17. Earth Air Water Trees pt. 2

Castiel bumps into him in the hall. 

It’s probably innocent. He probably doesn’t know what Dean’s been thinking, what he’s figured out. What he’s hiding. But when he rounds the corner to go down the stairs and slams into the alpha, who’d been coming up them, Dean bounces back so hard that he lands on his ass. 

A little flustered, Castiel’s mouth opens into a small round shape before he blinks and reaches toward him. “I apologize. Here, let me –” 

Dean flinches back from his outstretched hand so badly that he slams his shoulder into the wall. Castiel stares down at him with wide eyes, frozen in place. “Dean?”

He can’t. He can’t. He screws his eyes shut and takes a harsh, panting breath, and then he’s skittering back to his room. He just wants to hide. He doesn’t want to be touched, and he does want to be touched – even now, Castiel’s smell is at least as soothing as it is sickening, and because he’s panicking he wants to be comforted. His stupid bitch brain is screaming at him to cozy up to his fucking master and scent him and touch him – never mind that the alpha, the only person since he was sixteen that has ever once bothered to comfort him, is the one making him panic. 

Castiel follows him into the room, because of course he does, because nothing really belongs to him here no matter how much his master had pretended otherwise. “What’s wrong?” His voice is almost scared, and it would make Dean laugh if he wasn’t too busy considering the best way to escape and find his way through the snow, considering all the ways he might bite and claw to get the alpha away from him, considering – 

“Dean!”

He freezes despite his terror, and realizes abruptly that he’s crowded himself into a corner, knees up in front of him. There’s a familiar snarl on his face, one he’d thought he’d lost in Hell, but if feels good here, it feels right. He’d been stupid enough to let this alpha fool him into thinking he wasn’t going to be used, but now he knows. And he’s terrified – so fucking afraid – but he’s not going to go down easy. He never has and he never will. 

He feels himself look up and stare Castiel in his eyes, feels himself baring his teeth at the way he steps closer and crouches down like he’s going to reach out. “Don’t fucking touch me,” he snarls, and it sounds a lot fiercer than he feels. The alpha flinches, eyes widening in something that looks hilariously close to hurt. 

“I – okay, I won’t,” he says slowly, and Dean’s sickened by his tone, by the thought that Castiel almost had him. Almost fooled him into thinking that this isn’t all an act, a scheme. God, his dad was fucking right. He’s an idiot, naive even after everything. Even now, Castiel is convincing enough that Dean nearly swallows his next words into himself. But he can’t stop now. Can’t make himself. He’s so angry, so hurt, and he has no idea what to do with the intensity of the feelings inside of himself. No idea how to deal with the cruelty of kindness with an agenda.

“If you think you’re – if you think you can con me into – into feeling safe here, into being your – your –” his voice is too high, too tight, too fucking terrified and not nearly strong enough, “into your fucking breeder –”

He’s panting now, breath weak and fast in his chest, and he can feel the scar across his stomach burn like Alastair put it there yesterday instead of years ago. That gnarled line should be a comfort, now, ironically – even if he hadn’t wised up, Castiel wouldn’t have been able to lure him into a pregnancy. 

Predictably, a wash of fury floods the room, and Dean’s rage disintegrates into pure, stomach twisting fear; he flinches back and covers his head, knowing that alphas love to make him bleed when they’re pissed and that they’ll aim for whatever’s most convenient. But instead of boiling over, Castiel’s anger simmers, then fades until it evaporates completely. In its place is something else, something softer and sadder that wraps around them both until Dean can’t stand it anymore. 

He peeks his head out from under his hands. 

Castiel is staring down at him, his hands limp at his sides. He hasn’t moved forward. “You think I want to push you into a heat. You think I want…” He covers his mouth like he’s nauseous. “You think I want to get you pregnant?” 

Dean doesn’t answer, because it’s obvious. Why else would Castiel bother to do any of the things that he’s done? Dean’s heard stories about slaves that were taken in by masters like this, omegas who went all Stockholm-syndrome and became willing puppets for their alphas. He knew he’d never be like them – but now he has to wonder how true that is, if he’d come this close to letting Castiel get to him. If he’d let the alpha order him around like he had.

Castiel’s face twists, and he takes another step forward – and Dean’s breath catches in his chest because he’s waiting to get snatched off the ground and beaten or worse. But instead of crowding him, instead of hurting him, Castiel pauses, hesitates… and then steps back. And then back again, and again, until he’s pressed into the opposite wall, his hand still covering his mouth. 

And all at once, the enormity of how much he just fucked up hits him. 

How stupid is he? He can’t get knocked up – he knows it, and Pamela had confirmed it. So even if Castiel had tried later on, he wouldn’t have succeeded. Dean has just thrown his only chance at living a safe life for any length of time away, simply because he couldn’t hold it together for five fucking minutes. 

Now, Castiel is going to send him back. He’s going to sell him and probably try all over again with a new omega, one that might not be as quick as Dean to reject this venus flytrap life Castiel has tried to trap him into. Worse, maybe he’ll keep him around as a fucktoy, one he doesn’t have to be nice to anymore, and all that kindness and softness from before will be gone. 

Or maybe he’ll just kill him and be done with it. Ain’t like he’ll get much for Dean anyway, as used up and ugly as he is.

It’s too late to take it back. Far too late to apologize. So he just squeezes his eyes closed, sits there holding his breath, and waits. Waits to be recollared and sent to another center, waits for another nameless faceless trainer and another month of torture before being sold again. Waits for pain. 

When Castiel finally moves, Dean flinches into himself with a sharp intake of breath. But, rather than lunging forward, his master stares at him. 

“Dean, I…” 

Dean doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t want this man to use his name like he’s a person, doesn’t want to hear that soothing rumble. Not when it’s a lie. Not when he’s still so desperate to believe it. And apparently his master understands that, because he closes his mouth. 

And he steps out of the room. 

Dean has no doubt that it’s to get the collar. He should be running, right now, but he can’t. Days of sleepless nights and constant anxiety have him so exhausted that he wants to curl up right here, now that it’s all out in the open and he no longer has to pretend to be okay. He wouldn’t last ten fucking minutes out in the snow and he knows it. So he just clutches his knees and waits for it to end. There aren’t even any tears in his eyes. He feels broken, dashed against rocks. Blank.

Maybe it’s better that he’ll be somewhere more familiar, whatever happens. Somewhere where people don’t treat him like he’s worth something – because he isn’t, and he knows it. 

He’d come way too close to forgetting it.

Castiel returns to the room a minute later, and Dean turns his head away, clenching his fists in his lap so he doesn’t try to cover up his neck. He won’t show the man he’s afraid, won’t let him know how deeply he’s dug into his soul. Won’t give him the satisfaction. 

He can feel his master standing in front of him, but he can’t make himself move. Can’t even raise an arm to defend himself. When Castiel holds something out toward him, he flinches so hard he knocks his head into the wall, but he doesn’t look up. He just squeezes his eyes shut and waits.

“Dean, it’s just… it’s just your paperwork.” Castiel sounds miserable; Dean doesn’t have the headspace to figure out why. “I promise.”

Dean dares to open his eyes, and sure enough, there’s a file held in front of him. It’s thick. He’s never gotten more than a passing glance at it when he was being sold to someone new; not that he’d wanted more than that. There’s things in there he never wants to think about again. Castiel must sense some of that, because he takes one look at Dean’s face and lays it gently on the floor instead. 

“I haven’t read it all,” the alpha says, and his words sound odd. A little... strained. “But I have looked at the intake sheets. I think you probably should, too.”

Dean’s eyes flicker up to his master quickly, nervous, waiting for his fist or shoe to lunge out, but Castiel isn’t moving toward him. Instead, he moves away. Sits down on the bed that Dean had, only a few days ago, dared to try and sleep in on his own. 

Trembling, he reaches out to the file, hating himself for being afraid of whatever’s in there. He holds it like a dead thing, far away from himself, lips pressed together. Then he flips open the front cover. 

He’s met with a photo, glued down to the first sheet. He nearly doesn’t recognize himself. He’s 16 in it – freshly collared, head shaved, a defiant jut to his chin that he doesn’t have anymore, might never have again. He looks so brave in this picture. So stupid. 

This Dean had no clue what was coming. 

No idea that in just a few short hours he’d have a fake alpha cock shoved so far down his throat that he’d puke, no idea that he’d be forced to keep going until his stomach was empty, no idea that after that he’d be starved until he started kneeling, started begging, started presenting. No idea that he’d soon be so exhausted and broken down and afraid that he’d crawl on his knees and lick food out of a bowl and do whatever they fucking told him to before going hungry for another night, before another shock or slap or days of bright lights and loud noise that didn’t even allow him to sleep. 

The Dean in this photo had only been thinking about protecting his family, and hadn’t yet understood the price he would have to pay for their safety. 

His eyes skitter over the details, revulsion clawing up his throat as he takes in his sexual status, his potential talents listed out for buyers to see. His original purchase price, and, added on later, what they ended up selling him for. And Jesus, they hadn’t even gotten the date right – so little care in the world for a dirt-poor omega kid that the day he signed his life away is off by a friggin’ month. 

He has to look away, tears burning in his eyes at the memory of those first few weeks, the terror and the heartbreak and the realization that this was his life, now, and that he’d asked for it. 

Hands shaking hard enough that he can hardly direct them, he thumbs through the rest of the papers, looking for the last tab of the bunch. He doesn’t want to be reminded of all the steps between the first and Alastair, doesn’t want to see his gradual decline into brokenness. When he finds it, he forces himself to flip to the page, forces himself to look. 

This Dean looks much more familiar. 

He only vaguely remembers the officers who’d taken him into custody snapping this photo, the ghosts of their hands roughly arranging his head at the proper angle, the harsh white light above the camera. This was just a few hours after he’d been taken from Hell. He hadn’t slept, hadn’t been fed or even given water, and it shows. The bags under his eyes are dark as bruises, his cheeks hollow. His hair is longer here than it had ever been when he was free, curling under his ears and laying flat and dull against his forehead. 

He looks dead. Or, at least, he looks like he wishes he was. There’s nothing in his eyes here, no anger, no hatred. Not even fear. Just an exhausted sort of acceptance that his life is not his own, that he has no say in what will happen to him. Because he doesn’t.

Was this what Castiel had seen when he’d bought him? An easy target?

He swallows, hatred for himself clawing into his chest, and makes himself look at the rest of the file. There is the purchase price, so much lower than the first go-round. There’s his height, his weight, which is somehow less than it’d been at sixteen. His sexual status, changed from UNTOUCHED to USED, words so cold and clinical they make him sick, as accurate as they are. The date of his sale to Castiel – and fuck, it’s been ten – no, almost eleven years since he first signed that contract. It feels like a lifetime. 

And then, under that, something that changes everything. 

Fertility Status : STERILE

Dean will never forget the first one who had him. 

To this day, he doesn’t even know the man’s name. Some tall, vicious alpha with skeleton thin hands and eyes so murky they’d looked yellow. He’d been old enough to have been his dad, probably even older. 

That hadn’t stopped him. It hadn’t stopped him from staring into the kennel they’d kept Dean in and grinning with too white, sharp teeth. Hadn’t stopped him from inspecting Dean like a piece of meat, from grabbing his chin with ice cold hands and laughing when Dean had tried to bite him. The handlers had pinned him against the ground and had drugged him immediately – apparently, yellow-eyes hadn’t wanted to fight for the right to take him. 

Instead, he’d woken up in the man’s home with a gag in his mouth, his wrists tied in front of him, arms numb under the weight of his body. Woken with a hand gripping his hair and forcing him to bend. And when he’d finished – when Dean had sobbed so hard he’d nearly puked, had begged and pleaded and then had given up on fighting at all – he’d just sold him back.

It’s not even the worst thing that’s happened to him. But it had been the first time when he’d truly understood what he was to these people. Nothing but entertainment. Nothing but a wet hole to use and then dispose of. 

Yellow-eyes had taken his omega-virginity trophy and then dumped Dean back at the auction center to be bought by someone with lower standards. And he had been. Over, and over, and over. 

It had been what he’d thought would happen this time. Hadn’t expected anything less. Had thought, really, that it was all he was good for anymore. 

But instead, he has this. 

His heart freezes in his chest for a suspended moment, then it restarts and pounds, the sounds in the room whited out by the blood rushing in his ears. 

Sterile. Sterile. 

Castiel had already known. 

And that. That means that this – the kindness, the generosity, the safety he’s found here, all the things that Castiel has given him for no good reason – that’s all real. There’s no ulterior motive. 

It’s real. 

He’s shaking, tears blurring his vision, relief and self hatred and guilt rushing out of him all at once. And even though he’d rather crawl straight into the dirt, he looks up and faces the alpha in the room. Stares Cas in the eyes, mouth trembling and body numb, has to meet his gaze after the horrible thing he just accused the man of. 

“You… you knew. This whole time, you knew?”

Despite it all, Cas still looks kind when he speaks. His voice is quiet, earnest. “I knew before I even got to the auction house, Dean.”

Dean can’t make himself talk. Can’t make himself apologize, or beg, or any of the things experience tells him he should be doing right now. He just stares at the alpha, takes in the tired slump of his shoulders, the weariness in his eyes and mouth, the way his large, gentle hands rest in his lap. The filter of fear that made the man seem so big and imposing is gone, now. In the wake of it, Cas looks very small, and very human. 

Castiel’s eyes track him as he shakily stands, as he steps forward to the bed. He doesn’t stand in return, just looks up at Dean with those gray blues, his emotions guarded. But Dean understands, now – what he’d taken for frustration or anger is guilt, pouring out of the alpha’s expression and his scent. 

Cas feels guilty. 

When he goes to his knees, it’s not out of fear or because he’s been trained to. It’s because he’s sorry, and he’s relieved, and he’s so desperately grateful – and he knows no other way to express those things to an alpha that has had every chance to hurt him, and has not. 

He’s so close to Castiel right now that the alpha’s knees are on either side of his head. In the back of his mind he’s remembering all the times he’s fought tooth and nail to get out of this exact position; but this time, there is no hand on his collar or fingers squeezing his nape, no shock stick in his ribs, no metal ring or vicious threat holding his mouth open. There’s only his own cowardice keeping him silent and still. 

His guilt.

“I’m.” He chokes on his words, presses his fists down into his thighs to control himself. “God. Cas, I’m so sor–” 

He can’t even get the words out before Cas is hauling him to his feet and into his chest, arms wrapping around him. He relaxes into the alpha’s embrace – lets himself relax, lets himself curl his head forward and press his face to Castiel’s collarbone, his guilt caught in his throat. His hands catch the fabric at the back of the alpha’s shirt and hold on tight.

“Don’t apologize,” Castiel says, voice rough like he’s been trying not to cry, or maybe like he already has been. “I’m – I can’t imagine the state your mind has been in, thinking that’s what I wanted. Dean, I’m so sorry.”

Dean chokes out a laugh, bitter and quiet. He can’t believe that Castiel is apologizing right now. Can’t believe this ridiculous man and his kindness. “It’s not your fault that I’m – that I’m so fucked up that I… I accused you of… ” He can’t make himself say it, even now. Can’t repeat those horrible words. He feels dazed; dizzy with relief, sick with shame. 

“I cannot fathom the things that you have been through that made that possibility a realistic one,” Castiel says quietly, and this close, Dean can feel the alpha’s legs shake as they stand in the middle of his bedroom. “Nor the multitude of ways in which I have done wrong by you and failed you. I can’t blame you for your caution. For assuming the worst of me.”

Dean feels something sharp in his throat and his eyes at that. He gives it all up in a rush, the need to explain himself burning through him. The need to reassure Castiel that it was nothing he did. 

“I can’t – I couldn’t believe it was real. Why the hell would I be that lucky?” He draws in a hitching breath. “But I should have. I should have just – just trusted my gut,” he whispers, shuddering. “Shouldn’t have doubted you.”

Castiel shakes his head. “I told you right at the beginning that I would earn your trust. I meant it.”

He laughs, shaky but honest, and takes in lungful after lungful of the alphas calming scent, the warmth of coffee and honey wrapping around him like a blanket. It makes his head spin. He’s pretty sure that if Cas wasn’t holding him up right now, he’d be on the ground, and not by choice. 

Dean takes a deep breath. Slowly, carefully, he pushes the alpha back further onto the mattress. He sits down, looking up at Dean with a fragile question in his eyes. 

Dean follows him. Follows an alpha onto a bed. Willingly. But he can think of no better way to show Castiel that he means what he’s about to say. He sits on the edge of the mattress and stares the alpha in the eyes before he moves closer, perched by his side with his legs tucked under him. And, hesitantly, Cas draws in a breath and holds him close. Lets him breathe against his neck, lets him take in his alpha scent.

From the safety of Castiel’s chest, the alpha’s arm wrapped around his shoulders, he begins to speak. 

“You’re – I’ve never met an alpha that’s anything like you, Cas. Didn’t think I ever would.  I… I think I… ” The words wrench out like he’s digging shards of glass out of his chest. “God, Cas, I trust you. Do you know how much that scares me? You smell safe. No one’s ever smelled like that before, not to me. Not since I was a kid.”

The shaky breath that Castiel lets out sounds like it has the weight of the world inside it, and any fear Dean may have been harboring about being mocked for his vulnerability disappears. “You’ve no idea how glad I am to hear that.”

And then Dean can’t hold back anymore, can’t contain his relief. He wraps his arms around Castiel too and lets tears fall from his eyes, tired and silent, until he can feel the alpha’s warm hand on his spine beneath his nape, far enough down to be safe without Dean ever having to ask him for that. His thumb gently strokes there, warm even through the plush material of the hoodie, and he feels a shiver run through him. 

The relief of the alpha’s touch is nearly too much for him to handle – a week without it has made him crave it all the more. And with it comes a bone deep weariness that drags him down, makes sleep possible for the first time in days. 

“‘M really tired, Cas,” he murmurs sometime later, when the seconds have stretched into minutes and the air around them feels lighter, when the sun has been set for so long that the moon is bright in the sky. Castiel nods against him, unwinding his arms and laying Dean down onto the mattress gently, and Dean feels cold without him there. 

Later, he’ll blame sleep deprivation for what he does next. Castiel slides off the bed, tucks the blanket around Dean in a methodical way, and then makes to leave. 

Dean’s hand snakes out of its own accord and snags the alpha’s wrist, holding tight. 

Castiel looks down at him with undisguised surprise, features soft in the light of the moon reflecting off the snow outside. 

“Stay?” 

The question is shaky. Needy. He feels like an idiot for asking – he’s not a baby, he doesn’t need Castiel to sit with him till he’s asleep. But he asks anyway, because he wants Cas there and has wanted him there for days, has been pining for the scent of security to wrap around him like a quilt while he tries to avoid nightmares. For once, his need for comfort is outweighing his shame at having to ask for it. 

Castiel doesn’t hesitate. He nods, just once. Squeezes Dean’s hand and sits on the edge of the mattress, leaving a careful foot of space between them. “I will.”

And he does.