SPN: The Brothers Grimm - Chapter 5
Title:The Brothers Grimm
Beta: skylar_matthews
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU, Brothers Grimm verse, Fusion, adventure, horror
Pairings: Dean/Cas, mentions of Dean/Cassie, suggested Dean/Lisa
Spoilers: Some for The Brothers Grimm
Warnings: some sexual situations, violence, abuse of the French language, lots of UST
Word Count: 26 000 (in total)
Summary: Under the new French occupation, Dean and Sam Grimm have made a living conning people into believing that fairytales and monsters are real. But when they stumble upon the village of Marbaden, everything that they thought they knew gets turned upside down and instead of creating fairytales, they find themselves living in one.
A/N: Written as part of the dc-everafter Challenge. This is loosely based on the film The Brothers Grimm starring Matt Damon and Heath Ledger. Some significant changes have been made compared to the film but there will still be plot spoilers for those who have yet to watch The Brothers Grimm.
Special thanks to my lovely beta reader, skylar_matthews, and to talli_approved for creating the challenge. This was an awesome excuse to fuse the SPN universe with one of my favorite films and I had a great time writing this! Lastly, I want to thank h4ppy-fun-b4ll for creating beautiful artwork to accompany my fic. It was fun working with you, darling! <3
Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | Epilogue | Art Masterpost
The darkness of the forest made it impossible to see anything in front of him but still, Dean ran.
Feet pounding against the ground, twigs snapping and stumbling over the occasional fallen branch, Dean felt like a fish out of water without the use of his vision. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since the blood-red moonlight crept through the trees and dimly lit the path in front of him before everything had plunged into eternal darkness. Maybe he had gone blind from fear?
“Shit!”
Bark scraped against his arm and Dean wheezed out in pain. His heart was beating so wildly, it was drowning out the sound of his noisy footfalls. As he clutched at his arm, he slowed his steps a little until he heard it close behind him, its chilling howl turning his blood ice cold.
It felt as if it were everywhere. Howling and growling, crawling in the shadows, waiting for him to drop his guard…
Dean ran faster, using his good arm to feel out the area in front of him. He was panting so heavily now, he thought his lungs would collapse at any moment.
He chanced a quick glance behind him and was met with a pair of glowing, blue eyes too close for comfort.
As he pushed through the thick brush in front of him, the thin glow of moonlight burst through the branches like a bright light at the end of a long tunnel. He cried out and stumbled, grabbing onto the nearest tree for support. Leaning against it and struggling to regain his breath, he momentarily forgot that he was being pursued.
Any minute now, it would be on him. And here he was, clinging desperately to a tree to keep the pain in his tired legs from making him drop.
He gasped until his lungs no longer felt like bursting. As he regulated his breathing, a sudden, hopeful revelation made him pause: he could no longer here his pursuer.
Hesitantly, he began to turn around…
And then he felt a body press up against him, sinking into the depths of a pair of familiar, deep blue eyes…
“Dean…” Castiel breathed, his gravelly voice a whisper against Dean’s skin.
Dean shivered despite the droplets of sweat trickling down his face. That voice…heat pooled in places Dean wouldn’t dare admit to as Castiel held him pinned against the tree, strong arms keeping Dean up. There was something not quite right about any of this but Dean didn’t care. His eyes drifted to those plush, full lips, only a breath away. Castiel’s steady breathing mingled with Dean’s weak pants, meeting halfway, and Dean couldn’t help but feel like a needy, wanton whore, his growing erection pressed against Castiel’s thigh…
There was almost something feral about the way those blown pupils, rimmed with the hint of blue, stared hungrily at Dean…
But when Dean tried to speak, he was silenced by Castiel’s lips, drinking from him greedily like he were the fountain of youth. An explosion of heat and sparks erupted behind Dean’s closed eyes and he moaned into the kiss, caressing his tongue against Castiel’s with a need that had him silently begging Castiel to take him then and there, to drop him down onto all fours and claim him like a bitch in heat. Everything about Castiel’s touch was dominating: from those hands that had Dean pinned to the tree, to that leg that was rubbing Dean in all the right ways. Castiel gripped Dean’s shoulders so tightly, Dean felt like he was being branded.
It should have bothered Dean that he didn’t care. It should have bothered Dean that he was whimpering into Castiel’s mouth and tugging at Castiel’s hair in the same way women have often done to Dean. Women. But not even all the sex-starved, beautiful women in the world could have tempted Dean away from Castiel. Not when his tongue was doing things that had Dean seeing stars.
When Castiel finally pulled back, leaving Dean even more helplessly breathless than he had been moments before, Dean yet again got a good look at those mesmerizing eyes that never failed to trap him.
“…my, my, what big eyes you have, Cas,” Dean whispered jokingly, fingers still deeply laced in Castiel’s dark locks.
But it was the sudden, foreign looking grin on the man’s usually stoic face that made a chill run through Dean as everything fell into place.
“…and what big teeth…”
The words tumbled from his lips in a shaky gasp.
What else was he to do when staring at a mouthful of pointed canine teeth?
*
Dean would like to say in was the mid-morning sun streaming brightly into his eyes that woke him up. But the patched animal hide used to cover the lone window in the hut made it so that the open room was rather dark even during the day. He would have liked to say it was the smell of dead animal that had him spring up from his bed, and then curse, as he hit his head on the low ceiling of the bed built into the rafters of the hut. But, unfortunately, he would always have to live with the knowledge that it was his own blood-curling (let’s pretend ‘manly’) scream, and then string of loud cursing from hitting his head, that made him wake up so suddenly from what otherwise was a semi-scary, bordering on erotic, dream.
But, hell, Dean also wasn’t about to admit that a walking wolf man made him nearly cum in his pants. Animals never really did it for him, anyway.
He scrambled down the ladder, half falling onto the ground below. At least he still had his clothes on though…eww, he still had his clothes on from the night before.
Right. The night before. Witches, moving trees, child eating horses and wolves.
Which means that right now he was-
“Dean.”
Dean jumped back against the ladder as he felt a comforting hand invade his personal space.
“You-you-you-“
Dean was trembling and mumbling and looking into those blue eyes.
The same blue eyes that happened to belong to a fucking wolf that tried to fucking eat him because it turns out that wolves do fucking eat people.
And horses.
But Dean would ponder more about the implausibility of the latter later.
Castiel’s eyes widened with concern. But hell no, Dean was not falling for that.
He slapped away Castiel’s hand as the hunter tried to touch him again.
“D-don’t you f-f-fucking touch me!” Dean demanded, in a manly voice. His high-pitched squeal really betrayed the brave image he painted for himself in his head.
Oh, and that he was shaking against the ladder and close to pissing himself also wasn’t helping.
“You must calm down.”
“F-fuck no! I-I-I know!”
“Dean…”
It was that same, impatient tone Castiel had used most often with Dean in these last few days.
“Y--you’re the w-w-wolf!”
That made Castiel pause and tilt his head.
“…wolf?”
“Don’t play dumb with me!” Dean shouted, finding some of his bravado since Castiel did look rather, well, perplexed. And not so intimidating. “Last night. The w-woods.”
“Oh,” Castiel responded, nodding slowly. “That.”
“Yes. That!”
“I was not a wolf, Dean.”
“The fuck you’re no-!”
“I was a dog.”
Dean gaped at Castiel.
Castiel blinked.
Then Dean passed out.
*
“The day Anna went missing…I saw Gabriel.”
Clutching a damp cloth to the back of his forehead, Dean’s eyes shot up at the mention of Castiel’s brother. “Wait-Gabriel as in dead Gabriel?”
“Not dead,” Castiel started again, pausing to meet Dean’s eyes. “But transformed.”
“…you’re losing me here, Cas.”
Dean winced. Shit, he didn’t know if it was because his head still smarted or if he really couldn’t wrap his head around what Cas was saying. But after all the crap he saw the night before, what was one more walking dead freak show?
“Gabriel never died, Dean. Something else got to him, changed him. It is making him collect the children from this village.”
And it suddenly dawned on Dean what Castiel was trying to say.
“So that wolf we saw…”
“That was Gabriel.”
Great.
“I was not intending on harming you or Sam,” Castiel continued. “But I also could not allow you to harm Gabriel. I believe that I may be able to reverse the spell.”
Speaking of Sam…
“Where is Sammy?”
Dean stole a quick glance around the hut, the absence of his younger brother troubling him.
“He returned to the Inn to collect a few items. To kill the witch.”
Ah.
“This whole experience…it’s been 9 parts fucked up…” Dean said, shaking his head.
“What I have trouble understanding is how someone who has hunted witches before can be so taken by doubt.”
The observation startled Dean and for his knowledge of survival and hunting, Dean was a bit surprised that Castiel had yet to catch on to Dean’s career as a con artist. Then again, the best con artists get away with conning quite easily, otherwise Dean’s career would have come to a halt years ago.
“That’s because it’s all a farce,” he admitted. “The witches, demons, trolls…everything I’ve killed, I’ve never really killed.”
“…oh.” A pause. “I admit I had my suspicions…you seem rather lacking in faith in anything.”
It was the first time that Dean noticed the wooden rosary hanging on the wall. It stirred up old memories, hurtful ones that Dean had pushed back years ago. Mary had had a similar one that she clutched weakly in her hands on the night she…
“I used to think those things were real,” Dean found himself saying, “back when Sammy and I were kids. I’d tell him stories bout trolls, ghosts, imps. Tell him to use salt to line the windows, keep the demons from comin’ in at night. It drove dad mad that we’d waste salt like that but mom would smile and say, ‘our boys just want to keep us safe’.”
Dean chuckled, his eyes softening at the mention of his mother. “But then…mom got real sick. Dad had to work every day so that left Sammy and me to take care of her. Even with dad’s money, we couldn’t afford medicine…so dad asked me to sell our horse. I shoulda done it but when Sammy and I went out, I saw this girl I kinda had a thing for…”
“So you sent Sam on his own?”
Dean nodded. “I was 12, just started noticin’ them. Didn’t think much of it. Until Sammy returned carrying these beans…”
Dean shook his head bitterly, turning his head away from Castiel’s imploring stare as he felt shame course through him. “Sammy was so excited. Said the man told him the beans would bring us fortune, solve all our problems. That was when I knew these little stories I’d tell him-I’d taken it too far. I couldn’t have Sammy believing in fairy tales when our mom was lying in her death bed. And when dad found out what I’d done…geez, he beat the living hell outta me and I had to beg ‘im not to touch Sammy, told him it was all my fault. Mom died two days later.”
An uncomfortable silence fell between them, the room becoming almost too stifling for Dean. The bitterness for his own lapse in judgment left an awful taste in his mouth and he thought of Mary, so pale and weak and forgiving, as she told her boys she was going some place better. It was then that Dean truly lost faith in anything out there, especially when all he could think was his mother is just another corpse in the ground at her funeral.
“Always felt it was my fault…maybe if I’d been a better brother, a better son, mom would…”
But he couldn’t bring himself to say the thought that had haunted his teenage years. “I take it out on Sam, always been hard on him since. Stubborn kid just wants to believe in somethin’.”
“He has been more receptive to this situation,” Castiel remarked.
“Yeah,” Dean said, with a small chuckle. He switched hands as he continued to apply the damp cloth to the bump on the back of his head. Not that it really was helping. “Guess you’re proof of that. How did you end up a wolf-dog-man thing anyway?”
“On the day I lost Anna, I saw her speaking with a man in the woods. When I approached…that was when I saw Gabriel. And he turned.”
Castiel’s eyes seemed to grow more distant as he recalled the memory and he looked away from Dean.
“I was hesitant at first…until I saw Anna follow him blindly, deeper into the woods. I was not sure I believed what I had seen. But I had to stop him. That was when he attacked me and I got…this…”
Castiel pulled his loose tunic over his head and Dean gulped as he drank in the sight of Castiel’s bared, lithe upper body. The sight of those rock, hard abs and the trickle of hair leading down below the waistband of Castiel’s loose fitting pants, clinging precariously to those narrow hips…Dean’s throat was dry and the better parts of his strange nightmare began leaking into his head, causing a faint blush to rise to his cheeks.
But besides some old scars, to be expected of anyone who makes their living hunting animals, there was nothing out of the ordinary about Castiel’s chest. His upper, left bicep was currently bandaged, spots of dried blood now staining the off-white cloth.
“Didn’t you get that last night?” Dean asked, indicating to Castiel’s arm.
“That is not what I am speaking of.”
And it wasn’t until Castiel turned around that Dean knew what the hunter had been trying to say.
Three large, claw-like scars covered Castiel’s back, beginning from the top left shoulder and dragging down to his right hip. The skin must have been deeply penetrated to have left such a glaring mark, with the thin layer of pink skin appearing raw and fragile. Dean dropped the cloth he had been holding to his head in shock and before he could really process what he was doing, his fingers were trailing over the scar gingerly.
Instead of flinching beneath his touch, Castiel shivered, a tremor that reverberated along his skin. Dean’s fingers trailed lower, crossing over the small of Castiel’s back and eventually ending at the edge of his hipbone. Similar to his dream, Dean’s heart was pounding so frantically that it filled the sudden stillness in the room, seemed to drown out everything except the vision of this man-wolf-dog-thing in front of him (Dean wasn’t even sure what to call him).
“Looks like it hurts,” Dean mumbled. The feel of Castiel’s hipbone, now resting comfortably beneath his hand, was already arousing Dean. The smell of the forest seemed to live on the hunter’s skin, the scent of pine and fresh, spring water drifting the confines of Castiel’s invaded personal space and making Dean’s dick twitch.
Castiel turned around, Dean’s hand now dragging along his skin until Castiel was facing him and Dean could see everything in his eyes: desire and want, held back by hesitation that kept Castiel’s lips just a breath away from Dean’s. The way those eyes looked at him, with a feral and carnal lust that made Dean shiver…
“It no longer hurts,” Castiel answered, a whisper against Dean’s skin.
And Dean thought, fuck it!, wolf thing or not. He leaned in, taking the fluttering of Castiel’s eyes closed as all the invitation he needed, lips about to brush against the hunter’s own-
The pounding on Castiel’s door startled both of them and they broke apart.
“Y-you expecting company?” Dean mumbled, looking everywhere but at Castiel’s face. He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.
Castiel scrambled to put his shirt back on but just as he deemed himself presentable, the door burst open and French soldiers poured into the room.
“Dean Grimm,” one of them started, with a thick French accent as he broke into clipped German, “we have a warrant for your arrest.”
Chapter 6
Beta: skylar_matthews
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU, Brothers Grimm verse, Fusion, adventure, horror
Pairings: Dean/Cas, mentions of Dean/Cassie, suggested Dean/Lisa
Spoilers: Some for The Brothers Grimm
Warnings: some sexual situations, violence, abuse of the French language, lots of UST
Word Count: 26 000 (in total)
Summary: Under the new French occupation, Dean and Sam Grimm have made a living conning people into believing that fairytales and monsters are real. But when they stumble upon the village of Marbaden, everything that they thought they knew gets turned upside down and instead of creating fairytales, they find themselves living in one.
A/N: Written as part of the dc-everafter Challenge. This is loosely based on the film The Brothers Grimm starring Matt Damon and Heath Ledger. Some significant changes have been made compared to the film but there will still be plot spoilers for those who have yet to watch The Brothers Grimm.
Special thanks to my lovely beta reader, skylar_matthews, and to talli_approved for creating the challenge. This was an awesome excuse to fuse the SPN universe with one of my favorite films and I had a great time writing this! Lastly, I want to thank h4ppy-fun-b4ll for creating beautiful artwork to accompany my fic. It was fun working with you, darling! <3
Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | Epilogue | Art Masterpost
The darkness of the forest made it impossible to see anything in front of him but still, Dean ran.
Feet pounding against the ground, twigs snapping and stumbling over the occasional fallen branch, Dean felt like a fish out of water without the use of his vision. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since the blood-red moonlight crept through the trees and dimly lit the path in front of him before everything had plunged into eternal darkness. Maybe he had gone blind from fear?
“Shit!”
Bark scraped against his arm and Dean wheezed out in pain. His heart was beating so wildly, it was drowning out the sound of his noisy footfalls. As he clutched at his arm, he slowed his steps a little until he heard it close behind him, its chilling howl turning his blood ice cold.
It felt as if it were everywhere. Howling and growling, crawling in the shadows, waiting for him to drop his guard…
Dean ran faster, using his good arm to feel out the area in front of him. He was panting so heavily now, he thought his lungs would collapse at any moment.
He chanced a quick glance behind him and was met with a pair of glowing, blue eyes too close for comfort.
As he pushed through the thick brush in front of him, the thin glow of moonlight burst through the branches like a bright light at the end of a long tunnel. He cried out and stumbled, grabbing onto the nearest tree for support. Leaning against it and struggling to regain his breath, he momentarily forgot that he was being pursued.
Any minute now, it would be on him. And here he was, clinging desperately to a tree to keep the pain in his tired legs from making him drop.
He gasped until his lungs no longer felt like bursting. As he regulated his breathing, a sudden, hopeful revelation made him pause: he could no longer here his pursuer.
Hesitantly, he began to turn around…
And then he felt a body press up against him, sinking into the depths of a pair of familiar, deep blue eyes…
“Dean…” Castiel breathed, his gravelly voice a whisper against Dean’s skin.
Dean shivered despite the droplets of sweat trickling down his face. That voice…heat pooled in places Dean wouldn’t dare admit to as Castiel held him pinned against the tree, strong arms keeping Dean up. There was something not quite right about any of this but Dean didn’t care. His eyes drifted to those plush, full lips, only a breath away. Castiel’s steady breathing mingled with Dean’s weak pants, meeting halfway, and Dean couldn’t help but feel like a needy, wanton whore, his growing erection pressed against Castiel’s thigh…
There was almost something feral about the way those blown pupils, rimmed with the hint of blue, stared hungrily at Dean…
But when Dean tried to speak, he was silenced by Castiel’s lips, drinking from him greedily like he were the fountain of youth. An explosion of heat and sparks erupted behind Dean’s closed eyes and he moaned into the kiss, caressing his tongue against Castiel’s with a need that had him silently begging Castiel to take him then and there, to drop him down onto all fours and claim him like a bitch in heat. Everything about Castiel’s touch was dominating: from those hands that had Dean pinned to the tree, to that leg that was rubbing Dean in all the right ways. Castiel gripped Dean’s shoulders so tightly, Dean felt like he was being branded.
It should have bothered Dean that he didn’t care. It should have bothered Dean that he was whimpering into Castiel’s mouth and tugging at Castiel’s hair in the same way women have often done to Dean. Women. But not even all the sex-starved, beautiful women in the world could have tempted Dean away from Castiel. Not when his tongue was doing things that had Dean seeing stars.
When Castiel finally pulled back, leaving Dean even more helplessly breathless than he had been moments before, Dean yet again got a good look at those mesmerizing eyes that never failed to trap him.
“…my, my, what big eyes you have, Cas,” Dean whispered jokingly, fingers still deeply laced in Castiel’s dark locks.
But it was the sudden, foreign looking grin on the man’s usually stoic face that made a chill run through Dean as everything fell into place.
“…and what big teeth…”
The words tumbled from his lips in a shaky gasp.
What else was he to do when staring at a mouthful of pointed canine teeth?
*
Dean would like to say in was the mid-morning sun streaming brightly into his eyes that woke him up. But the patched animal hide used to cover the lone window in the hut made it so that the open room was rather dark even during the day. He would have liked to say it was the smell of dead animal that had him spring up from his bed, and then curse, as he hit his head on the low ceiling of the bed built into the rafters of the hut. But, unfortunately, he would always have to live with the knowledge that it was his own blood-curling (let’s pretend ‘manly’) scream, and then string of loud cursing from hitting his head, that made him wake up so suddenly from what otherwise was a semi-scary, bordering on erotic, dream.
But, hell, Dean also wasn’t about to admit that a walking wolf man made him nearly cum in his pants. Animals never really did it for him, anyway.
He scrambled down the ladder, half falling onto the ground below. At least he still had his clothes on though…eww, he still had his clothes on from the night before.
Right. The night before. Witches, moving trees, child eating horses and wolves.
Which means that right now he was-
“Dean.”
Dean jumped back against the ladder as he felt a comforting hand invade his personal space.
“You-you-you-“
Dean was trembling and mumbling and looking into those blue eyes.
The same blue eyes that happened to belong to a fucking wolf that tried to fucking eat him because it turns out that wolves do fucking eat people.
And horses.
But Dean would ponder more about the implausibility of the latter later.
Castiel’s eyes widened with concern. But hell no, Dean was not falling for that.
He slapped away Castiel’s hand as the hunter tried to touch him again.
“D-don’t you f-f-fucking touch me!” Dean demanded, in a manly voice. His high-pitched squeal really betrayed the brave image he painted for himself in his head.
Oh, and that he was shaking against the ladder and close to pissing himself also wasn’t helping.
“You must calm down.”
“F-fuck no! I-I-I know!”
“Dean…”
It was that same, impatient tone Castiel had used most often with Dean in these last few days.
“Y--you’re the w-w-wolf!”
That made Castiel pause and tilt his head.
“…wolf?”
“Don’t play dumb with me!” Dean shouted, finding some of his bravado since Castiel did look rather, well, perplexed. And not so intimidating. “Last night. The w-woods.”
“Oh,” Castiel responded, nodding slowly. “That.”
“Yes. That!”
“I was not a wolf, Dean.”
“The fuck you’re no-!”
“I was a dog.”
Dean gaped at Castiel.
Castiel blinked.
Then Dean passed out.
*
“The day Anna went missing…I saw Gabriel.”
Clutching a damp cloth to the back of his forehead, Dean’s eyes shot up at the mention of Castiel’s brother. “Wait-Gabriel as in dead Gabriel?”
“Not dead,” Castiel started again, pausing to meet Dean’s eyes. “But transformed.”
“…you’re losing me here, Cas.”
Dean winced. Shit, he didn’t know if it was because his head still smarted or if he really couldn’t wrap his head around what Cas was saying. But after all the crap he saw the night before, what was one more walking dead freak show?
“Gabriel never died, Dean. Something else got to him, changed him. It is making him collect the children from this village.”
And it suddenly dawned on Dean what Castiel was trying to say.
“So that wolf we saw…”
“That was Gabriel.”
Great.
“I was not intending on harming you or Sam,” Castiel continued. “But I also could not allow you to harm Gabriel. I believe that I may be able to reverse the spell.”
Speaking of Sam…
“Where is Sammy?”
Dean stole a quick glance around the hut, the absence of his younger brother troubling him.
“He returned to the Inn to collect a few items. To kill the witch.”
Ah.
“This whole experience…it’s been 9 parts fucked up…” Dean said, shaking his head.
“What I have trouble understanding is how someone who has hunted witches before can be so taken by doubt.”
The observation startled Dean and for his knowledge of survival and hunting, Dean was a bit surprised that Castiel had yet to catch on to Dean’s career as a con artist. Then again, the best con artists get away with conning quite easily, otherwise Dean’s career would have come to a halt years ago.
“That’s because it’s all a farce,” he admitted. “The witches, demons, trolls…everything I’ve killed, I’ve never really killed.”
“…oh.” A pause. “I admit I had my suspicions…you seem rather lacking in faith in anything.”
It was the first time that Dean noticed the wooden rosary hanging on the wall. It stirred up old memories, hurtful ones that Dean had pushed back years ago. Mary had had a similar one that she clutched weakly in her hands on the night she…
“I used to think those things were real,” Dean found himself saying, “back when Sammy and I were kids. I’d tell him stories bout trolls, ghosts, imps. Tell him to use salt to line the windows, keep the demons from comin’ in at night. It drove dad mad that we’d waste salt like that but mom would smile and say, ‘our boys just want to keep us safe’.”
Dean chuckled, his eyes softening at the mention of his mother. “But then…mom got real sick. Dad had to work every day so that left Sammy and me to take care of her. Even with dad’s money, we couldn’t afford medicine…so dad asked me to sell our horse. I shoulda done it but when Sammy and I went out, I saw this girl I kinda had a thing for…”
“So you sent Sam on his own?”
Dean nodded. “I was 12, just started noticin’ them. Didn’t think much of it. Until Sammy returned carrying these beans…”
Dean shook his head bitterly, turning his head away from Castiel’s imploring stare as he felt shame course through him. “Sammy was so excited. Said the man told him the beans would bring us fortune, solve all our problems. That was when I knew these little stories I’d tell him-I’d taken it too far. I couldn’t have Sammy believing in fairy tales when our mom was lying in her death bed. And when dad found out what I’d done…geez, he beat the living hell outta me and I had to beg ‘im not to touch Sammy, told him it was all my fault. Mom died two days later.”
An uncomfortable silence fell between them, the room becoming almost too stifling for Dean. The bitterness for his own lapse in judgment left an awful taste in his mouth and he thought of Mary, so pale and weak and forgiving, as she told her boys she was going some place better. It was then that Dean truly lost faith in anything out there, especially when all he could think was his mother is just another corpse in the ground at her funeral.
“Always felt it was my fault…maybe if I’d been a better brother, a better son, mom would…”
But he couldn’t bring himself to say the thought that had haunted his teenage years. “I take it out on Sam, always been hard on him since. Stubborn kid just wants to believe in somethin’.”
“He has been more receptive to this situation,” Castiel remarked.
“Yeah,” Dean said, with a small chuckle. He switched hands as he continued to apply the damp cloth to the bump on the back of his head. Not that it really was helping. “Guess you’re proof of that. How did you end up a wolf-dog-man thing anyway?”
“On the day I lost Anna, I saw her speaking with a man in the woods. When I approached…that was when I saw Gabriel. And he turned.”
Castiel’s eyes seemed to grow more distant as he recalled the memory and he looked away from Dean.
“I was hesitant at first…until I saw Anna follow him blindly, deeper into the woods. I was not sure I believed what I had seen. But I had to stop him. That was when he attacked me and I got…this…”
Castiel pulled his loose tunic over his head and Dean gulped as he drank in the sight of Castiel’s bared, lithe upper body. The sight of those rock, hard abs and the trickle of hair leading down below the waistband of Castiel’s loose fitting pants, clinging precariously to those narrow hips…Dean’s throat was dry and the better parts of his strange nightmare began leaking into his head, causing a faint blush to rise to his cheeks.
But besides some old scars, to be expected of anyone who makes their living hunting animals, there was nothing out of the ordinary about Castiel’s chest. His upper, left bicep was currently bandaged, spots of dried blood now staining the off-white cloth.
“Didn’t you get that last night?” Dean asked, indicating to Castiel’s arm.
“That is not what I am speaking of.”
And it wasn’t until Castiel turned around that Dean knew what the hunter had been trying to say.
Three large, claw-like scars covered Castiel’s back, beginning from the top left shoulder and dragging down to his right hip. The skin must have been deeply penetrated to have left such a glaring mark, with the thin layer of pink skin appearing raw and fragile. Dean dropped the cloth he had been holding to his head in shock and before he could really process what he was doing, his fingers were trailing over the scar gingerly.
Instead of flinching beneath his touch, Castiel shivered, a tremor that reverberated along his skin. Dean’s fingers trailed lower, crossing over the small of Castiel’s back and eventually ending at the edge of his hipbone. Similar to his dream, Dean’s heart was pounding so frantically that it filled the sudden stillness in the room, seemed to drown out everything except the vision of this man-wolf-dog-thing in front of him (Dean wasn’t even sure what to call him).
“Looks like it hurts,” Dean mumbled. The feel of Castiel’s hipbone, now resting comfortably beneath his hand, was already arousing Dean. The smell of the forest seemed to live on the hunter’s skin, the scent of pine and fresh, spring water drifting the confines of Castiel’s invaded personal space and making Dean’s dick twitch.
Castiel turned around, Dean’s hand now dragging along his skin until Castiel was facing him and Dean could see everything in his eyes: desire and want, held back by hesitation that kept Castiel’s lips just a breath away from Dean’s. The way those eyes looked at him, with a feral and carnal lust that made Dean shiver…
“It no longer hurts,” Castiel answered, a whisper against Dean’s skin.
And Dean thought, fuck it!, wolf thing or not. He leaned in, taking the fluttering of Castiel’s eyes closed as all the invitation he needed, lips about to brush against the hunter’s own-
The pounding on Castiel’s door startled both of them and they broke apart.
“Y-you expecting company?” Dean mumbled, looking everywhere but at Castiel’s face. He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.
Castiel scrambled to put his shirt back on but just as he deemed himself presentable, the door burst open and French soldiers poured into the room.
“Dean Grimm,” one of them started, with a thick French accent as he broke into clipped German, “we have a warrant for your arrest.”
Chapter 6