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“Harder.” Gabriel raised his hands. “I can take it, Dean. You don’t have to hold back.”
Dean shook his head. “If I use my full strength, you can’t take it. Trust me, your God won’t protect you from a punch. He may keep me from draining your blood, but a punch?”
“The whole point of this is for me to block you and defend myself,” Gabriel protested. “You’re training me to fight your kind, what good is it to either of us if I don’t know how hard I’m gonna get hit if I don’t block?” They’d had this fight once already, with Gabriel trying to get Dean to use his normal speed instead of slowing down. It was the same logic, after all. The vampires who were trying to kill him weren’t going to take it easy on him, so Dean shouldn’t either.
Therefore, he wasn’t surprised when Dean came at him again, this time a lot more force behind the punch. He managed to block the first two, but the third swing connected with his cheek and threw him to the ground.
Dean stopped immediately, offering Gabriel a hand up. “See, Father? Told you. You don’t want me using my full force.”
“Sure I do.” Gabriel took the hand and pulled himself up to his feet. “You know damn well I can handle some pain, and you stopped before you could do any serious damage. If you wanna feed, then you hit me for all you’ve got, understand?”
“Not really, but your pain, fella. Wanna go again, or are we done for the day?”
Gabriel considered. Even before this, he’d taken a few knocks, and he was starting to get tired. Besides, he suspected Dean would be holding back again, which did him no good. He was so much better now than when he started; back then, he could barely take a single punch. “Let’s be done for the day. Come here.” He undid his collar and stripped down, baring his neck and torso. “Don’t suppose you feel like telling me why you’re training me to kill your own kind?” He didn’t expect an answer, any more than he’d gotten the in the six months since Dean had showed up at his church to offer training in exchange for feeding. At first, there had been some cockamamie story about a dead brother and another brother who tied him a lot more strongly to the human side of things than the vampire, but Gabriel didn’t believe it.
“Not if you still don’t feel like believing me about Benny and Sam.” Dean sank his fangs into Gabriel’s neck, one hand holding Gabriel still while the other traced soft patterns over his bare back. As Gabriel was starting to feel a little cold, Dean pulled out and licked the wounds to seal them up. He wrapped his arms around Gabriel, warming him up. “You good?”
“I’m good.” Gabriel turned his face into Dean’s neck. “Oh, you might like to know this. There was an FBI guy here this morning. He’d heard that my church was putting together a task force against illicit drinking and wanted to see if we could exchange services.”
Dean snorted, his breath somewhat warm on Gabriel’s skin in its currently cool state. “Wow. Wrong type of Prohibition, there.”
“I know, right? I explained that we were going after a more supernatural form of Prohibition breakers, but I don’t think he believed me.” Gabriel leaned into Dean a little tighter. “Why do you have breath anyway? I thought vampires didn’t need to breathe.”
“We don’t need to breathe to live, but you ever tried speaking with no air in your lungs? It doesn’t work very well, and not being able to talk just might kill me,” Dean joked. “Want me to hang around so if the spook comes back, he’ll believe you?”
“I always want you to hang around, Dean,” Gabriel said, and he felt Dean’s arms tighten around him. “If I promise to at least try to believe you, will you tell me about Benny?”
“Benny’s the fang who turned me,” Dean said. “We were lovers, and he was gonna turn Sam too once I’d settled in a bit more. Then this guy Desmond found out about us, got jealous, and killed Benny. He’d meant to kill me too, but with his dying strength, Benny freed me from his control and told me to get back to Sammy. I was supposed to turn Sam, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t condemn him to this life where the humans hate us because we’re different and the fangs who are supposed to be our people hate us even more.”
“What does he want?” Gabriel asked. While as a priest he couldn’t exactly condone turning a living human into a vampire, he could encourage Dean to respect his brother’s autonomy.
Dean shrugged. “He’s torn – he hates the thought of losing me, but I’m planning on offing myself once he’s gone anyway, and never was a believer in my chances of making Heaven in the first place. On the other hand, he doesn’t wanna go through the dying and turning and being a newborn fang under my thrall. Which I get. He’s always complaining about how I get obnoxious about being the older brother so of course I know better than he does, but at least where we are, he can talk back and argue. He saw what I was like before Benny set me free. Benny was good about not abusing the power, but he gave me an order, I didn’t have any choice. I had to obey.”
“Did you know it would be like that before he turned you?”
“Yeah, of course,” Dean said. “Like I said, he didn’t abuse the power. He’d use it for my safety and the safety of the people around me, and sometimes during sex because he knew it really turned me on, but never to make me do anything I wouldn’t do on my own. We only had a few more weeks before the newborn stage was gonna be over anyway.”
“If you could be cured, turned back human, would you want to be? Or do you want to stay what you are to remember Benny?”
Dean shrugged. “Only cures I know of require me to either die anyway or won’t work because I’ve had human blood. Haven’t really thought about it. Why?”
“Vatican’s sending out an expert in demonic arts, and the letter I got from Father Castiel said that there was a ritual. It requires a willing sacrifice on the part of a human – not death, just some blood. More than you’ve been taking from me, but not so much that it would kill someone. The holy ingredients and sacred relicts we have plenty of, being a church, so it was just finding someone who would be willing to risk the ritual going wrong and dying alongside you.” He smirked at the look on Dean’s face. “I love you, but I’m not willing to do that for you, Dean. I’ve got too many other responsibilities to my flock.”
“I’ll ask Sammy. He’ll wanna talk to Father Castiel, so he knows exactly what to expect and what the risks are, but I would be shocked if he didn’t agree.” Dean closed his eyes, and Gabriel gave him the time he needed. “If Sam says yes and Father Castiel agrees that it would work for me, I’m all for it. Still don’t think I have much shot at being with Sam in Heaven, but not much shot is better than no shot. I think Benny would agree that with him dead, I’m better off human anyway.”