"So." Dean smoothed his palms down his jeans. "You ever do this kind of thing before?"
The guy sitting across from him smiled. He'd introduced himself as Al just a couple minutes ago, and when they'd shaken hands, his had been dry and cold. There were calluses on the very tips of his fingers, and his nails were trimmed back almost to the bed.
"A blind date?" he asked. "Mm...no, I guess I wouldn't say it's how I usually spend my Saturday nights. More of a homebody, myself." Putting his elbows on the table, he laced his fingers under his chin. "Am I correct in assuming this is your first time?"
"Yeah," Dean admitted, blowing out a breath. First blind date, first anything date in way too long to admit out loud. This was a hell of a lot more formal than he was used to, with bar pickups and one-night stands being his go-to trick. But he didn't even remember when the last one of those had been.
"Well, there's no need to be nervous, Dean." Al's smile widened. "I don't bite."
Good thing he didn't, Dean noted. Guy had pretty sharp teeth. Like a fishbone bristle of ivory needles in his mouth. Dean's own felt almost embarrassingly blunt.
"Would you like a drink?" Before Dean had even finished nodding, tremendously grateful, Al was flagging down a waiter. "Let me guess. Whiskey, two fingers, no ice."
"Got it in one." Impressed, Dean laughed as Al ordered for them both. "You a bartender or something?"
"Oh, no." Al shook his head. "Human resources. Though what I enjoy most is teaching." Gesturing, he asked, "And you?"
Dean opened his mouth to answer. It was right there, right at the ready. It was something he was proud of. The same work his father had done. But sitting at the little round table with the red candle in the middle of it, putting a name to it or even remembering any of the details was like trying to loosen a stripped screw. He just kept - slipping off.
When he didn't answer, Al nodded to his hands, clasped in front of him. "Some kind of wetwork, I imagine."
Dean looked down. Sure enough, there was blood on his hands. It went far enough up his arms that the sleeves he'd rolled to just below his elbow were dark with it. Luckily, the flannel was red, so it didn't show too much, but his skin was pale. There was meat under his nails and hair plastered to his knuckles. When he pulled his hands apart, they stuck tackily, and there were rusty smears all over the linen tablecloth.
"Ah, shit." He looked over at Al. "Jeez, I'm sorry about that. I must've forgotten - "
"It's all right." The interruption was gentle. Al accepted Dean's whiskey and his own cocktail from the waiter, passing Dean's across to him. "I hope you don't mind me saying so, but...you're beautiful like that. Marked by what you were meant to do."
There was heat in Dean's cheeks. The smooth burn of the whiskey at the back of his tongue helped with that. Setting the glass down, he glanced up at Alastair through his eyelashes without meaning to, and told him, "Thanks. Ain't so bad yourself."
The restaurant was nicer than Dean was used to, nicer than he probably could have afforded, but when the menu came, Al told him with a gentle insistence to get whatever he wanted. Things were going well enough he didn't want to aim too high, so he ordered a ribeye, medium well. It only cost two years.
The waiter was good. There with another whiskey just as soon as Dean finished the one he was on. A little frustrating he couldn't seem to get drunk no matter how many he knocked back, but it sure as hell tasted good, and maybe it was better to be sober for this conversation. He found himself liking Alastair more and more with every word that came out of his mouth. He just sounded so damn smart, said such beautiful things. It was like listening to somebody sing without any music. Dean was halfway sure he could have closed his eyes and seen Al's sentences on the inside of his eyelids.
Al was older than he usually went for, but Dean could admit to himself he was kinda into that. Made him feel safe and led in a way he hadn't even realized he'd been craving for years now. He knew, without Alastair coming out and telling him, he wasn't going to have to make any big decisions tonight. He wasn't going to get to make any.
Their food came. The kitchen had fucked up, Dean's steak so raw it was bleeding onto the plate, but whatever, wasn't like he was picky and he wasn't in the mood to complain. The thing that bothered him a little more was that there was still skin on it.
Under the blood, the skin was tan. It had moles, and scars. Dean didn't like that. He didn't like it.
"Something...wrong, Dean?"
Dean looked at Al, met his eyes.
He had nice eyes. Same blank, bleached-bone color as the plate, pink-feathered around the edges with little veins.
"Nah." Dean shook his head, picking up his knife and his fork and starting to eat. Raw meat was tough to chew, and he wished his teeth were sharper. Thankfully, there was an itching ache deep in his gums that told him they might be soon.
Al seemed to be enjoying his entree, though it was weird as shit and Dean didn't remember seeing anything like it on the menu. At first glance, he thought it was a whole octopus on top of a bowl of rice, moving and thrashing when soy sauce was added to it. Dean had seen a video like that once. He remembered somebody explaining to him how the octopus was dead, but the salt did something freaky to the nerves or whatever. He couldn't imagine eating something like that. When he looked closer though, he saw it was a hand, which was better. It kept trying to grab the long, thin knife Al was using away from him. There was a wedding ring on it, and Al set it aside with the bones as he cleaned them one by one.
"Want a bite?" Al offered Dean a little bit of meat on the end of the knife, and a sudden, stupid image of him slicing his mouth open back to the hinges of his jaw if he leaned forward to take it wedged itself into Dean's brain.
His cock kind of twitched against his leg. But he shook his head anyway. "Nah. I'm good."
Al didn't say anything else for a while. As the meal wound down, he invited, "Tell me more about yourself."
"Ain't all that much to tell, if I'm being honest." The steak, or whatever it had been, sat heavy in Dean's stomach. Good thing it wasn't that expensive.
"I very much believe you're wrong, Dean, but…" Al pushed his empty dishes aside, and smiled fondly. "I guess we can let it go. After all, I think we can both agree I know you pretty well already, inside." He still had his knife, examined the blade in the red light of their table's candle. "And out."
Dean hadn't given him all that much. Mostly because he couldn't remember a whole lot. It would have been a weird thing to say on their first date, except that he wasn't so sure anymore that it was their first.
"Who set you up on this?" he asked as he drained his final swallow of whiskey from his latest glass.
"Oh, that doesn't matter." Al had a pretty nasal, reedy voice. Made for an automatic hiss on his Ss. On some letters that shouldn't have had it, either. "Would you like to get out of here?"
Dean blinked, and for a second, despite the alcohol, despite all the blood, his mouth was so dry it was numb.
"What's wrong?" Al's smile got just a little mocking. "Not a…'fuck on the first date' type? And after I bought you dinner and everything."
"No, no, I - I wanna," Dean assured as quickly as he could without interrupting Al. "I wanna." He didn't think he'd ever wanted anything more. Like Al leaving without him would be about the same as never breathing again, or getting his skin ripped off.
Al led the way out of the restaurant. Even the back of his head looked proud and pleased. Dean tagged along after, looking down, coming real close to giving himself a headache trying to figure out if Al had two legs or more, but he looked up soon as they were outside. The stars were out. With the color of the sky, they looked like maggots hanging in a gape of rotting meat stretching overhead. Moved like it, too.
The asphalt was soft under Dean's feet. Sucking him slowly down, making chewing noises as it did. He absentmindedly tugged his boots free over and over.
"Where the hell are we?" he asked blankly, because his head felt as raw and empty as an oyster shell.
Al chuckled. "Nice to forget sometimes, isn't it?" A thumb ran down Dean's back, pressing into the notches of his spine through the double layer of his shirts. "Makes it all the more delicious when you remember."
It probably didn't matter, Dean guessed, where they were. It mattered even less when Al moved in closer, weight cool against his back and shoulder, and murmured, "Your place or mine?"
Dean gave it some real, honest thought before, feeling like an idiot, he asked, "Do I have a place?"
"Not really." Al's hand on Dean's hip was sharp, everything about the gesture written in ownership. "Not anymore. For now, you're at mine."
Dean laughed, because learning that, knowing that - well, it fucking delighted him, and the sharp little anxious buzz that ran along underneath the feeling was just an eagerness to get down to business. "Guess that answers that question, then."
So they went back to Al's. Actually, it kind of seemed like they'd been there the whole time. Made perfect sense to Dean so long as he didn't think too hard about it.
It wasn't bad, Al's place. Dean admired the pale, spotless tiles, laid out in a pattern that didn't give him a headache unless he stared. The adjustable fluorescents. The cabinets and tanks and bottles and racks and shelves. The map and the posters. The whiteboard. The cages. The wall of windows that looked out onto...something that didn't matter, so Dean tore his eyes away, disinterested in what was falling from the sky and crawling along the ground and pumping through tumorous rivers. All he cared about was what was in this room.
Dean, and Alastair. The tools and the storage and the references. And in the very middle of the room, the table.
He'd seen pictures of the tables they strapped prisoners to for lethal injections. He'd seen one in person once, though he wasn't sure when or why. (That how I died? Feels right.) The padding, the separate sections for arms and legs. This one was all white cushion and stainless steel, but in the cracks between the soft pads, red-black gunk had accumulated. Dangling off the underside of the table were straps and hooks like fangs and tentacles and tubing and needles. Made it look like something alive. He had no doubt it would do whatever Alastair told it to.
He could feel his heartbeat in his cock. The useless heartbeat that always felt like his soul playing an old song to itself, comfort as it cracked.
"My private playroom." Alastair's hiss was proud and loving. "One of several, but this is the most...traditional. Only the most...special of my subjects ever see it. The most treasured." He stood behind Dean, and he was somehow taller than him, though Dean could have sworn he wasn't. He wrapped his arms around him, rested a chin like frozen bone on top of his head. "It's been several hundred years since the last one. Not even your father saw the inside of this room."
That sent something sliding in Dean, because it felt in a very real way like Alastair was his father, but he got it a second later. The other father. The before-father. The one he'd hated without knowing it, and the one who'd probably hated him in about the same way.
"Do you feel honored?"
If Dean hadn't been worried about cracking his skull open, he would have nodded hard enough to have his teeth clicking in their sockets. Instead, he just breathed out a raspy, "Yeah."
"Well, then." Alastair's nails dragged through his pubic hair. He didn't remember getting naked, but he was. "Get on the table."
Dean absolutely did not need to be told twice. He was across the tiles soon as Alastair let him go, clambering up, flipping onto his back. It positioned him immediately, moving underneath him like a person, bending and spreading his legs, tipping him back. The air on his hole, on his dick and his balls, was hot and moist. Clamps snaked fleshy around his wrists and ankles, holding him in place as Alastair climbed gracefully on top of him, balancing on his joints. He bent his head, and Dean kissed him hungrily soon as he was in range. Something about the shape of his tongue reminded him of a scorpion's tail.
"Want me to fuck you?" Alastair purred, and Dean...well, he sure as shit wanted something, and he wasn't sure it was that, but sex made the most sense. Based on the context and all. So he nodded, and Alastair slid in.
Dean thought there might usually have been more prep involved, in the actual process of a cock going in an ass. And the anatomy of what had just happened was impossible in a sickening, dislocated way, if you were assuming Alastair was human-shaped. But the burn had Dean howling and twisting in ecstasy, something hot that wasn't quite come pooling in his navel, so he focused on the fact sex must have been what he wanted after all.
And it was good. Alastair inside him, moving. Hands on Dean's shoulders. Eyes narrowed down at him. Mouths locked in permanent grins. It was good all the way up until it stopped hurting.
Dean guessed it felt okay. Alastair's cock was hitting his prostate, or the memory of his prostate, which was basically the same thing, sending little waves of warmth through his stomach. It was just...a long, shallow, flat plan of tepid pleasure, not really something he wanted to stop doing but not worth it, either.
He'd thought it would be better. With Alastair.
He didn't want his disappointment showing on his face, didn't want Alastair feeling bad or anything, but it must have made it through anyway. Because Alastair stopped moving inside him and just looked down, asking mildly, "What's the matter, Dean? Am I not an...adequate lover?"
"No, no, you're - you're great." Dean felt a blush rising over most of his body, embarrassed and guilty. And afraid, though he didn't really get that one. The chewed-up memories of being fed slice-by-paper-thin-slice through a miter saw and being eaten from the inside out by insects and bacteria and being mummified with all the organ-removal steps included in the process didn't make a whole lot of sense to him, unconnected to anything he could recognize. It was like they were real but belonged to somebody else.
"It's all right," assured Alastair. He lifted a hand off Dean's shoulder, cupped his face with it. His nails rested against the skin of his scalp. "I've been told I can be...selfish."
He pressed, squeezed. Skin stung and broke under nails a lot sharper than Dean had thought they would be, for being meticulously trimmed so short. Blood welled, and Dean's back arched, his body trembling against the warm metal of the restraints that held him in place as he gasped and ground against Alastair.
"Well." Alastair's voice was a pleased hiss. "That's hardly surprising, by now."
He started moving again, but faster this time, harder. He battered against Dean's insides, a pressure that hit like sharp little cramps over and over again, and it pulled at the bones of his pelvis like somebody stomping on his tailbone. Dean's chest heaved as his breathing ripped in and out of him, eyes fixed on nothing, cock leaking, shuddering with the movement. He'd thought he couldn't see anything, pleasure whiting his vision out, but he noticed the movement when a pair of sturdy ivory curtains fell across the windows.
Apparently, Alastair felt like keeping him all to himself. Like hell was Dean gonna complain about that one.
His jaw had started aching where Alastair was holding his face, steadying himself by leaning his full weight on Dean's head. His jaw ground in the socket on one side, pried at creaking tendons with its painful angle on the other. It made it tough to breathe. His lips tingled.
He could still talk, though. "M-more."
It came out more as "nore," with his lips smeared away from each other from the pressure on one side of his face, but Alastair obviously got what he meant. Seeing as he moved his hand again, from Dean's face back to his arm, and then dipped his head to Dean's collarbone. His neck shouldn't have been long enough for it. It was. Dean was glad as teeth popped through skin, crunching cartilage and scraping rubbery and wet against living bone, and he threw his head back with a wild howl.
Alastair's dick was pulsing inside him. Felt like it was shredding him. He bucked up against him as he bit harder, and harder, until something finally splintered and squirted and agony rich and sweet as honey swept from his neck across his chest and shoulder and down to his fingertips.
The patter of blood and what he figured had to be at least a little marrow on the floor was like fingers strumming guitar strings. The surface of the table crawled in excitement.
"I can't believe that didn't pop your cork," rasped Alastair, through a mouthful of gristle and gore. "Your threshold's getting higher every day, isn't it?"
"S-sorry," Dean slurred out, desperate with need. He'd felt his climax on the horizon, right there when Alastair's teeth met. But it had slipped away again.
"Never apologize for that." Alastair started humping again, almost lazily. Dean appreciated it, the gentle movements somehow tugging at whatever wounds had opened up inside him harder than a full-power thrust would have. He ran a hand slowly down Dean's chest, and Dean lifted his head, which sent a sharp, sick ache spiking through his arm. He watched scalpel blades of polished bone grow bloodlessly from the tips of Alastair's long fingers. Watched them trail weeping, broken slits across the bumps of his ribs. "Just means I need to get more - creative."
Dean waited to see what would happen when Alastair reached his stomach and his hand stopped. But then he started fucking him in earnest again, building a rhythm. Driving into his prostate like it owed him fucking money. Practically nailing him to the table with his cock. Dean's head dropped, and he felt every one of Alastair's brutal strokes in his splintered collarbone.
It didn't hurt like it should, didn't do what it should, like his body wasn't properly connected to itself anymore. Like he didn't remember the shape of it quite right. It was still good, though.
"C-c'mon," Dean begged, gasping the words out in between the ferocious slap of flesh on flesh. His naked, sweaty body skidded off the table with the force of Alastair's strength, then fell heavily back down. Felt like something was going to snap soon, bone or flesh or both. "Tug me off. C'mon, man."
He might've been getting close again. He was pretty sure that that was all he needed. Just a little pleasure to round out the pain, and while he wasn't exactly in love with the idea of the things Alastair's fingers had turned into around his cock - he was sure he'd like it soon as he was in the middle of it. Seemed like he did most things these days. Especially things that made Alastair happy.
Alastair smiled down at him with white eyes and lamprey teeth.
"Oh, no, I don't think so," he answered. Despite the fact he was blowing Dean's back out right now, he didn't even sound out of breath. "I've got...something else in mind."
"What?" Frustration Dean wished he could have kept to himself made it into his voice, but lucky for him, Alastair seemed to have lost interest in conversation. With Dean, at least.
"It's ugly," Alastair mused to himself, "and I usually prefer so much more precision, not to mention originality, but...pain's pain, and pleasure's pleasure, and you've been so very, very good tonight." He bent over Dean, hand still resting on his stomach, as his movements somehow got steadily more determined and aggressive. Felt like he was aiming up. Dean imagined his skin tenting from the inside with every thrust, wondered if Alastair was planning to fuck him open and empty. He thought he might have done that before. "I think we can stand to be sloppy. Just this once."
Dean would've asked him what he meant. If he hadn't driven his hand down into his stomach even as he speared him even more deeply on his cock, just above his cockhead and just below Dean's sternum, slicing and crushing all the way down to his spine, blood and shit and bile and god-only-knew-what-else hitting the floor in a slopping wave as it was forced out of him.
Dean's orgasm hit him like a sledgehammer from below, ripping his breath and his voice and his reason right out from under him. Every nerve was on fire with pleasure and there was lightning in him from ass to skull, and he couldn't have felt better in that exact second if he was being peeled alive by a pair of feisty redheads.
And then it got away from him, the orgasm. And something weird started to happen.
A wave of change tore through his body, skin spiking like a soundwave, and his chest opened up, ribs fangs down either side and heart a beating tongue. His lungs hauled themselves out his back into a pair of ragged, billowing wings, arms and legs lengthening and twisting and branching out into shapes designed for precision and agility and speed, every organ a blinking white eye, face broken open in a spray of light, a crown of thorny, glittering horns erupting from temples and brow and -
Dean screamed. It sounded alien and feral. His spinal cord coiled like a whip and his nerves flowered. Then, the next thing he knew, he was laying on the table, whole and sweaty and person-shaped, chest pumping, remembered heart galloping, Alastair draped lazily next to him.
He was confused and shaky, felt like he'd just had a seizure. He wasn't sure if his mind had just fractured, or his soul. He wanted to ask what the fuck that had been, but didn't.
He thought it might have happened before. Maybe even worse.
Alastair made a fluting sound, and Dean wasn't sure which part of his anatomy had produced it, but it sounded sad. He turned to look at him.
"You'll leave eventually," Alastair said, and smiled, like thinking about that made him happy. It was like an icicle through Dean's heart. "Wonder what you'll do, with all...this riding around in you. On you. Wonder what you'll be able to do."
"I don't wanna go," Dean said, but Alastair didn't seem to hear him, or maybe just didn't care. "I ain't going."
Even to his own ears, he sounded like a little kid throwing a tantrum over bedtime. No wonder Alastair didn't answer.
"It's so close to the surface." A fingertip, blunt again, ran down Dean's sternum, and Alastair stared at his chest like he was mesmerized. Like he could see something right underneath his skin. "What you could be. What you really are." Alastair's eyes rose to Dean's. All of his eyes. "Do you have any idea the trouble I'll be in if you don't keep on skating that razor's edge?"
Dean swallowed. Alastair chuckled.
"Lucky for us both, that's what you're good at." He pressed with his finger. Black blood welled around it. "One of the things you're good at."