Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts with just a tingling in his fingertips, and Dean ignores it, late spring heat keeping his hands thick and swollen most of the time anyway. Dehydration. Because he won’t scavenge anymore, the abandoned buildings too haunted to risk.

By late afternoon, it’s in his stomach, too, and his Wranglers are too tight where they weren’t before. For practically the first time since the end, he thinks about sex.

Oh god. By the time he is visualizing, compulsively, the last good fuck he had, he knows that he’s made a mistake. Within the next mile of walking, he can’t even delude himself into ignoring it anymore; he can feel a trickle of moisture running down the inside of his thigh. Oh god.

Dean looks around wildly for a place that seems safe. The golden light makes everything seem so cozy, and he thinks how great it would be to spend a night inside. There’s a stand-alone two-storey building just a half mile off, separated from the other run-down businesses on the street. It looks like one of those really shitty office spaces with tiny, embarrassed suite numbers. The stairs are outside the building, though, wooden slats cutting a diagonal across the back of it, an ugly wood walkway down the row of doors on the second floor.

At least no one will be able to sneak up on him. He can smell old trails of Type A all over the road. Even though it’s been weeks -- maybe months -- since they passed through, the back of Dean’s jeans soaks in a gush. He stumbles, caught off-balance by the lightning flash rolling outward from his belly.

His backpack rolls off his shoulder to the blacktop, but he doesn’t notice. Just make it into the building, Dean. Just fucking do it. Move your fucking feet. Crawl if you have to.

He nearly doesn’t make it up the stairs, the lightning coming unrelentlessly now. His entire body feels like it’s been shocked by an electric fence all at once. He needs someone to hold him together.

Picking the lock is all muscle memory, and his last conscious thought is, Just need a couplea days.

By the first real morning of his condition -- he can’t say the actual words -- he’s unbelievably hot, unbelievably, even though he just came from Mexico on foot, it’s unreal, and he would cut off an arm for just a little box fan to blow on his face.

That evening, he wakes up to struggle out of his clothes, shaking, and the rub of fabric against his flushed skin makes his dick rock hard, and he whines (not that he would admit it), wanting hands instead. His tongue is dust covered and he can’t do anything but scratch it across scabbed lips. He can’t see his water and he can’t get up to find it. All he can do is whimper and curl up on his side, his teeth beginning to chatter.

In a clear corner of his brain, he thinks, What a way to die, after everything.

Castiel has been walking through what feels like a dead-air desert for far too long. The sky is huge, endless, and it seems far too hopeful for what the world is now.

On the earth level, it’s all buildings slowly ramshackling, weeds and wildflowers growing up through the asphalt. Life finds a way, though, and instead of the rushing traffic of the old world, birdsongs follow him everywhere. Sometimes he still find himself just staring at a pair of cardinals as they fly here and there, chink chink chinking at each lovingly. The birds have gotten more colorful as he’s moved south. Kansas was all red-winged blackbirds and corn fields with sunflowers between the stalks; Oklahoma red dirt and towns long-barren; Texas was wandering livestock, the most incredible sunrises he’s ever seen, and heat.

South of Fort Worth, he killed a calf and ate well with blood drying up to his elbows. He dried as much meat as he could carry and has been nibbling since. The world moved on long enough ago that he’s not entirely confident in any remaining manufactured food -- cans have started to pop, Twinkies crumbling, on the rare occasion he can find something other than stores and homes trashed during looting.

When he hits the “Welcome to Austin” sign, pristine after all this time, he stops to mark the moment. Over 700 miles he’s walked, just about halfway to Guadalajara. He tries not to think of how much further there is to go. The most important thing is to keep moving. Movement means survival.

He keeps walking, but pulls out his crumpled and dirty map to look for water. Castiel traces the route with his finger, frowning, and then --

Castiel was one of the earliest to catch Harvelle-Singer’s as it whipped through the surburbs and cities surrounding Kansas City, brought on a plane to MCI before anyone know there was such a thing as a carrier that could remain asymptomatic longer than a couple days. He was lucky enough to survive the first waves of illness, puking and shaking for weeks while everything went to hell on the outside.

Meaning, Castiel has had plenty of time to get used to the idiosyncrasies of his symptoms, but the way his focus shifts towards this particular scent that reaches him on the barest breeze -- it’s somehow different.

And somehow he knows, automatically, that it’s not happy-heat-mate but scared and sick and alone.

His nostrils flare, catching the direction of the smell. Without even giving it consideration, he breaks into a quick, tireless run, his thirst and aching back and fatigue all fading to a silent background. He wishes he could whistle like the birds to signal his intention. I’m coming.

The scent trail is much longer than he thought was possible. He never guessed that he could smell further than he could see, but he runs for over a mile before he knows he’s close. It’s stronger and stronger in his nose and his body is starting to react, urged by the foreign entity that has taken over so many of the body’s systems.

For one, Castiel is alert in a way he isn’t familiar with, focus ratcheted up to max while he sniffs and eyes and listens for others. This could be a trap. Roaming groups of Type As -- things escalate so quickly when they are in a group -- have been known to use the Type O people as bait. Not that that would stop Castiel from trying to help.

Secondly, he… wants. His hands itch; he opens and closes them into fists repeatedly, trying to get the feeling back into them. There’s a warmth in his groin he hasn’t felt in forever. But the biggest thing is the rush of aggressive protect protect protect. He would not be able to deny it if he tried.

A grungy backpack on the side of the road catches his eye. He goes to it and is hit with a candy sweet smell, the kind that could make your teeth rot, but he stops himself from pressing his face into the tattered fabric. Glancing inside, his worry grows: no one would leave these supplies behind if they could help it.

Castiel carefully unholsters his sidearm, heightened senses straining for a hint of more people than the one who had carried this pack until he couldn’t any longer. The only movement is the grackles throwing their head backs in possessed mating rituals. The only Type A smells are stale and impotent. And he can feel the distress as deep as marrow. As deep as the pounding of his pulse.

He creeps up the stairs. He passes the first several office doors: Pamela Barnes, Psychic Consultant; Linda Tran & Associates; Abaddon Enterprises. The last just has a suite number, shadows around where the last tenant’s name used to be, and that was where his nose -- his body, really, everything in him -- is leading him.

He eases open the unlocked door. A beam of light stretches into the dim interior and hits the crumpled, naked form of his bounty. The man moans, eyelashes fluttering. Castiel can’t smell anyone else -- absolutely no one, like the office had been vacant long before everything changed. There was no stench of death, just that scared-sick-please from the sweating man on the ground.

Castiel very gently sets the man’s bag inside the doorway. His feet are silent on the industrial carpet as he pulls his flashlight and makes quick work checking the smaller offices. Everything is dusty and silent, random pieces of furniture left behind: a chair here, a heavy wooden desk there, some file cabinets with locked drawers and no key.

He cracks one set of blinds for light to see by, and… Christ. Christ. Even with a couple weeks’ worth of untamed scruff, even with the fever raging underneath his deep brown skin, even emaciated and whimpering and bruised, he’s made of a kind of beauty Castiel didn’t realize even existed anymore.

Castiel holsters his gun and kneels next to him, canteen in hand. For a stupid few seconds, he struggles with what to say. He settles with, “Hello.”

At his voice, the man’s eyes flutter open, a green so rich and unexpected that Castiel pulls back. Which is probably for the best, because his human philanthropic urges are mixing with his diseased need to claim, to comfort with his body, to end the fever in the person below him.

The eyes are mostly unseeing. His fingers twitch and he makes a sad, broken noise as a hard tremor spreads through him and stays.

“Hey,” Castiel says, and he reaches out to rest his palm gently against the man’s cheek. “You need to drink.”

He holds the man’s head while he tips the canteen to his mouth. The man swallows and pants and water runs down his chin, clearing a streak of sweat and dirt away.

“How many days?” Castiel says.

But the man goes limp except for the shivers and the thick smell coming off him that burns like incense in Castiel’s throat.

Chapter Text

Dean wakes up with several needs roaring inside him: water, food, touch. But he’s so weak, and he’s in a nest of warmth and comfort, so all he manages to do is nuzzle his face deeper against the blankets under him and make a small hoarse groan.

His human mind is slow and foggy, but at least a piece of it is there, and when it catches up, he startles awake, hands scrambling for a weapon. His thighs slip against each other obscenely. He makes it to his hands and knees before a vertigo hits him, like stepping off the Mamba after riding it eight times in a row at Worlds of Fun during the only birthday party he ever had.

Dean falls back to his side with a hard thump despite the pile of blankets, but at least he has part of his mind on him, the part that’s not lost to the aching need in his groin.

He’s alone. But he’s in one of the smaller offices, tucked between a big-ass desk and the wall. His little corner is full of unmatched blankets and linens, pillows lined along the wall to soften the blows of his tossing and turning. A jug of clean water and strips of some kind of dried meat are waiting next to the nest. They might as well have his name written on them, and he feels his mouth do its damnedest to salivate at the meat, identified or not.

Dean is too hungry and too thirsty to question this gift. He pulls himself up to sit against the wall and chugs water until he thinks he’ll puke it all back up. He starts on the food, barely chewing in his hurry. The sharp scrape of salt is the best thing he’s tasted in his entire fucking life.

When it’s gone, Dean chugs more water until he can’t, then leans his head back against the wall, eyes closed. He produces an especially impressive burp and smiles despite himself: Dean Winchester is a man who is happiest when over-indulging. He doesn’t think about anything at all for a few minutes, maybe even dozing, but then his two minds both sound the alarm at once.

The smell that’s all over this room, the food, the water, some of the blankets, maybe even a little bit of Dean himself, makes his body start to react. Even though he clenches against it, he feels the wetness start between his legs and a different kind of flush come over him. Why is he alone and writhing when someone has left their invisible handprints on him so recently? Why isn’t he getting what he so badly needs?

His human mind is terrified. How long has he been out? Where is the motherfucker who touched him so Dean can smash his face into the pavement? And, quieter: I let it happen again.

Castiel knows when Dean wakes up, even though he is out on the wooden walkway, pretending he thinks this kind of look-out is necessary for their safety. Then again, it is -- it keeps Dean safe from Castiel. It felt ok when he went to find supplies to make a bed the best he could for the sick man. It was only after he tucked Dean into it that he realized he was nesting, another symptom just as sure as his uncontrollable sexual arousal.

He actually went into one of the other offices to jerk off, something it seemed like he shouldn’t even remember how to do, it had been so long.

And things were a little different now. Downstairs. He knew intellectually what to expect, but the reality -- the intensity that felt like the end of the world, that felt like a sin big enough to make him the king of Hell, that was literally the most pure pleasure he’d ever felt in his life -- was something else entirely. The way the base of his cock started to swell as he approached orgasm, every molecule of skin on his body almost too sensitive to touch, but he kept touching anyway, coming until he wasn’t sure if he was having multiple orgasms or just one never-ending one, a symphony as one hand squeezed his swollen cock, the new part of him that would knot him to his partner -- mate-mate-mate, skin the color of a bronze statue, eyes like emeralds -- the other hand using his come to slick up the head of his cock, quick strokes that kept him breathless and trembling.

Even after he made himself stop -- because it seemed like he could go on forever, or at least until his dick was raw -- he still wanted. So much that he couldn’t stay in the building with the temptation to soothe with his hands. So much so that he went out scavenging again, but he wasn’t sure even a blocker could be enough.

I am an honorable man, Castiel tells himself. I do not let a fucking virus determine my morality.

He swings his rifle over his shoulder and waits, tense, on the edge of bursting inside to check on his omega.

Jesus. You are an honorable man! Castiel shouts at himself internally, trying to drown out whatever was driving the hard-on growing in his pants. People aren’t possessions. People are not possessions. I am an honorable man. I’m just keeping him safe until this passes.

Next to him, the doorknob begins to turn.

Dean finds his backpack in the main office and, surprisingly, his hunting knife is still there. In his hands, it offers some level of assurance. A knife in a gunfight ain’t worth much, but if he can keep his head about him, he might have a chance.

If.

Through the cracked blinds, he can see the silhouette of a man. Smaller than Dean, at least, but there’s the heart-stopping shadow of an assault rifle carried on his back. Dean grips the knife handle harder and pushes the door open, trying for speed but stumbling when his next breath is nothing but the hormone-driven smell of a Type A.

This Type A. Who looks up at Dean with eyes the color of Texas skies, hair gathering in curls around his ears, a face that isn’t used to smiling.

Dean holds himself up by the walkway railing, thrusting the knife out weakly. It feels like want is just gushing down the back of his thighs, beads of it trailing into the crease of his knees and tickling there.

The knife isn’t even close to the other man. “Who the fuck are you?” Dean says, managing anger, even if his voice shakes.

The stranger, alpha, holds out his hands in a calming gesture, like a dog’s whining yawn. “My name is Castiel,” he says.

“The fuck did you do to me?”

“I didn’t touch you,” Castiel says. He hopes Dean can’t see through him into the fantasies he’s been generating for days he doesn’t dare count. “I… smelled you. From a mile and a quarter northwest. I knew you were ill.”

“Fuck you,” Dean says, snarling, even though everything in him wants to do exactly that.

“You were in heat and alone. If a bachelor group became aware of you --”

“They’d take what you wanted.” Dean moves forward, pinning Castiel against the end of the walkway. If he could gather the strength, he’s within range. If Castiel isn’t faster getting to one of his weapons, which he probably will be, fucking alpha adrenaline in his blood.

Dean tries for it, a stab at Castiel’s abdomen, but instead of the feel of yielding flesh, a heat flash rolls over him and he faints.

Fading in and out again, back in the blankets full of their intermingling smells, both the smells of arousal and comfort, a whiskeyrough voice speaking quietly, a gentle hand on his face. And his fever trickles away, and his fear trickles away, and eventually he’s just in a deep, exhausted sleep, dreaming about clouds floating into the horizon.

Dean wakes up in the middle of the night, not the instant leap into consciousness he’s used to but slowly like a lazy Sunday morning, him and Charlie on the couch in their underwear, eating cereal and smoking weed and watching cartoons. The blankets are still his only, but Castiel is sleeping in the opposite corner of the office, his head tilted towards Dean.

Dean grabs the fresh jug of water and chugs, again spilling it over his chin and down his chest, deliciously cool on his skin.

The heat is over, he thinks. His thighs are sticky, he can smell himself, but there’s nothing slick, and the urgency has left the pit of his stomach.

When he looks back at Castiel, Castiel’s eyes meet his. Dean can see him open and sweet, the lines of his face smoothed out until he looks almost boyish, like there’s not an ounce of aggression in his body.

It’s silent except for Castiel’s gentle breaths. He doesn’t move from the floor. Almost inaudibly, he says, “Your heat is over.”

“Thanks for the update,” Dean says.

Castiel’s eyes close, open, close, like he hasn’t slept in a hundred years. “I was afraid I wouldn’t make it in time. Thought for sure…” He sighs. “You’re ok. I kept you safe.”

He murmurs something more, but it’s sleep nonsense, and Dean just stares at him in the dimmest of light from the moon for a very long time. He can’t come close to naming what it feels like to look at Castiel, studying the rise of his eyebrow, the strong line of his jaw, the movement of eyelashes as he dreams. Dean tells himself it’s just the disease manipulating his emotions, but.

Dean’s whole life, he’s never felt the way he does looking at this Type A. Easy and comforted. Maybe even a little safe.

Chapter Text

Dean unpacks the sterno and some of the good cans he’s been saving and makes a feast for himself and Castiel for breakfast. Castiel is awake with the sun, and startles when he finds Dean outside on the walkway, bent over a campfire cooker.

Dean says, “I call this the Winchester Special. Pie for breakfast.”

Castiel stares at him, then slowly sits down cross-legged across from Dean.

Dean bites at his bottom lip, frowning at the cans he’s heated. “I’m trying to say thank you.”

Castiel picks up a spoon and turns the cans to see the labels. “I haven’t had blueberry pie since…”

“Since Before,” Dean supplies.

“Since before Before.” Castiel takes a small bite, then starts unloading the spoon into his mouth like he’s starving. Which he probably is -- he and Dean are both nothing but muscle and bone, carved out from limestone.

Once Dean starts, he eats the same way, and they go through the cans without talking, passing back and forth to share the flavors, stuffing themselves far past their usual rationing point. It’s almost celebratory, or at least as celebratory as things get at the end of the world.

The cans are empty. They use their fingers to clean up as much as they can from the bottoms, licking unabashedly. Finally, Dean smacks his lips and leans up against the wall, legs stretched out so his feet dangle through the railing. “I’m Dean,” he says, “if I didn’t tell you yet.”

“You didn’t,” Castiel says, positioning himself similarly, careful to keep a good amount of distance between them.

“How did you keep from…?” When Castiel doesn’t respond, Dean clarifies, lowering his voice. “From fucking me.”

“By the time I arrived, you weren’t conscious.”

“So? I smelled like -- like --” Dean can’t come up with a word for it, how disgusted he is with his own body and it’s wet wanting, how disgusted he is with how pleasant the smell was, once Castiel was there to watch over him.

“I was able to find some Alphex.”

Dean’s eyes jerk and widen. Now that it’s said, he can see the sores in the corners of Cas’s mouth, the bumbling rash on his hands. “But that’s so dangerous --”

“Yes,” Castiel says.

Staring at his own hands, Dean whispers, “Why?”

“I’m an honorable man, Dean. The end of civilization did not change that.”

“But you tracked me here.”

“Yes, I…” Castiel’s mouth turns down, brow furrowing. “I couldn’t help myself in that. I could smell that you were in distress.”

“You guys can smell that?”

“Yes. Why were you alone without suppressants?”

“I don’t need to be taken care of. I’m not some alpha’s plaything.” The word comes out vile, spewing.

“I agree, but many alphas have -- forgotten who they used to be. They are just the animal now. They go into a frenzy.”

Dean knows all about that, maybe better than anybody. He’s glad Castiel shares the long silence with him instead of pushing the point.

When Dean finds his voice again, he says, “So I guess that means we’re traveling together now?”

“I’m headed to Jalisco,” Castiel says.

Harshly, Dean says, “There’s nothing there.”

Castiel goes pale. “There’s supposed to be --”

“There’s not.” Dean steels himself against thoughts of what found him in Mexico. “There’s nothing, just like everywhere else.”

It’s a day and a half’s walk to the lake Castiel was heading for before being lured away by Dean’s fever. Lingering pain from the Alphex slows Castiel down, made worse as they do their best to conserve water. They don’t speak, just trudge. Still, it’s easier than trudging alone.

When they finally make it, they stop outside the park headquarters building. Dean, the taller, pulls the vines off off the map until they can squint through dust at the faded print. A good portion of the map is blue, little white squiggles here and there.

“Lake this big, there might even be a little water still there,” Dean says, grinning like he hasn’t voiced a horrific fear. By the time things ended, it was far too late for the planet to reverse the damage men had done to it, and the droughts in these parts only worsen every year.

Castiel stares at Dean for a beat too long, so Dean feels like an idiot for making a joke about something like that, but before he can apologize, Castiel has turned away and started into the park. Wordless. And tagging after him, Dean feels the same way he did as a little kid at the third new school in one year, chasing after kids in new name-brand clothes who would never bother to learn his name.

It’s another mile -- Castiel moving fast now, even as he favors his left side -- before they hit the lake, and there’s miraculously plenty of water. A fucking cornucopia of water. It’s gorgeous and blue and laps up against a floating boat dock, empty of charges. There are more wildflowers than there is grass in the area surrounding and all the little hopping sparrows make it seem like a Disney song is ready to break out.

Dean smiles, for real, and loosens the straps of his backpack. “Hey, Cas,” he says, “I’ll race ya.”

Castiel glances over at him, squinting, and Dean shoves at him, then drops his backpack to the dirt and takes off running.

There’s a frantic moment of quiet, and then Dean hears Castiel’s bag drop and his feet pick up, and Dean stretches his legs, remembering signing up for cross country just because it was the only sport that didn’t take a whole bunch of expensive equipment to join, and the sun is bright and the wind created by his own movement a relief in the hot-humid, and he laughs with the joy of running. With the joy of water. With the joy of Castiel’s feet pounding behind him.

Despite Dean’s ground-eating stride, Castiel catches up. He doesn’t pass Dean, though, just runs right behind him, and when Dean takes a flying leap off the dock into the water, Castiel follows without hesitation. Dean goes under, hits the bottom with his feet, and stays down, his heart pounding in his ears.

He surfaces after long moments and Castiel gasps. “Dean!” he says, and then he’s crowding close. The water has already taken off the top level of Castiel’s scent and it makes Dean impatient to get into his space, to fill his nostrils with it again.

They tread water, nearly touching, and Dean watches drops of water slide from Cas’s hair down the bridge of his nose and over the bow of his lips. “Hey,” Dean says, ducking his head.

“Hello,” Castiel says. And then, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Chasing.” His eyes are so fucking huge and blue, looking at Dean like Dean is some sort of pinnacle of righteous purity, like Dean could be broken by him.

“I asked you to, didn’t I?”

Castiel accepts the little smile Dean offers, even returns it, the corners of his lips twitching like they aren’t entirely sure how to do it. Dean reaches out to smooth Cas’s hair out of his face, but stops himself, hand paused in midair while his brain engine stops firing. When it finally catches, he jerks away and swims to shore.

Dean chews on the inside of his lip to keep himself from saying anything else as they start filtering water into their skins.

When it’s too much to keep in, he says, “I’m going to find somewhere for us to bed down. I’ll come back and find you.”

He leaves behind his bag like to assure Cas that he’ll be back, but only after he’s out of sight does it occur to him to wonder if Cas will be waiting for him.

Some guy doesn’t force himself on you, and now you want to run home and get married?

The thought makes him angry enough that he isn’t paying attention and trips, going down on one knee in the underbrush. A rock cuts through his wet jeans and into his knee and his scowl just gets bigger as he stomps on.

The… attack… (Castiel said “heat” like it was nothing, but Dean can’t think it even) is over. But he doesn’t remember the last time he ran just for the fun of it.

At the top of a hill that was starting to seem endless, Dean turns back to see Castiel coming towards him in that quick, relentless lope. “Hey--” Dean starts.

“Are you all right?” Dean just blinks and Cas says, “You’re bleeding.”

“Oh,” Dean says, looking down at his torn knee. “I tripped.” His words come out kind of vague; he has no idea what the fuck is happening here.

Cas comes closer until he’s way into Dean’s personal space. He inhales deeply, just staring at Dean. “I’m sorry,” he says at last. “Something -- came over me.”

“Maybe I should be worried about you,” Dean says, trying to sound lighthearted but missing entirely.

Castiel inhales again. “It’s -- the way you smell. It’s hard to.” He closes his eyes, like gathering resolve. “It’s hard to stay away from you. Can you smell me?”

“Yes.”

“What do I smell like?”

Dean blinks. And like drawn on a string, he leans closer to Castiel, inhaling deeply through his nose. “Um,” Dean says. “I don’t know. Like. A person.”

Castiel takes his turn leaning close, snuffling his nose up the line of Dean’s neck. Dean tenses but doesn’t pull away. “Leather seats with oil stains. And --” Dean actually feels the nuzzle-touch of Castiel’s nose, a wet huff from his mouth. “Old books.”

“You smell like alfalfa,” Dean says. “Fields of it, just hayed.”

Castiel almost smiles. Almost. “And you smell like blood. It’s almost as strong as your heat.”

“It’s just a little scrape, can barely feel it.”

“We should get that cleaned up. Just in case.” Just in case another alpha smells you, is what Castiel means, and Dean’s heart pounds.

He had actually forgotten Cas is a Type A. He had forgotten the world was so much more terrifying than it had been before Harvelle-Singer’s. He nods, avoiding Castiel’s eyes.

“Oh, look,” Castiel says, leaving Dean’s space to go around him. Dean follows and just a bit further, they find a strange little rock alcove, a wannabe-cave that bumps against the lake like a secret watering hole. A gecko stares at them from the rock wall. Cas says, “I’ll get the bags.”

Chapter Text

Castiel jogs back down the hill to their packs, not in any particular hurry but because each step sends razorblades of pain ripping up his calves, and he certainly deserves the punishment.

Alphex: because the ragged slicing-n-dicing of nerve endings is better than being a rapist. A slave to primal urges that wanted to make him more of a beast than even animal.

Because no matter what an honorable man Castiel is, he has never before encountered a temptation so strong as to set fire to his bones like he’s nothing but the ghosted urges of a real person, salted and smoking.

Dean’s smell -- the smell of Dean’s heat -- is all over his pack, his bedroll, and it’s all over Castiel’s pack, too. Out of Dean’s sight, Castiel allows himself this one pleasure: he pushes his face into the backpack, not caring about the scratch of grit and smell of stale sweat, not when he also has a face full of mate-Dean-lovely. Like long summer drives with the windows down, leather seats hot and stained with grease fingerprints, the backseat full of paperbacks picked up at Goodwill stores across the country. The feel of the sun on his face, watching Dean laugh and sing along to classic rock, not entirely on-key. Laying on the hood and kissing under a meteor shower. Checking in to shitty motels and eating greasy cheeseburgers and piles of fries covered in ketchup, watching the Travel Channel and mooning over Anthony Bourdain.

There’s an ache of nostalgia so hard and deep, the air squeezes out of Castiel’s chest. All those things he could see -- feel -- from just a scent, all those moments from another life he’ll never have.

Then again, the wildflowers shiver at his feet as he heads back uphill, and the three-step song of mockingbirds surrounds him, and the sun is starting to consider dipping below the western horizon, and it feels like a great day to be alive.

Dean waits until Cas has already gone down for the night before taking his clothes off spreading out on top of his sleeping bag. Dean stays as far away from Castiel as he can, but he falls asleep easy and comfortable, dreaming about a place less broken.

Castiel, as always, does not dream. He taught himself this skill of not-doing as a child, and it has served him especially well since the world has moved on.

Dean is so relieved when he wakes up alone and untouched, and then he’s disgusted with himself for being relieved, like if he refused to acknowledge the real terrors other people could visit on him, they would never exist at all.

When Dean rolls over, Castiel is staring at him. His stare is a jarring mixture of the kind of wonder on the face of a little kid at the aquarium and a statistician considering a piece of data that doesn’t seem to fit. Dean knows it’s him that doesn’t fit, it’s him wearing all those exotic colors as he glug-glugs around a glass prison.

Dean shoves his feet into his boots and stomps out of their rock hollow, forgoing clothes entirely in his hurry to get out from under Cas’s eyes. It’s hot already, the first orchestral buzzing of crickets starting up for the day. He pisses on a prickly pear cactus with flat round mitts the size of his head and tries to make his thoughts come together.

“Dean.” He startles, but instead of Castiel’s voice creating an underhumming fear in Dean’s blood, it worms it’s way under his spine and makes his flesh tremble. “I’m going on a supply run. You need to rest at least another day, but I’ll be back by dark.”

Dean turns, crossing his arms across his chest and scowling. “I’m totally f--”

“Stay here,” Cas says, his voice firm and final but not hard, and Dean ducks his head, wanting to rub his cheek against the thunder in the column of Cas’s throat.

“See you later,” Dean says instead.

They both assumed they would part ways once Dean’s heat, and thus the imminent danger, passed, and they both continue to kind of think it, even as another day passes, and then another. The scavenging in the nearby ghost town is good, and the hunting and gathering is good in the park, and even though they only speak in logistics, the company is a comfort after so many months on the road alone.

One morning Castiel wakes up and it’s been 14 days. He wonders if he should mention it to Dean, or if it would just re-energize him to separate, dashing all of this easy peace to Hell.

Castiel decides to keep his mouth shut.

On day 18, Castiel pauses in the middle of setting a small game trap and turns his face into the wind, nostrils flaring. He’s running before he even recognizes getting back on his feet.

This isn’t like the razor-edged instinct that had him tracking Dean, tracking distressed omega. It’s ten thousand times worse.

This is bachelor alpha on Castiel’s territory. Bachelor alpha near Dean.

Castiel is snarling as he runs, so the other alpha is certainly not startled by Castiel’s appearance. In fact, he turns to meet Castiel, though they both stop just outside of each other’s reach.

The other alpha is bigger than both Castiel and Dean, his shoulders broad, hands huge and crushing. Castiel has no fear. For the briefest moment, he considers trying to reason with the other man, but he can tell from the way his muscles bunch up and flutter underneath his skin that he’s not really a man at all right now. Just a beast with Dean’s smell in his nostrils.

Castiel goes at him hard and fast, lands a solid hit to his jaw before the alpha reacts, and then they are grappling, everything -- even the birds -- silent except for the human grunts and pants and the sound of fists meeting flesh. The other alpha may be bigger, but he hasn’t been eating as well as Castiel and Dean; he’s weak and slow where Castiel is strong and fast.

Castiel hits the ground and takes a boot to the ribs before he can roll away. He grabs for his hunting knife but it’s not clipped to his belt where it belongs. Of course. He’d grown complacent and if this stupid mistake gets Dean hurt --

But his hand does come up with a chunk of limestone. As another kick comes in, Castiel bashes the rock against the side of the alpha’s knee. A snarl of pain and rage follows the alpha to the ground. He grabs a chunk of Castiel’s hair in one of his animal hands and pull hard enough to set Castiel’s scalp on fire.

Castiel punches the man’s throat and staggers to his feet. He picks up the rock again, and before the other alpha can remember how to breathe, he brings it down on his head with all the force he can muster. The sound of shattering cartilage and bone is not a stranger to Castiel. It haunted him long before this fight.

The end of the rock is covered in blood and gore, splattering it as Castiel hits the man far past death, until he doesn’t have a face anymore. Until it would require expensive lab equipment to identify him. All Castiel can think is, You’re not fucking touching him.

In the end, he’s shaking too hard to hold on to the rock. He drops it and stumbles down to the ground, collapses to his ass, hands leaving bloody prints in the dirt. And then Dean’s smell is all over, and he closes his eyes into it, smiling.

Chapter Text

Dean comes down the hill so fast he nearly wipes out more than once. He’s shouting Cas’s name, watching Cas sway in his seated position with his eyes closed, watching the blood splattered and dripped and smeared all over his face, his clothes.

“Cas! Cas!”

Dean ran with his gun in hand, but there’s no need; the other alpha’s head is… not a head anymore. A body with meatsauce exploding out the top of the neck. He re-holsters the weapon and hits his knees next to Cas, reaching to touch his face, just gently, fingers coming away bloody.

“I’m fine,” Cas says, but only one eye opens properly, the other quickly swelling shut.

“Can you walk?”

“Yes,” Cas says, but Dean has to take most of his weight to get him to his feet and then again once they started up the hill towards home.

Home. A fucking rocked-in waterhole, and Dean just thought of it as home. Not that he’s had much experience with the word before.

He gets Cas sat down on his bedroll, puts a canteen in his hand, and uses his knife to turn an extra shirt into strips for bandages. He wets one in the lake and holds Cas’s chin as gently as he can as he starts to wipe the blood from his face.

“God, Cas, don’t scare me like that,” Dean murmurs. Castiel’s good eye squints into something like a smile. “What happened?”

“Type A,” Castiel says. He labors to breathe and it worries Dean, but he sticks with his blood-cleaning, just glad as fuck that Cas is alive and talking. “Must have tracked us here.”

“Tracked me here,” Dean says, stilling in the middle of wiping blood from the corner of Castiel’s mouth.

“Us.”

“So you decided to take on a guy about twice your size, unarmed? He beat the everloving shit out of you, Cas! You could be dead!”

Cas reaches up and grabs Dean’s wrist. His hands and arms are scratched to all hell from his haphazard run through Texas underbrush. His eyes grab Dean’s, too, holding him in place, barely breathing. “I will never not protect you, Dean.”

Dean looks away, flushing. “Well, next time, you know. Invite me along to help.”

Another week, and clouds roll in apropos of nothing, drought-heat turning to muggy hell. Castiel is not surprised when he wakes up in the middle of the night to the heavens opening up, fat raindrops clattering on the lake like a tin roof.

Or maybe that isn’t what woke him. Across the rock enclave, Dean tosses and turns in his sleep, groaning softly.

Dean has nightmares sometimes. Usually Castiel just crawls on his hands and knees over to Dean’s bedroll and touches his shoulder, gentle, and murmurs something comforting, and Dean whines “Ca-aaas” before falling back into sleep, and in the morning Dean doesn’t remember a thing.

But this time, even before Castiel is close enough to touch, he realizes. He stops with one hand reached out towards Dean’s bare skin. “Dean,” he says. Louder: “Dean!”

When he finally touches Dean’s shoulder, the skin is lava-hot. Castiel shakes Dean roughly. “Dean!”

Dean groans again, sounding pained. “Cas,” he whimpers.

“Wake up, Dean.” Dean’s eyes are fever-bright in the almost-black. “Dean, you’re in heat.”

Dean shudders, and the smell of it fills their air. “It’s only been a month,” he says.

“I’ll get you some water,” Castiel says. He fumbles around for the solar-powered flashlight and takes his time filling a canteen. He has Alphex in one of their storage hideaways separate from their homebase, shoved at the bottom of a duffel and forgotten until now, but he won’t be able to get to it until morning. You’re fine, he tells himself, it’s barely started.

Dean drinks greedily. In the weak beam of the flashlight, Castiel can see the sweat at Dean’s temple. Dean wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, breathing hard. “It’s only been a month,” he repeats. “It’s not -- it’s not supposed to happen this often.”

“I know,” Castiel says.

“Is it bad for you yet?”

“No,” Castiel says, watching him. “I won’t hurt you.”

Dean rubs a hand over his face. “Will you just --” Now he rubs the back of his neck, eyes averted. “Will you lay with me? I think I can sleep if…”

“Of course.”

Dean settles back on his sleeping bag, facing out into the rain. Very carefully -- slowly -- like Dean might change his mind, Castiel lays behind him. Before Castiel can figure out how close to get or what to do with his hands, Dean scoots backwards against him, almost violently, and hauls one of Castiel’s arms around his waist.

“Bossy,” Castiel says, smiling despite himself.

Dean says, “Shut up.”

Castiel expected to be consumed by Dean’s heat -- the physical part, the fever -- but instead, Dean seems to cool at his touch. Castiel presses his nose into the soft spot just between Dean’s shoulderblades and listens to his heart slow from a gallop to an easy walk and eventually the swaying clod of sleep.

Dean wakes up with his arms full of something solid and warm. There are urges itching under his skin, but not too bad, not yet; he just presses into the hair tickling his nose and flattens his hand against Castiel’s stomach to pull him just a little closer, just enough so there’s not a breath of air between them.

Dean talked a lot of shit on cuddling in his life, but it wasn’t until he had basically zero option of ever experiencing it again that he realized what a nice thing touch can be, even if not explicitly sexual. This touch, this guardian angel of a man tucked against him, is full of the kind of relief that makes him want to cry.

All Dean can smell is Cas. Talking about just-hayed alfalfa hardly does the idea of it justice. It reminds Dean a little of the smell of ground-up weed -- and god, wouldn’t it be nice to find some of that on a scavenging run -- but mostly it’s just Cas, inexplicable, like home in Kansas, like home in this stupid rock.

Just like home.

When Cas wakes up, Dean tries to school his face into something that doesn’t look like he just sat here contemplating Cas’s smell while he was sleeping, like that isn’t fucking creepy. Cas rolls to his back and it sends a jolt to the base of Dean’s spine how Castiel doesn’t even act like he’s trying to get out from under Dean’s arm.

They look at each other for a long moment. Cas’s nostrils flare, and then like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it, he noses under Dean’s chin and breathes against his neck. Slow, shaky inhale; long exhale; repeat. “Dean,” he says. A shiver scatters over Dean’s skin at the feel of Cas’s lips, warm and a little wet, as he talks. “You’re still in heat. But you aren’t…” Deep inhale. Nuzzling up Dean’s neck to just under his ear, and maybe that’s where he forgets to finish his thought.

“I need to ask you something,” Dean says, before he loses his nerve.

Cas goes impossibly still for a minute, like the eye of a storm, and then he says, “Yes, I still have Alphex in the supplies by campsite 42. I’ll go--”

“What?!”

“I kept it in case we didn’t find suppressants.”

Dean’s hand goes to the anchor of Cas’s hip bone -- too thin, both of them, angles sharp and unforgiving. “That’s not what I was going to ask.”

Without warning, the heat sparks in his belly. His fingertips feel numb and he squeezes them tighter into Cas’s skin.

“If we just -- if you, I mean --” Pressing his face into Cas’s hair makes it harder to think, but he can’t pull away. “We could just do it. And then.”

Dean’s heartbeat skips off-key in the silence.

“I’ve heard that copulation can ease some of the worst symptoms.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Yeah.”

“But I don’t know for sure, Dean.”

“I do,” Dean says, hoarse, wondering how Castiel can speak so evenly.

“You’ve done it?”

All Dean can whisper is, “Please, Cas.”

And all Cas could ever answer to that is, “Of course. Anything.”

Castiel brings another canteen and watches Dean chug it down. They eat fresh pecans for breakfast. Dean can’t look at Castiel and he can’t seem to look away, either; Castiel wars with the same urges. He can smell Dean more and more.

“Cas,” Dean says, like it tears something inside of him to say it, a hook ripping through tender gills.

“I’m here,” Castiel says. “How do you want to--”

Dean pulls his jeans off in one rough yank, then turns over on his stomach in his bedroll, one leg pulled up, his face pressed into the crook of his elbow.

Castiel can’t breathe. By now he’s seen Dean in all stages of clothed and nude and has always managed to keep his gaze chaste. But the long lines of him -- the slight indention of his spine, ribs fanning outward, all that sun-warm golden skin, freckles across his shoulders just a few shades darker than his earthen tan, the soft dark hairs on the back of his thighs, the surprisingly delicate arch of his feet -- have Castiel floating untethered in space.

Barely audible over the rain, Castiel says, “You’re incredible.”

“Please,” Dean says.

There are contexts, Castiel thinks, that he would love to have a naked Dean -- that is to say, a naked man as good-looking as Dean, he corrects himself quickly -- begging him for sex. But this, he hates with a venom that puts the pecans on a spin cycle in his stomach.

Dean cants his hips upwards and makes a noise that sounds like a sob.

“Dean,” Castiel says, putting a hand, gently, on his calf. “Can I see your face? I don’t want to hurt you.”

Dean turns over but won’t look at Castiel at all, just staring up at the uneven ceiling. Tears track steadily into the dirt. Proudly. Even like this, Dean doesn’t do anything as pedestrian as submit.

Castiel swallows and glides his hand, just the ghost of a touch, up Dean’s shin to his knee and then back down to his ankle. “I -- I’m sorry, Dean, I know you don’t want -- but I can’t feel like I’m raping --”

“Stop,” Dean says, eyes flashing. “If anyone’s -- doing that -- to me, this time it’s Harvelle-Singer’s. I know you’re not --” He bites the inside of his cheek, like he’s trying to tame the words before they come out. “Cas, will you kiss me?”

“Oh,” Castiel says, just a word wrapped in his breath, shaky. It just occurred to him that he might get to kiss Dean. He rubs his thumb over the sharp ridge of Dean’s shin bone, then carefully makes his way up his body.

As Castiel leans over Dean, close enough to make out the faded constellations of freckles across his cheeks, Dean says, “Your ribs. Are you ok?”

“Yes,” Castiel says. His voice is the same pitch as the rambling thunder outside their hideaway.

Because Dean is just watching and waiting, Castiel brings his hand up to skim along the rough edges of Dean’s jaw, to cup his chin and tilt him upward to kiss him fully, gentle but without reservation. It seems to take a long time, nothing but the sound of Dean’s heart and raindrops on the water outside, but then Dean’s mouth relaxes and he kisses back and then it’s just -- flashes of sensations, mindlessly guided by the hitches in Dean’s breath --

Castiel can smell his arousal and flares his nostrils to welcome it, breathing against Dean’s cheek with barely a whisper between their mouths. Dean’s hands raise, caressing the air as he hesitates, and then they rest lightly on Castiel’s shoulders like he’s not sure what to do with them, even as they trade nearly-chaste kisses, just breathing each other.

Touching Dean, breathing nothing but Dean’s smell, the urgency is… dimmer. He can smell the wet heat of Dean welcoming him, and Castiel is throbbing hard in his pants, but it’s ok. As long as Dean is half-smiling at him in the gloom, tears forgotten, there’s no one in the world but them and time is a meaningless concept.

Castiel murmurs, “Dean, Dean,” kissing the rough stubble of his cheek wetly, nuzzling against his ear, the tip of his tongue tracing the outer shell.

Dean whimpers and Castiel’s cock twitches. He rubs his nose down Dean’s neck and groans. Dean’s hips raise towards Castiel’s, all on their own, so that Castiel can feel the hot press of Dean’s dick against his own, even through fabric. Castiel’s fabric -- Dean is glorious and tempered like fire and naked beneath him.

Their hands meet at Castiel’s zipper but Dean gives way, instead --

Dean trembling his hands up Castiel’s spine to fan out across his shoulder blades like wings --

Castiel struggling out of his pants, murmuring an apology against Dean’s neck that makes him cough away a laugh --

apology turning to begging Dean, Dean with his teeth biting into the meat of Dean’s shoulder --

“Please, Cas,” Dean says, and when Castiel slides a finger into him -- wet and warm and tight and christ, wet -- Dean growls in a way that doesn’t seem entirely human and Castiel slides another finger in him and says against Dean’s mouth, “You feel so good,” and Dean growls again, a different way, his grip on Castiel’s shoulder blades tightening --

“Cas, baby, I ‘ppreciate you treating me all gentle except --” kissing hard, ending it with a bite sharp enough to draw blood “--I’m not fragile.”

No. He’s hard lines, darkening skin, gunmetal in his blood -- some day Castiel will worship every inch of him, find the best ways to make his heart race, make him slur his words, but --

Castiel fucks himself into Dean, absorbing Dean’s low-pitched whine into his own breath, not exhaling until his hips are flush with the backs of Dean’s thighs.

And then he pulls back and fucks into him again, and again, until Dean tips his head back to expose his throat, and Castiel sucks bruises there, and he holds Dean’s hips still while he grinds into him deep and dirty, and when Dean shudders out, “Cas--!”, Castiel comes, and he hadn’t actually realized -- he had been so into the noises Dean was making, it’s not until he reflexively goes to pull out that he realizes they’re --

stuck.

Dean comes, his whole body going tense, and Castiel comes again -- again?! -- and then again while Dean is starting to shake underneath him. “Jesus, I -- I’m sorry --”

“It’s ok,” Dean says.

Gently, Castiel smooths Dean’s damp hair away from his forehead, leaves a kiss there. “I’m sorry,” he says again.

Dean won’t look at him. “It’ll go down in a few minutes."

Chapter Text

Dean wakes up alone. Aching. Warmth across his skin. The rain on pause, finally, the lake water high and lapping against limestone.

He sits up, groaning as his back cracks in a series of three. Cas looks at him from across the enclave. He’s got pants on but no shoes or shirt and is balancing a mug of tea on his knees. His hair is damp and dark and wild, and his eyes are an ocean, and Dean can’t breathe for long heartbeats.

“Dean?” Cas says. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “I’m starving, though.”

They eat rabbit jerky, Dean greedier than usual -- though in part just so he doesn’t have to look at Cas -- and Dean obediently drinks the too-sweet electrolyte drink mix Cas stirs up for him. And then Dean says, hating himself for it, feeling himself get wet with the words, “Cas, can you -- again -- please --”

Cas kisses him, hard and meaning it. Both of Cas’s hands are on Dean’s face, fingertips stroking at his temples. “Oh, Dean,” and then he uses those lovely hands to turn Dean’s shoulders away from him.

Dean’s stomach clenches but he goes facedown on the bed anyway. Is he presenting? Is Castiel just loving it, just like --

Cas’s hands are gentle, skimming up the back of his thighs, over his ass -- Dean practically gushes at the nearness of the touch -- and he says, “No, lay down, relax. Relax, Dean.”

Dean goes down on his stomach. He feels Cas’s warmth over him. Cas tickles kisses over the back of his neck, the scratch of his beard leaving goosebumps in his wake. Cas licks, kisses, sucks, just gently, over the bruises on Dean’s shoulder and along the side of his neck. It’s so strangely sweet and Dean hums into it. He can feel Cas’s smile against his skin.

Cas spends time kissing each of the freckles across Dean’s shoulders, mapping them like constellations. “You’re so beautiful.”

“Cas,” Dean says, knows he’s blushing.

Cas’s face is pressed into the dip at the base of Dean’s spine, biting at dimples there, nostrils flaring. “The moment I saw you,” he says, “I belonged to you.”

Dean can’t say anything to that, and he definitely can’t make any words when Cas’s tongue first licks across his hole, not shy at all about the slick dripping down between Dean’s thighs in what is practically a stream.

When he finds his voice, all he can make out is, “Cas!”

“Mmm?” Cas says, mouth pressed up against Dean so the vibrations can be felt in his skin.

“You can’t -- oh --”

Feeling him grin, like a bastard Cheshire cat, but then his tongue pushes inside Dean and Dean doesn’t care about anything but more of that, there, yes, please, Cas, oh fuck yes, Cas, that’s so good, so good, baby, right -- right there -- I’m going to --

While Dean lays trembling, sticky with his own come, Castiel fucks him slowly, the wet smear of his mouth on the back of Dean’s neck, and afterwards they lie together, legs tangled and arms tight, and Castiel spends long moments kissing and nuzzling the bruises he’s left all over Dean’s neck, some of them flushed deep purple already, and Dean falls into a dreamless sleep, smiling.

The heat ends, and Dean is well enough to go scavenging for supplies, brave with Cas at his side. They find the remains of bodies often, ghostly mummies that succumbed to Harvelle-Singer’s before the changes could even happen, before the alpha and omega set in.

It’s calm. It’s comfortable. But Dean can tell Cas is getting itchy, ready to move on, and Dean certainly can’t blame him, because if there’s anything more dangerous than existing in this after, it’s existing as a Type O or with a Type O in your pack.

“Dean,” Cas says, late one night, from his own bedroll.

“Yeah,” Dean says. He wonders how Cas knew he was awake. Not that it matters, because he can tell from the tone of Cas’s voice, this is it. The separation. Dean, alone again, without an alpha. It was nice to pretend while it lasted.

“We should stay together,” Cas says.

“I don’t know,” Dean says, because he’s an idiot.

“You said there’s no cure in Jalisco. You said there’s nothing there.”

“It was too good to be true,” Dean says. “It was just --” Swallow, even out his voice. “Just alphas. Taking omegas.”

Cas sits up in a rush; Dean can hear the rustle in his slippery sleeping bag. “Did someone hurt you?”

“They called it Hell, where they kept us.”

Dean watches the shadow of Cas crawl towards him, and then Cas’s hands are on him a little clumsily, finding his shoulder and then wrapping himself around Dean. Kinda hysterically, Dean thinks that Cas is a human octopus. Who has that many limbs?

“Dean, Dean, Dean,” Cas whispers, pressing kisses to the still-healing bruises on Dean’s neck, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“It was a long time ago,” Dean says, like that makes it easier to sleep at night.

“The two of us together would be a lot safer than each of us apart,” Cas says, breath warm on Dean’s ear, voice a spring thunderstorm.

“You don’t know who I am,” Dean says, “what I’ve done.”

“You don’t know what I’ve done, either.”

Dean laughs.

Cas says, “I killed my father.”

Dean stops laughing. “What?”

“When I was 17, I found out he’d been touching my youngest sister. So I killed him. I was in Lansing when Harvelle-Singer’s hit.”

“Holy shit,” Dean says. “How long were you in?”

“Twelve years,” Cas says.

“Holy shit,” Dean says again. In the silence, even crickets hushed: “How’d you do it?”

“He kept guns in the house. For when, quote-unquote, ‘the illegals and terrorists come to take what’s ours.’”

“I’m sorry, Cas. I’m -- I’m so sorry you had to do that.”

“So who could you possibly be that’s so bad?”

“I’m just nobody.”

Cas sits up, looming over Dean in the dark. “Now that is bullshit.” His hand reaches, brushes along the scruff of Dean’s jaw, and then he finds Dean’s mouth with his own.

Dean kisses back.

They stop sleeping alone after that, instead just the hot sticky press of each other, clothed, just Castiel’s nose pressed into Dean’s shoulder to smell sun-warmed skin with every inhale, just octopus limbs and Dean’s quiet morning smile.

Dean ignores that Cas stays out longer and longer without him, sometimes coming back after sundown, his torch a bobbing lighthouse in the dark.

Those are Dean’s least favorite days.

Castiel is nesting again.

It’s a symptom, but he isn’t compelled to fight it. Instead, he spends his days marching steadily from home to home, never quite getting used to the stench of death. It seems like every home has at least one body, and some of them seem practically full of them -- bedroom after bedroom with bodies tucked into bed, a mother dead sitting in a rocking chair in front of a baby’s crib, a woman on the bathroom floor, a man on a sofa.

None of these are right, and not just because they belong to the dead.

He makes excuses to go out alone each day. He makes sure Dean has plenty of ammunition at their camp. And he seeks.

When he finds, it’s a relatively cool day, just a slow trickle of sweat down his spine instead of soaked through his clothing. Castiel has been walking for hours, making a slow spiral out from their rock hollow, when he spots it: a little brick ranch house, still perfect in a large, overgrown yard.

The front door jimmies open easily, and inside is everything Castiel could have hoped for. This home used to belong to someone very… particular. Everything is covered in a layer of dust, but underneath that, stiff plastic covers all the upholstered furniture. And the beds in the two bedrooms, one with a single queen bed and the other with two twins separated by a small yellow nightstand. It’s a nice little place, the kind his family would scoff at as country people, poor and without class.

Castiel marks the place on his map, then starts the long trek home.

Handing a heated can of beans to Cas, Dean says, “Bobby Singer was my uncle.”

Castiel freezes, arm outstretched, then slowly takes the can. Voice even: “Really.”

“Yeah,” Dean takes a bite, big, like he’s hungry. Like he’s ever hungry anymore. “He married Ellen a year before it happened. Before they got sick.”

They don’t say anything else.

Dean is glad, that night, that Cas pretends not to notice him crying.

But Castiel notices everything, so in the morning, he says, “I have something to show you.”

“What?”

“Just walk with me. It’s quite a hike, but it’s worth it.” Or so Castiel hopes -- after all, they don’t know each other that well, even though people tend to get real close real fast when the options are slim.

They’re silent, marching in heavy boots, eyes and noses alert to any hint of others. It feels good to stretch their legs, to feel the sun on the back of their necks. On a whim, Castiel grins at Dean -- toothy and real -- and Dean grins back. It’s Castiel’s most perfect moment.

The house is unremarkable, a little ranch-style surrounded by other single-storey homes, all the yards overgrown, coming up through the cracks in driveways to strangle leftover cars. This house could be beautiful with a new coat of paint and some other repairs, but for now: the roof is good, the doors are solid and the deadbolts in-tact, and there were no bodies inside.

Dean follows Castiel to the front door without saying anything. He follows Castiel into the dim light of the house, the shapes of furniture eerie among floating dust particles. “I’m still working,” Castiel says, “but…”

He takes Dean into a small bedroom. There are mattresses on the floor, fresh bedding pulled from vacuum-sealed storage bags. The windows are open, dusty curtains fluttering in the breeze.
Dean turns to Castiel, something fearful in his face. “This is for me?”

“Us,” Castiel says in a blast of hope so strong his knuckles go white as he grips the door frame.

Dean looks at the room again, the blankets, the pillows. The nest. When he turns back to Castiel, he’s smiling, bright and happy and true. He throws his arms around Castiel and kisses him, hard but chaste. “Really?” Dean says, staying close.

“Really.”

That night, they undress each other, touches exploring for the first time without Harvelle-Singer’s to guide them. When Dean enters Cas, Castiel arches up against him, baring his throat, gasping, and Dean presses his face into Cas’s neck, overwhelmed by the smell-taste-touch-gorgeous of him, and Dean murmurs something against his ear that might as well be I love you: “I got you, Cas. I got you.”