Feral, Chapter 4
Title: Feral 3/?
Author: radioheading
Rating: R, language and violence.
Characters/Pairings: Dean/Cas
Warnings: AU. Really, really, really AU. Castiel is human....Dean isn't.
Word Count: 2,388
Summary: Castiel Novak moves to a cottage on the coast, left to him by a relative he's never known. But there's more than meets the eye when it comes to this place, and its secret, when revealed, might not leave much of Castiel behind
The lake is still. Castiel peers through the window, hands blocking the blood that still trickles river-slow from his nose. They color the tips a red bright as lipstick, as candy apples he'd eaten as a child in Autumn. There's a trail of it, dots and dashes of his life left like breadcrumbs on the floorboards. Doesn't matter. Everything is hazed in death now; the gravel of the driveway in front of him shifts with a second sight, bodies laid out and a soul twisted with grief.
The first step outside is an accident. The wood of the deck is underfoot and he can't turn back now. It's painted white, the wood, though the sea air peels it off in plastic curls, the years and salt more than a match for the off-white shade, some of it sticking to his feet as he steps forward and then again, dreading the moment he steps down into the gravel-lined driveway. He's being led, really, a rope around his wrist and it's pulling, dragging him forward while the rest of him is beggingpleadingno, a shrieking that's lessened to a blank, unfeeling fog inside. The usually satisfying crunch of the rocks is chalk pressed too hard against a blackboard, loud and obnoxious.
Ten feet and he'll be right there, standing where two bodies were laid out, puppets to torment the man who'd wanted only to come home, to rest a tired head and heart and...
Castiel stops when he reaches where their bodies would have been. Copper tangs its sick sweet melody in his nose, flashes of the past flickering behind his eyes. The splash behind him, quiet ripples hitting the shore, don't distract him from the past as it mixes with his own loss, a grip that crushes him, a cigarette still smoking under fingers snubbing it out. He sits, half on his folded legs, ignoring the discomfort of the sandpaper-faced rocks beneath. Eyes remain dry as he stares into the emptiness before him, a choking emptiness unfolding in his heart. It's too much, a sea to drown in and he can't-if he lets it devour him, there's no coming back. But that doesn't stop him from laying his cheek down to the ground, pressing it in hard, curling his fingers into the dirt, gravel slipping beneath his nails. He breathes. He breathes in and out and somewhere in between one moment and the next the deep cycle turns rough, sobs that he doesn't want to admit come from him.
But with each shudder, each hitch and hot-streaked tear that falls from him, Castiel gets lighter. Hands unclench and the straining muscles of his back relax. He sighs into the ground, eyes sticky with sand, burning as he tries not to dig the heels of his hands in to scratch. Hands and knees work better than legs at the moment, so he crawls toward the bank of the lake and only thinks better of it once before plunging forward. The water opens its arms and brushes his skin like a lover, clearing the sand and his eyes. It's cool against naked skin, clothes forgotten, shame left behind like a book forgotten on a bus. He allows himself to sink, the pleading of his lungs for air only a mild discomfort, something to forget for a moment while he pretends nothing exists.
And then something skirts past his leg, a silk press of barely-there flesh, appendages that humans don't have. He sputters, shock overriding sense to fill his throat with water. The disrupted surface of the lake churns further when he bursts through the surface, sending ripples in every direction as he coughs and chokes, stomach twisting to rid itself of its unwelcome intruder. Heart racing now, he whips around in circles, wiping trails of water from his face, though they cling to his hair, ready to replace their fallen brothers a moment later.
Leave, the sane part of him orders, the part that tells him to use his seat belt and brush his teeth and to leave the fucking razors alone, to put them back where they belong and stop gazing at them like they're a solution. But it's weaker now, reed-thin and easy enough to ignore. So he stays, stopping as he turns to look over his shoulder and catches the surfacing of a dark-haired man with eyes that don't quite match the sneer on his pretty mouth.
“Back so soon, are we?” He mocks Castiel, a cutting tone that would have him blushing, though he's beyond it now. He knows this creature, understands something in it.
“What did you do to me?” Dean circles around Castiel, tail powerful, creating waves that have him kicking harder to remain in one place.
“Nothing you didn't want,” he smirks, showing off those small fangs. They're wicked, surreal, and Castiel's tongue itches to lick them. To make sure they're actually exist.
“Don't give me that shit,” his lips slip under the water as a harsher, hacking cough grips him. The hands on his back are a surprise; he shies away from them, but they grip hard and lift.
“Breathe.”
There's confusion in those strange green eyes, one look down and then up, a reflective sort of spark that piques Castiel's curiosity. The creature is one of a thousand masks, and he wants to peel them off one by one.
“I saw what happened,” he whispers to the water, Dean behind him, fingers curled around his biceps, now with enough pressure to leave 10 neat bruises. “I saw your wife and daughter.”
“You don't know anything,” he gets, a cold reply that would be fairly convincing in its apathy, save for the tremor just underneath the soft growl. “I have no family.”
“You did.” The hands move up to his shoulders and Castiel feels weightless, staring into an endless expanse where the sky kisses water. It spurs him on, the euphoria of gazing into infinity, so he reaches back, crossing his arm over his heart and rests his hand on Dean's. He doesn't expect the creature to cry out, a low simmer of agony, bowstrings pulled tight, just before ripping away from the frets. The chest against his back, cool as a distant star, goes limp and all that keeps Dean from falling under the surface is the hand Castiel still holds, though now its weight is awkward, dead. He turns to support Dean, whose eyes are open but blank, mouth slack.
“Hey,” he whispers, a breath away from that pink flush of skin, and when he says it again they touch, accidentally or on purpose, but it's all he can think of now, to touch, and so he presses down harder, wrapping himself around Dean, pleading with his body for the other man, the creature, the thing, to just wake up. He doesn't care about the dig of teeth into his bottom lip, doesn't understand why he needs the other man to be alright, but it doesn't matter. An eternity passes, lives upon lives and he's just holding the other man, waiting for those stuck-together lashes to part, for the soot of them to steal Castiel's breath as they rise over veridian bright enough to unsettle.
When they finally do, Dean looking up at him in confusion for a split second before opening his mouth wider, a need-air reflex, Castiel backs up and their lips part, sticking just a moment, painting Dean's mouth with blood he doesn't remember losing. He's staring at Castiel, tongue tracing gently the lines and indents of his bottom lip, gathering Castiel's essence to be guided back down his throat, to taste, to absorb. He's staring and Castiel just looks back into a wall of confusion, uncertainty pulling the sharp angles of Dean's face even tighter, making him look even more the beautiful, dangerous predator he seems to be.
“What's happening?”
The question is time speeding back up and then quickening; it's a shock enough that Dean pushes him, tail twitching between Castiel's legs.
“Stay away. Just get away from here.”
Without a backward glance, Dean glides away, each movement like the curve a snake's boneless back.
***
Castiel holds a piece of wrinkled paper in his hand, though it's been smoothed, pressed flat with now-dry hands. He glances down at the gibberish, then back at his laptop. It had overheated on the bed, motor running too hot during his strange excursion. He takes his tasks in steps. Getting dressed was the easiest; legs through shorts, arms through a shirt, pull up, pull down, finished. Fishing the forgotten note off the floor had been more difficult. It had been surrounded by the drops of his bloody nose, a reminder of the bizarro world he'd opened the door to, the key lost in the shuffle.
The code is a neat bit of scrawl, efficient handwriting with no flourishes.
R pmld blf droo urtfiv gsrh lfg, Xzhgrvo.
R girvw, nb vmgriv oruvgrnv. Yfg R xlfowm'g.
ZWZIL. Urmw z dzb gl vmw rg, nb mvksvd.
He notices the Rs first. It stands alone, which means, most likely, it's an I. Or an A. But the frequency of it; Castiel brings a hand to his mouth, chews on the haggard nail of his index finger nail writes the alphabet out neatly. Underneath I, he writes R, and then his answer stares him in the face. The encoded note is the alphabet, backwards. The words come together like ants on a picnic blanket, black dots stark against the white of the paper.
I know you will figure this out, Castiel.
I tried, my entire lifetime. But I couldn't.
ADARO. Find a way to end it, my nephew.
Adaro. The word curls itself around his tongue, a quiet utterance that leaves his lips pursed, ready to be kissed. It's the only non sequitur in an otherwise normal note.
Adaro, adaro, adaro.
It's echoey, a trill of the familiar that Castiel digs for, memory that edges away as he gets close. Pulling his computer back into his lap, he types the word, holds his breath and presses the enter button. The results are lists and lists of mythology resources, ghouls and goblins and bump-in-the-night monsters:
The adaro, unlike its more benevolent relative, the mercreature, is not something to be trifled with. Beautiful, appealing to men and women alike, the adaro is a lost soul, one trapped in an eternity of suffering and grief.
The first adaro is said to have been a rich merchant who cared too much for his drink and adultery and not enough for the lives of his wife and children. His involvement in dishonest trade led to their rather brutal deaths. When he dared ask the Gods for revenge, they handed down a spell that transformed legs into fins, teeth into fangs, mortality into and endless procession of days.
What the Gods didn't realize was that the curse could be passed on. The thrall of an adaro is as powerful as a siren's song, and much more dangerous. They attract and are attracted to those without hope, those clinging onto life by the tips of their fingers. It has not been made clear, exactly, how the curse is passed on, only that the adaro will willingly take victims to end its own suffering.
The curse is passed on, and the adaro perishes.
***
It doesn't come above the water for any real reason. Sometimes the night air is easier to breathe, less thick than the blue-black water lapping at its shoulders. It smirks at the house only a few hundred feet away, a structure it doesn't like to look at very often because a curl of wrongness always starts in his stomach, hot and tight and it doesn't go away until it dives back down to the coolest part of the lake and stretches out there, letting the gills by its hips and neck work peacefully.
But now...it wants to see. It wants to know what's going on behind the glow of curtains and blinds, to see the man with sky eyes and night hair. It wants to taste him again, the bittersweet of loss and pain and anger, all easy on its tongue, energy to take and take and take. It's good at taking now, breathing in the lives of others, the tears and the frowns and the quiet-loud thoughts people leave to fester in their minds.
But this human. He's good, too good. Everything about him is what it wants and needs and oh, it was so close to having it all today. But it pushed him away, told him to get out. Get away words while its body howled for the man to come closer, to let it taste and bite and feed. It had been shaken, that's all. Unsure of why it lost consciousness, why it woke up in the man's arms, lips pressed to his. The human should have wanted to run, should have left it there to drown, though it wouldn't have.
It heaves itself onto the sand, tail ungainly and awkward on the land, muscles all wrong for the gritty surface. Doesn't matter though, not now. It lifts itself like pendulum, reaches the end of the beach and stares at the uneven rocks leading down to the road. It lays down. The sky above is limitless and it is but a speck. It raises its arms, not minding the scrapes as it stretches, reaching for something on either side, flickers of the past and emotions it doesn't know what to do with anymore.
“Soon,” it assures the empty air, arching its back, a flick of the tail punctuation of its guarantee. It itches at its waist, frowning at the feeling of tight skin. It's too dark, though, to see how the scales there have lightened into a cast-over-morning grey.
Author: radioheading
Rating: R, language and violence.
Characters/Pairings: Dean/Cas
Warnings: AU. Really, really, really AU. Castiel is human....Dean isn't.
Word Count: 2,388
Summary: Castiel Novak moves to a cottage on the coast, left to him by a relative he's never known. But there's more than meets the eye when it comes to this place, and its secret, when revealed, might not leave much of Castiel behind
The lake is still. Castiel peers through the window, hands blocking the blood that still trickles river-slow from his nose. They color the tips a red bright as lipstick, as candy apples he'd eaten as a child in Autumn. There's a trail of it, dots and dashes of his life left like breadcrumbs on the floorboards. Doesn't matter. Everything is hazed in death now; the gravel of the driveway in front of him shifts with a second sight, bodies laid out and a soul twisted with grief.
The first step outside is an accident. The wood of the deck is underfoot and he can't turn back now. It's painted white, the wood, though the sea air peels it off in plastic curls, the years and salt more than a match for the off-white shade, some of it sticking to his feet as he steps forward and then again, dreading the moment he steps down into the gravel-lined driveway. He's being led, really, a rope around his wrist and it's pulling, dragging him forward while the rest of him is beggingpleadingno, a shrieking that's lessened to a blank, unfeeling fog inside. The usually satisfying crunch of the rocks is chalk pressed too hard against a blackboard, loud and obnoxious.
Ten feet and he'll be right there, standing where two bodies were laid out, puppets to torment the man who'd wanted only to come home, to rest a tired head and heart and...
Castiel stops when he reaches where their bodies would have been. Copper tangs its sick sweet melody in his nose, flashes of the past flickering behind his eyes. The splash behind him, quiet ripples hitting the shore, don't distract him from the past as it mixes with his own loss, a grip that crushes him, a cigarette still smoking under fingers snubbing it out. He sits, half on his folded legs, ignoring the discomfort of the sandpaper-faced rocks beneath. Eyes remain dry as he stares into the emptiness before him, a choking emptiness unfolding in his heart. It's too much, a sea to drown in and he can't-if he lets it devour him, there's no coming back. But that doesn't stop him from laying his cheek down to the ground, pressing it in hard, curling his fingers into the dirt, gravel slipping beneath his nails. He breathes. He breathes in and out and somewhere in between one moment and the next the deep cycle turns rough, sobs that he doesn't want to admit come from him.
But with each shudder, each hitch and hot-streaked tear that falls from him, Castiel gets lighter. Hands unclench and the straining muscles of his back relax. He sighs into the ground, eyes sticky with sand, burning as he tries not to dig the heels of his hands in to scratch. Hands and knees work better than legs at the moment, so he crawls toward the bank of the lake and only thinks better of it once before plunging forward. The water opens its arms and brushes his skin like a lover, clearing the sand and his eyes. It's cool against naked skin, clothes forgotten, shame left behind like a book forgotten on a bus. He allows himself to sink, the pleading of his lungs for air only a mild discomfort, something to forget for a moment while he pretends nothing exists.
And then something skirts past his leg, a silk press of barely-there flesh, appendages that humans don't have. He sputters, shock overriding sense to fill his throat with water. The disrupted surface of the lake churns further when he bursts through the surface, sending ripples in every direction as he coughs and chokes, stomach twisting to rid itself of its unwelcome intruder. Heart racing now, he whips around in circles, wiping trails of water from his face, though they cling to his hair, ready to replace their fallen brothers a moment later.
Leave, the sane part of him orders, the part that tells him to use his seat belt and brush his teeth and to leave the fucking razors alone, to put them back where they belong and stop gazing at them like they're a solution. But it's weaker now, reed-thin and easy enough to ignore. So he stays, stopping as he turns to look over his shoulder and catches the surfacing of a dark-haired man with eyes that don't quite match the sneer on his pretty mouth.
“Back so soon, are we?” He mocks Castiel, a cutting tone that would have him blushing, though he's beyond it now. He knows this creature, understands something in it.
“What did you do to me?” Dean circles around Castiel, tail powerful, creating waves that have him kicking harder to remain in one place.
“Nothing you didn't want,” he smirks, showing off those small fangs. They're wicked, surreal, and Castiel's tongue itches to lick them. To make sure they're actually exist.
“Don't give me that shit,” his lips slip under the water as a harsher, hacking cough grips him. The hands on his back are a surprise; he shies away from them, but they grip hard and lift.
“Breathe.”
There's confusion in those strange green eyes, one look down and then up, a reflective sort of spark that piques Castiel's curiosity. The creature is one of a thousand masks, and he wants to peel them off one by one.
“I saw what happened,” he whispers to the water, Dean behind him, fingers curled around his biceps, now with enough pressure to leave 10 neat bruises. “I saw your wife and daughter.”
“You don't know anything,” he gets, a cold reply that would be fairly convincing in its apathy, save for the tremor just underneath the soft growl. “I have no family.”
“You did.” The hands move up to his shoulders and Castiel feels weightless, staring into an endless expanse where the sky kisses water. It spurs him on, the euphoria of gazing into infinity, so he reaches back, crossing his arm over his heart and rests his hand on Dean's. He doesn't expect the creature to cry out, a low simmer of agony, bowstrings pulled tight, just before ripping away from the frets. The chest against his back, cool as a distant star, goes limp and all that keeps Dean from falling under the surface is the hand Castiel still holds, though now its weight is awkward, dead. He turns to support Dean, whose eyes are open but blank, mouth slack.
“Hey,” he whispers, a breath away from that pink flush of skin, and when he says it again they touch, accidentally or on purpose, but it's all he can think of now, to touch, and so he presses down harder, wrapping himself around Dean, pleading with his body for the other man, the creature, the thing, to just wake up. He doesn't care about the dig of teeth into his bottom lip, doesn't understand why he needs the other man to be alright, but it doesn't matter. An eternity passes, lives upon lives and he's just holding the other man, waiting for those stuck-together lashes to part, for the soot of them to steal Castiel's breath as they rise over veridian bright enough to unsettle.
When they finally do, Dean looking up at him in confusion for a split second before opening his mouth wider, a need-air reflex, Castiel backs up and their lips part, sticking just a moment, painting Dean's mouth with blood he doesn't remember losing. He's staring at Castiel, tongue tracing gently the lines and indents of his bottom lip, gathering Castiel's essence to be guided back down his throat, to taste, to absorb. He's staring and Castiel just looks back into a wall of confusion, uncertainty pulling the sharp angles of Dean's face even tighter, making him look even more the beautiful, dangerous predator he seems to be.
“What's happening?”
The question is time speeding back up and then quickening; it's a shock enough that Dean pushes him, tail twitching between Castiel's legs.
“Stay away. Just get away from here.”
Without a backward glance, Dean glides away, each movement like the curve a snake's boneless back.
***
Castiel holds a piece of wrinkled paper in his hand, though it's been smoothed, pressed flat with now-dry hands. He glances down at the gibberish, then back at his laptop. It had overheated on the bed, motor running too hot during his strange excursion. He takes his tasks in steps. Getting dressed was the easiest; legs through shorts, arms through a shirt, pull up, pull down, finished. Fishing the forgotten note off the floor had been more difficult. It had been surrounded by the drops of his bloody nose, a reminder of the bizarro world he'd opened the door to, the key lost in the shuffle.
The code is a neat bit of scrawl, efficient handwriting with no flourishes.
R pmld blf droo urtfiv gsrh lfg, Xzhgrvo.
R girvw, nb vmgriv oruvgrnv. Yfg R xlfowm'g.
ZWZIL. Urmw z dzb gl vmw rg, nb mvksvd.
He notices the Rs first. It stands alone, which means, most likely, it's an I. Or an A. But the frequency of it; Castiel brings a hand to his mouth, chews on the haggard nail of his index finger nail writes the alphabet out neatly. Underneath I, he writes R, and then his answer stares him in the face. The encoded note is the alphabet, backwards. The words come together like ants on a picnic blanket, black dots stark against the white of the paper.
I know you will figure this out, Castiel.
I tried, my entire lifetime. But I couldn't.
ADARO. Find a way to end it, my nephew.
Adaro. The word curls itself around his tongue, a quiet utterance that leaves his lips pursed, ready to be kissed. It's the only non sequitur in an otherwise normal note.
Adaro, adaro, adaro.
It's echoey, a trill of the familiar that Castiel digs for, memory that edges away as he gets close. Pulling his computer back into his lap, he types the word, holds his breath and presses the enter button. The results are lists and lists of mythology resources, ghouls and goblins and bump-in-the-night monsters:
The adaro, unlike its more benevolent relative, the mercreature, is not something to be trifled with. Beautiful, appealing to men and women alike, the adaro is a lost soul, one trapped in an eternity of suffering and grief.
The first adaro is said to have been a rich merchant who cared too much for his drink and adultery and not enough for the lives of his wife and children. His involvement in dishonest trade led to their rather brutal deaths. When he dared ask the Gods for revenge, they handed down a spell that transformed legs into fins, teeth into fangs, mortality into and endless procession of days.
What the Gods didn't realize was that the curse could be passed on. The thrall of an adaro is as powerful as a siren's song, and much more dangerous. They attract and are attracted to those without hope, those clinging onto life by the tips of their fingers. It has not been made clear, exactly, how the curse is passed on, only that the adaro will willingly take victims to end its own suffering.
The curse is passed on, and the adaro perishes.
***
It doesn't come above the water for any real reason. Sometimes the night air is easier to breathe, less thick than the blue-black water lapping at its shoulders. It smirks at the house only a few hundred feet away, a structure it doesn't like to look at very often because a curl of wrongness always starts in his stomach, hot and tight and it doesn't go away until it dives back down to the coolest part of the lake and stretches out there, letting the gills by its hips and neck work peacefully.
But now...it wants to see. It wants to know what's going on behind the glow of curtains and blinds, to see the man with sky eyes and night hair. It wants to taste him again, the bittersweet of loss and pain and anger, all easy on its tongue, energy to take and take and take. It's good at taking now, breathing in the lives of others, the tears and the frowns and the quiet-loud thoughts people leave to fester in their minds.
But this human. He's good, too good. Everything about him is what it wants and needs and oh, it was so close to having it all today. But it pushed him away, told him to get out. Get away words while its body howled for the man to come closer, to let it taste and bite and feed. It had been shaken, that's all. Unsure of why it lost consciousness, why it woke up in the man's arms, lips pressed to his. The human should have wanted to run, should have left it there to drown, though it wouldn't have.
It heaves itself onto the sand, tail ungainly and awkward on the land, muscles all wrong for the gritty surface. Doesn't matter though, not now. It lifts itself like pendulum, reaches the end of the beach and stares at the uneven rocks leading down to the road. It lays down. The sky above is limitless and it is but a speck. It raises its arms, not minding the scrapes as it stretches, reaching for something on either side, flickers of the past and emotions it doesn't know what to do with anymore.
“Soon,” it assures the empty air, arching its back, a flick of the tail punctuation of its guarantee. It itches at its waist, frowning at the feeling of tight skin. It's too dark, though, to see how the scales there have lightened into a cast-over-morning grey.