9. West County Dream
Dean wakes up naturally and slowly for the first time in a very long time.
Things filter in dimly. The room is quiet, the birds outside are loud. There’s sunlight creeping in through the window – the pale, golden kind that signifies dawn. He blinks at it dazedly, eyes unfocused.
He must not actually be awake. This is a dream. It’s kind of odd, because when he dreams it’s almost always memories of his childhood home back in Kansas, of summer, of Sammy. This is nice, though, so he isn’t going to start complaining. He is warm. The bed is soft.
The bed.
He’s on the bed, and then he isn’t, scrambling to his knees on the floor with his head bowed low, heart in his mouth.
He waits, and he trembles. But there is no sound of another man’s breathing in the room, there’s no tug of chains at his wrists or collar, no acrid scent or tell-tale soreness that would prove he’d been used. He’s been in a bed all night, and no one has touched him.
He can’t feel the cold, heavy chain brushing the back of his neck, and that’s strange enough that he takes stock, and remembers. He’s not in Hell.
Letting loose a shaky breath, he rocks backward till he’s sitting with his feet on the floor, his back pressed against the warm wooden bedframe behind him. Reaching up to snag the quilt, he slowly wraps it around his shoulders and stares through the wall in front of him. It’s early – he can tell by the pale light coming in through the large window that the sun has only just risen.
When his heart slows back to a normal rhythm, he can finally close his eyes without feeling like something is going to reach out and grab him if he does. Hugging his knees to his chest, he thinks back to yesterday, to the feeling of Castiel’s hand on his back, to the wash of soothing scents he’d sent out along with his soothing words.
He doesn’t know if it was due to stupidity or weakness, but for once, he hadn’t been scared.
Well, no. That’s not right. He had been scared – terrified, actually – of how his master would hurt him, of how he would be punished for his behavior with the doctor, of what the alpha might do with a sex slave he’d been told not to have sex with. Dean has not felt calm around an alpha since the day he left home, and for good reason – deceptively gentle touches will always hurt eventually. But he hadn’t fought the man’s touch, hadn’t growled or even tried to move away. He’d just… let it happen.
He’d be kicking himself for his stupidity and weakness right now, except… the alpha hadn’t actually done anything. Nothing at all, other than calm him down with some sort of freaky alpha-omega biology shit Dean doesn’t understand. Something none of the alphas he’s met before have ever done, or tried to do, because what they wanted was always taken by force. Dean hadn’t even known that they could do that – he’d thought they only sent out scents by accident, smells that gave away their rage or their lust and told Dean he needed to brace for impact. But Castiel’s scent had whispered safe, safe, safe, and Dean had, for reasons he doesn’t understand, believed it – at least long enough for him to finally go to sleep.
He can still smell Castiel on his clothes, if he concentrates. It’s distinctly alpha, of course – all alphas’ scents are similar, in a way. But there is no tang of lust or rage in it, no bitter aftertaste of sadistic glee, no musk at all. He slowly puts his nose to his shirt and inhales and actually feels himself calm down, feels something primal in his brain unclench and relax at the faint smell stitched into the fabric. And it's such a fucking relief to be calm for once that he doesn’t try and dredge up the energy to be ashamed of himself.
Castiel had carried him to bed. Had left him alone. Had let him rest.
Normally, he'd assume he’d been drugged – but he knows what it’s like to wake up after that. He’d be puking his guts up right now, or his head would be pounding, or both. And if the alpha had touched his nape, he thinks he would remember at least the initial contact; instead, he recalls very clearly that Castiel had taken care not to touch him there at all.
So no, Castiel hadn’t artificially made him sleep. He’d just allowed him to. Had taken away his fear in the gentlest way Dean has ever experienced.
And he’d tucked Dean in. Without hurting him at all, or even undressing him. He presses his hands to his eyes and shakily exhales.
It sorta scares him.
He’s so tired of his fear. Fear makes him stupid. Fear makes him consider bolting out into the snow to escape a man that has not hurt him, fear makes him tell a doctor no, fear makes him spill things and ruin things and piss off the person who holds his life in his hands. He wishes he could snatch the terror from himself and throw it away, because it has never helped him.
And – dare he say it – it’s possible, just maybe, that his fear has never been more useless to him than it is now. Because by far the most confusing thing about all of this boils down to one single solitary fact: His master has not hurt him at all.
It ricochets around in his head like a pinball, dinging here and there and setting off flashing lights. Castiel has not hurt him, even though he has every right. He could have with no provocation, anyway, but Dean has also fucked up royally. His behavior over the last couple days – any of it – would have been enough to get him whipped in Hell. Yet the alpha has done nothing but cook for him and soothe his fear whenever he can, he has apologized to him, he has looked at him with something other than lust or disgust or hatred, and had even been angry and hadn’t taken that anger out on him, somehow –
And. Castiel doesn’t even want to fuck him, apparently. That’s what he’d claimed. What Pamela had claimed, too.
The thought is nauseating. It should be the best news of his life, if he can actually believe it. But the truth is that he’s not capable of much else that will make him worth keeping around.
Once upon a time, Dean was going to be a mechanic, was going to go to school and open up his own shop. Once upon a time, Dean was a provider. Once upon a time, he was useful, resourceful, and willingly sacrificed his happiness and his schooling and his health for his family, did anything and everything for Sam –
He stops himself with a shake of his head, scared to open that box in his mind. He’s afraid of what’s in there. And he’s terrified of what isn’t – what he’s forgotten.
He isn’t a kid anymore, and he isn’t fit to take care of anyone. He’s just a tiny little fraction of a person that is, first and foremost, someone else’s property; a plaything that is meant only for the enjoyment of its owner. When his owner doesn’t enjoy him anymore, he gets thrown away like a cheap, broken toy, and then gets picked up and screwed back together in some fresh and horrible way by a new master with even worse standards than the one before.
Except… his newest owner doesn't seem to want to play with him at all. He doesn’t have a goddamn clue what his master wants.
That’s a dangerous thing, for a slave.
Rising to his feet, unsteady and sore but feeling better and more well-rested than he has in a long while, he finds his way to the upstairs bathroom. Castiel had told him to use it whenever he needed, and the stale fear stench and dried tears on him make him feel dirty inside and out.
When he turns the water over to warm he trembles in spite of himself, and he can’t help but hug his arms to his chest as he stands in the spray, waiting for a punishment that isn’t, apparently, supposed to come.
He towels himself dry and dresses his wounds and takes his medicine like he’s been told. It’s all laid out on the counter for him, so Castiel obviously wants him to do as the doctor ordered. He applies the numbing cream to what he can reach after a long bout of hesitation, something tightening in his throat when the pain fades to the background, his fingertips tingling. The lack of the now-familiar ache on his nape leaves him feeling strangely adrift.
He dresses in the same clothes that Castiel touched and inhales his scent, still confused when it doesn’t make his stomach clench. And, remembering the alpha’s words from yesterday, he drinks water out of the sink with his hands and wonders if he’s going to get in trouble for forgetting the cup.
He goes back to his room, because he’s not really sure if he’s allowed to leave. The only reason he had yesterday was because he had to pee so bad – he’d been terrified the whole time that Castiel would backhand him for leaving the place where he’d been put.
But, of course, he hadn’t. He hadn’t had anything for Dean to do downstairs either, though, so he probably shouldn’t go without permission. He thinks. It’s possible that he’s expected to go and wait in the kitchen like he had yesterday, but he doesn’t know. Castiel hasn’t given him any orders.
His head is beginning to pound. All these decisions he’s having to make are making him uneasy. In Hell, it had been explicitly clear what he was supposed to do at all times. He hadn’t always done that, but at least he’d known when he was breaking the rules. Had known when there would be consequences. It didn’t matter that some of the rules were impossible to follow – there had been a sick kind of security in knowing what was coming, even if it was gonna hurt. But now, he doesn’t even have that.
In the end, he’s too chicken-shit to go downstairs. Honestly, he kind of just wants to go back to sleep – despite being in bed for a day and a half, he’s still exhausted. Panic attacks, he’s learned, will do that to him, especially when they follow days of no sleep at all.
He looks at the bed for a long time before he takes the blanket off of it and clutches it in his hand. Apparently he really is allowed to sleep in it – Castiel had put him there, after all – but he doesn’t really want to get back in it himself. Doesn’t want to examine the squirming in his gut when he looks at the rumpled sheets.
The windowsill is painted white and covered with a long, soft cushion. It’s wide enough that he can curl up there comfortably, and he does so, tucking the blanket around his shoulders. He leans his temple on the cool window and closes his eyes.
What Castiel wants from him is still a mystery. Dean’s willing, whatever it is – he admits that freely to himself. Forget whatever’s left of his dignity, forget fighting. Fuck that. He just wants to go a month, a week, a day without getting hit or whipped or savagely fucked by an alpha that either doesn’t care about his pain or gets off on it. But he doesn’t know what he’s here for, simply because slaves don’t need to know. They only need to do what they’re told.
He watches his breath fog up the glass with hooded eyes. It’s started to snow again, light, fluffy flurries drifting past the window outside. For once, that doesn’t fill him with dread. His master doesn’t seem inclined to kick him into the cold as punishment, not like Alastair. He doesn’t know that for sure, of course, but strangely enough Dean doesn’t think this new alpha would get the satisfaction out of it that his old one did.
Tucking his chin closer to his chest, he inhales and closes his eyes. His master’s scent washes over him again, warm and soothing. His shoulders relax.
He doesn’t understand what that means.
People communicate through scents like this all the time, mostly by accident. Hell had always smelled of terror run lust rage, auction houses like fear and hopelessness. Training facilities like dread and sorry and submit submit SUBMIT.
But Castiel’s scent doesn’t smell like any of that, nor does his home. It just smells… normal. Comfortable. His own aside, there’s been no repeated, strong emotion from anyone here, far as he can tell. Even the alpha’s rage from the day before has faded away into nothing, as brief and bright as a flashbang – nothing like the smoldering, festering fury of the alphas that he’s come to know.
He doesn’t know he’s fallen asleep until the heavy footfalls on the stairs wake him up. His eyes spring open, and he scrambles to his feet, tossing the blanket back onto the bed with a nervous look.
Debating with himself for a frantic half second, he decides he should open the door. He does so and drops to his knees before his master even makes it up the stairs, praying that this is what he’s supposed to do.
Castiel sounds sort of surprised when he sees him. “Oh. Good morning, Dean. How long have you been awake?”
With a nervous look at the clock, Dean clears his throat. He stares down at his master’s shoes when he answers. “Uh. A couple of hours, alpha.”
“May I ask why you didn’t come down for breakfast?”
Fuck. Wrong choice, then. He ducks a little further, bracing himself. “I... I didn’t know I was supposed to. Sorry.”
His master doesn’t really sound angry with him, though. “That’s alright. Would you like to join me now?”
Dean’s brain struggles to make sense of that’s alright as he scrambles to his feet and follows Castiel down the stairs. The alpha doesn’t look back, confident that he’s following behind. He resolves for the hundredth time that he’s going to do exactly what his master wants him to, because he’s really enjoying this whole “not getting hit” thing.
But then, of course, his hunger and weakness catch up with him, and a wave of vertigo makes him stumble a little on a step – and he knocks right into Castiel on his way down.
He shrinks back, tries to make himself small, but it’s hard to kneel on the stairs and his master is a few steps ahead of him, so right now he’s much taller than the alpha. He crouches so he’s below him, panic raking up his chest with needle-sharp claws. “S-sorry, I didn’t mean to –”
“I’d imagine your blood sugar is low,” the alpha says, skipping right over the part where Dean touched him without permission and how that warrants at least a backhand. He looks down at Dean without even a hint of anger in his eyes. “You did miss a few meals yesterday when you fell asleep, so that makes sense.”
Shit. He’s supposed to be eating more, and he’s already failed miserably. How will his master punish him for that? He has no idea what he’ll default to – maybe a whip? He hasn’t seen one, but that doesn’t mean anything. He swallows.
“That isn’t your fault, Dean,” the man says, interrupting his quickly mounting panic. His voice is measured and calm. “I’m not sure you could have stayed awake if you'd tried. How many days have you gone without sleeping properly?”
Dean stares at him. Opens his mouth to respond automatically, and then remembers that he lied to the alpha on his first morning here and told him that he’d slept, when in reality he’d tossed and turned for most of the night. God, he’s just digging this pit deeper and deeper, isn’t he?
His heart pounds. Lie, or fess up? Which will be worse? The alpha waits patiently, his face unreadable.
“Five,” he finally croaks.
Castiel doesn’t call him on his lie from earlier. Maybe he forgot? But he does frown. “You hadn’t slept in five days?”
“I mean – I, uh, I dozed. But not for long, really. I tried, but – ” He swallows, stops himself from giving excuses. Castiel doesn’t care about his anxiety, doesn’t care about the sick terror that had kept him awake through that first night in the auction house, the surety that his master was on his way to retrieve him and blame him and punish him for everything that had happened. Then, as the days had passed and the likelihood of Alastair coming for him had decreased, the dread of what new horrible thing was next had kept him up just the same.
His master doesn't care. Slaves don't get to make excuses.
The alpha studies him. He drops his gaze, waiting for judgment. But all Castiel says is, “Did you at least sleep well last night?”
“Yeah,” he says quickly, eager to move away from the topic of his insomnia and all the pitfalls that come with it. “I mean, yes, alpha. I… I did. Thank you,” he adds. He realizes, belatedly, that it’s genuine gratitude that motivates him to speak, not fear, and that feels…
Castiel abruptly seems to realize that they’ve stopped in the middle of the stairs and starts moving again. “I’m glad I was able to help,” he says, and he turns away and that’s the end of the conversation.
No punishment. Not even a verbal reprimand. Dean feels dizzy, and he’s not sure it’s solely from his hunger.
The kitchen smells amazing when they get there, and Dean resists the urge to peek at what’s cooking on the stove before he slides down to his knees next to his master’s chair. The tile is cool and soothing on his shins, something familiar after whatever the hell just happened.
He waits to be told to do something. Waits for orders.
They don’t come. Castiel just fills up two plates and two cups and gives Dean his portion of… biscuits and jelly, he thinks. Again, it’s the same as his master’s. Not smaller – hell, it might even be a little bigger. All this food and he hasn’t had to do a damn thing to earn it.
“You may eat, Dean,” Castiel permits lightly when he doesn’t start into it right away.
Dean tries not to scarf it down, but he probably looks like a starving dog. It may be the best thing he’s ever tasted. The twisting in his gut fades as he empties the plate – he hadn’t even known it was there till it was gone. He’s gone hungry too often, he guesses, to still notice those pangs.
Castiel lets them eat in silence. The only sound he makes is the occasional rustle of the newspaper in his hands as he turns the page. Dean finishes his food way before him, despite his efforts not to, and sits there with his empty plate in his lap for a while before his master notices.
He glances down at Dean and a pleased expression crosses his face. “Would you like some more?”
Dean hesitates. This had inevitably been a trick question before. Of course he almost always wanted more, but there was usually a cost to it.
Castiel, though, has said he’s expected to eat. Said he wouldn’t have to earn it. So, slowly, he nods. If nothing else, he can figure out if the man means it.
His master stands and dips down to take his plate, ignoring Dean’s automatic flinch backward. He swallows, watching the dark-haired man place another biscuit onto it, spreading bright purple jam over the top from a glass jar that he carefully places back into the fridge afterward. It feels strange to be served. Maybe Castiel doesn’t trust him to touch the food? Either way, he ends up with another portion of breakfast, and the alpha says nothing as he returns to his chair and resumes slowly eating.
Dean hardly tastes the first bite – he crams it in and swallows it down and it feels like cement dropping into his stomach. Then he waits, watching the alpha out of the corner of his eye.
Castiel doesn’t seem to have noticed. He’s not paying any attention to Dean, actually, and that’s a fucking relief. Letting out a small sigh, Dean eats a little more. His master doesn’t seem to register that Dean expects him to snatch the plate away, to kick it out of his hands. To demand payment for being so generous.
So he’s able to eat two portions of a meal made for human beings in peace. It’s a far cry from the bowls of tasteless mush he’d had to work to earn in Hell. Castiel even raises an eyebrow when he finishes the second plate, as if he’s asking Dean if he wants more, and for once Dean is full enough to have the luxury of turning down food – so he shakes his head, gratitude making him ache. Suddenly, he finds he isn’t all that worried that the alpha will starve him, isn’t worried that he should be cramming down as much as he can now to make up for missed meals later. And that might be – probably is – foolish, but he feels it all the same.
When they’re both done, Castiel takes their plates to the sink and then looks down at Dean. Hope mixed with trepidation sparks in him – surely now his master has something he wants. Now he’ll give Dean some clear orders to follow.
“I have some work that I need to catch up on in my office. You’re welcome to keep me company, or you can go back to your room and rest. Whatever makes you more comfortable.”
Dean stares at him for a beat, and damn if he isn’t fucking disappointed, somehow, that he’s not being told what to do. More choices, instead of orders. He hasn’t had to make this many decisions in years. The mental gymnastics are exhausting – should he put himself out of sight and mind? Should he be attentive to Castiel’s needs, like he’d been trained to do so long ago? Which does the alpha want? Which is safer? Which will keep him here, away from another training center or whorehouse like Hell?
He realizes that he’s been silent for way too long, and clears his throat. He’s gambling, but he figures that Cas might want him within earshot when he does finally decide to give him an order. “Um. I’ll stay with you, if that’s okay.”
Castiel gives him a small smile, and Dean lets out a breath because that was clearly the right choice.
He follows the alpha into his office, takes in the plush rug and the large desk that the man’s computer rests on. Like every other part of the house that he’s seen, it’s luxurious, all dark woods and thick carpets and old glass light fixtures.
Clearly, it’s the home of someone who can afford a slave much better than him.
Castiel pulls out his desk chair and settles into it comfortably, and Dean’s left standing there, confused as to where he’s supposed to be again. Castiel doesn’t seem to want him under the table when they’re in the kitchen, so he probably won’t want him under the desk either, even though what’s left of Dean’s training tells him that’s where he should be. He decides to kneel down next to the desk instead, slowly settling in, watching his master out of the corner of his eye with his breath held as he waits for a reprimand.
It doesn’t come. Castiel just turns on his computer and gets straight to it. The click-clack of the keyboard and his own breathing are the only sounds in the room.
Eventually, he starts to relax. He leans against the side of the desk, resting his temple on it, as out of proper position as he’ll allow himself to get. He can just barely see Castiel’s legs from here, and it’s a relief to be out of the man’s direct line of sight even if he’s still very close to him.
Dean has to wonder what the alpha does for a living, and if his job has been interrupted for Dean’s sake. He doubts it, but something nags at him. His master is wearing a tie and nice shoes in his own house, which is frankly weird as hell – it feels like Castiel dressed to go to work, and then remembered he was staying home. Dean’s not sure how to feel about that. He feels a flicker of curiosity at the mystery in front of him, extinguished like a snapped-closed zippo the moment he thinks about asking a question and all the consequences that usually follow.
This close, he can smell the alpha clearly, and even though that should do nothing but make him afraid it actually sort of calms him down. No matter how hard he searches, he cannot find a single sour note in the man’s smell, just like last night.
No alpha has ever smelled pleasant to him before – no one but Sam. They’ve always been sickening – kerosine, gasoline, melted plastic, sulfur. Fetid, rotting. Cloying and terrifying and always too much.
Castiel smells… comforting. Sweet and grounding, almost familiar, like a favorite shirt or a claimed spot on the couch. It's hard to nail down, strange that it feels like a memory when Dean knows he’s never met this man before. But it feels like something missing has been returned to him when he catches the alpha’s scent. When he breathes in, he thinks of summer rain, of coffee on the porch in the morning, and of a warm, gentle touch.
Belatedly, he wonders what Castiel must think of his scent – he’s pretty sure it’s been nothing but disgusting the whole time he’s been here. It can’t be pleasant for him. Sometimes Dean is scared enough to smell himself, so he knows Castiel is getting the worst of it.
Alphas before him had taken savage, brutal pleasure in the scent of his fear, but all it ever seems to do is distress his new master. He doesn’t understand that at all, but it’s just one more reason he needs to figure out how the fuck to make Castiel want to keep him. He’s probably never going to get the opportunity to be owned by someone as kind as this man ever again, and he’ll be damned if he lets it go without a fight.
Leaning over a little further, he bites his lip and tries to make his brain work for two goddamn seconds. God, he’s exhausted. He stares at the carpet and tries to come up with a gameplan of how to get his shit together, but his thoughts slip away like snakes in the grass.
The room is warm. The fan on the ceiling turns lazily, producing more white noise than any discernible breeze, and he feels his eyelids drooping as he listens to the creaking of the trees outside and the soft breathing of the alpha next to him. The sun is streaming through the window behind his master’s chair, a gold square of light slowly stretching across the floor. He spaces out long enough that the warmth reaches his knees and begins to creep up his legs.
Once, when he was young, he and Sam had stayed at a farm for a few months – his dad had saddled one of his soon-to-be-estranged friends with his sons and fucked off for far longer than promised. There had been a friendly, orange barn cat on the property, and he’s abruptly reminded of the way it had followed them around and flopped down in little patches of sunlight wherever he and Sam had stopped to play. He thinks he can relate.
That thought should probably shame him, but feels pathetically good to be in the sunshine and not be afraid. His chin dips and touches his chest.
And his collar, of course, pinches against the hollow of his throat.
A jolt of fear wakes him the hell up. He’d been falling asleep. Stupid – beyond stupid. He’s supposed to be attentive to what his master desires – sleeping means he’s not doing his duty. Shaking his head to snap out of it, he sits back up and resolves not to get complacent, his hands clenched into fists.
He’s getting far too fucking comfortable here. Sunbathing and dozing like a goddamn pet – that’s not what he is, not what he’ll ever be.
Nobody buys a slave to spoil them and make them purr like a cat in the sunshine.