Fic: Burn
Title: Burn
Author: carmexgirl
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Spoilers: 5.04 and all that entails
Warnings: Furture!fic, Dark themes, angst, drug use,
Word Count: 2,827
Summary: Castiel wonders if he can fall further than he already has
Castiel burns; both inside and out. He closes his eyes as the rhythmic grunts and moans meld into one big cacophony of noise. He opens them slowly, and through the haze of smoke he can see bodies moving, writhing on his bed, on his floor, in his living room. He cries out as his pleasure reaches a peak, as he feels a burning sensation course through his entire body. He scrunches his eyes shut, and suddenly he can see it, the entire world burning. He hears the screams of people as they writhe in agony, and suddenly he has a sensation of falling into nothingness, the screams fading away as he descends into blackness. It makes him laugh in an ironic way, because while he knows the world will inevitably burn, he can’t possibly fall further than he already has.
It the world does burn, and they all fall headlong into the abyss, at least he’ll have one hell of a swansong.
***
Castiel’s powers didn’t disappear the instant the angels gave up and took their sorry asses back to heaven. No, they just gradually faded away.
He'd noticed it, on and off, for a few months. Little things, like not being able to remember as much as he used to, like getting distracted by trivial things instead of concentrating on his main goal. Annoying, yes, but not really cause for concern.
The biggest clue came the day he couldn’t zap himself to Dean’s location when he called him. It was admittedly lazy, given that now they’d barricaded themselves into this compound after the plague started to spread, he only had to walk a few yards to Dean’s hut. He’d found himself reluctant to make an effort to do anything lately; just didn’t see the point. He usually teleported wherever he wanted, so at two minutes to the meeting time, he’d closed his eyes and waited for the familiar whooshing sensation. Nothing happened. Again he concentrated and closed his eyes, jaw straining with the effort. Still nothing. He’d sat down on his bed, thinking, rubbing his temples while a strange feeling rose in his stomach. When the door opened nearly an hour later and Dean blundered in, asking what the hell had happened to him, he didn’t really know what to say.
Dean had been a little concerned, but his thoughts were more about keeping everyone safe, keeping the Croatoans out, and fighting Lucifer. He didn’t have the time for Castiel’s problems and Castiel knew that. He understood that priorities lay elsewhere, though it didn’t make him feel any better.
The voices stopped a few days later. The endless chatter of his brothers inside his head gave way to cold, hard silence. His own thoughts were now lonely inside his mind, echoing around with no-one to answer him when he called out. Dean found him one day on the floor of his hut, hands over his ears, moaning at how the silence inside his head was deafening.
Things started to get much slower after that. As an angel he used to circle the world in the blink of an eye, taking in everything and everyone, stopping on the head of a pin when something down below piqued his interest. As a semi-human or whatever the hell he was now, he was sluggish, heavy, stumbling through life, unable to go the slightest distance without feeling tired and aching. His new-found need to eat was almost as irksome as the need to keep relieving himself, and he wondered how the humans coped with the constant stop-start, having to refuel, empty, refuel again. Of course in the old days he took great pleasure in watching Dean eat, seeing his eyes light up as the diner waitress brought over his double cheeseburger with extra bacon. He’d marvelled at how his eyes filled with pleasure, his mouth contorted into an expression of pure bliss as he ate. Castiel hoped when he took his first bite of burger that he would feel those things too. He didn’t. It was all so perfunctory-he did it because he had to, not because he wanted to. He knew what he liked, but he never, ever felt the way he imagined Dean did.
Or used to. Because if he was a hollow shell now, Dean was a broken husk.
He was hurting, Castiel knew, and had utilised his usual coping mechanism which meant burying his feelings deep down and turning them into decisive, violent action. He didn’t smile any more-hadn’t for months since the Croatoan virus had spread and they’d formed this little pocket of rebellion. They all knew there was little chance of surviving, but they still tried because other than sitting still while Lucifer laid waste to the world, there was nothing else to do, and they had to feel like they were doing something. Dean had taken to his role as fearless leader, and as Castiel felt more emotion day by day, he observed Dean gradually losing the ability to feel anything.
They’d broken into an old storage warehouse when he first saw the pills. Prescription amphetamines, given to narcoleptics to keep them awake. He thought nothing of it, until he saw Chuck and some of the others, eyes wide, laughing and running around like their lives depended on it. Chuck handed him the bottle and told him to take one, said that it’d speed him up a little. He shook his head at first, then spotted Dean glaring at him from across the yard. There had been comments made about him being slow, about him holding them up on missions. He’d pulled his back picking up a heavy crate of supplies from the truck, and it had laid him up for a week while he recuperated. Lying in bed, unable to move an inch because of the pain, he’d felt so useless and small. Maybe this was the solution to all of that.
It certainly felt like it. Suddenly, for the first time in his mortal life, Castiel began to feel. It took half an hour for the effects to start, but once they did, it was as if he was someway near to his old self again. It started as a tickling in his stomach, growing into a sense of rushing forwards, of needing to do some action right away. His mind became clearer, more focused, and he felt as if he could do anything, as if any task was a mere drop in the ocean to him. It was almost like being an angel again.
As he continued, stealing supplies and stashing them under the floorboards of his hut, he began to notice long-term effects. The troublesome need to eat and go to the bathroom subsided; he felt more alert, able to do things for a longer period of time, more capable. Sometimes he felt invincible, like he could take on Lucifer and the whole of his army, instead of feeling like the small, insignificant man he had inhabited.
That was until the pills wore off, until he felt the horror of the comedown, feeling tired, listless, weak. All of the insecurities that disappeared with the rush of adrenaline came back magnified, and found he had to take solace in other things in order to keep the demons inside his head at bay. He experimented with any other drug he could lay his hands on, tried several different religions until he found the right combination that suited him, that made him feel better in some way.
One morning he came across a dusty old bible. It was stashed beneath a floorboard in his bedroom, presumably to try and stop the floor from creaking. He flicked through the old, musty-smelling pages, reading extracts here and there in the hope of finding inspiration or guidance.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will feel no evi:
For thou art with me
As he read the words he started to laugh; lightly at first, before becoming louder. It was a hollow, bitter laugh because he knew the truth. No one was with him; he walked through the valley of the shadow of death alone. Completely alone.
The door opened, and in walked Dean. He looked down at him through cold, unfeeling eyes, evidently pissed that Castiel was sitting there, reading and laughing while all hell broke loose outside. “You on the dope now? Is that what’s so funny?” He spotted the book he was holding. “Oh yeah, trying to get something back from the old days, right? Look at yourself, Cas. Look at us. It’s never gonna be the same.”
Castiel just shook his head. The amphetamines were wearing off and he could feel the familiar ache in his bones. He wasn’t in the mood to talk so he just stared. For a moment, he thought he saw Dean’s face soften into something like pity. It was over in an instant, and he continued to glare at him for a few moments before turning tail and walking out. As Castiel stared from the window, he saw him call to someone across the yard. Jeanne, he thought her name was. She walked over to him, all blonde hair and long legs, and yelped quietly in surprise as he pulled her into a harsh kiss. After a moment, he took her hand and led her back to his hut.
Castiel had always told himself he would never fall that far; never give in to that particular temptation. He’d lost everything else; he wanted to keep the small amount of grace he had left, knowing that if he ever indulged in anything like that, whatever small amount that was left would leave him forever. But then, for some reason, he couldn’t resist just looking, just seeing what it was like. He’d observed people having sex as an angel, but as a human…he wanted to see if it really was the be all and end all that Dean apparently thought it was.
So he crept to Dean’s hut, and watched him from the window, watched Dean’s face as it contorted in complete and utter bliss, saw his eyes turn from their usual cold, steel-like gaze, to something softer, more vulnerable. He saw his face as he came, as he forgot where he was and what the world had deteriorated into. It was almost like he was back on the road again; back with his brother fighting evil head on, rather than desperately and futilely trying to keep it at bay. That’s what Castiel wanted. That’s what he’d been trying to achieve with drugs, with religion; that feeling of complete and utter bliss.
It happened a few days later. He’d been thinking about it ever since he saw Dean’s face, wondering how to go about it. He probably could have done it with anyone in the compound if he wished, but he’d come to a decision. If he was going to take that last step and fall completely, he wanted it to be with Dean. Of course, it wasn’t his Dean now; that Dean was long gone. But given the times they lived in, it was close enough.
It was rather unexpected when it did happen, in that Castiel was just sitting on his bed in a shirt and nothing more when Dean came in after a mission to get more supplies. He’d killed three Croatoans in the process, and wanted to tell him how he was kicking ass out there, how they were closing in on Lucifer and how all of this would soon be over. Castiel had laughed at him initially, which made Dean mad.
They argued for a while, Dean throwing the usual insults at him of being a ‘useless hippie,’ while Castiel threw back that Dean was burying his emotions. He yelled at him, telling him he was not facing up to the fact that Lucifer would soon catch up with Sam, the brother he had abandoned, and Sam said ‘yes’. If he hadn’t already, that was. Dean had drawn his gun and aimed it at Castiel, visibly shaking, telling him to never say that name again. Castiel stood up, and saw Dean’s eyes narrow when he realised Castiel was naked from the waist down. The mood in the room changed, as Dean lowered his gun and stared at him knowingly.
“Finally did it, huh? Finally discovered how to jerk yourself off?”
“I’ve done no such thing.”
“So why are you only in a shirt, huh? Why’s your dick half hard?”
Castiel looked down and saw that yes, he was half hard, though he didn’t entirely know why. When he looked up he saw Dean’s eyes, suddenly burning with lust. “I…don’t know.”
“You want it, Cas. Just face it. Why don’t you admit it to yourself?”
Castiel was aware of the change in atmosphere in the room. From being highly charged with raw emotion, there was now a tension of a completely different kind in the air. He began to speak. He was nervous, apprehensive about what was to happen, but he continued all the same. “You’re right. I…do. So why don’t you show me.”
“You’re pathetic,” Dean spat, but his eyes lowered to Castiel’s crotch once more. Castiel watched him licking his lips, and in an instant he felt himself turned around and bent over the end of the bed. He heard the sound of unzipping, of jeans being pulled down, and suddenly he felt a spit-slicked finger enter him. He didn’t have time to get used to the sensation before it was quickly followed by another, burning as it entered him, stretching him out. Finally, he felt Dean push inside quickly, the burn increasing until he thought he may split apart. He closed his eyes, and could hear the harsh jangling of Dean’s belt as he began to thrust slowly. It hurt; it hurt a lot, and Castiel clung to the bed tightly until the pain receded and a burst of pleasure hit him. He began moaning, crying out for more as Dean grunted, not saying a word.
So this was it. This was what he had been waiting for, what he had been denying himself all this time.
As Dean rammed into him over and over again, as he gave one final, hard push and threw his head back, as the hard cock pulsed inside him, Castiel felt his own orgasm break. He moaned as a feeling of utter bliss washed over him. He knew that was it from then on, the last bastion of his grace ebbing away as Dean continued to thrust through his orgasm.
Nothing mattered anymore, if it ever mattered in the first place. He just wanted that feeling of bliss to carry on, to carry on doing that for the rest of his mortal life, to keep on feeling that feeling because it kept all of the others at bay for a little while.
Dean pulled out, pulling his jeans up and tidying himself. Castiel heard the jangling of his belt as he scrabbled onto the bed and lay there, eyes closed, trying to control his breathing. He opened one eye and watched as Dean picked his coat up off the floor, dusting it off. He stretched his legs wider, spreading himself wantonly and said in a rough voice, “Again.” Dean merely shook his head and walked out without saying a word, a look of pity in his eyes.
Castiel reached over and pulled out the orange bottle from the nightstand. He looked inside, finding two pills left. He took them both, not needing any water now to swallow them down before lying back, stomach still sticky with come, and closing his eyes. It would happen again; he was certain of that. Maybe not just with Dean, but with others too. He’d had that feeling now, and all he ever wanted was to keep on feeling it until he couldn’t feel anything any more.
***
He tries desperately to get that feeling back whenever he can, just like he’s doing now. Every chance he gets, he takes it. Sometimes it’s with Dean, but mostly with others, friends, comrades, those who come to the camp to escape the fight, to find solace in something other than violence and misery. Castiel gives then that, helps them in the same way they’re helping him.
He stands up, stumbling over to his coffee table where a joint, still lit, burns away slowly. He takes a drag, exhaling the smoke through his nose and feeling the front of his head start to tingle. He feels himself being pulled away, turned over and prepared once again, and he smiles as the familiar feeling of being full settles in his stomach.
So what? He thinks through the haze, taking another drag as he is thrust forwards. So what if the whole world burns? He can burn with it, the boldest and the brightest of them all.
Author: carmexgirl
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Spoilers: 5.04 and all that entails
Warnings: Furture!fic, Dark themes, angst, drug use,
Word Count: 2,827
Summary: Castiel wonders if he can fall further than he already has
Castiel burns; both inside and out. He closes his eyes as the rhythmic grunts and moans meld into one big cacophony of noise. He opens them slowly, and through the haze of smoke he can see bodies moving, writhing on his bed, on his floor, in his living room. He cries out as his pleasure reaches a peak, as he feels a burning sensation course through his entire body. He scrunches his eyes shut, and suddenly he can see it, the entire world burning. He hears the screams of people as they writhe in agony, and suddenly he has a sensation of falling into nothingness, the screams fading away as he descends into blackness. It makes him laugh in an ironic way, because while he knows the world will inevitably burn, he can’t possibly fall further than he already has.
It the world does burn, and they all fall headlong into the abyss, at least he’ll have one hell of a swansong.
***
Castiel’s powers didn’t disappear the instant the angels gave up and took their sorry asses back to heaven. No, they just gradually faded away.
He'd noticed it, on and off, for a few months. Little things, like not being able to remember as much as he used to, like getting distracted by trivial things instead of concentrating on his main goal. Annoying, yes, but not really cause for concern.
The biggest clue came the day he couldn’t zap himself to Dean’s location when he called him. It was admittedly lazy, given that now they’d barricaded themselves into this compound after the plague started to spread, he only had to walk a few yards to Dean’s hut. He’d found himself reluctant to make an effort to do anything lately; just didn’t see the point. He usually teleported wherever he wanted, so at two minutes to the meeting time, he’d closed his eyes and waited for the familiar whooshing sensation. Nothing happened. Again he concentrated and closed his eyes, jaw straining with the effort. Still nothing. He’d sat down on his bed, thinking, rubbing his temples while a strange feeling rose in his stomach. When the door opened nearly an hour later and Dean blundered in, asking what the hell had happened to him, he didn’t really know what to say.
Dean had been a little concerned, but his thoughts were more about keeping everyone safe, keeping the Croatoans out, and fighting Lucifer. He didn’t have the time for Castiel’s problems and Castiel knew that. He understood that priorities lay elsewhere, though it didn’t make him feel any better.
The voices stopped a few days later. The endless chatter of his brothers inside his head gave way to cold, hard silence. His own thoughts were now lonely inside his mind, echoing around with no-one to answer him when he called out. Dean found him one day on the floor of his hut, hands over his ears, moaning at how the silence inside his head was deafening.
Things started to get much slower after that. As an angel he used to circle the world in the blink of an eye, taking in everything and everyone, stopping on the head of a pin when something down below piqued his interest. As a semi-human or whatever the hell he was now, he was sluggish, heavy, stumbling through life, unable to go the slightest distance without feeling tired and aching. His new-found need to eat was almost as irksome as the need to keep relieving himself, and he wondered how the humans coped with the constant stop-start, having to refuel, empty, refuel again. Of course in the old days he took great pleasure in watching Dean eat, seeing his eyes light up as the diner waitress brought over his double cheeseburger with extra bacon. He’d marvelled at how his eyes filled with pleasure, his mouth contorted into an expression of pure bliss as he ate. Castiel hoped when he took his first bite of burger that he would feel those things too. He didn’t. It was all so perfunctory-he did it because he had to, not because he wanted to. He knew what he liked, but he never, ever felt the way he imagined Dean did.
Or used to. Because if he was a hollow shell now, Dean was a broken husk.
He was hurting, Castiel knew, and had utilised his usual coping mechanism which meant burying his feelings deep down and turning them into decisive, violent action. He didn’t smile any more-hadn’t for months since the Croatoan virus had spread and they’d formed this little pocket of rebellion. They all knew there was little chance of surviving, but they still tried because other than sitting still while Lucifer laid waste to the world, there was nothing else to do, and they had to feel like they were doing something. Dean had taken to his role as fearless leader, and as Castiel felt more emotion day by day, he observed Dean gradually losing the ability to feel anything.
They’d broken into an old storage warehouse when he first saw the pills. Prescription amphetamines, given to narcoleptics to keep them awake. He thought nothing of it, until he saw Chuck and some of the others, eyes wide, laughing and running around like their lives depended on it. Chuck handed him the bottle and told him to take one, said that it’d speed him up a little. He shook his head at first, then spotted Dean glaring at him from across the yard. There had been comments made about him being slow, about him holding them up on missions. He’d pulled his back picking up a heavy crate of supplies from the truck, and it had laid him up for a week while he recuperated. Lying in bed, unable to move an inch because of the pain, he’d felt so useless and small. Maybe this was the solution to all of that.
It certainly felt like it. Suddenly, for the first time in his mortal life, Castiel began to feel. It took half an hour for the effects to start, but once they did, it was as if he was someway near to his old self again. It started as a tickling in his stomach, growing into a sense of rushing forwards, of needing to do some action right away. His mind became clearer, more focused, and he felt as if he could do anything, as if any task was a mere drop in the ocean to him. It was almost like being an angel again.
As he continued, stealing supplies and stashing them under the floorboards of his hut, he began to notice long-term effects. The troublesome need to eat and go to the bathroom subsided; he felt more alert, able to do things for a longer period of time, more capable. Sometimes he felt invincible, like he could take on Lucifer and the whole of his army, instead of feeling like the small, insignificant man he had inhabited.
That was until the pills wore off, until he felt the horror of the comedown, feeling tired, listless, weak. All of the insecurities that disappeared with the rush of adrenaline came back magnified, and found he had to take solace in other things in order to keep the demons inside his head at bay. He experimented with any other drug he could lay his hands on, tried several different religions until he found the right combination that suited him, that made him feel better in some way.
One morning he came across a dusty old bible. It was stashed beneath a floorboard in his bedroom, presumably to try and stop the floor from creaking. He flicked through the old, musty-smelling pages, reading extracts here and there in the hope of finding inspiration or guidance.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will feel no evi:
For thou art with me
As he read the words he started to laugh; lightly at first, before becoming louder. It was a hollow, bitter laugh because he knew the truth. No one was with him; he walked through the valley of the shadow of death alone. Completely alone.
The door opened, and in walked Dean. He looked down at him through cold, unfeeling eyes, evidently pissed that Castiel was sitting there, reading and laughing while all hell broke loose outside. “You on the dope now? Is that what’s so funny?” He spotted the book he was holding. “Oh yeah, trying to get something back from the old days, right? Look at yourself, Cas. Look at us. It’s never gonna be the same.”
Castiel just shook his head. The amphetamines were wearing off and he could feel the familiar ache in his bones. He wasn’t in the mood to talk so he just stared. For a moment, he thought he saw Dean’s face soften into something like pity. It was over in an instant, and he continued to glare at him for a few moments before turning tail and walking out. As Castiel stared from the window, he saw him call to someone across the yard. Jeanne, he thought her name was. She walked over to him, all blonde hair and long legs, and yelped quietly in surprise as he pulled her into a harsh kiss. After a moment, he took her hand and led her back to his hut.
Castiel had always told himself he would never fall that far; never give in to that particular temptation. He’d lost everything else; he wanted to keep the small amount of grace he had left, knowing that if he ever indulged in anything like that, whatever small amount that was left would leave him forever. But then, for some reason, he couldn’t resist just looking, just seeing what it was like. He’d observed people having sex as an angel, but as a human…he wanted to see if it really was the be all and end all that Dean apparently thought it was.
So he crept to Dean’s hut, and watched him from the window, watched Dean’s face as it contorted in complete and utter bliss, saw his eyes turn from their usual cold, steel-like gaze, to something softer, more vulnerable. He saw his face as he came, as he forgot where he was and what the world had deteriorated into. It was almost like he was back on the road again; back with his brother fighting evil head on, rather than desperately and futilely trying to keep it at bay. That’s what Castiel wanted. That’s what he’d been trying to achieve with drugs, with religion; that feeling of complete and utter bliss.
It happened a few days later. He’d been thinking about it ever since he saw Dean’s face, wondering how to go about it. He probably could have done it with anyone in the compound if he wished, but he’d come to a decision. If he was going to take that last step and fall completely, he wanted it to be with Dean. Of course, it wasn’t his Dean now; that Dean was long gone. But given the times they lived in, it was close enough.
It was rather unexpected when it did happen, in that Castiel was just sitting on his bed in a shirt and nothing more when Dean came in after a mission to get more supplies. He’d killed three Croatoans in the process, and wanted to tell him how he was kicking ass out there, how they were closing in on Lucifer and how all of this would soon be over. Castiel had laughed at him initially, which made Dean mad.
They argued for a while, Dean throwing the usual insults at him of being a ‘useless hippie,’ while Castiel threw back that Dean was burying his emotions. He yelled at him, telling him he was not facing up to the fact that Lucifer would soon catch up with Sam, the brother he had abandoned, and Sam said ‘yes’. If he hadn’t already, that was. Dean had drawn his gun and aimed it at Castiel, visibly shaking, telling him to never say that name again. Castiel stood up, and saw Dean’s eyes narrow when he realised Castiel was naked from the waist down. The mood in the room changed, as Dean lowered his gun and stared at him knowingly.
“Finally did it, huh? Finally discovered how to jerk yourself off?”
“I’ve done no such thing.”
“So why are you only in a shirt, huh? Why’s your dick half hard?”
Castiel looked down and saw that yes, he was half hard, though he didn’t entirely know why. When he looked up he saw Dean’s eyes, suddenly burning with lust. “I…don’t know.”
“You want it, Cas. Just face it. Why don’t you admit it to yourself?”
Castiel was aware of the change in atmosphere in the room. From being highly charged with raw emotion, there was now a tension of a completely different kind in the air. He began to speak. He was nervous, apprehensive about what was to happen, but he continued all the same. “You’re right. I…do. So why don’t you show me.”
“You’re pathetic,” Dean spat, but his eyes lowered to Castiel’s crotch once more. Castiel watched him licking his lips, and in an instant he felt himself turned around and bent over the end of the bed. He heard the sound of unzipping, of jeans being pulled down, and suddenly he felt a spit-slicked finger enter him. He didn’t have time to get used to the sensation before it was quickly followed by another, burning as it entered him, stretching him out. Finally, he felt Dean push inside quickly, the burn increasing until he thought he may split apart. He closed his eyes, and could hear the harsh jangling of Dean’s belt as he began to thrust slowly. It hurt; it hurt a lot, and Castiel clung to the bed tightly until the pain receded and a burst of pleasure hit him. He began moaning, crying out for more as Dean grunted, not saying a word.
So this was it. This was what he had been waiting for, what he had been denying himself all this time.
As Dean rammed into him over and over again, as he gave one final, hard push and threw his head back, as the hard cock pulsed inside him, Castiel felt his own orgasm break. He moaned as a feeling of utter bliss washed over him. He knew that was it from then on, the last bastion of his grace ebbing away as Dean continued to thrust through his orgasm.
Nothing mattered anymore, if it ever mattered in the first place. He just wanted that feeling of bliss to carry on, to carry on doing that for the rest of his mortal life, to keep on feeling that feeling because it kept all of the others at bay for a little while.
Dean pulled out, pulling his jeans up and tidying himself. Castiel heard the jangling of his belt as he scrabbled onto the bed and lay there, eyes closed, trying to control his breathing. He opened one eye and watched as Dean picked his coat up off the floor, dusting it off. He stretched his legs wider, spreading himself wantonly and said in a rough voice, “Again.” Dean merely shook his head and walked out without saying a word, a look of pity in his eyes.
Castiel reached over and pulled out the orange bottle from the nightstand. He looked inside, finding two pills left. He took them both, not needing any water now to swallow them down before lying back, stomach still sticky with come, and closing his eyes. It would happen again; he was certain of that. Maybe not just with Dean, but with others too. He’d had that feeling now, and all he ever wanted was to keep on feeling it until he couldn’t feel anything any more.
***
He tries desperately to get that feeling back whenever he can, just like he’s doing now. Every chance he gets, he takes it. Sometimes it’s with Dean, but mostly with others, friends, comrades, those who come to the camp to escape the fight, to find solace in something other than violence and misery. Castiel gives then that, helps them in the same way they’re helping him.
He stands up, stumbling over to his coffee table where a joint, still lit, burns away slowly. He takes a drag, exhaling the smoke through his nose and feeling the front of his head start to tingle. He feels himself being pulled away, turned over and prepared once again, and he smiles as the familiar feeling of being full settles in his stomach.
So what? He thinks through the haze, taking another drag as he is thrust forwards. So what if the whole world burns? He can burn with it, the boldest and the brightest of them all.