Chapter Text
Castiel was seven years old when McMullin vs Lopez passed.
He didn’t understand the fuss yet then, not entirely—no-one would have expected him to, especially since, as it turned out, he was late to present. But Castiel understood that some of his siblings were excited—that Gabriel tried (failed) to grab him up and swing him around, then took off anyway; he knew that even Anna, who was nineteen, was babbling and laughing. He ran after them, and grabbed onto Gabriel’s leg when Gabe wouldn’t stop.
“What’s happening?” Castiel demanded. “Stop running around and tell me.”
Gabriel grinned at him. “The law just said I can be a policeman if I want, Cassie! Or open up a practical joke shop. Or whatever.”
Castiel considered this. “I think you should do the other thing,” he finally decided. “I don’t think you should ever be a policeman, Gabe. Or anything like that.”
In all fairness, Gabe had tried to explain in terms a seven-year-old would get. But even though Castiel had been quite precocious at that age, he couldn’t have begun to understand the importance of establishing secondary gender discrimination laws in the workplace.
(But to this day, as an adult, Castiel still remembered the joy leaving Gabriel’s face. He remembered the words his brother had used in response to that innocent statement.)
At seven, he was so shocked by the stream of profanity—something about ‘indoctrination,’ something else about ‘fucking Michael,’ and more about knots than Castiel heard essentially until he started going through puberty himself—that he couldn’t even get the breath to complain that Gabe was cursing.
He did remember that Gabe’s hand around his wrist hurt, and then it really started to hurt, and then when he tugged and Gabe didn’t let go, he started getting a little scared.
“Hey! Gabriel,” Anna hollered, and grabbed Gabe’s shoulder. “You’re scaring him. Look, he doesn’t understand.” She kneeled in front of him, her hair falling around her face. Some of it was still floating a little from how excited she was, like a red halo. Castiel automatically reached out to poke it out of the way, and she gave him a little smile. “Cassie, why did you say that? About Gabe.”
Castiel refused to sniffle. He raised his chin, instead, and directed his words at his big brother—who was being mean. “You’re not very good at following rules,” he told Gabe, angry, straight-backed. “I don’t think you should be the one making other people follow them. But you like playing tricks a lot.”
Then Gabe didn’t look angry anymore, he looked sorry, and the look that Anna was giving him over her shoulder was the one she gave people when they were in Big Trouble. Gabe went down on his knees in front of Castiel, too, and held him by both shoulders. “I’m sorry, Cassie. You’re right. You’re right about that.” Then he smiled, and there was something a little wet about it. Gabe shook him by the shoulders, gently. “You’re gonna be a really good little alpha someday.”
(Gabe and Anna both liked to claim that they’d been able to tell he’d present as an alpha even when he’d been little. Michael and Raphael, of course, both rolled their eyes at that.)
Gabe was certainly not a policeman now (though since Castiel’s favorite brother directed porn, and had been disowned by both Raphael and Michael, he could only think that Gabe had definitely taken Castiel’s young advice to heart). Raphael was a doctor, but so was Anna; Michael was attempting to make his name in politics, in Albany, and—a little to Castiel’s surprise—seemed to be succeeding.
Castiel, very gratefully, was none of the above.
So, given that it had been thirty years since the passing of that landmark law, he was standing in the Hilton Garden Inn Hotel Conference Center in downtown Manhattan, and most of Castiel’s coworkers were omegas, Castiel couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“—an alpha’s role is to be strong for the cognitively gentle secondary. We’ve forced omegas to work and forgotten their original ventures—the home, the hearth. Children. It was all such a blessing, and what have we replaced it with?"
Castiel grimaced. He knew who it was before he even registered the crooning whine from across the stretch of the carpeted conference center hallway. He didn’t claim that his nose was markedly sensitive, but Adler always smelled a little to him like wet sheep. The tall, pompous windbag was holding court in an ill-fitting gray suit that even Castiel knew was ugly.
“Omegas want to be coddled and protected. Why should they have to fend for themselves?” Adler continued puffing his venom into the air even as Castiel stalked towards him. He normally had no interest in making a public scene, but enough was enough. “That’s why these new policies are undermining our biologic duty!”
'New?' Again—thirty years! He had overheard that Adler had been passed over for the head curator promotion…
“People have forgotten that we all have a biologic destiny, and that of the omega is to breed, and that of the alpha is to nurture and support the weaker secondaries. Especially those who are fortunate enough to be fertile,” Adler cooed, and turned, no doubt hearing Castiel’s footsteps. “It’s so satisfying for everyone concerned—” His mouth curved in an oily smile. “Don’t you think so, Novak?”
“That an alpha’s role is to nurture and support their partner?” Castiel coolly repeated, raising his chin. “Well, of course. Everyone knows that.”
And when Adler’s shoulders went back with delighted surprise and the damned fool actually brightened, watery blue eyes opening wide, Castiel continued, “I, personally, think that a good alpha partner would find it wonderfully easy to nurture and support someone who can fly a space shuttle or shut down a courtroom with a perfect closing argument.” He smiled with just his lips—because smiling with teeth showing would have been very impolite at this very moment. He could hear that the gravel in his voice was harsh enough to take off skin. “I believe that would be extremely satisfying. Don’t you?”
Zachariah Adler, cut off mid-rant in his hoary, antiquated, poisonous argument, gaped at Castiel from across the conference hall water dispenser with one thick-fingered hand suddenly crushing the little paper cone of water he’d been holding. Water was dripping into his cuffs and onto the convention center carpet.
Adler’s audience—a thin, weedy alpha with a weak chin and pomade in his hair, and a beta who looked too caught up in horrified car-crash fascination to actually protest the nonsense that Adler was spouting—took one sniff of Castiel and—wisely—melted away.
Castiel didn’t care. He didn’t look away. The whole ‘physiologic destiny’ argument was absurd to begin with, and it was twice as absurd coming from an alpha who was at an archival arts seminar.
Case in point: Castiel himself was likely a handspan shorter than Zachariah. Certainly less bulky. By those old biologic conventions, he should be deferring to the other alpha. And yet he was very certain he was going to make Zachariah Adler regret that he had ever opened his mouth.
“But—” Zachariah snuffled, loudly. “How is anyone supposed to get anything done with heat-scent in the air?”
The omega passing them by on her way to the next seminar room gave them both a dirty look; Castiel couldn’t even blame her. He grimaced apologetically, and raised his chin enough to show the vulnerable curve of his throat to her.
What a stupid statement, though. The physiology of scent during heat was well-understood, and had been for quite some time. Multiple orgasms and an improved refractory period, yes—tendency towards distraction and violence, no. Did people still believe that an alpha could be incited to bad behavior by a whiff of someone’s fertility? Apparently so.
Castiel turned back to his fellow archivist; he could feel his blue eyes narrowing in a glare that was not friendly, and judging from the way Zachariah’s lips went white, Castiel’s scent was broadcasting his displeasure. Castiel wasn’t sure what anyone found menacing about the smell of leather and cinnamon—those were the main topnotes of his native scent when he wasn’t wearing cologne, and he rarely bothered—but Sam had assured him with a laugh that it was ‘really something, it’s really intimidating, Cas.’
(Sam, it should be noted, had not looked even remotely intimidated as he’d said it.)
Castiel arched his eyebrows at Adler. “Are you telling me that an omega person—who has no control over the production of their scent—is somehow at fault for an alpha coworker not doing their job properly? That seems contradictory. Weren’t you just talking about the duties inherent in being part of a strong, supportive secondary that isn’t hampered by…” Castiel tapped thoughtfully on his lower lip. The tip of one canine pricked at his fingertip. “What is that adorably archaic expression you used? ‘Cognitive gentleness?’”
This time, Adler didn’t argue with him.
Or rather, he tried. He spread his stance, facing Castiel boxy and defiant, the line of his shoulders squared and his chin tucked in. He opened his mouth. The tip of his tongue moved just past his lips, like a worm.
Most of the time, Castiel did not know the right things to say to soothe, to comfort, to ease, to defuse. Dean laughed at his efforts at saying something romantic—which even Castiel knew came off ridiculous at times, and more often than not ended with both of them laughing. He didn’t use his secondary often—he didn’t even try to stare people down when they cut in front of him driving. He’d never once flashed teeth to his boss. Castiel was quiet, and most of the time, when he wasn’t angry, he wasn’t very good with words.
But Castiel was dominant.
He didn’t raise or lower his chin. He didn’t tense at Zachariah Adler’s scent of fury and sour embarrassment on top of wet wool. He didn’t blink.
He snarled.
Adler dropped his chin to shield his neck, and didn’t say anything further.
That was probably the first wise thing Zachariah Adler had done in quite some time, Castiel thought, rather sourly, working his jaw to try to force his canines back in as he turned on his heel, leaving the human weed behind him shaking.
It was true, Castiel was not the sort of person who would throw a punch at a coworker at a conference unless physically provoked—he hadn’t gotten into an alpha brawl since a few months after he’d presented, and he hadn’t even had his first growth spurt at the time.
However, he absolutely was the kind of alpha who was going to be having a long talk with HR in the morning.
Even if Castiel hadn’t considered Adler’s views repugnant—and he did—that sort of talk was inappropriate at a work conference to begin with! The other alpha wouldn’t have said anything that completely stupid about women, so why—
Castiel grimaced as he stalked off. No, actually, he didn’t know that either. Adler had been mouthing nonsense about fertility.
It was true that Castiel was a tall, broad-shouldered, and physically robust alpha. Even still, he thought Adler was taking his own life in his hands voicing that kind of sentiment. Especially at a conference primarily attended by omegas.
(Imagining how Gabriel, even likely a half foot and more shorter than Adler, might decapitate the man at the knees, then eviscerate him tongue-first, and then finally proceed to set his car on fire, was a cheerful enough thought that Castiel’s canines finally retracted.)
Adler might have been unhappy at his position; should Castiel have felt pity for him for that? Adler might have even felt that his secondary entitled him to… what, precisely?
“Precisely nothing, that’s what,” Castiel muttered, and walked into the next conference room.
Hanna smiled at him from the next row of seats, and he shuffled over to make room for Castiel near the end of the aisle. Castiel took it, grateful, unbuttoning his suit jacket as he sat beside him.
Even though Castiel was already sweating a little in his suit and tie, Hanna always made him feel a little underdressed: his modesty collar was off-white today, the soft flat cloth wrapping his neck from just under his chin to where it bunched delicately just above his collarbones. It was lined with a row of tiny red buttons. Hanna always wore one, even though most people—even male omegas—rarely bothered outside of black tie occasions.
He and Castiel had worked together more than once, sweating over boxes and crates in the dusty hive that was the back rooms of the American Museum of Natural History. (Why were the archival specimens never where they were supposed to be? The creatures had legs, but some were thousands of years old, and they certainly couldn't walk.) Even though it must have been sweltering, Hanna had never taken off his collar; Castiel had no idea what his scent was.
Hanna never made waves, but he also never compromised: he was spectacularly organized, and he took things being out of place very personally.
Which was almost certainly why he—younger, newer, and omega—had been promoted over Adler.
“Congratulations,” Castiel murmured, before the talk started. “You deserved it.”
Hanna, the new curator of Land Invertebrates, smiled without looking at Castiel, quiet and serene. “Yes,” he agreed. “I did.”
Castiel didn’t even have time to chuckle before the very formal omega male he considered a friend—and now, technically his boss—was quizzing him about how work was going with the melittology project.
For the most part, Castiel was very content with his job sketching and painting tagged specimens too fragile or too old to be displayed, as one of the artists-in-residence at the American Museum of Natural History. At conferences, he still got sniffed periodically—sometimes politely, sometimes less so—but nonetheless: he had never once in his life felt any urge to wrestle someone to the ground bare-handed or run into burning buildings to prove the presence of his knot.
Other people were much better suited to that sort of thing than he was. Regardless of whether or not they possessed a knot at all.
(Castiel’s opinion on that had nothing to do with just how superb Dean looked in his turnout gear. Really.)
Not that Castiel had any complaints about how Dean looked now—loose-limbed and comfortable and very much in his own element at Chicory, Benny’s bar in Queens. Dean hadn’t dressed up to come out for the evening, but he didn’t need to. He wore open red flannel and a plain undershirt like he was going to shuck them at any moment, let his legs splay in loose jeans. Castiel smiled and studied the glorious lines of Dean’s bare throat, the roll of his Adam’s apple as he tipped his head back and drank his beer in an enthusiastic gulp.
Putting a modesty collar on Dean was a sin.
But Dean almost sprayed out his mouthful of beer and pecans when he heard.
“’Cognitively gentle?’” he sputtered. “Holy shit, I can’t even remember the last time I heard that outside of like, fucking Shakespeare! Wow.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Like, that’s bullshit that’s actually worthy of your air quotes, Cas.”
“Hey,” Castiel protested, mildly.
“Just sayin’.” Dean turned away from Castiel to elbow Sam in the side. “Hey, I thought there were policies about this kind of thing now. Can’t you do anything about that kind of crap? What’s that fancy degree of yours for anyway?”
“Really not that kind of lawyer,” Sam muttered into the mouth of his beer bottle. “Which you know, jerk.”
“Bitch,” Dean answered, a little too loudly, clearly delighted with the opportunity to be shocking.
A beta man walking behind them recoiled.
Benny, leaning on the bar in front of them, tried—and failed—to suppress a bark of laughter. “Hey, you keep a civil tongue in your head in my bar, chief,” he boomed, but he was grinning.
Castiel sighed and put a hand over his own face. Benny putting another beer down in front of Dean just encouraged him.
He didn’t even have to open his eyes to hear Dean’s smile. “What? He’s my baby bro an’ I’m an omega too, comin’ from me, it ain’t an insult.”
Castiel cracked one eye open. Dean was grinning at all of them, lips just a little parted and the tip of his tongue resting delicately against the inside of his teeth, shoulders proudly back at the chaos he’d wrought. His whole expression broadcast delighted mischief.
God, that smile. Castiel didn’t know how anyone stayed annoyed at him. Castiel certainly couldn’t.
“Coming from anyone it’s an insult,” Sam retorted, but he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the bar, looking past his brother at Castiel. “Are you going to report… what’s his name, Adler?”
Castiel nodded. “I’ve written up the incident and already have an appointment with HR tomorrow.” He wrinkled his nose in remembered distaste and started selecting the hazelnuts out of the small bowl in front of him, popping one into his mouth. “I’m going to bet it’s not the first offense.”
“Fuckin’ alphas, man,” Dean agreed. He passed over his own hazelnuts, already picked out of his bowl, and Castiel smiled his thanks. “If it’s not their dicks, it’s the brains at the base of ‘em.”
“Dean.” This time, Sam looked genuinely annoyed—enough that his hair fluffed with it, just slightly. He gestured sharply with his chin between Castiel and Benny.
Benny snorted. “Don’t look at me, brother. He can say what he wants ‘bout me, he ain’t goin’ anywhere near my dick or my brain.”
Sam choked.
Dean twisted and blinked, sheepish, and when he turned, it was to nudge an apologetic kiss against the curve of Castiel’s cheek. “Sorry. Shit. No offense, Cas. You’re the fuckin’ best. I just kinda forget you’re an alpha sometimes.”
Castiel supposed that someone else might have considered that an insult—especially since he and Dean were mated. But, for one thing, Dean said that sort of thing at the firehouse all the time, and most of his colleagues were most definitely capital-A alphas. He chuckled and gently tilted his head just enough to let late afternoon scruff rasp against scruff. “You forget everyone’s an alpha.”
Besides, he had every confidence in his ability to remind Dean of their respective secondaries, when he wanted to—and they both enjoyed it very much when that happened.
“Guess that’s true.” And Dean bent his head, sniffing ostentatiously at Castiel’s neck from close enough that Castiel laughed and shoved at his shoulder to dislodge him. Dean was so rude! “Couldn’t miss how you smell, though, sweetheart, mmmm.” He sagged against Castiel’s shoulder and moaned, “Time to swoon, now, too cognitively gentle to live.”
Sam threw up one hand, almost upending his own half-empty bowl of nuts. “Oh my God, what is wrong with you? Every time I think you’re done, you make it worse. Now you’ve managed to insult everyone,” Sam told his older brother.
Castiel opened his mouth to note that Dean hadn’t insulted betas yet, but Sam’s point was, nonetheless, valid.
And Dean should not be encouraged in this.
Probably.
Castiel closed his mouth.
Dean winked up at him from his position with his head on Castiel’s shoulder, saucy, but straightened enough to turn a superior grin on his little brother. The same one that Castiel had had turned on him a million times by his own older siblings. “It’s a gift,” he announced.
“Oh for crying out—hey. Wait. Speaking of terrible ‘gifts…’ actually…” Sam drummed his fingers on the bar countertop, thoughtfully, then turned his palm over, tapping his fingertips and visibly counting. “Hey, Dean, isn’t your time coming up really soon?”
Dean’s smile disappeared like Castiel had flipped the page on a drawing. He straightened away from Castiel’s side, leaving a long cold line where he’d been leaning. Castiel’s alpha grumbled.
Castiel rolled his eyes at it. Greedy for their mate, as always.
“Goddammit. Don’t remind me,” Dean groaned. Sam slanted what looked like a markedly judgmental glare at his older brother. “C’mon, Sammy, don’t look at me like that, I put in my presentation papers at the firehouse last month. Bobby woulda killed me if I didn’t.” He grimaced. “Assholes are taking bets.”
Castiel blinked and folded his hands in his lap. Dean’s… Had it really been that long? “Do you mean…”
“Yeah,” Dean sighed and scrubbed a thumb against the shining surface of the countertop. “Probably gonna go into heat in the next couple of weeks.”
“Oh.” Castiel arched a startled, questioning eyebrow. Then, when Dean stayed silent, studying the dartboard on the wall like he could hit the bullseye with his gaze alone, he turned to Sam.
“The twenty-third,” Sam offered, helpfully, “if I’ve got my math right.”
Well, Sam always had his math right.
Castiel stared, then twisted to look at his mate. “Dean, that’s next week!”
Dean made a small, disgusted noise, but he didn’t meet Castiel’s eyes.
Castiel knew he should have been keeping track—probably—but it had been a very long time. That was just how Dean’s biology was; Castiel didn’t have any problem with that, they had not planned on children anytime soon. But at the same time…
No, Castiel didn’t agree with Zachariah’s point of view. Any part of it. There was, however, a correlation between certain aspects of secondary biology and the development of certain… physical characteristics, he supposed it could be said.
Dean was taller than most, Sam taller than almost anyone, so he didn’t think that anyone would find it surprising that their heats were rare. Some omegas went into heat every month—Castiel felt sorry for them—but those omegas who had rarer heats tended to be physically taller and broader once they completed their full growth. Anna had told Castiel that it had something to do with physical resources in adolescence not being consumed by the process.
Sam, the six-foot-five, triathlon-running state prosecutor, went into heat once a year. So it shouldn’t have made any sense that Dean went into heat every two.
And yet, somehow, with them, it… did. It seemed to make perfect sense.
Castiel sometimes thought that Dean had stubborned his way into only having a heat every two years, just because it was inconvenient to have them any more often than that.
“Wait.” Sam looked between them, and his mouth sagged soft. The look he shot at Castiel was an apology given eyes. “Dean. You really didn’t tell him?”
“That’s none of your goddamned business, Sammy,” Dean answered, dark and low in his throat, the reverberation in it so close to an alpha growl that Benny looked over his shoulder from making a cocktail, frowning.
Castiel was frowning, too, but he swallowed the curl of unease. Or tried. They hadn’t been mated yet the last time Dean had gone into heat—they’d still been dating. They’d been dating for long enough that Castiel had been surprised, if not a little hurt, that Dean had chosen to sequester rather than ask Castiel to help him through it, but of course that had been his choice to make.
They were mated, now, and Dean still hadn’t told him. Hadn’t mentioned it at all.
“It’s alright. That’s short notice, though,” Castiel noted to Dean, quietly. He reached out and brushed the backs of his fingers down his mate’s side, his knuckles catching lightly on Dean’s belt loop. “At least I’m already meeting with HR tomorrow.”
The director might fuss a little about Castiel not putting in for partner-leave a month in advance, as he was supposed to, but she could hardly refuse to let Castiel take the time off, not when he and Dean were formally mated. And he could get the most of his current projects closed off or sketched out by next week if he pushed—
Dean’s shoulders hunched inwards, his body language slamming shut.
“We’ll talk about it later, Cas,” Dean said, and that dismissive flick of his chin and the way he didn’t meet Castiel’s eyes settled cold in the pit of Castiel’s stomach. That was very much a “we’re not going to talk about this, ever.” “Hey, I’m gonna hit the head, you wanna call for the check?”
He slid off his bar stool without waiting for a response from either of them, and went winding his way around the tables. Castiel watched him go, confused. His alpha ached and scrabbled at what was a very, very obvious rejection, whining at Castiel to stretch his face out to rest it in the crook of Dean’s shoulder—scent his neck and bite hard on his mating mark.
“Dammit,” Sam groaned. “Cas, don’t take it personally,” he told Castiel, with a gentle pat of his shoulder, his arm long enough that he didn’t even have to lean over, even with the space of Dean’s empty stool between them. “But I didn’t realize he—dammit.” Sam’s face squished in an expression that only Dean ever summoned out of him. “He’s… sensitive about it.”
“Yes. I gathered.” Castiel swallowed, and shook away his frustration along with the sympathy in Sam’s eyes. “But… I’d like to help.”
He didn’t understand. Everyone who presented alpha or omega went through the inconvenience of rut and heat. Castiel had envied betas more than once for it while he was sweating and panting, so on edge he wouldn’t have remembered to eat if Dean hadn’t coaxed him into it.
Sam sighed, and his hand tightened. Cas’s alpha tried to raise his hackles—it didn’t want him to be touched right now by anyone but his mate, not even an omega who smelled like family—but Castiel ignored it. “Yeah, I know, Cas, of course. ‘Cause you’re a good guy, and you’re a great mate. But… you know how he is.”
He did know. He knew exactly how Dean was.
So Castiel said nothing about it when they climbed into Dean’s beloved Baby. He chuckled weakly at Dean’s story about having to rescue some sort of foul-mouthed parrot from the roof of a house. He let them into their apartment, and smiled a little when Dean wrapped an arm around his waist from behind as soon as the door closed behind them, a big hand cradling the sharp jut of his hipbone. Castiel felt lips brushing in a soft caress against the back of his neck when Dean bent towards him, the whiffle of breath through his hair.
“Heya,” his mate said, warmly, and slotted his hips against Castiel’s rear.
Castiel reached backwards to run curved fingers up the side of Dean’s thigh, his nails rasping gently against denim. “I haven’t forgotten what we were talking about,” he warned, and extracted himself from the tight wrap of Dean’s arm—though not without running his hand appreciatively over the strong stretch of Dean’s forearm, from elbow to wrist.
He thought he was prepared for the expression that he was sure would be on Dean’s face when he turned around—the bright-edged smile that almost managed to make it all the way up to Dean’s eyes, the way he tilted his chin upwards in an attempt at charming guilelessness that Castiel would not have bought from him even years ago.
Being prepared for it did not make it hurt any less.
“Aw, Cas. It’s no big deal.” Dean chuckled and shook his head. His grin was as bright and hot and destructive as the fires he put out. “You don’t have to take the time off for my heat. Seriously, I was just gonna get a hotel room and a dildo. Maybe a sheath if I’m really feelin’ it.” He tried to reach out for him again. “I’ll be okay.”
But Dean’s eyes had dulled to almost brown, not jade; the curve of his lips was pure art, but tension strained at the line of his jaw.
Yes, he would be fine; Castiel didn’t doubt that. But between Adler’s nonsense and the sinking feeling of hurt in his chest, being condescended to that way by his mate bit sharply at Castiel’s otherwise rather imperturbable alpha nature.
An instant later found them both against the wall—Dean’s back to it, hard enough that his shoulders had thumped on the drywall, Castiel chest to chest with him and chin up, one hand pressed to the paint by Dean’s head.
“Ooh,” Dean crooned, looking entirely too pleased by this turn of events. He ducked his head to scent Castiel’s neck—deeply, lavishly, a loud inhale with lips parted. “So it’s like that? Okay, yeah.” Then both his hands went for Castiel’s back—one up his shirt and pressing calluses to his spine, one down the back of his slacks. “C’mere, Cas.”
Castiel knew he should resist. He knew he really should—Dean was doing this at least partially to distract him as because he wanted it.
But he was helpless when Dean ducked his head and caught greedily at his lips, Dean’s hands already grappling him close. Castiel let himself be distracted.
God, he could get addicted to how responsive his mate always was, how enthusiastic.
No, that was fooling himself—Castiel was addicted, completely. Dean was two inches taller than he was and Castiel was not small by any means, even within his secondary—but oh, every time Dean smiled at him like that, eyes shading low with golden lashes, expression going dark and warm and hungry, Castiel felt so powerful.
Most of the time Castiel considered himself just the most fortunate of humans to have caught the attention of this phenomenal man across the floor of an otherwise completely unremarkable and, frankly, boring museum fundraiser. He still didn’t know how it had happened.
“You kidding?” Dean laughed, when Castiel murmured his wonder into the warm infinity of that broad, star-freckled shoulder. “You were the hottest guy there, sweetheart—standin’ over in the corner with one eyebrow up, ninety percent dominance and ten percent blue eyes, and not a single fuck to give.”
“I had nothing I wanted to say to anyone,” Castiel protested.
Dean’s lips curved in a preposterous, delicious smirk. “Yeah, so basically, anyone who wanted to talk to you could just damned well come to you.”
(That wasn’t what it had been like at all. But that had been nearly four years ago, and Castiel had attended the same fundraiser every year, religiously, since. No, he didn’t care that Dean laughed at him for it.)
He had first seen Dean moving with purpose across the large ballroom room, absurdly handsome in a fitted black suit and the tiny, ridiculous red bow tie that all the firefighters in attendance were wearing. It wasn’t like anyone could have missed him, not a tall, tawny-haired alpha very much in his prime and on the prowl—broad shoulders and trim hips wrapped in black cloth, and long, long legs made for sauntering.
Castiel had no idea that this beautiful man was sauntering towards him until he was already standing in front of Castiel—hip a little cocked in the most casual posture that Castiel had ever seen in formalwear, creases at the corners of his eyes Castiel wanted to rub with his thumbs, lips that he wanted to sketch, over and over.
(Dean was clean-shaven, that night. Castiel thought nothing could make him want to rub their faces together more. Until the next time, when he saw him with his cheeks and the line of his jaw sandy with scruff.)
Then the man shocked him further by smiling down at him and purring, low in his throat, “I’m Dean. Is it hot in here, or is it just you?”
Castiel blinked, very slowly, and peered down at himself, unwitting, embarrassed out of his own scattered thoughts. “I didn’t think it was particularly hot in here.” He couldn’t very well check his armpits. He checked his modesty buttons, but they were fastened. “Am I sweating?” It must have been both noticeable and terrible if this stunning alpha, this complete stranger, would come over here and ask—
“What?” Dean gaped down at him, and then tossed back his head in a laugh that would have bared his throat if he hadn’t been wearing the high, closed collar of a formal occasion. “No—I mean—okay, okay, nevermind, that didn’t work.” He scratched the back of his head, and his grin—God, his grin softened; the floor dropped out from underneath Castiel’s feet, leaving him reeling. “Take two. You’re gorgeous. Can I, uh. Can I get you a drink?”
What?
Oh.
Oh.
Castiel could feel his face going the same carmine as his number 19 Derwent colored pencil. But Castiel was also decidedly not alphasexual, and while he was so flattered—oh, God, was he!—he had his mouth open to politely decline.
Then Castiel paused, because he didn’t normally watch the way other alphas moved across the floor either, trailing their smile like a sparkler. He hadn’t been able to wrestle his eyes off the covered line of that delicious, broad throat and his fingers were still twitching to draw the curves and lines of Dean’s hands, the angle of his elbow under the dark formal jacket. His knees were still weak, caught up in the vicinity of Dean’s smile—which was game, and just a little embarrassed, now, and so completely charming for it that Castiel wanted to bite on that lower lip.
Other alphas didn’t normally make him blush.
Well, what did that mean?
In the confused, confusing interim, with no input whatsoever from his brain, Castiel’s mouth said, “Oh… yes, please,” instead.
His alpha purred and purred and purred, rolling kittenish and delighted.
Dean undid his bowtie at the bar, leaving it dangling around his neck like a handle—Castiel tried not to stare, because staring at a stranger’s neck simply was not polite, but the bright red tails draped around his covered throat like goalposts, or a picture frame. But it wasn’t until Dean released the first button of his own plain white modesty collar, complaining “How the hell aren’t you strangling in this thing?” that Castiel got the first whiff of bourbon and burnt sugar.
Maybe to someone else it would have been a relief to realize that he was not having a late-life sexuality crisis after all. Maybe to someone else that would have been important.
Castiel was self-aware enough to know, in retrospect: he’d followed Dean having no idea what his scent or his secondary were. It hadn’t mattered what they were.
Castiel would never have approached Dean himself. He would never have smiled at a stranger across a crowded room with just a flash of tongue tucked between his teeth, confident in having their eyes unable to leave him. Dean didn’t worry about looking silly in a crooked bow-tie—Castiel’s eyes going wide as Dean reached across the thin air between them to touch the lopsided, plain black bow at the hollow of Castiel’s throat, a shockingly casual intimacy that left him holding his breath as Dean chuckled and delicately retied it for him with neat flicks of his blunt fingers.
None of that had anything to do with Castiel’s secondary or his dominance—Castiel was just not that sort of person.
He was grateful, every single day, that the man who would become his mate was.
Dean was the kind of man who would take Castiel’s hand and raise it to his pulse at a formal occasion, slipping the tips of his fingers past the unbuttoned modesty collar as Castiel’s breath came faster, shocked and delighted despite himself. Dean was bold and shameless—he whispered “Y’know, I really like that you’re so damned polite—but if you’re plannin’ to be this polite when you knot me, Cas, I’m gonna be disappointed,” as he slipped a phone number into Castiel’s pocket and sauntered off with a wink.
(Castiel had been unable to rise from his bar stool for the next ten minutes.)
Dean was the kind of partner who would tease Castiel until his alpha reared up and snapped; Dean just grinned, unbothered, eyes darkening at the bite of Castiel’s dominance. It was a little to Castiel’s surprise and more than a little to his delight that Dean loved those occasions when Castiel’s alpha snuck out to play—when Castiel grabbed him around the shoulders and flung him to their bed, one of Dean’s muscled arms tossed over his head and his broad chest on full glorious display.
Castiel was always aware of his own strength—but Dean was Dean, his size out of bed and very much his match in it. Castiel had never had to worry about hurting or frightening him, not when Dean was more likely to grunt, “C’mon, harder,” or bite out, “God, yeah, Cas,” than ask for gentleness or reprieve. Dean moaned and cursed so deliciously when Castiel held him down; when he moved and shoved while still buried inside him, tugging and pulling against each other even when knotted.
That was not to everyone’s taste—it was so intense—but it was definitely to theirs.
Dean was so distracting—Castiel’s insouciant, stubborn, cocky mate. He was always, always the gift that Castiel wasn’t sure he’d ever deserved. It would have been so easy to let Dean have his way in this.
Perhaps that was why Castiel wouldn’t let him.
“Please,” he said, quietly, and nosed at the back of Dean’s neck, let his lips feather against the mating mark where Dean’s neck joined his shoulder. Dean was panting and limp in the curve of his body. Castiel splayed his fingers wider, held his mate close and plastered them together, covered him with his scent. “Dean, there’s no world in which you would let me spend my rut alone.”
Castiel knew he wasn’t being fair to ask at a time like this—joined and spent, still knotted together, with Castiel’s fingertips straying down the streaks of come on Dean’s stomach. He didn’t care. Sometimes, when it came to Dean Winchester, dirty tactics were an absolute necessity.
Dean rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger and muttered, “Shit.”
~to be continued~