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Serene. That was the word Castiel was looking for. He could feel it still in his chest and he remembered how it used to be. He could breathe in and taste the air, rough and stinging. It scratched the soft skin of his pale, pink cheeks, even when wrapped in furs and coats. It beat against the white streets and the pillars of the palace garden and the houses that lined the shore. Mama didn’t let him go there, whispering that it was too dangerous for little fawns, but even the harbor was quiet when he walked through the narrow streets with their many steps, slowly guiding him down to the water. The people went about their business quietly and Castiel would put his head on the tables of the stalls, watching the fishermen work, watching the salesmen dispute over how to price the curious objects that weren’t from here. He’d receive apples and dates and little pieces of fabric that felt soft in his fingers and he could touch his hand to the thick wool of sheep that had come from beyond the forest. Castiel didn’t know what lay out there, on the other side of the city walls and the forests. Mama didn’t speak about it, not to him, but Castiel was too young to be bothered by the secrecy. He let the sheep push at him, pressing their noses underneath his coat. “They like you. They smell it in you, dear,” the owner said in a light tone and Castiel continued to pet their ears lovingly. Mama had pushed him into the bath afterwards, worried like that time Castiel had played with a boy that had accompanied a delegation, coming back home smelling like “the barbarian wilderness”. “We don’t want you to smell like the stables,” she told him, furiously rubbing lotion into his ears and his curly hair – too long now when the mild winter breezed through the city. “You belong here.” Of course he did, he didn’t know anything but here .
Towards the other end of their city, where the streets leading away from the capitol hill sloped down, gently like the gardens of their palace, the air changed. The shadows where deeper, bluer and cooler. The moisture in the air was different, more fragrant, less biting. Castiel would hang on to the hands of his Mama and aunt and wander the little villages that were built close to the trees. Castiel liked that place better, Mama liked it better too, but she told him that people couldn’t always sink their feet into the mud and sniff the fragrance of the barks of young trees and the foliage overhead. They weren’t animals. But Castiel liked to feel the earth beneath his fingers and the forest all around him. When he asked if they couldn’t just live there, in a small house close to the tree line, Mama looked frightened. Castiel didn’t know what was bad about living out of the city walls, but he didn’t ask her again.
He realized when he was six that the reason for his mother’s fear had been the dangers that lay beyond the forest. He had known nothing about politics and territorial wars or the fact that he didn’t really belong to the place where he had spent his childhood in. He hadn’t known that his Mama and aunt always held on so tight to his hands because Castiel wasn’t safe and could be given away when the tides turned. And he was. He was allowed to kiss his mother and tried to be calm when the king pulled him out of her arms even though he was terrified by all the odd smells of burning trees and dust of broken walls. The air tasted wrong and he was put into a little carriage that was dark and smelled ashy, like the forest after it had been burned down. He was in that dark space for so long he felt that he would never be able to wash off the scent of cinders, but there was light after hours of travelling and hands that pushed him into clear, cold water. “Poor lamb, you reek of deer,” they said and washed his old home away.
The place he was brought to was different, cool and lonely. The mountains were so high up that Castiel felt that he could float off into the endless blue skies and get cut by the ragged lines of the snow tipped stone giants. It was odd up there, where the grass was scratchy and the stones were covered by moss and little white flowers that looked like stars. The houses were small and wooden, with stones on their roofs and he could hear the wind rattle against the walls as the sky was filled with an ocean of dark clouds. Even in the summer it was cool. At night he could see stars, so many stars when he looked up from where he was tucked against Michael. Gabriel told him that the right word for Michael’s home was “scary” but Michael tended to say that it was majestic up here. The hills and the mountains weren’t the high columns and white houses of his mother’s kingdom, but they did feel the same after a while.
Castiel felt better when he was down in the fields though, with the rough mountains in the distance. The pasture he settled in was a happy place, less lonely and everyone told him that this was the right place for a lamb to be. Maybe they were right. Castiel loved his little house and the bright flowers that surrounded it. He loved the stream that marked the outskirts of the territory. He loved the fresh, clean scent, the vibrant colors of the grass, the blueness of the sky and the trees around him.
But the pasture too was made up of frontiers and boundaries and places Castiel wasn’t supposed to visit. Up the hill, around the foot of Michael’s mountain, led Castiel to a cool, barren region, where snow fell even into the lower regions. The forest behind the small mill where Castiel got flour for bread opened up into what seemed to be an endless field of grass that smelled of dry, cracked ground and something unpleasant, rotten. And beyond the stream was a deep forest of old trees where the ground was covered in moss and ferns. It was a place where Castiel’s steps were muffled and he could hardly be traced by the people on the pasture. There were no roads or paths, but Castiel found his way, marked the barks, tied flowers and empty glass bottles to the lower hanging branches. It smelled fantastic here, wild and untouched, rough and so alive. Sometimes Castiel just fell down on the ground, books, fabrics and herbs scattering around him. He loved to push his hands into the damp ground and his nose into the soft moss. His friends just laughed and helped him wash when he came to them with clumps of dirt in his hair.
Nobody ventured in here and Castiel wasn’t even sure who this place belonged to until he was grabbed by the waist and saw the forest rush by him.
The forest was Dean’s.
The village Dean lived in wasn’t small. It had a beautiful open square arranged around a stone and brass structure that held a clock and bell. The roads were paved with cobblestones and the houses lining the streets must have been beautiful once, with a vibrant life filling them, the shop windows lit and colorful, the displays in the ateliers not yet dull and covered by dust and cobwebs. Many houses were empty. Sam told him that this village had been abandoned in the war which had also cost Castiel his freedom. Dean had claimed it for his pack not that long ago and it was prospering under his careful hands. Even though nobody put chains on him, Castiel wasn’t supposed to go further than the line of trees, so for Castiel his new home was once again made up of lines that he couldn’t cross. The crossroad with the weathered guidepost in the west, the forest’s edge that he knew would lead him back to the pasture in the east, the uncultivated fields in the north and the hills in the south. Dean was rarely stern, but he had clear rules for his pack members and Castiel, even though he was sure that he had more than enough skill to slip out of Dean’s grasp, decided that he was interested in this odd little pack. He was interested in the personal stories of the people that had followed Dean, not wolves or sharing blood like Sam or Adam. They were people that had seen something in Dean and decided that the hardships of following a young alpha with a tiny pack was worth it all. People that sometimes came and went, unlikely friendships and love that extended far beyond his territory. Castiel was keen to see how Dean took something abandoned and made it alive again. He wanted to see the village around him change and regain the splendor that he imagined it to have had over 10 years ago. And Castiel was more than intrigued to hear news from all around the world for the first time in his life. All corners of the world that Castiel could no longer visit or had never even heard of before came together in Dean’s workshop or in Jo’s tavern when Charlie or Bela came to visit.
So he decided not to escape, even though he had plenty of occasion, and stayed instead.
When it became clear that Dean wasn’t handing Castiel over to whoever had asked him to carry out the abduction, he received a rather spacious room in the attic of Dean’s house. It had been empty at first, but was spotlessly clean and lacked nothing. Dean followed every request and then every suggestion with a patience and at times even meekness that Castiel hadn’t expected from an alpha wolf. But the empty room turned into Castiel’s room and when he started to take advantage of the open doors in the village, he realized that he felt a comfort here that he had never felt before. Not in the kingdom of his mother, or the mountains, or the pasture.
Dean’s forest and Dean’s village had a freedom to them that went beyond the physical limits of walls and the boundaries only visible to wolf eyes. Here Castiel had a choice for the very first time to decide what he wanted to be. He could dive his hands into the earth, come home muddy and Dean’s ears would perk up, pleased to see him covered in the soil of his home. He could give the alpha advice, shy at first, but when he noticed that he was actually being listened to, constantly and more insistently. Until Castiel’s opinion was vital for any decision Dean made regarding his pack, until their pack’s prosperity was what Castiel thought about, instead of how to further his own goals to move out of Dean’s sphere of influence.
Dean had seen the potential that others denied him and when he asked Castiel to stand by his side, shyly after he had joked about it for weeks before, Castiel had been free to tell him no. But he said yes. Dean was all that Castiel wanted in a mate. He was gentle, caring, nurturing, humble, but also passionate, cocky, inventive and protective.
He was home. And this home wasn’t serene, or majestic or the “right place” for a lamb. It was that one place where Castiel felt comfortable and at ease. Here where it smelled wild and alive and Dean’s laughter rang through the house and Castiel could turn his face into Dean’s chest, feeling warm and taken care of.
“You are starting to smell like me,” Dean said gently, pressing a kiss to the marked back of Castiel’s neck.
“Do I?” Castiel asked and turned his head to smile at him. “Because you smell like me too.” He was rewarded with a pleased grin.
“Then let’s make sure it’ll stay that way. We fit, right?” Dean asked, gently pulling at Castiel’s ear. Castiel nodded.
“Yes… We fit,” he agreed, pressing his face into his pillow, breathing in the warm smell, enjoying the weight of Dean’s body pressing down on his own. “This is where I want to be,” he promised, feeling Dean gently bite, then lick his neck.
“Good…” Dean breathed against his skin. “I’m glad.” Castiel closed his eyes, humming contently. Before he drifted off his mind soared over the no longer familiar streets of the Deer kingdom and the far removed mountains that he couldn’t see over the forest canopy. Even the pasture was so far away. But he was warm and happy and unconcerned.
“I’m glad we’re together,” he whispered and fell asleep to Dean pressing sleepy kisses down his back.