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“Is it done yet?” Dean asked impatiently, eyeing the bowl over Rowena’s shoulder. She pulls it away from him, moving the bowl out of his line of sight, swatting him with her free hand. Dean scowled at her but he doesn’t try and push it.“You Winchesters need to learn to have a little patience!” Rowena scolds. “It’ll be done soon.” Sam watches, mild amusement bubbling up in him, as Dean makes a frustrated grunt and shuffles away.Sam turns back to the cabinet in front of him, looking over the labels for the last ingredient of the spell. Ashes of a ghost - which were fairly easy to come by in their line of work. Sam remembered putting a full bottle on the shelf no more than a month ago, and it’s not like they’d used it since.“Where did you get this spell again?” Comes Castiel’s skeptical question. Sam shoots a glance at him from over his shoulder, Cas holding the spell in his hand and looking it over. Beside him at the table to his left is Gabriel, looking bored, and across from him sits Jack who’s listening with a smile on his face as they talk.“I pieced it together from a few other spells - an empowering spell, a magical strengthening spell, that sort of thing. It should work. And if it doesn’t- well, no harm done.” Rowena says, dropping something else into the bowl.“So you think this’ll work?” Sam asks as he turns back to the cabinet, pushing a jar of crossroads dirt out of the way. Rowina makes a non-committal noise - which, isn’t all that inspiring.“I hope so,” She says quietly. “But again, Samuel, I can’t make any guarantees. I’ve never worked with angel magic beyond the rift. For all I know this spell could turn them purple.”“I don’t want to be purple,” Jack says suddenly, worry clear in his voice, and Sam laughs a little and looks at him over his shoulder for a second.“You’re not going to turn purple, Jack. Rowena’s just over exaggerating.”“I sure hope I’m over exaggerating it.” He just barely hears Rowena mutter, and chooses to ignore it in favor of giving Jack a reassuring look. “You won’t turn purple, and even if you do we’ll fix it.” Sam said, turning back to the cabinet.He moves another couple of jars and bottles around before - he spots it, tucked in the back, are the ghosts ashes. He makes a little ‘ah-ha!’ noise as he pulls it out, holding them up for Rowena to see. She waves him over and he pulls away from the shelf.Sam pops the lid off and hands it to her, moving to stand beside Dean - who’s still looking somewhere between angry and worried. Sam considered not saying anything, letting Dean come to him on his own but - when has that ever worked out for either of them?“You good?” Sam eventually asks, leaning towards Dean and lowering his voice enough to let Dean dictate the volume. If he wanted to be quiet, or just talk normally. Either way Sam was ready to listen, crossing his arms.Rowena, oblivious to what Sam’s doing, pours a healthy portion of the bottle out into the bowl, Jack watching her with great interest. Dean casts Sam a sideways glance before mirroring his stance.“I don’t know, Sam.” He starts, and yeah, his voice is hushed. “If this doesn’t work it’s not like we’ve got anything else. We need them juiced up - now. With Michael still out here, doing god knows what, all the people we saved are in danger from him. If we can’t get this to work-” “It’ll work, Dean.” Sam says as he turns fully to Dean now. There’s a chance, Sam knows, that it won’t work. But he trusts Rowena - trusts that she can get this spell right. He knows Dean would scoff if he said that but he does. “Yeah, well, it better.” Dean sighs and rubs a hand down his face. He looks like he’s about to say something else, torn between whether to speak or not, but doesn’t get the chance to - as he’s cut off.“Alright, you three, get over here. The spells ready.” Rowena makes a waving gesture with her hands, signaling Gabriel, Cas, and Jack to come over.Castiel stands first, moving towards where she’s told them to go. He almost forgets the paper in his hands, only remembering it at the last second before he goes back and sets it down on the table. Jack follows him quickly, with Gabriel moving last, slower, taking his time. If Sam didn't know angels didn't need it he'd say Gabriel looked half asleep. Tired. Maybe just bored.A pang of worry hits Sam but he shoves it down so he doesn’t do anything about it. It… didn’t feel like his place to ask if Gabe’s okay. Sure, after everything that’d happened Sam had felt closer to him but - Gabriel was aloof.He kept himself detached from everyone. Sam didn’t think he’d be particularly thrilled to have someone prying. By the time they’re all in place Rowena’s got the bowl at her feet and is sitting cross legged in front of them.“Here goes nothin’,” Dean says as he gives Sam a look out of the corner of his eye, and Sam nods, taking a sharp breath. This was more or less a hail mary, but it was better than sitting on their asses until they came up with a better plan.Rowena elegantly lights a match, dropping it dramatically into the bowl. After a moment she begins repeating a spell - mostly in Latin, but there’s a few phrases in Enochian Sam notices thrown in as well. The only ones he’s able to recognize are - probably - grace, power , and maybe flight? He can’t be sure though, his Enochian… left a lot to be desired.She repeats it three times before letting her hands drop. Castiel and Gabriel look at each other for a moment, eyebrows raising. Sam can feel everyone’s attention in the room shifting, looking to see if anything’s happening. But nothing does. Rowena deflates with a huff, looking back towards Sam with a shrug. “Well, this was a colossal waste of time-” Dean says, annoyance evident in his tone and Sam turns to him, reassurance and rebuttal both on the tip of his tongue but stops before he can get it out when he’s cut off by a loud, pained groan from behind him. He snaps back around to see Castiel bent over, one hand gripping his shoulder so hard his knuckles are turning white.“Cas?” Dean immediately speaks, taking a nervous few steps forwards and Castiel just gives a pained grunt in reply.“Are you alright?” Jack asks him, reaching over and putting a hand to Cas’ other shoulder - only to let out a pained groan of his own and drop down to one knee.Sam moves closer too this time, until he’s a little ways in front of Dean. Rowena scrambles to stand up, backing up until she’s standing a good foot behind Sam. Sam barely gives her a second glance before he’s looking back at them.“What the he-” Gabriel starts, but - just like the others - lets out a cry of pain and doubles over, one hand wrapped around his waist and the other snaking up to grip his back.“Gabe!” That kicks Sam into gear as he shouts, taking another step forwards, but this time he’s not stopping and Dean’s hot on his heels. They get about halfway to them before Castiel lifts a hand in a halting gesture.“Close - close your eyes,” Castiel grits out, and Sam stops dead in his tracks and shuts his eyes without a second's hesitation, just as a searing white light explodes in the room.It’s so bright the inside of his eyelids are practically glowing with it, and he moves to shield himself from the light. There’s a loud popping noise, the light bulbs in the bunker exploding in rapid succession of each other - like a chain reaction. Even the bunker’s alarms blare for a few seconds, loud and incessant, before giving a glitching screech and powering down.Sam doesn’t know how long the light stays, but when it finally does die down and he opens his eyes he’s met with pitch black darkness all around him. Sam opens his mouth, question on the tip of his tongue, but is cut off with a yelp and a loud crash - like something being dropped or falling over - coming from where the others are standing. “Guys?” Dean asks, his hand colliding with Sam’s elbow in his attempt to get his bearings, making Sam jump. It’s just Dean. “The lights - I can’t see shit.” “Here,” Rowena says, suddenly right beside Sam and making him startle again, and he sucks in a sharp breath.She says something in a language Sam doesn’t recognize, and suddenly there’s a cracking noise and the lights flicker back on. Sam blinks, rubbing his eyes to clear his vision. He hears Rowena gasp, and he quickly turns to look at - yellow. There’s a great big yellow-orange thing folded up in front of his line of sight and. “Is that-?” Sam starts, mouth dropping open in shock. Because he’s pretty sure that’s a-“Yeah, it’s a wing. Fascinating. Can someone help me up, please?” Comes Gabriel’s voice, biting and annoyed.Then the mass - the wing, holy shit - is moving and stretching out somewhat to reveal Castiel and Jack standing behind it, and Gabriel laying on his back on the floor. The big, yellow-ish orange wing belongs to Gabriel. And he’s got two of them. One is bent halfway, only unfurled enough to reveal Castiel and Jack, with the other stretched out - as much as it can within the confines of the bunker, they’re huge - at his side, sprawled out across the floor.The feathers are gold, rich and saturated, but on the inside Sam can see darker parts. Rich honey brown and bronze, and speckled with almost black-brown spots along the bottom of the uppermost ridge of feathers. Sam only has time to look in awe, to take everything in, before he realizes that Gabe isn’t the only one with wings.Castiel has them too, and Jack. Cas’ wings are tucked against his back - the bottoms of the feathers almost touching the floor. Sam can’t see them well but they look black or dark blue. With them tucked against his back Sam can’t tell how big they are, but the ends of the feathers are a little ways short of touching the floor.Jack’s wings, however, Sam can tell are probably the smallest of them all. He’s stretching them out at his sides, looking at them in wonder. They’re short, stubby, but not in a stunted growth sort of way. Instead like they’re not finished growing. The feathers are significantly more fluffed than Gabriel’s, almost like - fledgling wings.They look like a fledgling birds wing’s, with only the flight feathers being somewhat grown. The tops and inner parts of his wings are a white, fading into grey. The rest of the wings, though, are a gradient - from grey to deep, dark red at the bottom. His wings, too, are speckled like Gabriel’s.“Holy shit,” Dean says beside him, snapping Sam out of his revere. Sam shakes his head and speed-walks over to Gabriel.He considers trying to kneel down to help him up, but he’s not… really sure how to get around without stepping on feathers, so he ops instead to grab Gabriel’s hands and pull him up that way. When Sam reaches his hands down Gabriel immediately reaches up to grab them.Sam isn’t expecting the sheer weight of the wings as he tries to right Gabriel, grunting with the effort as he pulls. He doesn’t think it’s going to work, doesn’t think he’s going to be able to help Gabriel stand up but then Gabriel’s wings curl inwards and push down, almost in a half flap, helping lift him up.Gabriel lets out a groan as he stands and Sam bounces a little as he does, letting Gabriel’s hands go. Gabriel hunches forwards and pulls his wings against his back tightly. The bottoms of his feathers are touching the floor, and the tops of them go a good ways above his head. Sam blinks at them in awe.“I think it’s safe to say that spell didn’t work.” Rowena says somewhere behind him, and Gabriel lifts his head up long enough to fix her with a glare. “You think?” He snapps, wobbling a little bit where he stands. Sam reaches a hand out entirely on instinct and grabs his shoulder gently to steady him.Gabriel looks up at him and opens his mouth, like he’s about to say something, but he must decide against it because he just shakes his head and looks away again. Sam feels his face go hot and lets his hand drop again as embarrassment tightness in his gut. He probably hadn’t needed to steady him.“What the hell happened?” Dean moves to stand beside Castiel, Sam’s attention pulled to them as he does. Dean’s craning his head back to get a look at Cas’ wings, looking for all he’s worth like he’s looking at the most interesting thing in the world.All heart eyes and peaked interest. Sam fights the urge to roll his eyes. Castiel, though, shifts and moves so Dean can’t see his wings - keeping his back firmly out of Dean’s line of sight.Neither of them say anything about it, but a look of... something crosses over Dean’s face for a split second. He doesn’t press though, instead turns his attention to Jack and starts looking over his wings. Sam frowns at the interactions and files it away for later inspection.“I was worried when I saw the Enochian in your spell Rowena, but I didn’t think this would happen.” Castiel says quietly, voice resigned but clearly upset, annoyed at her.“What exactly is this, Cas?” Sam asks then, as he looks between Castiel and Rowena, Rowena shrugging when his eyes fall on her. A silence falls over them for a moment before it’s finally broken by Gabriel groaning in frustration.“A spell witches made a long time ago,” Gabriel starts, shuffling towards the table, giving himself a wide berth from everyone else - noticeably keeping his wings from getting within an arms reaching distance from everyone.Again a pang of worry rises in Sam and this time he has a harder time pushing it away. Gabe drops down heavily into a chair and his wings lift as he does, before arching over the back of the chair and dropping down until a good half of the feathers are touching the floor.Sam notices then with a start that Gabriel’s wings are shivering. Shaking all over, like he was cold or too weak to stand. It might be the strain of manifesting? Or just from the sheer weight of themselves. It could be emotional too for all Sam could tell. He doesn’t mention it though.Maybe he’ll ask later.“Witches used it to get feathers from angels for spells, and when we realized how… dangerous that could be anyone with the knowledge was either wiped out or their memory taken away. You, apparently, stumbled on it by accident. Or came up with a new version.” Gabriel sighs. He turns and glares daggers at Rowena. “Nice going, by the way.”“If it was the same spell wouldn't you recognize it? It's not my fault if you didn't stop it.” Rowena shoots back, looking somewhat insulted.“One,” Gabe starts, holding up a finger as he levels this look at her that could curdle fresh milk. “It's not my job to stop you from doing stupid things. Two, I'm not exactly someone that's sent to deal with a group of unwieldy witches. I'm the Messenger of God, not the Errand Boy of God. I only knew about this second hand. Why would I remember a spell I never even had contact with?”“Someone's in a mood,” Rowena whistles, looking at Sam and raising her eyebrows expectantly like she thought he'd do something. What, he doesn’t know, and he frowns and opens his mouth, question on the tip of his tongue but Gabriel cuts him off.“Now listen here you-”“Alright, enough!” Dean cuts him off this time, stepping away from Jack - who was still so enamored with his new appendages to really participate in the conversation. “Who's to blame doesn't help, what happened happened. How do we fix it?”“There wasn't a reverse spell that I remember hearing about. Either the spell wears off or dad fixed it for us.” Gabriel crosses his arms over his chest, hunching forwards in his chair, wings jerking with the movement. Sam couldn’t help but think he looked somehow vulnerable.“That's just - no, that's just great. We've got three X-Men rejects and no cure.” Dean ran a hand down his face with a groan, starting to pace a little. Though it was an eloquent way of saying it, Sam had to agree with him. Three winged men was definitely going to draw some unwanted attention. Sam watched Dean for another moment before turning to Rowena, crossing his arms again.“If all we can do is wait…” He started, pausing to mull over his thoughts. “Rowena, do you think you can make a reverse of this spell?”“I can certainly try, but I make no promises. We all know how the last Frankenstein’s spell turned out.” She shrugged. “I don’t know how long it’ll take. Best strap yourselves in for a long time with those things.” She said, gesturing to Gabriel’s wings.Gabriel didn’t even lift his head to retort. In fact Sam can barely see him anymore, his wings pulled up and around his body, hiding him from the rest of them. His wings are still shivering.Sam takes a step towards him, reaching a hand out, question on the tip of his tongue, are you okay? But then he’s got a face full of Castiel and he makes a startled noise and jerks back at the last second, narrowly avoiding butting heads with him.“Jesus, Cas! What the hell?” Sam tried to move around him but Castiel grabbed his arm and stopped him short.“I think it’d be best if we gave Gabriel some room,” He said, and Sam eyed him. His expression was pleading and something about it made Sam pause.“Is something wrong with him?” Jack asked, putting voice to Sam’s unasked question. Cas’s expression shifted, conflicted for a moment before he cleared his throat.“Nothing. I shouldn’t have said anything. Sorry.” Castiel took a step back and Sam narrowed his eyes.“Now hang on, you can’t just start something like that and not explain why.” Dean moved over to stand beside Sam, crossing his arms as he gave Cas’ his best no-nonsense stare. Suddenly Castiel’s wings jerked quickly, in a short cut off flap, not unfurling - Sam blinked, startled. Cas did it again. “For the love of Dad, Cas, you’re allowed to tell them. It’s not like they won’t figure out sooner or later.” Gabriel spoke up from behind them, and his wings finally pulled back enough to reveal his face. He looked doubly tired now.“Tell us what?” Sam asked, looking back and forth between the two. Castiel shifted, wings giving the half-jerk again.“Body language.” Castiel said flatly, and Sam raised an eyebrow. “Everyone has body language. We have our own form of body language that comes across with our wings. It’s reminiscent of what we do in our true forms and we all have an innate sense of how to understand it. I was reading Gabriel’s body language and realized he might be… uncomfortable.” Cas explained, finishing lamely and with a nervous glance over his shoulder.“Understatement of the year, kid,” Gabriel laughed, and Sam’s eyes drew back up to him as he stood up, hand resting heavily on the table. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go. This has been fun and all, but it’s not everyday I get to have my wings out. Me and these babies need some alone time, if you know what I mean.” Gabriel winked and pulled away, his wings once again pulling up and almost wrapping around him fully as he walked away, heading towards his room. Something about the way he’d said that, though, seemed… forced. Sam couldn’t help but feel that Gabe was hiding something.“Ew,” Dean said, taking him at face value. “T.M.I dude!” Castiel gave a sort of half-smile at Dean, and Sam could practically feel the pining like it was a tangible thing now. How much longer are they going to do this? Sam thought to himself, just barely fighting off a groan.“Well.” Rowena said, drawing Sam’s attention up to her. “If you boys are done flirting I’m going to get to work. Call if you need anything” She spun around on her heels and walked off - presumably towards her room, but it was hard to tell with her. Sometimes she just found a random place in the bunker and holed up there for a few hours.“Dude, what the hell!” Dean spluttered out and made a choked off noise like he was dying and Cas turned a light pink, pulling his wings tighter against himself.“Were you guys flirting?” Jack asked, innocent as ever, moving over to them.“No!” Dean and Cas shouted in unison, before their heads snapped around to look at each other. Sam had to fight back a laugh. Dean make a noise stuck between annoyance and confusion before he grunted, moving towards the kitchen.“I need a damn drink,” He growled as he stormed off. Sam let out a small laugh and Jack gave him a confused look.“I’m going to. Help him get that drink,” Cas said, clearing his throat. He nodded to Sam before turning and rushing off to follow Dean.“What just happened?” Jack asked, blinking owlishly. “I’ll tell you when you’re older,” Sam laughed, pushing his hair back.