#micheanweek2015

Of course, going up alone against the kind of scum that had no problem using infant blood and live organs as ingredients in a spell was never a good idea, but getting to land a bullet in the monster's face was worth all the telekinetic gutting that came after.

 Dean exhaled sharply, breath punched out of his lungs in a way that once again confirmed that any spellcaster this far into the dark side was also stupidly, stupidly powerful. He was pulled upright before he could reach for his gun, and pinned to the wall by an intangible, hateful energy that made his skin crawl. 

 “You ruined my altar,” the warlock informed him. “But not to worry. You’re no innocent lamb, but your heart will do just fine."

 Dean grunted at the pain in his chest; at the horrifying sensation of muscles and sinew being wrenched apart to get at the pulsating thing behind them. His vision turned a bloody white when the first rib broke, but it wasn’t until the second began to splinter that he gathered the breath to ask for a miracle. The first thought which rose from the throes of his pain was a prayer to Castiel, but the invocation that wound around his tongue was older and much more potent than the wry soundbites he used to call on the seraph.

 The syllables of this terrific poetry that tasted like warm copper on his tongue manifested as a burst of coruscating light that streamed into the windowless basement through the very pores of the walls. 

 Everything quaked; brick dust rained from the roof, and what couldn’t hold its structure under the force of this approaching cataclysm, shattered. Including the warlock, Dean realized, because in between gasping for air and searching for his gun, he hadn’t even noticed the harrowing whine of an angel’s true voice above far more human screams.

 He stood up clutching his chest, staggering like a wounded animal in the eye of a storm made of holy light.

“You summoned an archangel? You?!” the warlock screeched in spiteful disbelief. “Who are you?!” 

 Dean barely registered the demand. There was a pyroclast at his back, folded into human form with deceptively sweet green eyes, who filled the acrid lair with an equally sweet, green smell of earth and pine. Michael’s footsteps were soft and purposeful as he approached. Dean sensed his grace rippling in askance.

 “I’m your true vessel,” he gasped roughly, still glaring at the thing he came to hunt. “That’s gotta mean something, don’t it?"

 “It means everything." Michael did not hesitate, as if the mere inkling of Dean’s wishes drew the words from his mouth. 

 “Good,” Dean had his hands around the warlock’s throat even before he finished that single syllable, and Michael slid his own palm over the hunter’s shoulder. Now, they were both that pyroclast—what was Michael flowed through Dean, like a river and its branch for him, but much worse for the warlock whose eyes and mouth exploded into flames. Pure holy fire seared away the monster’s flesh and the profane stanch of black magic until it was nothing more than a handful of ashes. Time seemed to slow, but the last of the embers died eventually and Dean shivered.

 Tied to a comet was an apt description—it felt like his body contained a swarm of stars, and the contradiction between their immensity and his own smallness was giving his brain vertigo. Dean was only vaguely aware of Michael’s arm looping around his chest to steady him; he was fascinated by his palms, which perversely didn’t look any different even after roasting a person alive?

 “Holy shit!” Dean exclaimed, when the magnitude of the act finally hit. “That was—uh…”

 “I know,” Michael hummed against the nape of his neck, as if he just knew the human tongue couldn’t possibly describe what had occurred. For Dean’s part, the pain in his chest was no more, but the archangel’s normally comforting warmth made him feel more lightheaded. Divine wrath was different when it was under one’s own skin, like a solvent that was too harsh, that cleansed a little too deeply and left a patch of the world stripped bare instead of merely tidy.

 Dean swallowed thickly and swept his eyes at the debris of dark witchcraft still scattered just beyond their hallowed radius. “I thought it’d be more satisfying,” he explained, more steadily than he felt. “but maybe I’m getting old.”

 Michael patted his flank in response, his vessel’s fingers slipping under the torn jacket that made up Dean’s FBI disguise. “This kind of vengeance is never about satisfaction,” he replied softly, the rolling timbre of his voice pulling Dean’s attention back to into their single square space containing just them. “It’s about burning the weeds. To save the whole garden, so to speak.”

 Instinctively, Dean wrapped Michael’s arms tighter around himself, to ground the angel as much as himself. “Yeah, well, maybe it’s best if I stick to my own weed-whacker from now, and leave yours to you.”

 Michael laughed at that, and the swooping plumes of light that Dean now recognized as the archangel’s wings threw dramatic shadows against the decrepit walls. “Whatever you say, Dean.”

 -

 From the fringes of the operation, Dean watched the local police raid the warlock’s house and a team of paramedics receive a shivering kids who’d gone missing over the last few days. There was nothing more heartwarming than the sound of families reuniting. Unless, of course, it was his own.

 “That was the stupidest thing you’ve ever done!” Sam was yelling, despite the police chief and at least one deputy side-eyeing his decidedly un-FBI like behavior. “All you had to do was wait a couple minutes and—“

 “Come on, Sam, you’re making a scene,” Dean interrupted, flashing the cops a placating gesture before turning back to his infuriated brother. “You know damn well you’d have gone in after those kids, too. And it all worked out, didn’t it?”

 Sam looked anything but impressed. “Did it?” he countered. “Dean, do you have any idea how lucky you were that an archangel happened to have his ears on?”

 The beginnings of Dean’s reply were lost in a sudden flutter of wings, and Michael’s formidable reappearance to inform them that the lair had been purged of supernatural booby traps.

 “Trouble in paradise?” the angel asked, looking at the two of them over a small bundle he held in his arms.

 “Eh, Sam’s just hangry,” Dean replied and promptly earned an appalling bitch-face from his brother. The hunter frowned warily when the bundle in Michael’s arms began to move. “Uh, what is that?”

 “Oh, this?” Michael asked innocently even as he deposited said ‘this’ into Dean’s arms. It was a baby, one of the ones kidnapped by the psycho they’d just taken care of, and whose cherubic serenity lasted for two whole seconds before the crying began.

 “Oh man, come on—“ Dean floundered, but it wasn’t long before the sound attracted the attention of a paramedic and a tearful woman who’d been restlessly hovering behind the police tape. There was a general ruckus headed their way after that, led by desperately relieved mantras of ‘you found her, you found my baby!’

Dean rubbed at his eyes. “I wasn’t bad,” he grumbled at Michael’s back. “Even Sam could hear you moan it in the other room last week.”

“Don’t complain to me,” Michael shrugged, however, to Dean’s smug delight, there was a thin shade of pink crawling up the back of his neck, that definitely wasn’t due to the heat over the oven. “It’s not my feast. Besides, that’s why you got the mandarins.”

“You need some vitamin-C,” coughed Sam, both in order to annoy and to mask up the embarrassment at the reminder.  

“But you’re the multicultural asshole.”

“So you don’t want breakfast either?”

“That depends… were you in France again, because I warn you. Snails ain’t acceptable meal any time of the day.”

“As a matter of fact, I spent the past two days in Istanbul. However,” Michael paused to arrange whatever he had in the frying pan onto plates, “I thought you’d prefer an English breakfast to cheese and olives.”

When Michael turned around, with absolutely no shame at all, Dean moaned at the sight. Sausage, bacon, beans and eggs and whatever else had never looked better than in Michael’s hands when he was only wearing one of Dean’s old shirts and boxers.

The plates barely touched the table’s smooth surface when Dean already had a secure grip around the angel’s collar and jerked him towards himself so that Michael ended up half sprawled over him, mouths only a thin breath away.

“You’ve never been this close to changing my mind on religion,” Dean murmured.

Michael’s eyes narrowed on the smile that unfurled his lips from over his flashing teeth.

“What can I do,” he drawled. “You look so pretty on your knees in front of me.”

Words and thoughts pressed against him had Dean shiver in his seat. However, before he could prod a bit further for the exact position in which he looked so pretty Sam not so subtly cleared his throat.

“Guys, we’ve talked about this.”

“What? You’ve got food.”

“Yeah, and I’d love not to see it back in a minute, thanks.”

“You’ve got chocolate too.”

Before the fight could get to the next level, which inevitably would lead to a rather regrettable food-fight, Michael elegantly placed himself in Dean’s lap, hooked an arm around his shoulder and murmured a few words in his ear, that even though he could not understand, they carried a promise far better than riling up Sam second thing in the morning.

“Okay, you can keep your damn Santa,” Dean announced, then he turned to observe the self-satisfied little quirk at the corner of Michael’s lips. “You promised something good, right?”