Feral, Chapter 6
Title: Feral 6/?
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: 3,177
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
Castiel’s lungs burn. Not the pleasant hum of being pushed too hard during a run, steps pounding faster than blood can stream; no, this is the grate of skin against pavement, rocks against the blade of a knife.
“Ow,” he whispers to himself, head falling to the side. He doesn’t open his eyes yet, though, preferring to slowly take stock of the rest of himself. To see what else has been maimed in the showdown between himself and the thing in the lake.
His neck pulses warm, agitated by the motion of his head. The ache is dull, though, a stretch like half-healed wounds. An itch, not a pain. His body is heavy with the cautionary throb of a just-cooled fever, somewhere between lethargy and the shakiness of an immune system in overdrive.
As he comes back to himself, though, toes stretching and legs moving to shift up toward his chest, he hears the low echo of water splashing, feels the heaviness of it on his skin as it moves gently over him. Eyes open, now, he sees that his legs are submerged, though his upper body is safely on the beach, away from the treacherous fingers of a rising tide.
How did I…
The question doesn’t need to form, really, because a glance to his left reveals the easy answer. Dean.
The adaro lies motionless, head turned away from Castiel. The only sign of life is the slight twitch of his chest up and down, and then the soft lull of a voice, a whisper, maybe not even meant for him.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry.”
The words, delicate as dandelion fluff in the wind, pool in Castiel’s stomach like a rock, though it quickly melts to magma and spreads to his blood, vessels burning.
“Sorry?” he hisses, throat protesting, the rasp of his voice barely able to push past his lips. “You’re sorry?”
He rolls, clambers onto hands and knees that will later regret sliding so quickly along the rough surface of the sand underneath him. But not now. Not when all he’s focused on is getting to Dean, and he does, hands on the thing’s shoulders, nails digging in, pushing so the monster’s staring suddenly up at him, eyes wide, cheeks wet.
The green is brighter, more jarring against the sheen of tears. The monster’s lashes stick together, but their length is still little-boy sweet, and for a moment, a split second, Castiel is taken aback by the sense of hopelessness- and…is that fear in Dean’s eyes?
Something shifts in him then, opens itself up like a flower blooming to soak up the sun. He wants the pain that flashes across Dean’s face, wants the hollow ache of whatever’s happening inside him. His tongue slicks his lips and he raises a balled fist, the sharp crack of it against Dean’s jaw satisfying enough that he hisses through his teeth, a warm wave of pleasure echoing the blow. Dean moans softly beneath him; from pleasure or pain, Castiel doesn’t know, but he does enjoy the shudder of the other man, the trembling of unsteady breath and deep grief.
“How sorry are you, Dean? Huh?” He traces the other man’s jaw, the light stubble there, fingers scratching at the sharp-angled bone. “You’ve turned me into a monster, Dean, so sorry-”
Something moves in front of him and his words cut off, lose their wings to flutter to the ground softly as flakes of snow. He looks up, brows drawing together because he heard no car, no footfalls to warn him of another presence. But as his eyes take in the details of the man in front of him, he understands why.
Whiskey-toned eyes, just a shade too bright, pin him with their unblinking gaze. He is turned to stone, mouth open, trying to form the words of an explanation that doesn’t come. There’s nothing.
“Castiel.” Three syllables hold enough sadness, enough disappointment to wash over him like a tidal wave. He’s pulled under, washed clean of the strange hunger he felt, leaving only hot, aching shame behind.
“Finn,” he grits, too-long teeth stabbing into his bottom lip, blood welling up to dribble down toward his chin. He flinches when the apparition moves closer, can’t help but want to curl in on himself, make himself smaller so his love can’t see what he’s become. What he’s becoming.
“Cas,” Finn’s close now, so close, and he’s reaching out, hand on Castiel’s cheek now, thumb rubbing the skin, a gesture so comforting, so warm familiar home that he gasps out loud, a sob echoing through his chest like a phantom heartbeat.
“Oh, god,” he says, hand covering Finn’s, grasping at his dead lover’s arm. “Oh god, Finn.”
“Shhh,” Finn kneels, pulls Castiel to his chest, a broad space that’s somehow warm and steady and smells like rain and the cold of fall. He wipes the blood from Castiel’s chin, brushes a kiss across his forehead that sears through him, love and warmth and trust bursting in its wake.
“Cas,” Finn says again, backing off to look into his eyes. “This isn’t you.”
“I-” He wants to explain, to tell Finn how this happened to him, how it hurts so much to be alive, how he just wants it all to be over because Finn took his heart with him when he left, but as he looks into his lover’s eyes, the honey-warmth there, he realizes how empty it would sound.
“Help him, Cas,” Finn’s lips thin, now, eyes ticking back and forth on his own. “You have to help him.” And then he’s pressing forward, pressing a kiss to Castiel’s mouth, licking it open, deftly maneuvering around the fangs that have taken up residence there.
“Please,” Castiel whispers, breathing Finn’s air, hands in the other man’s hair, pressing tight so hearts can beat as one, “Please don’t go.”
Finn’s lips quirk up to one side, though the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Sorry, babe,” he says, eyes filling to mirror Castiel’s own, warm wet burning and distorting the world in front of him, “But I have to.”
And just like that, he fades away, until the only thing Castiel is left with is the sound of his own quick breath and a pressure in his eyes that tells him the tears on his cheeks won’t be the only ones to fall.
***
Slowly, Castiel becomes aware that there’s a slight weight on his shoulder, a tentative presence that neither squeezes with comfort, nor clasps in friendship. It just is.
Dean is sitting up, now, eyes locked on his with an expression that he can’t interpret, so he takes in the other details instead. Darkness in the thin skin under his eyes, the blooming purple from his own fist, open lips that protects fangs shorter than he remembers. But the eyes. The green is a map of light and dark, a weave of bright and muted, and all of it works together to look into Castiel, to see through him. As if he holds an answer of some kind. As if he carries something valuable.
When Dean begins to speak, his words come out fast, like he’s trying to edge Castiel out of the conversation, to keep him from replying until his piece has been said.
“I know I can’t be forgiven, Castiel. I know that what I did was terrible, and there is no going back from that. But until yesterday, until I-”
His words stiffen here, voice going lower, gruff with disgust for himself, “Until I drank your blood, I didn’t know who I was. I couldn’t remember. All I knew was hunger. Hunger for pain and despair, and you-”
Hands splayed, Dean’s fingers curl, come in toward his own chest. He looks down at them, at the slight sharpness of the nails, and then back up at Castiel. “You were filled with both. And I couldn’t help but want it all. I didn’t know it would affect you. I didn’t know it would start to change you.”
“All these years, I’ve been here.” Dean gazes at the stars now, eyes lifted to the uncaring heavens that stare back silently, unwilling to give the answers, the explanations he searches for. His voice is thicker now, hitches over words. “I forgot about them. I forgot about Grace and Elizabeth. I forgot why I hurt so badly, every day. Because I’d become a monster. Just like the men who took their lives.”
Castiel feels the sting of fingers wrapping around his heart, sorrow for someone else besides himself. Concern. Caring. Things he cast off when Finn died, parts of himself that are awkward and stunted now. Of its own accord, seemingly, his hand slips between Dean’s clasped fingers, holding both at the same time. Dean’s head jerks down, surprise contorting his features, squeezing out the tears that had built in his eyes. They track down his face, hold on by their fingertips to his chin and then are cast away, landing on Castiel’s hands.
“I miss them,” he says, blinking again, wet lashes dark. “I miss them so much.”
“I know,” Castiel breathes, any animosity left for the creature, for Dean, deflating inside with a quiet sigh. “I know.”
“Do you think I’m damned?” Dean asks. His voice is steady, but the twitch of his jaw, the down-pull of bitten lips shows the brewing storm beneath a calm surface.
“I think you were blind and numb with grief,” Castiel says, looking into Dean’s eyes, trying to show the truth of his words, surprised himself at the depth of the emotion bleeding through them, “And the creature who made you what you are took advantage. You couldn’t have known what was going to happen.”
“Just like you.” And maybe Dean’s going to say more, going to wring himself out until everything he touches is flooded with guilt, but Castiel chooses that moment to slot his lips over the other man’s, to open his lips and carefully open them with the points of his teeth. Maybe Dean opens his mouth in shock, but he responds as he does, tracing Castiel’s lip before inviting him in to taste.
The kiss doesn’t consume him as their previous encounters had; this isn’t a pull that drags his soul up by the edges, a fight that leaves his insides in tatters and consciousness on shaky ground. This is warmth, the golden set of the sun as it breathes a goodbye to one part of the swiftly turning planet, leaving a glow on the skin of the mere mortals below. They’re vaulted into a shared space with an electricity that leaves both gasping at each other’s breath, hands clutching at arms but even physical touch is somehow far away, muted beneath the closeness of where they are. Boundaries have been left behind, windows opened and blinds drawn back to bare the souls of two creatures more alike than they know.
Castiel is wrapped in Dean, in the suffering he’s had, the loss, but also the memories, like a thousand fractured pieces of glass, of the man he used to be. He’s lost to a river of fierce love and loyalty, watches, agape, as images fly by. Dean, holding hands with a woman, lifting her white veil to lean in and brush his lips against hers, the sun shining between them, alighting upon long lashes that draw back up to reveal green eyes and the joy held by them. Dean, bouncing a swaddled infant up and down gently as his wife looks on, sweat on her brow, but peace in her eyes. Touches. Smiles. The easy contentedness of family and love. And then the rip of its loss, the creation of a hole that can never be filled and reaches greedy hands out to grow, grow, grow.
Castiel knows Dean must be seeing him, too, the life lived and the lives lost. Because though his heart beats and his lungs continue their forever in-out repeat pattern, he’s not living. Hasn’t for awhile, not when Finn is just out of reach; flitting through the back of his mind, caressing the tip of his tongue, keeping cold the ice in his heart.
Finn.
Caramel eyes, easy smile.
Gone.
Fragile life slipped through fingers that clawed hard, clinging with screaming desperation, but couldn’t hold on. Life is fragile. Life is the inevitability of death.
Castiel, he hears, or feels, because it wells up in him like the burn of a shot without a chaser, pools in his throat, on his tongue and stays there, unwilling to give an inch. Castiel. Soft, now, light like flower petals on skin, floating weightless in the air. It beckons, asks to be joined, to add his voice and being to the hum already playing inside his mind, a tune that begs to be harmonized. But he remembers the last joy he felt. The distinct before and after of vulnerability, the precipice that love sets you on before sending hurricane winds your way.
No.
Red behind his eyes, red streams in his mouth where he bites down hard, scoring Dean’s tongue and jolting them out of their false paradise.
“What’s the matter, Dean?” He snarls, lips curling up over his teeth, showing them like a dog with hackles raised.
“Castiel,” Dean spits blood between them, stains the sand but keeps going, ducking his head to look into Castiel’s eyes. “I saw. I understand.”
“What did you see, Dean?” He’s smiling now, a shark’s grimace that’s comfortable to sink into as a warm bath. The anger feels good in his veins, the thrum a roar of a car engine as it winds. “You saw my dead lover?”
He rests his forehead against the other man’s, lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“You saw the death of my humanity, Dean. I’ve only just realized it.”
“Awww, don’t get upset,” he continues, fingers on the other man’s waist, scratching at the dried scales there. “Not over me, anyway. You’re not looking too good right now.”
Oh, how his words affect Dean. His poker face is good, but Castiel breathes in the wrenching feeling of a rug being slipped out from beneath feet, a bottom dropping out with no safety net. Dean’s confusion is thick, his mind torn by the weight of new, familiar humanity, the grief he never dealt with and the promise, the idea of something good that slips away, mist on the breeze, before he can ever breathe it in. He doesn’t expect Castiel to spring forward, isn’t ready for the primal, savage rip of teeth into his shoulder, jolting his consciousness down to two white-hot points. It’s why Castiel manages a few deep draughts before Dean scrambles back, braces his arms in the sand and pulls away with all his might, ripping open the muscle of his shoulder as he lands in the shallows of the lake.
His mouth is open, questions forming, even as he backs further into the water.
“Why?” It’s chin is coated with Dean’s blood, slick on lips that are licked slowly, sensually. “Because I give up, Dean. Because I don’t care. Not anymore.” And with that, It stands stiffly, turns on Its heel and walks away from the lake, into the shadows that cling to It like a second skin.
***
Dean can’t breathe. He doesn’t know how it worked before, how he could go underwater easily, could swallow the water down and use it like air without a second thought. The magic was strong and he was unaware, comatose in his own monstrous body. But now, he’s fading, and a single dive starts to burn tired lungs, cracked and dry as fire kindling. He’s dying.
And maybe he wouldn’t feel so bad about that, would give in to the sweet release of his own last breath, but not at the expense of another. Not when he’s done something so foul his stomach gnashes at his ribs, a constant ache of guilt in his chest so heavy he’s not sure how he can still float. He’s made a monster out of an innocent; taken grief and twisted it into the cold blade of revenge, of hatred. He’s not that man.
He’s not a man at all, anymore.
But he’ll do what he can. What he has to. Because he can’t die with this blood on his hands, can’t try to wipe away the blame that’s settled heavily on his shoulders, twisting at his neck, pressing his temples.
His arm throbs, though at least it’s stopped bleeding. He can’t use it to pull himself up onto the dock, so he drags himself to the other side of the beach instead, an area protected by tall, sharp grass that slices at his already tender tail.
His tail.
He doesn’t want to look at it, doesn’t want to explore the mutation that’s warped his mind and body, but curious fingers don’t listen to a stern mind and so they reach down, sliding over the strangely rough surface. It’s not supposed to feel like that, right? He remembers fishing as a child, shrieking in delight over catching his first fish, the alien animal wriggling in his hands after his father had taken the hook out. It had been slippery, a gloss of slick scales and powerful muscle.
He feels something give way, pull loose like hair from a head and knows, before he holds his hand up to the moonlight, what’s happened, but he looks just the same. His hand is covered, dry, crumbling flakes of scales falling off even as he tries to examine them.
It’s hard to choke back the scream that so desperately wants to reach into the night sky, that would shred his lungs if it could because the power of it is too strong, has been locked away in an unfeeling heart for too long and now threatens to pull him under before he can make things right.
Instead of screaming, he curls his shedding tail underneath himself and looks up into the endlessness of the night sky. The stars are cold, pinpricks of light that radiate beauty and warmth, but are really just as empty as he is.
***
It looks into the mirror, noting the sheen of Its eyes, the even pallor of skin that makes blue veins in his face stand out like kites in the sky. A glance down at Its wrists reveal an intricate pattern of scales emerging, some already breaking the skin, replacing the pale scheme of humanity with something more permanent, more durable. Stiff legs carried it back into the house, muscles not quite working as they should, but that sends a flame of pleasure through the lower part of his stomach, excitement and arousal hot underneath cool skin. The changes excite it, beckon it toward forever, and now it’s ready to come willingly.
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: 3,177
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
Castiel’s lungs burn. Not the pleasant hum of being pushed too hard during a run, steps pounding faster than blood can stream; no, this is the grate of skin against pavement, rocks against the blade of a knife.
“Ow,” he whispers to himself, head falling to the side. He doesn’t open his eyes yet, though, preferring to slowly take stock of the rest of himself. To see what else has been maimed in the showdown between himself and the thing in the lake.
His neck pulses warm, agitated by the motion of his head. The ache is dull, though, a stretch like half-healed wounds. An itch, not a pain. His body is heavy with the cautionary throb of a just-cooled fever, somewhere between lethargy and the shakiness of an immune system in overdrive.
As he comes back to himself, though, toes stretching and legs moving to shift up toward his chest, he hears the low echo of water splashing, feels the heaviness of it on his skin as it moves gently over him. Eyes open, now, he sees that his legs are submerged, though his upper body is safely on the beach, away from the treacherous fingers of a rising tide.
How did I…
The question doesn’t need to form, really, because a glance to his left reveals the easy answer. Dean.
The adaro lies motionless, head turned away from Castiel. The only sign of life is the slight twitch of his chest up and down, and then the soft lull of a voice, a whisper, maybe not even meant for him.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry.”
The words, delicate as dandelion fluff in the wind, pool in Castiel’s stomach like a rock, though it quickly melts to magma and spreads to his blood, vessels burning.
“Sorry?” he hisses, throat protesting, the rasp of his voice barely able to push past his lips. “You’re sorry?”
He rolls, clambers onto hands and knees that will later regret sliding so quickly along the rough surface of the sand underneath him. But not now. Not when all he’s focused on is getting to Dean, and he does, hands on the thing’s shoulders, nails digging in, pushing so the monster’s staring suddenly up at him, eyes wide, cheeks wet.
The green is brighter, more jarring against the sheen of tears. The monster’s lashes stick together, but their length is still little-boy sweet, and for a moment, a split second, Castiel is taken aback by the sense of hopelessness- and…is that fear in Dean’s eyes?
Something shifts in him then, opens itself up like a flower blooming to soak up the sun. He wants the pain that flashes across Dean’s face, wants the hollow ache of whatever’s happening inside him. His tongue slicks his lips and he raises a balled fist, the sharp crack of it against Dean’s jaw satisfying enough that he hisses through his teeth, a warm wave of pleasure echoing the blow. Dean moans softly beneath him; from pleasure or pain, Castiel doesn’t know, but he does enjoy the shudder of the other man, the trembling of unsteady breath and deep grief.
“How sorry are you, Dean? Huh?” He traces the other man’s jaw, the light stubble there, fingers scratching at the sharp-angled bone. “You’ve turned me into a monster, Dean, so sorry-”
Something moves in front of him and his words cut off, lose their wings to flutter to the ground softly as flakes of snow. He looks up, brows drawing together because he heard no car, no footfalls to warn him of another presence. But as his eyes take in the details of the man in front of him, he understands why.
Whiskey-toned eyes, just a shade too bright, pin him with their unblinking gaze. He is turned to stone, mouth open, trying to form the words of an explanation that doesn’t come. There’s nothing.
“Castiel.” Three syllables hold enough sadness, enough disappointment to wash over him like a tidal wave. He’s pulled under, washed clean of the strange hunger he felt, leaving only hot, aching shame behind.
“Finn,” he grits, too-long teeth stabbing into his bottom lip, blood welling up to dribble down toward his chin. He flinches when the apparition moves closer, can’t help but want to curl in on himself, make himself smaller so his love can’t see what he’s become. What he’s becoming.
“Cas,” Finn’s close now, so close, and he’s reaching out, hand on Castiel’s cheek now, thumb rubbing the skin, a gesture so comforting, so warm familiar home that he gasps out loud, a sob echoing through his chest like a phantom heartbeat.
“Oh, god,” he says, hand covering Finn’s, grasping at his dead lover’s arm. “Oh god, Finn.”
“Shhh,” Finn kneels, pulls Castiel to his chest, a broad space that’s somehow warm and steady and smells like rain and the cold of fall. He wipes the blood from Castiel’s chin, brushes a kiss across his forehead that sears through him, love and warmth and trust bursting in its wake.
“Cas,” Finn says again, backing off to look into his eyes. “This isn’t you.”
“I-” He wants to explain, to tell Finn how this happened to him, how it hurts so much to be alive, how he just wants it all to be over because Finn took his heart with him when he left, but as he looks into his lover’s eyes, the honey-warmth there, he realizes how empty it would sound.
“Help him, Cas,” Finn’s lips thin, now, eyes ticking back and forth on his own. “You have to help him.” And then he’s pressing forward, pressing a kiss to Castiel’s mouth, licking it open, deftly maneuvering around the fangs that have taken up residence there.
“Please,” Castiel whispers, breathing Finn’s air, hands in the other man’s hair, pressing tight so hearts can beat as one, “Please don’t go.”
Finn’s lips quirk up to one side, though the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Sorry, babe,” he says, eyes filling to mirror Castiel’s own, warm wet burning and distorting the world in front of him, “But I have to.”
And just like that, he fades away, until the only thing Castiel is left with is the sound of his own quick breath and a pressure in his eyes that tells him the tears on his cheeks won’t be the only ones to fall.
***
Slowly, Castiel becomes aware that there’s a slight weight on his shoulder, a tentative presence that neither squeezes with comfort, nor clasps in friendship. It just is.
Dean is sitting up, now, eyes locked on his with an expression that he can’t interpret, so he takes in the other details instead. Darkness in the thin skin under his eyes, the blooming purple from his own fist, open lips that protects fangs shorter than he remembers. But the eyes. The green is a map of light and dark, a weave of bright and muted, and all of it works together to look into Castiel, to see through him. As if he holds an answer of some kind. As if he carries something valuable.
When Dean begins to speak, his words come out fast, like he’s trying to edge Castiel out of the conversation, to keep him from replying until his piece has been said.
“I know I can’t be forgiven, Castiel. I know that what I did was terrible, and there is no going back from that. But until yesterday, until I-”
His words stiffen here, voice going lower, gruff with disgust for himself, “Until I drank your blood, I didn’t know who I was. I couldn’t remember. All I knew was hunger. Hunger for pain and despair, and you-”
Hands splayed, Dean’s fingers curl, come in toward his own chest. He looks down at them, at the slight sharpness of the nails, and then back up at Castiel. “You were filled with both. And I couldn’t help but want it all. I didn’t know it would affect you. I didn’t know it would start to change you.”
“All these years, I’ve been here.” Dean gazes at the stars now, eyes lifted to the uncaring heavens that stare back silently, unwilling to give the answers, the explanations he searches for. His voice is thicker now, hitches over words. “I forgot about them. I forgot about Grace and Elizabeth. I forgot why I hurt so badly, every day. Because I’d become a monster. Just like the men who took their lives.”
Castiel feels the sting of fingers wrapping around his heart, sorrow for someone else besides himself. Concern. Caring. Things he cast off when Finn died, parts of himself that are awkward and stunted now. Of its own accord, seemingly, his hand slips between Dean’s clasped fingers, holding both at the same time. Dean’s head jerks down, surprise contorting his features, squeezing out the tears that had built in his eyes. They track down his face, hold on by their fingertips to his chin and then are cast away, landing on Castiel’s hands.
“I miss them,” he says, blinking again, wet lashes dark. “I miss them so much.”
“I know,” Castiel breathes, any animosity left for the creature, for Dean, deflating inside with a quiet sigh. “I know.”
“Do you think I’m damned?” Dean asks. His voice is steady, but the twitch of his jaw, the down-pull of bitten lips shows the brewing storm beneath a calm surface.
“I think you were blind and numb with grief,” Castiel says, looking into Dean’s eyes, trying to show the truth of his words, surprised himself at the depth of the emotion bleeding through them, “And the creature who made you what you are took advantage. You couldn’t have known what was going to happen.”
“Just like you.” And maybe Dean’s going to say more, going to wring himself out until everything he touches is flooded with guilt, but Castiel chooses that moment to slot his lips over the other man’s, to open his lips and carefully open them with the points of his teeth. Maybe Dean opens his mouth in shock, but he responds as he does, tracing Castiel’s lip before inviting him in to taste.
The kiss doesn’t consume him as their previous encounters had; this isn’t a pull that drags his soul up by the edges, a fight that leaves his insides in tatters and consciousness on shaky ground. This is warmth, the golden set of the sun as it breathes a goodbye to one part of the swiftly turning planet, leaving a glow on the skin of the mere mortals below. They’re vaulted into a shared space with an electricity that leaves both gasping at each other’s breath, hands clutching at arms but even physical touch is somehow far away, muted beneath the closeness of where they are. Boundaries have been left behind, windows opened and blinds drawn back to bare the souls of two creatures more alike than they know.
Castiel is wrapped in Dean, in the suffering he’s had, the loss, but also the memories, like a thousand fractured pieces of glass, of the man he used to be. He’s lost to a river of fierce love and loyalty, watches, agape, as images fly by. Dean, holding hands with a woman, lifting her white veil to lean in and brush his lips against hers, the sun shining between them, alighting upon long lashes that draw back up to reveal green eyes and the joy held by them. Dean, bouncing a swaddled infant up and down gently as his wife looks on, sweat on her brow, but peace in her eyes. Touches. Smiles. The easy contentedness of family and love. And then the rip of its loss, the creation of a hole that can never be filled and reaches greedy hands out to grow, grow, grow.
Castiel knows Dean must be seeing him, too, the life lived and the lives lost. Because though his heart beats and his lungs continue their forever in-out repeat pattern, he’s not living. Hasn’t for awhile, not when Finn is just out of reach; flitting through the back of his mind, caressing the tip of his tongue, keeping cold the ice in his heart.
Finn.
Caramel eyes, easy smile.
Gone.
Fragile life slipped through fingers that clawed hard, clinging with screaming desperation, but couldn’t hold on. Life is fragile. Life is the inevitability of death.
Castiel, he hears, or feels, because it wells up in him like the burn of a shot without a chaser, pools in his throat, on his tongue and stays there, unwilling to give an inch. Castiel. Soft, now, light like flower petals on skin, floating weightless in the air. It beckons, asks to be joined, to add his voice and being to the hum already playing inside his mind, a tune that begs to be harmonized. But he remembers the last joy he felt. The distinct before and after of vulnerability, the precipice that love sets you on before sending hurricane winds your way.
No.
Red behind his eyes, red streams in his mouth where he bites down hard, scoring Dean’s tongue and jolting them out of their false paradise.
“What’s the matter, Dean?” He snarls, lips curling up over his teeth, showing them like a dog with hackles raised.
“Castiel,” Dean spits blood between them, stains the sand but keeps going, ducking his head to look into Castiel’s eyes. “I saw. I understand.”
“What did you see, Dean?” He’s smiling now, a shark’s grimace that’s comfortable to sink into as a warm bath. The anger feels good in his veins, the thrum a roar of a car engine as it winds. “You saw my dead lover?”
He rests his forehead against the other man’s, lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“You saw the death of my humanity, Dean. I’ve only just realized it.”
“Awww, don’t get upset,” he continues, fingers on the other man’s waist, scratching at the dried scales there. “Not over me, anyway. You’re not looking too good right now.”
Oh, how his words affect Dean. His poker face is good, but Castiel breathes in the wrenching feeling of a rug being slipped out from beneath feet, a bottom dropping out with no safety net. Dean’s confusion is thick, his mind torn by the weight of new, familiar humanity, the grief he never dealt with and the promise, the idea of something good that slips away, mist on the breeze, before he can ever breathe it in. He doesn’t expect Castiel to spring forward, isn’t ready for the primal, savage rip of teeth into his shoulder, jolting his consciousness down to two white-hot points. It’s why Castiel manages a few deep draughts before Dean scrambles back, braces his arms in the sand and pulls away with all his might, ripping open the muscle of his shoulder as he lands in the shallows of the lake.
His mouth is open, questions forming, even as he backs further into the water.
“Why?” It’s chin is coated with Dean’s blood, slick on lips that are licked slowly, sensually. “Because I give up, Dean. Because I don’t care. Not anymore.” And with that, It stands stiffly, turns on Its heel and walks away from the lake, into the shadows that cling to It like a second skin.
***
Dean can’t breathe. He doesn’t know how it worked before, how he could go underwater easily, could swallow the water down and use it like air without a second thought. The magic was strong and he was unaware, comatose in his own monstrous body. But now, he’s fading, and a single dive starts to burn tired lungs, cracked and dry as fire kindling. He’s dying.
And maybe he wouldn’t feel so bad about that, would give in to the sweet release of his own last breath, but not at the expense of another. Not when he’s done something so foul his stomach gnashes at his ribs, a constant ache of guilt in his chest so heavy he’s not sure how he can still float. He’s made a monster out of an innocent; taken grief and twisted it into the cold blade of revenge, of hatred. He’s not that man.
He’s not a man at all, anymore.
But he’ll do what he can. What he has to. Because he can’t die with this blood on his hands, can’t try to wipe away the blame that’s settled heavily on his shoulders, twisting at his neck, pressing his temples.
His arm throbs, though at least it’s stopped bleeding. He can’t use it to pull himself up onto the dock, so he drags himself to the other side of the beach instead, an area protected by tall, sharp grass that slices at his already tender tail.
His tail.
He doesn’t want to look at it, doesn’t want to explore the mutation that’s warped his mind and body, but curious fingers don’t listen to a stern mind and so they reach down, sliding over the strangely rough surface. It’s not supposed to feel like that, right? He remembers fishing as a child, shrieking in delight over catching his first fish, the alien animal wriggling in his hands after his father had taken the hook out. It had been slippery, a gloss of slick scales and powerful muscle.
He feels something give way, pull loose like hair from a head and knows, before he holds his hand up to the moonlight, what’s happened, but he looks just the same. His hand is covered, dry, crumbling flakes of scales falling off even as he tries to examine them.
It’s hard to choke back the scream that so desperately wants to reach into the night sky, that would shred his lungs if it could because the power of it is too strong, has been locked away in an unfeeling heart for too long and now threatens to pull him under before he can make things right.
Instead of screaming, he curls his shedding tail underneath himself and looks up into the endlessness of the night sky. The stars are cold, pinpricks of light that radiate beauty and warmth, but are really just as empty as he is.
***
It looks into the mirror, noting the sheen of Its eyes, the even pallor of skin that makes blue veins in his face stand out like kites in the sky. A glance down at Its wrists reveal an intricate pattern of scales emerging, some already breaking the skin, replacing the pale scheme of humanity with something more permanent, more durable. Stiff legs carried it back into the house, muscles not quite working as they should, but that sends a flame of pleasure through the lower part of his stomach, excitement and arousal hot underneath cool skin. The changes excite it, beckon it toward forever, and now it’s ready to come willingly.