Work Text:
Soundtrack: Simple As This – Jake Bugg
You Stood Here Waiting
It has to be a hallucination.
Sam Winchester stopped dead in his tracks and stared. That – that couldn’t be his brother. Could it? The brother that disappeared? Seven years ago Dean dropped off of the map. Sam came home from school, saw his dad passed out on the couch with a half-drunk bottle of cheap whiskey by his side, and found that Dean vanished. A few important belongings were missing from their shared bedroom, but the worst part was the note.
Sammy –
Don’t worry about me. Don’t go looking for me.
--Dean
And Sam never fucking saw him again.
But this.
This had to be a hallucination.
Because if this shit was what Sam was really seeing, then he was seeing his hotheaded, give-‘em-hell attitude omega older brother with a sleeping pup slung over one shoulder and a belly rounded with a second. Dean. Dean Winchester. The Dean that swore he’d bend to no alpha, the Dean that swore he’d never get fat with an alpha’s pups, the Dean that refused to fall in line with the bullshit expectations of their father and society as a whole.
That Dean.
Sam stared. This omega looked older than Dean the last time Sam saw him, but then, seven years had passed since then. His hair was mussed in that way that seemed to plague new parents, though the pup in Dean’s arms had to be at least two or three years old. This omega carried himself with strength in his shoulders and pride at his back – God. It was Dean.
Sam opened his mouth to shout, but before he could, Dean’s eyes met his from over a bustling crowd of pedestrians. The blood drained from his face, his lips parted, and he turned on his heel. Dean bolted, and Sam hadn’t even gotten the chance to talk to him, to meet the pup, to ask him how he was doing and check if he was okay.
“Shit,” muttered Sam. He dipped through the crowd after Dean.
Dean’s pregnant girth and the weight of a pup in his arms worked to Sam’s advantage. Dean was quick, but not fast enough that Sam didn’t see him sprint into a used bookshop with a charming wooden sign swinging out from the awning. Sam shoved his way into the bookshop after him, panting.
Behind the counter, a dark-haired alpha lifted his brows at Sam.
“Hi,” Sam said, “Did you see a pregnant guy with a pup come in here?”
The alpha’s brows slammed back down. He frowned. His gaze swept over Sam, scrutiny prickling. He asked slowly, “Why do you ask?”
“Because,” Sam said, “he’s my brother.”
A tornado of emotions twisted the alpha’s face and his scent went all over the place. Sam wrinkled his nose against an onslaught of protective alpha, confusion, hope, and a plethora of other things too subtle to sniff out. He didn’t speak, which prompted Sam to add, “His name’s Dean.”
The alpha straightened. He said, “Just a moment,” and swept out from behind the counter and back behind several bookshelves. The sound of a door opening and closing echoed in the cramped space, and Sam stood alone.
Holy shit. What was happening? One minute, Sam was in the mountains with his friends for a Georgetown daytrip, and the next he started chasing down an omega. God, what would Jess think? Did she even see him disappear? Sam inhaled and tried to shape his scent into something calmer and more companionable. No wonder the alpha behind the counter looked at Sam like he was an asshole. Sam smelled like some random knothead fresh off the street, all aggression and need and though neither of those scents was sexual they still deterred others from getting close to Sam.
Sam ran his hands back through his long hair. If adrenaline weren’t pumping through his veins, he might have taken a look around the store. The comforting aromas of old books and ink soaked the store, old hardwood planks creaking under Sam’s weight as he shifted to peer around a shelf of fantasy pulps. All he could see were more bookshelves, and what looked to be a many-times-repaired couch in the back of the shop.
Then, the door sounded again and the alpha emerged from behind the shelves. He said, “Come with me.”
Sam obeyed. The alpha guided him past shelves and stacks of books, past a rotating display of 1950s mystery novels and around several well-worn longboxes of comic books, all lovingly organized but for a few placed on top instead of put back where they belonged.
“This way,” the alpha said. Sam didn’t realize that he had stopped.
The dark-haired alpha pulled Sam toward a door at the furthest corner. It opened to a set of old, crooked stairs. He indicated for Sam to walk through first, so Sam did. He’d do anything to see Dean again, even if it meant not watching his back with another alpha behind him.
The second floor of the bookshop proved to be an apartment. Art littered the walls, mismatched furniture fit snugly together in the living space, dirty dishes towered in the kitchen sink. And fuck, it smelled like Dean. It didn’t smell like the Dean that Sam remembered, but enough of Dean’s teenage scent lingered for Sam to know that family lived here.
Somewhere beyond the living room, the floorboards groaned.
There was Dean.
A Captain America t-shirt stretched over Dean’s belly and his jeans rode low on his hips. He looked comfortable, but smelled frazzled. For a while, Sam just drank him in, from his older face to his messy hair to the tattoo peeking out of the sleeve of his shirt to the bare feet curling against the hardwood floors.
“What the fuck, Dean?” Sam finally said, “Why did you run?”
“Uh,” Dean said. His voice was deeper, more adult. He cleared his throat and went on, “Got freaked, I guess. Heya, Sammy. Nice to see you.”
“Nice to – that’s all you have to say? You leave me two sentences and take off and after seven years, all I get is ‘Heya Sammy. Nice to see you’?”
The dark-haired alpha swooped forward. He squinted at Sam, the piercing stare unnerving in a way Sam couldn’t quite describe. Suffice it to say the defensive gaze of this alpha made Sam’s skin itch with discomfort. The alpha strode to Dean and gathered him in his arms. His eyes bore down on Sam, all protective alpha, and shit.
This alpha was Dean’s alpha. He pecked a kiss to Dean’s forehead and said, “Are you safe here without me?”
“I’m fine,” Dean said, “Don’t worry about me, you big sap.”
“If you need me, text me,” the alpha said. He split from Dean but pointed an accusing finger at Sam. He said, “If you hurt him, I will dismember you. Understand?”
Sam managed, “Um. Uh. Yeah. Got it.”
“Good,” the alpha said, and he left them, the door to the stairwell swinging in his wake.
“Your alpha?” Sam said.
Dean rubbed the back of his neck and said, “Yeah. That’s Cas. Castiel.”
“Castiel?”
“Religious family,” Dean explained, “You can sit or something. You wanna drink? We don’t got soda or anything but I can fix you some tea.”
“Tea sounds nice,” Sam replied. He made himself move and stepped down to flop onto one of the couches crammed into the small space. The cushions sunk under his weight, cushy from being old and broken in.
Dean took to the kitchen after that and opened one of the cabinets. He said, “Cas keeps about a thousand kinds of tea in this place. Can’t even remember all of them. You got a preference?”
“Do you have green?” asked Sam.
“Only about a dozen types,” Dean replied.
“Surprise me, then.”
Sam watched Dean fill a royal blue kettle with water from the kitchen tap. He set it on the stove and cranked up the heat, then took down what looked like a handmade mug and a battered tea strainer. The way Dean moved through the motions suggested familiarity, and Sam had to wonder just how much he missed if Dean knew how to brew looseleaf tea like he knew how to breathe.
While the kettle heated, Dean leaned back against the kitchen counter, arms crossed above his protruding belly and eyes on Sam. “So,” he said.
“You drink tea now,” Sam said.
“Oh, fuck no,” Dean answered, “It’s Cas’ deal. I mean, I drink the preggo shit he bought me, but only because he gives me that puppy alpha face and I’m a sucker.”
“Huh.”
“And…you’re in Georgetown,” Dean said.
“Yeah,” Sam replied, “I go to grad school at DU. I came up here with my friends to do the Georgetown loop and then we decided to dick around town for a little.”
Dean hummed. The kettle whistled, and Dean poured steaming water over the tea basket in the mug. Neither of them spoke for the space of time that it took for the tea to steep, but as soon as Dean passed the mug to Sam and collapsed in the armchair crowded in against the couch, Sam asked, “What about your other pup?”
“Huh?” Dean said, “Oh. Ben’s passed out for the afternoon, probably. Was full of screaming energy starting at like five this morning and used it all up before we hit noon. Watch him come out here now, though, just to prove me wrong.”
Sam blew across the top of his tea and took a sip. It tasted pungent, earthy. It also tasted expensive. He tried to piece together his scattered thoughts. He had so many questions, wanted to know so many things. But he started with: “So you’re doing pretty good, I guess?”
The soft smile that turned up Dean’s lips made him look younger. For an instant, Dean was as Sam remembered him: nineteen years old and cocky as all hell. Then Dean exhaled, and he was older again. He scratched a hand back through his hair and said, “I’m doin’ real good, Sammy. I’m doin’ great. What about you? You’re goddamn huge. Let’s talk about that.”
Sam laughed. He said, “Yeah, hit my growth spurt around senior year of high school. And I’m, uh. I’m all right. Getting settled in a new place is always weird. This is weird, too. I never thought I’d see you again. I – I missed you, Dean.”
“I missed you too.”
“Why did you go? You didn’t say anything,” Sam said, “For forever I thought I had to have done something wrong, and –”
“God, fuck, Sammy,” Dean interjected, “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was dad. He wanted me to sign up for one of them mail order mates things. Like, he wanted me to sell myself so he’d have more booze money. I told him to fuck off and he hit me, so I packed up my stuff and I left. He said he wanted to me to do it for the sake of the family, but I ain’t fuckin’ stupid. I knew if I sold my omega ass that none of that money would go to you. So I left.”
“Shit,” Sam breathed, “I didn’t – but he –”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dean said, “Everything turned out okay, didn’t it?”
“I guess so?” Sam said, “You always said you never wanted a mate. Never wanted pups.”
Dean chuckled. His eyes flicked down to his belly, which he smoothed a hand over before he said, “I did say that, didn’t I?”
“So what happened?”
Dean shrugged a shoulder, still smiling. He said, “I met Cas.”
X
Five Years Earlier
“That alpha’s in here again,” Charlie said.
“What? No, he isn’t,” Dean said. He pretended that he hadn’t been craning his neck to see.
A smug smile fitted onto Charlie’s face and she said, “So you do like him.”
Dean considered telling her to fuck off. If he did genuinely want her to leave the topic alone, Charlie probably would listen to him. Probably. Instead, Dean sighed. He ran a hand through his hair and stared out at the large gaming store laid out in front of him, minus one interesting alpha. Dean couldn’t help it. The guy smelled nice, and he had good taste in comic books. So sue Dean for looking. And fine – maybe he sniffed a little at the lingering smell of the alpha after he left.
But not while the guy looked! Come on. He wasn’t that rude.
“Charlie,” Dean finally said on an exhale.
Charlie frowned, “That’s a very serious ‘Charlie.’”
“Because I’m about to say something fucking serious,” Dean said.
Dean had never seen Charlie shift from teasing to intent so fast. The giddy smile on her face from prodding at Dean’s nerves slipped into something considering. She said, “All right. I’m listening.”
Dean swallowed the lump in his throat. He said, “Look, I know you know I had to get outta town real fast and all.”
“And you’re gonna tell me the story, finally?”
Charlie deserved to know. She took Dean in when anyone else would have taken one look at him and turned the other cheek. Nineteen-year-old homeless omega, unwashed clothes and uncut hair – that was how she met Dean. He walked into her game store because he missed stupid shit like bickering with Sam over comic books and finding board games that no one had ever heard of. Nostalgia, plain and simple. It was a nice feeling for a guy that hadn’t eaten in two days and slept on broken-down cardboard boxes beside the dumpsters that stood behind the Asian supermarket.
Only person in the store at the time was Charlie. The owner – she was an entrepreneur, set up a big game and comic book place that doubled as a coffee joint. Charlie was a mere couple years older than Dean but ages ahead in accomplishment. But Charlie being as she was, she saw Dean and took him in like a bird with a broken wing. She brought Dean back to her place, let him use her shower and crash on her couch. Next day she gave him a job – taught him how to make espresso drinks and how to handle the fancy tea machine and told him he’d get paid for it.
Charlie never asked for Dean’s story. She never asked how a teenage omega ended up homeless and filthy and wandering around a game emporium, just saw a guy down on his luck and decided to turn it. That’s who she was.
But maybe Charlie deserved Dean’s story, and deserved to know why he didn’t want an alpha.
“My dad,” Dean started, and got quiet again when the words stuck to the roof of his mouth. He fidgeted with the ballpoint pen laid out for customers to sign receipts with, and tried again, “My dad wanted to sell me off to one of those mating service things.”
“Shit,” Charlie said, “Not those places where you can buy people, right?”
“No…that’s exactly where he wanted me to go,” answered Dean. The joints were illegal, but so were a lot of things that people still did. The world had come a long way in terms of omega rights, but there were alphas out there – everywhere, really – willing to pay to own a person, own their omega in a way that hadn’t been legal for forever.
The look of abject horror on Charlie’s face said it all, really.
“Yeah,” Dean said, “I don’t really want a mate. It’s – man, that alpha is nice to look at and he smells nice and shit. Real nice. Not gonna lie. But I don’t – don’t want anyone to have that kind of power over me ever again. You know?”
“Yeah,” was all that Charlie said, “but…what if he asked you out?”
Dean considered. He said, “I dunno. No one ever took me on a date before.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’m one of them trashy omega types, remember?” Dean said.
“Dean.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“Doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a nice date,” Charlie replied, “Seriously. I think that guy is building up to it.”
Charlie was always right, at least about that kind of shit. Two days later, Blue Eyes the alpha ducked into the store looking shifty as all get-out with a bouquet of flowers in his hands.
Dean greeted him like he always did: “Heya, handsome.”
“Hello,” the alpha said back, “I – um.”
“Yeah?”
The alpha slammed the flowers down on the counter. He said, “I would like to take you out for dinner, if that would be acceptable. Please.”
Dean blinked from the flowers to the alpha and back again several times before he shook off his trance. The plastic wrapped around the stems crinkled as Dean picked up the bouquet and asked, “These…are for me?”
“Yes.”
No one ever bought Dean flowers before. Truth be told the gesture struck him as cheesy, but it was so goddamn sweet that he couldn’t say no. He said, “Sure, let’s do dinner. But do me a favor first?”
“Yes?”
“Tell me your name,” Dean said.
The alpha went pink in the face. He asked, “I haven’t told you my name?”
“Nah, you always pay in cash and hightail it outta here after,” said Dean.
“Oh,” the alpha replied, “Castiel. My name is Castiel.”
X
Present Day
“He hadn’t ever told you his name?” Sam asked.
A funny little smile, something fond, twisted Dean’s mouth. He said, “Yeah, I know, it’s hard to imagine Cas being shy after he threatened to dismember you and all, but he used to get that way sometimes, all quiet and shit. Thing about that is that folks underestimate him, think he’s not willing to go all alpha but trust me when I say that he is all alpha.”
“Uh,” Sam said, “Sure. I’ll take your word for it.”
Dean threw his head back and laughed.
Sam laughed, too, but the moment cracked and broke when a soft, sleepy voice called out, “Daddy?”
“What’s up, puppy?” Dean asked.
The pup that Sam saw asleep on Dean’s shoulder before padded out to the living room, dragging a ragged baby blanket behind him with one hand and rubbing at his eye with the other. He climbed into Dean’s lap, oblivious to Dean’s belly being right in the way of comfortable seating, and settled so that he faced Sam.
The pup looked exactly like the alpha, like Cas, but his critical eyes were green, like Dean’s. He scowled at Sam and said, “Who are you?”
“This is your uncle Sammy,” Dean said.
“Uncle?” echoed the pup – Ben, if Sam remembered right.
“Yeah, he’s daddy’s brother,” Dean explained.
“Like uncle Gabe?”
Sam tried very, very hard not to be offended that there were already uncles in this pup’s life, while Sam was here through mere happenstance.
Dean chuckled at Ben and stroked a hand through his bedhead, trying to smooth it into submission. He said, “Sort of. Uncle Gabriel is papa’s brother. Uncle Sam is daddy’s brother.”
“Okay,” Ben said, “Am I allowed to hug him like uncle Gabe?”
Dean lifted his brows at Sam, prompted him to answer the pup.
“Yeah, yeah,” Sam said, opening his arms, “Of course you can come hug me.”
Ben slipped off of Dean’s lap and toddled to Sam with his blanket still clutched in one grubby fist. Sam helped him climb up onto his lap – his legs were longer than Dean’s now, harder to scale for a pup so young. Ben’s barely-there weight made Sam’s heart beat faster as the pup scooted his back against Sam’s chest. Sam wrapped his arms loosely around Ben, unsure what was okay. This pup smelled like family, like home, like a person to protect.
“You’re an alpha like papa,” observed Ben.
Sam nodded, coughed, and said, “Yeah, I am.”
“Uncle Gabe is an omega,” Ben said, “Uncle Michael and uncle Luke are alphas too, but we don’t like them.”
Sam glanced at Dean, who’d rested his head on one hand. He was smiling at Sam and Ben, eyes soft and tender. The aroma of happy omega rolled off of Dean in waves, the kind of intoxicating joy that people lived to smell, as legendary as true love and victory of the good. That smell curbed any residual anger stuck to Sam about being left behind, about not knowing where Dean was and Dean bolting when he met Sam’s eyes.
Sam asked, “So what happened after your dinner with Castiel?”
X
Five Years Earlier
Dean and Cas went out on dates.
Cas took Dean to some classy, upscale Chinese joint with a fuckton aquariums and some desert with fried bananas or something in it. He brought Dean to a French place and made him try snails. They weren’t actually all that bad.
Dean brought Cas to pizza joints and taught him how to hustle pool at backwater biker bars.
They kissed, sometimes, but neither of them advanced past that. Dean didn’t take things further because he didn’t want to relinquish control. Cas didn’t take things further because – well, Dean didn’t know, but it was probably some stupidly noble reason that would piss him off if Castiel ever admitted to it. Point was, they were together, sort of. But not together.
Being together-but-not-really fixed Cas into some cozy groove in Dean’s life. He fit there like he’d always been there, and some days that unnerved Dean because that’s the kind of shit that people say mates feel like. He ignored it and went with the flow of things, let himself live in the moment and spend time with Cas because somehow Cas had wormed his way into Dean’s life and Dean wasn’t keen on the idea of Cas worming his way out of it.
One night, Dean invited Cas over to his and Charlie’s place (he paid rent now, even though Charlie said that he didn’t have to) for pizza and beer and Star Wars, but when they turned on the TV to start the movie, it was on some news channel reporting an attack on an omega clinic not two hours away from where they lived, in Colorado Springs. Charlie didn’t linger long on the news, just watched tight-lipped for a couple of minutes before she switched over to the DVD player.
Still, it was enough time for Cas to get spitting mad.
He had a beer in each hand. One beer was supposed to be for Dean, but Cas seemed to have forgotten that in the flurry of his righteous anger. He drank out of both, alternating between left and right beers as he flailed his arms and paced the living room.
“It is unbelievable. Unbelievable. In this day and age, an omega should have the right to bodily autonomy without fear like the rest of us have,” – sip of beer – “But no. No, a man with a gun decides that that’s not fine by him. He’s going to pass judgment, because apparently he’s important enough to do that. It’s not like we have laws or anything like that.”
And while Cas chugged down the remains of his left-hand beer and continued pacing, a realization smacked Dean with all the force of a runaway train.
He fucking loved Castiel.
Castiel, a quiet kind of alpha, that got drunk and ranted about omega rights.
Castiel, who liked old comic books and fancy tea.
Castiel, a man that brought Dean flowers and took him out to restaurants that Dean had never dreamed of entering before.
“Cas,” he’d said, and Cas stopped mid-rant to look at Dean.
“Yes?” Cas said.
“Nothin’, really,” Dean replied, “Just love you.”
Cas stood there looking like he’d been hit over the head with a frying pan. Only for a second, but the look on his face was one hundred percent worth Dean’s surprise declaration. It melted away a beat later into a gummy, proud smile, and Cas said, “I love you, too.”
Charlie, for her part, politely vacated the area around that time, but Dean was admittedly fuzzy on the details. He launched himself at Cas and smashed their mouths together. From the way Cas’ hand drifted down to Dean’s ass, their self-imposed sex ban seemed off the table, to say the least.
X
“Gross, Dean, I don’t need to hear this part,” Sam said, “and neither does Ben.”
“You’re missing out. It’s my favorite part, personally.”
Sam stuck his fingers in his ears and declared, “I can’t hear you. LALALA –”
“Okay, okay,” Dean waved at him, “I’ll skip the raunchy part.”
X
Neither Dean nor Cas wanted a formal mating ceremony. They just filled out their paperwork at the courthouse and strutted down the concrete steps happily official. What came next, Dean didn’t know. Cas worked some dead-end office job and Dean moved out of Charlie’s place to live with him, but Denver didn’t feel quite right to settle permanently, not after Dean’s childhood spent in small-town Kansas.
Then, of course, the need to find a better place became more pressing after Cas found Dean in their tiny apartment’s bathroom with eight positive pee stick pregnancy tests on the floor.
Castiel and Dean shopped around Colorado, first looking into suburban areas (Dean did not like this idea), and then expanding to places outside of Denver’s immediate reach. Georgetown found them by accident, really. They weren’t in Georgetown looking for a place to live, but had stopped because Cas wanted to check out the cornucopia of antique stores.
“I have a lot of books in storage,” Castiel told Dean, when they walked the streets of Georgetown for the first time, “We could live here. I could open a bookshop. Tourists would love that.”
Cas was right, though the shift from city life to Georgetown took some adjusting to. The locals didn’t know them from Adam, and here they were, setting up shop like they owned the joint. Well. They did – they owned the little place that they bought.
But then they started making friends. They got to know the folks that ran the year-round Christmas store, because Castiel loved Christmas with a ferocity that Dean didn’t quite understand but appreciated all the same, just because he liked seeing his alpha’s enthusiasm. Dean got familiar with the baristas at the coffee joint, learned the names of the folks that ran the candy shop and the antique places and the tea parlor that was way too fucking frilly for Dean’s taste but again, fell under the umbrella of Castiel’s unbridled enthusiasm.
Ben arrived in the summertime, a serious-faced pup that emerged from the womb with a full head of soft, dark hair.
And Dean realized, against all odds, he was happy. He had a mate and a pup – neither of which he set out to have – and he loved them. He loved his alpha, loved his Ben, loved his home.
Awesome.
X
Present Day
By the time that Dean finished relaying his story, the sun set outside the windows of the cozy apartment above the bookshop. In the pocket of Sam’s jeans, his phone buzzed. Ben laughed at the sensation, and Sam deposited him on the couch cushion to the left so that he could answer.
Sam only had about a million text messages from his friends. He put together a group message and sent out: I’m all right guys. Just a family thing. I found my brother.
Before Sam could even replace his phone in his pocket a flood of text messages assaulted his cell. He decided to turn it off for the evening. Being with Dean and Ben was far more important than his friends right now. They’d understand.
“So, you staying for dinner?” Dean asked, voice all-too-casual.
This was important to Dean. He built a family, built a home, out of nothing. And now, it sounded like Sam was being invited to be a part of it.
From behind Sam, Castiel’s voice rumbled, “I’m making lasagna.”
Jesus, Sam hadn’t even heard Cas returning upstairs.
Sam smiled anyway, and plucked Ben off of the ground when Ben tugged at his hand. With his nephew’s head nestled against his shoulder, Sam answered, “Of course I’ll stay.”