title: what fun it all would be (3/7)
summary: When Dean comes to the next time, the first thing he notices, after the hot venom pooling under his tongue, are the long claws curving from his fingers.
pairing: Dean/Castiel
warnings:language, violence, gore, suggestive situations, eventual character death
a/n: Thank you so much to everyone who has read this far. Not to be annoying, but if you read, could you please leave me a review? Just letting me know if the parts sound too melodramatic, or annoyingly over-domestic? I'd really appreciate it.
iii.
She'd never tell Dad 'cause it would hurt his feelings, but Emma likes Papa's work best. You have to climb practically a thousand stairs to get up to it and then go through a dark hallway that feels like the inside of a castle. Then you finally get to Papa's office, which is full of books and has a window that's really high and there's always pigeons strutting around on the sill, and Emma loves to rap on the glass with her windows and make faces at them. Most of the time Papa lets her, except when he gives her a sad look because he's working on something and would like her to be a little quieter please, Emma.
Sometimes Papa lets her sit in his desk chair at his computer while he discusses things with the students who come to see him, and Emma swivels around in it while they talk, except when Mariela comes, because Mariela is super-pretty and wears glittery scarves and Emma is going to be just like her when she grows up. So she makes sure to act extra sophisticated when Mariela comes and doesn't swing in the chair like a little kid and pays attention like she can understand what Papa and Mariela are saying, Papa easily and Mariela very slowly and carefully. Sometimes she actually can; Papa's been teaching her words at dinner, and now she can say, "I am eight years old," in French and Spanish and another language that Papa doesn't speak with anyone but her.
(Dad taught her how to say it in Pig Latin. "Oink oink snort," he said, tickling her knee, and Emma laughed so hard she coughed down a fry and Papa had to pat her back until it came out.)
The best part of Papa's job at the college is the party they have at the beginning of every school year. It's for all the professors like Papa-"the boring stuffy ones," Dad always says-to get together to welcome their new students and let them network. Emma's not sure what this means, but the professors' families come, and a bunch of Papa's students, and they all tell Emma how pretty she is and let her hang out with them like she's a big girl, and she loves it.
She's had her outfit planned for forever now, Auntie A helped her pick it out one of the times Emma went to the mall with her and J.B. and Uncle Sam. So she's a little smug when Dad and Papa are running around trying to figure out what to wear.
"I'm glad I'm not the reason we'll be late to Papa's work," she says loudly. Dad throws one of his gross sweaty work shirts at her head. It knocks her fedora off, and she screeches, "DAD!" because it took her forever to make it tilt like that without falling off.
"Dean," says Papa from the bathroom where he's shaving his pricklies, "be nice."
"Yeah, Dad!" Emma says with a glare, jumping up and wriggling her way between Papa and the bathroom mirror to fix her hat. Papa gives her a Look, and she gives him a grin and a big huuuug around the waist, then traipses back out into Papa and Daddy's room, where she stops in horror.
"Dad! You can't wear flannel to Papa's party! You'll embarrass him!" She looks over her shoulder for support. "Right, Papa?"
Papa frowns at her as he fastens the last few buttons of his nice blue shirt. "Your father should wear whatever he feels most comfortable in."
He looks past her to Dad, who looks suddenly uneasy and has stopped buttoning up his own shirt.
"No, I can... I can wear something different," Dad says, looking down at the fabric and smiling kinda weird. "Pick out something good for me, huh, Emma?"
This is the opportunity Emma's been waiting for; she lunges for her dad's closet to give Dad a makeover.
But Papa says, "Emma."
It's his solemn voice, the one he uses on the students who come to see him because they're not doing well in his class, and it makes her shrink in shame even though she's not entirely sure why. She looks at him, and his face is almost disappointed.
"Please go put your shoes on," he says quietly.
Emma slinks out to the living room and laces up her boots slowly, straining her ears to hear what the low rumble of Dad and Papa's voices in the bedroom are saying. She feels nervous and a little sick and suddenly not very excited about the party. She's remembering how Dad's smile looked, like it was careful and not really real. She's remembering how one time at recess Savannah Elton told everyone Emma's nose looked like a pig's and Emma just laughed at her like she didn't care but when she got into the Impala after school that day she cried.
When Dad and Papa come out of their room a few minutes later, Emma jumps up to throw her arms around Dad's waist and whisper, "Sorry, Daddy," into his jeans.
There's a pause, and then he pats her head, awkwardly. That's when Emma realizes that his jeans don't smell like car oil like they usually do. She cranes her head back and sees he's wearing nice jeans, not any of his usual hole-y ones. And he's wearing his nice leather jacket over one of his Zeppelin shirts instead of the flannel he was wearing before. The last time Dad came to pick her up from school wearing that jacket, Emma heard Mrs. Mahon tell Miss Bramble it made him look really hot, so Emma declares against his waist, "You look really hot in that jacket, Daddy."
Dad's uncomfortable face becomes a grin that crinkles his eyes like when Papa comes into the kitchen in the morning with his hair sticking up everywhere. Emma's insides suddenly feels really light, like she's not going to be sick anymore, and she hugs Dad's waist again, tightly.
He untangles her and picks her up, saying, "C'mere, octopus," and she says, "Wait, wait," and turns up his jacket collar to make it look really cool, like the kids on Disney Channel.
Dad groans. "Seriously, Emma?"
A throat gets cleared behind them. "Do I meet with your approval, Emma?" Papa says in one of his dry voices. Emma looks at him, a little nervous, but his eyes are soft, so she leans back in Dad's arms to pretend to look him over.
"I guess," she sighs long-sufferingly. "You would look better if you hadn't missed a bunch of your pricklies."
Dad barks out a laugh. Then he says, "You know what I think you need, Cas?" Papa tilts his head, and Dad laughs again, then grabs Emma's hat from her head. "A hat."
Papa lets out a surprised laugh as Dad plops it onto his head, which makes Emma and Dad grin. They spend the next ten minutes taking turns trying on Emma's fedora and seeing who can get the messiest hair, and they end up being late to Papa's party after all.
- o -
Dean half expects-okay, more like ninety percent expects-the kid to try to suck him dry. But she stops after only a minute or so, pulls away. She makes a little sigh that sounds kind of bummed, but she already looks warmer, like some sort of magic's made her closed eyes a little less sunken than before. Dean pretends not to care and gives her back to Cas, who gives him an are you sure? look that Dean ignores.
"Guess angel juice ain't her cup of tea," he says with a shrug and curls up again in his pile of leaves, back to Cas. He chews down on his thumbnail for a moment, feeling the indentation of tiny teeth and the salt of his own blood.
He takes her again in the morning without being asked, or offering, to feed her. It becomes sort of a habit, before they get going in the morning and when they make camp at night. After a few days, she almost looks like a normal human two year-old, the weird black streaks gone from under her skin even though she still hasn't opened her eyes and spends most of the time sleeping, or chewing on Cas's coat. But she still tenses when Dean takes hold of her, skittish like a dog afraid it's going to get thwapped with a newspaper, and it makes Dean simultaneously uncomfortable and reassured, because even if Cas seems to have forgotten she's a monster and Dean's starting to get stupidly close to forgetting it himself, she hasn't, still knows that she's a threat to Dean and he to her. It tastes like bared throats and long curved nails, and he pushes it to the same place as that hot, steady pulse of cascascas.
He's not her Alpha, even if that's what it feels like, she isn't what he is (he isn't what he is), and when he bothers to wonder what her parents are, he wonders if he was the one that killed them. One night he dares to ask Cas if he knows, and Cas looks like he's not sure whether to tell him, which pretty much answers that question for Dean, and when he takes the kid for feeding that night he feels a lot like shit.
Other times he feels almost normal (human), holding a baby for its bottle (blood) like he used to think only Sam would ever get to do (before he realized neither of them would ever get that). He remembers all the times he was embarrassed by his mom nursing Sam when they were out in public, and thinks that she would laugh if she saw him now, how's that shoe feel on the other foot, huh, Dean-o?
"You're getting too big for this," he tells the kid on one of those times, 'cause yeah, she's thin as sticks but her legs still dangle over his arms when he holds her. She's gonna be tall; he can tell already, 'cause Sammy was like this, too. It pushes that tendril of a memory out in his brain again, sticking out and trying to trip him, and we're not gonna do that, he sidesteps it, hollers to where Cas is lingering at the spring they found, "Get a move on, Cas, we don't have time for you to powder your nose!"
He turns back to what would've been their fire pit if they ever dared to light a fire around here, and Cas is suddenly there, frowning and looking faintly annoyed by Dean's hollering. "I was getting you water to replenish your fluids."
Dean might've turned red if his body still did that. Because yeah, he been bitching about the kid sucking him dry and how he was probably gonna keel over one of these days, but he'd really just been bitching for the sake of bitching, but now Cas is holding some rough off-white bowl thing that looks like it might have been the top of something's skull once, and it's full of water that actually looks like water and not Purgatory's version of Progresso soup.
"Uh. Thanks." He trades the bowl for the kid, who kicks one pudgy foot at Dean and nuzzles into Cas's coat. "Ingrate," Dean tells her without heat and takes a sip of cloudy water, trying to feel bad-ass for drinking from a skull instead of like a first-time mom whose husband made a midnight run to the store because she was craving ice cream.
- o -
When he comes to the next time, crawling out of a tar pit, the first thing he notices, after the hot venom pooling under his tongue, are the long claws curving from his fingers.
He tries to gnaw them off with his too-sharp teeth before Cas can find him. Can't bear for him to see more proof of what Dean's becoming.
- o -
"I need contacts," Emma says one day.
"What?" says Dad from the kitchen, where he's distributing fried chicken onto plates. "Winchesters have perfect vision!"
Papa ignores him, tilting his head to look at Emma. "Are you having difficulty seeing?"
Emma tries not to look sneaky. Papa's giving her what Dad calls The Laser Eyes, and they're pretty good at telling when Emma's lying. "Kind of?"
Papa's eyes get more Laser-y. "Emma."
"Please can't I just get one pair, Papa?" she bursts out. "Savannah Elton got ones that make her eyes blue, and they look so pretty."
Dad is coming in from the kitchen now, wiping his hands on a towel and leaning against the doorway. Papa glances at him, then back at Emma. He looks puzzled.
"Your eyes are beautiful, Emma. I don't understand why you would want to change them."
Emma mumbles something, looking at her empty plate.
Dad crouches down in front of her. "What was that, kiddo?"
"I said Papa has blue eyes," she mumbles again, only a little louder this time. "And you have green ones." She kicks the table leg. "But mine are just brown."
Dad doesn't say anything, just raises an eyebrow. He always says Papa has Laser Eyes, but Dad has, like, Laser Eyebrows, because suddenly Emma's blurting out, "Ms. Mahon told Philip's mom she thinks you adopted me."
Her voice cracks on the last words, and her eyes are stinging and then they're spilling over and her nose is running and she's hiccupping, wailing into Daddy's shirt as he picks her up. She tries to pull away, but he holds her tighter, and that makes her cry harder because something deep inside her had been afraid he would let go.
After a while, Dad says against her cheek, "That must've made you feel like shit, huh."
Emma swallows down a gob of tears and nods against his neck even though she doesn't really know what shit means. There's a hand on her back, rubbing gently, and she hiccups out another cry, hears Papa say," Sshh, sshh," and rub smaller circles than before. She hiccups again, this time quieter, and it finally feels like she can breathe again.
"Listen to me," Dad says. He's holding her so tight, she almost can't breathe again. Papa's hand stills on her back, warm and heavy. "You're our kid. In every single way that counts, you hear me?" When she doesn't say anything, he pulls back, ducks his head to find her eyes. "Emma. Look at me."
Emma keeps her face hidden, whispers, "Then why don't I look like Papa?"
A moment of silence. She feels them looking at each other over her head. Then Papa says, "I'm afraid I must confess something, Emma. I am the one who was adopted."
Emma pulls away from Dad's shirt to twist around and look at Papa. He looks back, hand still warm on her back.
"Your father had you," he says. "And then I came, and I loved you both very much. So I asked him if I could stay and be part of your family."
Emma looks at Dad. He's watching Papa, his lips parted. His eyes flick to her, and he looks sad and happy at the same time.
"I think now it is your turn to decide," Papa says. "Emma. Can I be part of your family?"
His voice sounds the same as usual, but his hand falls from her back, curls at his side like maybe he's scared. Emma feels scared, suddenly. She leans back in Dad's hold, keeps one hand scrunched in his shirt and grabs Papa's with the other. Pulls him in.
"Family don't end in blood," she says, clumsy and uncertain like she's remembering something she heard, somewhere. But there's nothing uncertain about the way Papa hugs her, or the warm huff of air Dad breathes into her hair, like he's relieved, as he wraps his arms around both of them.
- o -
During the day he can pretend. Kick up clods of dirt and track down things to kill to drown out the smell of the nearby pulse, its steady tempting thump.
But night is stillness. The quiet of sleep and the deafening throb of pulse, as he lies in the dark and marinates in raging, aching thirst. His claws curling into the dirt, venom burning in his mouth.
Cas is careful not to come too close to him, now.
- o -
They still won't let her get contacts, but Dean lets her dye her hair dark -"It's temporary, Cas!" he says when Cas makes displeased faces about it-to match Cas's. She spends Thursday night at Sam and Amelia's place so Amelia can help her do it, which means that Dean and Cas haven't actually seen Emma with her new hair color by the time they get a call from the principal Friday afternoon, informing them it's no appropriate for an eight-year-old to have dyed hair at school. To which Cas snappishly replies that it's not appropriate for teachers to gossip about his child to other parents on school property. Dean has to bite his fist half in glee and half in my husband is so badass awe, and when Cas hangs up, a pretty epic make-out session takes place before Sam texts that he's got Emma and will be dropping her off in a few minutes.
They're waiting on the porch when Sam's hybrid pulls into the driveway, and Dean blinks when he sees the little face through the windshield. Glances over at Cas, who is admirably straight-faced except for the microscopic smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
"It looks really bad," Dean whispers. Like, really bad.
"Black does not appear to be her color," Cas concedes.
"Maybe we should just let her get the contacts?"
The smile tugs harder at the corner of Cas's mouth. "Or a trenchcoat."
Dean nearly cries, he laughs so hard.
- o -
Cas feels the Leviathan when they're just about to stop for the night. Dean knows because he scents the sharp spike of terror and sweat, sees Cas's eyes going wide and his foot faltering, legs buckling. He's there before Cas's knees hit the ground, yanking him up and shoving him forward.
"Go," he growls. Cas tries to plant his feet, eyes wide and white-rimmed like a horse hemmed in by wolves. Dean barely notices the weak attempt at strength. Knowledge is pounding in him heady and hard like Cas's pulse; he knows, knows that if he dies this time he will come back the strongest he has ever been, bones of stone and fangs like steel, like the Colt; nothing, nothing that he cannot kill-
"No," the other breathes. He tries to push the child into Dean's hold, babbles go and run and they won't come after you if they have me, and Dean is growling, "Go," and backing him up, away from the oily tang of predator, into a tree, he's growling and biting the pleas from chapped lips for one long, short moment, and then he's tearing his mouth away, and wrenching Cas to him by the collar and breathing venom-sweet into his face: "Go."
Cas goes.
And Dean.
Dean whirls, and snarls, and rips.
And dies.