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Dean had been bitten. He had been infected. It had all happened so quickly in the fight he himself had not even realized until hours later. Until now as he was cleaning off his blood-slicked skin. As the adrenaline was leaving his body, that's when he saw it. Blood trickled from his side. His own blood had mixed so entirely with the creatures' that he only now could see it pooling from those deep punctures. If he hadn't seen marks like these, exactly like the ones on him, so many times before - on bodies which he had, just as quickly as he had been bitten, cut down - he could have easily fooled himself into believing it was only a cut. Simply a gash. The mark of a blade, a sharp stone, a splintered piece of wood. The type of injury he had sustained hundreds of times before during hundreds of hunts. This was different. This was the bite of a vampire.
One could say his fate had been sealed when he and his brother had decided to work a job, a hunt like any other, the day before. To stop into a small town to do what they knew better than anything else. Hunting was in their blood, like the poison that now spread through Dean. As the number of missing persons stacked up, they had become convinced that it could only be the work of something wicked. And with hunting came an intimate knowledge of wickedness. Bodies, half-consumed why Vampires and half by the elements: vultures, flies, coyotes. These bodies led to those so lowly amongst their kind that they were afforded only scraps. These loners offered up the location of their nest in exchange for the promise of easy blood. All it took was a slit of Sam’s forearm, to taunt the blood-suckers into revealing everything they needed to know. The brothers made short work of them. Adding bodies of their own to the dead of this town.
Then, of course, the nest. It was there, in the dark and blood factory that housed the vampires, that the eldest Winchester was altered.
Now, hours later, Dean sat up craving. His entire body ached for what he knew he could not have. And yet, knowing this only seemed to make his sickness worse. Pain tormented his nerves, like knives twisted into his stomach. He swallowed down vomit that refused to come up. He kept swallowing until his throat turned prickly. Behind his eyelids hummed a constant dull ache. He prayed his head would just rupture, and leave him free from this suffering. He was not so lucky. He crawled across his bedroom floor - standing was agony at this point - flicking off the light switch, plunging himself into darkness. This only released his mind from what was a painful distraction and left the bloodlust free to scream within his head, his chest, his every limb.
Again at his bed, he curled into a ball, holding his knees to his chest as tears burned down his cheeks. He tried to calm himself by raking his fingers through his hair but that sensation made his skin crawl and only put him more on edge. He couldn’t stand the texture of the fabric beneath him. He was too hot. Burning up. He threw the sheets off his bed in a burst of energy that made him dizzy. Pain like thousands of tiny pricks moved across his skin. Soon enough he was cold again. Desperately, he reached for a blanket and buried himself within it. If only he could hide from this. From himself. From who he was becoming.
Down the hall, mere feet away Sam rested. But all he could think of was the blood rushing through his little brother’s body. He could hear it now. A rumble at first, low, harrowingly quiet. But louder it grew. Beating at an agonizing rhythm. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. The only sound to accompany his pain. Increasingly louder it echoed. Booming violently, Dean swore it was shaking the walls. Finally, the bile in his throat rose up, burning as he was sick down his shirt front. His body ached too much, he was in too much of a daze to direct it to the floor or even get up now and clean himself. So he just lied there, in his bed, in his own sick, and prayed. He prayed for death. He prayed for old man death to untether him from his body. To let him be at peace.
But it did not come. Instead, the pain ebbed only slightly, and in this momentary release, he knew what he needed to do. He needed to get well, if only for a few hours. Whatever the consequences. He didn’t bother changing his shirt, none of that would matter soon.
Bare-footed he padded down the hall. He reached the door and took a deep breath. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and shivers ran through him. His hand trembling on the doorknob, he opened the door. And then as if his body was controlled by another entity, he entered the room. Castiel sat before him. Dean’s heartbeat thundered in his ears, filling the war room’s silence. The angel was reading from an ancient book. He was translating it for Sam but he’d never finish it now. Looking up he met the Winchester's eyes and know something was very wrong.
“Dean?”
The man stood before the angel, frail and exhausted. Eyes bloodshot. Visibly shaking. Weaker than ever before but with the gaze of a man possessed. In spite of this, as Dean moved closer, Castiel did now step away but toward. To meet Dean in his misery. And as if under a spell himself, or under the impression he was safe, Cas didn’t flinch when the teeth of a creature collided with his jugular. The Winchester pulled the divine being toward his wicked mouth. Graceful in its wickedness the teeth devoured the blood as it flowed warm and red. Like manna from heaven, it quenched the intolerable thirst. In this satisfaction, the bloodlust only grew, and yet, as if the taste allowed Dean momentary deliverance from his daze, he pulled back. Rushing like a waterfall, blood flowed from the angel's neck. At once, the two of them realized the cost of what had occurred. Dean was now turned.