.”
Sam climbs in the car on the driver’s side, waving off Dean’s token protests. There’s barely enough room for both Cas and newly-winged Dean in the backseat, and there’s a moment of awkward shuffling as they try to get situated so they can both look at Sam. Dean’s wing ends up wrapped around behind Cas, and Sam bites his lip to stifle his grin at that. It’s kind of freaking adorable, and more than that it will probably make great fodder to hold over Dean. If Sam chose to do that, of course.
“Here,” Sam says, pulling the feather out of his pocket and holding it up for Cas to inspect. “Your, uh, grace.”
“Yes,” Cas rumbles, looking both relieved and vaguely constipated. He holds his hand out, palm up, and Sam gives him the feather.
It raises up, floating about an inch about his hand. There’s a golden light surrounding it, glowing outward in a sphere around the feather. Cas opens his mouth, wider than seems humanly possible. Dean grunts - possibly in confusion. The feather shimmers, vibrating gently in Cas’s grasp. Then, without warning, it bursts outward into the light and Cas sucks the nebulous, golden cloud into his mouth. And then he swallows it.
“Okay,” Dean says, slowly, letting the word hang heavy in the air, “so I’m betting this day can’t get any weirder - since already I got wings and Cas can unhinge his jaw like a fucking snake.”
As though in response, Cas burps.
They make it into a motel without anyone noticing Dean’s new limbs, but as soon as Cas walks in, he collapses on the nearest bed.
“Great,” Dean says. He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes and groans, taking a seat on the other bed. “Now what the hell are we supposed to do?”
“Stop griping,” Sam says. “We’ll just have to wait for Cas to wake up.” He gives Dean a quick grin that immediately has Dean suspicious. “I’ll go get us some food,” he says, jangling the keys to the Impala. Dean is already unhappy enough that he had to relinquish the keys to the car for the ride to the motel; Sam can’t helping rubbing it in - just a little. “Be back soon.”
It takes Sam nearly an hour to find somewhere to grab some food and then get back. When we walks in, Dean’s on the phone and Cas is still laid out flat on his stomach, asleep.
Dean looks up, then says, “Oh, sorry, Lisa, Sam’s back. I’ll call you back.” He hangs up and looks over at the bag Sam’s carrying with interest.
“That Lisa?” Sam asks, rhetorically. He sits down at the little table provided and starts unpacking the food. “You tell her what’s going on?”
“Hell no,” Dean scoffs, tearing open a carton of fried rice. He grabs the chopsticks Sam holds on and starts digging in.
“I don’t know,” Sam says, his tone light. “Some people are really into that sort of thing.”
“What, wings?” Dean’s mouth is full of food as he rolls his eyes.
“Yours are exceptional.” The brothers both look up to see Cas, sitting up on the bed, his hair in a messy halo on his head, sticking up with unusual ferocity. His eyes droop and his tie is badly askew. A chopstick hangs from Dean’s mouth as he stares at Cas. Castiel just tilts his head up and looks down at the Winchesters with narrowed eyes.
“Uh...” Dean lets the chopstick drop and clears his throat. “What?”
“Your wings,” Cas clarifies unnecessarily. He raises one hand and lets it drift down the tips of Dean’s feathers with unusual gentleness. Dean shivers, open-mouthed, with what Sam suspects may be pleasure. Sam just finds it a little creepy. Castiel wets his lips, still transfixed by the feathers under his fingertips. “They are beautiful.”
Sam resists the urge he has to look away. “Um. You’re still going to take them away, right?”
Cas draws his hand back quickly, something close to color rising in his cheeks. “Of course,” he says, indignantly.
“Why’d you give them to me anyway?” Dean asks.
“It wasn’t intentional,” Cas starts, but Dean interrupts.
“I really fucking hope it wasn’t intentional,” he snorts.
Cas gives him a dark look but doesn’t respond. “When I pulled you from the pit, I remade you - rebuilt your body. It seems that some of my grace was woven in. In my weakened state, I... responded to that. I tried to draw it to me.” He looks away from Dean and wets his upper lip with the flat of his tongue. He’s been doing things like that more lately, Sam notices - little involuntary motions, things a human might do without even thinking about it. That, he thinks, probably doesn’t bode well. “It had... unexpected results.”
“Yeah, I’ll say.” Dean looks down with a scowl. “So you’re saying I have... a piece of you. Inside me?”
“You could put it like that, yes.”
“Then get it out!”
“It isn’t that simple,” Cas explains. He looks as much in a snit as Dean does. Sam’s starting to think maybe the library needs a little more investigating. “I don’t know what might happen to you if I take it away. And at any rate I’m not strong enough yet.”
Dean’s flagging attention perks up at that, and his eyes dart to Cas’s, sharp and alert. “What the hell do you mean you’re not strong enough? You just got another piece back. Are you going to be able to get these things off me or not?”
“Yes,” Cas says with emphasis. “I will. But I’m going to need to rest more. I should be able to do it by the morning.”
Dean groans, his face in his hands. “You mean I have to sleep on these things?”
He does have to sleep on them; and it’s an experience none of them want to repeat. Cas, still dressed in everything down to his shoes, falls asleep face first on the bed again. He grunts when Sam pokes him but refuses to wake even with both brothers calling to him. Dean, by virtue of taking up the most space, gets a bed to himself. Sam has either the floor or Cas’s bed to choose from, so he shoves the angel over and tries to make do with the large lump that keeps trying to roll into the middle.
Dean tries to sleep on his stomach, but he still isn’t used to the feathers that keep brushing against him. Even though the wings are corporeal, they went straight through his clothing without ripping it. The only explanation Cas had given before he’d gone unconscious again was that it had to do with their metaphysical properties. Or, as Dean has put it, because of angel magic. The wings rustle all night, and occasionally if Dean gets too uncomfortable, one of them flings out and hits either the window or the nightstand between the beds.
Sam wakes up early, before Dean or Cas. Cas is still sleeping like the dead beside him, not moving, the only sign he’s awake at all the slight wheezy breath coming out of his nose. Dean is hovering above his bed, his wings flapping gently to keep him aloft. It takes Sam a moment to realize what he’s seeing. He blinks and rubs hard at his eyes. His brother’s still in the air. The wings are flapping hard enough to keep him elevated, and Sam realizes with a start that it’s probably what woke him up.
“Dean,” he hisses. “Dean! Wake up.”
The wings flap again and Dean grunts. His eyes open blearily and his legs stretch. They’re just hanging in the air, pointing down to the bed. It must be a disconcerting feeling - and really damn uncomfortable, Sam thinks - because Dean shakes his head and his muscles bunch up and, moving back to his conscious control, the wings stop flapping. He falls back onto the bed, spitting out a curse as he does.
“Cas!” he yells, trying to sit up, the wings getting in his way, bent awkwardly and trailing over the side of the bed. “Cas, get your ass up and get these things off me!”
Cas stirs from beside Sam. He sits up, eyes looking around blearily before focusing in on Dean. After the few moments of struggle Dean seems to have gotten his wings under control and he’s standing, looking furiously over at Cas. “I’m awake,” he says, his voice hoarse. There are dark circles under his eyes and a mark on his face from a wrinkle in the pillowcase. He stands and goes over to Dean. “Are you... certain you want me to remove them? Because I - “
“What the fuck,” Dean says. Sam snorts to himself. “Yes,” he says, emphasizing the word by poking Cas with his index finger. “I want them gone.”
Cas sighs as though he’s being greatly put-upon, and then rolls his shoulders. “Very well,” he says. He raises his hands and cups the air around Dean’s shoulders. Dean looks from his right side to his left, the feathers in his wings fluffing up a little in what Sam guesses is concern. Cas closes his eyes and he takes a breath so deep his body moves from it. And then the wings recede.
Sam can’t quite see it happen, only hears Dean’s gasp, and notices a golden light surrounding his brother. He blinks a few times and looks back, and just like that the wings are gone - the only thing left of them is a single white feather, that Cas surreptitiously tucks into the pocket of his coat.
After resting, Cas seems to have regained a lot of his strength. He seems to have a better idea of where his grace is, too, because the next day they have a new lead and a destination.
“So how do you know this is the right place?” Dean asks around the hunk of burger in his mouth. He licks some ketchup off his teeth and then shoves a fry in his mouth. “You picking up some sort of signal or something?”
Cas looks up from his plate of fried fish, a hushpuppy still between his thumb and index finger. “Yes,” he says. He looks over at Sam beside him. Sam just shrugs. “We’ve been over this already, Dean.”
“Yeah, I know,” Dean says, popping one finger after another in his mouth, sucking off all the burger detritus. “I just don’t see how it has anything to do with you or your grace. Hell, I don’t see how it’s a case at all.”
Sam sucks down the last of his milkshake and then sighs at his brother. “It is a little suspicious, Dean. All the women in this town going after the same guy?”
Dean shrugs. “Maybe he has a magic cock.”
Sam rolls his eyes. Cas just says “We can ask him when we get there.”
They finish their lunch without much more conversation until Dean says, “Hey Cas. I have something to ask you.”
“What is it, Dean?”
“Since you pulled me out of the pit and stuff some of your angel grace in me, wouldn’t Sam have some, too? And why can’t you just take it out of us? Wouldn’t that make you stronger faster?”
That’s something Sam hadn’t even thought of, and he turns to Cas, curious.
But Castiel shakes his head. “I didn’t have to rebuild Sam’s body as I had to rebuild yours. He has a small piece of my grace in order to... help him. Cope with the memories of hell. I do not wish to take that away.”
Sam’s torn between being really fucking grateful and a little freaked Cas did that without his permission.
“And,” Cas continues, “I do not want to risk unmaking you. The grace inside you does create a sort of bond between us, but I can’t tell what would happen if it were removed. As it seems to be causing you no problems, I decided that as long as I could retain enough strength to stay alive, it would be best to just leave it inside you”
“Oh, uh.” Dean shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Thanks for that, man.”
Cas doesn’t seem to hear the discomfort. “You’re welcome.”
Sam grins at his brother, unable to help himself when Dean is already visibly embarrassed. He teases Dean about Castiel all the way to the impala, which is where Dean’s admittedly limited patience breaks.
Dean sighs angrily. “Dammit, Sammy, are you ever going to let this go?”
“I don’t know,” Sams says with a shrug. He slings open the door to the Impala and slides his long body onto the seat. “Are you ever going to forgive me for eating cheesy puffs in the car?”
“Wha--” Dean glares. “Sam, a child - a fucking child - would realize that when you eat those things, you get that orange junk all over your goddamn hands. Do we have a sink in the car, Sam? Can you wash them before you put your greasy orange hands all over my baby?”
Sam rolls his eyes and lets out a huff of air; in the backseat, Cas doesn’t quite manage to hide his laugh.
Their destination is a small town somewhere Dean’s never heard of in Louisiana. They check into a little motel and do a little googling. A young man named Cameron Barlow had gone from being an unfortunate looking IT worker to being the most desired man in the entire town. From the interviews they’d read, the most desired man in the entire parish.
“So what do we think?” Dean asks, closing the internet browser and then shutting the laptop. “That somehow this guy got a hold of one of Cas’s pieces of grace and it made him hot shit to all the girls who never used to give him the time of day?”
“Looks like it,” Sam sighs. “And even if it doesn’t seem likely, something about this pinged on Cas’s radar, so we might as well check it out.”
Dean shrugs. “I guess so. What’s the plan?”
The article they read listed his employer, and it doesn’t take long to get a phone number for that. Sam calls, hoping to either talk to the guy or find out where he lives, but as soon as someone answers he starts yelling, telling them he has no idea where Cameron is, he hasn’t shown up to work, try his mother’s house and for the love of God stop calling.
“Um.” Sam clears his throat, taking a moment to process all the information that was just screamed at him. “Could you... tell me how to find his mother, please?” The guy spits out an address and then hangs up.
“Did you talk to him?” Castiel asks as Sam puts away his phone.
Sam shakes his head. “No. But the guy I talked to said we should try his mom’s.” Dean snorts in derisive amusement and Sam gives him a dirty look. “He said she lived on Front Street, number 204. Going in as reporters would probably be the easiest cover. We can pretend to want to write another article on him.”
“Sounds good to me,” Dean says. He stands up, stretching, and slaps Cas on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”
The town is so small they don’t really even need a map; it takes less than ten minutes to get there and soon they’re pulling up into a small driveway at the front of a squat brick house with a wooden porch and an overgrown lawn.
“Let us do the talking,” Dean tells Cas as they get out of the car. “Okay? Don’t mention anything about lost grace or what the hell we’re really doing here.”
Cas nods. “Very well, Dean.”
Dean seems pleased by the acquiescence. Sam rolls his eyes but doesn’t comment. They walk up to the door and ring the bell. After a moment or two a short woman with curly, graying hair opens the door. She squints up at Sam, who’s at least a foot taller than her, then puts on the glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. “Yes?” she asks.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Sam says, giving her his friendliest smile, “we’re looking for Cameron Barlow. Are you his mother?”
Her face falls and tears well up in her eyes. “Oh, my poor boy. Yes, I’m...” She takes out a handkerchief and blows her nose, then sticks it back in the breast pocket of her shirt. “I’m Edna Barlow,” she says. “But Cameron isn’t here, I’m afraid. He’s been missing since the day before yesterday.”
“We just want to ask you a few questions,” Sam says. “Would it be all right if we came in?”
“I suppose so,” she says, shuffling back and pushing the door open wider. “Are y’all reporters?”
Sam nods as they all come in. Cas closes the door gently behind him. “We are,” Sam says as they follow Edna into a sitting room. The room is small but crowded - it looks well cared for, but very lived in. Bookcases are built into the far wall, and there are two big windows with little bench window seats to their right. There’s an expensive looking flatscreen television mounted to the wall, and an old, squashy brown loveseat with hibiscus-printed throw pillows piled on top of it. A wicker basket full of old Cat Fancy and Food Network magazines is right beside the sofa, with a big, glass top coffee table in front of it. There’s a big leather armchair set catty-corner near the bookshelves, and a tall floor lamp stands beside it, the shade covered with what looks like a gauzy red scarf.
Edna takes a seat in the armchair and gestures toward the sofa. Dean plops down immediately, and Sam sits beside him. Cas just stands awkwardly near the windows.
“Now what can I help you with, boys?” she asks. There are pictures hanging on every wall; some of them are generic paintings of pretty landscapes, but most of them are of a young man with a marked resemblance to Edna. She looks over at the one closest to her and sighs. “You said you were here to do a little piece on my Cameron?”
“That’s right,” Dean says. “Could you, uh... tell us maybe how the whole thing started? I mean with the girls. Did anything strange happen? Did he mention finding anything or... maybe seeing something weird?”
Edna’s brows furrow and she frowns, shaking her head. “No,” she says. “He never mentioned anything like that to me. And he would have, you know, I’m sure he would have.” She leans forward, and cups a hand around her mouth conspiratorially, as though sharing a secret. “You see, he’s never been very popular with girls. He’s shy. But our neighbors - the Johnstons, right next door - have a pretty daughter, about his age, named Kelly. Her mother’s sick so she’s over pretty often checking in on her, and whenever Cameron was over here for dinner he’d always sit on the porch to try to get a look at her. She was friendly to him, of course, but I don’t ever think she knew how he felt.” She dabs at her eyes with her handkerchief. “I thought it was all very romantic.”
Dean coughs to cover a laugh and Sam jabs him with the point of his elbow. Sam licks his lips and scoots forward. “So he was interested in this girl - Kelly, right?” Edna nods. “What happened? Did he talk to her? Did he get another girlfriend to make her jealous?”
She shrugs. “I have no idea!” she says. “He likes to go for walks, you know, long walks out near his uncle’s place. Lot of swampland out there. And one day he goes out, moping about that girl. He comes back, same as always, but that’s when this whole thing started. He’s sitting on the porch, just like usual, but when Kelly’s getting into her car and Cameron waves, she just stops. And she stares at him, and stares at him, and stares at him, like the girl’s never seen him before in her life! I’ll tell you what, it had poor Cameron blushing like I’d never seen him before.
“And she wasn’t the only one, either. Girls all over town started staring at him, and it wasn’t too long before they started doing more than that, too.” Edna nods. “Yep, everything in a skirt started going after my boy. Flat out chasing him, near about. We went down to the grocery store, and had to be ten girls trying to grab him. Even the cashier was climbing over her register, saying she’d finally found her prince charming.”
Sam and Dean exchange looks. “Had anything like this ever happened to him before?”
“Oh no!” Edna says, laughing. “It was always the opposite. Cameron could already even talk to a pretty girl; and I hate to say it, but they never really took the time to talk to him, either. But I told him if he was just patient it would happen. They’d see just how special he was.” She sighs and looks off towards the door, her expression suddenly speculative. “It was funny the cashier said that, actually - the he was her ‘prince charming.’ Because, you see, that’s what I’d always told Cameron. I’d told him that he just had to be patient; that the right girl would find him one day, she just might have to kiss a few frogs first.”
“Do you have any idea where Cameron might have gone?” Dean asks. “You said he was missing - do you think he might have run away, trying to get away from whatever the hell’s happening?”
“Maybe,” she says. She reaches down and pulls a lever that raises her footrest. She shifts in her seat, getting comfortable, then props her feet, clad in fuzzy pink house shoes, up on the foot rest. She looks even smaller, nestled in the chair, and Sam feels a pang of sympathy for her and her missing son. “He was eating up all the attention at first.” She smiles indulgently. “Of course he would, though, I can’t blame him for that. But it was getting worse and worse, and I think it was really starting to get to him. He told me he was going for a walk, just to clear his head.” She sniffs. “Even promised to be back for supper. But I haven’t seen him since.”
“Well, could you tell us where he’d have gone for this walk?” Dean asks. “We want to find him for, uh... For an interview.”
“All right,” Edna says, “but my brother already looked for him and couldn’t find anything. I’ll give you the address, though. I told the police he was missing, but they said that I’m worrying too much - told me that once things settle down a bit, he’ll come home. I just pray nothing’s happened to him.”
Running through a swamp is exhausting, Sam decides. They are all muddy and miserable - even Cas, who practically makes it his job to ignore any physical unpleasantness he encounters, is actively projecting irritation.
They’d found Cameron Barlow after about an hour of searching. They’d heard voices, and followed them to find two women yelling at each other, arguing over who got to kiss him next. It turns out that Cameron had found a piece of Cas’s grace - another feather - and had used whatever mojo it held to give himself his own fairy tale ending. It had backfired, though, and instead of turning from a frog into a man, he’d started turning from a man into a frog. They’d gotten the feather from him, Cas had fixed the frog problem, and then they’d all trekked back to the car.
"Fuck," Dean says, reaching down to pick up the key to their room from where it lay on the ground. Sam aims a quick glare at the back of his brother's head, matted down and crusted with mud. Dean is Dean however, so he doesn't notice, not that he would care if he did of course, but Sam figures he might be racking up some good karma for at least trying to chastise him. Dean scratches at a bug bite, red and inflamed, on the back of his neck. "Welcome home, boys," he says, unlocking the door and pulling down the handle, pushing it open with his shoulder. He doesn't look back as Cas and Sam follow him inside, slipping off his jacket and dropping it down on the bed nearest the door.
The set of his shoulders is stiff under his t-shirt and he stalks into the bathroom and shuts the door hard enough to rattle the watercolor painting on the wall. It's of a vase of flowers, soft reds and blues and yellows, their heads bent gently towards the ground. It's not exactly cheery.
Sam sighs and sinks down in the chair by the air conditioning unit. Cas extends one hand and pushes and the door slowly closes behind him. He stands in front of it for a moment, staring down at the carpet at his feet. Sam watches him, notices the way his hands clench at his sides, the way he's stiff - naturally, humanly stiff, his muscles tense and the movement automatic. He probably doesn't even realize he's doing it.
The sound of water rushes in from the bathroom and Castiel's eyes dart towards the door. His lips part and for a second Sam thinks he's going to say something - but then his eyes just flicker downward again and the room stays silent.
It's pretty awkward, actually, but Sam tries not to let it bother him. He opens his laptop and turns it on. Cas, predictably, doesn't move. It's not that he doesn't like Cas - he does, really, but he's never going to have the relationship with Cas that Dean does. And Cas is more subdued than usual, anyway, after ingesting another piece of grace.
"What?" Castiel asks, noticing Sam's eyes on him.
Sam shakes his head. "Uh, nothing. Nothing, sorry."
Castiel blinks like what he really wants to do is roll his eyes.
Dean's shower doesn't take long, and he's strolling out of the bathroom a few minutes later, one of the towels slung around his waist. He grabs his bag and ducks back into the bathroom long enough to change.
"Your turn," he tells Sam, taking a seat on one of the beds. He scratches his neck again and looks over at Cas. "Hey," he says, beckoning Cas over with a jerk of his head, "can you heal this bug bite for me? Hurts like a son of a bitch."
His eyes narrow. "It's nothing but a minor inconvenience, Dean." Which is Cas-speak for no.
Dean falls back onto the bed. "Come on, Cas," he whines. "Fix it."
Sam can hardly believe that Dean would have the audacity to even ask - but then, he thinks, no, of course he can believe it, because it’s Dean. And of course Dean, being Dean and kind of a dick even at the best of times, would ask Cas to use his mojo - if he even had it still - to heal something as insignificant as a bug bite.
Cas rolls his eyes but goes over to Dean. “Right here,” Dean says, pointing to the back of his neck.
“I’m... not sure I can,” Cas says.
Dean snorts. “Sure you can. You just ate another one of those feathers, right? I thought you were getting stronger.”
“I am.”
“Then you can fix it.”
Cas lets out a breath similar to a sigh, then holds two fingers up to Dean’s neck. His brows furrow and he touches the bite. It takes about half a second of concentration, then Cas is pulling his fingers back, looking surprised to see the skin he’d just been touching unblemished. “Oh,” he says, his arm falling slowly to his side.
Dean looks up at him, beaming. “See?” he says. He stands up and pats Cas on the shoulder. “Knew you could do it. Now Sam, you go get a shower because dude - you reek. And Cas, get some sleep or whatever the hell it is you need to do to recharge.” He holds up his cell phone and shakes it a little. “I gotta call Lisa.”
Dean has a dream that night.
Air snaps around him and he opens his eyes. He’s standing on a beach - it’s empty of everything, of any signs of sentient life other than himself. The clean, white sand stretches on for as far as he can see in three directions, and in front of him is the ocean. Deep, endless blue. It’s calm, except for one patch of roiling water a little way off from shore. He shades his eyes and looks out, trying to see what’s interrupting the peaceful, secluded paradise.
The water swirls around in a circle, faster and faster until it makes a whirlpool. Whitecapped waves crash around in, churning up the water. The center of the pool pulls downward further and further and Dean wonders if it’ll drain the whole ocean dry.
But then he catches sight of something else. Something golden and pointed, peeking out above the water.
The whole beach seems to catch its breath, waiting, and after a moment of anticipatory stillness something bursts, whole and newly born, out above the water.
“Cas,” Dean breathes, so startled he takes an involuntary step back. It’s Castiel, but not as Dean’s ever seen him before. He has three pairs of huge, golden wings, the feathers irridescent and sharp, catching every beam of light and shining so bright it seems like they’re burning. His upper torso is naked - clean, pale skin with water droplets sliding down in bold, blasphemous little trails. His arms seem normal, but they end in hands like Dean’s never seen on any man - with long, thin fingers that end in pointed, steely claws.
And from his navel down, his body is covered in shiny green scales. It starts as just a smattering, a few here and there, set distinct from the skin. But the further down Dean looks, the thicker they get, until it’s not skin at all anymore - it’s just thick scales, in a dewy emerald green. Where his legs should be there’s a thick tail. It’s not small, it’s gigantic, like a dragon’s, curling around twice, spiraling into a huge, dark fin. And it takes Dean a moment to realize, struck dumb as he is, but Cas isn’t regular sized. He’s enormous, the size of a building, rising out of the water like some winged Godzilla.
Dean hiccups nervously, stumbling backwards further. Cas’s eyes snap open and they shoot straight to Dean.
“Dean,” he thinks. His eyes start to glow, and then they erupt into beams of blinding light. He thrashes, hard, his tail hitting the water with loud smacks. His mouth opens and light beams out. His wings spread out wide, and he rises up further like some ancient aquatic god.
He’s not sure why he does it, but something compels him to move closer and Dean runs, nearly tripping over his own feet in the loose sand, down to the water’s edge. The waves hit him hard and he watches as the sky turns a dark, ominous gray. Thunderheads gather behind Cas and the ocean turns dark and more turbulent.
Dean stands, despite the water pummeling him. And his eyes never leave Cas. The waves keep at it, hitting him over and over until he can’t remember the feeling of ever being dry. His body soaks up the water and he feels something inside him crumble. The water froths, and as each subsequent wave hits him he breathes in, and he feels a part of himself recede with it towards the ocean. His clothes disappear, torn apart by the force of the water, and he stands naked in the sand, baptized by the salty waves. The foam clings to his skin and he shivers. It becomes him, and he melts into the water, until he dissolves into the ocean, nothing more than foam.
part 3