Chapter Text
The shower felt amazing and he took the time to scrub every inch of his skin until it was pink and free of all grease and oil. He washed his hair twice to make sure it didn’t smell of the shop and then grabbed the brush and the orange stuff he used to scrub his hands and under his nails. Once he was satisfied that they were also free of dirt and grease he used his pumice stone on his callouses. By the time he was finished his hands were baby soft and his skin was glowing. He shaved, dried and styled his hair, applied his deodorant and then went to get dressed. He had less than a half hour before his date would be there and it would take at least twenty to decide on what he wanted to wear.
Charlie had been right about what he should wear. As he slid the blazer on and looked at himself in the mirror he had to admit, he looked really good. He cleaned up nicer than most people realized and when he did, he looked like the model he’d been for years. Hopefully Castiel would be even more attracted to him like this. He crossed his fingers and hoped that was true.
At seven his doorbell rang. His stomach did a flip as he went to answer it. He took a steadying breath before he opened the door but the moment his gaze fell on the Alpha he forgot how to breathe.
“Hi,” Castiel smiled wide at him. “Wow, you look...I have to be honest, you’re gorgeous. You look really good like this. I still think you look amazing in a tee shirt and jeans but this is really nice too.”
Dean blushed and smiled as he finally remembered to inhale again. “Thank you. You look fantastic too.”
Castiel smoothed a hand down the front of his button down. It was neatly tucked into a pair of crisp jeans and he looked really good.
“Are you ready to go?” He asked.
“Yes,” Dean stepped out onto the porch and closed the door. Once he’d locked it he followed Castiel down to his car. He was impressed by the Alpha’s manors when he opened his door for him. As Dean settled in his seat he went around to the driver’s side and got in.
“I have to admit, you look like you belong on the cover of GQ like this.” He said as he backed out of the driveway. Dean chuckled, pleased that the Alpha thought that.
“That’s because I am a model. Well, not because of it. More like, I’ve been modeling for years, so I know how to clean up.” He explained.
“You’re a model? Seriously?” Castiel’s eyes were wide when he glanced over at him.
“Seriously,” Dean nodded. “My mom took me on my first audition when I was two. From there I did it for about twenty five years on and off. I had my last gig a couple years back and I’ve been contemplating getting back into it. For me at least, the money’s pretty good. My agent says I have a pretty face and that makes me desirable for ads and commercials.”
“Commercials, that’s not modeling, that’s acting. You’re an actor too?”
“Well, if you count standing there and throwing my jacket over my shoulder in slow motion while the woman in front of me has her hair blown back as she adjusts my tie, then yes, I suppose I’m an actor. I have done a lot of cologne and synthetic pheromone ads the last ten years or so.” Dean replied.
“Wow, I’m very impressed. The first time I saw you I thought you were beautiful enough to be a model but I didn’t think you were actually one. I can’t say I’m surprised though. You must have a lot of Alphas showing interest in you.”
“Eh,” Dean shrugged as he crossed his legs. “I’m kind of particular. Most are really rude and condescending, and they don’t like that I can think for myself, or that I want to think for myself, and they don’t like that I am a successful business owner that likes to work with my hands. I often get told that I’m pretty, and then they obscenely tell me what I should be doing with my pretty mouth. So yeah, I’m particular.”
“I’m sorry they treat you like that. I’m not like that. You’re beautiful, that’s true, but I would never disrespect you. I want to get to know you.” Castiel told him. His sincerity was clear in his scent. Dean smiled. He was pleased to hear the Alpha say that.
“So you own your yoga studio?” He decided to start getting to know the Alpha now. They could talk more over dinner but he was beyond curious and didn’t want to wait to get started.
“I do. I’ve had it almost two years now. I’m happy with how well it does. I selected the area because of the demographic. I knew I had a higher chance of success if I placed my studio in an area full of middle to upper class single mothers. So the downtown area was where I knew I had my best chance,” Castiel explained. “I like it, though having the front tagged less than a month after opening was quite infuriating. I’d barely gotten started and I was forced to hire someone to clean it off. I tried scrubbing and I got most of it off the window, but I couldn’t get it off the brick. I was upset when I saw they’d tagged your shop. When I drove past that night to go home I noticed that it was off the windows and there was a man outside stripping the paint off the doors. I think the punks that did it used the type of spray that eats through paint. Over the following few days I saw several men that I recognized as your employees out there stripping the rest of the doors in the early hours before the shop opened, and in the evening after it closed. It didn’t take more than a few days for the doors to be completely stripped and repainted. I think the fresh coat of paint makes the place look nice. It looked nice to start with but fresh paint makes anything look better. My front door was fine, it was gray and the paint was fairly new but I wanted it to pop, so I painted it red. I think it looks better, and people notice my studio more now.”
“The red door does look nice,” Dean agreed. That was what he’d first noticed about the place, before his attention had been drawn to the large window and the room inside. “Did you always want to own a yoga studio?”
“No,” Castiel replied with a smile. “I was a dancer, since I was five actually, and I danced with a ballet company for over a decade. I love dancing but the traveling was killing me. I wanted someplace I could call home, and I wanted something I could do that I could still have room to dance in my off hours. My studio doubles as a dance one. I dance for myself now, because I don’t want to be out of practice. I’ve always been flexible and have had excellent coordination but I’ve seen what happens when someone stops dancing for twenty years and then tries to do it. They’re never quite as good as they once were. I thought that if I ever decided I wanted to do it professionally again, I’d at least be in tip top shape. I realized this year though that I don’t really want to do it anymore. There is a lot of physical pain that comes with dancing and I suffer a lot less of it now that I’m able to do yoga and not be forced to wear shoes at all if I don’t want to. I still don’t want to stop dancing. It’s something I love.”
Dean was not surprised in the slightest to learn the man was a dancer. He definitely had the body for it. “Are you from here? Your dialect, you lack that Kansas twang. Me? I’m from here, born and raised in Lawrence. You sound midwestern.”
“You’d be right. I’m from Illinois,” The Alpha smiled at him. “You have a good ear.” Dean was a little surprised to learn that he was from Illinois, like he’d found out in his dream.
“I lived in California for a long time and I was the odd one out. People asked me all the time if I was from the south. I learned to recognize the various California dialects, but I learned to recognize others too. A lot of people flock to L.A. to start their careers, though many never get to really do what they went there for. I’m one of the lucky ones that did.”
“I am still in shock that you’re an actual model. I’ve never met a model before.” Castiel pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant just outside the downtown area. It wasn’t a place Dean had eaten at before. He hoped the food was good.
“I’m nothing special. I model clothes and cologne, and once I was in an ad for televisions. I really just sat in a chair next to a TV with my hand on it. I was supposed to make it look classy. Pictures don’t tell you much of anything about a person. I was supposed to make the ad appeal to people with more money because the TV’s they sell are expensive. The truth is I’m a country boy that grew up playing ball in the streets with the neighborhood kids and swimming at a watering hole. My family was middle class. My dad was an engineer that spent most of his adult life welding, and my mom was a florist. I definitely wasn’t the snobby guy I was supposed to look like in that ad.”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with middle class. My family wasn’t wealthy either. My dad died when I was ten so my mom raised my sisters and I by herself. She was a CNA for years but she somehow found the money and time to go to school to become a nurse. Things got better after that but I was already part of a local ballet company and when I turned eighteen I auditioned for the American Ballet Company. I was accepted. A ballet dancer doesn’t make very much which was why I worked so hard. I moved to the Boston Ballet Company because the pay was better. It allowed me the chance to save some money.” Castiel explained as they made their way from the car to the restaurant door. He held it open for Dean before following him inside.
“Who leaves Boston and moves to Kansas?” Dean was curious about his decision to move from such a big, busy city to one that moved so much slower.
“I wanted someplace I could afford to open my own business, and where I could afford to buy my own home.”
“Are you from the Chicago area?” Dean asked. Castiel smiled and shook his head.
“No, I grew up in a podunk town in the middle of the state, a place called Holly Creek. It’s not even on most maps. It’s just outside Salem and has about two hundred residents.”
“Wow, that’s small,” Dean quieted as they were approached by a hostess. She led them to a table and once they were seated, set a menu down in front of them. “Have you ever eaten here before?”
“No, but I heard the food is good, and they have steak. I love a good steak.” Castiel replied. Dean nodded in agreement. As wolves they craved meat, and steak was something most enjoyed, himself included.
“Steak sounds really good.”
Their server came and took their drink order, but left them time to peruse the menu. There were so many different dishes with meat but since Castiel had mentioned the steak that was all he could focus on. When she returned with their drinks she took their orders and was gone again.
“So tell me,” Castiel sat back in his chair and smiled at him. “You’re from here, do you have family here as well?”
“Yes,” Dean nodded. “My parents still live in the house I was born in and I have a brother. He and his mate actually live across the street from them. I live two blocks away from them.”
“Are you older or younger than your brother?”
“Older, by three and a half years.”
“Ah,” Castiel nodded. “I am one of the middle children. I have an older sister and two younger ones. Adina is older, Hannah and Hael are younger. Addy is five years older than me but Hannah is nine months younger. Hael is four years younger than her.” Dean stared for a moment before looking down at his hands. What were the chances that the man would have three siblings with the same exact names as the ones from his dreams? It wasn’t like Adina and Hael were common names.
“Those names, they’re different,” He took his glass of Pepsi and sipped at it. Castiel’s head was tilted and he seemed to be studying him.
“Our parents are religious. We’re named after angels. Are you ok?”
“Oh yeah, I’m peachy,” He replied a little too quickly. When the Alpha arched one eyebrow he sighed and decided he might as well come clean. Well, just a bit. “I had a dream, um, a-and we knew each other in it. You had way more siblings but three of them were named Adina, Hannah, and Hael. There was a Naomi, a Hester, and an Anna too. Oh, and a Rebecca and a Rachel.”
Castiel’s other eyebrow shot up to join the first one. “I had that many sisters? Lord I wouldn’t know what to do if I had that many!”
“You had four brothers too,” Dean replied, smiling sheepishly. Castiel’s jaw went slack.
“There were…” He counted on his fingers before looked up at him with wide eyes. “Thirteen? There were thirteen?!”
Dean shrugged and took another sip of his drink. His cheeks were burning but he refused to acknowledge it.
“Wow, I just...I seriously don’t know what I would do with that many siblings. I’d probably lose my mind. The three I have were not easy to grow up with. Adina, she was alright, but Hannah was whiny and Hael was the worst. As the youngest she was defiant and she was a tattle tale. I admit though, I tormented her. She drove me nuts though, so it was pretty much payback.”
“Sam drove me nuts growing up. He was a tattle tale too, and he was forever breaking my stuff,” Dean said. “He got better as he got older but I was off to college by then so I wasn’t there for him to drive crazy anymore. I only saw him on break, and only until he left for college. Then we mostly talked on the phone. Christmas was when we would both go home.”
“So you dreamed of me. That’s really interesting. Was there any particular reason why?” Castiel leaned forward, resting one elbow on the table. His expression was curious.
“No, not really,” Dean shook his head. “It just happened one night. I was surprised by it when I woke up the next morning.”
“So that’s when you dreamed I had all those brothers and sisters?”
“Um…” Dean realized he was digging himself in deeper.
“It wasn’t , was it,” Castiel smiled. “Do you dream of me often?”
Dean frowned and dropped his gaze to his hands again. He should have kept his mouth shut.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Castiel leaned even closer. The Omega looked up at him curiously, waiting to hear what he would say. “I dreamed of you too. Do you know what that means?”
“No,” Dean was being honest, he’d never heard of strangers dreaming of one another. “What does it mean?”
“Well, there is an ancient lore that talks about true mates. It’s said that they will dream of each other. True Mates aren’t supposed to exist anymore because people will take whoever they feel they are most compatible with as their mate, but every once in a while there will be a story talking about people that dreamed of one another, frequently too. I’ve had several about you, though I was not dreaming you had twelve siblings,” Castiel laughed. “What exactly was I doing for a living? Did I do yoga?”
“No,” Dean smiled softly. “I can’t remember what you did in a few of them, but that particular one you were the vice principal of a private school.”
“A teacher,” Castiel said thoughtfully. “I wanted to be a teacher when I was a pup, but I wanted to be a dancer even more. I suppose I’m a teacher now. Maybe that carried over into your dream.”
“Maybe,” Dean conceded that there could be some truth to that. “You were happy as a teacher.”
“I’m happy now with what I teach,” The Alpha said. “What did you do in that particular dream?”
“I was a movie director,” Dean laughed. “A famous one too.”
“Interesting,” Castiel said with a smile. “I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that you used to live in California. I’m sure you knew directors if you were making commercials.”
He realized the man was right. “I did know a few. They weren’t blockbuster movie big but a few would have people recognize their names if they heard them and oh...that makes sense now.” He tapped his chin as he realized one of the names from his dream was the name of a director he knew.
“What did you just realize?” Castiel asked.
“That one of your brothers in my dream has the same name as a director I knew. His name is Gabe.”
Our real lives carry over into our dreams quite often. I once dreamt that you were a race car driver. It sort of makes sense since you work on cars.”
Dean couldn’t help but smile. “A race car driver? That sounds cool but way too dangerous.”
“That’s what I thought too. In another one you were a single mother with three pups. They...weren’t mine. I believe you’d had them in vitro.”
Dean had been taking a sip of his drink and nearly dropped it as he hurried to set it down.
“Jesus! In that particular dream, it was the most realistic and intense one I’ve ever had. I had three pups! An eight year old little girl named Emma and twins girls, Charlotte and Sophia. They were seven months.”
Castiel’s jaw went slack. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Dean nodded quickly. “This dream stuff is for real?”
“Absolutely,” Castiel pulled his phone out and began tapping away on the screen. “Those are the names of your daughters in my dream. They were yours in some of my dreams, but more than anything I wanted to be their father. Being that I felt it was real in my dream I meant as their step. In others they were ours together. It’s strange that the names and ages were the same. Here, this is one article about the dreams.” He handed Dean his phone and while the Omega read the article in full he drank down half of his Sprite.
“Wow.”
“Wow indeed,” Castiel gave a quick laugh. “Did...you dream of anything else?”
Dean blushed, something the Alpha didn’t miss.
“We had sex, didn’t we.”
“Y-yes,” Dean whispered. “Yes we did.”
“I bet it was phenomenal,” Castiel grinned. “Every time I dreamt of it, it was so amazing I’d wake up and...well, I’d have to change the sheets, if you get my drift.” He winked at the Omega when he looked up at him. Dean’s cheeks reddened even more.
“Um, me too. I thought it was because my heats were close. The one with my daughters, that was the most intense and realistic one of all. I woke up and cried because they weren’t real. I wanted them, but…”
“Yes, I know. I cried one morning too. I’d been bouncing one of the twins on my knee and telling her how beautiful she was. Then I woke up and she wasn’t there. My heart broke,” Castiel confessed. “But I think...I think they are real, they’re just...not here yet.”
It clicked very quickly what he was saying. Dean’s heart thudded hard in his chest.
“You think I- we will have them?”
“I think that yes, we will. We’re truemates, we’re meant to be together and I think those will be our daughters.” Castiel replied honestly. Dean stared off into the distance as he tried to wrap his mind around the idea that truemates existed.
“Wow. I could...I could really be a mother?”
“Do you want to be?” The Alpha asked. He nodded emphatically.
“More than anything!”
Castiel smiled and reached across the table to take his hand. “I want to be a father more than anything, but I want to have my mate at my side. I could adopt but I don’t want to raise a pup by myself. Something felt off, like a part of me was missing. When I saw you that first time, it was when you were looking in the window. I was in a position and when I saw you, I nearly fell over. I remember meeting your stare but then you were hurrying off. I couldn’t go out and talk to you, I had a class and all, but I wanted to. I’m a bit shy though and I wasn’t sure of your orientation, or if you could even be interested. Your friend Charlie assured me that you were. It was the night of that first time I saw you that I had my first dream. I was alone in my studio, dancing to music I’ve danced to a thousand times before but I saw you through the window. I ran outside but you were gone. It was a very brief dream that I woke quickly from. I hadn’t been asleep very long and it took me a while to get back to sleep. Once I did, you were right back in my dream. This time I ran outside and you were still there. You told me your name and I knew it was the truth, I felt it. I took you in my arms and kissed you.”
They spend the time leading up to when their food was brought to them in a discussion about their dreams. Dean pulled up more articles and they read them together as they ate. He was growing more and more excited because this meant Castiel was supposed to be his. The beautiful blue eyed man across from him was meant to be his mate, and the father of his children. As they talked he had a hand against his belly, wondering what it would be like to be pregnant. Hearing from Gilda and his brother what it was like was one thing, experiencing it for himself was something else entirely.
“So what now?” He asked. “What does this mean for us?”
“It means whatever we want it to mean,” Castiel replied. “But I know what I want. The question is, what is it that you want?”
“You,” Dean replied honestly. There was no reason to be embarrassed now, not if this was something they were both experiencing. The smile he received was blinding.
“Really?”
“Yes, so what is it that you want?”
“You,” Castiel replied.
“Ok, now answer me, what does this mean for us?”
Castiel squeezed his hand before lifting it and kissing the back of it. “I think it means you’re my mate. Of course I don’t expect you to just let me into your bed, and honestly, I’d prefer to get to know you more before we take that step. So how do you feel about going out with me again tomorrow night? I know a place where we can walk a moonlit trail. It’s supposed to be very romantic. My friend took her mate there when she was courting him. Does that sound like something you’d like to do?”
“Yes,” Dean felt that flutter in his stomach again as his heart began to race. This was it, he was going to formally be courted and when it was over he’d have the mate of his dreams and be on his way to having the pups he’d always wanted. “I would love that.”
“We’ll get dinner and then after dark we’ll head up to the trail. It overlooks a lake and is supposed to be really pretty. Meg says it’s gorgeous and her mate loved it. I think we will too.” Castiel told him.
“I’ll wear my knee brace,” Dean decided. “I can walk, so don’t worry about that, but my knee cap was damn close to ripped off and I needed surgery to repair it. It’s still healing so I’ll just wear my brace and I’ll be fine.”
“You’re sure?” Castiel asked. “I don’t want to cause you pain.”
“You’re not. Do you think if I started doing yoga it could help? I’m doing physical therapy right now. It’s why I was starting to think about getting back into modeling again. I’m paying for it out of pocket and it has depleted my savings account. I want to have money for pups. I mean, I still have money in my savings, but it’s running out fast. I need the therapy for my knee though.”
“Don’t worry about money, ok? Do your therapy and I’ll ease you into some simple yoga so we can get your muscles stretched. Jumping straight into the more advanced stuff could cause things to tear. We’ll take it a little bit at a time, and we can do that at my house where it’s quiet and no one can interrupt and distract us.” Castiel kissed his hand again. He wanted the Alpha to kiss his lips but for the moment this was acceptable.
“But we need the money if we’re going to have a family. I had twenty thousand but I’m lucky if I have five now. I have to check my bank account.”
“I have money saved, and I have a large house. It’s bigger than what I need as a single Alpha, so I think we could easily raise a family there,” He leaned in and his smile suddenly became wolfish. “So I have to ask because the curiosity is eating at me. Was the sex as good for you in your dreams as it was for me in mine? Because like I said before, it was out of this world in mine.”
Dean laughed louder than he’d meant to but that was funny. “It was the best I’d ever had.”
“Good, at least I was able to rock your world. Hopefully in reality I can too.”
Dean smiled wide and squeezed his hand. “I’m looking forward to it.”