glorious_spoon | No Dark Sarcasm

Title: No Dark Sarcasm
Pairing: Dean/Alastair
Rating: R
Warnings: Torture. Dark themes. Basically what you'd expect with this pairing.
Summary: Dean's never liked to play, but that's just because he's shy. Missing moment from 4.16, Alastair POV.

A/N: Yeah, so I don't know where this came from. There's probably something wrong with me. Title from 'Another Brick in the Wall' by Pink Floyd.

Alastair is an artist.

That's not quite right, of course. He is a whittler, a carver, a dissector of souls; but he prefers to think of what he does as art.

It has a more poetic ring to it. In any language, and he knows them all. All the languages of the Earth, all the words that taste of pain, all the ways a soul can beg to keep its small, tarnished shreds of humanity. He carves away the fat and gristle to reveal the shining shape beneath. Draws beauty out of ugliness.

Art.

And here is his greatest masterwork standing stained and ruined before him. Forty years to scrape him clean and it's only taken a few months topside for him to start gathering putrid scraps of his old self to him, like a pauper grasping at coins. Or a pig rolling in shit. It works out to the same thing.

Heaven, I'm in Heaven and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak...

Oh, this is perfect. Just perfect. Dean. Dean, here before him when Alastair was so sure he was lost forever. Here and hurting and twisting himself up deliciously inside. Perhaps there's hope for him after all.

This is a very serious moment for you, isn't it? he asks.

Dean, of course, won't play. All the questions, all the irrelevant questions. He doesn't want to be here. He's never liked to play, but that's alright. He's just shy. Alastair knows how to bring him out of his shell, how to peel away his skin and all those tiresome layers of self-righteousness along with it. It's slow work, stripping away all those layers, but it's worth it in the end. Oh, so worth it.

Oh, and there's the angel outside the door. Outside the door with his back turned. You saw that, didn't you, Dean? Didn't you see that? They took you away from me, but it was only so they could use you. Only so they could use what I taught you.

The symmetry is beautiful. Dean is beautiful, even in the rotting meatsuit he's wearing now, all hollowed out eyes and bitter mouth smiling.

You were prettier in the Pit, Dean. Remember when you were a creature of sound and shadow? Remember how they screamed? That's your true self, not this crude mess of beer and women, laughter and dreams. Nightmares are your business now.

The blade slides through him, trailing agony. Lovely. Lovely.

Oh, Dean, such fine work. Such a good student. The best student.

And now, finally, he's playing Alastair's game. He doesn't step back. His hand hovers near Alastair's face, braces, catches, fingers pressing hard through flesh and into bone, finding the shape of the skull beneath the face that Alastair wears.

Lovely, Alastair whispers.

Shut up, Dean whispers back, but he doesn't mean it now. His hand twists the knife deeper, and blood rushes hot from the wound. Alastair screams for him, watches the smile warp his lips into something more familiar. Humanity sliding away, and leaving only the perfect figure that Alastair carved.

Lovely.

The knife slides away too, and there's only Dean, the fierce shape of him, all darkness and fury when he pushes Alastair's head back and kisses his mouth. His lips are demanding, precise, and he tastes of whiskey and pain.

And now he's stumbling backwards with something breaking behind his eyes, and Alastair lets his bloody mouth find the shape of a smile.