on what wings (spn)
Title: On What Wings.
Rating: R.
Fandom: Supernatural.
Pairing: Sam/Dean.
Warning: Incest. Wing!fic (angel!fic).
Notes: Thanks to mandysbitch for the awesome beta. I don’t actually know if I should apologize for the fact this is wing!fic, fairly serious wing fic, incest, kinda!angel!fic or (debatably for this fandom) crack, so I’ll just not. Title from The Tyger by William Blake (another thing I should probably apologize for). These two lines are the relevant ones:
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
---
They’re holding Dean, two of the ugliest demon creatures Sam’s every seen, fleshy wings sprouting from their naked, leathery backs. Their bird-clawed human fingers are digging into Dean’s upper arms. Sam’s chained helpless against the far wall, struggling, eyes glued to the creatures.
The demon is about to make a second incision, to match the one on Dean’s right shoulder blade. Sam can’t hear Dean scream like that again. It must burn.
The dagger comes down and Sam feels himself expanding, reaching out beyond his body. He pulls the dagger with unseen hands, mind focused only on stopping them from hurting Dean again.
The demon screams and so does Dean and….
There’s an explosion of white behind Sam’s eyes, muscles he didn’t know he had tensed collapse with a melting burn like he’s being working them for days without rest.
---
“Am I…?”
Sam knows he’s not dead the second the guy with the angel wings laughs like a devil and swims into focus.
“Dean?”
“Hey, Sam.”
“What the hell, Dean?”
“I don’t think hell has much to do with it,” Dean says. He drags a downy, tickling feather down Sam’s face. Sam freezes.
It tickles more when Dean shoves it up his nostril.
“Dean, goddamn it!”
“I couldn’t resist,” Dean laughs.
---
Sam spins the dagger in his hand, twisting it up to touch his inner arm, invisible from the front; flicking it down to point at the floor; stopping himself at the last minute from letting it fly out of his hand to bury in the wall of the motel room: tricks and practice drills that are so deeply ingrained in his brain he could do them sleeping.
Dean went back and set the building alight, burning everything that could be. The demons were no where to be seen. Dean is exhausted and bleeding and pissed off.
Sam remembers seeing lots of huge dusty books, when he was chained up, as old in years as they were heavy in pounds. There was an alter set up, but it didn’t look like the demon were using it for what they’d been planned for Dean.
It’s just.
The cuts on Dean’s shoulders, the wings on the demons, the way they looked so wrong, the feather covered consequences of Sam’s unseen power holding the knife as it slid through Dean’s flesh.
It tickles the back of his mind.
He wants to fix Dean before they find the bastards, or even start looking. So. Research first, kicking ass later.
He tells Dean the plan.
Dean only adds “story of our life,” and continues struggling with the single motel bed plus wings plus getting to sleep dilemma.
---
They're white.
Dean’s wings: they’re white.
Not like, "The ceiling of my room is white".
Not like, "This paper is white".
Not like, "This brand new shirt is really white out in the sun".
In the middle of a clearing, out of view from the roadside, Sam watches. They drove out of town so Dean could get a handle on the wings. Sam’s just happy to get his nose out of absolutely useless research books, unhelpful crackpot internet sites and the dustiest library on earth. It looks like Dean’s going to be stuck with the wings for a while, so… might as well see what they can do.
Dean flexes as if he's never been without wings in his life, a strong arc of feather covered muscle and bone, pulling up and around to touch tips momentarily, forming a circle. Each wing is as tall as Dean and then half again. Sam hadn’t noticed their grandiose, intimidating, sort of otherworldly hugeness while they were folded against Dean’s back, inside the motel room.
As Sam watches the wings slowly come down, blind spots flit in and out of the corners of his eyes. He realises what the wings are white like: they’re like staring into the sun.
Sam can't look away.
"Man, these would be awesome in black, huh?" Dean says, without turning around.
"I don't think the whole ancient cursed blade and demon thing were about colour coordination, Mr. Fashion."
"Oh, blow me," Dean says. His wings shudder with what looks like annoyance.
"Did I just literally ruffle your feathers?" Sam laughs shortly.
Dean turns and fakes a left handed punch to Sam's shoulder, and as Sam dips his head to avoid what he assumes will be Dean’s real punch from the right, Dean brings a wing up to cuff him on the back of the head.
"Ow, Jesus, Dean, there's bone under there!" Sam hits Dean on the shoulder and Dean doesn’t bother to dodge. Probably feels guilty about the unfair advantage.
"Best curse ever," Dean says.
So not feeling guilty then. In that case, Sam feels it’s his duty to use Dean’s newly discovered different centre of gravity to his advantage. He tackles Dean to the ground, dust and leaves puff out like a mini twister touched down as Dean falls down on his back, wings spread flat. Sam rolls off before Dean can recover enough to get a leg around him and flip them.
He stands up and bounces on his heels, looking down at Dean. Dean looks up at him, smiling, and holds his hand out to be pulled up.
Sam slaps their palms together, pulling Dean off the ground. The last couple of days, when Dean smiles, Sam just has to smile back.
“Yeah, some curse, huh?” Sam says.
“I say again, baby brother, best ever.”
---
Dean lists the downsides to his new appendages:
1. Limited maneuverability in daylight, meaning boredom beyond comprehension, no chicks, and not being there to have Sam’s back.
2. Heavy, thrift store bought trench a must at all times, even in burning, damp heat that makes you sweat your energy out. People thinking he’s mental when he goes out in the coat in this weather.
3. Being stuck in motels while Sam researches ways of undoing the curse (and they don’t even know what those demons really are yet much less how Sam’s freaky brain touch or whatever ended up giving him wings).
4. He can’t drive his fucking car. That one’s the worst. He just doesn’t fit right anymore.
Sam lists the downsides:
1. Limited maneuverability in daylight, meaning no one there to share the bullshitting-for-the-cause/research at the library duties.
2. Dean being stuck in motel rooms. A bored Dean is a dangerous Dean and Sam really, really likes his hair at the moment.
3. Waiting for the “curse” to get worse before he can figure out how to fix it.
4. Knowing he did this somehow. Sure, it’s doubtful this is what the demons were going for, but.
5. Dean telling him how to drive the damn car.
---
Sam comes back from the library with absolutely zero leads. He kicks a rock in the carpark in frustration, but instead of helpfully flying across and smashing something into a million pieces, all it does it hurt his toe and bounce harmlessly into a bush. He can hear music pounding unrecognizably out of one of the motel rooms, and hopes like hell he won’t have to go somewhere at 2 a.m. to ask some probably adulterous couple to keep the music down, with a polite: “We all know you’re fucking anyway”.
Turns out the music is coming from his room.
And it’s Metallica.
And it’s blaring so fucking loud he’s pretty sure his ears just started bleeding
But it’s totally and completely worth it for the sight that greets him: Dean, angelic wings spread, standing on the bed unsteadily, crotch level air-guitar at the ready, belting out the live version of Fuel along with James Hetfield.
Sam… loses it.
Eventually, he blinks tears of laughter out of his eyes, and finds Dean sitting on the end of a bed, smiling at him.
No shame.
“Man,” Sam says. “You looked like a DICK.”
“You’re a dick!”
“No, you’re…,” and Sam finally opens his eyes enough to see the three quarters empty bottle of whisky on the bedside table, “god, drunk much?”
“Hey, you started it,” Dean says happily.
“Dick,” Sam says as he plunks himself exhaustedly next to Dean. “I can’t leave you alone for a second, can I?”
“Sure you can. I just can’t be held responsible for any damages that might happen. At the time. Y’know.”
“Did I already mention you might be a bit drunk, Dean?”
“Sam. Sam. Sammy.” Dean looks at him, swivels to face Sam and plunks a hand heavily onto his shoulder. “Sometimes you just need to get so completely blind, stinking, goddamn drunk and put on great music to drown out your brain until you can’t think about how you just clogged up the damn shower drain with feathers, when you did finally manage to cram bulky wing covered self into the breadbox of a shower. And even though that ate up a good couple of hours, you were still so mind numbingly bored sitting around useless--“
Sam shoves Dean’s shoulder a little.
“You’re rambling, drunk-o.”
“I’ll give you drunk-o!” Dean says and tackles Sam off the bed.
Dean’s got the weight advantage when they’re both on the floor, extra pounds of wing and muscle cancelling out Sam’s normally advantageous extra inches in height and reach.
It’s just, when they finally roll to a stop, out of breath, Sam can’t help but stare. Dean’s hands hold his wrists in a loosening grip, but Sam doesn’t think about moving. Looking up into Dean’s face, hovering above Sam with a soft drunk smile, Sam notices that in the dim light…
Dean seems to glow, and--
“Sam, do you love me?”
Sam snorts, and tries to say something about Dean needing to lay off the booze, because this is the kinda shit Dean’s always come out with when he’s really, really shitfaced. He’s always touched Sam a lot more, wrestled him, said stuff he’s never say otherwise. Even asked Sam not to leave him, before Stanford, drunk out of his head. Said ‘please’. It tore Sam’s guts out. So he tries to make another drunk crack, to save them both some monosyllabic conversation, loud music and classic Winchester uncomfortableness, but what comes out is, “yes.”
That wasn’t what he was going to say. What the hell?
“Dean, what the fuck?”
“Holy shit,” Dean says. “You can’t lie to me. I, uh, was really really bored earlier, because you were out researching and it was fucking boring. Anyway, there was a maid that came by who had no problem with a little friendly chat, and it turns out… well. Look. Sam. Quick question: you whack off last night?”
Sam doesn’t have any idea what to say. He tries to keep his mouth shut, but, “yes,” slips past white lipped effort.
If Dean’s saying what Sam thinks… “I can’t lie to you?” Sam says.
“No, man, no one can lie to me. I don’t think. I mean, you’re only human.” Dean rolls off him, sounding winded.
“Jesus, Dean, are you… okay?” Sam asks. What he does say is ‘why the hell isn’t this freaking you out as much as it is me?’.
“If you don’t count the truly impressive size of my… wingspan,” Dean pauses and cocks an eyebrow at Sam, “and the truth thing, I’m good. In fact, I feel better than I have in… I don’t even know, ever.”
---
Out of desperation Sam researches absolutely anything that might vaguely be connected to wings, daggers, demons, or the history of the town they have yet to leave.
He stumbles across a whole chunk of articles that cause imaginary red flags to wave in front of his eyes, and what he’s always thought of as his hunter’s second sense, until recently, taps at the back of his mind incessantly.
Unfortunately, it’s completely unrelated to Dean’s wings.
There’s a forum that’s apparently a hangout for local teens, peppered with talk of death defying make out sessions at “The Old Baker Place”. A shack located just out of town. Turns out once a month, always at night, the locals heard horrible screams and howls coming from inside, wood cracking, walls thudding and shaking. But recently, it’s been quiet.
Sam thinks, werewolf, and then, fuck.
He googles dog attacks plus the town name, and wants to scream. Two deaths in the last two months, that (almost) fit the large dog attack description.
If there’s one thing he hates, it’s werewolves. It’s always harder when they’re still still mostly human.
He leaves off the fruitless research about Dean’s curse, and heads back to tell Dean about the find. At least it will be a night hunt, Sam thinks, Dean can be there to back me up.
“Damn werewolves,” he says under his breath, then wonders if the librarian is just smelling something funny, or if she actually heard what he said.
It’s just. Werewolves. He hopes it’s not a kid. Kids are the worst.
---
It’s not a kid. Sam has time to think thank god it’s not a kid, before a few hundred pounds of adult wolf smashing him into a wall makes him reconsider the thank god part.
Dean yells something that sounds about is clear as the blurry shapes in Sam’s vision look.
By the time Sam’s up and clear headed again, it’s all over. Only, he’s not sure how exactly it ended.
“Dean…” Sam thinks he should have screamed, as he watches Dean bleed through his gaping shirt, claw marks crossing his ribs in vertical red gashes, curling around to his lower stomach. Sam’s seen wounds like that on werewolf victims, spilling their life and blood and gore all over the ground.
But Dean is standing tall, wounds across his side and front pulling together, knitting, holding up like they’re wrapped in clear plastic as they heal.
The wolf, too, isn’t right. It’s just a person. A thin, pale woman, laying naked and crumpled in the full moon light. The moonlight that should be keeping her trapped in a twisted, unnatural human-wolf hybrid body. She should be baying for more of the blood she’s spilt.
“Dean?” Sam says, and suddenly Dean’s right there, his own heavy breathing is fading out… then vision goes with it…
Sam opens his eyes. Dean’s still bleeding, but it’s rapidly slowing. He’s flat on his back. Dean’s hovering over him, glowing in torn clothes and wide, spotless wings, miraculously not dripping blood into Sam’s face.
Miraculously.
Miracle.
Sam’s head spins when Dean pulls him up by his arm.
“Have I mentioned best curse ever, Sammy? Because I can kick some serious ass like this, man. I mean, look,” Dean says. He pulls his ripped shirt away completely to show his now completely perfect, if bloodstained, torso. There’s not even a scar.
“Where’s the wolf?” Sam says, trying to keep his thoughts on the job at hand. Because werewolves don’t just change back during a full moon, and naked women don’t just appear on the ground either.
“That’s her,” Dean says.
“How?”
“I don’t know, one second it looks like she’s killed you, the next I’m throwing my shotgun away, and jumping on her. The second we touched she ripped into me… and she goes down in a glowing pile of naked chick,” Dean says.
Sam glances down at said pile of naked chick, finally getting a good enough look at her face to recognize the town’s librarian. He holds in the urge to punch a wall, or laugh. Both would be unpleasant. “You think she’s like that for good?” Sam says.
“Yeah,” Dean says, “she’s just a person now.”
Sam’s head throbs, and he’s pretty sure the warm trickle of wetness down the back of his neck isn’t good. He doesn’t ask how Dean knows the librarian is cured, he just does.
Dean puts a hand on Sam’s neck, brushes the wetness and hair there. Sam’s sound and vision go static fading in and out again. He falls, but stays loose limbed, because he’s heading into the warm circle of Dean’s arms, and Dean’s smiling at him (he has to smile back) and wrapping him up in…
Darkness.
---
Sam wakes up dry mouthed in their motel room. Dean says something like, “concussion, drink this”. Sam sees Dean glow, and accepts whatever is pressed to his lips. It’s warm and Sam assumes painkillers or some kind.
When he wakes up next, he’s never felt better in his life.
There’s not even a scratch where his head was bleeding.
---
Dean wants to move on. Accept the supposed curse, and maybe meet up with Dad for help on it.
Sam can’t argue with that. Logic tells him Dean’s right, there are no leads here, but he just feels like there’s something they’re missing. He wanders the town a last time. He chats to older residents, watches people, even goes back to the library.
There’s a sign on a historical building that announces an exhibit of the town’s eldest resident’s personal collection of antiques. Sam pays the fifty cents the old man with the jangling jar is asking and ducks inside the paper and dust coloured building. Inside, it smells just like it looks.
He thinks he’s getting stupidly desperate to find something before he gets back to the hotel, and he doesn’t even know why.
Dean’s fine. Dean’s better than fine.
Dean’s perfect.
Perfect.
And then Sam finds the scrapbook on display under glass, apparently open to a random page.
Turns out there was a cult of religious fanatics, strange monks called “The Host of Heaven”, living in the town about a hundred years ago. Their goal was to turn themselves into angels.
Sam uses an old hat pin, stolen from an equally old hat across the room, to pick the lock on the glass case and pull the scrapbook out.
There’s a whole lot of yellowed newspaper clippings of articles about “The Host of Heaven”, a church group who all murdered each other with the one knife, each slashing two lines down the shoulder blades of the others. Their bodies had been found, hideously cut up and bleeding, unrecognizable, on the floor of their church. One member of the community was quoted saying of the Host of Heaven murders: ‘What kind of sick people could do that to each other? Why, they didn’t look anything like men, they looked more like the demon’s that’d obviously taken their minds!’
They were all buried in the church’s yard, unmarked. There was no one left alive to charge for the crimes.
Sam shoves the book in his jacket, patting it down as well as he can, hoping the old man isn’t observant (or at least as slow on his feet as he looks). It’s the best lead they’ve had. It’s the only.
---
Sam dreams, after reading the article again with Dean.
In his dream he’s standing at the back of the church, wooden pews and a great cross with a bleeding, agonised Christ on one wall, and a giant angel, holding a flaming sword on the other.
In camera flash, whip crack fast images, he knows.
The knife touched them all twice, no more, once on each shoulder.
These men weren’t special.
They were a cult of crazy, stupid religious fanatics who stumbled across the wrong dagger.
The knife was everything. He feels it reaching out to him, caressing his mind softly, telling him, yes, he’s the one who can hold it, and make it work. Without his power, or power like it, they were all doomed the moment they picked up the dagger. With the knife and Sam, they could be so high, high above their mortal flesh.
Fools, it whispers to him, pity in its dead hissing not-voice, poor, poor fools.
Sam wakes, the dagger clutched in his cramping fingers, under his pillow.
---
They go back to the burnt out stone shell of the building.
“So, this was a church,” Dean says. He trails his hand across the charred inside wall of the stone building.
“The Church of the Host of Heaven,” Sam says, nodding absently. He shines his flashlight around on charred pews and smoke stains. He sees the remains of a giant, agonized Christ, crucified, rotted and burnt. He swings the beam across to the other side of the now roofless room, casting light on the equally ruined angel statue.
They look nothing like his dream now, but it’s them.
“It’s not a real church,” Dean says. Dust sweeps up in little whirl winds under Dean’s wings as he moves. Dean looks at Sam.
“Well, no, this cult wasn’t ever a real church, I guess. Who cares. Let’s just see if we can find anything useful and get out of here.” Sam feels a cold, winding shiver down his spine.
“It’s not consecrated ground,” Dean says.
“It could be, they could have gotten any minister out here to bless it.”
“No, they didn’t.” Dean frowns at the floor, then glances up at Sam. He smiles. Sam just keep staring. Sam’s face itches to smile with him, even though he doesn’t want to.
That’s when they hear the moaning sound, floating up from the darkness behind the building.
---
The demons are even uglier with their skin burnt in patches, pink and grey bits healing slowly over burns, creating a quilt of dead colours, sores and peeling skin.
“Hiya, uglies,” Dean says. They walk into a clearing in the sparsely wooded area behind the church.
Sam and Dean both hold shotguns at the ready, and holy water vials in their pockets. As soon as Dean steps into the clearing, however, Sam realises the weapons are going to be unnecessary.
The demons cower backwards, hissing and shielding their eyes as if from a bright light. Sam sees Dean looking puzzled.
“All that is holy…” a demon hisses. The others echo him.
“How did you…” one says.
Dean glances at Sam, and Sam cocks an eyebrow at him. Plan worked out, Dean turns back to the demons and Sam takes a step back into the shadows.
Sam sees Dean, wings spread and standing straight, trying not to laugh. The demons cower further.
It’s perfect.
Sam lets Dean ask the questions.
---
Time stands still as the demon finishes his story. They didn’t say anything Sam hadn’t already figured out, though admitting it to himself was different.
Dean was stuck on the angel thing.
Sam was stuck on the immortality. He figured Dean would catch up pretty soon.
“We were going to be angels,” the demon says, “we were going to live forever. Two cuts with the knife, and we’d be transformed like… like you. Perfect and immortal. But it didn’t work. The knife was treacherous to humans, we knew, but we had all devoted our lives to worship. We though it would mean our hands might be clean enough… our souls.”
“So,” Dean says. “What the fuck happened to me? My soul is more pure than a bunch of former monks?”
“You don’t know?” Hisses one.
“What, all of a sudden you guys can make it work?” Dean asks.
“We didn’t do it. They never work for us, they always turn out like we did… it was that one there,” the demon says, “he took the blade from my hands and used it.”
“Sammy, what did you do?” Dean says. He turns his back to the demons and looks Sam in the eyes, frowning.
“It was an accident, Dean. I… didn’t mean to cut you.”
Dean turns back to face the demons.
“Immortal, huh, guys?” Dean says. “There’s no such thing as an immortal demon in my world.”
“Immortal,” one says.
“Though…” another hisses.
“There is that…”
“Yes,” they all say, “the knife.”
They all bend themselves to the ground, as if worshiping at an altar, prostrated in front of Dean, wings raised.
“Kill us, angel. To be touched by you is as close as we will get to the heavenly state. Cut off our wings, and we will become mortal men, again… just as we would have been if we had never touched that knife.”
”Ashes and dust.”
---
“Well, that was the easiest end to a hunt we’ve ever had,” Dean says. He’s just filling the silence. For the first time since the knife sliced his shoulders, he doesn’t look glowingly happy.
“What about the harpy that ended with you and those twins ditching me-“ And Sam goes along, because he doesn’t want to have the discussion he can feel coming, rolling over them like dark storm clouds.
“I said easiest end, not best, oh man, those chicks…” Dean illustrates his words with an lewd gesture, momentarily breaking through the oppressive clouds to shine like the angel he is. His glow pulses through the car again.
Sam pulls the car over, scattering gravel across the deserted road.
He looks at Dean, but can’t open his mouth.
Dean gets out of the car, and walks around to Sam’s side.
“You’ll live forever,” Sam says, stepping out of the car to face Dean.
Dean looks at Sam’s face for as long as Sam can keep his eyes up.
“Cut them off, Sam. Please, cut them the fuck off me.”
“Christ, why?” Sam asks. He knows the answer, he just wants to hear it. He wants to feel like he has a reason for killing an angel.
“I never, ever want to see you die, Sammy,” and Dean hands him the knife. There’s dust sticking to the blood on the blade. Dean kneels down in front of Sam, but looks up at his face, not like the demon’s who had stared at the ground in worship for Dean.
“One question while I’ve still got the lie detector mojo going,” Dean says, and smiles devilishly, glowing on the gravel roadside. “You going to leave again?”
“… I…” Sam swallows, hard.
“Don’t answer me yet.”
Sam nods and holds the knife ready. But he can’t.
“Dean. Let’s. Not now. You’ve only got forever, right?”
“… Yeah.”
They’re back in the car, staring out the windscreen.
“Hey Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m not leaving you again,” Sam says. It has to be true, Dean asked.
---
It’s a soft touch, where there’s going to be a burning cut later.
When Sam kisses him, it’s barely a touch of lips. It’s sharing breath for a moment and perfectly still. It’s realising Dean’s glowing skin is so much warmer than normal, and not knowing if that’s because he’s flushed or because he’s an angel now. It’s being pulled in like a moth to a flame and he’s just now realising how hard he’s been resisting touching Dean. It’s knowing Dean gets the truth from everyone now, when he wants it, whether they want him to have it or not.
Sam strokes soft feathers, and Dean groans, turning a warm smile on him.
“I know, Sam.”
Sam wonders if he said anything.
“Sorry,” he says.
“For what?” Dean asks.
“I love you.”
---
The next day, Sam takes a knife to his brother’s wings, fresh, red blood washing away the rust coloured dry stains on the blade.
He wonders why he cried last night, but not now.
---
Later, Dean sits mortal and dark in the driver’s seat of the Impala. He says it’s hard to remember what it felt like. He has memories of the world being a brighter place, all midday sun burning the shadows away, love and light in the world like a second sun he’d never noticed, or hadn’t been able to. A certainty in everything. Like he’d known everything he’d ever need would fall into place if only he’d let it, or if he asked for it. He said he remembered everything, only it was like it happened when he was a child. He didn’t remember details. He remembered sensations and feelings.
Sam looked out the car window, watching shadows speed past. The dark seems darker with Dean’s angelic light gone.
“Everything I said and did was me,” Dean says. He glances away from the flat stretch of road to look at Sam’s blank profile. He’s trying to tell Sam it’s okay. Sam’s not sure Dean knows what he’s trying to comfort Sam about. Or maybe he does. He doesn’t know how much Dean’s plain not saying. “It was just me seeing things in a different light.”
Sam itches to ask how things look now.
---
Rating: R.
Fandom: Supernatural.
Pairing: Sam/Dean.
Warning: Incest. Wing!fic (angel!fic).
Notes: Thanks to mandysbitch for the awesome beta. I don’t actually know if I should apologize for the fact this is wing!fic, fairly serious wing fic, incest, kinda!angel!fic or (debatably for this fandom) crack, so I’ll just not. Title from The Tyger by William Blake (another thing I should probably apologize for). These two lines are the relevant ones:
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
---
They’re holding Dean, two of the ugliest demon creatures Sam’s every seen, fleshy wings sprouting from their naked, leathery backs. Their bird-clawed human fingers are digging into Dean’s upper arms. Sam’s chained helpless against the far wall, struggling, eyes glued to the creatures.
The demon is about to make a second incision, to match the one on Dean’s right shoulder blade. Sam can’t hear Dean scream like that again. It must burn.
The dagger comes down and Sam feels himself expanding, reaching out beyond his body. He pulls the dagger with unseen hands, mind focused only on stopping them from hurting Dean again.
The demon screams and so does Dean and….
There’s an explosion of white behind Sam’s eyes, muscles he didn’t know he had tensed collapse with a melting burn like he’s being working them for days without rest.
---
“Am I…?”
Sam knows he’s not dead the second the guy with the angel wings laughs like a devil and swims into focus.
“Dean?”
“Hey, Sam.”
“What the hell, Dean?”
“I don’t think hell has much to do with it,” Dean says. He drags a downy, tickling feather down Sam’s face. Sam freezes.
It tickles more when Dean shoves it up his nostril.
“Dean, goddamn it!”
“I couldn’t resist,” Dean laughs.
---
Sam spins the dagger in his hand, twisting it up to touch his inner arm, invisible from the front; flicking it down to point at the floor; stopping himself at the last minute from letting it fly out of his hand to bury in the wall of the motel room: tricks and practice drills that are so deeply ingrained in his brain he could do them sleeping.
Dean went back and set the building alight, burning everything that could be. The demons were no where to be seen. Dean is exhausted and bleeding and pissed off.
Sam remembers seeing lots of huge dusty books, when he was chained up, as old in years as they were heavy in pounds. There was an alter set up, but it didn’t look like the demon were using it for what they’d been planned for Dean.
It’s just.
The cuts on Dean’s shoulders, the wings on the demons, the way they looked so wrong, the feather covered consequences of Sam’s unseen power holding the knife as it slid through Dean’s flesh.
It tickles the back of his mind.
He wants to fix Dean before they find the bastards, or even start looking. So. Research first, kicking ass later.
He tells Dean the plan.
Dean only adds “story of our life,” and continues struggling with the single motel bed plus wings plus getting to sleep dilemma.
---
They're white.
Dean’s wings: they’re white.
Not like, "The ceiling of my room is white".
Not like, "This paper is white".
Not like, "This brand new shirt is really white out in the sun".
In the middle of a clearing, out of view from the roadside, Sam watches. They drove out of town so Dean could get a handle on the wings. Sam’s just happy to get his nose out of absolutely useless research books, unhelpful crackpot internet sites and the dustiest library on earth. It looks like Dean’s going to be stuck with the wings for a while, so… might as well see what they can do.
Dean flexes as if he's never been without wings in his life, a strong arc of feather covered muscle and bone, pulling up and around to touch tips momentarily, forming a circle. Each wing is as tall as Dean and then half again. Sam hadn’t noticed their grandiose, intimidating, sort of otherworldly hugeness while they were folded against Dean’s back, inside the motel room.
As Sam watches the wings slowly come down, blind spots flit in and out of the corners of his eyes. He realises what the wings are white like: they’re like staring into the sun.
Sam can't look away.
"Man, these would be awesome in black, huh?" Dean says, without turning around.
"I don't think the whole ancient cursed blade and demon thing were about colour coordination, Mr. Fashion."
"Oh, blow me," Dean says. His wings shudder with what looks like annoyance.
"Did I just literally ruffle your feathers?" Sam laughs shortly.
Dean turns and fakes a left handed punch to Sam's shoulder, and as Sam dips his head to avoid what he assumes will be Dean’s real punch from the right, Dean brings a wing up to cuff him on the back of the head.
"Ow, Jesus, Dean, there's bone under there!" Sam hits Dean on the shoulder and Dean doesn’t bother to dodge. Probably feels guilty about the unfair advantage.
"Best curse ever," Dean says.
So not feeling guilty then. In that case, Sam feels it’s his duty to use Dean’s newly discovered different centre of gravity to his advantage. He tackles Dean to the ground, dust and leaves puff out like a mini twister touched down as Dean falls down on his back, wings spread flat. Sam rolls off before Dean can recover enough to get a leg around him and flip them.
He stands up and bounces on his heels, looking down at Dean. Dean looks up at him, smiling, and holds his hand out to be pulled up.
Sam slaps their palms together, pulling Dean off the ground. The last couple of days, when Dean smiles, Sam just has to smile back.
“Yeah, some curse, huh?” Sam says.
“I say again, baby brother, best ever.”
---
Dean lists the downsides to his new appendages:
1. Limited maneuverability in daylight, meaning boredom beyond comprehension, no chicks, and not being there to have Sam’s back.
2. Heavy, thrift store bought trench a must at all times, even in burning, damp heat that makes you sweat your energy out. People thinking he’s mental when he goes out in the coat in this weather.
3. Being stuck in motels while Sam researches ways of undoing the curse (and they don’t even know what those demons really are yet much less how Sam’s freaky brain touch or whatever ended up giving him wings).
4. He can’t drive his fucking car. That one’s the worst. He just doesn’t fit right anymore.
Sam lists the downsides:
1. Limited maneuverability in daylight, meaning no one there to share the bullshitting-for-the-cause/research at the library duties.
2. Dean being stuck in motel rooms. A bored Dean is a dangerous Dean and Sam really, really likes his hair at the moment.
3. Waiting for the “curse” to get worse before he can figure out how to fix it.
4. Knowing he did this somehow. Sure, it’s doubtful this is what the demons were going for, but.
5. Dean telling him how to drive the damn car.
---
Sam comes back from the library with absolutely zero leads. He kicks a rock in the carpark in frustration, but instead of helpfully flying across and smashing something into a million pieces, all it does it hurt his toe and bounce harmlessly into a bush. He can hear music pounding unrecognizably out of one of the motel rooms, and hopes like hell he won’t have to go somewhere at 2 a.m. to ask some probably adulterous couple to keep the music down, with a polite: “We all know you’re fucking anyway”.
Turns out the music is coming from his room.
And it’s Metallica.
And it’s blaring so fucking loud he’s pretty sure his ears just started bleeding
But it’s totally and completely worth it for the sight that greets him: Dean, angelic wings spread, standing on the bed unsteadily, crotch level air-guitar at the ready, belting out the live version of Fuel along with James Hetfield.
Sam… loses it.
Eventually, he blinks tears of laughter out of his eyes, and finds Dean sitting on the end of a bed, smiling at him.
No shame.
“Man,” Sam says. “You looked like a DICK.”
“You’re a dick!”
“No, you’re…,” and Sam finally opens his eyes enough to see the three quarters empty bottle of whisky on the bedside table, “god, drunk much?”
“Hey, you started it,” Dean says happily.
“Dick,” Sam says as he plunks himself exhaustedly next to Dean. “I can’t leave you alone for a second, can I?”
“Sure you can. I just can’t be held responsible for any damages that might happen. At the time. Y’know.”
“Did I already mention you might be a bit drunk, Dean?”
“Sam. Sam. Sammy.” Dean looks at him, swivels to face Sam and plunks a hand heavily onto his shoulder. “Sometimes you just need to get so completely blind, stinking, goddamn drunk and put on great music to drown out your brain until you can’t think about how you just clogged up the damn shower drain with feathers, when you did finally manage to cram bulky wing covered self into the breadbox of a shower. And even though that ate up a good couple of hours, you were still so mind numbingly bored sitting around useless--“
Sam shoves Dean’s shoulder a little.
“You’re rambling, drunk-o.”
“I’ll give you drunk-o!” Dean says and tackles Sam off the bed.
Dean’s got the weight advantage when they’re both on the floor, extra pounds of wing and muscle cancelling out Sam’s normally advantageous extra inches in height and reach.
It’s just, when they finally roll to a stop, out of breath, Sam can’t help but stare. Dean’s hands hold his wrists in a loosening grip, but Sam doesn’t think about moving. Looking up into Dean’s face, hovering above Sam with a soft drunk smile, Sam notices that in the dim light…
Dean seems to glow, and--
“Sam, do you love me?”
Sam snorts, and tries to say something about Dean needing to lay off the booze, because this is the kinda shit Dean’s always come out with when he’s really, really shitfaced. He’s always touched Sam a lot more, wrestled him, said stuff he’s never say otherwise. Even asked Sam not to leave him, before Stanford, drunk out of his head. Said ‘please’. It tore Sam’s guts out. So he tries to make another drunk crack, to save them both some monosyllabic conversation, loud music and classic Winchester uncomfortableness, but what comes out is, “yes.”
That wasn’t what he was going to say. What the hell?
“Dean, what the fuck?”
“Holy shit,” Dean says. “You can’t lie to me. I, uh, was really really bored earlier, because you were out researching and it was fucking boring. Anyway, there was a maid that came by who had no problem with a little friendly chat, and it turns out… well. Look. Sam. Quick question: you whack off last night?”
Sam doesn’t have any idea what to say. He tries to keep his mouth shut, but, “yes,” slips past white lipped effort.
If Dean’s saying what Sam thinks… “I can’t lie to you?” Sam says.
“No, man, no one can lie to me. I don’t think. I mean, you’re only human.” Dean rolls off him, sounding winded.
“Jesus, Dean, are you… okay?” Sam asks. What he does say is ‘why the hell isn’t this freaking you out as much as it is me?’.
“If you don’t count the truly impressive size of my… wingspan,” Dean pauses and cocks an eyebrow at Sam, “and the truth thing, I’m good. In fact, I feel better than I have in… I don’t even know, ever.”
---
Out of desperation Sam researches absolutely anything that might vaguely be connected to wings, daggers, demons, or the history of the town they have yet to leave.
He stumbles across a whole chunk of articles that cause imaginary red flags to wave in front of his eyes, and what he’s always thought of as his hunter’s second sense, until recently, taps at the back of his mind incessantly.
Unfortunately, it’s completely unrelated to Dean’s wings.
There’s a forum that’s apparently a hangout for local teens, peppered with talk of death defying make out sessions at “The Old Baker Place”. A shack located just out of town. Turns out once a month, always at night, the locals heard horrible screams and howls coming from inside, wood cracking, walls thudding and shaking. But recently, it’s been quiet.
Sam thinks, werewolf, and then, fuck.
He googles dog attacks plus the town name, and wants to scream. Two deaths in the last two months, that (almost) fit the large dog attack description.
If there’s one thing he hates, it’s werewolves. It’s always harder when they’re still still mostly human.
He leaves off the fruitless research about Dean’s curse, and heads back to tell Dean about the find. At least it will be a night hunt, Sam thinks, Dean can be there to back me up.
“Damn werewolves,” he says under his breath, then wonders if the librarian is just smelling something funny, or if she actually heard what he said.
It’s just. Werewolves. He hopes it’s not a kid. Kids are the worst.
---
It’s not a kid. Sam has time to think thank god it’s not a kid, before a few hundred pounds of adult wolf smashing him into a wall makes him reconsider the thank god part.
Dean yells something that sounds about is clear as the blurry shapes in Sam’s vision look.
By the time Sam’s up and clear headed again, it’s all over. Only, he’s not sure how exactly it ended.
“Dean…” Sam thinks he should have screamed, as he watches Dean bleed through his gaping shirt, claw marks crossing his ribs in vertical red gashes, curling around to his lower stomach. Sam’s seen wounds like that on werewolf victims, spilling their life and blood and gore all over the ground.
But Dean is standing tall, wounds across his side and front pulling together, knitting, holding up like they’re wrapped in clear plastic as they heal.
The wolf, too, isn’t right. It’s just a person. A thin, pale woman, laying naked and crumpled in the full moon light. The moonlight that should be keeping her trapped in a twisted, unnatural human-wolf hybrid body. She should be baying for more of the blood she’s spilt.
“Dean?” Sam says, and suddenly Dean’s right there, his own heavy breathing is fading out… then vision goes with it…
Sam opens his eyes. Dean’s still bleeding, but it’s rapidly slowing. He’s flat on his back. Dean’s hovering over him, glowing in torn clothes and wide, spotless wings, miraculously not dripping blood into Sam’s face.
Miraculously.
Miracle.
Sam’s head spins when Dean pulls him up by his arm.
“Have I mentioned best curse ever, Sammy? Because I can kick some serious ass like this, man. I mean, look,” Dean says. He pulls his ripped shirt away completely to show his now completely perfect, if bloodstained, torso. There’s not even a scar.
“Where’s the wolf?” Sam says, trying to keep his thoughts on the job at hand. Because werewolves don’t just change back during a full moon, and naked women don’t just appear on the ground either.
“That’s her,” Dean says.
“How?”
“I don’t know, one second it looks like she’s killed you, the next I’m throwing my shotgun away, and jumping on her. The second we touched she ripped into me… and she goes down in a glowing pile of naked chick,” Dean says.
Sam glances down at said pile of naked chick, finally getting a good enough look at her face to recognize the town’s librarian. He holds in the urge to punch a wall, or laugh. Both would be unpleasant. “You think she’s like that for good?” Sam says.
“Yeah,” Dean says, “she’s just a person now.”
Sam’s head throbs, and he’s pretty sure the warm trickle of wetness down the back of his neck isn’t good. He doesn’t ask how Dean knows the librarian is cured, he just does.
Dean puts a hand on Sam’s neck, brushes the wetness and hair there. Sam’s sound and vision go static fading in and out again. He falls, but stays loose limbed, because he’s heading into the warm circle of Dean’s arms, and Dean’s smiling at him (he has to smile back) and wrapping him up in…
Darkness.
---
Sam wakes up dry mouthed in their motel room. Dean says something like, “concussion, drink this”. Sam sees Dean glow, and accepts whatever is pressed to his lips. It’s warm and Sam assumes painkillers or some kind.
When he wakes up next, he’s never felt better in his life.
There’s not even a scratch where his head was bleeding.
---
Dean wants to move on. Accept the supposed curse, and maybe meet up with Dad for help on it.
Sam can’t argue with that. Logic tells him Dean’s right, there are no leads here, but he just feels like there’s something they’re missing. He wanders the town a last time. He chats to older residents, watches people, even goes back to the library.
There’s a sign on a historical building that announces an exhibit of the town’s eldest resident’s personal collection of antiques. Sam pays the fifty cents the old man with the jangling jar is asking and ducks inside the paper and dust coloured building. Inside, it smells just like it looks.
He thinks he’s getting stupidly desperate to find something before he gets back to the hotel, and he doesn’t even know why.
Dean’s fine. Dean’s better than fine.
Dean’s perfect.
Perfect.
And then Sam finds the scrapbook on display under glass, apparently open to a random page.
Turns out there was a cult of religious fanatics, strange monks called “The Host of Heaven”, living in the town about a hundred years ago. Their goal was to turn themselves into angels.
Sam uses an old hat pin, stolen from an equally old hat across the room, to pick the lock on the glass case and pull the scrapbook out.
There’s a whole lot of yellowed newspaper clippings of articles about “The Host of Heaven”, a church group who all murdered each other with the one knife, each slashing two lines down the shoulder blades of the others. Their bodies had been found, hideously cut up and bleeding, unrecognizable, on the floor of their church. One member of the community was quoted saying of the Host of Heaven murders: ‘What kind of sick people could do that to each other? Why, they didn’t look anything like men, they looked more like the demon’s that’d obviously taken their minds!’
They were all buried in the church’s yard, unmarked. There was no one left alive to charge for the crimes.
Sam shoves the book in his jacket, patting it down as well as he can, hoping the old man isn’t observant (or at least as slow on his feet as he looks). It’s the best lead they’ve had. It’s the only.
---
Sam dreams, after reading the article again with Dean.
In his dream he’s standing at the back of the church, wooden pews and a great cross with a bleeding, agonised Christ on one wall, and a giant angel, holding a flaming sword on the other.
In camera flash, whip crack fast images, he knows.
The knife touched them all twice, no more, once on each shoulder.
These men weren’t special.
They were a cult of crazy, stupid religious fanatics who stumbled across the wrong dagger.
The knife was everything. He feels it reaching out to him, caressing his mind softly, telling him, yes, he’s the one who can hold it, and make it work. Without his power, or power like it, they were all doomed the moment they picked up the dagger. With the knife and Sam, they could be so high, high above their mortal flesh.
Fools, it whispers to him, pity in its dead hissing not-voice, poor, poor fools.
Sam wakes, the dagger clutched in his cramping fingers, under his pillow.
---
They go back to the burnt out stone shell of the building.
“So, this was a church,” Dean says. He trails his hand across the charred inside wall of the stone building.
“The Church of the Host of Heaven,” Sam says, nodding absently. He shines his flashlight around on charred pews and smoke stains. He sees the remains of a giant, agonized Christ, crucified, rotted and burnt. He swings the beam across to the other side of the now roofless room, casting light on the equally ruined angel statue.
They look nothing like his dream now, but it’s them.
“It’s not a real church,” Dean says. Dust sweeps up in little whirl winds under Dean’s wings as he moves. Dean looks at Sam.
“Well, no, this cult wasn’t ever a real church, I guess. Who cares. Let’s just see if we can find anything useful and get out of here.” Sam feels a cold, winding shiver down his spine.
“It’s not consecrated ground,” Dean says.
“It could be, they could have gotten any minister out here to bless it.”
“No, they didn’t.” Dean frowns at the floor, then glances up at Sam. He smiles. Sam just keep staring. Sam’s face itches to smile with him, even though he doesn’t want to.
That’s when they hear the moaning sound, floating up from the darkness behind the building.
---
The demons are even uglier with their skin burnt in patches, pink and grey bits healing slowly over burns, creating a quilt of dead colours, sores and peeling skin.
“Hiya, uglies,” Dean says. They walk into a clearing in the sparsely wooded area behind the church.
Sam and Dean both hold shotguns at the ready, and holy water vials in their pockets. As soon as Dean steps into the clearing, however, Sam realises the weapons are going to be unnecessary.
The demons cower backwards, hissing and shielding their eyes as if from a bright light. Sam sees Dean looking puzzled.
“All that is holy…” a demon hisses. The others echo him.
“How did you…” one says.
Dean glances at Sam, and Sam cocks an eyebrow at him. Plan worked out, Dean turns back to the demons and Sam takes a step back into the shadows.
Sam sees Dean, wings spread and standing straight, trying not to laugh. The demons cower further.
It’s perfect.
Sam lets Dean ask the questions.
---
Time stands still as the demon finishes his story. They didn’t say anything Sam hadn’t already figured out, though admitting it to himself was different.
Dean was stuck on the angel thing.
Sam was stuck on the immortality. He figured Dean would catch up pretty soon.
“We were going to be angels,” the demon says, “we were going to live forever. Two cuts with the knife, and we’d be transformed like… like you. Perfect and immortal. But it didn’t work. The knife was treacherous to humans, we knew, but we had all devoted our lives to worship. We though it would mean our hands might be clean enough… our souls.”
“So,” Dean says. “What the fuck happened to me? My soul is more pure than a bunch of former monks?”
“You don’t know?” Hisses one.
“What, all of a sudden you guys can make it work?” Dean asks.
“We didn’t do it. They never work for us, they always turn out like we did… it was that one there,” the demon says, “he took the blade from my hands and used it.”
“Sammy, what did you do?” Dean says. He turns his back to the demons and looks Sam in the eyes, frowning.
“It was an accident, Dean. I… didn’t mean to cut you.”
Dean turns back to face the demons.
“Immortal, huh, guys?” Dean says. “There’s no such thing as an immortal demon in my world.”
“Immortal,” one says.
“Though…” another hisses.
“There is that…”
“Yes,” they all say, “the knife.”
They all bend themselves to the ground, as if worshiping at an altar, prostrated in front of Dean, wings raised.
“Kill us, angel. To be touched by you is as close as we will get to the heavenly state. Cut off our wings, and we will become mortal men, again… just as we would have been if we had never touched that knife.”
”Ashes and dust.”
---
“Well, that was the easiest end to a hunt we’ve ever had,” Dean says. He’s just filling the silence. For the first time since the knife sliced his shoulders, he doesn’t look glowingly happy.
“What about the harpy that ended with you and those twins ditching me-“ And Sam goes along, because he doesn’t want to have the discussion he can feel coming, rolling over them like dark storm clouds.
“I said easiest end, not best, oh man, those chicks…” Dean illustrates his words with an lewd gesture, momentarily breaking through the oppressive clouds to shine like the angel he is. His glow pulses through the car again.
Sam pulls the car over, scattering gravel across the deserted road.
He looks at Dean, but can’t open his mouth.
Dean gets out of the car, and walks around to Sam’s side.
“You’ll live forever,” Sam says, stepping out of the car to face Dean.
Dean looks at Sam’s face for as long as Sam can keep his eyes up.
“Cut them off, Sam. Please, cut them the fuck off me.”
“Christ, why?” Sam asks. He knows the answer, he just wants to hear it. He wants to feel like he has a reason for killing an angel.
“I never, ever want to see you die, Sammy,” and Dean hands him the knife. There’s dust sticking to the blood on the blade. Dean kneels down in front of Sam, but looks up at his face, not like the demon’s who had stared at the ground in worship for Dean.
“One question while I’ve still got the lie detector mojo going,” Dean says, and smiles devilishly, glowing on the gravel roadside. “You going to leave again?”
“… I…” Sam swallows, hard.
“Don’t answer me yet.”
Sam nods and holds the knife ready. But he can’t.
“Dean. Let’s. Not now. You’ve only got forever, right?”
“… Yeah.”
They’re back in the car, staring out the windscreen.
“Hey Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m not leaving you again,” Sam says. It has to be true, Dean asked.
---
It’s a soft touch, where there’s going to be a burning cut later.
When Sam kisses him, it’s barely a touch of lips. It’s sharing breath for a moment and perfectly still. It’s realising Dean’s glowing skin is so much warmer than normal, and not knowing if that’s because he’s flushed or because he’s an angel now. It’s being pulled in like a moth to a flame and he’s just now realising how hard he’s been resisting touching Dean. It’s knowing Dean gets the truth from everyone now, when he wants it, whether they want him to have it or not.
Sam strokes soft feathers, and Dean groans, turning a warm smile on him.
“I know, Sam.”
Sam wonders if he said anything.
“Sorry,” he says.
“For what?” Dean asks.
“I love you.”
---
The next day, Sam takes a knife to his brother’s wings, fresh, red blood washing away the rust coloured dry stains on the blade.
He wonders why he cried last night, but not now.
---
Later, Dean sits mortal and dark in the driver’s seat of the Impala. He says it’s hard to remember what it felt like. He has memories of the world being a brighter place, all midday sun burning the shadows away, love and light in the world like a second sun he’d never noticed, or hadn’t been able to. A certainty in everything. Like he’d known everything he’d ever need would fall into place if only he’d let it, or if he asked for it. He said he remembered everything, only it was like it happened when he was a child. He didn’t remember details. He remembered sensations and feelings.
Sam looked out the car window, watching shadows speed past. The dark seems darker with Dean’s angelic light gone.
“Everything I said and did was me,” Dean says. He glances away from the flat stretch of road to look at Sam’s blank profile. He’s trying to tell Sam it’s okay. Sam’s not sure Dean knows what he’s trying to comfort Sam about. Or maybe he does. He doesn’t know how much Dean’s plain not saying. “It was just me seeing things in a different light.”
Sam itches to ask how things look now.
---