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A sour smell greets Dean as soon as he opens the door to the apartment he and Cas moved into several months ago. He grimaces. He’d expected as much, from the terse responses Cas had been sending ever since he got out of his doctor’s appointment, but confirmation of his boyfriend’s bad mood is unpleasant all the same.
“Hey babe,” he calls as he walks in. “I got Thai food.”
A blanket-covered lump on the couch shifts. “I’ll eat later.”
The TV is on but muted, which means that Cas just wants to watch the kittens without worrying about whatever conflict Animal Planet has made up. A tabby, sitting atop a cat tower, hisses at something offscreen.
Dean shrugs off his jacket and shoes and plops down onto the couch. He lines the takeout containers and plastic utensils up on the coffee table. Despite his words, Dean can see Cas tracking the food from where his head sticks out of the blanket pile. “Did you get the chicken satay?”
“A double order.”
Cas lets the blankets fall to his lap, leans over, and kisses him. When he pulls away, Dean runs his thumb over his cheekbone. Cas looks tired, no less tense than he had this morning, before he’d left to see his specialist in the city. He doesn’t meet Dean’s concerned eyes, focusing instead on the food.
For a few minutes they just watch as Jackson Galaxy attempts to introduce a new cat to the household. But it turns to commercials eventually, and Cas sighs and shuts it off.
“How long have we been together?”
It’s probably a rhetorical question, but Dean takes a moment to make sure he gets it right all the same. “A year, seven months, and… four days?”
Cas pauses, then shrugs. “Sounds right. But you know that in all that time, I’ve never been in heat.”
“No,” Dean agrees carefully. He’s got an idea of where this is heading, from all the Googling he did when he and Cas first started dating, but he doesn’t want to rush his boyfriend. Knows this isn’t easy for him to talk about.
“It’s recommended that alphas who presented O and are undergoing HRT pause and allow for a heat cycle every eighteen months, at the most. Our bodies don’t completely stop producing omega hormones unless we’re able to get bottom surgery, and my insurance…” Cas trails off and shakes his head. Dean takes his hand and squeezes it. He’s heard enough rants from Cas about the discriminatory policies on the only plan he can afford; he doesn’t need to elaborate.
“Anyway, the buildup of O and A hormones gets dangerous. Messes with blood pressure, raises the risk for heart attacks, probably does a bunch of other things that the literature hasn’t completely proven. Which is why we’re supposed to have a heat every year and a half, at the latest. It’s the body’s way of balancing out.”
“Got it.” Dean traces the ridges of Cas’s fingerbones, trying to be soothing.
“Before we got together, I hadn’t been in heat for, uh. About twenty months. The last time was when I was with Bartholomew, and he, uh, wasn’t great about it…”
“You don’t have to get into the details if you don’t want to,” Dean says, keeping his breathing calm and careful. Mentions of Cas’s shitty ex always make him furious, but he knows that adding the scent of angry omega to the conversation isn’t going to be productive.
“What I’m saying is, it’s been over three years since I’ve gone into heat. I’ve avoided the issue at past check-ins with Dr. Elorza, but my O hormones are elevated beyond a point that she considers safe.” He looks away and huffs. “And she isn’t going to renew my prescription for the A gel unless they go down.”
“Asshole.”
“Yeah,” Cas agrees, even though they both know that she’s the best doctor Cas has ever had. “So. I need to have a heat.”
Dean nods, chewing his noodles slowly as he tries to figure out how to be supportive without sounding patronizing. “Okay. When? I just gotta make sure everything’s set at the bar before I take the time off.”
Cas frowns. “You want to be here?”
“I mean, if you don’t want me to be here, I can go somewhere else? But… yeah. I mean, I take that ‘Galaxy’s Best Boyfriend’ mug that you got me pretty seriously. I’d be a shitty boyfriend if I let you go through this by yourself.”
“Bart did,” Cas replies, expression twisting. “He stayed for a few hours, but told me that if he was there any longer, he’d never be able to see me as an alpha again.”
“Bart was a giant fucking douchebag who didn’t deserve you,” Dean says evenly, “And if I ever do anything that reminds you of him, you have my permission to kick me in the nuts. You’re my alpha. Having a heat isn’t going to change that.”
Cas grips his hand tight. “I just don’t want you to lower your opinion of me. After you see me like that.”
“You remember when we first started dating? I went into heat early after a month or so together, and I was literally crying and begging you to raw me. And you wouldn’t, because you weren’t on fertility suppressants at that point and you didn’t want to knock me up. Which I knew, logically, but it didn’t stop me from having a fucking meltdown over how badly I wanted your cock in me.”
“I have a vague recollection,” Cas says wryly.
Dean kisses him on the lips before continuing. “You were with me through all of it. Rubbing my back and bringing me cold compresses and driving an hour out because I really wanted the cherry pie from that one bakery. And using my toys on me. And when it was all done, I was so sure you were going to dump me. I mean, I was fucking mortified. We barely knew each other, and here I was begging you to stay with me and demanding that you spoon me, when I wasn’t talking about how much I wanted your come.”
“That was an unusually harsh heat for you.”
“Yeah, but that’s besides the point. You stayed the whole time, except for when you left to get the pie, and afterwards, when I couldn’t look you in the eye, you told me it was fine. I was in heat, it happens. And then you stayed with my pathetic ass.”
“You took me ice-skating after,” Cas says. “That was a good date.”
“I figured we might as well go when my ass was already sore, so falling would be less painful.” Dean shakes his head. “Stop changing the subject. The point is that you were there for me. Cas, what makes you think I wouldn’t do the same for you?”
Cas stares at him with wide but unreadable eyes. Dean pushes on. “We gotta talk beforehand about what you’ll be okay with doing and what boundaries you want to set before the heat gets to your head. But I’m here for the long haul. If you’ll have me.”
A moment later he’s on his back, Cas atop him and kissing him something fierce. “I love you,” Cas says when they come up for breath, and Dean knows that they’re gonna be okay.
The next week is filled with planning: Dean makes sure that the bar he co-owns with Pamela is all set to be without him for up to a week, while Cas takes care of his own work-related obligations. There are careful conversations about consent over dinner that spill into the bedroom more often than not. Dean stocks the fridge with sports drinks for the electrolytes and red meat, which Cas apparently craves during his heats.
Cas halts the gel of A hormones that he usually applies daily in favor of a supplement prescribed to help prepare his body. “Doctor Elorza said the heat should come on after seven to ten days of skipping the A,” Cas informs Dean. “Normally it should be longer, but my O hormones are ‘concerningly high.’”
(If the finger quotes are any indication, this fact isn’t particularly bothersome to Cas, so Dean tries not to worry either. Still, he also spends a good deal of that in-between week Googling so he can be prepared for any side effects that might come up.)
Dean restocks the medicine cabinet: cold compresses, Advil for the cramps Cas will likely get early on, and a new bottle of UnTied, the lube that doubles as a soothing cream, containing lab-made versions of the compounds in designated-alpha come that bring relief when an alpha knots the person in heat.
Five days after Cas goes off A, he calls Dean into the bathroom. Dean finds him standing in front of the mirror, shirtless.
“It’ll be here in a few days,” he says.
It takes Dean a moment to notice, the change is so slight, but of course it’d be instantly recognizable to Cas. The area around his nipples has a blush to it, the skin puffy and inflamed. Dean makes a sympathetic noise in his throat and rests his head on Cas’s shoulder.
“It’s how I always knew it was coming when I was younger,” Cas says bitterly. He pinches one; it looks too tender for the gesture to be anything but painful. “That and the cramps.”
Dean wants to say I love you, to remind Cas he’s in it for the long haul, but he’s said that so much lately that he doesn’t want it to start sounding robotic. It also might be besides the point, he thinks; all the love in the world that he feels towards Cas can’t change the long years Cas spent blaming his body for how the world perceived him.
Instead, he leans forward and plants a kiss along Cas’s clavicle, wraps his hands around his waist. Cas sighs, leaning back into him, and Dean holds him closer, trying to let his body express the things that feel inadequate when reduced to words.
True to Cas’s predictions, he wakes up the next day with intense cramps that have him curled in a fetal position and unwilling to get out of bed. Dean calls out of work, lets Pam know he should be back in a week or so, pops a heating pad in the microwave—Cas hasn't actually started feeling overheated yet; that'll probably come in a day or so—and brews up some ginger tea. He takes them both into the bedroom. The Advil sits on the bedside table, already broken into.
“Hey, sunshine.” He perches on the edge of the bed and runs his fingers through Cas’s hair. “Got you some tea and a heating pad.”
Cas lifts his hand, not bothering to roll over. Dean passes him the heating pad and watches as he tucks it against his belly.
Forcing the tea seems like a losing proposition, and besides, Dean’s never really been sure if it actually helps with his pre-heat cramps or if it’s just a placebo. He sets the cup down on the nightstand.
“Okay if I lie down with you?”
“It’s your bed too.”
“I don’t wanna stay if you don’t want me.”
Cas sighs. “I always want you, Omega.” He reaches a hand behind him and pats the mattress as best he can without unfurling from his position.
Dean stretches out next to him, not quite spooning him, but pretty damn close. He slips his hand beneath the soft gray fabric of his Shitty Day Sweatshirt, which Cas had apparently borrowed/stolen, and starts rubbing small circles on his lower back.
Cas smells different. Not quite in heat, but definitely not his normal scent. The closest thing Dean can compare it to is how off he smelled a few months ago, right before he’d come down with the flu.
They lie like that for a bit, until Dean clears his throat and asks, “Can we talk about boundaries again? Just make sure we’re on the same page before, y’know, the big event?”
Cas snorts at the euphemism but goes into recitation mode. “Your mouth and your fingers are fine, as long as I say they are. Toys are a grey area. If I already used them on myself, it’s probably okay, but otherwise…” Dean can’t see his face, lying as they are, but he’s pretty sure he’s wrinkling his nose in that grumpy expression he gets whenever something is particularly distasteful. “I hate fake knots.”
“I get it,” Dean says, because he does—he’s been through plenty of heats alone, and while there’s something to be said for controlling the size and the length of time a dick is stuck inside you, there have been moments when the realization that he had to fuck himself because no alpha wanted him had left him simultaneously crying and masturbating, which. Wasn’t fun. (Heat hormones usually weren't.)
“And me using my dick on you is a hard no.”
“Yes,” Cas replies, though it wasn’t really a question. That’s a standard boundary for them, only broken once or twice when Cas had been feeling particularly adventurous. Still, being in heat can make you ask for things you wouldn’t want otherwise.
Dean kisses the back of his neck. “Thank you for trusting me enough to have me here.”
Cas snorts and says, “Let’s see how you feel this time tomorrow,” but curls his body closer to Dean all the same.
By that night, Cas’s cramps have lessened but he’s started to slick. While he’s in the shower Dean strips the bed, puts on the mattress protector, and remakes the bed with Heet Sheets (the fact that there are entire industries built around creating “nests” that don’t get disgusting and sweaty during heats is kind of fucked, but the sheets really do help keep you cool, so they’re kind of worth it).
Cas comes out of the bathroom wearing nothing but slick-absorbing briefs. He smiles wanly at the sheets.
“Anything I can do to help you out?” Dean waggles his eyebrows, the question stuck between sincerity and flirtation.
“Just let me hold you,” Cas answers, and a second later he’s swept Dean off his feet and onto the bed, and Dean laughs, and it feels like things are going to be alright.
By the next morning, things are not alright.
Cas spends the night tossing and turning, which of course means that Dean doesn’t get more than half an hour of sleep at a time. Which is fine, really. Except Cas feels frustrated that he can’t sleep and that he’s keeping Dean up, and no matter how many times Dean says that it’s okay, his mood worsens with every minute they’re both awake.
His arousal also deepens, if his scent is anything to go by. Which means that Dean is sporting one hell of a boner and wants nothing more than to bury his face between Cas’s legs. But Cas isn’t even touching himself.
Eventually there’s too much sunlight shining through the curtains for Dean to have any hope of sleeping. He sits up and sighs.
“I’m sorry,” Cas mumbles, the first words either of them have said for several hours.
“Don’t be.” Dean strokes his hair, noting with concern how sweaty he is. “You want coffee? Probably not. Uh, Gatorade and a protein bar?”
“That sounds great.” He blinks up at Dean with bleary eyes, pupils wide with arousal. Dean kisses his forehead.
When he comes back, Cas has gravitated towards Dean’s side of the bed, burying his face in his pillows. Dean sets the drink and snack on the bedside table, smiling. “Anything I can help you with?”
Cas tenses. “Actually, if it’s not too much trouble, I was wondering if I could have the bedroom to myself for a bit?”
“Oh.” Dean stands. “Yeah, of course.”
He can’t help the disappointment that seeps into his scent, and of course Cas notices. “I’m sorry, it’s not you, Dean, I just… This is difficult for me.”
“You don’t need to apologize. I get it.” As much as he can, which for someone who’s cis-primary and cis-secondary, probably isn’t that much. He squeezes Cas’s shoulder. “I’ll be right outside if you need anything, okay?”
Dean gets washed up, realizing belatedly that all his clothes are in the bedroom, but there’s no one to judge him for lounging around in just his briefs anyway. The morning drags on, divided into brief intervals of activity. Making toast. Eating toast. Washing the dishes. Staring at the books for the bar. Dicking around on Facebook.
Eventually he gives up on doing anything productive. He lies on the couch, trying to ignore the very enticing smell coming from the bedroom, and attempts to immerse himself in the Food Network.
“Dean,” says a voice. There’s a hand on his back, and, “Dean,” again.
Dean blinks and lifts his head from where it’s currently being imprinted with the fabric pattern of the couch. A second later, a smell slams into him with, well, as much force as a smell can. He jerks up and awake. “Cas?”
His chest is flushed, and he’s wearing nothing but a pair of heat briefs that Dean guesses he just put on to leave the bedroom, seeing as they’re backwards. Sweat mats his hair and lines his brow.
“I need help,” Cas says, and instantly Dean is on his feet, reaching out to his boyfriend. Cas whines, burying his face into the place where Dean’s shoulder meets his neck.
“I’m so hot, Dean. I’ve tried and I can’t cool off, I can’t—I can’t—”
“It’s okay.” He runs his hands up and down Cas’s sweat-soaked sides. “I’m here. How do you want me?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Cas lifts his head to kiss Dean. “Just want you.”
“Okay.” Dean leans his forehead against Cas’s and tries to think of the ways he found relief during the heats he spent alone. “Okay, I got an idea. Meet you in the bedroom?”
When Dean enters their room a few minutes later, Cas is lying in the middle of the bed naked, cock already hard. His face and chest are still flushed, and when Dean straddles him and lays a hand over his heart, his skin is hot to the touch.
“What’s that?” Cas asks, nodding to the teacup in Dean’s hand.
Instead of answering, Dean takes a piece of ice out and holds it in his mouth while he sets the container atop Cas’s nightstand, in a crowd of UnTied lube, wet wipes, and Advil. Then he leans down and kisses Cas, balancing the ice between his tongue and teeth so that he can swipe it across the seam of Cas’s lip.
Cas’s eyes widen. He opens his mouth, letting Dean press in the ice, moaning low in his throat when it hits his tongue. Dean holds the kiss until the ice has almost fully melted, and then sits up. Cas stays staring at him, wide-eyed.
“Tell me if this is too much, okay?”
“It won’t be,” Cas murmurs, but he nods anyway.
Dean sets to work. Holding another piece in his teeth, he mouths his way along the sharp line of Cas’s jaw, up to his ears, down to his collarbone. Cas shivers as he leaves a smaller shard to melt in his jugular notch, water pooling in the dip of his neck.
He heads downwards, tonguing the ice between each of Cas’s ribs, down to the hard plane of his stomach, back up his other side. He pauses when he gets to where Cas’s nipples are still slightly swollen. “Can I touch you here?”
When Cas gasps out a “yes,” Dean takes the left one into his mouth, laving it between the ice and his tongue, sucking on it with his chilled lips. Cas moans as it hardens, hips bucking upwards. Dean moves on to his right, losing track of time as he alternates between the two.
He stops only to replace the ice after it melts completely. Before he can return to worshipping Cas’s chest, though, Cas grabs his wrist. “I need more.”
Dean nods, kisses him, and then drops down between his legs. He laps at the head of Cas’s cock while using his hand to run an ice cube at the seam of his legs. Cas cries out at the dual sensation, devolving into quieter whimpers as Dean sucks him down. The ice in his mouth has mostly melted, but there’s still a sharp contrast to Cas’s dry and overheated skin.
He's in the middle of going to town on the blowjob when Cas reaches out and tugs at his hair. Dean stops immediately, popping his lips off Cas’s cock and palming the ice he was teasing around his perineum. “What is it?”
“Inside me,” Cas pants. His hips twitch upwards, and Dean can practically see how close he is to coming. “Your fingers. Cold. In me, please.”
“Okay.” Dean kisses the quivering muscles of Cas’s thigh. “Whatever you need, Alpha.”
He snags the bottle of UnTied from the bedside table. With Cas as deep in the throes of heat as he is, the synthetic compounds of the chemicals in alpha come won’t bring total relief, but it should ease the burden a bit. He squeezes it onto his hand and selects an ice cube that’s melted down enough not to have any sharp edges. Holding the ice between his middle finger and his pointer finger, he presses into Cas’s hole.
When the ice first touches his skin, Cas cries out and raises his ass off the bed, but before Dean can withdraw his fingers and check in with him, his hips are back down and he’s squirming desperately onto his hand. Dean thrusts forward to meet him, plunging in as deep as he can. He twists his fingers, pressing the ice against the overheated walls of Cas’s channel.
“Fuck me,” Cas practically snarls, one hand on his cock, the other flailing down to grab Dean’s hair and tug him up for a kiss.
Dean slips a third finger in, which Cas takes easily and willingly. The ice is starting to make Dean's fingers numb, but it’s a very, very small price to pay to make his boyfriend feel this way. He’s fucking Cas as fast as he can and pressing nipping kisses along his belly and the inside of his legs, barely even cognizant of how rock-hard his own cock is.
“Dean, Dean, oh god—”
Dean looks up just in time to see Cas’s back arch up in a bow, skin pulled taut over the hard muscles of his torso, mouth open and lips dark cherry-red from being bitten, come splattering onto his stomach. He pushes his fingers in and out and in and out and in as fast as he can, trying to give his lover everything he needs.
But when Cas falls flat on his bed again, his hips are still jerking in time with Dean’s thrusts. “Dean,” he whines. “Dean, I—”
“What is it? C’mon, sweetheart. Let me take care of you.”
“Body needs a knot. But I don’t—no toys—” Cas takes a deep breath. Dean’s fingers have stilled inside him, the ice almost totally melted.
“Your hand. In me. Please?”
Dean almost comes just at Cas asking for that in such a low, gravelly moan, but he takes a breath of his own and lets his big brain take control for a sec. They hadn’t discussed this before Cas’s heat because, well. It hadn’t really been on either of their minds.
“Are you sure?”
Cas nods, and his eyes are lucid. “I want it. Not just because it’s what my body is asking for. I trust you.”
For some reason, his words make tears prick at the corner of Dean’s eyes. He blinks them away and leans forward to kiss his mate—his boyfriend on the lips. Cas holds him there, hand on the back of his head.
“I want it,” he repeats, breath tickling against Dean’s lips. “Please.”
It goes quickly. He slides a pillow under Cas’s hips to make the angle better (at the expense of the pillow, he realizes somewhere in the back of his mind; there’s no way they’re ever going to get the slick out of that). He pours a generous amount of the UnTied lube onto his hands, ignoring Cas’s muttering about how he’s wet enough already (he probably is, but Dean’s not taking any chances).
His first three fingers slip back into place easily, like they’re back where they belong. Dean pushes in and scissors them, trying to get Cas as stretched as he can. Kneeling between Cas’s legs, he has the perfect view of his hardening cock, and of his fists scrambling at the sheets.
“I’m ready,” Cas says. A trickle of slick leaks out his hole, punctuating his words.
“Okay. Okay.”
Four fingers in and then his thumb, and like that he feels most of his palm slipping in. It’s wet and tight and like nothing he ever even thought about; Cas’s hole is so wide, his rim stretched almost unthinkably far but taking all of it. Dean hasn’t been with too many alphas, but he’s pretty sure his fist outsizes most knots.
Cas cries and comes a second time, his whole body shaking and clenching around Dean. Dean can’t ignore his own needs anymore. As he curls and uncurls his fingers inside Cas, he palms himself as best he can with his free hand. It’s not much, but any pressure is enough, and he spills into his briefs a second later.
His orgasm leaves him feeling like he’s floating. He lies his head down on Cas’s stomach, hand still in him, while he catches his breath.
Dean’s thoughts come back to him a moment or two later. Cas is stroking his hair, rhythmically tightening and relaxing around his fist. Dean makes to get out, but—
“No,” Cas says. “Just a bit longer? Please?”
He nips a kiss on Cas’s hipbone. “Anything you need, Alpha.”
Five minutes or ten minutes or an hour later—time doesn’t exist in the bedroom at the moment—Cas sighs and shifts, and Dean takes it as his cue to carefully remove his hand. Slick trails out on his fingers, a gossamer link between him and Cas.
Dean reaches for the wet wipes, quickly cleans his hands and tenderly wipes around Cas’s hole. Trying not to put too much pressure on the reddened skin he asks, “You want me to put some ice on that?”
“It’ll be fine. I just want to hold you.”
And who the hell is Dean to deny him that?
They rest together, Dean’s head on Cas’s chest. His skin is still warm, but not nearly as overheated as when they got in bed together. As Cas rubs small circles across his scalp, Dean can’t think of another time he’s felt this content.
He’s almost fully dozed off when Cas speaks. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure. Literally.”
“No. I mean, I know you enjoyed it, but…” Cas’s massage slows.
Dean rolls so he’s lying on his stomach, chin propped up on his hand, facing Cas. Cas is always careful with his words, but even so, something tells Dean that what he’s trying to say now is particularly important.
“Heats are difficult for me for a lot of reasons. But one of the worst is the disconnect of my body demanding pleasure that I can’t feel mentally. I feel good physically, but mentally I'm revolted, because I'm enjoying something that alphas aren't supposed to experience. And when I was with Bart, and a few previous partners, they, uh. They questioned if I was really an alpha because of how I so clearly enjoyed the physical sensations while in heat.”
Dean tries to tamp his fury down; he really does, because what Cas is saying isn’t about him, and he doesn’t need Dean’s selfish scent distracting him. He obviously fails, though, because Cas laughs and touches his cheek. “No need to get angry on my behalf, Omega. What I’m trying to say is, you don’t make me feel ashamed.”
He locks eyes with Dean. “I feel accepted; I feel like I don’t need to be disgusted that I just had one of the best orgasms of my life. I feel safe with you. So. Thank you.”
There’s a lot Dean could say. About what he wants to do to the people who ever made Cas feel wrong about who he was; about how he loves every inch of Cas’s body and all the immeasurable depths of his mind; about how if Cas wasn’t in heat, he would ask him right there and then to mate him.
But words feel insufficient, so instead he wraps his arms around Cas’s chest and holds him tight for a minute. Cas rests his hand on his back, and Dean knows he knows what he means.
“Maybe I should shower and eat while I’m mostly lucid,” Cas says wryly.
Dean snorts and kisses him right below his collarbone. Then he sits up, swings his legs over the side of the bed, stands, and pops his back, all in one motion. “Good idea. You get cleaned up; I’ll make something to eat.”
“Make sure to wash your hands first,” Cas calls after him, and Dean laughs all the way to the kitchen.