i want destiny. i want narrative arcs that do not end human because human does not exist- not in this world, where seth’s descendants are all too happy to slaughter each other and the supposed predators will do anything they can to avoid slaughtering them.
sam claims his birthright, maybe not willingly, maybe as part of the deal. the king of hell, all of demonkind, and all he wants to do is be good. all he wants is to be clean, all bloodsoahed and lightningeyed under a crown of barbed wire. (gordon thought it was funny, just before he tore out sam’s heart. he was not the one laughing at the end of the night.)
dean’s parallel to the monsters he was raised to slaughter just becomes more apparent over time. his father’s ghost always just out of sight, always around the corner of his eye, always in the rearview mirror of the car he now haunts. when eve bit him, he couldn’t be cured, and he became eve’s supposed perfect monster. the only one left, after the two kids were killed, and turned by eve herself before he burned her from the inside. an alpha of unimaginable strength and power. who better to take his mother’s place in purgatory? (he always was a mama’s boy.)
and the angel with the crack in his chassis, the one who watched all four archangels get torn out of the grand plan, the one who always yearned after an absent, cold father, finds new meaning in reconstruction. and maybe heaven isn’t perfect, but they’re working on it. and maybe they can get it right this time.(of course, a little boy is born to a woman named kelly kline a few years later. and, of course, gabriel made sure to ask first.)
Castiel was in Dean's room when Sam returned, sitting in the chair at his desk and watching him sleep. He glanced at Sam, and didn't ask how whatever he'd been doing had gone as he stood up and left. But he did squeeze Sam's shoulder when he passed him.
Sam just stood there for a while, looking at Dean. He looked so peaceful, in an obscene, almost twisted way. Bloated belly laid out on the mattress in front of him where he'd settled on his side, one arm tucked around it. Tube running into his mouth, slight motion of cheeks and lips and throat as he sucked and swallowed.
Soda sitting in his mouth all night was going to be absolute hell on his teeth, they needed to figure out some way to keep him from winding up with a hundred cavities a week. Then again, according to Crowley, he was literally made for this now. Maybe he didn't have to worry about cavities any more than he did hardening arteries or high blood sugar.
He was still thinking along those lines when he realized that Dean's breathing had changed, and his eyes were open a slit. In the dark, Sam couldn't tell what shape his pupils were.
Inspired by scorpiod's "His Shoulders Blot Out the Stars" on AO3, a marvelous fic in which Sam's a vampire. I'm imagining how damn long those two really good hunters would survive as vampires - maybe 'til the end of the world.
meant to finally write happy wedding vibes this week but instead i finally finished up my most ridiculously hand in unloveable hand destiel fic :D dean eats people and he's the good one!! @longkissgoodnightbatmanandtwofacis to blame/thank for the amazing prompt involving betrayal, monsters and bad therapy. i think i added the apocalypse??
Though he’d never liked mornings and he awoke feeling cold, with his limbs stiff; Sam still felt more alive, more hopeful about the day ahead than he had in years.
He could function through and force himself into mornings far better than most of the team joining him though, proved yet again by the lack of figures he could see moving. Feeling impatient, Sam got himself out of his sleeping sack and to his feet and looked up at the sun sluggishly starting to rise up through the misty, hazy sky, lighting up the bleak wastelands beneath.
As a teenager, Sam had devoured whole libraries worth of apocalyptic fiction. He’d enjoyed the thought exercise of what humanity might start to look like after all its known structures and habitats were destroyed, he’d enjoyed the appearance of monsters, something to draw them all back together again.
He could have done without the live experience.
Just one other figure was up, crouched over a small travel cafetiere. Smiling grimly and shaking his head at the sight, Sam walked over to join them, glad that coffee was one of the few luxuries that the compound hadn’t yet run out of. They hadn’t planned for the apocalypse, not the way it arrived. By the time any order had been established in their particular fortress town, all the supermarkets and grocery stores had long since been looted, but not many had bothered taking anything from Starbucks but its most immediate perishables.
So, yeah. Coffee was still around, but it didn’t come easy, you didn’t see it often.
So of course Sam’s mysterious benefactor had brought a stash with him.
“Didn’t think it was your turn on watch, Cas,” Sam pointed out as he took a seat across from the biologist on one of the logs they’d dragged over to their fire the night before.
“Charlie needed her rest,” Cas explained, not looking up from his coffee press as though he were afraid it would do something dangerous if he stopped.
“And you didn’t?”
Cas smiled slightly, but Sam had learned in the months they’d spent planning for and leading this expedition together that this was as positive a reaction as could ever likely be expected from him. He was taciturn, to say the least.
“You know, Cas…” Sam paused for a moment, considering whether it was worth continuing. “We’re so close now. Don’t you think you could… maybe be straight with me now?”
Blue eyes finally darted up from the coffee. “I’ve never lied to you, Sam.”
“I didn’t think you had,” Sam assured him, thrown, as always, by the almost uncomfortable sincerity in the other man’s face. “But… Cas, you’ve got to know, when you came to me with the proposal for this expedition… obviously I was going to look into you. You turned up out of the blue with university funding and an armed guard ready to go into the same area my brother went missing. It was exactly what I wanted to hear – of course I thought it was too good to be true.”
Cas sat very still, but it seemed to Sam as though he was working which direction it would be most beneficial to spring off in.
“What was -”
“Cas, Dean’s still in half of your old social media pics.”
“Your job doesn’t give you clearance for internet use.”
Sam gave him a look. “Cas.” When his friend continued to say nothing, Sam cleared his throat and took his own turn staring at the cafetiere, which neither of them had pressed down yet, still. “I’m thinking that since you arranged all this, and it clearly means a lot to you… Look, me and Dean weren’t seeing much of each other before it happened. We didn’t live close, our lives kept us busy – whatever.” As Sam was speaking, he noticed that Cas’s whole frame seemed to droop, like his shoulders had just become ten times heavier. “But I knew enough. I knew that something broke his heart. I know that’s part of why he went off on that dumbass mission in the first place.”
“I didn’t know what he was planning,” Cas said, his voice even rougher than usual. “If I had, maybe -”
“Hey,” Sam said, taking a risk and reaching for Cas’s hand. “I wasn’t trying to go in for an interrogation here. Just… we’re probably the closest things we both have to knowing what we’re both going through. I mean, I know for me -” Sam huffed a laugh. “It’s taken so damn long but we’re finally close. This time tomorrow, we could get some sort of…”
“Closure.”
“I was gonna say answers, but sure. Yeah.” Sam narrowed his eyes. “You really never thought he was alive, did you?”
“Hope…” Cas rubbed his hands together and shrugged. “I find it tends to make it worse.”
Sam felt his lips twitch up, though he hadn’t felt like smiling. “I guess.”
“I’m sorry I… wasn’t entirely straight with you.”
“I’m just glad you invited me along.”
Cas shrugged. “Half of it was selfish, I’ll admit. You might not have made it your profession as Dean did, but the two of you have well-earned reputations for unlikely survival.”
Sam smiled wryly and picked up the coffee press. “And the other half?”
“Dean… he would have wanted you to have that closure. You deserve it.”
“Might be closure. Or…”
“I want to believe it, Sam. I…” He choked on his words and looked back at the ground. “I want to believe he could still be out there. But I can’t.”
Sam pushed the press down. “We’re out here to find changed survivors. To study them.”
“And in the unlikely circumstance that Dean is one of them, you think that would be easier, be better, than if we find that he died?”
“I don’t know what we’ll find today. But it’s like you say. Survival’s what we’re good at.”
Cas took a quick breath in. “You didn’t see him when he left.”
Sam had nothing to say to that, and thanks to the loud screeching noise from somewhere off to their left which made them both turn their heads slowly, he didn’t have to come up with anything.
“That…”
“Sounded close.”
They nodded at each other and stood up slowly. The sun still wasn’t fully up yet. There was a lot out in the darkness that none of them wanted to see. The books had been consistently right about that part.
They moved off in opposite directions, getting their people up and moving. Usually they might happily stall to find what was approaching them – they were all well-prepared, and it could be useful research for later. But now, wordlessly, they were in agreement.
Not today.
*
Cas hadn’t been this deep into the Eastern Wilds for a very long time. It wasn’t that he was scared to venture out – thanks to a mixture of natural abilities and acquired skills there was little which could threaten him. But it made him sad, seeing the wreckage that had been made of the world
Sometimes, of course, being at home just made him feel guilty. He’d forget for a moment what life was like outside the carefully cultivated urban greenery of the compound - could almost forget that the world hadn’t ended. Of course, over this last year, those moments of forgetfulness had almost stopped entirely.
It was all too easy to dwell on the hard truths when all his mind was drawn back to was, well. Dean. Who would have been merciless in making fun of him if he’d been around to hear Cas air that thought aloud.
But Dean wasn’t around. And even if by some freakish miracle he was…
Cas wouldn’t be someone he’d want to talk to.
Nodding as Sam glanced back at him, silently motioning that they should move forwards, Cas found himself staring at the back of his head, lost in thought, as the rest of their small team moved in behind them. Sam hadn’t seemed like much of a natural leader when Cas had first met him, approaching him after one of his classes. He was certainly able to command the attention of his group of teenagers, but Cas wouldn’t have been able to imagine him leading a charge against a wall of unfamiliar monsters, even knowing he was Dean’s brother. But now he’d seen it for himself and had no more doubts. Sam was the sort of person people wanted to listen to, wanted to follow. And the reason for his drive in what he did was so clear, so good. His brother, the only family he’d had left, was missing, had been missing for over a year, and Sam would do whatever it took to find out what had happened to him out there.
Luckily for Cas, he hadn’t questioned too hard as to what had made him leave.
It hadn’t been an officially sanctioned mission, but with the role he had as one of the compound’s uniformed defenders, no one had questioned Dean when he left, when he’d walked out that gate alone. They had later, when a string of bodies had shown up inside the compound, all linking back evidentially to Dean’s empty sleeping quarters. People had started whispering again about the possibility of monsters hiding themselves inside the walls. Whispering very particularly that at least he’d had the good sense to end himself outside the walls before anyone had found out, that he’d had the sense to experience shame in what he was.
Sam couldn’t believe it of course. It was obvious he still carried some hope that he might find his brother alive, and that when he did, that no obstacle would be significant enough to remain in their way for him to bring him home and resume their lives.
Cas wasn’t sure what, if anything, he was hoping for himself. The Winchester brothers may have survived for years alone on the outside of the walls, but Cas knew a few more extra things about monsters and everything else out there.
It was guilt more than hope which had carried him this far. Guilt, and a lack of interest in anything waiting back home for him.
Dean, or at least the answers of what had become of him, were outside. So he’d ventured out.
A loud shaking of a bush still standing somewhere to the right of them made Sam pause, and glance back at the group. Cas watched him count their heads, their names all forming feverishly on his lips.
This time, Cas could understand Sam’s caution. Wild animals were few now, and those there were tended not to be much friendlier than the monsters.
But generally Cas had found Dean’s brother to be, as Dean had advertised him to be, a cautious character at all times. He had carefully kept his knowledge of Cas close to his chest. Dean wouldn’t have agreed to go out there with Cas at all until he’d been entirely straight with him from the start. But Sam seemed prone to keeping his own secrets and accepting of others holding closely onto their own.
He was definitely Dean’s brother. They shared – or had shared – a rather irreverent sense of humour and a passionate belief in right and wrong. Sam had just learnt to be quieter in his jokes and his feelings.
But Dean had rarely ever been capable of quiet. Almost never until –
Well, until he’d stopped talking altogether, and then he’d gone.
And Cas doubted that Sam’s personality of restraint would stretch to still treating him so well if he knew how much the fault of that rested with him.
“Wait,” Sam said, bending down. “That’s a footprint.”
Cas kept his eyes on the bush that had moved while they paused, trusting that Sam knew what he was looking for.
“It looks like they’re moving off…”
Dragging his eyes back to follow Sam, Cas started moving off again in the direction. “Was it wearing shoes?”
“What?”
“The footprint,” Cas asked again. “Did it look like it was a foot or a shoe?”
“Uh…. Shoes. Definitely shoes.”
Cas nodded and kept his eyes scanning their route ahead. He was responsible for their small team of a dozen people being out there in the first place, and now they were right in the centre of the place where Dean’s last voice message had come in from. If anything happened to any of them now, it was going to be on him. He knew that for himself he had little to fear, but the rest of them…
They were human, they were fragile.
Sam’s tracking led them towards an old church building on a hill, on the edge of what looked like the remains of a small town.
“Up there?” Kevin murmured, behind Cas.
“I don’t like it,” Rufus agreed. “Nothing good nests indoors. It’s always the more dangerous fuckers that get their paws on that kind of shelter.”
Sam stared up at the church, or chapel, really, in silence. “You’re right. Keep a perimeter outside. But it looks quiet, and it’s still daylight. I’m going in, but no one else needs to follow.”
Cas watched as Charlie heaved out a long sigh. “Sam…”
“You’re not going in alone, Sam,” Cas told him, lifting his rifle meaningfully. The man had a rather aggravating tendency towards self-sacrifice, and Cas had learned the hard way not to give him any opportunity to indulge in it.
Sam’s mouth squirmed up in a strained smile as he nodded and started walking forwards. Dutifully, the others followed, forming the suggested perimeter around the building.
The door wasn’t locked, or barred, and Cas and Sam walked into the dark chapel unhindered. The windows let in some cracks of light from them, but the stain glass had long ago been boarded up, some long-forgotten safety effort made by a previous inhabitant. Though he had not informed Sam of the particular ability, Cas was grateful that his limited night vision allowed him sight of the obstacles, or rather lack of obstacles, ahead of them. The place seemed to be empty.
But the hairs on the back of Cas’s neck would not lie still, and his nose insisted that they were not alone, so he kept his gun raised and ready.
When whatever had happened to Dean had happened he’d been entirely alone. No Cas, no Sam, no team of friends or comrades. Just himself alone with his thoughts –
Cas was jolted from his own thoughts at the strange screeching sound which was cried out sharply from behind the alter. Glancing at Sam, who nodded silently, they both carefully advanced towards where the noise had come from. Then, as one, they looked over the alter.
It was children – two of them.
Not human children. That much was obvious. The eyes shone a strange purple and their canine teeth were elongated. And then one of them – the girl, who was a little older, at maybe seven or eight – made that horrible screeching noise again.
She was answered by a much louder roar coming from the right of them.
Somehow both of them had failed to see the adult male watching them from the corner, who now advanced, claws out and eyes glowing brightly.
Of course the young had not been left alone.
“Cas…”
“I see him, Sam,” Cas said, readying his gun to fire. The man’s face, still shadowed, twitched, and Cas suspected he was ready to spring at them at any moment. He had never seen creatures like this before and had no idea how effective an attack from one of them might be.
“No, Cas – it’s Dean.”
Cas froze, and was seized by the strangest impulse to burst out laughing. Of course the creature in front of them couldn’t be – but he knew that jawline. The frame of the face was sallower and disguised by unfamiliar facial hair, but those shoulders, the stance, the tilt of the head as he listened to them speak – listened but did not recognise…
“No. He -”
Sam stepped forwards slowly, loosening his grip on the gun in his hands and letting the strap around his shoulders drop it to his hip. “Dean,” He said again, his voice choking up over the name. “It’s me – it’s us – Dean, we’ve come to take you home.”
The purple light seemed to dim and for a moment Cas caught his breath – despite himself allowing hope to sweep over him, to let himself think it was a spark of recognition he saw glowing there. He had never known it to be true of any turned individual he’d found in his research, but surely if anyone could defy the odds, defy the science then it had to be –
When Dean lunged forwards, Cas barely had time to react.
Stupid, stupid hope. It really did only make everything worse in the end.
so i mean, twink!cas as some kind of monster being the mate of even worse big bad monster!dean tho
ur gonna pay for this came MARK MY WORDS u come into MY HOUSE u bring me suggestions of destiel au featuring twink!cas and implied monster porn and size difference.... i cannot believe....
i’ve been thinking about this message since u sent it and trying to turn it into an au how dare u
