Frozen Inside Part 2
Still, Sam is also aware that Dean is still very much the alpha of their little group - and that as such, Dean would see nothing wrong with forcing Castiel to do whatever he wanted him to do.
He could only hope that any humanity left in Dean would balk at the notion.
Castiel was also changed by the attempt at mating. He seemed now more aware of the danger he was in, of the confused web of emotion and desire that Dean had knotted around him the night the wolf had discovered him in the woods. Sam had noticed that for the past few days, Castiel had tried to stay away from Dean (an impossible task, as Dean was incredibly insistent on following him everywhere) Castiel had also started sleeping in his clothes, did not in fact seem to remove them at all - choosing to wash inside his shirt. Even when he needed to relive himself, he would wait until Sam ventured outside, and go with him to do so. In short, he was doing everything possible to remain covered in Dean's presence, and to never be alone with the wolf when it wasn't avoidable.
Sam pitied him, and he pitied his brother, who did not seem to know what was happening.
Sam wondered if Dean had desired men before, back when he was human. Sam remembers his brother being sullen in the presence of others, but then, Dean had had a harsh childhood, and was very aware of his native blood, that made him an outcast amongst the settlers. Sam had always been enamoured with their culture - especially their books, paper and ink, and the glass instruments used by their apothecaries. But Dean had remained separate, and had hated their ways - the manners, the pointlessly modest modes of dress, the constricting formalities of their culture.
He can't remember Dean ever having a sweetheart. He'd assumed that his brother found loose women in the towns that they traded furs in - now though, he wasn't so sure.
Perhaps Dean had never understood the difference between himself and regular men. Had seen it only as further proof that he would never be accepted by them - a half-blood son of a native, with no place in his heart for a woman.
Sam hoped most emphatically that Dean had realised the difference that nature had cruelly spliced into his flesh - before he had changed, permanently, into his wolf form. Sam could not imagine how confused, how woefully unprepared an animal would be, to deal with such a realisation as this - that Dean was a man, who craved the bodies of other men, the way most craved feminine flesh.
It was not in his power to force Dean to take human form again, and confront this difficulty head on. But, he could not leave it to chance, and have Castiel attacked again. Despite himself, he had grown to like the slight man who had stumbled into their lives - he had underestimated how strong he was, both in body and in spirit.
Castiel bore Dean's affections as a trial, and he did so without complaint. He had coped with their hard life, with the demands that their routine placed on him...and, at times, Sam suspected that Castiel even cared for them a little. He tended to Sam's cuts and scrapes with a kind of tenderness, and, despite his apparent horror of Dean's physical attention, Castiel still curled up around the wolf to sleep.
So it was that Sam considered his plan of action, and finally put it into effect.
Whilst Dean might not be able to talk to him - Sam could pray that he would at least still understand.
Dean first notices that Sam is trying to get his attention when a hunk of cold rabbit is dropped under his nose.
He looks at his brother, questioningly. It's not time to eat yet.
Sam, person Sam, just points at the rabbit, and tells him that it's for him.
Dean eats it, but keeps an eye on his mate as he does so.
Cas is always away from him now. Moving too much, scared eyes and scared body all the time. Dean thinks that Cas should be scared - he hit him, Dean should hurt him for that. But the rest of him wishes that Cas wasn't scared.
Sam holds up more rabbit, then walks away.
Dean looks at his mate. Cas puts his arms around his knees, a sign that he isn't going to move.
Dean follows Sam into the cave.
Sam sits down in the little dark room at the back of the cave. It smells like old food, it's storage. Dean sits down in front of Sam, growling, nose up in the air, waiting for the food.
Sam gives it to him.
Dean holds it between his paws and rips pieces of rabbit away, chewing.
Sam is saying something.
Dean looks up at his brother, who sighs, and repeats. "I want to talk to you."
Dean goes back to his rabbit.
"Dean?"
He snorts, to show he's listening.
"It's about Castiel."
Cas. What about Cas?
"What you did to him, the other day? You can't do that again."
At the word 'can't' Dean growls warningly. He's the one in charge here. But, the part of his brain that is working out Sam's words isn't so sure - it doesn't really want to do that to Cas again...except that it does...but...different.
"I know. You can do what you want...but Castiel is human. And right now...you aren't."
Dean huffs. He knows this, he is not stupid.
"Castiel is scared. Because you hurt him. You tried..." Sam wets his lips, looking for a word small enough. "You tried to make him lie with you."
Dean is silent, and the part of his brain that understands, also makes his stomach twist, the rabbit not feeling as good as it should.
"Castiel is a man. He's...he comes from a village. From settlers. He knows that it is wrong to lie with another man." Sam explains patiently, hoping that he's getting through to his brother. "And, there are words, in their rules, that say men cannot lie with men. Words that say they cannot lie with animals."
Dean does something unexpected then. He lies down, puts his nose on his paws, and his tail flops onto the ground.
He looks for all the world...sad.
Sam cautiously continues.
"You have been a wolf, for a long time. But, if you want Castiel to stay...you need to show him that you are a man. That you understand him. That you won't hurt him. I need to know that you won't hurt him."
Dean whines, low in his throat. Sam understands - Dean doesn't want to hurt Castiel.
Now comes the difficult part.
"I think...you want Castiel, the way men want their wives. The way our father was with our mother. I think...you are a man, who desires men."
Dean doesn't respond.
Sam presses on.
"Our lives are...wrong. To the settlers, to our father's people. But...you would never be wrong to me. I will love you. Despite this. You are my brother. My pack...and I would never leave you."
Dean creeps forwards on his belly, an uncharacteristic gesture, and licks Sam's hand with the tip of his tongue.
Sam combs his fingers gently over the curve of Dean's ear.
Inwardly, Sam burns with sadness. Sorrow that his brother will not, cannot, speak to him. A tender sadness for their stunted lives. For the horror that had been visited on them.
He pushes it away. He has a task to go about, and he will do so, whilst the time is right.
"If you want him...and if Castiel wants to be with you...in that way. Which...he may not. Then you must be human...and you must be careful.
Again Dean looks confused.
"The way a man is with a man...it is different to how it would work, with a woman. Or so I have come to understand."
Sam had thought of it, turned the idea over in his mind as he fretted for Castiel's safety. He knows that there is only one way that two male bodies could come together carnally, as men and women do.
Although the thought gives him no small measure of malaise, he has to make sure that Dean understands the hurt he could do to Castiel by accident.
"There's a way...but..." Here, Sam's nerve deserts him. He picks up a stick from the ground, and scratches in the dirt. "Here - like this." He points out parts of his quick drawing, watching Dean for signs of understanding.
Dean noses at the dirt lines.
Sam draws again, speaking aloud, shying away from the more graphic language that it would perhaps be prudent to use.
Finally, Dean cocks his head to one side, and it seems that he understands.
Dean watches Sam scratch at the dirt. Thinks that maybe he's writing. But, there are no words, only pictures. And he doesn't understand what they are. Even Sam seems to be having trouble telling him what he means.
It's a shameful thing for him. Dean picks up on this. Something shameful...
Sam eventually uses a word, two words, that Dean understands - he understands all words, well, most. But these words make the meaning of his brother quite clear. Words that it pinkens Sam's cheeks to use.
Watching, he finally understands, and is...changed, by the lines on the ground.
Here is the way that he can be with Cas - that he can make him his, the way even his Sam-knowing brain wants to.
It scares him. Like the first time he changed. New, different, almost unnatural.
But, it's possible.
And Dean had learnt that, what is possible - is what is natural.
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Chapter 7: Chapter 7
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Sorry for the lack of updates - ideas for this one have started to trickle through.
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It starts as a twinge under Sam's skin.
He's been restless for a while, looking out at the smoky, smudgy ghosts of chimneys over the settler camps. He can hear them when the wind blows strongly - the market sellers calling, women and children chattering. He smells the sea, their roasting meat.
Now that he spends most of his time in human form, he has started to dream of things that he has wanted for a long time, with new clarity: paper, ink, pens, books, proper clothes, a bed, plates and spoons. He has seen all of these things on his brief visits to the settler camps. But now he wants them, with a kind of ache that even the deepest winter hunger pangs cannot equal. He wants a bed of his own, and a fireplace with a copper kettle on it. He wants to read books and learn things, all the languages that the settlers speak, medicine, the ways in which they govern themselves.
And more than that, more than he craves that civilisation, the company of other people and their ways of life - he dreams of having a wife, of producing children, raising them.
Since Castiel came to them, since Dean took ownership of him, Sam has watched them, and felt a foreign sting of jealousy.
Dean is the eldest, and the alpha, and now he has a mate.
But it is Sam who can have children, should he find a woman willing. And it is he who is out in the cold now. Figuratively. In reality, Sam is quite glad for his brother's lack of modesty. For he is still consent to share a bed, even with Castiel in their home. But, Sam longs for something other than loyalty, fraternity and acceptance. He wants love.
Only knowing that Dean and Castiel need him holds him back.
There are fears in him as well, that help to dampen his longing. The fear that he will produce a litter of pups, and be executed as a witch, or demon in human form. He fears leaving his brother, and the only life he has ever known, for hardship, and uncertainty.
But he cannot deny the prickling under his skin.
And when the call comes, there is no ignoring it.
Fourteen full days after he spoke with Dean on the nature of his relationship with Castiel, Sam sits and the mouth of their cave, skinning a rabbit, their first in days. He changes into a wolf afterwards, the better to clean the blood from himself. That is when he smells it, a scent stronger than those of the settlers, stronger than the forest odour, even than that of the blood on his paws.
It's indescribable, and yet, something akin to the way their mother and father would smell, when they had been away for a long time, and Sam's heart had ached with want of them. This scent is one of longing, of impending relief, and almost immediately Sam feels drunk with it.
He snaps out of his daze only when something pinches his tail.
He turns to find Dean snorting a few of Sam's own tail hairs off of his nose, onto the ground. Sam whimpers questioningly.
Dean hasn't looked this grave in a long time.
He looks past Sam and out towards the horizon, then steps forwards and nudges Sam towards the mouth of the cave, pushing him on his way.
Sam's whimpers grow in volume. Dean growls, and shoves, hard, sending Sam sprawling.
Sam looks up into his brother's eyes. There is no mistaking the message there. "Go. Just, Go." It is not unkind, but it is insistant. Dean himself knows the power of the mating call, and he does not expect Sam to resist it, anymore than Sam had expected Dean to simply grow tired of Castiel.
They stand and stare at each other for a long while, the wind from the cave mouth stirring their fur. Dean does not blink, but, after a while, he steps forwards, trotting across the gap between them to press his muzzle alongside Sam's, and huff warm air into his fur, his eyes closed. Sam whines his own goodbye, and changes forms, wrapping his arms around Dean tightly, but still unable to utter a single word.
He dresses and takes a bundle of his things. There's no time to wait, with the imperative of the call running through him, still, he finds time to wake Castiel and explain to him what is happening.
Castiel looks appalled.
"You cannot leave me." He hisses, looking across the cave, to where Dean sits stiffly. "You are the one who pressed me to stay, knowing what would happen to me..."
"I had no way of knowing that Dean would..."
"And now you want to leave?" Castiel's face betrays his fear, and his disgust. "What will become of me?"
Sam lets out a slow breath. "That...is not something I can concern myself with. I feel responsible for you, and I've tried to make Dean understand...but you have to understand us. The way this works for us...it's not like how it is for your people. Our mate calls, and we go. We have to. I could no more stay here than you could walk across the ocean. It would go against all of nature's rules."
Castiel's hollow eyes beseech him.
"And when he rapes me...where will nature's rules be? Shall they be satisfied? Or do you think they shall require me to suffer more?"
Sam turns his face from the harsh words, but, when his eyes flick to Dean, he finds that his brother is as still as stone.
"I wish I'd hanged." Castiel murmurs softly.
"And I wish my mother had lived, and my father too - so that my brother would not have been so reduced, that you could fail to see the good in him." Sam hisses. "Nature is cruel, and it does not listen to prayers or pleas. You have to save yourself." Feeling the harsh snap of his words, Sam gentles his voice. "The bond between you and Dean is strong, and private...and he will not tolerate my interferences for long. I have done all I can with him - but you...you I have to encourage, because it is you who has to reach into him, and find wherever my brother is hiding."
Castiel looks at him, betrayed, and deeply afraid. "And if there's nothing there to find?"
Sam simply gazes at him.
"I know my brother. He is in there, somewhere. And he wishes you no harm." He looks away, feeling again the call inside of him. "I have to go now, I'm sorry. But please, please - do not abandon him. I'll come back in twenty days - and I will find you, whatever has happened, and help you, though I hope there will be no need."
Sam picks up his bundle and sets his eyes once more on the horizon.
He hopes that nothing terrible will happen, but he cannot stay to insure that it won't. Sam looks up to catch his brother's eye, to assure him that he will return, to ask that he keep from harming Castiel, to make sure that he remembers that Sam tried to teach him
But Dean is not by the cave mouth.
Even as an animal, Sam thinks, Dean cannot stand to watch his brother walk away from him.
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Chapter 8: Chapter 8
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Sorry for the lack of updates - Uni work, etc etc.
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Castiel listens to Sam's footsteps as they descend the cliff path, and patter out of earshot.
The day is chill, and he pulls a fur around his shoulders, covering the rough homespun shirt with it, and casting nervous eyes to the shadows of the cave, aware that Dean might be anywhere.
But Dean does not appear.
Castiel eventually stirs himself from his bed. He goes to stand at the cave mouth, looking down into the wintry forest and the stark white sky. He could run, he knows this. But run to where? His own people would see him hanged, and in another settlement he would always be at risk. Traders travelled, and they brought news and gossip with them. Sooner or later someone would talk of a man with dark hair, with blue eyes, who had ensorcelled a village and escaped by calling up a pack of natives.
A dark doubt had begun to form in Castiel's mind in any case. He had never believed in witchcraft, or in demons, he had seen evil only in people. Nature was not good or evil, kind or cruel. It simply was, and he had lived his life in this belief. But now he found himself in the company of men, who could change into wolves. And there was something in him that drew Dean on, towards him.
Could it be that his people were right? That there was something...wrong, in him?
And if so, could he stand to seek out decent folk, and try to make his way with them?
Castiel shivered.
No, running would only end in his death - whether in the woods, at the hands of nature. Or in the town, at the hands of men.
He did not stop to wonder why he did not believe that Dean would kill him. If Castiel considered Dean's input into his escape, he only imagined the wolf forcing him to return to the cave. There was a certainty in his gut that Dean would never hurt him, never kill him. A certainty that the rational part of his mind had yet to embrace, as he still feared a kind of injury from Dean, that every aspect of his former life had taught him to hold in terror. The violent, carnal advances of another man.
Eventually he stirred himself and retreated into the cave. He set a fair going, fashioning it from dried sticks that snapped and flared to life. He boiled water and added dried shavings from a small tin, that Sam had always used to make a sharp drink. There was work to be done, and Castiel sipped his hot beaker as he swept the cave with a rudimentary broom, and shook the furs out.
There was still no sign of Dean, so Castiel checked their supplies and found a rabbit hanging. He skinned it and prepared the meet in a hot pot, searing it before adding water and herbs. At the back of his mind, something told him that Dean would appreciate the comfort of this familiar, nourishing food, in the face of his loss.
Castiel had not lost a brother before. He'd never really had any family to lose. But he had experienced a kind of social loss, as he's left one family after another over the years, with nothing and no one to call his own. Until finally, he had been accused and cast out.
But Dean did not appear when the food was ready, and when Castiel searched for him, he could find no sign of him in the cave.
He wasn't sure what to do. Sam had stressed the importance of allowing Dean first taste of all food, as well as the best place in their bed, and the warmest seat by the fire. Dean was an 'alpha' and that meant he was something of animal royalty. Castiel stood in indecision for a while, his stomach riotous with hunger, before replacing the lid on the cook pot, and drawing some skins around him to keep warm.
He did not want to examine the impulse that led him to wait on a wolf's whims while he sat hungry, and so he did not. Neither did he allow himself to think about what might happen to him should Dean return.
Or if he should not.
The thought struck him like a stone between the eyes. Perhaps Dean had abandoned him, had gone to follow Sam, or to shun all people forever. Without Dean, Castiel knew he would perish. He could not survive alone.
It was a thought that brought him up short.
He could trap rabbits, and find good food in the forest. Now that he had warm clothes and shelter, he really did not need the half-breed wolf-men anymore.
Still, he knew that he would die without Dean.
Just as surely as he knew he would die without food, or air.
Castiel took up his mending, the shirt and breechclout of Dean's that had become his, and that he had accidently ripped. His fingers were clumsy with the needle, it was woman's work, and his knowledge of sewing was limited to wounds and leatherwork. But he managed, though his hands became increasingly unsteady as darkness drew in, isolating him in the round gold coin of the fire's light.
Dean had still not returned.
Castiel felt his eyes burn, and moved from the fire a little. Though he was used to smoke and terrible lighting, he had lived his life in the reek of tallow candles and damp smoke holes. He refused to link the burning in his eyes with the tightening of his chest.
He could not, he found to his consternation, remember a time that he had been without Dean, since his rescue from the woods. Always Dean had been with him, like a shadow. Even when Castiel had stubbornly trailed Sam so as not to be vulnerable to attack.
A scrabbling forced Castiel from his reverie, and he looked out into the dark, jumping as he spotted the reflective eyes of a wolf. Dean came from the darkness, dropping a hare at the fireside and going to the far side of the fire, to slump on the stone floor.
Castiel looked at the hare, unsure what he should do. He was saved from his quandary when Dean sniffed and raised his head, eyeing the stew pot with interest.
"I made dinner." Castiel says, feeling foolish without knowing why. Perhaps it is because without Sam in residence, he is faced with the ridiculousness of addressing himself solely to an animal.
He takes the lid off of the pot, and carefully ladles a portion into a clay bowl. He had forgotten that Dean took his meat raw, and seldom ate proper meals with them. Castiel sets the bowl of steaming stew by Dean, and takes his seat once more.
Dean is watching him as though puzzled by everything that he does, but, after a long, long moment of consideration, the wolf begins to lap at the broth. About halfway through the bowl, he looks up, muzzle wet with stock, and looks at Castiel, then at the pot. It is only then that Castiel dolls out food for himself.
Once they have eaten, Dean leaves the circle of the fire's glow, and retreats to the icy cave mouth, to look out at the forest. Castiel prepares a bed with the aired furs, and stands by it, remembering that it is Dean who usually took the initiative as to where they should sleep.
But Dean remained at the cave mouth, and didn't seem to notice that Castiel was cold, and tired. So, he slid between the furs, and tried to ignore the ache in his chest, and the burning in his eyes, that had little to do with the banked down fire.
The night moved on ponderously, like a crow in flight, gliding on an air current.
Castiel could not sleep. He was cold, and could not find a comfortable way to lie and rest his head on the furs. His eyes strayed, without his permission, to where Dean lay by the cave mouth, his pale fur visible in the almost pitch black, ruffled and snatched at by the wind. Castiel can hear rain spattering on the stone, and the wind almost howls out in the dark.
"Dean." He calls, without thinking.
The wolf doesn't move.
Castiel clutches at his courage like a handful of wet clay. "Dean...it's cold. Come and sleep."
Still, Dean does not move from the cave mouth.
A high pitched, long, terrible sound issues from the darkness, and Castiel realises that it is Dean. A lone wolf call that makes the hair on Castiel's neck stand up, and his eyes well and his innards shiver - until it becomes unendurable.
He stands up, dragging a clump of furs and blanket with him, he makes his way to the cave mouth. The floor is slick with rain, and the chill of the wind is terrible, but not so terrible as the heart-sore howl issuing from Dean's mouth.
Castiel touches Dean lightly, and the howl dies into a soft whimper, bitten off in a whuff. Dean lies down, as if exhausted, too tired to fight or take umbrage at Castiel's intervention. Castiel puts the coverings over Dean, spreading them carefully before sliding in and curling up. The chill is formidable, but Dean's fur is warm, if speckled with rain. The wolf's body is loose and limp, and Castiel can feel Dean's despair, his loneliness, more sharply than if Dean had a human tongue to utter such sentiments.
He lays his arm over the wolf's bulk, and listens to Dean breathe.
Both of them, are asleep within heartbeats.
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Chapter 9: Chapter 9
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Sorry for the lack of updates - Uni work, etc etc.
Dean's aloofness continues for a further eight days, and Castiel, despite his better nature, is almost mad with loneliness by the end of the second.
He had not realised until then, just how much he had valued Sam's company. During his time at the settlement, kept prisoner and tried as a witch, he had seen very few people, save those that came to interrogate him, shaving his hair, prodding him with sharp instruments to search out the devils mark - cutting him or striking him when he winced or tried to fight them. And out in the loneliness of the forest, there had been only Sam to converse with. Limited thought their conversation had been, it was valuable as fresh water on a long, starved voyage.
Now Castiel had only Dean, and Dean did not speak, did not even look at him.
Castiel watched for three days as Dean disappeared from the cave, going out into the woods to do God knew what, leaving Castiel alone.
At night, Dean lay down at the cave entrance, leaving it up to Castiel to crawl from his bed, where he might have been for hours after darkness, waiting for Dean's return. Dean showed no sign of acknowledgement when Castiel came to him, bringing furs to cover them both, like a maiden going to her marriage bed.
He cooked food for himself and for Dean, not daring to touch the food until Dean was there to take the first serving. Dean no longer brought rabbits or hares, having seemingly either exhausted his supply, or run out of the will to hunt. Castiel made do with vegetation and dry stores. But these were not plentiful. His body felt practically starved, and Dean did not look much better. The cold seemed keen to whittle them down to their bones.
At night, in the exposed mouth of the cave, Castiel curled up, trying to keep himself warm and covered by the blankets and furs. Dean always found a place, curled against his chest, limp and warm, fidgeting in his sleep and whimpering if Castiel moved far from him. It was only in those moments that Castiel could believe that Dean recognised his presence. The rest of the time, he merely pined for Sam.
By the ninth day, Castiel is tired - tired of being ignored, of being cold and hungry and alone all day, with nothing to do and no one to talk to.
He takes his bed, such as it is, to the room at the very back of the cave, and makes space for himself to sleep in the relative warmth. As the sun dies down, he eats some thin herb and root broth, and sets himself down to sleep.
He wakes some time later, to the sound of frantic yipping.
It reminds him of a dog bothered by its chain, or one of the strays that the village boys had tormented with sticks and strings of clacking nutshells.
He sits up, feeling the night's knife-like cold on his skin.
The yipping comes in bursts, changing direction, but never getting closer. Fear traces a figner of ice down Castiel's spine.
"Dean?" He calls out into the dark, a dark so intense that it blots out the sight of his own fingers not an inch from his face.
A sharp bark snaps through the cave, and he hears clawed feet tapping on the rock, scraping in their furious hurry.
A bundle of heavy, wriggling fur strikes him in the chest, sending Castiel sprawling to the ground. His heart leaps into his mouth, Dean is angry with him for disobeying the non-verbal understanding that they have developed. He must be furious over the insubordination, the usurping of his seat as alpha.
Castiel brings his shaking hands up to shield himself, at the same times as a hot tongue laves his face, and a wet nose nuzzles under his chin. Dean whimpers against his skin, body constantly shifting and wiggling in an attempt to get closer.
Castiel's fear over Dean's anger evaporates - the wolf is not enraged.
He's relieved.
Castiel puts his arms around Dean and presses his face into the fur on top of his head. Dean whimpers, his ears hanging down in sorrow, his body quaking under its coating of fur.
"Did you think I had left you?" Castiel murmurs.
The wolf redoubles it's panicked movements, and Castiel shushes him and strokes his hand over Dean's nose.
"I'm not going to leave...I was just tired. It's too cold for me to sleep out there again."
Dean noses him sorrowfully and climbs down from his lap, onto the makeshift bed, lying down and looking up at Castiel with reflective eyes, like he's waiting to see if his gesture has been accepted.
Castiel sighs and lies back down, letting Dean tuck himself up against his body before he drags the covers back over himself.
In the warm, soft little cave, Castiel runs one of Dean's ears through his fingers absentmindedly, and Dean wriggles with delight.
"I'm sorry." Castiel says, the words leaving his mouth as soon as he thinks them.
Dean stills.
"I shouldn't have let this happen, you imagining my departure...I won't let it happen again...but..." he says, after a short pause. "I need you. Not just...to bring food, or to let me stay here...but, I need you, so that I am not alone. Without...people, I will lose whatever civility I have, and then my sanity."
Dean makes no comment, but moves closer to Castiel anyway.
Castiel sighs.
"Is that why you remain...changed, like this? So that you do not want for human company?" Castiel muses mostly to himself. It may be his imagination, but he thinks he hears Dean huff derisively.
"I suppose you can't tell me why." Castiel transfers his attention to the other ear, stroking the soft fur. "But...I'm not a fool, I know there's a reason, something that Sam hasn't yet guessed at."
Dean tilts his head and nips at Castiel's fingers lightly.
"I don't even know why I would wish to know." Castiel sighs. "I just know that...I do. And Sam...is under the impression that you and I...that we..." He can't quite say it. Saying it, voicing it aloud, even to Dean's dubious intelligence, makes it real. Something he is not prepared to do, not now, not ever.
Dean growls quietly.
"I know." Castiel mutters. "I know you think this...that my being here means that I'm..." he struggles, "yours, but..."
Where should he begin?
That life is not as simple as claiming what you want, and keeping it for yourself?
That there are rules, laws of God and man that make this impossible, unthinkable?
That he doesn't want this. Has never wanted this?
That Dean isn't even the same species as him? That Castiel has no way of knowing if there's anything human left in him beside...some residual understanding?
All of this passes through his mind, and Castiel knows that all of it is true. But there is something else as well, something he had not even spoken of to Sam, and that is what escapes him.
"...but I have nothing, nothing for you, and...I am not a mate; I've never been, to anyone. And...I'm nothing worth keeping - if that's what you want."
He's never spoken like this before, hardly dared think like it, but he's half convinced that Dean can't even understand him. It's safer here, than it has ever been for him, to admit that he has no idea what the other men are so interested in when they talk about women. They were people, just like himself, with their jobs to do, and their preoccupations with linens and the habits of their households. He had never seen the attraction, or rather, he had never seen why such an intense...fixation had developed in his male peers.
He knows that there are some...men, if they were worthy of the term, who had found...a similar attraction, between themselves and other men. But, Castiel had never allowed such thoughts to cross his mind. He was as puritan in his imaginings as he was in his daily life, and he kept his conscience clean.
There was a part of him, that had looked on the few naked men he had encountered, with something approaching...longing. But that part was so deeply buried that Castiel knew almost nothing of its existence, save the few moments when in uncoiled in sleep, and inflamed his dreams.
At first, Castiel, lost in the silence that greets his words, is ready to sleep, knowing that Dean has nothing to say, or at least no way to say it.
Then Dean moves, uncoiling himself and standing with a whuff of discontent. Castiel tenses, aware that he may have angered Dean with his rejection. The wolf however, does not growl, or bare his teeth, instead he picks his way over Castiel, until he has his legs planted on either side of Castiel's torso, his face hovering in the dark over Castiel's as the wolf lies down on his chest. He touches the soft, barely furred part of his muzzle, his lips were he to return to his human form, to Castiel's own lips.
Castiel almost fails to breathe.
Dean tucks his muzzle gently under his chin, and stays on top of him, a weight that Castiel cannot ignore. He reaches up and tentatively rests his hands on Dean's back, feeling his fingers sift through the coarse outer coat, anchoring themselves in the soft fur underneath.
Dean breathes out, and it almost seems like a sigh.
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Chapter 10: Chapter 10
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This is sort of the second half of the last chapter, I had it planned for chapter ten, so that I'd go into double figures on the first 'bit of the plot' - so, the next few updates will introduce some new elements
Dean feels warm and comfortable for the first time in days, heavy with sleep. There's hunger in his belly, but he pushes it aside, Castiel has food ready for the morning, he knows that. There's no desperation to the hunger, no edge of starvation.
Dean's starved before.
When he was hunting the man that killed his parents, he'd gone without food for days. He'd slept in icy hollows and under thin coverings of greenery with an aching stomach, cuts and scrapes oozing through his fur. He knew about pain, loss and deprivation. Nature had taught him from an early age.
Castiel's rejection had been an entirely new smart, and Dean had felt its sting intensely. Now though, lying in the warm, with Castiel sleeping beneath him, and his arms resting on Dean's back. Dean felt...better, bonded,and...safe.
He hadn't felt that way since before his father died.
Dean's eyes are closed, his nose twitching as he dozes, soaking up the scents of his surroundings as his ears map out the area around himself and Castiel.
Wind, rain, trees rattling...
Earth, stone, cooking, herbs, roots...
Castiel, breathing...
Old fur, musty, sweat and skin, sleep...
Castiel, warm skin, hair, sweat...mate...
An owl hooting, fox call, sticks snapping...
Castiel, whimpering...
Dean starts to wake up at that. Castiel is making a new noise, not a noise of speaking, or one of fear. Not even his regular, deep sounds of sleep. This is a sound Dean has not heard from him before, but somehow...it's also familiar.
A long, soft...sound. And Castiel's body moves a little, sleeping, but not soundly. Dean resting on top of the sleeping man, pricks his ears up and opens his eyes a little. Castiel's body is warmer than it should be, and...
Dean shivers, from his twitching nose to his wriggling tail.
The smell. The mate smell, intoxicating as it normally is, is ten times as strong now. Deep and dark and rich as autumn soil.
Dean whines quietly, and Castiel makes the sound again, almost a growl, his body twitching.
Dean feels it then, the strange, familiar pull like...almost like he's been here before. Castiel's body moves again, and Dean feels him rubbing against the soft fur of his belly. Only, it's a kind of touch that's new. The touch of...Dean realises, and his blood drowns out the sound of leaves and rain and...everything but Castiel's breathing, and the sounds, which come quicker now.
This is a human thing...a...mating thing, that Dean remembers, that he's felt and experienced himself. Castiel is...Castiel is ready, accepting him, wanting him. There's no fear in the air, only warmth and the scent of Castiel's body. The scent of wanting.
But...there's something wrong with it. With him. Dean realises, in a creeping of his skin, as Castiel's body rises against his, the heat, the pressing of him intensifying. Dean wants Castiel...but more than that...he wants...
It's hard to remember, to think how he used to...but Dean realises what he wants, what he craves right now.
Hands.
He needs, hands, and...lips and skin, and...he needs arms and fingers and an organ to match Castiel's own.
He needs himself. The self he buried like unneeded clothes, frozen under the soil of his own winter.
It's as Dean stiffens with impotent desire, frozen in the wrong body, the wrong mind, a shudder going through him - the half forgotten change prickling his skin- that Castiel wakes up.
One moment, he's sleeping, heavy with heat and shuddery breaths of pleasure, his lower body half shucked of loose clothing, indulging in its meeting with the soft, warm fur of a living body. The next, he is abruptly awake, his fear a stench in the air, throwing Dean off of himself, dragging himself from the covers, breeches lost in the tangle of skins and blankets, baggy shirt covering his shameful arousal.
He skitters backwards onto the cold stone, leaving Dean sprawled on the cave floor.
Castiel's skin is warm, shuddering in the cold, his stomach heavy with unfulfilled wanting, the ache between his legs almost as torturous as his own shame. He can barely remember the dream. Had there been a dream? Or just the feeling of the body on him, Dean's body.
The body of an animal.
Castiel feels sick, and his chest feels tight. He is foul. A foul, disgusting creature, with a black soul.
It takes him a moment to look through his burning eyes, and catch a glimpse of Dean on the floor. Fresh fear leaps into his chest.
Dean is...writhing, legs twitching on the ground, his body jerking roughly every few seconds. His eyes are wide open, mostly white and terrified, his teeth bare themselves, and a horrible, pained sound rips its way out of his throat.
Castiel is frozen, wanting to dive forwards and help, powerless to do anything.
He hears Dean's bones crack, sees sinew rip beneath the surface, and all at once, Dean goes limp, like a child's marionette with cut strings. Then his body begins to grow longer, and Dean's throat produces agonisedscreams animalistic and terrified, until a wet snick cuts off the sound.
But Dean's mouth is still screaming, jaws open, eyes staring.
His legs elongate, paws forming hands and feet with awful cracking, snapping sounds, his body warps and twists until he has a chest and neck and hips - the fur and thick wolf skin underneath flaking away.
Castiel had seen Sam's transformations, and they were...almost effortless, but this...this looks like torture and birth, and a gruesome death all at once. As if Dean's wolf body had grown over him like...flesh growing over a spur of wood stabbed through a man's chest. And now it was being spliced open, flayed away to reveal the man underneath.
The screaming begins again, mangled and gargling as Dean's voice grows in his throat, human and in complete agony. He shakes and sobs and finally goes still as his skin stops boiling, and his limbs stop jerking. Left in a heap on the cold, unfeeling stone.
But he does not go quiet, and his pained whimpers are too much to bear when uttered in a human tongue.
Castiel drags himself forwards, and reaches fearfully for Dean's arm, touching the skin, rubbing gently. Sam had complained of a cramping of his muscles when he had transformed after a long period of change, Dean's body was...in a kind of shock, he presumed. His muscles knotted and abused by the change.
Castiel rubbed Dean's arms until he felt the muscles give, then moved his fingers to his torso. His hands froze when it came time to move lower, and he had to force himself to still his own shame at touching a naked man this way. He would be as a doctor or a mother nursing her son. He would not allow his baser self to slip his grasp. His arousal had faded quickly, and Castiel strives to forget that it ever existed.
He tends to Dean's knotted muscles, and then shuffles back a little, satisfied now that Dean no longer seems pained, but rather...almost insensible with exhaustion. He picks up a fur, and almost drops it again when a clumsy hand paws at his arm.
He looks down at Dean is surprise, finding the man looking up at him.
"Cas..." Dean gasps, fighting to escape the grip of exhaustion.
Castiel takes his hand, and tucks the fur over him with the other. He lies down, extending and arm for Dean to lean against.
"Sleep, Dean." He tells him.
It seems that this is all the permission Dean needs, apparently soothed by his presence, his eyelids droop, and he subsides against Castiel's arm in a deep sleep.
Castiel lies awake, and, hours later, in the shallow, pale light of the rising sun he finds that he is still looking down on the newly bared face of the man who saved his life, and claimed him for a mate.
And he is beautiful.
Castiel, alone, filled with the residual horror of his awakening, and Dean's transformation, shivers and feels a pit of fear open in his stomach.
What is wrong with him? That he is looking on the face of this man, this...face that must be like his own, like any mans, with a nose and mouth and eyes...and yet...he feels...stirred, intimately, in a way almost akin to hunger, to a savage, devouring privation.
He looks again and again, as long as he can stand to look, and still, he cannot find what it is that makes him feel this way. Not the curve of Dean's lips, or the shape of his cheek bones. There is nothing, nothing in his face that should make him feel this way. That should make him feel at all.
And yet, when he tries to, he cannot look away.
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Chapter 11: Chapter 11
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Have no fear! I have not crossed over to the wincest side, just taking a short vacation, checking out the scenery, sampling the kink buffet. I'm still working on my destiel fics.
Also, if you haven't voted in the eonline poll today...sorry, but, this is not for you :P
When Castiel wakes up, the morning light playing on the cave wall is the first thing he sees. He cannot for the life of him recall ever feeling this way upon waking. But, his very skin seems to hum with the knowledge that this day, this day is going to be a gift. Could it be he's forgotten a celebration? An event? In the fraction of a second before he is fully awake, Castiel decides that this strange, soaring feeling in his stomach, must be what the bride and her groom feel on the day of their wedding.
Then, he turns onto his back, looking away from the white light on the dark stone, and finds himself staring into a pair of green eyes.
Castiel blinks, disturbed to find Dean leaning up beside him, watching him as if it is the most natural thing in the world. Then Dean's hand moves under the coverings that swaddle them both, and Castiel feels it's warm roughness against his belly. His body tenses, and he remembers losing his loose breeches, remembers his own shame at finding himself undone by a simple dream. He remembers the horrific transformation he had witnessed.
"Dean?"
The other man responds, his eyes clearing at Castiel's recognition. The hand on his belly moves to press over his heart, and Castiel feels a bare leg press between his own.
It is only then that he remembers that Dean is naked.
Castiel struggles from the bed as quickly as he can, and, wrapping his arms around himself, he looks down at where Dean is lying, an expression of deep confusion on his face. The blankets and skins around him gape in Castiel's absence, and he finds that he can see all the way down Dean's broad chest, to his deprived stomach, and his sex. A territory that Castiel's eyes devour despite himself.
He turns away, red faced and shamed, and sees the discarded and crumpled woven breeches on the ground. Castiel snatches up the fabric and turns back to Dean with averted eyes. He drops the clump of fabric onto the bed.
"Here, put these on."
When he hears no answering movement, he chances a look, and finds Dean still watching him, the clothing left untouched.
"Do you understand me?" Castiel says, frustration winning out over helplessness.
"Yes."
Castiel very nearly jumps in fright. He contains the impulse, if barely. "Then dress."
"No."
Castiel hesitates, his eyes locked with Dean's, and he is filled with the sudden knowledge that, whatever is about to happen, he has no hope of escaping it.
This does not mean that he doesn't try.
Castiel bolts, quick as a threatened deer, and very nearly makes it past Dean and out into the cave proper. But, he is not fast enough, and no match for the strength of the hands that catch at his waist, hauling him back and down.
Castiel finds his bare legs spread, knees on either side of Dean's own legs, bared by the slipping of the furs. The skins are bunched beneath him, and Castiel is subjected to the rude brush of fur on his backside. His main focus however, is on Dean.
He's unprepared for the assault of sensations when they come, the way Dean presses his mouth to the join in his neck and shoulder, sending an array of sudden feelings through him. Neither does he expect the movement of Dean's hands, pushing the ridiculously oversized shirt up, to elicit such a pleasant reaction. The shirt is so baggy that it hangs off of Castiel's shoulder, and Dean buries his face there, mouth travelling hungrily from throat to shoulder, then lower, laving his collarbone, he chest...until his mouth (deceptively soft for one so strong, for what was once an animal so vicious) embraces the risen nub there. Castiel cannot help the sound that comes from his mouth, a bolt of pleasure, heretofore unexperienced, almost tears him in half. He finds himself pushing Dean's shoulder, trying to escape the feeling, as good as pure sin, as unbearable as torture. Dean resists, and the answering swipe of teeth over the soft flesh in his mouth has Castiel shaking.
He barely notices when Dean pushes him backwards, laying him out on the rumpled furs and holding him there with the weight of his body. His physical excitement is what jolts Castiel from the daze visited on him by lust, and he struggles one more against Dean's bulk.
Dean holds him down without seeming exertion, and Castiel is reminded of how weak he is in comparison. The other man seems completely unaware of his fear, intent instead on pressing the evidence of his disturbing passion to Castiel's own rebellious member.
"I can't..." Castiel gasps, feeling the touch of that intimate flesh on his own, a divine kiss. "I can't, please..."
Later he will think on this, and recall that he did not ask, 'Stop' or demand 'No' neither did he profess his lack of desire.
All he could say was, "I can't", as tears found their way into his eyes, tears of pain as everything he wanted, fought everything he believed was right and good.
It takes a moment for Castiel to realise that Dean is no longer touching him amorously, and still longer to notice the gentle touch of fingers on his wet cheeks.
"Crying." Dean says softly. "Why?"
Castiel breathes, the air filling his chest, in out, in out. But he cannot form words, cannot explain everything that is so very wrong with him. He can't. And the mere thought of Dean moving away from him, hurts like nothing else. But the thought of him continuing to mate him is still more painful.
Dean looks down at Castiel.
Castiel's eyes are a colour. It's been a long time since Dean saw colours, anything other than shadows and light. He can't remember the name of it, but he knows it's rare. There are only a few birds of that colour, fewer flowers, still fewer animals. It's the colour of the sky, when the ground is dry and the sun is hot.
Castiel's eyes are sad too.
He doesn't know why, he's heard Castiel tell him about 'rules' and 'men' and 'the book' things that Castiel thinks are important. But, Castiel belongs to him, not to other men, not to their book, so why should it matter? Castiel is his, and Dean is Castiel's - that is the way it is. This, what Dean wants to do, now, is for them only. Only they will see, only they will know, it is nothing to do with anyone else.
Dean's instincts are a tangled mess. They tell him that Castiel is his mate, that he is a beta, that it is Dean's right to mate him, and have him bear his pups. The rest of them tell Dean that Castiel is a man, and that right now, his mate is a frightened, hurt man - who needs him.
Dean lays his head down on Castiel's chest, and allows his body to go limp, his better instincts triumphing.
Castiel shakes and sobs and shivers, but he does not push him away.
Dean understands speech, that skill never really left him, thanks to Sam. But...the words are slow in coming to him, and, like a dull tool, they were frustrating to use.
Still, when Castiel begins to speak, Dean concentrates so hard, that his brow furrows, and his blunt teeth worry his lip.
"Why did this happen?" Castiel says. "I was good, I believed in God, and doing right...living my life by His rules...and still I was driven out of my country, persecuted in this...strange new place...almost put to death. And...now, I find that I am spared, by God...but left here, tempted."
Dean does not understand 'God' it's a thing that continues to frustrate him. Sam, who knew more about the settlers even when they were younger, and even his mother, had tried to explain the idea of God to him. God was a man who lived in the sky, and who rewarded you for being good, and punished the wicked. He had created everything, and everything on earth he had given to man. Man ruled the animals, and the earth.
But...Dean was an animal, did that mean he belonged to all men, everywhere? And where in 'the book' had God created things like him? No one in it was like him, or his father, or his mother. It was a stupid story.
Castiel was sad because of the story, because this, the two of them, wasn't in 'the book', and so he thought it was against the rules. The rules God had made.
Dean knew that things were different in the world to how they were in the stories his mother used to tell. In the stories there were huge floods, and water that turned into blood or wine, a magic horn that destroyed cities, and people turned into heaps of salt. There were angels, and the devil - and Dean had never seen either one of those things. He'd only ever seen strange birds, and snakes.
But he does not know how to explain all this to Castiel. That things did not happen like in stories. They happened because people made them happen - and they either hurt or helped, pained or pleasured.
"I don't want to be here." Castiel says, and Dean understands that perfectly, holds Castiel a little tighter and is relived when the other man does not pull away. "I want...a place to call my own, a home and a family...but I have never wanted a wife. Now...now I think I know why, but, that does not make it right to..." Castiel lets out a shuddery breath.
Dean knows that wives are like mates, and they have children. He's glad that Castiel does not want one. Castiel should not want to find anyone, because Dean had already found him.
"I can't do this." Castiel says, brokenly. "I cannot allow this to happen, I can't give in, I have to...fight this...please." He starts to move, pulling away, desperation colouring his words, and Dean holds him down, holds him there until Castiel looks up at him, his rare-coloured eyes wet again. "I have to be good, clean. And I have to go." Castiel whispers, "I have to...make this better, I have to go back to civilisation...they can fix this...they can..." He swallows. "There are righteous people. In places where I won't be tempted." He struggles to keep his eyes on Dean's. "You don't know of Hell, of the terrible things that will happen to me if I let this take over...I want to go to heaven, to...oh..." He searches for words, but Dean already knows what heaven is. A good place. A place for good kind people, like his mother.
Castiel is good, and kind. Why should it matter that he is good and kind to Dean, and not to a wife? Goodness. Like God-ness. Words are too tricksome.
"Heaven is...when we die, we go there to be with God...it's a good place." Castiel tells him.
There are so many things that Dean would say, if he knew the words for them. He would say that Castiel is his, that he wants him, needs him. That this is nothing unnatural, but the most natural thing in the world. That without Castiel, he will be in Hell. That everything he wants is right here, and if it is taken from him, then he will change back, become an animal again, and walk right into a settlement, to be shot and nailed to the wall as a trophy.
What he says instead, are the only words he can marshal that seem to come from the place inside of him that aches with a pain that is somehow, a good one.
"You want to be with God?" He asks.
"Very much." Castiel tells him.
"Because you love God, God loves you."
"God loves all his children...even the flawed ones."
Dean thinks about that word 'love'. How it means how God feels, and how his mother felt for his father, but also for him and Sam. And how Dean feels for Sam, but also for warm days and hot food.
"But not like I love you."
Castiel looks at him, surprise on his face.
Dean repeats himself.
"God loves you. But not like I do." He struggles with his meaning, what he wants to say is that...Castiel will be alone, and cold, and sad. Until he dies, and only then will God love him, and be with him. Dean will love Castiel another way. The way that keeps him warm at night, and fed. That keeps him happy, and does not make him cry. He will love him even when he is a man that walks on the dirt, rather than living in the sky. He will love him, and make him sigh, and shiver, and make the sounds he had made when Dean kissed him under his shirt.
He tries to make sense of it in words.
"I will love you, even if you go." Dean says, "When you go to be with good people. I will love you. When you hate what I am. I will love you. When you die. I will love you. And when I die, you think I will be in Hell. Then I will go there. And I will love you."
Castiel looks at him, and Dean looks back, and thinks that, if God thinks Castiel looking at him like that is bad - then God is wrong. Because it is the best way anyone has ever looked at him. Like he is important, and special, clever and loved.
Castiel doesn't move, but Dean senses a change in the way they are aligned, just before Castiel opens his mouth, just a little, the slight parting of lips.
All of Dean's instincts tell him what he already knows.
Castiel is his.
He leans forwards, and this time, when he kisses him, there are no tears.
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He could only hope that any humanity left in Dean would balk at the notion.
Castiel was also changed by the attempt at mating. He seemed now more aware of the danger he was in, of the confused web of emotion and desire that Dean had knotted around him the night the wolf had discovered him in the woods. Sam had noticed that for the past few days, Castiel had tried to stay away from Dean (an impossible task, as Dean was incredibly insistent on following him everywhere) Castiel had also started sleeping in his clothes, did not in fact seem to remove them at all - choosing to wash inside his shirt. Even when he needed to relive himself, he would wait until Sam ventured outside, and go with him to do so. In short, he was doing everything possible to remain covered in Dean's presence, and to never be alone with the wolf when it wasn't avoidable.
Sam pitied him, and he pitied his brother, who did not seem to know what was happening.
Sam wondered if Dean had desired men before, back when he was human. Sam remembers his brother being sullen in the presence of others, but then, Dean had had a harsh childhood, and was very aware of his native blood, that made him an outcast amongst the settlers. Sam had always been enamoured with their culture - especially their books, paper and ink, and the glass instruments used by their apothecaries. But Dean had remained separate, and had hated their ways - the manners, the pointlessly modest modes of dress, the constricting formalities of their culture.
He can't remember Dean ever having a sweetheart. He'd assumed that his brother found loose women in the towns that they traded furs in - now though, he wasn't so sure.
Perhaps Dean had never understood the difference between himself and regular men. Had seen it only as further proof that he would never be accepted by them - a half-blood son of a native, with no place in his heart for a woman.
Sam hoped most emphatically that Dean had realised the difference that nature had cruelly spliced into his flesh - before he had changed, permanently, into his wolf form. Sam could not imagine how confused, how woefully unprepared an animal would be, to deal with such a realisation as this - that Dean was a man, who craved the bodies of other men, the way most craved feminine flesh.
It was not in his power to force Dean to take human form again, and confront this difficulty head on. But, he could not leave it to chance, and have Castiel attacked again. Despite himself, he had grown to like the slight man who had stumbled into their lives - he had underestimated how strong he was, both in body and in spirit.
Castiel bore Dean's affections as a trial, and he did so without complaint. He had coped with their hard life, with the demands that their routine placed on him...and, at times, Sam suspected that Castiel even cared for them a little. He tended to Sam's cuts and scrapes with a kind of tenderness, and, despite his apparent horror of Dean's physical attention, Castiel still curled up around the wolf to sleep.
So it was that Sam considered his plan of action, and finally put it into effect.
Whilst Dean might not be able to talk to him - Sam could pray that he would at least still understand.
Dean first notices that Sam is trying to get his attention when a hunk of cold rabbit is dropped under his nose.
He looks at his brother, questioningly. It's not time to eat yet.
Sam, person Sam, just points at the rabbit, and tells him that it's for him.
Dean eats it, but keeps an eye on his mate as he does so.
Cas is always away from him now. Moving too much, scared eyes and scared body all the time. Dean thinks that Cas should be scared - he hit him, Dean should hurt him for that. But the rest of him wishes that Cas wasn't scared.
Sam holds up more rabbit, then walks away.
Dean looks at his mate. Cas puts his arms around his knees, a sign that he isn't going to move.
Dean follows Sam into the cave.
Sam sits down in the little dark room at the back of the cave. It smells like old food, it's storage. Dean sits down in front of Sam, growling, nose up in the air, waiting for the food.
Sam gives it to him.
Dean holds it between his paws and rips pieces of rabbit away, chewing.
Sam is saying something.
Dean looks up at his brother, who sighs, and repeats. "I want to talk to you."
Dean goes back to his rabbit.
"Dean?"
He snorts, to show he's listening.
"It's about Castiel."
Cas. What about Cas?
"What you did to him, the other day? You can't do that again."
At the word 'can't' Dean growls warningly. He's the one in charge here. But, the part of his brain that is working out Sam's words isn't so sure - it doesn't really want to do that to Cas again...except that it does...but...different.
"I know. You can do what you want...but Castiel is human. And right now...you aren't."
Dean huffs. He knows this, he is not stupid.
"Castiel is scared. Because you hurt him. You tried..." Sam wets his lips, looking for a word small enough. "You tried to make him lie with you."
Dean is silent, and the part of his brain that understands, also makes his stomach twist, the rabbit not feeling as good as it should.
"Castiel is a man. He's...he comes from a village. From settlers. He knows that it is wrong to lie with another man." Sam explains patiently, hoping that he's getting through to his brother. "And, there are words, in their rules, that say men cannot lie with men. Words that say they cannot lie with animals."
Dean does something unexpected then. He lies down, puts his nose on his paws, and his tail flops onto the ground.
He looks for all the world...sad.
Sam cautiously continues.
"You have been a wolf, for a long time. But, if you want Castiel to stay...you need to show him that you are a man. That you understand him. That you won't hurt him. I need to know that you won't hurt him."
Dean whines, low in his throat. Sam understands - Dean doesn't want to hurt Castiel.
Now comes the difficult part.
"I think...you want Castiel, the way men want their wives. The way our father was with our mother. I think...you are a man, who desires men."
Dean doesn't respond.
Sam presses on.
"Our lives are...wrong. To the settlers, to our father's people. But...you would never be wrong to me. I will love you. Despite this. You are my brother. My pack...and I would never leave you."
Dean creeps forwards on his belly, an uncharacteristic gesture, and licks Sam's hand with the tip of his tongue.
Sam combs his fingers gently over the curve of Dean's ear.
Inwardly, Sam burns with sadness. Sorrow that his brother will not, cannot, speak to him. A tender sadness for their stunted lives. For the horror that had been visited on them.
He pushes it away. He has a task to go about, and he will do so, whilst the time is right.
"If you want him...and if Castiel wants to be with you...in that way. Which...he may not. Then you must be human...and you must be careful.
Again Dean looks confused.
"The way a man is with a man...it is different to how it would work, with a woman. Or so I have come to understand."
Sam had thought of it, turned the idea over in his mind as he fretted for Castiel's safety. He knows that there is only one way that two male bodies could come together carnally, as men and women do.
Although the thought gives him no small measure of malaise, he has to make sure that Dean understands the hurt he could do to Castiel by accident.
"There's a way...but..." Here, Sam's nerve deserts him. He picks up a stick from the ground, and scratches in the dirt. "Here - like this." He points out parts of his quick drawing, watching Dean for signs of understanding.
Dean noses at the dirt lines.
Sam draws again, speaking aloud, shying away from the more graphic language that it would perhaps be prudent to use.
Finally, Dean cocks his head to one side, and it seems that he understands.
Dean watches Sam scratch at the dirt. Thinks that maybe he's writing. But, there are no words, only pictures. And he doesn't understand what they are. Even Sam seems to be having trouble telling him what he means.
It's a shameful thing for him. Dean picks up on this. Something shameful...
Sam eventually uses a word, two words, that Dean understands - he understands all words, well, most. But these words make the meaning of his brother quite clear. Words that it pinkens Sam's cheeks to use.
Watching, he finally understands, and is...changed, by the lines on the ground.
Here is the way that he can be with Cas - that he can make him his, the way even his Sam-knowing brain wants to.
It scares him. Like the first time he changed. New, different, almost unnatural.
But, it's possible.
And Dean had learnt that, what is possible - is what is natural.
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Chapter 7: Chapter 7
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Sorry for the lack of updates - ideas for this one have started to trickle through.
You can still buy both of my novels on amazon for a kindle device, or computer or phone, or as a paperback from lulu(.com). Links in my profile
It starts as a twinge under Sam's skin.
He's been restless for a while, looking out at the smoky, smudgy ghosts of chimneys over the settler camps. He can hear them when the wind blows strongly - the market sellers calling, women and children chattering. He smells the sea, their roasting meat.
Now that he spends most of his time in human form, he has started to dream of things that he has wanted for a long time, with new clarity: paper, ink, pens, books, proper clothes, a bed, plates and spoons. He has seen all of these things on his brief visits to the settler camps. But now he wants them, with a kind of ache that even the deepest winter hunger pangs cannot equal. He wants a bed of his own, and a fireplace with a copper kettle on it. He wants to read books and learn things, all the languages that the settlers speak, medicine, the ways in which they govern themselves.
And more than that, more than he craves that civilisation, the company of other people and their ways of life - he dreams of having a wife, of producing children, raising them.
Since Castiel came to them, since Dean took ownership of him, Sam has watched them, and felt a foreign sting of jealousy.
Dean is the eldest, and the alpha, and now he has a mate.
But it is Sam who can have children, should he find a woman willing. And it is he who is out in the cold now. Figuratively. In reality, Sam is quite glad for his brother's lack of modesty. For he is still consent to share a bed, even with Castiel in their home. But, Sam longs for something other than loyalty, fraternity and acceptance. He wants love.
Only knowing that Dean and Castiel need him holds him back.
There are fears in him as well, that help to dampen his longing. The fear that he will produce a litter of pups, and be executed as a witch, or demon in human form. He fears leaving his brother, and the only life he has ever known, for hardship, and uncertainty.
But he cannot deny the prickling under his skin.
And when the call comes, there is no ignoring it.
Fourteen full days after he spoke with Dean on the nature of his relationship with Castiel, Sam sits and the mouth of their cave, skinning a rabbit, their first in days. He changes into a wolf afterwards, the better to clean the blood from himself. That is when he smells it, a scent stronger than those of the settlers, stronger than the forest odour, even than that of the blood on his paws.
It's indescribable, and yet, something akin to the way their mother and father would smell, when they had been away for a long time, and Sam's heart had ached with want of them. This scent is one of longing, of impending relief, and almost immediately Sam feels drunk with it.
He snaps out of his daze only when something pinches his tail.
He turns to find Dean snorting a few of Sam's own tail hairs off of his nose, onto the ground. Sam whimpers questioningly.
Dean hasn't looked this grave in a long time.
He looks past Sam and out towards the horizon, then steps forwards and nudges Sam towards the mouth of the cave, pushing him on his way.
Sam's whimpers grow in volume. Dean growls, and shoves, hard, sending Sam sprawling.
Sam looks up into his brother's eyes. There is no mistaking the message there. "Go. Just, Go." It is not unkind, but it is insistant. Dean himself knows the power of the mating call, and he does not expect Sam to resist it, anymore than Sam had expected Dean to simply grow tired of Castiel.
They stand and stare at each other for a long while, the wind from the cave mouth stirring their fur. Dean does not blink, but, after a while, he steps forwards, trotting across the gap between them to press his muzzle alongside Sam's, and huff warm air into his fur, his eyes closed. Sam whines his own goodbye, and changes forms, wrapping his arms around Dean tightly, but still unable to utter a single word.
He dresses and takes a bundle of his things. There's no time to wait, with the imperative of the call running through him, still, he finds time to wake Castiel and explain to him what is happening.
Castiel looks appalled.
"You cannot leave me." He hisses, looking across the cave, to where Dean sits stiffly. "You are the one who pressed me to stay, knowing what would happen to me..."
"I had no way of knowing that Dean would..."
"And now you want to leave?" Castiel's face betrays his fear, and his disgust. "What will become of me?"
Sam lets out a slow breath. "That...is not something I can concern myself with. I feel responsible for you, and I've tried to make Dean understand...but you have to understand us. The way this works for us...it's not like how it is for your people. Our mate calls, and we go. We have to. I could no more stay here than you could walk across the ocean. It would go against all of nature's rules."
Castiel's hollow eyes beseech him.
"And when he rapes me...where will nature's rules be? Shall they be satisfied? Or do you think they shall require me to suffer more?"
Sam turns his face from the harsh words, but, when his eyes flick to Dean, he finds that his brother is as still as stone.
"I wish I'd hanged." Castiel murmurs softly.
"And I wish my mother had lived, and my father too - so that my brother would not have been so reduced, that you could fail to see the good in him." Sam hisses. "Nature is cruel, and it does not listen to prayers or pleas. You have to save yourself." Feeling the harsh snap of his words, Sam gentles his voice. "The bond between you and Dean is strong, and private...and he will not tolerate my interferences for long. I have done all I can with him - but you...you I have to encourage, because it is you who has to reach into him, and find wherever my brother is hiding."
Castiel looks at him, betrayed, and deeply afraid. "And if there's nothing there to find?"
Sam simply gazes at him.
"I know my brother. He is in there, somewhere. And he wishes you no harm." He looks away, feeling again the call inside of him. "I have to go now, I'm sorry. But please, please - do not abandon him. I'll come back in twenty days - and I will find you, whatever has happened, and help you, though I hope there will be no need."
Sam picks up his bundle and sets his eyes once more on the horizon.
He hopes that nothing terrible will happen, but he cannot stay to insure that it won't. Sam looks up to catch his brother's eye, to assure him that he will return, to ask that he keep from harming Castiel, to make sure that he remembers that Sam tried to teach him
But Dean is not by the cave mouth.
Even as an animal, Sam thinks, Dean cannot stand to watch his brother walk away from him.
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Chapter 8: Chapter 8
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Sorry for the lack of updates - Uni work, etc etc.
An Important notification. You've probably seen this on tumblr, but, basically, it's a collection for a seriously ill woman, who desperately needs surgery. I've donated, and I thought I'd share the info here, as my tumblr isn't widely followed. This post has the donate link, and links to more information. alovething. /post/16455169397/ i-am-sorry-my-fandom-love-is-on-hold-for-tonight-my
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Castiel listens to Sam's footsteps as they descend the cliff path, and patter out of earshot.
The day is chill, and he pulls a fur around his shoulders, covering the rough homespun shirt with it, and casting nervous eyes to the shadows of the cave, aware that Dean might be anywhere.
But Dean does not appear.
Castiel eventually stirs himself from his bed. He goes to stand at the cave mouth, looking down into the wintry forest and the stark white sky. He could run, he knows this. But run to where? His own people would see him hanged, and in another settlement he would always be at risk. Traders travelled, and they brought news and gossip with them. Sooner or later someone would talk of a man with dark hair, with blue eyes, who had ensorcelled a village and escaped by calling up a pack of natives.
A dark doubt had begun to form in Castiel's mind in any case. He had never believed in witchcraft, or in demons, he had seen evil only in people. Nature was not good or evil, kind or cruel. It simply was, and he had lived his life in this belief. But now he found himself in the company of men, who could change into wolves. And there was something in him that drew Dean on, towards him.
Could it be that his people were right? That there was something...wrong, in him?
And if so, could he stand to seek out decent folk, and try to make his way with them?
Castiel shivered.
No, running would only end in his death - whether in the woods, at the hands of nature. Or in the town, at the hands of men.
He did not stop to wonder why he did not believe that Dean would kill him. If Castiel considered Dean's input into his escape, he only imagined the wolf forcing him to return to the cave. There was a certainty in his gut that Dean would never hurt him, never kill him. A certainty that the rational part of his mind had yet to embrace, as he still feared a kind of injury from Dean, that every aspect of his former life had taught him to hold in terror. The violent, carnal advances of another man.
Eventually he stirred himself and retreated into the cave. He set a fair going, fashioning it from dried sticks that snapped and flared to life. He boiled water and added dried shavings from a small tin, that Sam had always used to make a sharp drink. There was work to be done, and Castiel sipped his hot beaker as he swept the cave with a rudimentary broom, and shook the furs out.
There was still no sign of Dean, so Castiel checked their supplies and found a rabbit hanging. He skinned it and prepared the meet in a hot pot, searing it before adding water and herbs. At the back of his mind, something told him that Dean would appreciate the comfort of this familiar, nourishing food, in the face of his loss.
Castiel had not lost a brother before. He'd never really had any family to lose. But he had experienced a kind of social loss, as he's left one family after another over the years, with nothing and no one to call his own. Until finally, he had been accused and cast out.
But Dean did not appear when the food was ready, and when Castiel searched for him, he could find no sign of him in the cave.
He wasn't sure what to do. Sam had stressed the importance of allowing Dean first taste of all food, as well as the best place in their bed, and the warmest seat by the fire. Dean was an 'alpha' and that meant he was something of animal royalty. Castiel stood in indecision for a while, his stomach riotous with hunger, before replacing the lid on the cook pot, and drawing some skins around him to keep warm.
He did not want to examine the impulse that led him to wait on a wolf's whims while he sat hungry, and so he did not. Neither did he allow himself to think about what might happen to him should Dean return.
Or if he should not.
The thought struck him like a stone between the eyes. Perhaps Dean had abandoned him, had gone to follow Sam, or to shun all people forever. Without Dean, Castiel knew he would perish. He could not survive alone.
It was a thought that brought him up short.
He could trap rabbits, and find good food in the forest. Now that he had warm clothes and shelter, he really did not need the half-breed wolf-men anymore.
Still, he knew that he would die without Dean.
Just as surely as he knew he would die without food, or air.
Castiel took up his mending, the shirt and breechclout of Dean's that had become his, and that he had accidently ripped. His fingers were clumsy with the needle, it was woman's work, and his knowledge of sewing was limited to wounds and leatherwork. But he managed, though his hands became increasingly unsteady as darkness drew in, isolating him in the round gold coin of the fire's light.
Dean had still not returned.
Castiel felt his eyes burn, and moved from the fire a little. Though he was used to smoke and terrible lighting, he had lived his life in the reek of tallow candles and damp smoke holes. He refused to link the burning in his eyes with the tightening of his chest.
He could not, he found to his consternation, remember a time that he had been without Dean, since his rescue from the woods. Always Dean had been with him, like a shadow. Even when Castiel had stubbornly trailed Sam so as not to be vulnerable to attack.
A scrabbling forced Castiel from his reverie, and he looked out into the dark, jumping as he spotted the reflective eyes of a wolf. Dean came from the darkness, dropping a hare at the fireside and going to the far side of the fire, to slump on the stone floor.
Castiel looked at the hare, unsure what he should do. He was saved from his quandary when Dean sniffed and raised his head, eyeing the stew pot with interest.
"I made dinner." Castiel says, feeling foolish without knowing why. Perhaps it is because without Sam in residence, he is faced with the ridiculousness of addressing himself solely to an animal.
He takes the lid off of the pot, and carefully ladles a portion into a clay bowl. He had forgotten that Dean took his meat raw, and seldom ate proper meals with them. Castiel sets the bowl of steaming stew by Dean, and takes his seat once more.
Dean is watching him as though puzzled by everything that he does, but, after a long, long moment of consideration, the wolf begins to lap at the broth. About halfway through the bowl, he looks up, muzzle wet with stock, and looks at Castiel, then at the pot. It is only then that Castiel dolls out food for himself.
Once they have eaten, Dean leaves the circle of the fire's glow, and retreats to the icy cave mouth, to look out at the forest. Castiel prepares a bed with the aired furs, and stands by it, remembering that it is Dean who usually took the initiative as to where they should sleep.
But Dean remained at the cave mouth, and didn't seem to notice that Castiel was cold, and tired. So, he slid between the furs, and tried to ignore the ache in his chest, and the burning in his eyes, that had little to do with the banked down fire.
The night moved on ponderously, like a crow in flight, gliding on an air current.
Castiel could not sleep. He was cold, and could not find a comfortable way to lie and rest his head on the furs. His eyes strayed, without his permission, to where Dean lay by the cave mouth, his pale fur visible in the almost pitch black, ruffled and snatched at by the wind. Castiel can hear rain spattering on the stone, and the wind almost howls out in the dark.
"Dean." He calls, without thinking.
The wolf doesn't move.
Castiel clutches at his courage like a handful of wet clay. "Dean...it's cold. Come and sleep."
Still, Dean does not move from the cave mouth.
A high pitched, long, terrible sound issues from the darkness, and Castiel realises that it is Dean. A lone wolf call that makes the hair on Castiel's neck stand up, and his eyes well and his innards shiver - until it becomes unendurable.
He stands up, dragging a clump of furs and blanket with him, he makes his way to the cave mouth. The floor is slick with rain, and the chill of the wind is terrible, but not so terrible as the heart-sore howl issuing from Dean's mouth.
Castiel touches Dean lightly, and the howl dies into a soft whimper, bitten off in a whuff. Dean lies down, as if exhausted, too tired to fight or take umbrage at Castiel's intervention. Castiel puts the coverings over Dean, spreading them carefully before sliding in and curling up. The chill is formidable, but Dean's fur is warm, if speckled with rain. The wolf's body is loose and limp, and Castiel can feel Dean's despair, his loneliness, more sharply than if Dean had a human tongue to utter such sentiments.
He lays his arm over the wolf's bulk, and listens to Dean breathe.
Both of them, are asleep within heartbeats.
Until the 27th of January, my novel 'Me and Mine' is FREE from the Amazon kindle store (in all territories). It's a special promotion, and I really hope to see some reviews and recommendations of it - but, what I'd love even more is for new people to get to read my book.
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Chapter 9: Chapter 9
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Sorry for the lack of updates - Uni work, etc etc.
Dean's aloofness continues for a further eight days, and Castiel, despite his better nature, is almost mad with loneliness by the end of the second.
He had not realised until then, just how much he had valued Sam's company. During his time at the settlement, kept prisoner and tried as a witch, he had seen very few people, save those that came to interrogate him, shaving his hair, prodding him with sharp instruments to search out the devils mark - cutting him or striking him when he winced or tried to fight them. And out in the loneliness of the forest, there had been only Sam to converse with. Limited thought their conversation had been, it was valuable as fresh water on a long, starved voyage.
Now Castiel had only Dean, and Dean did not speak, did not even look at him.
Castiel watched for three days as Dean disappeared from the cave, going out into the woods to do God knew what, leaving Castiel alone.
At night, Dean lay down at the cave entrance, leaving it up to Castiel to crawl from his bed, where he might have been for hours after darkness, waiting for Dean's return. Dean showed no sign of acknowledgement when Castiel came to him, bringing furs to cover them both, like a maiden going to her marriage bed.
He cooked food for himself and for Dean, not daring to touch the food until Dean was there to take the first serving. Dean no longer brought rabbits or hares, having seemingly either exhausted his supply, or run out of the will to hunt. Castiel made do with vegetation and dry stores. But these were not plentiful. His body felt practically starved, and Dean did not look much better. The cold seemed keen to whittle them down to their bones.
At night, in the exposed mouth of the cave, Castiel curled up, trying to keep himself warm and covered by the blankets and furs. Dean always found a place, curled against his chest, limp and warm, fidgeting in his sleep and whimpering if Castiel moved far from him. It was only in those moments that Castiel could believe that Dean recognised his presence. The rest of the time, he merely pined for Sam.
By the ninth day, Castiel is tired - tired of being ignored, of being cold and hungry and alone all day, with nothing to do and no one to talk to.
He takes his bed, such as it is, to the room at the very back of the cave, and makes space for himself to sleep in the relative warmth. As the sun dies down, he eats some thin herb and root broth, and sets himself down to sleep.
He wakes some time later, to the sound of frantic yipping.
It reminds him of a dog bothered by its chain, or one of the strays that the village boys had tormented with sticks and strings of clacking nutshells.
He sits up, feeling the night's knife-like cold on his skin.
The yipping comes in bursts, changing direction, but never getting closer. Fear traces a figner of ice down Castiel's spine.
"Dean?" He calls out into the dark, a dark so intense that it blots out the sight of his own fingers not an inch from his face.
A sharp bark snaps through the cave, and he hears clawed feet tapping on the rock, scraping in their furious hurry.
A bundle of heavy, wriggling fur strikes him in the chest, sending Castiel sprawling to the ground. His heart leaps into his mouth, Dean is angry with him for disobeying the non-verbal understanding that they have developed. He must be furious over the insubordination, the usurping of his seat as alpha.
Castiel brings his shaking hands up to shield himself, at the same times as a hot tongue laves his face, and a wet nose nuzzles under his chin. Dean whimpers against his skin, body constantly shifting and wiggling in an attempt to get closer.
Castiel's fear over Dean's anger evaporates - the wolf is not enraged.
He's relieved.
Castiel puts his arms around Dean and presses his face into the fur on top of his head. Dean whimpers, his ears hanging down in sorrow, his body quaking under its coating of fur.
"Did you think I had left you?" Castiel murmurs.
The wolf redoubles it's panicked movements, and Castiel shushes him and strokes his hand over Dean's nose.
"I'm not going to leave...I was just tired. It's too cold for me to sleep out there again."
Dean noses him sorrowfully and climbs down from his lap, onto the makeshift bed, lying down and looking up at Castiel with reflective eyes, like he's waiting to see if his gesture has been accepted.
Castiel sighs and lies back down, letting Dean tuck himself up against his body before he drags the covers back over himself.
In the warm, soft little cave, Castiel runs one of Dean's ears through his fingers absentmindedly, and Dean wriggles with delight.
"I'm sorry." Castiel says, the words leaving his mouth as soon as he thinks them.
Dean stills.
"I shouldn't have let this happen, you imagining my departure...I won't let it happen again...but..." he says, after a short pause. "I need you. Not just...to bring food, or to let me stay here...but, I need you, so that I am not alone. Without...people, I will lose whatever civility I have, and then my sanity."
Dean makes no comment, but moves closer to Castiel anyway.
Castiel sighs.
"Is that why you remain...changed, like this? So that you do not want for human company?" Castiel muses mostly to himself. It may be his imagination, but he thinks he hears Dean huff derisively.
"I suppose you can't tell me why." Castiel transfers his attention to the other ear, stroking the soft fur. "But...I'm not a fool, I know there's a reason, something that Sam hasn't yet guessed at."
Dean tilts his head and nips at Castiel's fingers lightly.
"I don't even know why I would wish to know." Castiel sighs. "I just know that...I do. And Sam...is under the impression that you and I...that we..." He can't quite say it. Saying it, voicing it aloud, even to Dean's dubious intelligence, makes it real. Something he is not prepared to do, not now, not ever.
Dean growls quietly.
"I know." Castiel mutters. "I know you think this...that my being here means that I'm..." he struggles, "yours, but..."
Where should he begin?
That life is not as simple as claiming what you want, and keeping it for yourself?
That there are rules, laws of God and man that make this impossible, unthinkable?
That he doesn't want this. Has never wanted this?
That Dean isn't even the same species as him? That Castiel has no way of knowing if there's anything human left in him beside...some residual understanding?
All of this passes through his mind, and Castiel knows that all of it is true. But there is something else as well, something he had not even spoken of to Sam, and that is what escapes him.
"...but I have nothing, nothing for you, and...I am not a mate; I've never been, to anyone. And...I'm nothing worth keeping - if that's what you want."
He's never spoken like this before, hardly dared think like it, but he's half convinced that Dean can't even understand him. It's safer here, than it has ever been for him, to admit that he has no idea what the other men are so interested in when they talk about women. They were people, just like himself, with their jobs to do, and their preoccupations with linens and the habits of their households. He had never seen the attraction, or rather, he had never seen why such an intense...fixation had developed in his male peers.
He knows that there are some...men, if they were worthy of the term, who had found...a similar attraction, between themselves and other men. But, Castiel had never allowed such thoughts to cross his mind. He was as puritan in his imaginings as he was in his daily life, and he kept his conscience clean.
There was a part of him, that had looked on the few naked men he had encountered, with something approaching...longing. But that part was so deeply buried that Castiel knew almost nothing of its existence, save the few moments when in uncoiled in sleep, and inflamed his dreams.
At first, Castiel, lost in the silence that greets his words, is ready to sleep, knowing that Dean has nothing to say, or at least no way to say it.
Then Dean moves, uncoiling himself and standing with a whuff of discontent. Castiel tenses, aware that he may have angered Dean with his rejection. The wolf however, does not growl, or bare his teeth, instead he picks his way over Castiel, until he has his legs planted on either side of Castiel's torso, his face hovering in the dark over Castiel's as the wolf lies down on his chest. He touches the soft, barely furred part of his muzzle, his lips were he to return to his human form, to Castiel's own lips.
Castiel almost fails to breathe.
Dean tucks his muzzle gently under his chin, and stays on top of him, a weight that Castiel cannot ignore. He reaches up and tentatively rests his hands on Dean's back, feeling his fingers sift through the coarse outer coat, anchoring themselves in the soft fur underneath.
Dean breathes out, and it almost seems like a sigh.
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Chapter 10: Chapter 10
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This is sort of the second half of the last chapter, I had it planned for chapter ten, so that I'd go into double figures on the first 'bit of the plot' - so, the next few updates will introduce some new elements
Dean feels warm and comfortable for the first time in days, heavy with sleep. There's hunger in his belly, but he pushes it aside, Castiel has food ready for the morning, he knows that. There's no desperation to the hunger, no edge of starvation.
Dean's starved before.
When he was hunting the man that killed his parents, he'd gone without food for days. He'd slept in icy hollows and under thin coverings of greenery with an aching stomach, cuts and scrapes oozing through his fur. He knew about pain, loss and deprivation. Nature had taught him from an early age.
Castiel's rejection had been an entirely new smart, and Dean had felt its sting intensely. Now though, lying in the warm, with Castiel sleeping beneath him, and his arms resting on Dean's back. Dean felt...better, bonded,and...safe.
He hadn't felt that way since before his father died.
Dean's eyes are closed, his nose twitching as he dozes, soaking up the scents of his surroundings as his ears map out the area around himself and Castiel.
Wind, rain, trees rattling...
Earth, stone, cooking, herbs, roots...
Castiel, breathing...
Old fur, musty, sweat and skin, sleep...
Castiel, warm skin, hair, sweat...mate...
An owl hooting, fox call, sticks snapping...
Castiel, whimpering...
Dean starts to wake up at that. Castiel is making a new noise, not a noise of speaking, or one of fear. Not even his regular, deep sounds of sleep. This is a sound Dean has not heard from him before, but somehow...it's also familiar.
A long, soft...sound. And Castiel's body moves a little, sleeping, but not soundly. Dean resting on top of the sleeping man, pricks his ears up and opens his eyes a little. Castiel's body is warmer than it should be, and...
Dean shivers, from his twitching nose to his wriggling tail.
The smell. The mate smell, intoxicating as it normally is, is ten times as strong now. Deep and dark and rich as autumn soil.
Dean whines quietly, and Castiel makes the sound again, almost a growl, his body twitching.
Dean feels it then, the strange, familiar pull like...almost like he's been here before. Castiel's body moves again, and Dean feels him rubbing against the soft fur of his belly. Only, it's a kind of touch that's new. The touch of...Dean realises, and his blood drowns out the sound of leaves and rain and...everything but Castiel's breathing, and the sounds, which come quicker now.
This is a human thing...a...mating thing, that Dean remembers, that he's felt and experienced himself. Castiel is...Castiel is ready, accepting him, wanting him. There's no fear in the air, only warmth and the scent of Castiel's body. The scent of wanting.
But...there's something wrong with it. With him. Dean realises, in a creeping of his skin, as Castiel's body rises against his, the heat, the pressing of him intensifying. Dean wants Castiel...but more than that...he wants...
It's hard to remember, to think how he used to...but Dean realises what he wants, what he craves right now.
Hands.
He needs, hands, and...lips and skin, and...he needs arms and fingers and an organ to match Castiel's own.
He needs himself. The self he buried like unneeded clothes, frozen under the soil of his own winter.
It's as Dean stiffens with impotent desire, frozen in the wrong body, the wrong mind, a shudder going through him - the half forgotten change prickling his skin- that Castiel wakes up.
One moment, he's sleeping, heavy with heat and shuddery breaths of pleasure, his lower body half shucked of loose clothing, indulging in its meeting with the soft, warm fur of a living body. The next, he is abruptly awake, his fear a stench in the air, throwing Dean off of himself, dragging himself from the covers, breeches lost in the tangle of skins and blankets, baggy shirt covering his shameful arousal.
He skitters backwards onto the cold stone, leaving Dean sprawled on the cave floor.
Castiel's skin is warm, shuddering in the cold, his stomach heavy with unfulfilled wanting, the ache between his legs almost as torturous as his own shame. He can barely remember the dream. Had there been a dream? Or just the feeling of the body on him, Dean's body.
The body of an animal.
Castiel feels sick, and his chest feels tight. He is foul. A foul, disgusting creature, with a black soul.
It takes him a moment to look through his burning eyes, and catch a glimpse of Dean on the floor. Fresh fear leaps into his chest.
Dean is...writhing, legs twitching on the ground, his body jerking roughly every few seconds. His eyes are wide open, mostly white and terrified, his teeth bare themselves, and a horrible, pained sound rips its way out of his throat.
Castiel is frozen, wanting to dive forwards and help, powerless to do anything.
He hears Dean's bones crack, sees sinew rip beneath the surface, and all at once, Dean goes limp, like a child's marionette with cut strings. Then his body begins to grow longer, and Dean's throat produces agonisedscreams animalistic and terrified, until a wet snick cuts off the sound.
But Dean's mouth is still screaming, jaws open, eyes staring.
His legs elongate, paws forming hands and feet with awful cracking, snapping sounds, his body warps and twists until he has a chest and neck and hips - the fur and thick wolf skin underneath flaking away.
Castiel had seen Sam's transformations, and they were...almost effortless, but this...this looks like torture and birth, and a gruesome death all at once. As if Dean's wolf body had grown over him like...flesh growing over a spur of wood stabbed through a man's chest. And now it was being spliced open, flayed away to reveal the man underneath.
The screaming begins again, mangled and gargling as Dean's voice grows in his throat, human and in complete agony. He shakes and sobs and finally goes still as his skin stops boiling, and his limbs stop jerking. Left in a heap on the cold, unfeeling stone.
But he does not go quiet, and his pained whimpers are too much to bear when uttered in a human tongue.
Castiel drags himself forwards, and reaches fearfully for Dean's arm, touching the skin, rubbing gently. Sam had complained of a cramping of his muscles when he had transformed after a long period of change, Dean's body was...in a kind of shock, he presumed. His muscles knotted and abused by the change.
Castiel rubbed Dean's arms until he felt the muscles give, then moved his fingers to his torso. His hands froze when it came time to move lower, and he had to force himself to still his own shame at touching a naked man this way. He would be as a doctor or a mother nursing her son. He would not allow his baser self to slip his grasp. His arousal had faded quickly, and Castiel strives to forget that it ever existed.
He tends to Dean's knotted muscles, and then shuffles back a little, satisfied now that Dean no longer seems pained, but rather...almost insensible with exhaustion. He picks up a fur, and almost drops it again when a clumsy hand paws at his arm.
He looks down at Dean is surprise, finding the man looking up at him.
"Cas..." Dean gasps, fighting to escape the grip of exhaustion.
Castiel takes his hand, and tucks the fur over him with the other. He lies down, extending and arm for Dean to lean against.
"Sleep, Dean." He tells him.
It seems that this is all the permission Dean needs, apparently soothed by his presence, his eyelids droop, and he subsides against Castiel's arm in a deep sleep.
Castiel lies awake, and, hours later, in the shallow, pale light of the rising sun he finds that he is still looking down on the newly bared face of the man who saved his life, and claimed him for a mate.
And he is beautiful.
Castiel, alone, filled with the residual horror of his awakening, and Dean's transformation, shivers and feels a pit of fear open in his stomach.
What is wrong with him? That he is looking on the face of this man, this...face that must be like his own, like any mans, with a nose and mouth and eyes...and yet...he feels...stirred, intimately, in a way almost akin to hunger, to a savage, devouring privation.
He looks again and again, as long as he can stand to look, and still, he cannot find what it is that makes him feel this way. Not the curve of Dean's lips, or the shape of his cheek bones. There is nothing, nothing in his face that should make him feel this way. That should make him feel at all.
And yet, when he tries to, he cannot look away.
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Chapter 11: Chapter 11
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Have no fear! I have not crossed over to the wincest side, just taking a short vacation, checking out the scenery, sampling the kink buffet. I'm still working on my destiel fics.
Also, if you haven't voted in the eonline poll today...sorry, but, this is not for you :P
When Castiel wakes up, the morning light playing on the cave wall is the first thing he sees. He cannot for the life of him recall ever feeling this way upon waking. But, his very skin seems to hum with the knowledge that this day, this day is going to be a gift. Could it be he's forgotten a celebration? An event? In the fraction of a second before he is fully awake, Castiel decides that this strange, soaring feeling in his stomach, must be what the bride and her groom feel on the day of their wedding.
Then, he turns onto his back, looking away from the white light on the dark stone, and finds himself staring into a pair of green eyes.
Castiel blinks, disturbed to find Dean leaning up beside him, watching him as if it is the most natural thing in the world. Then Dean's hand moves under the coverings that swaddle them both, and Castiel feels it's warm roughness against his belly. His body tenses, and he remembers losing his loose breeches, remembers his own shame at finding himself undone by a simple dream. He remembers the horrific transformation he had witnessed.
"Dean?"
The other man responds, his eyes clearing at Castiel's recognition. The hand on his belly moves to press over his heart, and Castiel feels a bare leg press between his own.
It is only then that he remembers that Dean is naked.
Castiel struggles from the bed as quickly as he can, and, wrapping his arms around himself, he looks down at where Dean is lying, an expression of deep confusion on his face. The blankets and skins around him gape in Castiel's absence, and he finds that he can see all the way down Dean's broad chest, to his deprived stomach, and his sex. A territory that Castiel's eyes devour despite himself.
He turns away, red faced and shamed, and sees the discarded and crumpled woven breeches on the ground. Castiel snatches up the fabric and turns back to Dean with averted eyes. He drops the clump of fabric onto the bed.
"Here, put these on."
When he hears no answering movement, he chances a look, and finds Dean still watching him, the clothing left untouched.
"Do you understand me?" Castiel says, frustration winning out over helplessness.
"Yes."
Castiel very nearly jumps in fright. He contains the impulse, if barely. "Then dress."
"No."
Castiel hesitates, his eyes locked with Dean's, and he is filled with the sudden knowledge that, whatever is about to happen, he has no hope of escaping it.
This does not mean that he doesn't try.
Castiel bolts, quick as a threatened deer, and very nearly makes it past Dean and out into the cave proper. But, he is not fast enough, and no match for the strength of the hands that catch at his waist, hauling him back and down.
Castiel finds his bare legs spread, knees on either side of Dean's own legs, bared by the slipping of the furs. The skins are bunched beneath him, and Castiel is subjected to the rude brush of fur on his backside. His main focus however, is on Dean.
He's unprepared for the assault of sensations when they come, the way Dean presses his mouth to the join in his neck and shoulder, sending an array of sudden feelings through him. Neither does he expect the movement of Dean's hands, pushing the ridiculously oversized shirt up, to elicit such a pleasant reaction. The shirt is so baggy that it hangs off of Castiel's shoulder, and Dean buries his face there, mouth travelling hungrily from throat to shoulder, then lower, laving his collarbone, he chest...until his mouth (deceptively soft for one so strong, for what was once an animal so vicious) embraces the risen nub there. Castiel cannot help the sound that comes from his mouth, a bolt of pleasure, heretofore unexperienced, almost tears him in half. He finds himself pushing Dean's shoulder, trying to escape the feeling, as good as pure sin, as unbearable as torture. Dean resists, and the answering swipe of teeth over the soft flesh in his mouth has Castiel shaking.
He barely notices when Dean pushes him backwards, laying him out on the rumpled furs and holding him there with the weight of his body. His physical excitement is what jolts Castiel from the daze visited on him by lust, and he struggles one more against Dean's bulk.
Dean holds him down without seeming exertion, and Castiel is reminded of how weak he is in comparison. The other man seems completely unaware of his fear, intent instead on pressing the evidence of his disturbing passion to Castiel's own rebellious member.
"I can't..." Castiel gasps, feeling the touch of that intimate flesh on his own, a divine kiss. "I can't, please..."
Later he will think on this, and recall that he did not ask, 'Stop' or demand 'No' neither did he profess his lack of desire.
All he could say was, "I can't", as tears found their way into his eyes, tears of pain as everything he wanted, fought everything he believed was right and good.
It takes a moment for Castiel to realise that Dean is no longer touching him amorously, and still longer to notice the gentle touch of fingers on his wet cheeks.
"Crying." Dean says softly. "Why?"
Castiel breathes, the air filling his chest, in out, in out. But he cannot form words, cannot explain everything that is so very wrong with him. He can't. And the mere thought of Dean moving away from him, hurts like nothing else. But the thought of him continuing to mate him is still more painful.
Dean looks down at Castiel.
Castiel's eyes are a colour. It's been a long time since Dean saw colours, anything other than shadows and light. He can't remember the name of it, but he knows it's rare. There are only a few birds of that colour, fewer flowers, still fewer animals. It's the colour of the sky, when the ground is dry and the sun is hot.
Castiel's eyes are sad too.
He doesn't know why, he's heard Castiel tell him about 'rules' and 'men' and 'the book' things that Castiel thinks are important. But, Castiel belongs to him, not to other men, not to their book, so why should it matter? Castiel is his, and Dean is Castiel's - that is the way it is. This, what Dean wants to do, now, is for them only. Only they will see, only they will know, it is nothing to do with anyone else.
Dean's instincts are a tangled mess. They tell him that Castiel is his mate, that he is a beta, that it is Dean's right to mate him, and have him bear his pups. The rest of them tell Dean that Castiel is a man, and that right now, his mate is a frightened, hurt man - who needs him.
Dean lays his head down on Castiel's chest, and allows his body to go limp, his better instincts triumphing.
Castiel shakes and sobs and shivers, but he does not push him away.
Dean understands speech, that skill never really left him, thanks to Sam. But...the words are slow in coming to him, and, like a dull tool, they were frustrating to use.
Still, when Castiel begins to speak, Dean concentrates so hard, that his brow furrows, and his blunt teeth worry his lip.
"Why did this happen?" Castiel says. "I was good, I believed in God, and doing right...living my life by His rules...and still I was driven out of my country, persecuted in this...strange new place...almost put to death. And...now, I find that I am spared, by God...but left here, tempted."
Dean does not understand 'God' it's a thing that continues to frustrate him. Sam, who knew more about the settlers even when they were younger, and even his mother, had tried to explain the idea of God to him. God was a man who lived in the sky, and who rewarded you for being good, and punished the wicked. He had created everything, and everything on earth he had given to man. Man ruled the animals, and the earth.
But...Dean was an animal, did that mean he belonged to all men, everywhere? And where in 'the book' had God created things like him? No one in it was like him, or his father, or his mother. It was a stupid story.
Castiel was sad because of the story, because this, the two of them, wasn't in 'the book', and so he thought it was against the rules. The rules God had made.
Dean knew that things were different in the world to how they were in the stories his mother used to tell. In the stories there were huge floods, and water that turned into blood or wine, a magic horn that destroyed cities, and people turned into heaps of salt. There were angels, and the devil - and Dean had never seen either one of those things. He'd only ever seen strange birds, and snakes.
But he does not know how to explain all this to Castiel. That things did not happen like in stories. They happened because people made them happen - and they either hurt or helped, pained or pleasured.
"I don't want to be here." Castiel says, and Dean understands that perfectly, holds Castiel a little tighter and is relived when the other man does not pull away. "I want...a place to call my own, a home and a family...but I have never wanted a wife. Now...now I think I know why, but, that does not make it right to..." Castiel lets out a shuddery breath.
Dean knows that wives are like mates, and they have children. He's glad that Castiel does not want one. Castiel should not want to find anyone, because Dean had already found him.
"I can't do this." Castiel says, brokenly. "I cannot allow this to happen, I can't give in, I have to...fight this...please." He starts to move, pulling away, desperation colouring his words, and Dean holds him down, holds him there until Castiel looks up at him, his rare-coloured eyes wet again. "I have to be good, clean. And I have to go." Castiel whispers, "I have to...make this better, I have to go back to civilisation...they can fix this...they can..." He swallows. "There are righteous people. In places where I won't be tempted." He struggles to keep his eyes on Dean's. "You don't know of Hell, of the terrible things that will happen to me if I let this take over...I want to go to heaven, to...oh..." He searches for words, but Dean already knows what heaven is. A good place. A place for good kind people, like his mother.
Castiel is good, and kind. Why should it matter that he is good and kind to Dean, and not to a wife? Goodness. Like God-ness. Words are too tricksome.
"Heaven is...when we die, we go there to be with God...it's a good place." Castiel tells him.
There are so many things that Dean would say, if he knew the words for them. He would say that Castiel is his, that he wants him, needs him. That this is nothing unnatural, but the most natural thing in the world. That without Castiel, he will be in Hell. That everything he wants is right here, and if it is taken from him, then he will change back, become an animal again, and walk right into a settlement, to be shot and nailed to the wall as a trophy.
What he says instead, are the only words he can marshal that seem to come from the place inside of him that aches with a pain that is somehow, a good one.
"You want to be with God?" He asks.
"Very much." Castiel tells him.
"Because you love God, God loves you."
"God loves all his children...even the flawed ones."
Dean thinks about that word 'love'. How it means how God feels, and how his mother felt for his father, but also for him and Sam. And how Dean feels for Sam, but also for warm days and hot food.
"But not like I love you."
Castiel looks at him, surprise on his face.
Dean repeats himself.
"God loves you. But not like I do." He struggles with his meaning, what he wants to say is that...Castiel will be alone, and cold, and sad. Until he dies, and only then will God love him, and be with him. Dean will love Castiel another way. The way that keeps him warm at night, and fed. That keeps him happy, and does not make him cry. He will love him even when he is a man that walks on the dirt, rather than living in the sky. He will love him, and make him sigh, and shiver, and make the sounds he had made when Dean kissed him under his shirt.
He tries to make sense of it in words.
"I will love you, even if you go." Dean says, "When you go to be with good people. I will love you. When you hate what I am. I will love you. When you die. I will love you. And when I die, you think I will be in Hell. Then I will go there. And I will love you."
Castiel looks at him, and Dean looks back, and thinks that, if God thinks Castiel looking at him like that is bad - then God is wrong. Because it is the best way anyone has ever looked at him. Like he is important, and special, clever and loved.
Castiel doesn't move, but Dean senses a change in the way they are aligned, just before Castiel opens his mouth, just a little, the slight parting of lips.
All of Dean's instincts tell him what he already knows.
Castiel is his.
He leans forwards, and this time, when he kisses him, there are no tears.
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