28. They Come From the Deep

Chapter Track: Waves – Blondfire

They Come From the Deep

Dean’s glad that Sammy’s trying to get Cas his medical license back. He’s better than glad, actually. He’s freaking thrilled. Sammy can do anything – hell, his website lists tons of shit that he did for omegas in California. Colorado isn’t a red state; it tends to be purple during election years, so Dean doesn’t think that putting up a fight would be fruitless. They could make real strides here.

Besides, he knows it would make Cas happier than a pig in shit. Back at the hospital, when all those omegas got evacuated out of the compound and they needed Cas’ help, Cas became something – somebody that Dean had never seen before. He had life and energy and vigor and all these things that Dean never witnessed.

Until then, Dean thought of Castiel as a reserved, quiet guy. And he is, most of the time. But working changed that – it sparked fire in Cas’ eyes, put a spring in his step, made him breathless and bright-eyed and raring to go. And goddamnit, Dean wants that for Cas again.

Dean pauses his work on sanding down the lumber for Sam’s coffee table and slouches back, tipping his eyes up toward the ceiling of the garage, where a single light bulb swings back and forth from the support beams. It’s hard not to want good things for Cas, and Cas’ work was his whole life…Dean knows that he says that Dean and Mary are his whole life now, but Dean would have to be a sociopath not to realize that the loss of Cas’ work left a gaping hole in him.

He shakes his head and leans forward to keep on keeping on with his new project. Sammy’s got the stupid Ikea table in his house now, and Dean’s the only one that can get rid of that thing once and for all. He knows Sam is just prodding him into making another table, but there’s a kind of flattery that comes from knowing that Sammy likes the stuff that Dean can do with his hands.

Dean got a power sander with the money on the gift card that Cas gave him for Christmas. It makes the process of prepping the lumber (purchased from a yard this time, where it has been properly seasoned) a whole hell of a lot easier, though he did get a damn good workout sanding their coffee table into shape with nothing to work with but sandpaper. He had a hell of a time making that table with tough, stubborn material and few tools at his disposal, but he's proud every time that he sees it in the living room.

Over the noise, he doesn’t even hear Cas open the garage door and approach from behind until Cas shouts over the racket of the sander, “Dean!”

Dean flinches with surprise and shuts off the sander. He wipes the sweat from his forehead with his arm and asks, “Yeah, what’s up?”

Cas holds up the home phone and says, “It’s Ms. Talbot.”

Crap. Bela never calls with good news. Dean exhales and says, “Hang on a sec,” before shedding his thick work gloves onto the lumber in front of him. He motions for Cas to hand him the phone and then to skedaddle, which he thankfully does without complaint, though he does pause at the doorway between the garage and the house and sends a pointed look Dean’s way, as if to say, you will tell me what she says.

As if there’s something that Dean hasn’t shared with the class.

“How goes the freedom fighting?” Dean says into the receiver.

“Ha ha,” Bela replies, “Very funny.” Back in the day, Bela would have been exactly his type – omega, curves everywhere, and one heck of a sharp tongue. Now she’s a pain in his ass, though she’s a pain in Dean’s ass that’s trying to help him do something good.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean replies, “Tell me what’s going on. Must be real special if you decided to call me.”

“Something like that,” Bela says, “Are you sitting down?”

Dean glances down at his legs, where they’re splayed out in front of him, his ass parked firmly on a three-legged stool. He says, “Yup. I checked just for you. Why?”

“Lovely,” she says, “And it’s because you’d probably like to be sitting when I give you this news.”

“Well, shoot,” Dean says, “Go ahead and ruin my day.”

Bela doesn’t bother responding to the last of Dean’s sentence, and just powers into her announcement with, “Alastair’s court date is set.”

Dean’s heart stops beating in his chest. He licks his lips and tries to kick his brain into motion, but this is it. This is what he’s been dreading and craving all in one messy, chaotic package. Dean’s known that the party was gonna get started at one time or another, but this is final. This is real.

“…When?” he finally croaks out.

“March third,” she replies.

Dean worries the peeling skin on his lips and tries to remember what day it is. He ends up having to count back to Christmas to get it, since his little girl keeps him up at odd hours and has him sleeping at even odder ones.

It’s January second. That gives them only two months until the bomb drops, and one of those months is dinky fucking February. He starts to grind his teeth.

“Anyway,” Bela continues, “That isn’t all that’s happened. As of this morning, two of the men working under Alastair have taken a plea deal. They’re going to be testifying at the trials of the other employees to put parole on the table in their future. I doubt they’ll be allowed it, but they’d like to hope.”

“So testifying against their buddies is a done deal,” Dean says.

“Yes,” Bela says.

Dean grabs the back of his neck. He has to breathe for a second before he asks, “What about Alastair? Are they testifying against him?”

Silence meets him on the other line for several seconds. That’s enough. Bela doesn’t have to say anything for Dean to know that the creepy henchmen won’t be ratting out their double-extra-creepy boss.

“Why the fuck not?” he demands.

“They outright refused, Dean,” Bela says, “All of them did. No one wants anything to do with testifying against Alastair, no matter how long we kept at them. We don’t have the evidence, but my guess is that he’s lording something over them, that they’ve been blackmailed into silence.”

“Awesome,” Dean says, the word bitter and ugly against his tongue. Why the fuck should that surprise him at all? Alastair’s got more money than anybody should rightfully have, and from that money comes an insane amount of power. Even worse, he’s got nuts enough to do whatever the fuck he wants with that power. So why did Dean ever think that he could take Alastair on?

“Dean?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve got to run,” Bela says, “Be safe, Dean. Do you still have an officer at your house?”

“Yeah. Jo tonight.”

“Good,” she says, “I’ll call you if anything else comes up.”

When the click of Bela hanging up sounds, Dean starts to shake. His shoulders tremble. He wraps his arms around himself and tries to hold his body together, but it feels like all the bolts and cogs keeping him in one piece are going to unravel and explode. His lungs burn like he’s inhaling smoke from a fire, and his eyes start to water.

This is fear.

Dean lives his life in fear and he knows it. Maybe between nightmares and memories he gets some peace, but that peace only lasts until the next episode.

And he’s just fucking doomed to take it. That’s how it’s always been since he presented. He’s expected to bend over for life and take whatever he can get, because omegas should be grateful for anything that they’re given, any job, any knot, any whistle from some knothead jackass, any hey sweetheart, nice ass you get when you do as little as duck to tie your shoe.

“Fuck that,” Dean says. His arms fall away from his sides and he balls his hands into fists and shouts, “FUCK that!” With a sweep of his arms, he sends his progress on Sam’s table clattering to the cement floor of the garage. The crash of noise sends adrenaline through his veins, and something like satisfaction. He grabs his hammer from the toolset open on his worktable and hurls it against the wall.

“You can’t do that, Dean, you’re an omega,” he shouts, and swipes his hands over his work table. Nails tumble down like metal rain. He throws his drill and heaves his level over Cas’ Prius.

After that, he doesn’t look at what he’s throwing. He just yells and growls and overturns everything that he can get his hands on. Every ounce of rage that he’s ever shoved down for the sake of peace, every snide remark, every bastard that came onto him in music shops and comic book stores when he was just a fourteen year old kid –

But a fourteen year old is still old enough to fuck, his dad would say to him, if you smell right.

And when for once in your goddamn life a stranger treats you with some dignity, doesn’t ask if he can buy you a drink or ask, “Where’s your alpha, sweetie?” – It turns out be the worst decision of your life. Dean forfeit everything the day that his first heat came, all the hope of his dignity or capability being realized, forfeit his chance to make a decent living (“The average omega makes seventy three cents to every alpha’s dollar, and that’s the statistic for white, male omegas,” or so Sam’s website says), forfeit any dream of independence because the day you present as omega, you’re shoved down, kicked around and stuffed into a tiny box that everyone labels as needy, helpless, stupid.

“I’m not stupid,” he says, kicking something on the ground, “I’m not stupid!” Dean makes a grab for his worktable, for anything else that he can throw across the room and get a satisfying crash out of it.

His fingers only close around it for a second, but the brand new, razor-edge of the saw blade slices a clean line across the fingers on Dean’s right hand. He roars out a curse and clutches his it to his chest, blood running over and dripping from the spaces between his fingers and soaking into his shirt, dropping onto the floor. There, Dean falls onto his knees.

The blood running down his hand takes his anger with it.

What’s left is a deep, cavernous hole of hatred. At the bottom of the hole, sadness sloshes black and sticky. He never asked for this. He never asked for biology to do him in, never asked for anything. But he’s got pretty lips and nice eyelashes and a round ass, so they all tell him that he did ask.

“Dean?”

Dean turns his head. Cas rushes to him and exclaims, “Dean! What happened?”

“Go away,” Dean bites out. What the hell would Cas know about this? He doesn’t know a goddamn thing about being an omega. All he knows is that it’s insulting to be equated with one, and isn’t that just peachy? Being an omega is an insult. Never mind that some of the strongest goddamn people that Dean has ever met have been omegas, omegas that have endured being tracked down streets, held down and knotted even when they begged for it to stop, omegas that suffered through heats alone because it was better than being with anybody else, omegas that spend every day of their lives defending their competence only to be shown up by cool-headed betas and alphas with million-dollar smiles and firm handshakes.

“Dean, please,” Castiel says, voice too gentle and too forgiving, “What happened to your hand? We need to –”

“I said to leave me alone, you fucking alpha shithead,” Dean snaps.

Cas is stunned into silence, but instead of satisfaction, fresh, frothy guilt rushes over Dean in waves. For a second, it’s so quiet that all Dean can hear is his own breath coming out in short, pained pants, and the blood rushing in his ears. Then he hears footsteps and the sound of nails rolling aside.

Maybe Cas is going to leave. That’s probably best.

But Cas doesn’t leave. Instead, he lowers himself to the ground behind Dean and wraps his arms around Dean’s middle. Castiel murmurs, “I’m not going to leave,” and noses over the mark on Dean’s neck before he adds, “I love you. I’ve never met somebody brighter than you.”

“Sure you haven’t,” Dean mutters.

“It’s true,” Castiel replies, “You’re brilliant and boisterous and you speak your mind. You do so many things that I would never have the courage to and you don’t think twice about it. I don’t know what’s going to happen, Dean. I’m not a fortune teller. I do, however, know that you will always have me. I will always come when you call.”

They sit there like that for several minutes without talking. Dean clutches his bleeding hand and Cas rests his forehead against one of Dean’s shoulders. Dean’s breathing slows from harried and wheezing to long and exhausted.

And then Dean says, “Never change, Cas.”

He’s still shaking, but Cas makes the worst of it drift away. His brain leaps to tell him that he doesn’t deserve an alpha like Cas, doesn’t deserve anybody like Cas, that tolerates tantrums like this and instead of yelling back, sits down on the ground and hugs Dean to him. But when Cas brushes his lips over the curve of Dean’s ear, his mind goes blank, blipping out to static like an old TV screen.

Cas’ scent comforts him. It always has. He thinks of when he arrived here, skinny and pale and terrified. Even then, Cas smelled like comfort. Smelled like home. Smelled like mate. Dean lets the smell wrap him up and swaddle him like a baby, leaning back into Cas as his lips ghost over places on the back of Dean’s neck and over his scalp.

“Are you ready to go back inside?” Cas asks.

Dean nods dumbly and Cas helps him to his feet. Dean protests when Cas moves in close, tells him that he’ll get blood on his clothes, but Castiel doesn’t seem to give a fraction of a fuck and lets blood smear across the front of his button-up like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Immediately, when they walk into the house, fireworks of anxiety burst inside Dean. Mary is screaming and crying in Kevin’s arms, and Kevin smells like distress and concern and metallic fear. The noise builds in Dean’s head until he feels like his skull might explode.

When Kevin asks, “What happened?” Dean loses it.

“You wanna know what happened?” Dean barks, “None of Alastair’s men are gonna testify against him, that’s what happened. We’re alone and we’re fucked. I hope you’re ready for hell, kid.” He doesn’t realize that his voice is raised until he quiets and sees the blood drain from Kevin’s face.

Kevin holds Mary out.

Beside him, Cas takes her, rocking her in his arms and whispering to her in that gruff, gentle voice of his. As soon as the pup is free from his arms, Kevin flees back to his bedroom, footsteps light and quiet as they hit hardwood floor and soften on carpet.

“You shouldn’t have shouted at him,” Jo says from her place in the corner of the kitchen, “He’s really vulnerable, Dean. I know it’s hard –”

“You know, huh?” Dean snaps, “You think you know? You’re a goddamn beta. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever been bent over and fucked even when you begged for somebody not to? You ever find out how many knots it takes in one night to bleed? Do you know the answer to that question? No, you don’t. So don’t you fucking tell me that you know anything.”

Mary cries and cries and cries. The sound echoes in Dean’s ears. He feels like his bones are going to break apart if he stands here any longer, and so he turns on his heel and strides back to the master bedroom. He slams the door behind him but still hears Mary screaming at the top of her tiny lungs.

When Dean bolts to the bathroom and slams the door closed, the sound of pup-sobs fades enough for him to think clear thoughts. He stares at his reflection in the mirror – dark-eyed and filthy from the garage, right hand covered in blood up to his elbow. He doesn’t think he sliced far enough to do permanent damage but flexes his fingers just in case. They sting like hell, but it’s nothing debilitating.

Dean runs his cut-up hand under the bathroom tap, watching pink water swirl down the drain until his arm is mostly clean, as clean as it’ll get for now.

He wets his lips and spares a glance at the bathroom door, wondering if he should go back out.

Instead, Dean pushes aside the shower curtain and climbs into the fancy claw-foot tub. He scoots all the way to the back and tucks his knees against his chest. It’s always safer if you look smaller. Always safer if you keep your back against the wall. He lets his head slump and presses into his knees, breathing heavily through his nostrils.

Dean tries to control the breathing but fails. It’s erratic, and instead of being in the bathtub at home, he’s spiraling back to a neat guest room at the brothel, sitting on some alpha’s cock while he’s too drugged out of his mind to know what’s happening. The alpha told Dean to ride him, so Dean did.

Dean stopped, lightheaded, and swayed where he sat on top of the guy, a middle-aged alpha whose suit looked expensive when Dean stripped it off of him.

“Did I fucking tell you to stop?”

Dean’s vision swam a little and he tried to move again, but it wasn’t enough. The alpha threw Dean off of him, using more strength than it took to toss an underfed omega across a room. Dean slammed up against the opposite wall, head cracking against it. The alpha pulled him by his hair and it hurt, Christ, it hurt…

No, no, no. He’s at home. Dean’s eyes fly open. His heart beats wildly, even though everything in the master bath is as it’s always been. The walls are a deep slate blue, the shower curtain dark green, and the drawer pulls are made out of stones that Cas found on the property before the build began.

Dean knows all this.

But it’s not enough. The room stretches before him for what seems like forever, dark except for fluorescent lights on the ceiling hung far, far apart. It’s like that for the thrill of the hunt. The chase room is built to visit the way things used to be, before omegas got the vote.

Run.

Even though Dean knows what happens when he runs here, he never says no. If he doesn’t run, they take him up to The Chair, and The Chair is worse than the chase room. The Chair is much worse. His bare feet slap against the cold floor, body buzzing with the instinct to flee as it always does when they want him here.

Behind him, he hears a growl, low and vicious, and knows that this alpha’s a bad one. He won’t be like the alphas that like to pretend they’re playing chase like puppies and just want to knot someone sweet-smelling and snuggle up at the end of the game. This is a real hunter, the kind of alphas that are on special maps on the internet so you know where they live and know to keep your pups away.

Dean’s eyes start to sting as he runs, but there’s something…something not right.

He stops dead in his tracks and scents the air. Instead of filth and concrete and furious alpha, he smells family.

Dean snaps his head up.

“Dean,” Castiel says softly. He’s standing in the underneath the door frame that sits between the bathroom and the bedroom. Mary sits in his arms. She’s quiet now, but the stare that she gives Dean indicates to him that she’s far from okay.

Damn it.

Dean holds out his arms for Mary, and Cas deposits her into them.

As soon as Mary wiggles up against him, Dean presses his nose to her hair and breathes in. With each inhale and exhale, his heartbeat slows to sound and steady. Dean kisses her forehead and rasps, “So sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to run from you. I-I should have been there.”

He is an awful father.

Just as the thought rains down on him, Mary bats him in the face. He blinks at her, and she blows a spit bubble.

It’s a little hard not to laugh, though the sound that escapes him is less a laugh and more an exhale.

“Dean?”

Dean looks up and sees Cas watching him with serious, studious eyes. It’s little unnerving being watched like that, like he’s a Sudoku puzzle that Cas is trying to complete. Dean coughs and replies, “Yeah?”

“Could I bandage your hand now?” asks Castiel.

“Huh – oh, yeah,” Dean says, “Here, take the pup for a sec.”

Cas collects Mary from Dean’s arms and Dean unfolds himself from his place in the tub. He stumbles when his feet first touch the tile floor but catches himself against the wall. Cas looks worried but lets Dean work it out on his own, and he walks stiffly into the kitchen behind his mate and pup before he leans one side up against the counter. Dean stretches out his legs and groans.

With one arm, Cas holds Mary. With the other, he sifts through the medicine cabinet until he brings down a couple different things.

“Hold her with your left arm while I fix your hand,” Cas says, and Dean takes her from Cas’ grip.

With a damp paper towel, Cas wipes away the rest of the blood that Dean didn’t get. The slice across his fingers isn’t bleeding much anymore, but it still stings when Cas applies Neosporin. He wraps an individual Band-aid around each finger. When he finishes, Cas tells Dean to wiggle his fingers and see how it feels.

It stings a little still, but feels much better than before.

“So, what’s the prognosis, doc?” Dean asks. He tries to make his tone teasing, but the words come out flat.

Cas answers, “This is serious, Dean.”

“What? It’s just a cut,” Dean says, and wiggles his fingers again to prove it.

“I’m not talking about your hand,” Castiel says, “I’m talking about your flashbacks, your nightmares, about what happened in the garage. You ripped it to shreds.”

“I know,” Dean says, and hangs his head a little, “I’m sorry, Cas, I know I fucked up –”

“You are missing the point entirely,” Castiel tells him, “I’m not upset about the state of the garage.”

“But you just said –”

“I’m upset because you are hurting,” Cas says, “I should have known better than to think that you’d recovered wholly from your experience. You still suffer so much and it hurts me to watch it. I won’t make you if you don’t want to, but I’d like if you would consider seeking out a therapist. They are trained to help people with these things. In fact, there are counselors specifically trained to handle sex crimes, like what happened to you.”

“You want me to see a shrink?” Dean says, “I’m not crazy.”

“No, you’re not,” agrees Castiel, “But you need the kind of help that family alone can’t give. This afternoon proved that to me.”

Dean clenches his jaw. He doesn’t like the idea of talking to some phony shithead that’s only helping him out for their paycheck. He also doesn’t like the idea of spilling his guts to somebody he doesn’t know, even if they’ve probably already seen his guts all over on TV.

But it’s Cas that’s asking him, and Cas doesn’t actually ask for a whole hell of a lot from Dean.

So Dean mutters, “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s all I ask,” replies Cas, and he leans forward to press his lips against Dean’s forehead, where he lets them linger for a few seconds before he pulls back away.

“Thanks,” Dean says, “For, um. I don’t know. For bein’ you, I guess.”

Castiel cocks his head with a bewildered little smile on his lips before he answers, “Thank you for being you too, Dean.”

Dean nods and shifts Mary so that she’s swaddled in his arms. She gazes up at him with that kind of adoration that only pups can muster. He wonders how much longer she’ll look at him like that.

“I…uh,” Dean says, “I’m gonna talk to Kevin.”

At the very least, he owes the kid an apology. Dean takes Mary with him, maybe as a bargaining chip so that Kevin won’t get too upset at him, or maybe because having her near makes Dean feel braver, stronger than he usually is. He knocks on Kevin’s door and gruffly says, “It’s me.”

Kevin doesn’t answer, which means he’s either asleep or ignoring Dean.

Just in case it is the latter, Dean says, “Look, I owe you an apology, dude. I know I’ve been outta that shithole longer than you but it still messed me up real bad. Sometimes I forget how bad, ‘cause I got Cas and Mary and Sammy and you, and then it feels like I’m just a normal omega with a normal family. I guess you gotta know how it feels to want to put all the crap behind you.”

Dean pauses to breathe. He’s never been skilled with words, not the way he needs to be in order to dig himself out of the bull that he’s gotten himself into. But he still tries: “So, I try and figure stuff out on my own, ‘cause other people are fucked up and do fucked up shit and it’s easier if you don’t trust any of ‘em, even the ones that might be good. Sometimes that gets me into trouble and so that’s why I’m here now, standing here like an idiot. You’re one of the good ones.”

Dean hears a shuffle on the other side of the door.

“And the thing is,” he says, “if we’re gonna tackle this crap, then we’ve gotta do it together.”

The door opens at that, and Kevin stares Dean down with his good eye. He says, “You’re an asshole.”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, “but I try not to be, if that makes it any better.”

“Sort of,” Kevin says, and frowns. He folds his arms over his chest and then goes on, “So I guess it’s us against pretty much everyone else.”

“Pretty much.”