29. Riches and Wonders

Dean goes rigid. There’s no other way to describe it – Castiel can see him putting on his armor, can see him try to straighten his spine and his shoulders so that he can carry the weight of the world. So he can accept blame for something that is not his fault. 

It strikes him as something Dean has done many, many times before.

“Don’t,” he pleads. There’s suddenly an ache inside his chest – or maybe it isn’t sudden. Maybe it’s something that’s been living there since the moment he laid eyes on the man in front of him, and he’s only feeling it now that he’s paying attention. “You don’t need to apologize to me at all.” 

“Nah, I do,” the omega says, faux ease making his tone strangely plastic and brittle. “I fucked up. I ignored what you told me, and –” 

“I don’t care!” Castiel bursts out, cutting Dean off – his mouth snaps shut, and he stares at Castiel with something close to wariness. “Dean, I could not possibly care less that you ignored me. It is your right to ignore me.”

Silence. And then, Dean… laughs. 

He laughs. 

“No the hell it isn’t, Cas,” he giggles. He’s hysterical – his tone is not joyful in the slightest. It’s edging much closer to panic. “No, it isn’t. That’s the whole fucking point.” 

He points to his neck. Bare. Pale, where unbruised and unchafed. Such a fragile thing. “I think me getting collared again will help us both. Because neither one of us seems to be able to remember how this shit is supposed to go. Neither one of us can – can just...”

He breaks off. Hunches forward, like the world has punched him in the chest, has carved out his heart and his ability to hope for something better. The dogtags in Castiel’s pocket – the ones with his name and address on them – burn against his skin.

Words crowd forward in Castiel’s mouth, pushing against each other in their need to be out in the air. He almost tells Dean that he wants to free him. Almost tells him that it’s been the plan all along. He wants to, has wanted to since day one.

But right now, the omega is shaking. He’s shaking, barely holding on to anything concrete, barely holding himself together. Barely able to acknowledge and accept that Castiel does not want to treat him the way he is, apparently, supposed to. 

He’s barely able to fathom the mere idea that he doesn’t deserve to be treated that way in the first place. 

For perhaps the first time, Castiel truly understands how badly telling Dean would yank the rug out from underneath him, how quickly that would send him into a tailspin of bargaining and pleading and self-hatred. How Dean would blame himself for not being good enough, even though good is all he seems capable of being. And how, even though Castiel never wants Dean anywhere but with him, the omega would see his freedom as little more than a dismissal. A rejection. 

Because, for better or for worse, the only value that Dean seems to be able to see in himself is what he has as a slave. He’s not ready to see his value as a human. 

So, Castiel doesn’t tell him. He doesn’t try and convince Dean to see himself as worthy of freedom and happiness. It’s something that Dean will have to understand on his own, and Castiel can only help him along – he knows that now, perhaps better than he ever has. But he does look into Dean’s eyes and say, “Slave or not, you deserve to be able to choose for yourself.”

Dean blinks, and slowly, the incredulity fades from his expression. It’s replaced by a bleak sort of pessimism, the kind that only grows from years of worst fears being confirmed. And he shakes his head. “Look what happened when I did, though,” he whispers miserably. “Look what I caused.”

What he’s implying is so far from the truth that it takes Castiel a moment to respond – and in the silence, whatever was left of Dean’s faux confidence and indifference decays. Rots. “I…” 

“Dean.” He waits until the omega makes eye contact, and holds it. Waits until he’s sure that Dean’s listening. “You didn’t ask for anything that happened in that garage.”

Dean’s face crumples a little, though he does a remarkable job at keeping his voice steady. “I mean. I did. You told me not to get out of the car, and I knew it was stupid. But I d-disobeyed,” he stutters out, tripping over the word like he’s afraid to even say it, “because I’m just… I’m so…” 

“You are stubborn,” Castiel finishes calmly. Dean flinches as if the word is a physical blow, but Castiel isn’t done. “And that’s not a bad thing. It is, in fact, unimaginably brave.” He softens. “You are brave.”

And he believes those words to his core. He always has, even if Dean can’t see that. The thing inside his chest – the ache – begins to sleepily stir. 

But Dean just chokes out a miserable laugh, his composure beginning to fray in earnest. And Castiel regrets that. As much as he needs to make this clear to Dean, he hates that he also seems to be taking away the serenity that had settled on the omega’s shoulders after going down. He wishes that hormonal high could last a little longer. That Dean’s life could be uncomplicated.

“Brave? I couldn’t even… Cas, the fucking shirt he touched is balled up behind the toilet because I couldn’t even look at it. I couldn’t stop smelling him. I couldn’t stop closing my eyes and thinking someone else was there.” A frustrated tear streaks down his face and soaks into his shirt collar; he brushes the trail of it away with an angry gesture, like he doesn’t have every right to cry, and looks away.

And his heart crumbles a little more when Dean adds, “You should be pissed. ‘Cause I… I didn’t even try to stop him.” 

“Yes you did. I heard you,” Castiel corrects firmly. “You told him no.”

“So what?” Dean demands, shrugging harshly. “So fucking what I told him no? It didn’t make a damn lick of difference. I knew it wouldn’t.”

“Then it was all the more brave to do so,” he insists. “All the more brave to try and stand up for yourself, in whatever capacity you could.”

Dean closes his eyes, his jaw clenching. He doesn’t look like he believes Castiel in the slightest, and he can’t exactly blame him for that doubt. Not after what he’d said, after how he’d reacted. 

Castiel takes a deep breath. Searches for a way to make Dean understand how proud he is, how amazed he is. How incredible it is that Dean, a man who has been abused in the worst ways imaginable for so much of his life, could say anything at all in his own defense. He searches for a way to make Dean understand that the reason he was targeted has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with the world he lives in. 

“That man was a predator.”

“Yeah,” Dean snorts. Of course he does – it isn’t news to Dean that there are awful people in the world. He expects there to be wolves in the night, unlike Castiel, who has only just started to hear their howls. “Yeah. And I was just his fucking prey. I’m always prey. I hate… I hate feeling so goddamn helpless. Weak.” The coffee cup in his hand is shaking so badly that the dark liquid threatens to spill out onto the carpet when he raises it to his mouth. At least Dean trusts him enough to drink it, now. 

Also unlike that first night, Castiel knows he can touch. Knows Dean will allow him to. So he wraps his hands around Dean’s, and gently supports the cup with him. The omega bites his lip, blinks harshly. Relinquishes it to him with a hitching, spasmodic movement, something painful flitting across his face. And Castiel feels that thing inside of his chest spasm, too.

“Not weak,” Castiel corrects softly, setting the mug down next to his own on the carpet. Dean tucks his hands around his ribs, taking a shallow, short breath, and leaning away like his words hurt to hear. “Not at all. How other people treat you is not your fault, Dean.”

With a whipcrack movement, Dean snaps his leg out and kicks the coffee table in front of them, sending it skittering several feet across the living room. It topples over and hits the ground with a dull thud. Castiel is hardly aware of it. He only has eyes for the devastation on Dean’s face, finally bursting to the surface after his attempts to hide it away. 

“It must be!” he yells out, grief in his voice and on his face; and it is an old grief, a well worn grief. Something confirmed by what happened in that garage, by the cruel words Castiel used. Nothing new. “It… it has to be.”

He curls forward, presses his hands around his ribs like it will keep his pain inside of him. It fights its way out anyway, his words slowing as he goes like he’s already losing steam, losing the righteous anger that allowed him to speak in the first place. “I mean, come on. You even said– and you’re so friggin’... so nice to me, so good, and if even you think that – that I wanted–”

“I do not think that,” Castiel interrupts, panic and guilt clawing out of his mouth right along with his conviction. “I could never.” 

Dean stares at him, taken aback. His eyes are wide. “But… but you said –”  

“I,” Castiel growls, “spoke out of anger, and out of an utterly selfish desire to shirk responsibility for what happened. And that was cruel.” 

Dean flinches, instantly opens his mouth to respond – likely to apologize again, if his scent and the tilting of his chin to show his neck are anything to go by. So Castiel steamrolls forward, refuses to allow Dean to blame himself for his thoughtless words for one moment more. 

“And I lashed out because I was terrified.” 

Dean’s mouth snaps shut at that. He stares up at Castiel, frozen, his eyes wide. Confused. Painfully so. “The thought,” Castiel grits out, “of something happening to you. Of someone hurting you again. Scared me.” 

An expression that Castiel doesn’t understand flickers across Dean’s face. “Scared?” 

He says the word like he’s testing it out, as though he never once considered it a possibility. Perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps the dawning comprehension on his face is a sign that he never thought that there could be any other explanation for Castiel’s behavior, that he’d truly believed it was deserved. 

“Is that so hard to believe?” Castiel asks, even though he knows that the answer, for Dean, is unquestionably yes.

His eyes searching, Dean looks at him for a long time. And the longer he looks, the more the hurt in his expression bleeds away, replaced with something that looks like naked, raw relief. “Scared. Huh. Didn’t even think about that.”

The omega blows a laugh out of his nose, wipes his face with a shaking hand. Looks across the room at the dark television, his eyes flicking around at nothing as he puts his thoughts together. Castiel dares not interrupt him. 

“I thought you… I thought you were right.” He closes his eyes. Breathes slowly. “You always seem to see the truth in me even when I can’t. So I thought you must have known something I didn’t. I thought you… I thought you must have found something ugly inside me.” 

He snorts, like what he just said is not devastating in every way imaginable. “Sometimes I forget you’re just… a person. That you can make mistakes too, that you can get scared even if you’re an alpha. I know that sounds stupid,” he laughs, “But...” 

A tear streaks down his face, but relief cracks Dean’s voice as he speaks. He scrubs a hand through his hair, takes a shaky breath. “But, God. You got no idea how good it feels to hear that you don’t… that you were just saying shit ‘cause you were freaking out. That you don’t really think I’m a slut for suffering. ‘Cause, man, I was starting to wonder if I was.” He shakes his head. Gives Castiel a shaky, rueful smile, as if he’s apologizing for his self doubt. 

“Dean,” Castiel says, and the omega looks into his eyes without even a hint of trepidation. There was a time, not long ago, where Dean was scared to do that. “That I made you believe that for even one second...”

Dean’s expression softens. He leans over, softly bumps Castiel with his shoulder. “Fear… it does weird things to your brain. Makes you act different. I should know. You didn’t mean it.”

“But that’s...” Castiel trails off, flabbergasted by how quickly Dean has accepted this. Astounded that Dean would forgive him this easily. That he would even begin to compare their experiences, as if the terrors he has faced are in any way equal to Castiel’s fleeting ones. “It’s not an excuse. What I said to you was horrible, and I…”

Almost achingly kind, the omega gently interrupts. “I get it, Cas. It’s okay.” 

And the aching thing bursts to life inside of Castiel’s chest at those words, at the gentle forgiveness on Dean’s face. It starts to grow. 

Castiel protests. Can't help but protest. “You have every right to be furious with me.”

Dean laughs, the sound soft and breathy against the quiet of the room. Rubbing his hand on his jaw, he’s silent for a long time. Long enough that Castiel feels guilt try and make a nest inside his chest so that it can multiply. But when Dean does speak, his words are not accusatory. Not angry, not even a little. 

“When we were kids,” he starts, his eyes reflecting the low light of the lamp. “My… my little brother. Sam.”

Castiel freezes. Holds his breath. 

“He must have been – oh, what year was that? He was real young, before he even presented. He must have been nine or ten. So I’d have been about fourteen at the time.” 

Dean takes a breath. Slowly, he draws his knees up. Hugs them to his chest. For a moment, Castiel thinks he won’t go on – he starts to reach out to steady him, to ensure him that he doesn’t have to pick at this wound that has, quite clearly, hardly begun to scab over. But Dean just cocks his jaw and keeps talking, his tone even and quiet. 

“He was enrolled, for once. I was too, which was even weirder. But I was in junior high, and he was still in elementary, so we were in different buildings. My school got out, like, an hour later than his, and was just a few miles up the road, so he would always wait for me in the gym and we’d catch a city bus home together.”

Dean’s voice is steady. Quiet. If it weren’t for his scent, snapping back and forth like a flag in the wind, Castiel would not know that his words were consequential in the slightest. He crosses his arms. “That day, it was really friggin’ cold. Like, frozen eyelashes cold. And Sammy, he didn’t want me to have to walk all that way to get him.”

Dean shakes his head. Smiles, though the pull of it looks a little painful. “He’d tried to tell me at breakfast that he was old enough to go home by himself, that he didn’t need me to babysit him – it was my birthday, I think that’s where he got the idea to give me a break. And hell, I mean. He probably was old enough. The kid knew how to take care of himself. But the school bus couldn’t have taken him to the apartment we were renting, because it was outside of the district. I’d faked our address to get him in a good elementary and not the shady one we were actually zoned for. And there was just no way in hell I was letting him on a public bus alone –”

He stops. Clears his throat, blushes like he’s embarrassed he’d been rambling. “Anyway. We didn’t know he was an alpha yet. Even if I had, he was too young. So I of course told him no, and didn’t think anything of it.” He shakes his head, grimaces. “But… I left school that day, hiked my ass up the road to go get him. And when I got there, he was gone.”

Dean closes his eyes for a moment, and in his expression, Castiel can see the ghost of the horror he’d felt in that moment. The dread. 

“So I ask around, of course, trying to keep my cool. And a teacher tells me he got on the friggin’ school bus, but I couldn’t tell her why that was bad, because she would have ratted us out to our dad, and that…” 

He trails off. Swallows. His scent pulses, ever so slightly, with fear.

Firmly, Castiel pushes away quickly simmering anger – all these little signs of abuse and mistreatment are sparking a protective sort of rage inside him. But it is a rage that Dean does not need to deal with that right now. So, instead, he tucks this away for safekeeping with all the other tidbits that Dean has dropped about his father. Castiel cannot fight his ghosts, no matter how much he wants to. 

Dean continues quietly. “So I acted like I’d just forgot he was going home that way, and then I spent… hours. Hours trying to find him. I looked all around the neighborhood, and then the neighborhoods outside of that – I checked home first, of course, but he wasn’t there… and it was getting dark, and I was realizing I was maybe gonna have to call the cops. Which would have been… bad.”

The omega hesitates. Flicks his eyes up to Cas, then back across the room. “Don’t want to bore you with the details,” he says quietly. “But getting CPS called on us would have been the worst case scenario.”

Castiel is filled, instantly, with heart aching sympathy for Dean, for his childhood self; hardly a teenager and so clearly raising his brother as a parent. He wants to chase the leads that Dean is dropping, wants to pull at the threads of his childhood trauma – the things that, along with everything that has happened to him in the last decade, have made Dean the way he is. But the omega has been through more than enough, today. This moment is as fragile as a bird egg – he cannot risk stepping in the wrong place. 

He reaches out and holds Dean’s hand. The omega takes a quick, shuddering breath. Pushes forward, like he always does. The aching thing in his chest strains and tugs Castiel right along with him. 

“So I went to the house to call my dad so he’d come back, because even that would have been better than… than someone outside sticking their nose in. But, wouldn't you know it, that kid…” 

Dean shakes his head, fondness twisting his expression until it is painful. “I figured out later that he’d decided to go himself to try and surprise me. He got off just down the road and got on a city bus. Went uptown instead of going straight home, so he could stop at the flea market to get me a gift. He wanted to do something to celebrate, even though we didn't have any money for that shit. I told him not to worry about it, but the kid could hustle, and he’d been saving up his friends' lunch money…” 

He huffs. But the fondness fades from his expression like a dimming light. “I was walking up, scared out of my mind that something had happened, scared of what my dad would say, what he’d… what he’d do when he got home. And more than that, fuckin’ terrified for Sammy, terrified about what might be happening to the kid. And then the little shit just comes bounding out the front door, all smiles and sunshine.” His voice tightens to the point of pain. “Not a goddamned clue what he’d put me through for the last couple’a hours. Not a clue what could have happened.”

He sniffs. Wipes his nose on the back of his hand. “Cas, he was so happy. So proud of himself. He thought he was helping me, thought he was being a big kid and that I’d be proud of him too.” He closes his eyes. “But I screamed at him. Picked him up by his coat and shook him and yelled in his face about how stupid he’d been to do that.” His scent pulses with guilt, even all these years later. “I made him cry.”

He blinks, hard. “He’d bought a necklace. A little amulet – I think it was supposed to be a protection symbol, or something. I wore that thing for years. Until, um. Until...”

And he stops. There is silence in the room. A full sort of quiet, a held-breath sort of quiet. And Dean steels his jaw. Looks up at the ceiling, conviction unwavering in his green eyes. “I loved my brother. Loved him more than…” He chokes up, flinches into himself. His hand tightens around Castiel’s own. “Love him more than anything. And I still did that to him, because he scared me. Because the thought of losing him...” 

He shakes his head, his jaw flexing. “So I don’t… I don’t blame you. I understand. Even if you don’t think I do.” The determination in his eyes is breathtaking. “I know what fear can make you do.”

Castiel carefully turns his body toward Dean, his hands in his lap. He’s crying – has been crying for a while, now, and when Dean finally looks at him he does a double take. Concern eclipses the fire in his eyes nearly instantly. “Cas?”

“I…” He clears his throat. Tries to push the words around that aching something in his chest. Something that has expanded and grown so large he feels as though he will burst. He cannot begin to thank Dean for this – for his understanding, for his strength. For his seemingly endless well of kindness, all of which Castiel has done very little to deserve. 

For his trust. Because this is so, so much trust.

So, instead, he just looks at him, silent and tear streaked, his words too heavy with gratitude to make it out of his throat. The thing in his chest swells another inch and it feels like it could kill him.

“Would you…” Dean asks, biting his lip. A sliver of self consciousness bleeds back into his tone, but he takes a breath and shoulders forward anyway. “I mean, it would probably help if you’d. Um. If you’d s-scent me.” He flushes. “Only if you want, I mean. It’s okay if you–” 

As soon as Castiel’s arms wrap around him, Dean goes limp. Lets out a long, hitching breath. He wraps his arms around Castiel’s middle and allows him to touch and to soothe them both; to push away the last, lingering traces of that other alpha’s scent, imaginary or real. Allows Castiel to inhale against his throat and inhales against Castiel’s in turn, their jackrabbit hearts slowing until they match, the pale morning sun inching over the horizon and warming them both. 

“I’m so sorry, Dean,” he whispers. “I am so, so sorry. I cannot even begin to ask for your forgiveness.”

Dean snorts, the kindest amusement Castiel has ever heard. “You’ve already got it, stupid.”

And Castiel finally identifies that aching, growing, alive thing in his chest. 

It’s love.