Title: Graceless/Bloodless
Author: OpheliacAngel
Pairing: Gabriel/Dean
Genres: Romance/Horror/Hurt/Comfort
Rating: Teen
Summary: He's still Dean, just a different Dean.
A/N: Written for Fandom Stocking for Morganoconner's Stocking. Always happy to come across a Debriel shipper. You've got a bunch of awesome prompts too!
Warnings: Vampire!Dean, Grace Drinking
This is the fifth time in two months that Gabriel has managed to get Dean to sleep on top of him.
Sharing the same bed has never been a problem since this whole sticky mess began. Sure, at opposite ends of the same bed like the other person doesn't exist, but Gabriel will push and Dean won't budge. No matter Gabriel's incentives to listen to him just once. Some nights it gets bad and Dean ends up on the floor, or rather, drags himself down there in the twenty degree weather with a splitting headache and no blanket or pillow, 'cause that's just Dean. Luckily, Gabriel doesn't actually sleep or Dean would be freezing to death down there.
Gabriel bundles him up once Dean manages to fall asleep. Sometimes he'll lay as close to Dean as he can get without waking him up, as still as he can be which is quite a feat for him considering how much he hates sitting still. Other times he'll just lay in the bed and listen to the pounding in Dean's head that has replaced the once peaceful thumping of his heart.
Now Dean's heart doesn't pump blood. He doesn't breathe, doesn't feel the cold and can't get warm, complains every time Gabriel points out his sharply pronounced freckles and has cravings that have nothing to do with human food. Oh, and there's that mouthful of razor sharp teeth when he's hungry or pissed or just about anything really. If Gabriel sounds like he's complaining, he isn't really, he's just relaying Dean's endless list of everything that's wrong with him now that he's a vampire.
Now that he's turned and Gabriel can't turn him back.
While the hunger gnaws at Dean, the guilt eats away at Gabriel's ridiculously giving heart. It's amazing that he even has one, startling that it only seems to feel and beat for one little Winchester.
There are the headaches that Gabriel can no longer will away with a just a mere snap of his fingers; Dean calls them fireworks sometimes when he doesn't know what he's saying. It's Dean's reward for fighting against the very thing that he is now; Gabriel tells him this because he knows about the world and everything in it, so intimately that Dean could only be jealous of this knowledge, but Dean never listens anymore. If he ever listened at all.
There is no more reveling in warming Dean from head to toe on cold nights. He misses Dean's inner warmth too because while it could never meet the inner heat lying dormant in all angels, or a lava-like heat in archangels, it was the comforting, familiar warmth of humanity, coiled up tight inside of Dean and waiting for Gabriel to coax back to the forefront.
Now there's Dean's soul, darkened and crispy at the edges, pulsating dark light but still light.
He's still Dean, just a different Dean.
Then there's the biggest change of all. Dean can see his wings now since vampires are an offshoot of demons - weird, huh? - but they freak him out sometimes. Gabriel chucked it up to one of Dean's wacky hallucinations before he pushed Dean far enough for him to start banging his head against the wall and describing his wings.
Huge. Check. That's pretty obvious.
Tawny brown in low light and amber-ish in the sun. Check. Dean could have just been going off his eyes though.
Tattered. In places. Check. Sure, Gabriel's pretty old. As long as Dean doesn't say that outright.
Some feathers missing on his right wing. Check. Way too specific for Dean to just pull out of his head.
Definitely not a hallucination.
Gabriel then proceeded to use a small amount of grace to heal where Dean split open his head. Too much grace could affect Dean sometimes, like make him a little too irritable or unstable. Yeah, there have been some major… adjustments. Just like Gabriel had to accommodate for Dean in a lot of areas when Dean made the first move and said he wanted to start something up, relationship, whatever, his words. Gabriel told him explicitly that he could never be the one to push Dean in that direction anymore than he could control. That he could never be the one to initiate. For one, trickster be damned, he was an archangel and that meant consent.
Still, that long haul or whatever humans like to call it, well, Gabriel's more than just knee-deep in it. He's in it, dead or no, fangs or no. Daily consuming of blood or no.
He claims he can see Gabriel's grace too, can see right through Gabriel's vessel and into Gabriel, whatever the hell that means, veins and muscles and bones and all. Gabriel's grace a shimmering orb in his chest that's sparking tendrils extend to every one of his vessel's limbs. Dean doesn't mean to get freaked out, he was never meant to see things that he can't understand. Gabriel wants to tell him that he doesn't have to understand, that Gabriel understands so much about Dean but that it doesn't have to go both ways. Dean doesn't have to compensate for this.
Dean shifts on top of him, even in sleep he is anything but restful. His hands are trapped between Gabriel's back and the sheets, but even though there is no warmth left there is still Dean. He knows Dean so intimately, knows him inside and out that he would recognize him from mere touch alone, even if his skin is now cold to the touch.
Lucifer would tell him he's touching a dead thing. Dean is no longer living and human and the cure is null and void for a vampire who's already fed. Even on blood, when Dean relents and drinks it, there is no longer that same life inside of him. There is cold flesh and hunger and needs humans cannot understand. Gabriel would tell his brother to shove it. He wonders whether Dean hallucinates him sometimes.
Dean twitches, usually the second sign of him waking up. The third will be sensing that someone's nearby and hand stretching, reaching underneath the pillow to wrap around his knife. The fourth will be sensing that someone as Gabriel. Doesn't mean he won't freak out a little, just not as much.
All four happen like clockwork. Usually Dean will roll away once he finds himself on top of Gabriel, today he freezes and look down at him. "Sorry, man," he mumbles, trying to gauge which direction to roll himself in, the side that won't cause him to fall off the bed.
Gabriel grins. "You know I like it when you're on top of me."
Back then, before all this, when Dean would feel self-conscious and knew he had to give a good reason for squirming out of Gabriel's hold, he would complain that he was too hot. It wasn't a total lie either; archangels burned hot unless they spent considerable effort tampering that heat down. Now Dean can make no such complaint.
It still isn't a victory for Gabriel.
Gabriel doesn't wait. Dean's had dizzy spells for days and blood isn't much of a pick-me-up for a Winchester. Not that Dean drinks anywhere near the amount to keep him healthy and on his feet anyway. His arms wrap around Dean's torso, preventing him from moving. Gabriel may have had to learn to accommodate for Dean's additional strength as a vampire, but he's still about a gazillion times stronger than the newly turned vamp.
"Gabe," Dean warns. His pupils are blown wide, mouth salivating, practically drooling on Gabriel again. It used to be cute, now it's just a pitiful reminder of Dean's constant needs. Needs he won't admit to. That he's touch-starved because Gabriel touching him - even so much as brushing against him - is so much more powerful than it used to be. That it sets all of Dean's nerve endings on fire, enough to simultaneously want more and need to lock himself up in a closet to avoid more, literally too. It's not easy to ignore it or pretend it doesn't exist because Gabriel can feel everything Dean feels if he doesn't block it out.
If Dean became his vessel then Gabriel could keep him in control, lessen the cravings. If Gabriel keeps thinking about this he's going to lose his mind.
Gabriel can look at Dean and tell himself that nothing has changed.
Regardless, not everything has changed.
Dean still makes him a better person, still makes his grace pulse sharper, shine brighter. Dean is still his to protect, to take care of. "You need to feed, Dean. No sense hiding it from me. You can keep me out of your head, but you can't lock me out completely."
Gabriel can practically hear the screaming of Dean's mind to feed, can hear Dean screaming back that he can't. Anything but this. He's shut everything and everyone out, left his brother a note, begged Gabriel to cloak him from Castiel. Demanded that Gabriel leave also.
Even if he didn't mean a single word. Even if Gabriel did all of those things anyway except the last one, because not even he is capable of that.
"You're relentless," Dean growls.
Even so, Gabriel pushes the collar of his shirt down and exposes his neck. There is blood running through the veins of his vessel, but this is not what Dean's starving, growing body has become accustomed to. There are sharp points against the soft, sensitive skin of Gabriel's neck and then Dean is buried deep inside him, Gabriel giving him unfiltered access and pushing him past the thick, sloppy blood until he's drinking down Gabriel's very marrow, his life force. Dean controls himself, even if Gabriel could shove Dean out and away from him if he dove too deep without causing much damage to his vessel.
When Dean pulls away Gabriel feels weakened, cloaking magic diminishing but not enough to reveal their location. To the human eye there would be nothing smeared across Dean's mouth and dripping down his chin. If Dean were still human, none of this would be real. The pearly white substance coating Dean's face makes Gabriel feel a whole new form of peace.
There's a whole helluva lotta satisfaction too.
"Feeling better, kiddo?" Gabriel settles back against the pillows, content to just watch Dean adjust to the new grace thrumming in tune to the beat of Gabriel's heart. The archangel can almost see his grace underneath Dean's pale skin, can feel his power weakening and Dean's strengthening. Dean is beautiful like this, he must feel beautiful too. He reaches up and pulls Dean to him; it's a need almost as fierce as Dean's hunger. His limbs shake slightly from the recent draining but Dean comes to him willingly, making it look like Gabriel still has all the power and strength and will. Gabriel will feed him like this once a week and Dean will never refuse.
He'll hold Dean when he won't drink, when he's tired but restless and hungry but revolted. And Dean will hold him when he's had his fill.
Dean scoots forward and sits in between his legs. He runs his cool, calloused fingers through Gabriel's feathers, adjusting a few that are out of place. Gabriel hadn't had his wings touched in eons before Dean was turned, and replacing the feel of Lucifer's grace brushing against his feathers with the soft texture of Dean's skin is a welcome remedy. Dean skims those cool fingers down Gabriel's slack face next, smoothing over his eyebrows and straying into his hair, brushing it off his forehead and tucking it back behind his ears. Gabriel always feels drugged like this, can't do much but sit back and let Dean do what he wants.
This is the closest he gets to Dean anymore.
They don't talk. Dean buries his face in the crook of Gabriel's neck, cold nose making the archangel almost jump. Sometimes Gabriel can feel him breathing against the side of his neck again, but when he concentrates there is no gentle puff, no steady beat of Dean's heart as he lays a palm over his skin. Gabriel murmurs a few words in Enochian, remnants of a lullaby he used to sing to Dean. He uses his remaining strength to wrap his wings around Dean, fully cloaking him from outside eyes.
Gabriel's remaining grace pounds in him like a hammer when he realizes Dean's laying on top of him again, fingernails scratching at the back of Gabriel's neck, almost scrabbling, like he's trying to hold onto Gabriel. The archangel pulls him closer and massages his scalp, lazy fingers working slow, broken circles, easing away the ache there. Dean can't exhale but his taut muscles loosen as the fear and hunger evaporates and his grip on Gabriel falters and his bright green eyes become dull and lidded. He recognizes the grace in Dean as his own, and the grace left within him purrs at Dean's closeness. Its counterpart. His mate. The grace bond between them stretches, pulls but then loosens and wraps around them both.
Maybe hiding away from the world won't hold forever, but Gabriel can't help but think that hiding away with Dean is almost as perfect as it can get.
FIN