30. Molasses on My Tongue

They sit together, intertwined, for a very long time. Dean can feel the last of his anxiety falling away, can feel a weight lift off his shoulders. He feels settled. Calm. Like he can breathe. 

And Cas falls asleep. 

He crashes like a tree against Dean’s chest, and Dean just barely holds back a grunt of surprise at the sudden shift in weight. For a moment, all he can do is blink stupidly, spitting Cas’s hair out of his mouth as he supports the alpha so he doesn’t fall on his face. 

They’re chest to chest. His breathing is soft and even, his head resting on Dean’s shoulder, nose turned toward his neck. And Dean doesn’t move, doesn’t even twitch. He just… holds him. And for some reason, his throat tightens. His eyes sting.

And so what? he thinks defensively. So what if it feels good to sit here, to keep Castiel’s warmth draped over him? So what if it feels nice to be a pillar of support? It’s something he hasn’t been in a long, long time, for anybody. So he sits on the floor with the alpha practically crushing him, his weight calming rather than frightening. 

He breathes in his scent. Warm and familiar, coffee and honey and rain on the grass. The lack of grief, of shame, is such a relief. The alpha smells much better like this, all soft and content. 

Dean is aware he should maybe be freaking out right now. A lot has happened to him over the past few days, after all. A lot of things that have sent him into tailspin after tailspin, nosedive after nosedive. Not the least of which was the friggin’ story he just told Cas. Dean’s not even sure why he did that – why, suddenly, it was so vividly clear to him that it’s what Cas needed to hear. How he had known that he had nothing to fear now, that he really could tell the alpha about his old life. How he’s really had nothing to fear all along. 

The first time Dean had mentioned Sammy, it had been an accident. A slip of the tongue. And it had scared him, had sent him into a panic spiral when he’d realized that he’d given a powerful alpha something akin to ammunition. Against him, of course, but also against his family. He’d always known that the person who owned him could find and hurt Sam, too, in more ways than one. But now he understands that those fears had been a product of his own fucked up expectations, not of anything that Cas had done or ever will do. And he has to wonder if that slip up, almost a month ago now, was really his instincts trying to tell him that everything was finally okay. 

He misses Sam every time his heart beats. For years, he’s tried to shove his past life, his brother, into a safe little box, only to be pulled out when he had no other choice. No other way to keep going. But somehow, digging up that memory – a story about his brother’s kindness and stubborn love, about his own mistakes and faults – it hasn’t made it worse. It hurts like a wound, and it always will. But the ache of finally telling Castiel... it’s like stitches, instead of another slice. 

Still hurts, but at least it’s… healing. 

“Cas,” he eventually whispers, only because they can’t sit like this forever – Dean’s ass is going numb, and Cas’s back is gonna end up pretzel-shaped.

The alpha doesn’t even twitch. Dean hesitantly puts a hand on his back, rubbing up and down a few times like Cas has so often done for him. It feels strange – though maybe not as strange as it should. “Cas, come on. Wakey wakey.” 

The alpha inhales a sharp breath, motionless for a few seconds as he figures out where he is. After a long moment, Cas leans back and blinks at him blearily, and Dean can’t help the dopey smile the sight drags out. 

Cas squints at him in response, adorably – and God, did Dean really just think that? – confused. “I was… asleep?” he tries, voice like gravel. 

Dean huffs out a laugh, stretching out his back and shoulders until they pop. “Yeah, man. Out like a light. Come on.”

Gently, he urges Cas up, for once not feeling any anxiety about telling an alpha what to do. Cas follows him willingly enough, anyway – he lets Dean guide him onto the couch without a single complaint. He lands heavily, yawning, already looking like he’s going to drop back off to sleep at any moment. 

Dean turns on the TV, still tuned to the news that the alpha watches so much, and Cas doesn’t protest when he lowers the volume to almost nothing. He just scrubs a hand over his face and looks at Dean like he can’t believe he’s there. Like he’s grateful he’s there. The unguarded expression is new, and raw, and vulnerable. 

Dean doesn’t really know how to handle that. It makes his stomach flutter in a way he doesn’t understand, and he avoids Cas’s gaze so the dude won’t see him blush. He doesn’t even know why he’s blushing. 

He sets about fixing the mess he made of the living room. Starting, of course, by righting the coffee table he toppled. He stares down at the wood with a small pang of regret. He’s starting to lose track of the number of times he’s lost his temper, of the number of times he’s blown up on Cas or things that belong to him. But the sickly shame he’s become accustomed to never hits him. 

Cas wants him to have feelings. Wants him to express them. He’d said so. It’s taken Dean a long ass time to remember that, but he had, all the way back at the very beginning. So Dean moves on to a stack of books that got knocked over as well, and, as he makes sense of the titles and puts them in their places, he lets his guilt go. At least for now. 

For once, Cas doesn’t say anything about him cleaning. Doesn’t tell Dean he doesn’t have to, or that he should be resting or eating or doing nothing at all. Instead, he sits heavily on the couch and watches the television blearily, his eyes mostly unfocused. His head dips every once in a while, but for some reason, he seems determined not to fall asleep. 

“You should probably, um.” Dean takes a breath. Keeps his eyes on the book in his hands as he finds the right pile, and amends what was about to be something way too close to telling Cas what to do. “Maybe you could take a nap.”

He gets no answer except a low hum. It could be an agreement, or a denial. Either way, Cas doesn’t move an inch from his spot on the couch. He just turns toward him, and blinks at Dean slowly. Like a cat. He cocks his head to the side very slightly, as if to say, really? 

Dean huffs, shakes his head. But he doesn’t push, even though he can tell Cas is beyond tired. 

It hits him with a pang that there’s a good chance that, since the day before yesterday, Cas hasn’t slept much at all. Too busy worrying. Fretting. If his insomnia had kept him up when Dean had done nothing but freak out a little, he can’t imagine what it must have done to the alpha’s brain to have Dean lose it completely – three or four times in less than forty-eight hours, as a matter of fact. Not to mention coming down from the high of going alpha in the first place.

Fuck – Dean’s tired, and he’d slept. So he knows Cas is exhausted.

Still, the alpha doesn’t relent. Stubbornly, he shifts until he’s leaning forward, his chin resting on his fist with his feet flat on the ground. And for the first time, he actively watches Dean nest, abandoning the pretense of watching the news entirely.

His gaze is intense, even with his eyes hooded. But it’s not uncomfortable, not like Dean might have thought it would be. In fact, he sort of finds solace in it. There’s a weird feeling of domesticity in the air, the warm comfort of existing in the same space as someone without feeling the pressure to interact. 

It makes him smile to himself as he slowly piles up books on bees and clouds and the mythology of angels, trying to imagine Cas’s purpose for all of these – especially now that he knows most of this information could be searched up on the internet in a snap. 

After the emotional triathlon he forced Cas into running with him, he knows the alpha is due for a little scent therapy. It’s not like it’s hard to relax, to let the smell of his contentment fill the room – hell, it’s not even hard to push it out a little more intentionally. He’s more at peace right now than he’s been in a long, long time. Dean won’t flatter himself into thinking that the scent of his happiness alone can finally get the alpha to relax his guard, but he thinks it can’t hurt.

Cas is knocked out completely by the time Dean starts putting books back on the shelves. Dean tries not to be too smug about it.

His head is still resting on his hand, but he’s at least leaning on the arm of the couch now. The rest of his body is curled awkwardly under him. Still upright. It doesn’t look comfortable in the slightest, but that’s Cas for you. Nags at Dean to eat and sleep all day long and then can’t even do it right himself. 

Dean swallows as he realizes, abruptly, that he’s been staring. There’s those butterflies in his gut again, their little wings kicking up clouds of an emotion that he doesn’t know how to name. 

All he knows is that it makes him edge closer, makes him kneel carefully in front of the alpha. A scant few inches from Cas’s face, he stays there for a good long while. He even leans and tips over till he’s sitting, instead of kneeling, and rests his chin on the couch cushions. 

There was a time, not long ago, when Dean thought he’d had to do this. When he’d thought that the only way Cas might leave him alone is if he kneeled in front of him and sucked him off like a good little pet. Dean can taste that fear, can remember exactly how sick he’d been, how terrified. How sure he’d been that Cas had bought him for the worst possible reasons. But it all feels far away from him now. 

Because, just like it had last night, this feels right. Dean can’t even be mad about it – it feels good to be here, looking up at Cas while he’s relaxed and at ease. Dean doesn’t care that he’s on the floor, or that he’s acting all… submissive again, though the thought does make him wrinkle his nose. He feels… solid. Like he has a place in the world. It’s a good feeling. He could probably close his eyes and drift off just like this. 

But, of course, he won’t. Cas still has his friggin’ shoes on and he’s gonna wake up with scoliosis at this rate, and Dean can’t leave him like that in good conscience.  

He holds his breath and tries not to second guess himself as he edges back up from his place on the ground and moves Cas, gently angling him so he’s actually laying down properly. And when Cas doesn’t even twitch – damn, he’s out cold – Dean feels comfortable wriggling a throw pillow under the alpha’s head as well. He retrieves and drags the blanket that Cas had given him on his first night here over him, and tucks it in carefully. All things that Cas has done for him time after time. 

All things the alpha deserves to have, too. Dean wonders when the last time was that someone bothered to take care of Cas like he takes care of Dean. He has a hunch that the answer is never, or whatever’s closest. 

He sits down on the coffee table and rests next to the alpha for a while, looking at the sleeping man with a fragile sort of tenderness in his chest that, somehow, manages to outgun the anxiety he feels about taking so many liberties. It doesn’t hurt that he knows Cas needs someone to look after him. Doesn’t hurt that he’s sleeping like the dead and can’t really protest, anyway. 

He’s never seen an alpha so vulnerable. Never been in a position where he didn’t feel the need to take advantage of that vulnerability, if he ever did witness it. For a moment, it doesn’t matter that he’s on the floor, it doesn’t matter that he’s owned. He feels like he did a decade ago – like a protector. Like someone who takes care of others, not the other way around. 

The feeling only intensifies when he sees the gentle, relaxed expression on the alpha’s face, so different from his pinched and perpetual worry. He doesn’t want Cas to worry anymore. He wants to get better.  

He stands up, careful not to jostle the couch, and clicks off the television. Abruptly, he’s reminded of the way Sam used to fall asleep on him halfway through movies – and of the way he’d carry his little brother to bed and tuck him in. Dean nudges off the alpha’s shoes gently, just like he used to do for Sam, and Cas only frowns a little in his sleep before he settles back down. Dean sets them gently on the floor next to the couch, and smiles when Cas lets out a small, content sigh, nestling further into the pillow. 

He reaches over to pick up the pair of coffee cups, intent on taking them to the sink and doing the dishes, and sees a glint of silver. 

Dean sits back on the coffee table slowly, his back to Cas. Picks up the small, beaded chain and cups it in his palm. It must have fallen out of the alpha’s pocket.

There are two tags. The front one, in all capital, uniform letters, simply says Winchester, Dean.

It is still strange to see his name on anything, let alone something meant to replace a collar. Because no matter how much like a dog Dean might be, he has never been granted even the minor dignity of bearing his own name on his neck. No, the collars he’s had before had either been blank, impersonal symbols, or had been embossed with his owner’s name and nothing more. Anything else relevant had been stored in the infamous, starred chip under the clasp, and the only time anyone had bothered to read that was when they were selling him or catching him. 

Not this one, though. This one bears his name first, and it’s only when he picks up the tag to look closer that he realizes his ID number is stamped into the back. Like it’s still less important than the name his parents gave him. His throat hurts a little when he studies it; the simple, awful S, followed by a string of ten random digits that replaced his social when he sold himself. 

He swallows, and flips the tag back over.

Winchester, Dean.

The second is a little more familiar, he supposes. Novak, Castiel, takes up the whole first line, and under it, he sees Cas’s phone number. His address. 

And maybe the symbol of ownership should piss Dean off. Maybe it should make him feel small. But it doesn’t. It just makes him feel wanted, as perverse and fucked up as that probably is.

Because, honestly? This collar hardly qualifies as one. It’s loose. Dean runs the length of the small, beaded chain through his fingers and knows he could hide it under clothes, knows he could snap it easily. He knows there’s no alarm, knows there’s no GPS chip. Knows he could just… take it off. If he wanted. Just like Cas said he could. 

He could escape the only tangible proof he’s a slave with nothing but a sharp tug. The thought nearly makes him laugh. And that nearly makes him sob. He’s suddenly, fiercely glad that Cas didn’t give in to Dean’s fear-fueled desire for a real collar.

Gripping the chain in his hand, he bites his lip. 

There’s no reason to hesitate, because there’s nothing keeping him from taking it off. Nothing. No screaming fire, no electric burn. No wards that have been specially designed to scar a slave permanently for the rest of their days, with a mark that declared their disobedience to anyone who cared to look. Designed so that, no matter how far you ran, you’d always be seen as nothing more than lost property.

Some omegas, like Balthazar, were brave enough to risk it. But Dean’s never had the guts.

He hadn’t, not even to run from Alastair. And it had made him stupidly easy to hunt down, the tracking information pinging clear as day to anyone with the means or influence to look. 

Civilians weren’t supposed to have that info, of course. After all, the law stated that runaways needed to be apprehended by state police, disciplined, and strictly re-trained, all following rigid guidelines. No exceptions. And, a lot of the time, runaways weren’t returned to their owners at all. People who couldn’t handle their slaves didn’t get to keep them, he’d figured out. Too much risk of a rebellion, if slaves weren’t held down with an iron grip. Too much risk that one of them would get ballsy and fight back. 

Every master Dean’s ever had knew that, and half the reason they tried to keep him from running was because, with enough marks on their record, they might lose the right to have slaves at all. Dean knows, with a grim sort of satisfaction, that he’d gotten more than one of his masters banned from the auctions though his persistence alone.

But, of course, there were always ways around the system. Alastair had found one. Dean’s gotta wonder if he’s the only slave Alastair’s had that tried to escape. Or, more likely, if he’s the only one the bastard bothered to track down, if he was the only bitch the man put enough work into to want to keep at any cost. It makes his skin crawl. 

All it had taken, probably, was a couple of bills in the right pocket, a favor or two promised in payment, and Alastair would have been able to hunt Dean with tracking information gleaned from a black market database, while never risking that he’d lose the right to the rest of his stock by reporting him missing. 

And he had hunted Dean. Caught him, and punished him, and re-formed him around his sick little rules himself. And he’d done it a lot better than the police or the official re-trainers ever had, because Dean had stopped running. 

All because slave law and the tracking system were full of holes that no one cared enough to patch. Hell – even his old man had used that black market info, back in the day, when he stopped hunting predators and started hunting people who were already prey. Easy money.

But Dean doesn’t want to think about that. Not now, and not ever.  

He turns around and looks back at the alpha, snoring on the couch. At the soft lines of his face, at his large, warm hands, at his messy dark hair. He thinks about his gentle touch, and his stubborn kindness, and his comforting scent.  

He slips the tags over his head and tucks them under his shirt. 

The chain is cold, at first, but it warms up to his skin almost immediately, the soft clink of the metal somehow... comforting. Because this collar is not a collar, not really. It is nothing more than security and protection, nothing more than Cas following the letter of the law as loosely as he can while still keeping them out of trouble. It is, for all intents and purposes, something for Dean, not against him. 

And if there’s anyone whose name he’ll happily wear around his neck, it’s Castiel Novak’s.

Cas is still asleep when Dean’s phone beeps at him. 

This time, it’s not Balthazar. It’s Pamela, the doctor he’d seen when he’d first been brought to the alpha’s home. He hadn’t expected any kind of communication from her, not really – he’d figured that, if she wanted to see him again, she’d just ask Cas, even if she had given him her number. So Dean stares at the screen a little blankly before he fumbles to unlock it, his eyes scanning over the message over and over again before it makes sense.

Hey ya, kid. Balthazar let me know you’ve got a phone, now, so I thought I’d check in. Would you give me a call sometime, if you’re comfortable with that?

He hesitates, for some reason. It’s not like Pamela had been cruel to him – far from it. She’s the nicest doctor he’s ever had, by a fucking mile. But thinking about his early days here, how scared he’d been… how fucking pathetic he must have looked. It makes him sick with shame. 

Because Pamela had tried to tell him Cas was good. She really had. He’d just been too freaked out to believe her. 

He figures that she dealt with enough of his shit for him to owe her this, at the very least. A phone call shouldn’t be making his palms sweaty, but it is. It’ll be the first he’s made since he was sixteen years old. 

He retreats to Cas’s office, curls up on the floor next to his desk in his usual spot. It feels strange to be in here without the alpha, and he hopes Cas won’t mind – it’s not like Dean is going to touch anything, or mess with his computer, but still. Before he can chicken out, he presses the little phone shaped button near her name and holds his breath while the call connects. 

It rings twice before she picks up. “Dr. Barnes,” she greets. She sounds vaguely distracted, but just as matronly as he remembers. 

“Um. Hi. It’s, uh. It’s Dean,” he stutters out. “Sorry, um. If you’re busy. I just thought –” 

“Dean!” she interrupts, sounding genuinely pleased. “I didn’t expect to hear from you right away.”

“Oh.” He swallows. “Sorry. I can, uh - I can call back?”

“No, no,” she says warmly. “I’ve got time right now, this is perfect.” There’s some shuffling on her end – Dean thinks he can hear the creak of an office chair, the rasp of paper on paper. “I just wanted to check in, maybe schedule a follow up visit for you if you’re up to it.” 

Dean’s shoulders relax minutely. “Oh. Okay.”

“How are you?” she asks warmly. “It’s been a couple months since we last spoke, I know. I didn’t intend for it to be that long, but Castiel didn’t seem to have any concerns, and things are quite busy here.” She doesn’t sound put out about it – on the contrary, Dean thinks she’s positively chipper. He can feel himself relaxing as she speaks. Maybe it’s got something to do with how she’s talking to him like a person, not a thing, just like she had the first time around.

“I’m… good,” he says softly, and means it for the first time in as long as he can remember. “Really good, actually.”

“Glad to hear it,” she says, genuine warmth in her tone. “Healing up alright? How are those injuries?”

“Fine,” he says, tracing his thumb on his leg where, a few weeks ago, there’d been a nasty bruise from a cane. Hugs himself, presses his palm against his ribs, and revels in the fact that they don’t hurt. “Nothing really... There’s not really any bruises anymore. And all the bleeding stopped.”

“Good,” she says firmly. “You’ve been taking everything I prescribed, right?”

He nods, and belatedly realizes that she can’t see him. “Yes ma’am,” he confirms. 

“Oh, good lord, son,” she says, exasperated. “Didn’t I tell you not to call me that?”

He thinks he should probably be afraid of a correction like that. Thinks he might have been, only a few weeks ago. But he isn’t, not really, because even if Pamela complains to Cas, he doesn’t really think anything will come of it punishment wise – the worst he’d do is disappoint the guy. Frankly, though, that’s troubling enough as it is. So he falters for a second before he says, “Sorry,” his voice a little weaker than it should be. 

“All’s forgiven,” she says easily, and his shoulders relax. “How are your wrists? I remember those being pretty banged up.”

Dean glances down at the exposed skin above his sleeves, frowning. They’re just as red as they’d been in the dressing room a couple of days ago. Still just as obvious. And when he flexes them, they twinge a little. It’s not a pain he’s noticed before now, really. Probably because he’d been living with so much worse for so long that little things like this never even registered. His first instinct is to lie, to minimize the small sparks of pain – they don’t seem like something he has any right to complain about.

But Pamela had asked, so Dean needs to be truthful. “They’re… still pretty banged up, I guess. Not bleeding anymore, and they’re healing, but… yeah. They’re probably gonna scar,” he adds, somewhat shamefully. He feels, somehow, like he should be healing better than this, considering all the help he’s gotten. 

“I’d be shocked if they didn’t, after what I saw,” Pamela agrees, her voice a little more gentle. “Any pain?”

“A little,” he admits, grimacing. “But it’s nothin', really. Way better than it was before.”

“Well, I’d hope so,” Pamela says. She doesn’t sound at all sarcastic. “I’ll show you some exercises you can do to help with the ache, if you’ll come pay me a visit.” 

Dean swallows. “Uh - Come to you?”

Somehow, he’d thought that Pamela was going to come here. But he supposes that’s wishful thinking – he knows she’s busy, and it’d be selfish to ask her to drive out to Castiel’s home to make a special home visit for him. 

The doctor obviously senses his trepidation. “Would that be your first time outside the house?”

Dean’s tone is a little more defensive than he’d like it to be. “No. I… we went out a few days ago,” he says, as if that’s really a shining example of him being able to handle himself. He figures that must mean Cas didn’t tell her – Dean remembers him saying that he talked to Balthazar about the whole thing, but he’s not sure who else knows.

She hums. “I could make a home visit, is all I meant. It’ll just be a little while before–” 

“No,” Dean says quickly. “I can - I mean. I can come up there. If Cas is okay with it.”

Pamela sounds faintly amused. “Cas?”

He blushes, suddenly glad she can’t see him. “Relax, hon,” she says easily. “I’m just glad to hear you two are more comfortable with each other.”

He blushes harder. “Yeah. I guess you could say that.”

“Well, alrighty then. If you’ll talk to Castiel, we can figure out when’s a good time to meet here at the facility. I just want to give you a check-up – see if everything looks okay.” She pauses. Adds, “I should also say that you don’t have to do any of that, if you don’t want to.”

Dean lets out a slow, even breath. “I know.” And he does. If Cas has proven anything, it’s that he won’t make Dean do pretty much anything. And while that had been a bewildering and, frankly, frustrating thing not too long ago, he finds that he’s desperately grateful for it now. The absolute surety that he won’t be forced has done wonders to ease his mind. 

“Good,” she says, businesslike again. “You can also tell him that if you haven’t gained at least fifteen pounds, I’m tearing him a new one.”

Dean can’t help a surprised huff of laughter at that. The idea that his master could be held responsible for his weight is still very strange to him. But Dean already knows he’s healthier – knows that his hips aren’t quite as sharp as they’d been, knows he can see less of his ribs. Knows that his wrists aren’t nearly as fragile. Dean hasn’t gone hungry in weeks, not by Cas’s doing. 

“The dude feeds me like five times a day,” he says, a little half smile on his face. “Don’t think you got much to worry about there.”

“Hmph,” she intones, noncommittal, but Dean can sense that she’s mostly messing with him. “Alright. You let me know when you’d like to come up,” she says, not really asking. 

“Yes ma’am,” he can’t help but reply, feeling a little cheeky. 

Sure enough, Pamela groans. “You’re making me feel old, kid,” she complains, but Dean can hear that she’s smiling. He feels a little kernel of warmth inside of him – it’s nice to know that there are people who care for him. Nice to know there’s people he can joke with. It’s been a long time since he’s felt anything like what he feels here. 

They hang up, and Dean sits against Cas’s desk for a while, feeling lighter. Cas is finally getting sleep, Dean’s made good progress on the books, and he called Pamela without too much bellyaching. He feels kinda accomplished, and maybe that’s dumb – not like those things are anything to sneeze at – but it’s still the truth. 

The feeling, along with the alpha’s nap, persists into the late afternoon, and it’s enough to convince him to make his own meal for the very first time since he arrived here. His stomach has been rumbling for a while, now, and Pamela’s friendly threat regarding his weight doesn’t hurt. So he abandons his current stack of books in the spare room, and pads over to the kitchen, wondering how over the line he’d be to try and make the burgers Cas had talked about before everything went to shit. 

His stomach twists unreasonably when he opens the fridge, some deep-seated worry that he’ll be punished for stealing trying to crawl up his spine. But as he hesitates, he can hear Castiel’s gentle snoring in the other room, and the unease trickles away from him. Cas told him he could eat. Told him he was welcome to the food, whatever food he wanted. 

He’s not gonna get in trouble. He’s not. 

It’s honestly the first time he’s looked in the fridge at all, and like the rest of Castiel’s home, it’s almost painfully organized. He pulls the hamburger meat out of the drawer labeled meats, pulls the lettuce and a tomato out of the drawer labeled produce. The butter is on the top shelf in the door, and the cheese on the shelf below that. He takes note of these things, familiarizes himself with them. He realizes, belatedly, that he’s already planning on doing this again.

There was a time when Dean actually liked cooking. When he found it calming. Something he could do that he could have fun with, provided he’d had the money to pay for the ingredients. It’d been nice to have a pastime that would always be needed, something he could justify if anyone ever questioned him. It had rankled when he’d realized that cooking was an omega hobby, as though his genuine love for a thing could just be boiled down to biology and nothing more. But even that hadn’t made him give it up, and he’s glad now. 

Methodically, like it hasn’t been ten years since he’s done anything like this, he rifles through the cabinets and sprinkles half remembered seasonings and a diced onion into the bowl of meat, sets a pan on top of the stove carefully so that he won’t make too much noise. He finds some potatoes and chops them up, drops them in a pot of water and brings it to a boil.

Before long, the buns have been buttered and set in the oven to toast, he’s taken the finished fries out to season, the last of the patties are sizzling away, and he’s grinning to himself like an idiot. He keeps grinning as he assembles the burgers, taking maybe a weird amount of pleasure in making everything symmetrical and perfect and just so on the plate.

He puts mayo on one, none on the other, and doesn’t realize why until he pauses and thinks about it. Sammy didn’t like mayo, of course. Weirdo liked his burgers dry. 

For the first time, he smiles at the memory rather than feeling hollow around it. 

Sam. Sam is making something out of himself somewhere, he knows it. He knows it. The kid had been too full of fire and intelligence to be anything short of amazing now. He’d been smarter than Dean by far, even as young as he’d been. That alpha fire and competitive nature had developed in him early. Once, he’d announced to Dean that he was going to be the president, and that Dean, of course, would be his VP. Never mind that there were hardly any omegas in local government, let alone the White House. Sam hadn’t understood that – or, if he had, he hadn’t cared. 

His mouth quirks up at the memory – John hadn’t known what had hit him. A furious omega-in-denial eldest, and a rebellious alpha youngest, both sons to an inept and neglectful beta father who hadn’t been a real parent since the day their mother had died. 

His good mood fades a little with the thought of John. God, he hopes Sam got away from him as fast as he could. Without Dean there to protect him, he’s not sure what the kid’s childhood must have looked like. 

It’s nice, he thinks, that Cas knows about his brother now. It’s nice that it doesn’t scare him. Dean’s a long way from dumping his feelings all over another person if he doesn’t have to, but it’s comforting to realize that, if he wanted, he could tell Cas about those fears. Could confide in him the multitude of ways in which he’s failed his brother, the ways in which their father hurt them both. 

It should surprise him that he isn’t at all concerned that Cas won’t care about that stuff. It doesn’t, though. Cas had looked… he’d looked grateful this morning, when Dean had told him about Sam. So Dean knows that he’ll be glad to know more, knows that Cas cares about his past and wants to know it, to get to know Dean better. 

He picks up the plates and wonders if Cas will tell him about his own past, too. 

The alpha startles awake when Dean sets the food down on the coffee table in front of him. He looks confused for a solid thirty seconds, blinking at the blanket around him and then at Dean, his eyes a little unfocused. 

“What time is it?” he finally rumbles. “How long have I been asleep?”

Dean grins at him from his seat on the coffee table. “It’s almost four, dude. You knocked the hell out.” 

Castiel’s eyebrows draw together. He rubs his face for a few seconds as he digests that. “I was… quite tired.”

“Yeah. Wonder why,” Dean says, a little sarcastic. He’s nervous, honestly, and he always gets rude when he’s nervous. He doesn’t need to be, of course. Because as soon as Cas looks up and catches sight of the food on the table, his expression blooms into something extremely pleased. 

“Did you make us lunch?” 

He’s grinning as he asks, the warm scent of pride suffusing into the air, and Dean can’t help the slight blush or the gruff shrug he gives in return. “More like an early dinner,” he protests, but it’s weak at best. He’s smiling – he can feel it on his face, moving his muscles in ways that still feel slightly alien. 

Cas just smiles back at him, his hair every which way and his eyes soft, and Dean can’t help but roll his eyes so that he can squirm away from his feelings. He nudges a plate closer to the alpha, his heart fluttering. “Go on, Cas. Don’t just look at it.”

Cas blinks, and, laughing a little, picks up a plate. He leans back on the couch with it and picks up the burger obligingly, taking an enthusiastic bite. 

The sound he makes is… indecent. His eyes close, and his face goes slack, and he chews in a way that looks almost rapturous. Dean feels his mouth water at the sight – 

Of the burger, of course. Not Cas. He can feel a blush starting to crawl up his neck to the tips of his ears, and he resolutely ignores it. 

“Dean,” Cas rumbles, looking down at the burger with all the devotion of a sycophant, “this is fantastic.” 

Dean has to clear his throat before he can speak – luckily, Cas seems too enamored with his burger to notice. “Yeah, well. I'm just happy it’s edible, after a decade without practice. Don’t have to gas me up, Cas,” he mumbles, ducking his head a little. 

Cas frowns at Dean as though he’s insane. “I’m quite serious. This is amazing. How did you learn to cook like this?”

Dean shrugs again. His cheeks probably look like fire engines, at this point – he stares down at the ground as if it will keep Cas from seeing how self-conscious he is right now. “I mean, you know. I did most of the cooking at home. Dad wasn’t… he didn’t really do anything ‘cept TV dinners, if even, and Sammy couldn’t grow up on that, so…”

Cas’s look softens into understanding. “I see.” He picks up a fry, eats it, and produces another megawatt smile. “These are delicious, as well. I never can get oven fries to come out right. How did you manage it?”

Jeeze, Dean’s face is on fire. He picks up his plate and concentrates on it so he won’t have to meet Castiel’s gaze. “I, uh. I boiled ‘em first. Helps ‘em get soft in the middle.”

“I never would have thought of that,” Cas says simply, happily, like it isn’t strange at all for him to admit that Dean has done something better than he has. 

Dean spends the entire meal sitting on the coffee table. He’s not quite up to sitting next to Cas, but he is happy enough to sit a little higher than the ground, since he knows it’s what Cas wants him to do. And the burger is good – it really is – but Dean can hardly think about that. 

Because Cas won’t shut up. He keeps showering Dean with praise as they eat, his gaze warm and happy when it hits Dean, his words bright and excited and almost too much. Dean isn’t really used to praise. It feels good, of course it does, but it almost… aches, somehow. Like he’s trying to use a muscle he forgot he had. It’s winding him up.

And if he doesn’t stop blushing, he’s gonna catch the damn house on fire. 

“Alright Cas, damn,” he finally interrupts, holding his hand up when Cas starts pontificating about his apparently genius use of parmesan cheese on the french fries. “I get it, alright? It’s… I guess it’s cool that I finally got the balls to cook. But can you stop pretending it’s something to alert the media about? ‘Cause–” 

Castiel’s gentle touch under his chin throws him more than it probably should – after all, they’ve just spent the night doing way more intimate shit than that. And he could pull away, if he wanted to. Cas isn’t holding him, isn’t forcing him. He never does. 

But Dean doesn’t really want to pull away, for some reason. 

The alpha tips his head up slowly, silently, and peers into his face, appraising him. Dean forces himself to meet the alpha’s eyes after a beat. The dark, serious look he sees there should really make him laugh, considering the circumstances. It doesn’t, though. Instead, it makes something near his stomach tighten like a coil. 

“I’d thank you,” Cas says calmly, “not to sell yourself short.”

Dean swallows. He can’t help it, not with Cas looking at him like that. Like he’s… important. His heart is beating so loudly in his chest that he’s certain Cas can hear it. 

“Um,” he blurts intelligently. 

The alpha waits patiently, one dark eyebrow raising into an arch. Something in Dean’s brain short circuits at that look. He feels that coil tighten a little more. Feels an odd little twitch, deep inside of him. 

“‘Kay,” he finally manages. His voice is weak. 

It seems to be what Cas was looking for, regardless – he makes a satisfied noise and nods, dropping his curled finger from under Dean’s chin. “Thank you for dinner,” he says simply. Dean can only nod in a stupefied sort of way, dazed.

He takes in a somewhat shaky breath, and crams the last of his food into his mouth to cover up whatever the fuck he’s feeling right now. He hardly tastes it.

Cas disappears into the kitchen to clean their dishes, and Dean wipes a hand over his face. He shakes away the weird feeling as best he can, and stands up to finish the stack of books he’d started on a few hours ago. 

And, instantly, he figures out exactly what that tightening in his gut had been. 

He’s fucking slick.