10. Too Cold to Start a Fire

Chapter Track: Rusty Cage – Johnny Cash

Too Cold to Start a Fire

Dean likes to sit in the nursery sometimes.

Vacuumed and smelling of the fresh green paint that he and Cas have rolled onto the walls, it’s become something of a safe haven, a little pocket of dream-world for Dean to go to when he wants to pretend that maybe he isn’t some washed-up, skanky omega fresh from the griddle of a brothel. Maybe he’s an average dude with a smart alecky alpha and a pup on the way to make them a trio.

Here, he can kick back in his brand-spankin’-new rocking chair, stick his face in one of the parenting books he asked Cas for, and pretend that life is good for him. Dean doesn’t have a shady past in this little room that smells like paint and new furniture. He has a good home with a good family, the kind he dreamed of in the weaker moments of his youth.

Is sitting in the rocking chair in the nursery a weak moment? Dean holds his palms against his stomach, over the pup, and considers this. His dad would think this weak. Barefoot and pregnant omega, willing to follow Castiel around like a bitch if it means safety. But then, John Winchester never did understand the concept of safety for his children. Being a beta started his instincts on neutral ground, but with the proverbial bun in the oven, Dean can’t understand not wanting to protect his own. He will do anything for his pup, anything in the world.

Dean’s own comfort be damned, it’s the tiny little creature he’s growing inside him that’s important now.

His eyes flick over the edges of the room. It isn’t finished yet, though Dean assembled the crib and the chair and the changing table, underneath which are stored the jumbo pack of diapers that Bobby and Ellen gave him at the puppy shower – his puppy shower. It still feels weird to Dean that all those people, most of which he hadn’t even laid eyes on before that day, showed up to a party just for him. For him, and for his pup. Even though it doesn’t technically have an alpha, even though Dean is an unattached, single omega parent.

What Dean likes most about the room is more than the new furniture and attractive slap of green paint, even more than the framed LPs that Castiel purchased online – Zep II, Pink Floyd’s “Animals,” Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band – it’s the promise of the place. Maybe that sounds stupid. Most things Dean thinks are stupid. But he can picture rocking his pup to sleep in this place, sleepily stumbling in when his pup cries out for him at some ungodly hour of the night, reading board books and playing with dumb, colorful pieces of plastic that don’t make sense but sure as hell amuse the fuck out of infants.

“Hey, Dean?”

Dean looks up from his belly – he didn’t even realize he’d been staring – and sees Cas in the nursery doorway. The usual easy confidence that sets his shoulders is missing, replaced with a kind of nervousness. Dean frowns, “What’s up?”

“I wanted to discuss something with you,” Castiel says.

That sounds bad.

Really, really bad.

When people want to discuss things with Dean, they’re getting rid of him. They’re throwing him out on his ass, pawning him off on some other person, banishing him to rape-factory homeless shelters filled with other empty-eyed, hopeless omegas.

“I thought,” Dean starts, “I thought you said I could stay.”

Alarm flashes across Cas’ face and he rushes to amend, “No, no, I’m not making you leave at all.”

“Oh,” Dean says, now confused. He frowns and tries to scrape his memory for something that he’s done wrong. He’s been pretty fastidious about cleaning up after himself, scrubbing off his dishes and taking care of the bathrooms and making sure he doesn’t leave anything out of place.

Sharply, he looks back up at Cas and asks, “Is it – did you change your mind about wanting to knot me? ‘Cause we can still do that. I’m real good at it.”

Castiel rubs a hand back through his hair and hoarsely says, “No, Dean. I told you that I’m not going to force you to sleep with me.”

“It’s not forcing,” Dean insists, “I can take it, promise.”

“Dean,” Cas says, “I am not going to knot you. It’s something else I need to talk to you about.”

Now Dean’s at a loss. He knows Cas is good. Cas gave him a home and things to eat and books to read and even set up a nursery for the pup – or rather, paid for the nursery and got irritated when Dean insisted upon setting up everything by himself. If Cas wanted to knot Dean in exchange for those things, he wouldn’t mind. And he doesn’t think it would make Cas a dick, just a regular alpha. So maybe it’s that he doesn’t find Dean attractive. That stings to know, but there’s nothing that he can do about it. Dean thinks he’s gotten better looking over the course of his time here, body filling back out to normal.

“It’s about your brother. Sam?” Castiel says, looking ill at ease.

Instant fury, red hot and sizzling like lightning in his veins, snaps through Dean. He stands and says, “I don’t want to talk about my family. I don’t make you talk about yours.”

“Dean, this is important,” Castiel says, and the amount of calm that he sounds actually pisses Dean off.

“I don’t wanna talk about Sammy,” Dean says, “Don’t make me do it, Cas.”

“We’re going to talk about it,” Castiel states. Alpha authority climbs over his voice, infusing it in that same, terrifying way that the alphas at the brothel did, like Alastair did, like John Winchester did.

It takes a moment for Dean to bring himself down to reality and consider that Castiel has never indicated that he would hurt him.

But he is being a bag of dicks.

“You know what?” Dean says, and jabs a finger into Cas’ chest, “Fuck you. Don’t talk to me like everyone else does, like I’m some dumb, pliant omega bitch that’ll do whatever you want just ‘cause your stupid alpha ass asked for it. I sure as hell don’t wanna talk about my brother, so I’m not gonna. Just fuck off.”

Dean shoves past Cas and out of his little safe corner of the world. Anxiety fills him from yelling at Cas and from the idea that Cas wanted to talk to him about Sammy, of all the people. It’s not Castiel’s business to know about Dean’s baby brother, or his past, or any of the shit that he’s been through. He tells Cas things sometimes because he has these stupid moments of trust, moments when Cas’ scent curls into his nose and settles into his body with the soft feel of comfort.

For a long second, Dean doesn’t know where he should go from here. He stares down the hallway at the door to the room where he sleeps now – the room he’s come to know as ours.

That seals it. Dean shifts to his left instead of his right, turning into the guest bedroom. He locks the door behind him and crawls into the plainly dressed bed. It doesn’t smell nearly as good as the bed in Castiel’s bedroom smells, but it’s better here. Safer. Away from alphas. There’s the lock on the door, and no reason for Castiel to demand to be let in.

Yeah, it’s better here.

X

Things are tense between them.

Dean doesn’t leave the guest bedroom for the remainder of the night, though he does open the door briefly when Cas knocks and tells him that he’s leaving a plate of food outside the door for him and to “please eat it.” He does, and even though it’s some curry concoction that he knows Cas cooked because Dean’s been getting cravings for spicy food, he barely tastes it at all.

When Dean emerges the morning following, Castiel looks as though he wants to say something, but doesn’t. He asks Dean how he slept, and Dean answers honestly that he couldn’t sleep for shit. Both he and the pup have become used to having the heat and contentment that comes with sleeping beside an alpha, their alpha. But Castiel is not Dean’s alpha, and nor would he want to be was it not for his stupid brain thing.

Frustratingly enough, Dean can’t take another night of sleeping alone. He tries, but in vain, and ends up back in bed with Castiel halfway through the night. He’s embarrassed, red-faced as he slips into Cas’ bedroom.

“Dean?”

Damn it. He didn’t want to wake Cas.

But son of a bitch, how can he resist that sleepy-eyed alpha on the bed? He whines before he can help it and crawls under the covers, seeking Cas’ warm and scenting along him. Cas coils his arms around Dean, splaying his palms over Dean’s back and cradling their bodies together.

It should make Dean sick how much he needs this, how much he craves being held against a soft body with strong arms. He tells himself that it’s the pregnancy, that it makes him need alpha shelter more than he would if he was on his own.

But that isn’t it, and he knows it isn’t. He’s in bed with Cas because he wants to be in bed with Cas, and he would whether or not he had a pup in his belly. Castiel’s scent is something incredible to him. He can’t pinpoint it to another aroma like some people can with their alphas, declaring their scent citrus or cloves or something equally out of the reach of Dean’s brain. All Dean knows is that the smell of Cas is masculine. It means comfort and warmth.

On that guilty note, Dean nips at the skin of Cas’ jaw and settles in to sleep.

X

Though small pieces revert back to normal, Castiel is unusually quiet during the next few days. It unnerves Dean into spending more time outside on the hammock, reading with a glass of juice on the ground beside him or napping the summer afternoon away. Castiel makes him wear sunscreen before he goes out, blabbering on in doctor-speak about the altitude and how close they are to the sun and “Don’t you know what ultraviolet rays can do to your skin, Dean?”

So Dean endures it all and loiters outside reeking of the coconut-scented SPF 30 slathered over his skin. The breeze and the smells of the outdoors – plant life and animal fur and tree bark and the minerals in the dirt – always eventually blot it out, anyway.

On one afternoon, Castiel leaves Dean at the house to check the mailbox seven miles out, and Dean enjoys the solitude. He indulges in a long shower, scrubbing soap over the swell of his belly and over his arms, where his strength progressively returns. When he steps out, he rubs an oval of space in the condensation on the mirror and dries his body in front of it. He has stretch marks like tiger stripes on his sides, marks he can’t help but run his fingers over to feel.

He dresses in a gray Skynyrd t-shirt with a graphic of two electric guitars crossed in an X and the words Florida Straight Rock & Roll and a pair of jeans, forgoing his jacket or socks because it’s too damn hot. On his way into the living room, he flicks on one of Castiel’s standing fans and lets it cool what remains of his hot shower on his skin, before he rolls back toward the kitchen in search of something junky to eat.

The door opens just as he bites into a Poptart at the table, and Cas lifts a hand in greeting. He looks a little green around the gills, enough so that Dean asks, “Hey, you all right?”

“Fine,” Cas replies, “Package for you. We didn’t happen to get a visitor while I was gone, did we?” He sets a big, cardboard box down the table, and Dean stares.

“No,” he says, and stands to grab a knife to slice through the packing tape, “Were we supposed to get somebody?”

“Well,” Cas says, and licks his lips. He shuffles in place with a catch between his brows before he looks back up at Dean and shakes his head, “Nevermind. Ellen said she might drop by with some old pup clothes.”

“Oh,” Dean says, “Nah. Nada.” He runs his knife through the tape and opens up the box.

He pulls out a little crib bedding set.

The one with guitars.

And the matching quilt.

“Cas,” Dean says, and looks up, “You didn’t – you don’t have to keep doing this shit for me, man.”

“I want to,” Castiel replies.

“I don’t get you,” Dean mutters, but claps his hand over Cas’ arm and says, “But thanks, you weirdo.”

Dean gathers the bedding into his arms. It’s just one more thing to add to the perfection of the nursery. He pads back and dumps the things on the floor. He has to reach over the lip of the crib but struggles to get to the mattress with his giant preggo belly bumping in the way. He laughs and then grunts a little by his third attempt before he mutters, “Jesus Christ, pup. Give ol’ dad some room, will you?”

By the time Dean finally maneuvers the tiny little crib mattress up into his grip, he hears Ellen’s sharp knock at the front door and hears Cas answer the call, letting her in. He hopes she didn’t bring any ugly shit – he saw some doozies at some of the hoity-toity pup clothing outlets, the kind of shit that gets you made fun of at school. Not that his newborn is gonna be going to school.

Whatever.

Dean plucks the itty-bitty guitar fitted sheet from the carpet and starts to wrangle it on.

“Cas gave us the coolest friggin’ joint, didn’t he?” Dean narrates at his stomach, “Perfect room for my little pup. You got your music, got your awesome crash pad, got toys and all that good shit. Even got us some Zeppelin lullabies. You’re gonna love it when you get out here. Lots a’ folks to love on you. Especially your dad.”

That’s when he smells it.

It’s old, familiar, and it’s alpha.

Dean freezes in place. He releases his grip on the guitar sheet but clenches his fists before he turns around. It can’t be what he thinks it is. It isn’t what he thinks it is. But it is. Oh, fuck, it’s exactly what Dean thinks he is.

All at once, he’s catapulted back into childhood, back to Sam climbing into bed with him when he got scared, both of them smelling the other and feeling better being in the presence of one another, being held together by each other.

“Hey,” Sam says, a crinkle in his brow, “Dean?”

He’s much taller and far more filled out than the teenager that Dean left behind seven years ago, but there is no doubt that this alpha decked out in a well-cut suit is the pup he used to call Sammy. His hair is longer now, neatly combed, and over the other smells that stain his suit, of travel and the coffee spill on his blue button-up underneath his suit coat, there's cologne. It's all power and dominance, and at it, an anxious lump clogs Dean's throat.

Dean curls one arm over his belly and treads backward. He hits the crib and stumbles into the wall, a trip that has Sam swooping forward with his arms outstretched. Immediately, Dean crouches down and covers his head and shouts, “What do you want?” because that’s what you ask an alpha that’s after you, even one with a scent you knew as a kid.

“You’re pregnant,” Sam says, dumbfounded, “What are you doing? Why are you –”

But Sam scents the air and doesn’t have to ask. Dean’s afraid.

He backs off just a little, enough to give Dean space to breathe. He says, “You’re scared of me. Why are you scared of me? Why are you pregnant?”

Dean snarls out into his arms, “Think that would be pretty fucking obvious, Mr. Smarty Alpha.”

“Was it him?” Sam growls, “Was it Novak? He do this to you?”

“No!”

And that’s when Cas comes in. Dean doesn’t see him, but he can smell him, anger and say-so just like any other old alpha, but there's something else, the something that makes Dean want to leap up and bury his face against Castiel's chest.

“I thought I told you to tread lightly,” Castiel says, the grit and fury of alpha all over his tone of voice.

“You told him what?” Dean demands, and at this revelation he stands, surging to his full height. He may be an omega, but that doesn’t mean he’s about to let himself be jerked around, let his fate be decided by a couple of fucking self-involved alphas. He narrows his eyes at Cas and says, “You got together with Sam and decided you’d do away with me? That it?”

“No, no,” Castiel says, and holds his hands up in defense, “I’d never do that. I thought you would want to see him. The way you spoke of Sam –”

“The way I – are you kidding me?” Dean bites out, “You motherfucker. I trusted you, and this is the shit you do? I believed you. I believed you when you said it was okay for me to be here. I believed all of that. And you just – shit all over that. Do you have any fucking idea what this asshole said to me right before I left? He told me I should’ve stayed home like our dad said. ‘Maybe you should’ve stayed home, Dean.’ Yeah, you stupid omega. Maybe you should’ve stayed home and then you wouldn’t have gotten fucking assaulted by a gang of sweaty alphas and had your family blame your dumb omega ass.”

“What?” Sam says.

“Dean –” Cas starts. He takes a step toward Dean.

Dean lashes out, shoving him back away. His brain kicks into protectprotectprotect. Protect my pup. He shouts, “Leave me alone! I don’t wanna – I can’t – you people will hurt my pup.”

With a burst of adrenaline, Dean breaks past his brother and Castiel, rushing barefoot into the living room. He doesn’t have time to shove his feet on his shoes, not the way that Cas and Sam are calling for him. He throws open the front door and runs down Cas’ walk.

It’s the night of his escape again, the escape from Alastair’s. Kevin had just been with an alpha. He was limping and weak and they were bringing him back in as they were coming for Dean to replace him. Kevin made a fuss, put up just enough of a fight that Dean could run for his life. He’s never run so hard as he did away from Alastair, running until his feet bled everywhere, until his lungs screamed for air, until his legs threatened to buckle beneath him.

Until an alpha in a shitty little Prius pulled up beside him and told him to get in.

Dean doesn’t know how long he runs this time, just that by the time he stops, he’s cloaked with trees all around him. Sweat pools between his shoulder blades, under his arms and at the collar of his t-shirt. He trips into a clearing, falling to his knees and catching himself on his palms so that the pup doesn’t get hurt. He crawls forward and, breathing heavily, and sits back against a fallen tree snapped at the stump.

Safe.

At least for now, he’s alone. The scents of animal shit and soil will shield him for a little.

He thinks back to the night that he left and his heart clenches.

It was the end of his heat – earlier that day it had subsided, but the pheromones still floated off of his skin with that smell so pretty that some bottled and sold it, tried to duplicate synthetic versions in laboratories and factories. It was a shit heat, wouldn’t go away no matter what kind of knot that he fucked himself on, no matter how much porn that he watched. He’d been holed up in his room for a week.

All Dean wanted was to get out.

He just wanted a drink, some laughs, maybe to hustle up some extra cash with a couple of games of pool and blow it on something nice for himself.

His father shouted at him.

“You stupid fucking omega slut! You can’t go out. You smell like a fucking bitch in heat – you’ll have alphas crawling all over you.”

Dean yelled back. He yelled about how John didn’t run his life, didn’t dictate where he went, and what would mom say if she heard John calling Dean an omega slut and a bitch?

Your mother would agree with me – that’s what John Winchester said back.

Dean flipped his father the bird, threw a jacket over his shoulders and took off. He slid into the nearest bar with a grin on his face and the scent of his heat on his skin and threw back whiskey on the rocks for a couple of hours before he tired of the bullshit, thought he should go back home, if only to apologize to Sam for being loud while he was trying to do his homework.

One drunken tumble out the door, and they were on him. Reeking of cheap liquor and dirty alpha sweat, they dragged Dean behind the bar.

He fought and clawed but it was four against one and Dean didn’t stand a chance.

By the time that the second one had had his way with Dean and his knot had gone down, he gave up. He let them pound into him, let them tear up his body. Let bruises bloom to the surface of his skin and blood to pool in with the natural slick of his body. He didn’t even cry or shout, just took it.

And when Dean came home, John called him names, told him how ashamed he was that he had a son like Dean, a stupid, silly, no-brain omega that couldn’t do something like follow a simple set of orders. All Dean needed to do was listen to direction. That was what an omega did. What he was supposed to do. He was supposed to obey. He didn’t, and he returned home with a torn up ass and a deep and abiding sense of disgust with himself.

In him, the pup aims a kick.

“Promise you,” Dean says, like he’s been saying since he knew about the pup, “Promise you I’ll do right by you.”

Then, after a long, noiseless moment, he adds, “I love you, pup.”

X

Dean smells them just after the sun sets.

He hears them right after, the crunch of shoes through the trees snapping through the quiet of the mountains like firecrackers. Beyond them, all Dean can hear is crickets and other bugs, serenading mates with chirps and clicks and soft songs. Sometimes, it still amazes him the nothingness that is here. Only him. Only the crickets.

And Cas.

And now Sam.

“Back off,” he shouts to the woods.

Castiel’s voice emerges back with one word, “Dean.”

It’s not spoken with force or with disdain, just with worry and want.

Then Cas goes on, “May we come sit with you?”

Dean swallows and hesitates. He closes his arms around his belly and says, “Okay.”

From the trees, Sam and Castiel both appear and tread toward him, crunching through the weeds and wildflowers. Sam hangs back a few paces, while Castiel walks all the way to Dean. He gathers Dean up into his arms and Dean can’t help but relax, sticking his nose against Castiel’s neck and wrapping his arms around Cas’ neck.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Cas grumbles.

“Sorry,” Dean says.

Sam makes an indignant noise behind them, and Castiel shifts back and growls.

“Hey,” Dean snaps, “Don’t either of you pull that posturing shit with me.”

“Sorry,” Sam mutters, at the same time that Castiel murmurs, “I apologize.”

Dean takes in a breath of Cas’ scent to solidify his nerves, and then stands on wobbly legs. This time around, in the dim dusk light, he takes the time necessary to take in the full sight of his brother. He’s out of his suit now, changed into a t-shirt and button down. His face looks haggard, weary and ill. Like any alpha would be for their omega brother, he’s sick with worry. There’s more than that, Dean can tell, but he won’t question it quite yet.

Instead, he squeezes Cas’ hand and takes several tentative steps toward his little brother.

First, Dean touches Sam’s shoulder. Then, he leans in and scents the same place. He breathes in so many smells – of Sam, that element that makes him Dean’s brother and that he’ll always recognize and think family when it hits him. There are new places and new people surrounding that scent, friends and people that Dean has never met. There’s something soft, something sweet in that smell.

When Dean pulls back, he blinks at his brother and asks, “Sammy, are you mated?”

Sam licks his lips and shifts his gaze down to the ground.

“I was.”

“Oh,” Dean says.

“Last year she – she passed. With our pup. Childbirth,” he slowly says, “Both of them were just. They were just gone.”

“I – shit,” Dean says, and only then does he gather Sam into his arms. It sends his brain into overdrive, into fear and longing and memories all at once. Sam hugs back and buries his nose in Dean’s hair, sniffing, but not too much, not enough to send Dean back to the comfort of Cas.

“You smell mated too,” Sam mentions softly, “Have you and Castiel...?”

“Nah,” Dean says, and pulls back, “I mean. I dunno. We sleep in the same bed and stuff. But Cas has got this thing, this false mating –”

Sam looks back at Cas and says, “You should see somebody about that, doctor.”

“I know,” Castiel replies, voice oddly stilted. Dean can hear in it some things that he can’t recognize, but mostly the tone of voice that says that Castiel very much does not like being told what to do by another alpha.

Dean shifts over to run a soothing hand over Cas’ arm, for which Castiel shoots him a grateful look.

“We should go back,” he suggests, “You haven’t had dinner.”

Dean agrees, and after a several minutes of walking on his bare feet in the sharp growth, he finally caves in and lets Cas carry him, with a heave of effort and not without a string of complaints from Dean as he clings to Cas' neck, back the rest of the way to the house. There, Castiel sets him down on the same kitchen chair that Dean sat in the night they met, where Cas took out his implant and stitched him up. For the second time in that chair, Castiel washes and bandages Dean’s feet. Only this time, Sam is there, looking on at the scene without speaking.

It’s only over a quick dinner of quesadillas that Sam finally says something –

“Dean?”

“Mmph,” he replies, through tortilla and melted cheese.

“What…what happened to you?” he asks.

Every fear that Dean has had since the day Alastair locked him up below the brothel surfaces in an instant. He stares at Sam’s face, tries to find something in it that will reassure him that Sam wouldn’t blame him for the years of hell that he endured. Maybe – maybe Sam could have let it slide, could have forgiven Dean’s stupidity, if Dean had been entirely innocent in it all. But Dean isn’t innocent. He cracked like an egg in Alastair’s grip, presented himself to any alpha that wanted him at all.

Alastair’s favorite.

That was Dean, at least until the pup.

Dean swallows his bite of quesadilla and holds an arm over his belly. He shakes his head, and though he has only eaten half of his supper, stands and says, “I’m going to go to bed.”

“It’s not even nine –”

“Goodnight,” Dean says, and walks past his brother and Castiel, closing Cas’ bedroom door firmly behind him.