Chapter Text
Wake up.
Wake up wake up this isn’t real.
But Castiel had never been able to pull himself out of this particular dream once it got started. Like his mind needed to make sure he relived every terrible moment, like he’d gone too long without feeling the horror and guilt.
Or maybe this was the only way he could remember the Alpha.
This time it started from the beginning, Castiel standing outside the house, staring up at Mrs. Gordon’s silhouette in the upper window. It’s a Wednesday, but he had called that morning to let her know he would be by today instead of tomorrow with groceries. He’d been helping Mabel for nearly a year now, sweet thing all alone who repaid his kindnesses with homemade applesauce overloaded with nutmeg.
Door unlocked, as always, in the kitchen, opening cabinets. He knew where all the groceries went. But she didn’t come creaking down the stairs, or even call out a welcome. So quiet in here, strangely, thickly quiet. He looked around for the equally elderly dachshund that should be tangling his feet by now begging for affection.
He knows the beats but there are rules. Start from the beginning meant feeling the early prickle of uneasiness before it turned to fear. And it would, his dream self both knowing and, as yet, still unaware.
A soft shuffle sent him drifting into the living room, heavy limbs under water, slowly peering under the coffee table, where the dog was curled beneath it shivering with fright, too scared to even whimper. No amount of coaxing could soothe the animal and Castiel began to feel the cold seep of dread slither down his spine. He looked up at the ceiling, and something stopped him from calling out. She was up there, or someone was up there and this house groaned with every little movement but there was nothing but silence and it pressed down against his eyes and the back of his throat.
At the stairs he paused, and he felt his hands itch for something heavy to hold, some small protection that he tried to tell himself was ridiculous. She was an eighty year old woman and he had seen her in the window but he couldn’t shake this sense that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
With light steps he kept to the far edges of the steps so as not to set off the alarm of groaning wood. The bedroom door was open, there was movement. There was movement and he inched closer.
The dream never let him see the next part moment to moment, just flashes in sequence. Mrs. Gordon lying twisted on the sunny yellow quilt, smeared red-brown with blood and mottled with the purpling viscera. Her two faces. Two faces. One the scream-frozen death mask drawn across her waxen features, milky eyes wide and mouth grotesquely open. The other turning to look at him with clear, furious eyes, blood smeared lips, globs of fat and skin hanging from unnaturally sharp teeth. The twin even wore a matching dress, which he remembered thinking, above all this horror, the most impossible thing to reconcile as the old woman had recounted on several occasions making it herself.
He didn’t remember the struggle, if he was attacking or defending, but the thing that wore Mrs. Gordon’s body was thrashing against him and he hadn’t ever been able to recall how they made it to the hallway, but they were there and by some providence it was her body and not his own that gravity claimed. She tumbled hard down the stairs and landed with a sickening crunch in a pile at the bottom.
This part was always the longest, the clearest, he’d had whole dreams of just this. Standing at the top step, looking down. She was tucked into the lading at a diagonal belly down, but her head had been folded backwards so that it laid upside down, the back of her skull resting between her shoulder blades so she was looking at him. Staring at him. Breathing ragged through her bloody fangs and watching him. Still alive, still twitching life and testing range of motion and attempting to rise on its broken legs.
Rushing down, leaping over, the heavy weight of the enormous silver mantle cross in his hands and crashing down.
Again. Again.
Blood and bone and choking from the ruined skull beneath him and inhuman grunts in his own voice until there was silence.
And then the Alpha was there, training a gun on him, on her, green eyes looking over all of it with a calm Castiel didn’t understand.
“Are there any more?” A real voice, a human voice that was asking him like he knew what was going on.
“More?” Because the idea couldn’t exist, there couldn’t possibly be more things like this out there in the world. “No. She….she looks like Mabel but she was…..” His eyes trailed up toward the bedroom, and someone was going to have to collect her. Move the body, clean the sheets, cover the gaping wounds that had been chewed into her flesh.
“Listen, this?” The Alpha pulled Castiel to his feet and motioned with his gun hand to the figure beside them. “This was what needed to happen, you did good. You hear me? But it looks like Mabel, right? So I need you to clean off and get out of here. Go home, burn your clothes and have a drink or twelve. I will take care of this. You were never here.”
And the Alpha had smelled so calm and sure, and Castiel let it wash over him for a moment, taking the small comfort gratefully. Then the hand at his arm was squeezing, turning him, pushing him out the door.
And Castiel woke with the same sense of regret. That he never got to say thank you, and that he could never remember the man’s face.
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One would think California was a progressive state. Los Angeles and San Francisco loomed so large in the country’s imagination that it was easy to forget the whole huge stretch of land in the middle. And most of America was mildly amused that Prop 328 even made it to the ballot, California was just so liberal there was no way it could pass. Except it wasn’t, not in the way it’s metropolitan centers were. So while the Omega strongholds across the country had already passed similar measures earlier that year, the denizens of Los Angeles had just tutted at their news feeds, because what could you expect from the flyover states, and scrolled down to the story about a highway chase in Florida involving someone’s stolen Burmese python and a naked, unemployed mall Santa.
It was everywhere in the news for months, but you know how these things go, nobody thought it was a real possibility with real consequences until the vote came in. And leaving it to the voting public meant that the only people that showed up at the polls were the elderly and politically paranoid who had been successfully whipped to a frenzy by Naomi Milton and her backers in the Omegas for American Prosperity group. But the moment Castiel heard the words, Prop 328 has passed by 4,600 votes, he’s a thing possessed. Of course, there would be a lawsuit, but he knew better, he had enough insider knowledge to understand the clock was counting down.
It was a witch hunt, he knew that, late night talk shows knew that, the crowd he ran with, but fuck, what the hell year were they living in that a whole section of society could be effectively forced out like this? The OAP, the conservative talking heads, the rich with their security detail and gated homes thought of all of this in the abstract, how could it be anything but a benefit to know just who among the population was an Alpha? They’d been marginalized for decades, slowly bred out of society with the advent of the Timley-Smith test that detected with 97% accuracy the likelihood of a fetus presenting Alpha at puberty. And now those that remained would no longer have access to the one thing offering them a measure of anonymity.
Allerapax hadn’t been the only Alpha suppressant, but it had been the most powerful and back when the only god was money, the lobbying groups played the antitrust courts like a fiddle until it was the only major brand that remained. It could stave off the ruts, both the monthly and Omega induced kind, and it muted the senses that caused Omegas the most concern. An Alpha on Allerapax couldn’t scent the difference between an Omega in full heat and a Beta on a boring Tuesday. The aggression, the possessiveness, the mating desire were all dialed back to such a degree that they were nearly Beta, and that was exactly what Alphas on the drug presented themselves as. And sure some people claimed they had A-dar, but a pile of muscles could just mean a person worked out, an eye-raising bulge could just be some douche stuffing his jeans. And some people were just bossy sons of bitches, Castiel had been accused of as much by anyone that knew him for more than a month.
For people whose livelihoods were on the front lines, it was officially time to panic. Castiel was the poster child for an Omega sympathetic with the plight of the Alpha, his holistic health store sold three versions of herbal suppressant, and he had a personal concoction that mimicked Allerapax so closely without the side effects that he could only sell it to those in the know under the table for fear of the FDA or a lawsuit for breach of patent. But fortune favors the well prepared, and despite everything between them, his mother had at least taught him that. He’d spent every last dime of last month’s profits on building his stores, he stayed up all night for nearly a week straight prepping batch after batch. The only thing he hadn’t anticipated was the swiftness of the verdict.
---
“And this just in, we have word that a verdict has been reached in Cory vs. the State of California. Prop 328 will be upheld, and furthermore all pharmaceutical grade Alpha suppressant will become illegal to sell in the state of California as of midnight tonight. Back to you Tom.”
Castiel was out the door so fast he almost forgot to put on shoes. Shit there might be riots, small scale sure, but it would get worse once people figured out what this really meant. Fuck, it was actually happening. With the commercial stuff gone, he and other sellers like him would be the only game in town. People would see a the supply cutoff in the pharmaceutical sector as an indicator that all suppressants were banned, which might actually happen now that the OAP had succeeded, and they would freak the fuck out. Alphas would stockpile, then steal, profiteers would do the same just so that they could sell to desperate Alphas on the black market. His shop was a target. He was a target. As he careened down the nighttime street, bleary-eyed and upright only from adrenaline, he prayed and prayed that he could at least make it to the shop before anything was broken. A smashed window was blood in the water and all his work would be for naught if that was the case.
Castiel pulled up to the store twenty minutes later, nerves shot, convinced it would be a looted, burned out shell. But the street was quiet, everything intact. He unlocked the front door and turned on the lights, hustling to the back to unlock the store room. By the time he returned to the counter, a hunched over figure was already lurking at the door. Castiel’s heart skipped, Alphas weren’t prone to violence without cause, and he would make sure they had no cause for such, but it’s still unnerving, an empty street, an empty store and the first pangs of chaos sounding in the public conscious.
“Hey, you need some help?” Nice and calm, soothing voice and no sudden movements. The figure swayed a bit, maybe with indecision.
“You uh, you got all kinds of stuff here right, for like, problems and stuff?” Castiel had bought recreational drugs with more directness than that.
“Come in, you need suppressant?” The figure tripped inside at the word, as if someone might hear and know what he was. “Don’t worry, how much do you need?”
The man was older than he expected, the jeans and hoodie suddenly seeming very out of place on the large frame softened by a middle aged paunch and bald head that pops into view when he removes the hood. It was as if this executive director of sales and marketing had put on his hoodlum costume to go skulking for off brand suppressant in the bad part of town. Castiel almost wanted to laugh but for the fierce tension pulling across the man’s face. This could go either way, he realized, this is a man that would get what he wants, preferably without force, but violence wouldn’t cost him any sleep either.
“A month, or no, two months. How much?” And he can see he’s stealing himself for the gouge.
“How’s this, they’re still $45 each, but I suggest you get three months at least, with all that’s going on it’s going to take me that long just to get the next batch in order. Price will stay the same as long as it does for my suppliers, but if you know of anyone that needs some help you let me know and we can try to work something out.” The man looked him over before handing him the cash and taking the proffered brown paper bag.
“You’re a good man.” And it almost sounds like an accusation.
“I just don’t like what’s happening, they shouldn’t be doing this to you, to any of you.” The man just looked him over again, nodded tersely and turned back out into the night.
Under any other circumstances Castiel might celebrate, he was busier that night than he had been during regular hours all week. Holistic health products not being the most profitable industry, but he’s making cash hand over fist. The steady stream of clients keeps up into the night. Most are nervous, scared they’re doing something illegal buying he wares, but he does his best to sooth their fears, assure them it’s not and he would maintain supply as long as he could, but really he feels that it’s the presence of other Alphas that keep the mood calm. Being an Alpha was something of a dirty secret, but here were all these other people, normal people with normal lives that lived with the same burden. It tugged at Castiel’s heart more than once, to see the kind of camaraderie that could form in a disaster bloom among his customers that night.
By four a.m. it’s finally quiet. Castiel locked the remaining supply in the back, straightened up and closed the shop. He felt good, he’d done well, and that blissful self-congratulation kept him from noticing the group of men across the street tracking his path back to the car.
“It’s Castiel, right?” He looked up in surprise at the face smiling down at him. It’s the middle aged man, his first customer, still in his ridiculous outfit, but this time accompanied by three other, younger men. Castiel looked around nervously, nobody was that friendly at this hour of the morning, and the fact that this man was back, and somehow knew his name sounds off the warning bells in Castiel’s head. He doesn’t really have a shot at running, and something is telling him running would be the best possible option right now. But they’re surrounding him in a casual way that tries to pass itself off as non-threatening. Best to play it cool and see what they want.
“Yes, sir, can I help you?”
The man’s smile was an imitation of kindness that only made his eyes look crazy.
“Why yes you can young man, my friends here are also in need of your product. They hate to be a bother but I’m afraid they just have to insist.” Subtle way of saying they were all Alpha. Castiel fumbled with the keys in his hands, trying to swallow the building panic.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve closed for the night. You can come back tomorrow morning, we open at nine.”
“Well that won’t do.” And Castiel doesn’t see the punch that hits him, it’s the ones you don’t see coming that knock you out the flattest, so going from standing to curled on the cement in the space of a breath is a bit of a surprise. But having four older brothers has taught him a few things, one of which being how to take a punch and keep on swinging. Keep moving, the pain wasn’t going to wait for you to cope and if these men were anything like his brothers, neither would your attackers. So up and at em’, fear does wonders at masking pain. Castiel was under no delusion that he has enough skill to take out all of them, as lovely as that sounds, his best strategy was maintain distance, create a whirling snarling cyclone of fists and teeth and knees so that it’s impossible to pin him. Don’t let them take you to another location, that’s death. Don’t let it get to the ground, all fights end on the ground and being outnumbered meant that would also be death. Just keep them back.
That’s all he can think of as he feels his knuckles connect and split skin and be split open in turn, he bites something soft until it gushes, head butts a nose, slams a foot on an instep, uses every dirty trick in the book and thanks Gabriel for all those times he had refused to play fair. His muscles burn and he realized the adrenaline dump would only last a little longer and after that his limbs would turn to jelly. But they weren’t giving him an opening, so when something that’s either a shinbone or a baseball bat connected with his side, it snapped the last thread of fight in him and he crumpled in a heap. They’re cursing at him, and if the way his body jerked against the rough scrape ground is anything to go on, kicking him too. There’s a hand in his hair, yanking him up like a marionette. Zachariah, Zachariah, someone’s yelling. Then he’s being dragged, pause, dragged some more. He knows this place, this is his store. The shelves at this level could use a dusting he thinks through the haze. Alphie was small enough, he’d get him to take care of that tomorrow. They were stopped now and resume kicking him while one of them worked on the store room lock. Get the register, and it’s such a pity since he won’t make payroll without it.
And then everything went silent, and for a moment Castiel wondered if they’ve beaten him deaf. But no, they’re just frozen, and he can feel the crackle of tension arresting all four men dance along his own skin.
There’s someone else here.
Castiel can smell him before he can see him, it‘s wood smoke and leather and an unidentified sub-current opening his sinuses with a singing sensation that brings his vision a little sharper into focus.
The figure stood squarely in the shadow of the aisle leading to the front door, hands at his sides and while his posture seemed relaxed, the scent of him was screaming at Castiel. Alpha Alpha rip tear fight. The others can smell it too, the younger men beginning to edge in to the threat, the older one, Zachariah, holding them off with a gesture.
“Well hello there son, looks like we’re all after the same thing, right? This little Omega bitch has been stockpiling and we were just of a mind to relieve him of his ill-gotten gains, redistribute the supply to those that really need it. Like yourself I assume.” There’s that lilting spark of crazy in his voice as he tried to pull the intruder in with knowing pleasantries.
“So what, you’re Robin Hood and his merry band of dickheads?” The voice low and even, the humor in it just biting enough to indicate this man hasn’t an ounce of fear of them. Castiel laughed through the sting of a split lip, partially at the man’s joke, partially at the thought that Google maps must have lead every crazy Alpha in town right to his door. He had been propped up on his hands on the ground, but a swift crack to the temple took care of that, his head bouncing off the floor when it connected and punching out an aborted cry. There was a growl to his left, Alpha’s still growl? It seemed like such an antiquated thing.
“You touch him again and I’ll open you up like a birthday present.” Castiel was dizzy, the edges of his vision pulsing grey and black, which upset him only because he didn’t want to pass out before he got to see this new guy make good on his threat.
These assholes were in the shit now that his Alpha was here.
That’s a strange thought, he’s coherent enough to recognize that. Thinking it was strange was also strange for some reason, he wondered if he had a concussion. He’s not afraid, though he‘s pretty much certain he was going to die tonight. That’s not good, right? You’re supposed to be afraid of dying because it helps you do things to not die. But he feels calm. He thinks of his brothers and a game they used to play when they were kids, coolest way to croak. He would win for life, well for their lives at least, Gabriel would be so jealous. Torn apart by Alphas, what could beat that? Maybe sharks.
Noises, thumping and smack of skin, grunts, howls, cries of pain. Castiel pushed himself back up. It’s all shadow and blur, and he can’t pick out who’s who but the injuries are being announced in different voices so the new guy must be giving it back to them pretty hard. One of them falls by Castiel’s side, the wet-metal tang of the man’s blood and fear heavy enough that Castiel can almost taste it on the back of his tongue. They had all forgotten him down here, so when the firefly wink of streetlight hit the blade of the man’s knife as it’s pulled from a pocket, Castiel never considered for a moment that it was meant for him. The man is up, but somehow some primal impulse in Castiel is quicker. His arm snaking low along the ground to grab the hem of his jeans, and the man goes down hard at the unexpected hindrance. Most of his body was cold numb, so it had to be crawling with his few remaining functional parts up the prone figure. The knife was in his hand before he thinks to look for it. The man beneath him still a bit dazed so it’s easy-calm when Castiel placed the point to his chosen spot and pushed smoothly into an armpit. He’d once heard it was a very painful place to get stabbed. Huh, that had been so simple, the blade just went right in there like he’d stuck it into ice-cream, and the man hadn’t even fought him, just clenched up, face twisted, mouth a silent O. Castiel blinked up at his rescuer and got a solid lock on a set of brilliant green eyes blazing savage that never waver even as he snapped someone’s elbow in the wrong direction.
A spark pops in his brain, recognition… or déjà vu. Suddenly it’s too much, having intensity like that directed at him, the Alpha staring and Castiel unable to look away until his head is swimming and he thinks he may be sick because his hands still feel the phantom sensation of plunging the knife into welcoming flesh. There’s another figure now, light shining off a bald head looming behind the Alpha and he’s still staring at Castiel, doesn’t see it, Castiel just manages to rasp out behind you before slipping into blackness.