Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s not quite sunset. Gold clips off the tips of the evergreen boughs, and Dean can see indigo sky behind the ragged clouds that scud over the treetops. They won’t have to worry about rain; it’s already passed overhead, leaving the ground springy and damp and the air sweet-smelling and cool. Perfect for a festival.

Stretched across the field of long grasses on the edge of the woods, all but one the packs in their loose association — the Harvelles, the Campbells, the Singers, the Trans, the Klines, and of course, the Winchesters — have gathered to celebrate their harvest. Tables groan under the weight of their feast: game fowl and goat, squash and roots, beans, bright-colored corn, and mounds of precious sweets.

Dean lets his fingers run along the table and grins, remembering when the sweets were the main attraction of the evening. Rich dark chocolates, apples swathed in creamy caramel, boiled toffees, chewy salt-water taffy… okay, they’re still tempting, even if he has other things on his mind tonight. He pops a chocolate in his mouth, chewing slowly while he mingles and breathes in the crisp Samhain air.

Looking up at the sun peeking through the tattered clouds, Dean feels a tremor race along his skin, wildness thrumming in his blood. It’s not time yet, but he feels like a tinderbox ready to take a spark. There's a crackle in the air like a gathering storm, and it has nothing to do with the weather. Dean savors the salt of anticipation on his tongue and grins at the westering sun. Hurry, he begs it. He needs to run.

He finds Sam lighting the lanterns strung between the spreading oaks, ready to cast their warmth into the falling twilight. At the far end of the field, a huge bonfire lies waiting to blaze forth. On every table and perched in piles atop bales of straw, grinning gourds face the outside of the circle to keep the anxious spirits at bay. Not Dean's, not those of his people. Beyond, the dark forest looms.

It’s nearly sundown.

“Here ya go, Sammy,” Deans says, tossing a toffee in Sam’s direction. “Don’t spoil your dinner.”

Sam barely catches it, then fixes Dean with a bit of a glare, all new-alpha-sharp and jittery. “It’s Sam,” he grumps. “Don’t call me Sammy.”

Dean makes a dismissive noise at Sam’s bluster. “Whatever. Doesn’t matter how tall you get, squirt; you’re still my little brother.” To prove his point, and maybe in hopes of a sibling tussle to relieve some tension, Dean lunges with one arm to get Sam into a headlock.

“Quit it,” Sam grunts as he squirms out of the hold. “I gotta focus.”

Dean nods. “Right, right. I forgot. Big bad alpha’s gotta get his game face on.”

“Dean,” Sam warns, jaw clenching tight, not looking at his brother. “Don’t try and tell me you’re not nervous, too.”

Dean takes a second look at Sam, then rubs at the soulbrand at the back of his neck. The stupid thing has been itching on and off all day, but he’s had more important things to worry about. Like the tight fear around Sam’s eyes, the thready nervousness in his scent. Maybe Sam’s ready for the Trials, and maybe he’s not, but either way, his time has come. Dean tries to think back to his first Trial six years ago, tries to remember if there was anything that made him feel less like he’d swallowed a beehive.

“Look, it’s —”

“You never know what’s gonna happen,” Sam interrupts. “Who knows? Maybe this is the year you don’t come out alone.”

Dean blinks, pulled up short by Sam turning the tables on him. “That’s — You know that’s not how this works, right? Not for me.” He tries, he really tries not to let the bitterness into his tone. “I’m here to hunt, not to — y’know.”

Sam shrugs. “The Novaks are new, though. Maybe one of them —”

Much to Dean’s uncomfortable relief, Sam is interrupted by a low horn blast signaling the arrival of the Novak pack. “Finally,” Dean grouses. “At least they got here before sundown. You think they wanted to make an entrance?”

Sam shrugs. “Maybe they got turned around in the foothills. They’ve never come this far up before.”

They meander with the rest of the crowd toward the newly arrived wagons, already being unloaded. They’re heavy with a cornucopia of fruits and game from the Novaks’ homelands far to the south; foods unfamiliar to Dean and his people. Also unfamiliar are their names — Anael. Uriel. Gabriel. Samandriel.

“What’s up with all the -els?” Dean whispers to Sam and gets an elbow in his ribs for his trouble.

“Be nice,” Sam mutters back.

Dean just scratches at the rune at his nape. Since it burned its way through his skin at fifteen, the soulbrand has sat docile and quiet. Now it’s burning and itching like it were newly risen.

“Hey, Sam,” he tugs at the goatskin pelt around his shoulders and turns so his brother can see his brand. “Does this thing look weird to you?” he asks.

“Yeah, it looks like you’ve got a rune branded on your neck,” Sam snarks back.

Dean huffs, annoyed. “Thanks, genius. I mean does it look weirder than normal? Do I have a bug bite next to it or something?”

Sam squints and leans closer. “It’s kinda red, but I bet it would go away if you stopped scratching at it.”

Dean huffs and lets his pelt fall back against his nape. “Yeah, I’ll just do that.”

“I dunno, man, you’re on your own with that thing.”

And ain’t that just the crux of the issue. He’s trying not to be nervous, for Sam’s sake, but it’s not like very many people in their loose collection of packs has any idea what to do with a soulbranded. The last true mates in his pack died before Dean was old enough to present, and there’s not much written about them in the texts. He rubs at the soulbrand and tries to push the itch from his mind.

Instead of brooding on it, he puts his back into helping the Novaks unload their strange harvest.

“The hell are these?” he asks as he hoists a basket of fuzzy, dark-green lumps.

“Kiwis,” a voice replies. The voice is low, gruff, and when he turns he meets a sober gaze from eyes that are as blue as the near-twilight overhead. Dean almost drops the basket, but this unnamed man catches the other handle.

“Uh,” Dean flusters. “Sorry about that.” He sniffs a little, trying to subtly catch this man’s scent, but all he can smell is the fruit in the basket. “What’s a kiwi?” he asks as they hoist the basket onto the table and start piling them into a wooden bowl.

“A fruit,” the other man replies.

Great, Dean thinks. Now he thinks I'm an idiot. He rolls his eyes and hopes his blush isn’t too obvious. “Yeah, I got that much. How do you eat it?”

The blue-eyed man smiles — just a tiny thing, quirking one corner of his lips — and plucks one from basket. “Try it,” he says, holding the fruit out to Dean.

The bristly fur of the kiwi is strange on Dean’s fingers, and he eyes it dubiously, then looks back up at the guy who is just watching him, still smiling a little. “What, just — bite into it?”

His smile gets a little bigger.

Feeling a little foolish, Dean brings the fruit to his lips and sinks his teeth in.

The skin is bitter, and the fuzz is unpleasant on his tongue, and the flesh behind is fiercely tart, spitting juice over Dean’s chin. The whole effect makes Dean recoil. In spite of his best intentions of good manners, his face screws up against his will and he spits the bite onto the grass.

The new guy is laughing at him when Dean looks up. “I’m sorry,” he says, wiping the grin from his face. “That was unfair.”

Dean shoots him a glare. “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” he says, tossing his fruit back to the other man and turning to walk away.

A strong hand catches his arm before he can get very far. “Allow me to make it up to you,” he says.

Dean looks down at the hand on his shoulder and takes a quick, involuntary breath in, his instinct to scent, to bare his throat. He still mostly smells fruit, but the way Dean’s blood is surging at his touch, there’s no way this man is anything but an alpha.

A sudden searing prickle on the back of his neck sends Dean’s free hand flying to slap the sting away with an “Ow!”

“Are you alright?” the alpha asks, concern landing on his brow. He lets go of Dean’s arm.

“Yeah, um. Mosquito, probably,” he fibs, a blush rising up his cheeks. “Go on. Make it up to me.” Then he bites his lip. “That came out wrong.”

The alpha just smiles and pulls a spoon with a toothed edge out of his pocket. He holds it up to show Dean, then deftly severs the top of the strange fruit and tosses it onto the ground to join Dean’s aborted bite. With the green flesh revealed, the Novak digs the spoon in and pulls out a neat semicircle of pulpy, seedy fruit.

“Try it now,” he says, holding it out for Dean.

Dean’s face burns, and heat pumps hard through his belly. Slow down, he chastises himself. Maybe southern customs are different. They probably are. This isn’t what it looks like, no matter how Dean’s instincts are screaming at him — from right under his skin — that this is an offer. Of more than just fruit.

Even if it were, he couldn’t accept it. Not unless this gorgeous blue-eyed alpha has his own soulbrand, but since when has Dean’s luck ever worked that way?

Still, it’s fun to play the game.

Not letting himself lower his eyes from bright blue, he leans forward and wraps his lips around the spoon and the fruit. This time, without the bitterness of the skin, he can taste the tangy sweetness. It’s still on the sour side, but it’s not bad, and he says so.

The other man smiles a more genuine smile — less quirked, more teeth — and sets down the fruit to hold out his hand. “Castiel.”

Dean accepts the handshake, and the warmth of Castiel’s palm makes his bones feel a little less solid than he’s used to. “Dean,” he says. “Dean Winchester.”

Castiel's smile keeps getting broader, and he opens his mouth with some follow-up, but whatever it is, it’s cut off by a loud trumpeting and a rattling of reeds as the great bonfire goes up in flames.

The sun has set.

Samhain has begun in earnest.

Dean grins at Castiel’s perplexed expression. “Get ready,” he says. “You’re in for a hell of a ride.”

~*~

The feast is an informal affair. The tables are too full of food to bother sitting at, and besides, there are too many things to try, too many people to talk with. Dean fills his bowl over and over with roasted meats, potatoes, squash, beans, all the fruits of the harvest. He wants to taste some of everything, and there’s plenty of everything to go around. Though he steers clear of the kiwis for now, he spies Castiel demonstrating the spoon trick to some others, and he’s not sure if he’s glad or insulted that no one else seems to get the same trial-by-fire experience that Dean did.

When everyone has eaten their fill, as twilight leans on toward night, parents herd their youngsters off toward the tents, most of them screaming and kicking, high on sugar and incensed at being told to go to bed when the party is so clearly still in full swing. Dean catches Krissie bargaining with Ellen that she is definitely old enough to stay up, even if she hasn't presented yet. Ellen shows no sign of budging.

The masks come out — grotesque imitations of human and animal faces, carved from wood, with straw and feathers and fabric and beads strung all around. Dean dances with a variety of demons and devils, swung this way and that as their spirits rise higher and higher. He knows them well — knows their scents and forms familiar, even if their faces are hidden — but one particular scent threads out of the mass of his fellows and follows him through the grapevines. Clove and woodsmoke and something like the dark earth under the oak leaves. It makes his skin itch from the inside and the back of his neck burn like he’s standing too close to a lantern, but he can’t pinpoint it. It’s maddening.

Maybe it’s just the moonlight. Maybe it’s the dreaded spirits breathing behind his ears, or maybe it’s his own omega urges rising up from within. Either way, Dean knows that he will surrender to it before the dawn comes.

They dance, dance, dance until they are spent, until the rising moon looms silver-orange in the treetops. The music reaches a crescendo, fiddles and rattles and drums ringing out loud and clear, encouraging the voices of the people to join. They cry wordlessly into the night, and then all at once fall silent.

Stillness is strange; Dean shivers with cooling sweat as the high priestess, Missouri, climbs the prominent rock jutting out of the ground near the bonfire. She is unmasked, as are her apprentices, and the assembled tribes fall silent as she spreads her arms in welcome.

“My families,” she cries, her voice carrying high over the crowd. “Since the ages before ages, we have gathered in this place. Tonight, the old sun dies and a new moon rises. Tonight, the veil is thin, and the spirit is wild. Tonight, we send our best and strongest into the woods to prove themselves — to find each other — and to see what may be seen.”

In his heaving chest, in his rushing blood, Dean can feel the wildness of his own spirit clearer than ever before. He wants to run. He wants to hunt. He wants —

“Some of you have run this wood for many years.” Dean tightens his grip on his kukri. “Some are new faces, young and untouched.” Dean spares a thought for Sam. “Some bring your own Samhain traditions into our fold.” A tendril of clove-smoke tingles in his nose. Who is that? “Whoever you are, wherever you call home — the Trials await you!”

Dean’s is the first loud whoop from the assembled crowd, ringing in the treetops. Missouri gives them a moment to revel, smiling serenely at the assembly.

“Hunters!” Missouri calls out. “Step forward!”

There’s a mass movement in the crowd as the unmated move toward the other side of the bonfire, closer to the shadows of the woods. Dean and Sam catch eyes briefly before splitting to join their groups. Dean stands between Jo from the Harvelle pack, only in her second hunt, and the flame-haired Charlie, who has found a home with the Winchesters but shares none of his blood. Charlie was a little unusual for being on her third hunt without coming out mated, but Dean has been doing this for six years. Six. He can feel the excitement around him, omegas eyeing the alphas and vice versa, whispering to each other, probably calling dibs or otherwise scheming. No one whispers to Dean.

Dean idly wonders if Castiel will be hunting, and a cool thrill shocks over his skin at the prospect. For a heart-pricking moment, Dean wonders what it would be like to be hunted. It's stupid, but he thinks it, and uses it as a shield against the idea of Castiel hunting anyone else. It's… oddly discomforting.

“Omega hunters! What do you bring?” Missouri asks with ritual rhythm.

Dean banishes his thoughts with a shake of his head and punches his wickedly curved knife in the air. “Our wit, our blade, and our blood!” they call out together.

Missouri nods, and then, “Alpha hunters! What do you bring?”

“Our blood and our teeth alone!” comes the cry from the alphas. Dean thinks he hears Sam's voice warbling in the center, and his heart goes out to the kid. He wouldn't want to face this unarmed, but such is the alpha's lot.

Missouri's two apprentices move through the gathered omegas. Pamela reaches Dean first with a bowl of thick paint, which she dots and stripes over Dean's face. He bares his chest to her ministrations as well and winks when she places a firm painted handprint right on his sternum. She smirks back, then makes way for Rowena with her clay pot of herbal dust. Dean has to stoop low, and she reaches high to sprinkle the dust on his tongue. It's bitter, astringent, and sucks all the moisture from his mouth; he swallows it down.

“Omegas. Your time has come,” Missouri intones to a great rattling of beads and bone. With fast-racing heart and sweat on his brow, a tight grip on the pommel of his blade, Dean finds his footing on the edge of the forest. He scans the tree trunks, peers as far as he can through them. It's not far. He feels his muscles coil, ready to spring.

“May the moon shine bright upon your trials.”

Dean jumps when Jo slaps his shoulder. “Race you!” she cries as her blonde hair disappears between the trees.

With a curse and a growl, Dean launches himself into the shadowed woods.

~*~

The trees close in quickly on all sides, and Dean soon loses his compatriots in the oppressive dark. The bright light of the bonfire cannot penetrate the close, consuming branches, spruce and pine and underbrush. He's barely gone ten paces before it’s pitch black, even when he turns around to look back the way he came. At first, he’s accompanied by the whoops and cries of his fellow omegas, but soon they fall silent, swallowed by the forest. He steels himself and moves further into the night.

It’s slow going, picking his footing with care under the ferns and over crumbling logs; gossamer spider webs cling to his face and hands. Much as he brushes them away, he can’t shake the feeling that the webs’ inhabitants are crawling all over him.

Distantly, he hears a crack and a roar of voices behind him, muffled by the thick wood. The alphas have entered the forest. He can’t be farther than a hundred paces beyond the border, and yet it sounds like the echo of another world.
Dean swallows hard on the flutter of his heart in his throat, grips tight to the hilt of his kukri, and ventures deeper into the night.

~*~

“I am a creature of the wood…” Dean hums, for the sake of his sanity. His eyes have adjusted to the gloom, just enough that the waxing gibbous moon through the trees casts strange silvery shadows at the heart of his vision. Trees don't have faces, he tells himself over and over. Just trees. “Forsaken in my solitude…” His hands, his arms, his face are all nicked with tiny scratches, and they sting copper when he sucks on them. By the time he finds a narrow, twisting game track, his back and legs ache from stooping and stepping over uneven ground. “My song is pleasure, and is pain…” He stands in the middle of — not quite a clearing, but at least a reprieve from the crowding undergrowth — and looks first one way, then the other, up and down the track. Listens with his head cocked to one side. “My song would drive a man insane…” For all that he entered the wood with at least two dozen of his own kind, and anticipating monstrous meetings within, he can hear very little other movement — only the wind sighing high in the evergreens and the racing of his own heart.

For a long moment, Dean stares up into the treetops, watching them bend and sway against the midnight sky above. He can see starlight twinkling through the boughs and is, all at once, reminded of cherry blossoms in spring, gracing the branches of his homeland’s orchards before drifting down like snow to blanket the earth. Star-shaped flowers, flower-shaped stars…

Snap!

An errant twig. Dean’s senses snap to alert, and he drops into a crouch. Silvery moonbeams are suddenly as bright as day, and he knows his pupils have gone cat-wide, just as every twitch of his ears brings him now a new echo of a leaf, a stone, a questioning owl. With a silent breath, Dean opens his nose and inhales deeply the scent of —

Smoke and spicy clove. Dark, damp earth.

And sulfur.

Adrenaline pounds in Dean’s veins, and he holds his every muscle taut.

Which way?

He thinks the scent of woodsmoke may be one way down the game trail, but the sulfur is definitely in the other direction — which is where the twig-snap came from. Bird in the hand, two in the bush, Dean thinks to himself. Mind made up, he stalks on silent feet north along the path.

~*~

Dean tracks the stink of sulfur down the game trail, under bending vine maples and over standing rocks, through a thicket of fireflies twinkling like stars brought down to earth. The moon climbs to its zenith while Dean’s senses bloom wilder, sharper. He sees crystals in the moonlight, webbing nets across the low-hanging boughs. The forest is heavy with the scents of life, both natural and other. His nose catches the faint traces of his fellows — a mating pair has already found each other, and their musk throws farther than the sounds of their coupling, which Dean cannot hear. A fight of blood and fae dust has broken out to the south, but Dean pays the fae no mind, not even to question the twinkling of the fireflies. He angles northwest, moonlight at his back, stalking the scent of bright-yellow sulfur.

It's a good hunt until a stream, a babbling, little thing, crosses his path. The demon’s scent scatters when it hits the water.

“Shit,” Dean mutters.

Up? Or down? Dean doesn’t let himself think too long or too hard, but follows the pull of his gut. Better this night to trust to intuition than to reason.

The streambed is rocky, the water low on the stones. In all but the narrowest of places where the stream runs swift, Dean finds steady footing. The sulfur stink rises and falls, hiding in pockets but never disappearing entirely, fading, flashing, then consistently rising until he’s choking on it, and he can’t tell if the world is getting brighter — it’s not nearly dawn, it can’t be — or if the spirits are playing tricks on his eyes… or maybe it’s just the fireflies.

Fireflies.

Dean blinks the crystal swirls from his vision to take another look around. What he sees are not fireflies. Fireflies are not so still.

Yellow eyes.

Dean barely has time to swear, and he does not have time to run. The sickening brimstone he’d been following is not a demon like he’d thought, but the breath of hellhounds by the dozen. He's surrounded, all unseen except for the glowing flash of their eyes. One breath of hot, putrid breath on his wrist, and he jerks it away from the snap of a jaw and turns to bolt.

He doesn’t make it more than a dozen steps before he realizes how futile it is to try to flee. There are fireflies in all directions and no way to tell a will-o’-the-wisp from a hellhound’s eye. Only one option, then. He draws his blade and waits for their breath to graze his skin again.

A low growl by his ear and he whirls, but cuts only air; he closes his eyes — maybe blind is a better way to fight an invisible foe — but he rolls his ankle and takes a tumble instead. Luck is with him, though, and when he rolls over his shoulder and hops up into a crouch, he feels matted fur against his arm and sinks a swift blade into the creature’s flesh.

It’s not enough. He may have dispatched one hound, but the others are closing in, and Dean’s wild slashes are only going to hold them at bay for so long.

And then.

Between one breath and the next, sulfur is overlaid with woodsmoke and clove. In the breath after, Dean hears pounding boots on dry leaves, and before he can spare a glance, the clustered hounds are scattered by the approach of — Castiel?

Yes. Dean knows him by his hair and the line of his jaw, and something — something else. He is wild-eyed and feral, slamming bodily into what must be a solid clutch of invisible bodies. The firefly-eyes turn this way and that, as if trying to choose between the two targets, and Dean makes use of the distraction to strike.

The fight is quick and confusing. With the hellhounds’ attentions split and desperate, Dean can get closer, can take surer aim, but it's risky. He nearly loses his blade to a glancing blow, and the creature sinks its teeth into his forearm. In an instant, Castiel is at his side, tearing the jaws from his flesh. They end up back to back, Castiel a warm reassurance behind him.

That scent. Here, now, in the dark of the woods, it pings in Dean’s belly like a ringing bell. He has to breathe in deeper, drinking it down. In spite of the chaos, Dean shivers right down to the bone, because Castiel smells like mate.

It’s not possible. It shouldn’t be possible, but he’s more certain with every breath. It burrows down under his skin, into his blood. It sparks memories he’s never known, a song in his heart that he’s never before sung.

It’s terribly distracting.

Gritting his teeth and gripping his blade, Dean launches away from that welcoming aura, into the slavering jaws of his foes. Castiel moves with him, covering his blind spots and his open side where his arm is still bleeding. Dean can’t shake the awareness of him, the glimpses of him in the corner of his eye brighter than they should be. He and Castiel move around each other, with each other, as easily as if they’d been fighting together for years. It’s a wild rush, and he finds himself swallowing laughter even as they beat back the sulfurous hounds.

It doesn’t take long for the remainder of the pack to decide they’ve had enough. By the high-pitch yelps and the skittering of twigs and detritus, Dean marks their retreat.

“Yeah, you better run!” he hollers nonsensically after them.

“Dean.”

Dean’s spine cinches straight at the sound of his name in Castiel’s voice, and his heartbeat skips high on renewed adrenaline. He turns to find Castiel closer than he’d thought, all sweet cloves and hearthfire and good, dark earth. He reaches for Dean’s arm, grasping his wrist and pulling it up to examine the bite. “Are you —?”

“I’m fine,” Dean gasps. He can still flex his fingers, and it will ache, but the bleeding is already slowing, so he’s fine. There’s something more important.

“I don’t — are hellhounds here venomous? Do their bites necrotize? Perhaps we should —” His hands are shaking, fingertips cool where they press into Dean’s skin, ever-so-lightly, like he’ll break.

“Cas,” Dean interrupts.

Castiel looks up, wide-eyed, startled, bewildered. Dean knows the feeling, but he just smiles down at him and swallows the moths in his throat. “You alright?” His voice doesn’t even waver. Much. He’s proud of that.

Cas blinks, breathes in deep with his nostrils wide open. “It’s you,” he sighs, a benediction. “You —”

All the usual protests are right there behind Dean’s lips. It’s not — he can’t — he’s soulbranded, so he can’t be — but they wither unsaid like dry leaves in a fire. “Yeah,” he sighs, and sways a little closer. Cas is still clasping his wrist.

Slowly, as if unwilling to be proven wrong, Castiel raises his other hand, drifting his knuckles in a dotted line up Dean’s bare chest, over the handprint of flaking paint on his sternum, trailing little fluttery shivers up and over Dean’s collarbone and around to the back of his neck. When his fingertips touch the edge of Dean’s soulbrand, a frisson of heat washes over Dean’s body from his ears to his toes. His eyes fall shut, but even through his lids he can see the edge of a soft, golden glow. He reaches his own hand up to match, more certain, more hurry, and there — right at the knob atop Castiel’s spine, his fingers find raised skin, a familiar shape to his touch, if not to his eyes. Heat melts down his fingers like honey from a sun-warmed comb, and he opens his eyes in time to see Cas haloed in gold, looking at him with hallowed disbelief. Dean can’t help a breathless laugh.

“Did you know?” Dean asks.

“I had no idea,” Cas says. “I thought I caught — something, before, during the dance. But it wasn’t until I picked up your scent in the woods that I — I knew.”

Dean nods. “I thought I did too.”

“I thought you were a dream,” Cas says. They sway together gently in the wind. “I didn’t think I would ever —”

Dean nods. “I know. I know.”

Their foreheads touch first, a gentle pressure. Then their noses. Then their breaths. When Dean finally feels the mothwing brush of Castiel’s lips, he collapses like a log in a fire, pressing close to learn his kiss. Cas is tentative at first, saying hello, formal and quiet. But Dean’s never been the ‘hello’ type, and it’s not what he wants right now. Not with his nose full of mate-scent and his soulbrand burning down his spine. He can sense the bridled strength, the urgency, behind Cas’s deliberate restraint. He wants that. He wants to feel him break free.

With the hand still tracing the lines of Cas’s soulbrand, Dean pulls, and if his lips pinch between their teeth, it’s worth it to swallow Castiel’s surprised gasp and shuddering moan. Their kiss burns bright but brief, and Cas’s fingers grip tight as Dean disengages. He pulls back just far enough to speak into the humid space between their lips.

“Catch me,” he says, and tears himself free.

Dean reels off into the underbrush, laughter bubbling to his lips, effervescent and giddy as he lets himself be hunted. Chased. The better to be caught. He hears Cas swear an unfamiliar curse as he slips and scrambles on the dry leaves. That slide buys Dean just enough time to make the chase worth it, to make it fun. Tree trunks jump out of the shadows at him, strange looming shapes, but he careens between them like a ball between pins, grabbing and looping for hairpin turns. He hears Castiel’s footfalls bounding, hears brambles snapping as he crashes over them in his growling haste.

At the bottom of a shallow gulch, Dean feels solid heat slam into him from behind. Cas pins him face-first into the rough bark of the nearest tree, breath fogging on Dean’s skin at the back of his neck. The thrill of being pinned shoots through him, but those sparks are nothing compared to the wildfire when Cas growls in his ear, “Mine.” The sound itself turns to shivers down Dean’s neck, and he feels the first traces of wet slick drip between his thighs. He’s whining into the bark before he can think to stop it, dropping his head to bare his neck, pushing his hips back into Cas’s weight, presenting for his alpha.

His. And his alone. He raises one hand to cup Cas’s head, pulling his face in tighter, closer, until he feels the hot slide of lips behind his ear. “Yours,” Dean murmurs.

With a strangled sound, Cas’s mouth opens against Dean’s skin, and he pushes their bodies flush together. Dean feels all of him. From flat, firm stomach to muscled thighs and the hot, hard line of his cock in between. The arm that braced across Dean’s shoulders comes down to join Cas’s other hand around Dean’s waist, tracing the lines of his chest, the softness of his belly, and down to palm over the rise in Dean’s trousers.

“Son of a —” Dean bites off a curse and bucks his hips between Castiel’s hand and the jut of his cock against his ass.

It’s never been like this before. Not ever. This isn’t just some fruitless roll in the hay. This is his mate. And Dean’s body knows it, he can feel himself opening for him, ready, willing. It feels like iron melting in his belly, slow and bright and hotter than he should be able to contain. “Cas,” he moans.

“Dean —” Cas groans, fumbling for the ties of Dean’s trousers, but curling his hands into fists before he gets them open. “Tell me. Please. I need to hear you say —”

“I want it,” Dean blurts out, grinding his hips back on Cas’s obvious arousal. “Yes, fucking yes, I want it —”

Cas responds by leaning back — cold for half a second — then spinning him against the tree trunk. Dean doesn’t have a chance to regret the loss of Cas’s cock against his ass before he’s being kissed, and yes, this is what he wanted, Cas’s claiming lips, invasive tongue, and Dean wants nothing more than to be claimed and conquered. His knees threaten to fall out from under him as he pushes into his mate’s touch, and then one of Cas’s arms scoops under his waist, hoisting him up, pulling his knees up to wrap around Cas’s waist.

“Shit, Cas,” Dean grates out of a roughened throat, and demands a kiss, demands Cas’s tongue and teeth. Cas’s strong arms and the flaking bark of the tree behind him hold him firmly. He locks his ankles behind Cas’s hips, squeezing Cas’s body into his own, and he feels himself slicking his trousers and briefs, his cock hard and straining against the ties Cas had loosened earlier. “We — clothes, Cas —”

Cas nods, but instead of letting Dean go, he starts a slow roll of his hips. Dean’s thighs seize together when he feels Cas’s cock line up next to his through their trousers, a sweet friction drag and pressure right where he needs it, exquisite torment. From his pinned position there is very little he can do but hold on tight and bite down on his begging.

Finally, Cas pulls away and lets go of Deans legs. “Down,” he says, and Dean obeys without question, but when he tries to step away from the tree, Cas’s hand stops him. “Stay.” So Dean stays. Stands there motionless while Cas pushes off his vest, letting it fall to be forgotten. Then Cas — his alpha — drops to his knees in the leaves, face to face with Dean’s groin. His fingers shake at he fumbles with the ties, looking up with insane blue eyes that catch the moonlight, and Dean can’t believe he gets to keep him.

Cas barely gets his trousers down around his thighs before he’s swallowing Dean’s cock into the heated bliss of his mouth. Dean is very grateful for the stability of the tree at his back; his head thunks against the trunk, and he sees stars as Cas sucks him down, sucks him hard. He sinks his fingers into Cas’s thick, dark hair, gripping and pulling and pushing all at once to get his cock deeper. He can’t help it. He needs. By the breathy little whimpers Cas gets out around him, Cas needs too, and when he fucking swallows around him, Dean’s bones turn to hot water.

“Fuck,” he groans again, and his thighs part as wide as they can. Even as he thrusts without mercy down Cas’s eager throat, he feels Cas insinuating one of his hands between Dean’s thighs. Strong, sure fingers caress his sack, then tease the slick-drenched space behind, just barely touching his rim.

It’s too much. It’s too much not enough. Dean’s hips ride between the heat of his throat and the tease of his fingers until his thighs are shaking, until begging words tumble from his lips. “Please,” he moans, “Cas, please, I gotta — you gotta — please —”

The heat of Castiel’s mouth retreats with a wet pop, but his fingers venture further, two of them swiftly reaching knuckle-deep and aiming straight for his sweet spot.

It’s only by virtue of being trapped in his trousers that Dean doesn’t topple to the ground. As it is, he slides to the side and stumbles a little, catching himself by grabbing Cas’s free hand.

“Yes, alright,” Cas says, though Dean hasn’t said anything that made sense in several minutes. “Down — yes.” With a grip on Dean’s wrist and without removing his fingers, Cas lowers Dean in a semi-controlled fall onto a soft bed of leaves. “Dean — I have to — your boots. I have to —”

It takes Dean a remarkably long time, but eventually he realizes what Cas means. “Oh. Yeah. I guess that’s important,” he laughs, but he still takes a few selfish moments to fuck himself on Cas’s sturdy fingers, relishing the sweet waves of pleasure, before nodding. “Okay, go.”

Cas’s fingers pull out a little too quick, but it’s worth it when Cas strips off his own shirts. Dean lets himself take in the sight of his mate’s moonlit skin, firmly muscled shoulders and trim waist and the dark rounds of his nipples. Suddenly, Dean isn’t content to just let himself be touched — his hands are just as hungry. He sits up in the fallen foliage — grateful for the lack of prickles and thorns — and lets his hands roam. Cas shivers at his touch, and then they are both fumbling with the ties of Cas's trousers.

“Get up here,” Dean murmurs once they’re both down to the skin. “C’mon, get up here.”

Cas gives him a tiny head tilt and confused brow, but then he’s following the tug of Dean’s hands until Dean is on his back in the fragrant duff and Cas is straddling his chest. “Dean —” he starts to ask while Dean clasps both hands behind his own head and leans up. “What are you —”

“Just go with it,” Dean says with a smirk and a wink before flicking his tongue and lips over the head of Cas’s cock.

“Oh —” Cas gasps, then shuffles forward. “Oh, Dean —”

Dean has always loved having a cock in his mouth. The weight, the scent, the taste, the pressure against his throat. Cas hesitates from thrusting too deep — though really, Dean wouldn’t mind — sticking to shallow rocking that rubs the pronounced head over and over Dean’s tongue. Dean swirls and suckles, plays with gently biting down and gets Cas’s hips stuttering and a high whine in response and a burst of precome that tastes like Cas smells and hits Dean right between the eyes with need and mate and —

He pulls off. “Deeper, come on,” he pants out, glancing up to make sure Cas heard, then gets Cas’s cock back between his lips.

For a few seconds, Cas doesn’t move, but then he shuffles forward again and cradles the back of Dean’s head and interlaced hands in his own and gives an experimental thrust. Dean rewards his courage with a loud groan, sucking him deeper. He wants, he wants —

And he receives. Cas eventually falls forward on his hands, and it’s all Dean can do to just lie there and let his throat be used, and really, that’s — that’s fantastic. It’s fucking incredible, his alpha’s cock sliding in and out, in and out, spittle leaking at the corners of his lips. He catches air in quick gasps when Cas pulls out, and maybe it’s crazy, but he trusts him. Trusts him to know how deep is actually too deep, to let up if Dean gives the signal. He trusts Castiel implicitly. So he opens up, moans around the invasion, letting it stir the embers of his own arousal.

It’s not long before he feels Cas’s knot starting to swell at his lips, and he pats Cas’s side rapidly. Cas pulls back, flush-faced and panting and gorgeous. “Don’t come yet,” Dean gasps, his voice a ruined rasp.

“Obviously,” Cas pants out, retreating to the side and trying to catch his breath. “That was —”

“Yeah,” Dean laughs, heels pedaling restlessly in the duff, rubbing at his eyes with his palms. “This is insane.”

Cas’s hand on his hipbone, sliding up his belly, almost startles Dean because he still has his eyes closed, but already he knows that touch. Would know it anywhere, he thinks. He moves his hands off his face and finds Cas incredibly close, kissing distance, looking at him with wide-eyed amazement. “I still can’t believe I found you,” he whispers.

Dean shakes his head. “Me neither.”

Cas can’t keep his hands to himself. He explores Dean’s body with warm palms and harvest-rough fingers, skimming from his hips to his shoulders, back down to his knees — then up between them. Dean sucks in air and lets his thighs be parted, lets his mate sink down between them.

“Cas,” Dean breathes, “mate me. Fuck me. Please —”

What little restraint Cas has found seems to snap, and Dean finds himself all at once flipped by the hips, and now it’s his back exposed to the cool night air, and Cas is pulling him up. “Fuck yes,” Dean moans, and arches his chest to the earth, his hips to the sky.

“Dean — next time, I —” Cas pants, rough and dark in his ear, leaning his sweat-damp chest over Dean’s back and bruising his hips with his fingertips. “Next time, in a real bed, we'll — but now, I —” Dean can feel his cock hot against the back of his thigh, already thrusting, seeking, and need lances through him, almost a pain.

Dean nods, frantic, his elbows skittering in the leaf litter trying to brace himself for what’s coming. “Don’t worry — just get in me.”

Before he’s even done speaking, he feels the head of Cas’s cock find its home, feels pressure and then — pop — “Oh fuck yes, Cas, just —”

It feels like it takes forever for him to sink home. Deeper and deeper he drives, and Dean just bears down, rides back, opens up for his mate.

Cas doesn’t hesitate until Dean feels the slight swelling of his knot pressed against his ass cheeks. “Don’t you fucking dare stop, Castiel —” Dean reaches back and scrabbles at Cas’s hip, clutching at his ass and pulling the best he can. “Give me — need you —”

Cas shudders over him and pushes, pushes until his knot slips inside and his hips are flush with Dean’s ass. Dean focuses on breathing and controlling the clenching of his muscles around the sweet intrusion.

“Are you alright?” Cas asks, breathless, but concerned. Dean nods vigorously.

“Just give me a second,” he murmurs, and it’s not to adjust, not really. He’s trying not to come fucking instantly from his mate’s knot.

Cas gives him a second. Then gives him two more. But then he grows restless, starting with small shift of his hips, back and forth, back and forth. Dean collapses deeper onto his elbows, breath punching out of him. “Yeah, yeah, s’good, Cas, please —” Cas takes that for the cue it is, and in a flash, Dean is forced to the ground, his thighs knocked wide for Cas to kneel while he takes him, fucks him, mates him. The swell of his knot tugs over and over against Dean’s rim, slipping in and out and leaving Dean ridiculously empty on the egress.

“Dean,” Cas mouths at the back of his neck, right over the soulbrand, and an entirely different heat washes over Dean’s body.

“Cas,” he answers. “Cas, please —”

With a growl that hardly sounds human, Cas opens his teeth and bites down into Dean’s neck. His mouth entirely encompasses the soulbrand, his bite surrounding it, and there is a lightning flash in Dean’s blood as his teeth break the skin. Dean is only distantly aware that he's screaming.

It's pain, but it's pleasure, and pleasure is pain, an intense loop of sensation that feeds from one to the other, and Dean's not even sure how much might belong to Castiel. All he sees is a shower of golden sparks, as if the forest around them were ablaze, but the fire is in his blood, his belly, and his cock as he comes, and comes, and comes —

Through the fire of his pleasure, Dean hears Cas cry out loud against his skin, high and wordless. With one final shove that sinks Dean into the soft earth, Cas's knot swells and locks tight. Dean clenches down on him, squeezing, wanting, and Cas finally lets go of his neck to gasp hot breaths into Dean's hair.

“You —” he says. “You —”

One of Dean's hands finds Cas's where he's clinging tight to Dean's shoulder, and he pats it, boneless and sloppy. “Yeah,” he sighs and lets himself drift.

Little aches come to him slowly: his knees, his hip where he fell to the forest floor, his elbows. The pain of his wounded forearm, no longer content to be ignored. The new bite on his neck throbs like an all-new brand. He doesn’t mind that one as much.

Other things come slowly, too: the trill of a night bird. The sound of the stream. The aroma of the woods around them, cool and dark, threaded through with the scents of their fellows. And Cas's, that woodsmoke and clove, the earthy tones blending into the background, but… something else now, too.

Dean turns his head as far as he can, a warm thrill in his belly. “Sea salt?” he asks.

Cas responds with a nuzzling nod. “White sands. Shore pines. And…” Dean catches the corner of a grin. “Kiwis.”

Though he's still pinned in place with his new lover's knot, though he's still lying on the cold forest floor, Dean can't help a long belly laugh. He feels Cas's smile against his shoulder like a warm ray of sunshine.

With a shift that makes them both gasp, Cas drops them sideways to the cool forest floor, a solid wall of heat at Dean's back. Cas's vest and shirt are still close enough that Dean can grab them for a bit of extra covering against the chill, and they settle in to wait for dawn. Or for Cas's knot to go down, at least.

Cas. His mate. He has a mate. Dean still can't quite get over that, and he's fighting back nervousness as much as he's alight inside with excitement.

“Have you ever seen the ocean?” Cas asks, low and quiet in their little space.

“Once,” Dean says. “When I was a kid, I went down with my dad. I think we were there to talk with the Novaks, actually, about incorporation.” He shrugs. “I was more interested in looking for seashells.”

Cas sits up as much as his knot allows him to, squeezing his eyes shut at the shift. “I think I remember that,” he says at last. “Faintly, since I was only a child myself, but I remember a Winchester coming to visit.”

Dean grins. “You hadn't presented yet, had you? Or got the, um,” he gestures at the back of his neck.

“No,” Cas says with a shake of his head. “No, not for a few years.”

“Imagine if we'd been just a few years later, eh? We coulda saved ourselves all this —” he waves a hand at the forest around them.

Cas tightens his arm around Dean's chest. “I don't know,” he says, “I rather enjoyed your Samhain traditions.”

Dean meant all the waiting, the agonizing, the wondering who and how and where and if, feeling like a leper while all your friends paired off, how easily “special” could turn into “lonely” or even “freak.” But he stows that, because Cas's pronunciation of “Sam-hane” is just too precious.

“You know you're saying that wrong, don't you?”

Just as he felt Cas's smile, now his frown is a cool foggy mist. “How should it be said?” he asks.

“Sowin,” Dean says, and it sounds like a kiss on the wind.