dean's never been an art guy. no shit. if there's art at the bottom of a beer bottle, or in the blinking neon letters spelling out GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!, or in the spurt of spilt ketchup over a cheap formica tabletop, then sure, he can get behind that. but art art? marble columns and stained paintings and cracked vases? nah. that ain't his bag.
recently he's started doing this. this thing. developed this habit. obsession. whatever.
he wishes he could say he stumbled across it accidentally, hadn't gone out his way to drag it up, but that's not true. he doesn't remember when he saw it first, must've been a kid, one of the few days he was actually in class. but anyway.
he finds it again. one night - it's late, sam's passed out, gone 3am, and dean can't sleep. neon motel sign beyond their window's blinking like a firework, and it's dead quiet, 'cept for the hiss of the rain and the low murmur of a tv set in the next room.
he yanks sammy's laptop out his duffel, and types in one word.
he has to sift through a lot of crap - cartoons and love hearts and one particularly distracting website called angelgirls.com (they're pretty, but they sure as hell aren't angels) - but he finds it. the seven works of mercy.
its wings curl up to a black sky, like it's fighting, struggling. one hand is outstretched to the earth, reaching endlessly. it's dark and cracked and grimy; it's anything but comforting. and yet he hasn't been able to shake it. it's like it's seared itself onto his mind.
the handprint on his shoulder burns.
after that, he looks for the angels every night. it's like his eyes are greedy, aching; searching the dark corners of digital canvases for their great, arching wings, their brilliant eyes, their taught, elegant muscles. he likes sacred love and profane love, but he prefers nativity with st francis and st lawrence. he starts to recognise the names; caravaggio, baglione, gentileschi. not that he cares. it's just the angels. the paintings are beautiful and painful. he doesn't know the proper words, whatever. he doesn't care.
he can't stop looking at them. ever since he came back. he doesn't know why; he sure as hell doesn't think they're real. it's like a dream, something he's struggling to remember. sometimes, in the paintings, in the captured agony and ecstasy and grief, there's a spark - a memory - confusion, darkness, pain, and the hand, reaching down out of a great, dark sky. then there's - bliss. oblivion. relief.
he wipes the browser every night before he falls asleep.
