Claire Novak (angel_heart) wrote in helladjacent, @ 2017-03-08 20:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | !jumps: vamps vs wolves, character: castiel, character: claire novak, character: gretel, character: negan, character: stevie universe |
Who: Castiel, Claire, Negan, Gretel, and Stevie
What: Awkward of Awkwards
Where: Gretel's room
When: Fridayish
Rating: Lots of language
Status: Complete
After twelve hours of intense illness, the efforts of Negan and Gretel’s care resulted in a healthy, happy wolf. Stevie was not a puppy, but she wasn’t completely filled into her coat and her paws were just a little large for the rest of her. It was her size which was most surprising, as if some hidden factor had determined she would be as tall as either wolf.
But before Gretel or Negan had time to wonder the wisdom of making new, large wolves or needed to reestablish the natural order of their pack, Stevie was instantly rolled onto her back, spine curving back and forth, making a mess of the already bloody sheets, tongue lulling, eager to submit for not just acceptance but their approval.
Her coat was a mix of colors, in patches of red, brown, black, white and gray. It wasn’t a stately solid white or an intimidating mostly black. Between the technicolor werewolf coat, the fact that her tongue was nearly always hanging from her mouth in a goofy canine smile, and the way Stevie liked to rub her face against everything as though she couldn’t scratch it just right, she appeared by some measure, the least intimidating in the pack.
For now, she was content to stay as a wolf. Even having removed most of her clothes before the change during the feverish transformation process, they were still bloody and Stevie didn’t feel any particular attachment to them. The den room was small. Stevie was going to wiggle on the bed until she wore her packmates down and they agreed to go hunting. Stevie was hungry. And curious. And excited. And the happiest she had felt in years.
After everything- the fever, the delusions born from it, and the strange mix of uncertainty and confidence that sat like a small weight on Gretel’s chest, Stevie had fully recovered and obviously embraced her new nature. Watching the calico wolf from where she stood near the other bed, folding the bloodied clothes the girl had been wearing- now washed- Gretel thought to herself how she had felt the first time that week, when her skin erupted in fur and her hands were replaced by claws. She knew why she felt Stevie was smiling on the inside; it was more than freeing. A lot more.
Now that she wasn’t completely engrossed in a sick girl in her care, Gretel was much more keenly aware of the hunger gnawing at her insides.
“I wonder,” she began quietly, sensing Negan closely behind her rather than actually seeing him. Naturally, she gravitated toward him, turning a hip or rolling her shoulders back just enough to make contact. “If she’ll actually kill a deer or try to play with it…”
Negan had stopped being worried after Stevie scarfed down the food he’d brought for her. At first he stuck with oatmeal, since he wasn’t really sure how well someone who was delusional from fever could actually eat. But she’d eaten that fine, and she ate the steak he brought for her, too.
That had been hours ago. Now, he and Gretel had a squirming, excited wolf on their hands, and he was grinning from ear to ear. Stevie was cute, sure, and now she was part of their pack, but mostly he was excited because it fucking worked. Killing Stevie would’ve been a pain in the fucking ass to deal with, but now, not only did he have another wolf, he knew he could make more. He let his hand settle on Gretel’s hips as he stood behind her, and leaned down to kiss her shoulder, before looking at Stevie again.
“She better fucking kill it,” he murmured, then kissed the side of Gretel’s head. “And if she doesn’t, I’ll teach her not to fucking play with her food.” He smiled, and gave her hip a squeeze. “Let’s go. I’m fucking starving.”
Stevie gave an excited sort of yip. She was immediately up on all fours, doing a couple of excited sharp turns on the bed, having no care or concern for dignity. This was her chance to prove herself. They were her pack, but she so badly wanted to impress them, to make sure she was accepted by them. If she could bag a deer, on her own, and bring it to them- all she wanted was to make them proud.
And then she would get THE BITS. They wouldn’t be french fry bits from the boardwalk. Beach City was gone, but that was much less painful to think about now that she would be getting deer bits. Deer bits were much more special now that they could go together hunting and together eating and it was going to be great and Stevie’s ears would not settle down on her head.
She couldn’t wait to show them.
Meanwhile rounding the landing that lead to the fourth floor from the stairs, Claire gathered her hair in a ponytail at her crown, heading for Gretel’s room with Castiel in tow.
“I’d bet money Negan’s in there with her,” she warned the angel quietly, still a bit unsure about how that interaction was going to go. Actually, she had a decent idea, and it involved a lot of swearing- possibly violence. She wouldn’t count it out. She had not particularly liked the crazy glint she saw in Negan’s eyes the last time they talked. “She’s a wolf this week, too-” Which just sounded weird to say, but Claire was past that at this point.
“She is?” Castiel asked. “Do you believe that will make her less sympathetic to our questions?”
Castiel continued to follow her as they arrived at the door. He rubbed his head, the dull vestiges of the headache from his hangover still tailing him even several hours later. It was dealable, just distracting.
“And if we are to meet Negan as well, the assumed instigator in possible future violence, it seems like we are entering the lion’s den,” he said. He stood straighter and squared his jaw, hand at the ready if he needed his angel blade. “You are confident this is a wise course of action?”
Claire tugged on her ponytail to make sure it was tight, and sighed audibly, pausing at the door she knew to be Gretel’s.
“Not really, no.” At least she was being honest. “But I’d rather try now and get some idea of where they both stand than have it bite me in the ass later on.” Or bite anyone else in the ass. Plus, if Negan was going to meet Cas, she wanted to be there- though Claire wasn’t sure if it was just protective worry or sheer, morbid curiosity. Before she figured it out or lost her nerve, she lightly pounded the bottom of her fist on the door.
“Hey Hefner-” she chirped at it, using the nickname she’d bestowed on her mismatched roommate two sentences into their knowing each other. “You two home?”
Negan was so wrapped up in the situation in the room that he hadn’t been listening for people outside. That, and nobody had come to bug them so far. He recognized the voice immediately, though, and raised an eyebrow as he glanced over at the door.
“Yeah, hold the fuck on!” he called back, before giving Gretel’s head another kiss and going over to the door. On his way, he pointed at Stevie, accompanied by a pointed look, and said, “Stay. Don’t lose your fucking shit just because there are people at the door.” He knew Stevie was still in there, but he also knew Stevie had spent the last half hour rolling around on her bed. He didn’t need her jumping on his roommate.
By the time he was at the door, he already knew Claire had someone else with her. Someone new who he’d never met before. At least he was mostly clothed, with jeans on, more than he could say for Gretel, or Stevie if she changed back. When he opened the door, it was just enough so he could stand leaning against the doorway, smiling widely down at Claire and the stranger.
“Well, hey there, kid,” he said, then looked at the guy next to her. He was new in the hotel, too. The lightbulb went off, and he grinned. “And you must be the fucker wearing her dad like a meatsuit. We haven’t met yet.” He gave him a brief look up and down, and gave the air another sniff, before meeting the angel’s eyes again. A fucking angel. “I’m Negan.”
Cas was struck dumb. His eyes opened into wide near-circles. His mouth was slightly agape. He looked the man up and down, unwilling to react verbally to his shock. He narrowed his eyes as if suspicious of the striking physical similarities between Negan and John Winchester. He looked at Claire, then back at Negan, unsure whether the young girl even knew what Sam and Dean’s father looked like.
The physical similarities were where the comparison stopped, though. Aside from Castiel seeing the stark change the lycanism had given him, Negan’s very soul was different from John’s. It was disorienting to watch him. So, temporarily struck mute in shock and thought, that left the floor open to Claire in responding in any kind of coherent way as Cas slowly tilted his head as he continued his overt examination of Negan.
For her part, the teenager’s reaction to Negan’s overly blunt greeting was nothing more than an unimpressed deadpan look- he hadn’t said anything incorrect, but pointing out Cas’s relation (not to mention the fact that she’d told him about it in relative confidence) left a sour taste in her mouth. Maybe that was her own fault.
What she did not expect was the look on Castiel’s face. She caught it in the corner of her eye, then with full confused caution, considering he looked like he was staring at something infinitely more disturbing than just Negan, wolf or not.
“Uh-” Nope. Later. She’d ask him later. Claire looked back at Negan, or rather, five inches of him through the barely open door. The look on her face showed she noticed, and questioned him about it directly- if not in words. “We wanted to talk to Gretel.”
Hearing her name from the other side of the door perked Gretel’s ears, but it was easy enough to tell Negan wasn’t prepared to let anyone through. She watched him from the side, slipping a shirt on over her shoulders. Normally she would have insisted she address people coming for her directly, regardless of the man standing between them- and she knew that. The inner conflict between her human self and what she had been made into was usually fairly minimal, but occasionally it flared up enough for her to pay attention.
Right now, she only considered it background noise she wanted to forget.
Stevie was hungry, wound up and trying so, so hard to do exactly as she was told. All four paws were still technically on the bed as she got down to her belly and inched as far to the edge of it as she could, sticking her neck out as far as it could possibly reach, sniffing at the air as far as her impressive senses could pick up. The people on the other side of the door were new, and they didn’t smell anything like Negan or Gretel and Stevie absolutely wanted to say hello and stick her nose everywhere on them.
But she didn’t.
She did, however, accidentally release the tiniest, excited whine from behind Negan.
Negan wasn’t stupid. He saw the look in the angel’s eyes, and he knew it wasn’t because he was some fucking spectacle. That look was significant, and it only made Negan’s grin twist, and the look in his eyes go from straight curiosity to something a little more sinister. He was already rubbing this guy the wrong way and he hadn’t even fucking tried.
Claire’s voice drew his attention, and he looked down at her, his expression morphing into one of taken aback shock.
“Wait just a fucking second, kid. We didn’t even get to finish our fucking introductions,” he said, and looked at the angel again. “You got a name, Meatsuit Man?” Because if not, that was what he was going to be called. Hell, Negan might just stick with that, anyway.
Castiel still studied the John doppelganger in front of him and didn’t react to Negan’s profanity or flamboyance.
“My name is Castiel,” he replied calmly in his deep voice. “The vessel I’m inhabiting was Jimmy Novak. You are correct in assuming that he was Claire’s father.” He squinted his eyes again. “You look like someone from my world who is dead but your soul and energy are different. It is unsettling.”
“Cas-tee-ell,” Negan parroted back, dropping his voice down a couple of octaves, and then he chuckled, letting it trail off into a sigh. “Look at this fucking guy, talking about my fucking soul and energy and some shit.” He shook his head. “Y’know what’s fucking unsettling? I don’t think you’ve blinked a single fucking time since I opened the door. That’s fucking unsettling as shit.”
But what Castiel said would stick in his head, and he’d have to find out who the fuck he looked like later. Right now, Claire and Castiel were clearly on a mission. A mission to talk to Gretel.
“But, now that I know who the fuck you are...” He turned to look over his shoulder at Gretel, smiling brightly. “You got guests, babe!” Then he looked at Claire and Castiel again, not moving from his place in the doorway. Not yet. He was too busy grinning down at Castiel.
Gretel had been listening to every word, even as she pulled on a pair of her leather riding trousers and secured the lacings, and glanced at Stevie at the squeak of air that passed through her nose. The girl was obviously impatient, and hungry. The fever burned through a lot of energy, even if she had plenty to spare. She wouldn’t likely be able to be still for much longer.
Even more pressing was the exchange going on between this Castiel and Negan; talk about familiar faces but different souls struck a distinctly loud chord with her- especially this week. Her hand appeared sliding gently around Negan’s chest from behind his shoulder, establishing tactile assurance and connection in a way she no longer thought about, but also to make room for herself between him and the doorframe. She briefly looked at the girl, sharing a small nod of recognition, before settling her brown eyes on the man who stood beside her.
Her expression was open and- as usual, mostly benign, curious- but the change in her brought on by the hotel was present in her eyes as flecks of wildness and gold, like she was constantly repairing and destroying the bridge between her own soul, and that of the animal that had joined it.
Claire had been taken by surprise by what Cas said- suddenly she was eyeing Negan a lot closer, like she should be seeing something obvious she kept missing. He resembled someone Cas knew that was dead… so who was that? She’d have to ask him later.
“We just want to know more about the hotel-” Claire injected, but why, she wasn’t exactly sure. Her instincts were flaring, mostly because of the secretive, guarded way Negan was blocking the door. Then it struck her…
“...did something in there whine?”
Negan had one hand on Gretel’s hip, still watching Castiel and Claire from his position behind her. At Claire’s question, he raised an eyebrow, and glanced over his shoulder at Stevie. Maybe he should’ve specified stay fucking quiet, too, but oh well. He turned his attention back to Claire.
“Yup,” he said, though he wouldn’t clarify who or what. If Stevie was smart, she’d stay where she was. If Claire was smart, she’d probably figure it out. “I’d invite you in, but we had a messy fucking night.” He was back to grinning again. Messy could’ve meant any number of things by the way he grinned- he’d be just as giddy about making a mess spending the whole night fucking as he would have if he’d killed the shit out of someone and gotten blood everywhere. Granted, he hadn’t murdered the shit out of anyone, but there was still a decent amount of blood staining the room.
Stevie was now deathly still. They were talking about her. It was more than excitement, she was on full alert, waiting for the okay to dart out and say hello. Her nose continued to sniff vainly for anymore information than she already had. Every muscle in her body was tensed and ready to leap from her position the second she had permission. If she’d been a mere dog, her tail would have been thumping loudly enough to be heard in the hall. Instead, she was loaded and aimed like a pistol waiting to fire.
Castiel looked idly through the negative space between Gretel and Negan’s heads (their bodies were so close it was hopeless to see through any splits between them). He saw a glint of a nuzzle but nothing more. His angelic perception could have identified that it was another werewolf, but he never said anything if it had. A third party, as long as it stayed docile, wasn’t of great importance in Castiel’s mind.
He turned his attention to Gretel, then.
“I wish to know more of the history of this hotel. I understand you have been here the longest. I wish to escape. Or attempt it. Learning as much as I can about--” he paused and sighed, giving a slight roll of his eyes.
He interrupted himself speaking softly, “The one which you are attempting to hide wants very much to be seen.”
He looked at both of them pointedly.
Negan didn’t know which part he wanted to laugh at more - the fact that Castiel thought he might actually leave or his amazing ability of pointing out the way fucking obvious. He ended up laughing at both.
“Yeah, she’s also basically a fucking bomb waiting to explode, she’s so fucking excited,” he said, his grin still firmly in place. “We were gonna go work on diffusing her when you two showed the fuck up. But I can make this visit real fucking quick.” He leaned forward, resting his chin on Gretel’s shoulder. “I don’t care if God himself fucked you up the ass and called you blessed, you’re not fucking going anywhere.” He gave Gretel’s hip a squeeze, tugging her back towards the room. “Here, you’re just as fucked as the rest of us. Get used to it.”
Cas looked at the older man, again unaffected by Negan’s personality, nonplussed by the array of f-bombs littered through the monologue like a bad case of profanity hiccups. He looked from Negan to Gretel and gave her face attention, squinting as he did when he was looking farther than human site.
“I can see you fighting,” he said. “I would still like conversation even if you think it is unlikely or impossible to escape. If you are of the same mind as Negan, I understand and Claire and I will be on our so you may...diffuse your charge.”
He narrowed his eyes again. Negan was not John. He was the furthest thing from John that could ever exist. This fact did nothing to settle him.
While Gretel didn’t particularly care for the imagery that came with Negan’s descriptive analogy, most of her wasn’t phased by it. What flared in protest somewhere deep in her core was something old and faded, screaming to be heard when it was acknowledged by the man in the tan coat- and especially when she was being directed back into the room. Though her body complied, her benign expression shifted to something more unnerved. Something tense.
Two half-steps back into the room, before Negan could shut the door on the pair of unnerved and slightly bewildered souls in the hallway, she twisted a look up at him. “I’ll talk to them for a bit-” she suggested in a way that felt like asking, whether she intended it or not. “I can catch up with you.”
Negan paused when Gretel did, and sighed down at her. Of course she’d talk with them for a bit. But he already knew talking wasn’t going to get them fucking anywhere. If it was, Gretel wouldn’t still be stuck in the hotel. If she’d been there for years, no fucking way was he getting out intentionally in less than a week.
“Why do you have to be so fucking helpful?” he asked in a groan. Gretel would end up talking to them at some point, one way or another, so it might as well fucking happen while he could be around to possibly get something out of it. With a defeated sigh, he stepped back into the room, but opened the door wider so they could come through.
Then he grinned.
“Hey, Stevie,” he said, aiming his grin over at the giant, excited wolf on the bed. “Come say hi.”
Stevie leapt from the bed and would have charged the less than a second it took to make to Claire and Castiel. Instead, the moment Stevie’s feet landed her amber eyes zeroed in on Claire, recognizing the gem.
Anyone not a wolf would have been forgiving for thinking her next move was submissive. But there was nothing about her tail or ears that indicated submissiveness when she got on her belly and crawled the rest of the way over to Claire and Castiel. She was eager and going out of her way not to scare them. Her nose reached them first, sniffing at their legs.
Stevie seemed much more interested in sniffing Claire it seemed. Claire was- well, she smelled nice. Stevie was very interested in Claire.
Claire’s eyes had gone wide even before the lanky wolf gunned it for them.
“Stevie?” She ‘asked’ toward Negan, accusingly. She knew Stevie had not been a werewolf at the beginning of this week. Her point or any further questioning was interrupted by the antics of Stevie herself, which both confused and alarmed Claire- not in fear for herself, but for the whole damn situation. Her natural reaction to being sniffed at by a huge wolf- friendly or not- was to go a little stiff in the back. She did not particularly relax much when she glanced inside the room and saw a mass of bloodied sheets on one bed- even though it became evident that Stevie-wolf wasn’t about to bite her face off.
Castiel entered the room with less trepidation than Claire, even after Stevie’s affection and the blood stained sheets.
“Hello, Stevie,” he said politely, as if she had been any other person in the room.
The angel then scanned the room in mild curiosity before turning back to Gretel.
“Thank you for agreeing to talk. I don’t assume to find a way out immediately. But...there is a plan in the works. I feel as if the more I know about the hotel and its history the better chance I’ll have to...attempt an escape,” Castiel said.
He was very careful with his words. Gretel was the person who’d been here the longest. If anyone would have misgivings of his ability to make it back to his world it would be her. He didn’t wish to be written off too quickly.
Stevie could see the way Claire tensed. Not just the strained way her posture locked up. There was almost a sixth sense and, despite Stevie wanting to get closer, she backed away from the nervous hunter slowly and bashfully before standing on all four legs.
To the angel, Stevie nosed his hand politely, which was wet and cold like any healthy wolf nose should be. Now that she had said hi, she curled up on the floor and sat with a slight huff, waiting to go hunting while her eyes looked over at Claire with interest every few moments or so.
Gretel settled on the padded armrest of the wingback chair in front of the fireplace, where Negan took a more proper seat. She’d done so without thinking about it, just like the way her inside leg tucked itself under his- her cognitive focus, however, was centered on the two others in the room. Mostly the male, who smelled… strange. Not unpleasant- actually comforting in a way she couldn’t define, but certainly unfamiliar.
“I’ve been trapped here for years,” she told him simply, a narrative she’d gone over probably a thousand times at this point. “Five, maybe six. Maybe more… after a while it gets hard to keep track. Over those years, I’ve seen so many people come and go, but the one thing that they all have in common is that none had a choice in either. Typical humans, creatures of every single make, magic users, even gods... it’s never made a difference.”
Castiel nodded as the woman spoke. Six years was a long time for a human. In fact, for Castiel, even though 7 years had been a mere blip in his existence, they were of the most important years in his history.
“I’m sorry you’ve been here for so long,” he said.
He’d moved from Claire’s side to slightly in front of her, deftly avoiding the wolf that lay on the floor. He was now between both Gretel and Negan and Claire. It was a slight power move, very subtle. It was in his unconscious to protect Claire and it showed in his posturing.
“I wonder if you know anything about the location of the hotel either in time or space. Also...have you aged at all?” Castiel asked. He wasn’t very good at questioning people. He wasn’t Sam or Dean. He didn’t possess the skills to misdirect or lie. So he was himself, straight forward, sometimes blunt...always a little awkward.
Claire noticed the subtle shift in Cas’s position, but decided not to bring attention to it- besides, she was more concerned with the fact that the small horse-sized wolf staring at her was Stevie. It was hard to push through her mental filter. Plus, she was more than a little pissed at Negan for making the girl his first guinea pig.
Gretel dropped her hands on her lap in a way that conveyed a clear answer to his first question. She had no idea.
“There’s no way I can say this and make sense-” the (former) white witch stated. “The hotel is nowhere, and everywhere... I’ve seen so many different Earths outside those doors, I stopped keeping track. Also, worlds that aren’t Earth, different stars, different times.” She sighed, audibly. “Never the same one twice- but faces can repeat. You said Negan has the face of someone you know… That happens here. A lot”
She paused long enough to push the spiney knot that formed at the back of her throat.
“There’s another man here, now, who has my brother’s face,” she confessed in explanation, knowing it would be a surprise to Negan- she hadn’t told him. “My brother was here with me for years- he’s another that just disappeared, recently.”
Stevie’s eyes lazily traveled to Gretel as she spoke, and then back to Claire. She didn’t want to get into a sad discussion about what they’d lost- she wanted to enjoy being a wolf. If Stevie had her way, she’d never take human shape again. Being a wolf was infinitely better. But now everyone was talking and she was hungry and she had some strong, confusing feelings that she didn’t know how to deal with.
So she huffed again unhelpfully.
Negan was happy to stay quiet for a little while. Castiel and Claire had questions, so he’d might as well let them get their fucking answers unimpeded. He noticed the way the meatsuit-wearing angel shifted, but he didn’t acknowledge it. Castiel certainly didn’t need any goddamn encouragement.
Now, though, he couldn’t stay quiet. His hand paused to rest on Gretel’s calf, and he looked at Gretel, his eyebrows shooting up.
“Hold the fucking phone,” he said, and frowned. “When the fuck did that happen? Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” Despite his choice in vocabulary, his tone still held genuine concern. Enough so that Gretel, and others who’d spent enough time around him, would recognize it.
“I didn’t…” She huffed a bit before her answer, shaking her head as she looked down at him. “I don’t know how to deal with it myself yet- and I’ve had a lot of other things on my mind lately.” As did just about everyone else.
Castiel shifted uncomfortably at Negan’s reply to Gretel’s admission. When Gretel replied to Negan, attempting to assuage the emotion expressed, Castiel decided it was a good time to enter information that he wanted to share.
“It sounds like a pocket dimension,” Cas said, figuring ignoring the outburst would be far less uncomfortable than acknowledging it.
“Archangels, in my universe, can create them. It takes a lot of power to sustain, though I have heard of pocket universes being in existence for years before an archangel is able to alter them to show the true path. The only difference is that those alternative realities don’t often travel to other realities. I would imagine, though I don’t know first hand, that this would take even more power,” Cas explained, shifting slightly and taking account of all of the other’s reactions in the room, even Stevie’s.
Cas didn’t get a reaction from Negan, who really didn’t give much of a fuck about what he had to say in the first place, and whose attention was still on Gretel. He frowned, and gave Gretel’s calf another gentle squeeze. Considering how much time they’d been spending together, and how attached they’d been in general, he still didn’t like the fact that she hadn’t told him, but he couldn’t really get annoyed. And he wasn’t annoyed. He just cared, a lot, and had a weird way of showing it.
He noticed the pause in conversation, and looked back over at Castiel. Oh, right. This was still happening. “Sorry, I just missed every fucking bit of what you just said,” he said, and smiled at him, shifting to lean back further in his chair, making himself more comfortable and tilting his head. “But please, continue.”
Gretel could more or less feel the look Negan gave her and knew that part of the conversation was far from over, but for right now, there was an antsy newborn werewolf with a stomach growling so loud she could hear it across the room, and two others that might want to extract themselves from the situation sooner rather than later.
She sighed at the man in the coat, her shoulders moving in a half-hearted shrug.
“Your theory is as good as any I’ve heard- or any anyone else I’ve known her heard before my time. And no- we don’t age. There was a man who claimed to have been stuck here for three hundred years when I first arrived. ...there wasn’t much of his sanity left. Eventually he just… walked off into the Fog and stayed there until the clock chimed again. That’s how most of them go…”
Stevie lifted her head at that and whined. Whether she whined because that was awful, or because she was about to start eating the rug, was anyone’s guess. It was awful, but she was also hungry and they were wolves, and it seemed pointlessly miserable to think about something they couldn’t fix just yet.
Cas did not pick up on Stevie’s needs. Sometimes he tended to forget things like eating or get so focused on what he felt was more important than what he felt was less crucial was ignored.
“It would be fascinating if it weren’t so overtly cruel. But if it does take power to keep this universe going there certainly should be an option to disable that power. It also occurs to me that if this place exists at all there was a structure to build it, meaning that those with purpose had to have created it. Something like this...it wouldn’t show up by accident. There must be an intelligence to guide this universe. Not a god, per se, but a being, or perhaps more than one. I still believe there might be a way to escape,” he said with finality. “I would like to continue to have contact with you, Gretel. If...all parties are in agreement, of course.”
Cas spared a neutral look at Negan, understanding at least that social etiquette.
Negan hadn’t been listening to Castiel before, but he was now, and the longer the guy went on, the less Negan wanted to be listening to him. He’d heard this shit more than enough times for him to be sick of it. Maybe not put exactly that way, but it was all the same. His expression said exactly how enthralled he was by their conversation, and when Castiel shifted his gaze, Negan gave him a few slow blinks.
“What the fuck are you looking at me for, Meatsuit Man?” he asked, and tilted his head the other way. “Is my fucking name Gretel?” He let the question hang in the air for a second, and then continued. “She’s her own fucking person. If she wants to listen to another jackass try to convince themselves there’s a way to get the fuck out of here, she’s more than welcome to. But-” He paused again, letting go of Gretel’s leg, and standing up from his chair. “Not while I’m here being subjected to it. Because it is all a bunch of fucking bullshit.”
He turned his attention to Stevie, walking over to where she was waiting so patiently and crouching down to give her head an affectionate scratch behind both of her big ears. “Plus, I got a fucking puppy to feed,” he said, giving her a grin, before he looked over at Castiel, and stood up straight again. “So are you done? Or do you have some more bullshit to spew before I kick you the fuck out?”
“C’mon Cas…” Claire finally spoke up after listening to everything and learning… nothing. Nothing useful, anyway. It was hard to focus on it all with Wolf!Stevie still pawing at the ground and trying to figure out how to process that whole thing. One thing she was sure about? They weren’t gaining any ground here. Not right now. “There’s a few others you should talk to…”
Stevie was currently battling a number of drives. There was her hunger and her pack. These two things seemed to line up perfectly. If she stayed with her pack, they would go eat, and it was probably going to be a pretty great time.
But, then there was Claire. Stevie hadn’t met Claire in person before, but being the overly tender hearted person that Stevie was, still considered her a friend. Though she wasn’t a wolf, Stevie was dealing with some strong instincts and desires that had been relatively muted. But to talk to Claire, Stevie had to change, which on a personal level she didn’t want to and yet…
The wolf seemed to shrink down into a skinny, naked girl. She looked around for something to cover herself with, not because she really cared about being naked- she hadn’t been very self conscious before being turned- it struck her as a polite after thought. When nothing was immediately available, she ignored it.
“Hey, Claire? After we go hunting if you still need help figuring out your powers, I could drop by? Summoning the shield isn’t so hard once you get it the first time.”
Stevie smiled as though the situation wasn’t awkward at all, although if it defused some of the tension in the room, it would be a happy byproduct of Stevie’s strangeness.
Gretel acted on a tangled mix of old habit and instinct when she noticed Stevie clammer around without cover; with a tense jaw she was out of the chair behind Negan, grabbing the sheet off the bed to fluff around the whip of a girl. She did it without a word, only a quick look that felt strangely motherly.
Claire, on the other hand, was unable to keep from grimacing on Stevie’s behalf.
“Sure, Stevie-” the young hunter said after clearing her throat. “I’ll just.. Actually, just ping me on the PDA okay…”
Cas shuffled a little awkwardly at Claire’s beckoning. Negan’s tirade hadn’t made him uncomfortable. It was doubtful that even with the extra strength of being a werewolf that Negan had the physical prowess over the angel to be able to physically evict him from the room. He’d just tilted his head in interest at the outburst. Despite the profanity, it did put things in perspective. He was not the only one who had the same ideas about the hotel’s existence. The history of escape was full of failures and mysterious disappearances. Still, Cas had a hard time losing faith. He was very stubborn.
He nodded to Claire’s suggestion, thankful of her ability to read when the situation was getting too tense. He watched with intrigue as Stevie transformed, so unlike the werewolves of his and Claire’s world.
“Um…” he said, turning back to the rest, “thank you for offering your time to listen. It was...informative to meet each of you.”
He gave a half blink and small smile.
“Good luck with...being wolves,” he finished lamely.
Negan looked between Stevie, butt naked and smiling like she had rainbows shooting out of her ass, and the two who were on their way out the door, and didn’t fight the pointed roll of his eyes to fucking all of it. As happy as he was to have another wolf, and even though he’d fucking dare anyone to fuck with the little shit, he was starting to seriously consider working on his impulse control.
He put himself in between his Munchkin and his unwelcome guests, smiling in a way that didn’t quite reach his eyes as they briefly flashed a fiery orange-yellow.
“Good luck with your fuck parade of an incoming reality check,” he said, and gestured with a sweeping motion towards the door.
“Thank you,” Cas replied with a nod. He walked to the door, opening it to let Claire through first.
(Looks good to go)