#authortiamatv

Excerpt 

The outfit’s all a little too big, though, a little too simple, like Cas is still figuring out things like how tall and how wide he is. Or maybe how to account for a body without extra flappers over his shoulders, and so he’s going for too few parts. Sure enough, when Dean looks down, Cas hasn’t got any shoes on his feet.

Castiel squints, all the way into offended again. He straightens, his shoulders pushing back even further, like he’s trying to stretch out his wings to show off how big and intimidating he is. Except he doesn’t have wings right now. Yep, definitely a little too fond of the missing flappy bits. “My true form—”

“Is pretty freakin’ bizarre,” Dean answers bluntly. “We don’t need that. Don’t do it, man.” He jabs a finger at the genie in their tiny apartmen. “In here, those wing-dings of yours would go right through the walls if you stretched ‘em out to show off how pretty you are. And then we’d all have the guard called on us for property destruction, and probably the other hunters called on you.”

Castiel goes still. The corners of his mouth droop. He glares at Dean. “I feel as if you’re not being sincere when you say I’m pretty.”

“Dean,” Sam scolds.

“Look, it’s true. He has skin like a crystal outta the witchy woman shop, and a lot of wings and eyes,” Dean says. It might be an asshole thing to say, but it is true. “Also, he was buck-ass naked and using his wings as a skirt. This is better, right?” He claps Castiel on the shoulder. “Still you, just, y’know. More normal.”

“I’m a genie. I don’t think you understand what ‘normal’ is,” the little asshole says. With air quotes.

But Sam’s latched on to his lore ideas again. “So… you have wings, normally? That’s amazing! I read in one book that genies were the size of giants, with blue skin, and smoke for legs!” he continues excitedly. “I mean… not that I’m saying you should be blue. Just…”

Cas considers that so seriously that Dean expects him to start rubbing his chin, like one of those scholars in paintings. “Perhaps that was normal in that society at the time?” he offers, finally. “Knees are a very inconvenient development in upright evolution. I’m not sure whose idea they were.”

Sam stares. “Is that, uh… is that a joke?” he finally asks.

beggars would ride 

Excerpt

The reaper goes still. Like… really still. Like, stones around them, still. (Actually… Dean’s not sure he breathes. It’s hard to tell, with the feathers all over the place, constantly moving, but they’re quiet now. Unblinking.)

“You,” he says finally, “are a very strange human.”

“Yeah, you won’t be the first to say it, won’t be the last,” Dean drawls. Then he narrows his eyes. “Kind of insulting to be told that by something with, like, six wings and forty eyes, but yeah, sure, whatever you say, dude.”

When he glares at Dean, sparks fly out of some of his eyes. Like… literal sparks, jumping blue and white into the air like firecrackers on the king’s birthday. They don’t light anything on fire—sputter out before they reach anything—and Dean just barely manages to keep himself from leaping away. But the little lights vanish before they touch anything, and then the reaper dude is—mostly—just a dude again.

Well. A glowing naked dude the color of starlight on water, with the nicest cheekbones Dean’s ever seen, wings that aren’t staying still for long enough to really count them, and a couple of dozen eyes that seem to be appearing and disappearing at random… but sure.

“You are very rude,” the reaper tells him, spreading… some of its wings. Dean tries to count them again. He thinks there are six, but they’re flashing in and out of his vision, out of the corners of his eyes, and the number seems to change every time he tries to focus on them. Also, they’re not all the same size all the time. “I am not a thing.” He narrows the two eyes on his face, and the ones on his arms do the same—flashing blue at the very edges, like lightning over water.

“Also, I have a hundred and twenty-two eyes, not forty,” he adds grumpily, like an afterthought.

“Sorry,” Dean says, not sorry at all.

The eyes narrow further, and he leans towards Dean. In and in and in. Dean thinks that something’s going to touch him—those wings, the glow coming out of his skin, something, but nothing does. No warmth. Nothing human.

“You should show me some respect,” Eyeballs growls from way inside Dean’s personal space, harsh and rough, like the walls around them—like the avalanche that took Dean to the floor. “I can smite you dead where you stand.”