#anywayyyyy. my ask box and dms are always open if you have any other questions or cas angst ideas you'd wanna share 👀

[and-stir-the-stars]

hello! I have been obsessed with the lighting-up-holy-oil-in-the-hollow-of-angel-wing-bones concept for torture since I read that particular fic of yours. It's delicious and I think about it SO often. So question: how'd you come up with that?

SO glad that you enjoyed that concept, fellow angst lover :)

Angel wings having hollows in them like bird wings is an idea I've been rotating in my mind for a while now. I remember a few months back I was ranting to angelfishofthelord about Cas trying to make sure he never loses any of his memories to Naomi again, and how horrifically cool it would be if Cas did things like snap his wings and hide notes to himself in the hollows of his bones where she would never think to find them (until, unfortunately, she does).

That fic (Safe and Sound, if anyone's curious) was ofc written for angelfish's birthday. Initially I wanted to gift her a different fic, but it didn't end up working out, and by that point there were like two days until her birthday, so I had to root through the depths of my brain for old fics ideas in order to get something written in time.

One of those old ideas was a scene that I had been wanting to write for a long time: Cas begging Sam not to look at him after his wings have been forced out because Sam doesn't know how violating it is for Cas. But I still needed something for the fic to build up to, aka, the torture that makes Cas snap and Sam comforting him afterward.

I was sort of pressed for time, so I decided to go with the iconic torture method for angels: holy oil. But I wanted to make it a bit more unique and memorable than just "the captors throw holy oil onto Cas" (even if that trope is both fun to read and extremely traumatic for Cas all on its own). So I was thinking about old fic ideas, and my brain sort of stumbled across my old ideas about angel wing bones being hollow, and then suddenly it clicked and my brain went "hey, you know what would be really angsty...?"

In that moment when I first thought of the idea, I actually did plan for the holy oil to be lit on fire, but I realized about .3 seconds after I actually started writing it that maybe it was a bit too angsty, especially for a birthday fic lmao. (Also, I listened to a million songs while trying to find a good title for the fic; as I was listening to Coldplay's 'Fix You', I heard the lyric "ignite your bones" and almost died ahdkjfaskfhs. I was very tempted to make that the fic title but didn't end up following through).

And there have been some very kind and amazing people in the comments of that fic who informed me of some practical aspects of that torture idea that I wasn't aware of, including:

1) that bones have their own pain receptors that feel pain more intensely and for a longer period of time than muscle pain receptors, which would make Cas' wing bones being lit on fire excruciating even if the holy fire didn't burn through his bones and ignite his actual skin and muscle

2) that birds actually use the hollows of their bones as a part of their respiratory system to store oxygen

And this next part is slightly off topic, but I made a post a while back about how if an angel were to actually manifest their wings, it would probably kill them because their human heart wouldn't be able to efficiently pump blood throughout their entire body with the addition of two large appendages to their circulatory system (although this depends on whether an angel's Grace is strong enough to compensate, I suppose). But now I'm thinking about number 2 above,, if maybe angel wings are designed for them to be able to store oxygen in their wings while in vessels to keep their vessel's hearts from exerting themselves trying to pump oxygen-rich blood to the angel's manifested wings, and about how this would affect Cas after getting holy oil dumped into the hollows of his wing bones--

#cas slowly drowning + his heart over-exerting itself after all the blood he just lost... #I do want to write a second chapter for Safe and Sound‚ but so far the hardest part #is trying to come up with a way for the characters to get the oil out of his wing bones #me not knowing how to fix the problems I created 🙄 #anywayyyyy. my ask box and dms are always open if you have any other questions or cas angst ideas you'd wanna share 👀 #thank you so much for the ask!!!! it really made my day :)) #i'd tell you god's name if you asked #katswrites #bri dont look #castiel