Every fertile inch (5b/6)
Previous half of chapter.
It was dinner for five, as it turned out. Charlie had come along too, presumably because, with Anna off delivering Castiel’s letter to Angel Central and bringing some more angels back with her, Sam had stolen her only house guest. Funnily enough, it threw Castiel for a bit of a loop. He was slipping into the habit of being a complete slob around the house, where it was just Sam and Dean and nobody was expecting him to be this important angel captain or anything, and Dean adored it. Apparently Gabriel wasn’t worth putting on his game face either, because when Castiel shuffled into the kitchen, mussed and yawning and with his fingers hooked possessively into the back pocket of Dean’s pants, he wasn’t wearing anything but Dean’s pants from yesterday, slung loose around his hips. When he saw Charlie sliding bread rolls out of the oven, his bare feet stuttered to a halt on the kitchen flags, and the haze of sex and sleepiness was abruptly covered up with an awkward little squint and the rigid back of the soldier.
But, “’Sup, guys,” Charlie tossed carelessly in their direction with a little oven-mitted wave, as she tipped the bread rolls from the tray to the cooling rack that Sam was holding for her, like an unguarded Castiel was nothing remarkable at all. For that matter, Sam was barefoot and shirtless, with some hastily wiped smudges of stew on his stomach, and Charlie was swimming in one of Sam’s sweaters and looked like she might have lost her shirt under that as well, so all in all it wasn’t the most formal-looking bunch.
Dean spotted Chevy lapping away happily at a spot on the floor, silver-tipped tail flapping to greet him, and chuckled as he stole one of the hot new rolls. “Y’let the stew get the jump on you, Sammy?”
Sam made a bit of a face, and pointedly didn’t look at Charlie, in a way that suggested exactly who’d done the fumbling. “It sort of exploded.”
Dean tugged Castiel down beside him, gave him the first roll, and got another for himself, because he was the epitome of chivalry.
“Not my fault,” Gabriel pointed out helpfully, “but you’ll be pleased to know that I charged heroically in to rescue the princess, wielding my trusty wash cloth.” He’d solved the problem of their lack of a fifth kitchen chair by bringing in the short sofa from the living room, and he was occupying it like a throne. His wings were out now, and in the greys of the kitchen their colour drew the eye, deeper and richer in the half-light: all coppers and blood-reds instead of the bright gold that they caught in the sun.
“Your trusty wash cloth missed a spot,” Dean told him, pushing the stew over towards Charlie and snagging the butter for himself and Castiel. Sam exhaled heavily behind the dishevelled mess of his bangs, and scrubbed at the leftover smear with the edge of the tablecloth. Yep. Definitely not a formal sort of gathering.
“What can I say? It’s a prude.” Gabriel winked at Castiel. “All those acres of manflesh get it terribly flustered.”
Castiel cut a half-hearted withering glare in Gabriel’s direction, but it didn’t work so well with the sleepy eyes. Sam threw a bread roll at Gabriel’s head. Dean carefully didn’t notice the way his ears and belly went pink.
It didn’t feel like Having People Over For Dinner. Although Dean had never really been sure what that was meant to feel like, anyway. Not like he and Sam had ever been in that habit of entertaining when they’d been growing up - who’d come to have dinner with a couple of kids? and it was weird letting people see into his and Sam’s life together, to give them a chance to look at Dean sadly and tell him a ‘better’ way to do all the stupidest little tasks, or take over in his own kitchen and tell him to go and play with their kids while they did the cooking or washing up, or think they had the right to scold Sammy for bad manners, or - anyway. Somewhere along the way, Dean felt like he’d missed the memo on how ordinary people just casually asked friends over, shared a meal with them, worked out how to exist in each other’s space.
But, hey, they were all misfits here. Gabriel, not quite an angel and not quite a human, sharp and prickly and not to be touched. Castiel, who’d missed out on a childhood, who was an angel but who was also Dean’s little brother and his betrothed and was just generally weird and who actually wanted to marry Dean. Sam, who’d always wanted to leave and see new worlds, who’d always thought he was a freak growing up and who still wouldn’t talk about the fact that technically he was a skinwalker now unless Dean really pressed him and who (Dean was pretty sure) hadn’t actually changed into his other shape since he’d got back home. Charlie, who’d always stayed down on the apple farm as much as she could, who’d also been left to keep house all by herself far too young and hadn’t even had a brother or sister to give her reason to keep going, who read the obscurest shit and only liked girls and wouldn’t pretend otherwise. And Dean... well, yeah.
So it wasn’t like they had to worry about doing things right and being Like That: showing off, or being on your best manners, or whatever it was normal people did when they had friends over. It was just... comfortable. In a way Dean had never thought it could be, having someone who wasn’t Sammy (or, okay, Castiel) in his kitchen. And somehow, even though there were more people than kitchen chairs, even though they weren’t family in the strict sense, having them all here made it feel... more like home.
Castiel was being all embarrassed but tolerant, expecting and pointedly ignoring all of Gabriel’s little insinuations, wearing a long-suffering face and gradually leaning heavier and heavier against Dean’s side. Dean drifted in and out of the conversation, intoxicated on the fact that all he had to do was turn his head and he could nuzzle in under Castiel’s ear, or drop a kiss on his jaw. Gabriel was busy occupying space, wings draped like a curtain of soft fire over the sofa, telling stories that weren’t the grand impressive exoticisms of distant lands, like all the one’s he’d been telling lately, but more like the stories he’d used to tell before they’d found out what he was. Little silly anecdotes of life on the road, almost incongruous now in their normality; but they made Sam’s eyes light up just the same. Charlie was talking with her mouth full, the gaping collar of Sam’s sweater slipping down over one bare shoulder, gesticulating with her spoon.
And then sometimes Dean and Charlie and Sam were all talking over each other while Castiel smiled his little private smile behind his fork, and Gabriel pointed out that they were all wrong - until Charlie and Dean shot back the same retort to him at once, then crowed smugly and fist-bumped across the table like kids, while Gabriel rolled his eyes to the ceiling like he was praying for strength.
It was all very strange, or it should have been. And it would probably kick in any moment now; but in the meantime, well, everything else went on, easy and rambling.
And sure, there were those moments from time to time when Gabriel cracked a joke that was just a bit too coarse, and Castiel went stiff and looked away, and Gabriel’s voice faltered and got all hard for a minute. Or when Sam, sleepy and well-fed and demonstrative, would reach out to cup one hand around Charlie’s shoulder, or drop a sloppy kiss on her cheek, or reach across the table to tap Castiel’s wrist to emphasise a point, and yet carefully never put his hands anywhere near Gabriel’s end of the table even though he was right there next to him. And hell, Dean could see the way Gabriel’s eyes trailed after Sam’s hand sometimes, and the careful way Castiel’s right wing tucked in against his side to keep from bumping Gabriel’s, even while his left sprawled casually out behind Dean’s chair. But the trouble was, it didn’t get Dean’s shoulders all tensed up over Gabriel breaking Sam’s heart, or whatever: it just made him wonder what happened to an angel who’d been so screwed over that he flinched away from every simple friendly touch.
... then Sam utterly betrayed him.
“What? No!” he stuttered, while Sam grinned at him like the worst little brother ever. “I only got those things because I thought Sam might like them!”
“Sure,” Sam agreed, far too easily, while Castiel looked back and forth between him and Dean and Charlie in patient confusion. “And that’s why you still have them, and always used to keep bringing them out to fiddle with them.”
Dean jabbed a stern finger at him. “Those things cost good money. We don’t throw away things we can fix, Sammy.”
“Fixing.” Sam smirked behind his potato. “Sure. That’s what you were doing.”
Dean went red, and found himself dodging Castiel’s curious eyes, even though Castiel never knew the difference between cool and uncool. “Whatever.”
Charlie’s spoon clattered to the floor. “Hold up. You have a collection of Brekeborough toys?”
Dean laughed the laugh of a man all alone in the face of cruel betrayal. “No! Maybe.”
“Dude,” Charlie breathed reverently, eyes wide and gleaming. “What do you have?”
Huh.
“Um. There’s a stag, but he’s lost one of his antlers now, so his head goes sideways when he lowers it to scratch his knee.” Dean carefully kept his eyes focussed on the table in front of Charlie, and pointedly ignored the broad grin he could just see on Sam’s face beside her. “And I’ve had to replace all his gears at least twice, because he crunches them like crazy. And this windmill, it’s... well, kinda awesome actually. When it’s all properly greased up and it hasn’t popped a cog or anything it turns in the wind, and it drives this tiny pump that just goes up and down. And a lark, with all these really thin aluminium feathers in its wings, and when they open, if you do it really carefully, they all fan out just - well.” He gestured with his hands, trying to describe the sheer mechanical beauty of that motion for those few glorious weeks before the flimsy metal had started to bend and twist and ruin the shape, and ended up just leaning back into the warm, living feathers that had driven that childhood fascination. “Just like a real wing.”
Charlie made little grabby motions with both hands. “When we’re done here,” she declared, “you are taking me to wherever you keep your stash, and you are so introducing me to those sons of britches.”
This... wasn’t ridicule.
“What about you?” he asked, playing it cool, poking the knife about in his stew. “Have you got, uh...”
“Little pedlar wagon with all the tiny cupboards and drawers inside if you life the roof off, and if you wind it up it trundles along on its own without a horse,” she answered promptly, “and a dragon.”
Dean whistled. “No shit! And the wings on that -”
“Well, we got it half price because one wing had come off, but my m-” She faltered for a moment, then swallowed and went on, “My mum fixed it for me. She could do anything with that sort of thing. But, yep, they work - she got rid of the linen for the sails because it kept tearing and fit this light parchment to it instead, and if you keep it supple they fold up like a dream.”
“The dog is licking your spoon,” Castiel pointed out mildly.
“Parchment, huh?” Dean dropped his knife and pretence and leaned forward eagerly. “I gotta try that for the windmill. The old leather cracked off years back, and I can’t get any more fine enough. Linen’s too light - screws the balance.”
“Hey, do yours have those weird little steel curlicues on the toes? Or, you know, anywhere they could fit?”
“Hell yes!”
Dean wondered wildly what it would have been like to have had a little sister too.
“Hold on,” Gabriel cut in, voice rich with amusement. “These wouldn’t be those little mechanical nightmares that Frank Devereaux used to peddle, would they?”
Sam nodded around a mouthful of stew-soaked bread. “Pretty sure that was the name, yeah.”
Gabriel made a derisive noise. “That old fraud? Selling complicated junk to clueless yokels and calling it art.”
Charlie’s face scrunched up indignantly. “It was art! Dean!”
And, well... in this company, it wasn’t that hard to choose honest and enthusiastic over looking all badass.
Dean swallowed half of his mouthful, and grinned around the rest. “Sorry, dude, gotta go with her on this one. That was some serious craftsmanship going on there.”
Gabriel waved one hand dismissively. “Well, yeah. All inspiration and shoddy materials. Buy them for a pittance from hard-up journeymen who’re desperate to pay their accommodation, sell them on to some poor shmuck just far enough away that they look exotic.”
Dean rolled his eyes, because that did sound like the sort of thing foreigners would get up to. “Nobody likes a smartass, angel.”
“Hey.” Charlie jabbed her knife in Gabriel’s direction. “Childhood memories, dickfingers. Respect.”
Sam spluttered into his cup, then had a coughing fit. Gabriel took that for an opportunity to pat at his back, then muss his hair up until Sam batted him away.
“Sorry, princess. I just can’t believe there were two people in this tiny little village who fell for that.”
“I can’t believe you’re sitting too far away for me to punch you in the arm,” Charlie complained.
“What are you all talking about?” came Castiel’s deep gravel voice, pulling Dean up short.
“Uh. I’ll show you later.” Dean scratched sheepishly at the back of his neck. “It’s, um. It’s just some dumb toys.”
Charlie made a betrayed noise.
“... I mean. Not dumb exactly, just...”
“Keep digging, hotcheeks,” Gabriel advised, and slurped a bean into his mouth.
Sam leaned forward across the table, little brother smirk out in full force again. “It’s a collection of little mechanical models and animals that Dean was into when we were little. Kids’ stuff.”
“Ah, I see,” Castiel said, all gravity and puzzled innocence. “Just like the cookies, then?”
Sam shut his mouth with a snap.
Dean snickered, and tugged his sneaky angel in against his side. Castiel’s wing settled warm around his shoulders, and his mouth curved ever so slightly at the corner.
Having Charlie here, part of this: that was unexpected all on its own. What with one thing and another, Dean had hardly even known her two months before. She was of the book and the plough, and he was of the gun; and, besides helping Missouri in the schoolroom, she’d hardly left her farm in the last couple of years to come up to the town.
He’d only got the impression that she was a bit odd. A bit different, with her gawky sort of figure and flyaway hair and habit of dropping references to storybook characters like they were personal friends. And then, of course, thinking back on it, there’d also been the fact that she never dressed up as elegant or pretty, like most other girls her age did when they got a chance: never blushed and smiled and tucked hair behind her ear and gave you assessing little sideways glances and swayed her hips when you were watching her, all those little behaviours that said I am a girl. She just came to town in her dirty overalls with her sleeves pushed up over her elbows, hair messy from the wind and the work, and talked to everyone like she was a guy herself. Or like all of them were girls. Or something.
But unexpectedly, she was here. And unexpectedly, Dean liked that. She was... a comfortable kind of girl to have around. Which sounded stupid in his head, but there weren’t that many people who were easy, who made Dean not care if he screwed up or let his walls down a bit or acted like a bit of a dork. And there was a sort of joy about her that was infectious and deep, like the world was full of things to get excited about.
Also she was awesome.
Dean watched her epic seven-round rock-paper-scissors duel with Sam over the last potato, and wondered how long it’d been since Charlie had decided she was never going to marry a man. That had to be a pretty damn lonely call to make. Especially when you didn’t know that there’d be an ethereal red-headed angel girl coming along soon, who was into the same sort of thing.
And then there was that moment when Sam got up to take the empty tureen to the sink and, coming back past Gabriel, accidentally brushed against the very edge of the wing that stretched out on the sofa. The wing flinched back against Gabriel’s side quick as a caterpillar curling into a ball, and the whole table jolted and rattled as his hands locked tight on the edge.
Sam froze in place, his face a mask of horrified guilt; and, after a moment, the fight-or-flight shock on Gabriel’s slid into something harsher, a sharp-edged little curl of self-mockery fixed on his plate.
“Sorry,” he said, very deliberately, in a way that sounded like it was trying to be a joke. The wing uncurled a bit - stiff, jerky little movements, like it was fighting its own muscles.
“Shit. No. Don’t be - I shouldn’t have - um.” Sam bit his lip into silence, and slid carefully back into his seat. Dean caught, out of the corner of his eye, an abortive movement of Castiel’s right hand towards Gabriel’s left - because that was always his first instinct, the wordless press of skin to skin when things got hard. Only that wouldn’t do here. And Gabriel wouldn’t look up.
There was a tense moment of silence. Then, “Uh. Awkward,” Charlie said brightly, hair corkscrewed into a tangle around two fingers; and Dean let out a surprised little bark of laughter, and got back to ribbing Sam over the way he always overcooked the rabbit.
It took a minute or two, but it did sort itself out, wandering back into the lazy chatter of before. And when Gabriel’s wing finally relaxed back into place, it wasn’t quite where it had been in the first place: it was curled in a little towards Sam. When Sam caught Gabriel’s eye there was some kind of moment that Dean wasn’t going to think about, and Sam’s jaw went stubborn and hard. Then his hand slid slowly over to clasp, for one deliberate moment, around the leading edge just under the table. Just like he’d press Dean’s shoulder, to make a point.
This time, Gabriel didn’t flinch. He held Sam’s gaze for a moment, eyes dark and giving nothing away. Then he looked over to respond to Castiel, to call him ‘nightowl’ and laugh, and Sam’s hand dropped back to his own lap.
Maybe Dean wasn’t the only person around who was learning lately what it felt like to breathe a sigh of relief.
---
It was a clear night when Dean let Gabriel and Charlie out, and the moon turned the world into flat paper cut-outs of black and white.
Gabriel tilted his face up to the moon and took a deep breath. His wings stretched out, vast arches of shadow and velvet, up above his head and out to his sides, tilting and pulling back to slide into one slow, powerful beat, then another. Like driving against a lover’s body, and savouring it.
He turned, and his smile was brushed with silver.
“Hey, princess. Want to fly?”
Charlie gulped, but her eyes went wide.
It took them a minute or two to sort it out. Apparently Charlie was slim enough and the flight short enough that she could loop her arms around Gabriel’s neck and lie along his back, without cramping up his wings or whatever. The one time Dean had let Castiel coax him into trying it, that had been the worst part: even Castiel’s arms wound firm around his body, and the belts strapping his calves to Castiel’s, and the press of their chests together, hadn’t been able to cancel out the sickening yawn of that vast gulf below and behind him.
Dean hovered, keeping an eye on them in the mottled light as the big round moon drifted in and out from behind the clouds: Charlie’s delicate, bony hands hovering just above Gabriel’s shoulders like breathing space. Gabriel’s shoulders squaring up under them, and his darker hands reaching back to take hers firmly by the wrists and draw them down, without flinching, to cross over his chest. Gabriel’s voice, going on about air flow and rhythm and how the first few downbeats would be the worst, while he stepped back into her body and his wings flexed and shifted, little half-gestures to show what he meant. Charlie replying, here and there, half-breathless but keeping up, keeping things straight in her head. Trusting.
Dean insisted on her buckling her belt through Gabriel’s, just to be sure. Because that shit was dangerous, and Charlie was not allowed to fall.
He ducked back inside before Gabriel took off, just in time to close the door on the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of wings grabbing at the air and Charlie’s little startled squeak. Some things he’d rather not see.
Castiel was lurking in the hallway, his wings darker smudges in the shadows and head tipped lazily against the door of the weapons closet. Even though he’d shooed a yawning Sam off to bed with the promise of doing the washing up.
Dean’s stomach did a ridiculous little jump of happiness. He closed on Castiel and boxed him softly in against the door with his body, because it already felt like days since they’d touched. Castiel tolerated it with a rumbly sigh, hands settling around Dean’s waist to tuck in under the back of his belt.
“So, I just noticed something,” Dean told him, dropping his voice to make Castiel’s breath hitch. “Moon was full two days back.”
Castiel drew back far enough to squint at him in that patient ‘please continue to elaborate, obtuse human’ sort of way he had.
“Which means that was our one-month Being Officially Betrothed anniversary,” Dean explained, distractedly, leaning in to kiss the silly little wrinkles in between his eyebrows. “And we missed it.”
“‘Anniversary’ means ‘the turn of a year,’ Dean. There’s no such thing as a monthly anniversary,” his pedantic know-it-all angel mumbled, hands working their sly way down inside the back of Dean’s pants. “And no, we didn’t. It was the ides of August. Tomorrow is the ides of September.”
“Huh. Follow the calendar instead of the moon? Not bad.” Dean wriggled in a little more comfortably against Castiel’s body, as his angel’s stance widened to let Dean settle between his legs. “So you know what that makes today, then.”
And yes, he knew he was being an utter dork, right down to the stupid grin, but he didn’t have to be smooth for Castiel.
Castiel’s cheek rasped against his, then they were breathing against each other’s lips.
“I can guess,” he murmured, dry and warm, and even in this light Dean had never seen a blue like the brightness of Castiel’s eyes. “But I imagine you’re going to tell me.”
Dean laughed, breathless with happiness, low into the charged air between their mouths. “Damn straight. Orgasm monthiversary, you giant nerd. And I’ve only given you two so far today.”
From this close, he could see the tiny creases at the corners of Castiel’s eyes when he smiled.
Next chapter coming soon.