Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

For the most part, Castiel is content with his work. Although he has imagined his future a bit differently when he was studying to become a doctor – more sterile operation rooms and less scraping together whatever you can find to stop someone bleeding out from a bullet wound, for example – he still thinks he’s better off than most around him.

Castiel has never cared much about any war, past or current, and if his education hadn’t ensured him being spared from being sent to the frontlines, he’d probably taken up his cousin Gabriel’s offer of forging documents and hiding out on a sunny coast in Southern America.

But for all its senselessness, the battlefield has a strange kind of clarity. A defined purpose. People get hurt, and he helps them. Simple.

Despite the harsh reality of what’s going on around him – soldiers staring off into nothingness after a few too many months out in the trenches, boys barely old enough to grow stubble getting torn apart by mines – he feels… useful. He might not be able to save everyone, but without him and his own little army of nurses, far fewer would stand a chance.

He's elbow-deep in a new arrival: a young corporal with a nasty abdominal gash from faulty armor plating. The bleeding’s stopped, but the internal bruising might complicate things. He gives quick, clear instructions to the attending nurse, stripping off his gloves and dropping them in the bin after he’s done all he can for now.

“Patient 13 is starting to wake up,” another nurse informs him.

Castiel wipes his hands on a towel before taking the offered chart. “Vitals?”

“Stable. Sedation’s wearing off faster than expected, though. He’s already shifting.”

Castiel hums under his breath, eyes scanning the file. He doesn’t need to see the name again – he remembers Lafitte dragging him in a couple of hours ago. Dean Winchester. Alpha, combat elite, flagged twice in the past for ‘unsanctioned field behavior,’ but cleared both times with glowing performance reviews and commendations.

“I’ll be right with him. Prep a mild tranquilizer, but leave it out of his sight. I don’t want to use it unless I have to.”

She gives him a tight look, and he sympathizes. Lord knows they get enough cocky soldiers who think they’re actively saving the world with their Alpha posturing out on the field, too stupid to realize they are barely more than chess pieces being moved around in someone else’s game.

Not that Castiel isn’t also just as much another piece on the board as any of them, but at least he’s aware of it, and secure enough in his designation to realize it is simple biology and a bit of luck what you’re born as, not the God-given gift they treat it as.

Winchester is probably much the same, if Lafitte’s accounts of what happened can be believed. Castiel doesn’t know him well, but he has no reason to think they can’t. Pulling a gun on one of your own is a highly punishable offense, and Castiel knows the consequences for Winchester could be dire lest he find a medical explanation for it.

“I’ve got it.” His tone is calm but firm, and while he would never play the Alpha-trumps-Omega card, his status as a doctor alone forbids the nurse from arguing about the matter any more, no matter how badly Castiel can see she wants to.

They can’t afford true privacy, but the cots are separated by heavy curtains woven from scent-dampening fabric meant to keep most pheromones contained and spare the other already-suffering patients additional distress.

Even so, the air around Winchester’s cot is thick and charged, and when Castiel pulls the curtain back to enter and closes it behind him, it feels like he’s standing in the middle of a battlefield.

No matter the undertone, Alpha aggression always reeks, sharp and acrid, like metal left too long in the sun. Castiel doesn’t flinch anymore, doesn’t wrinkle his nose in disgust, but only because long years of practice have taught him control. Still, scents never lie. So he takes a moment, lets himself catalogue the layers clinging to the air. Under the sour, static bite of rage, there’s something else, thicker, heavier. The unmistakable miasma of fear, clinging like sweat to skin.

The patient is awake, if only barely.

He’s flat on his back, strapped at the ankles and wrists, though not aggressively. Just precaution. His head turns sluggishly at the sound of footsteps, but his eyes - though bloodshot - are alert.

Castiel watches the flicker of recognition, confusion, and threat pass through them in rapid succession. No words yet. Just the coiled tension of a man used to violence being the only language that works.

“Sergeant Winchester,” Castiel says, keeping his voice even, unthreatening. “You’re in the medical bay. You’ve been sedated.”

Winchester’s nostrils flare. His fingers twitch against the restraints.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Castiel continues. “I’m the doctor assigned to your case.”

“You got a muzzle to go with all this?” Winchester rasps, voice gravelly. “Or just the chains?”

Castiel doesn’t react. “Only what was necessary to keep you from hurting yourself. Or anyone else.”

Winchester laughs - short, sharp, bitter. “I’m not unstable.”

“You pulled a gun on a teammate.”

“That was-” Winchester cuts himself off, jaw working.

Castiel studies him. “That was what?”

Winchester doesn’t answer. His breathing’s getting heavier, more ragged. His body is tensed like it’s waiting for the next blow, even if it’s not physical. Castiel makes a mental note of it.

“I’m going to run a few scans,” he says, stepping to the side table.

“I’m fine,” Winchester snaps, rattling the chains with the restrained movement of his hands. It visibly annoys him, though Castiel can also tell he’s trying to keep calm. His breaths are too short, his eyes too frantic as they scan around the room, jumping back every second as if he was afraid to leave Castiel out of his sight for even a moment.

He silently commands himself on telling the nurse not to leave the tranquilizers out to see, but he still hopes he won’t have to use them. Though with the way Winchester’s scent is starting to thicken again, hot metal, scorched nerves, something acrid crawling just beneath the surface, it’s a possibility he may need them after all.

“Then the tests will confirm just that, and you’ll be back on duty in no time,” Castiel says, tone deliberately calm, stripped of any authority that might be interpreted as a challenge. He’s careful. Knows that most Alphas don’t take well to being ordered around - especially not ones who’ve served long enough for the habit to calcify into instinct.

For a moment, Winchester just stares at him. Wide-eyed, startled open. There’s something unguarded in the look, something young, even, and for one suspended heartbeat, Castiel almost expects a small, broken Promise? to fall from his lips.

But then the shutters slam back into place. Winchester scoffs, bitter and loud enough for everyone within a ten-mile radius to know exactly how he feels.

“Fine,” he bites out, radiating resentment. Castiel merely nods, already setting the scan in motion.

✪✪✪

Dean doesn’t like the silence. Doesn’t like the way this guy - this doctor - doesn’t flinch when Dean growls, doesn’t even smell nervous.

He doesn’t like the occasional moans of pain of another patient, or the way the heavy curtain is making him feel trapped with nothing but his own stench and the underlying scent of disinfectants.

He doesn’t like being restrained, forced to lay here and keep quiet while his men are risking their lives out there. It’s pissing him off. Which is bad.

Because he’s not supposed to be pissed off. He’s supposed to be fine. Calm. Controlled. The sooner he can convince the doc of this, the sooner he gets to go back. He ignores the tiny voice that sounds a lot like Sam asking why he even wants that.

Sure, he would prefer for this whole stint to blow over. Waits each day for the announcement that it’s done, they’ve won, and everyone can go back to their families, even though it’s less fueled by hope than by habit at this point. But this, what he’s doing right now, this is not a kind of earned reprieve. It’s cowardly and wrong, and the longer Dean’s forced to stay here, the more rumors will spread, and he already has a mess to clean up when he returns.

Because no matter how quick he is with his weapon, if he loses the respect from the other soldiers, he’ll be back to cleaning their guns in no time.

The restraints dig into his skin every time he so much as shifts. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to remind him they’re there.

Dean grits his teeth, jaw so tight it hurts. Over the scrape of metal instruments, he can hear the doctor, Novak, moving around outside of the curtain, efficient and quiet, like he’s done this a thousand times. He probably has.

Dean hates that it doesn’t seem to bother him. He hates how steady Novak smells. No fear. No challenge. Just sterile confidence, and something underneath that reminds him of the charged air mere minutes before it rains.
He hates that he keeps noticing.

Dean shuts his eyes. Tries to focus on breathing. Four in, four out. He did that once, when the suppressors didn’t kick in fast enough and he had to walk it off in the rain for two hours with Lafitte at his side, pretending nothing was wrong.

This isn’t the same.

He sees Tran’s face. Wide-eyed. Scared. Remembers the sound of the safety clicking off.
Remembers his finger on the trigger. Remembers nothing stopping him until Lafitte grabbed the barrel.

Dean’s stomach flips.

He nearly shot at one of his own. He nearly killed a kid. And now he's strapped to a fucking cot like a feral stray, breathing like a cornered animal, with some doctor adamant at proving there’s something wrong with him.

His fists clench again, uselessly, against the restraints.

“Fuck.”

The machine lets out a soft ping, startling Dean into a growl he quickly swallows back down, flushing. When has he gotten so sensitive? It’s a conscious effort to not let his body tense even further than it already is, but he’s wired so tight it’s a wonder the bed frame hasn’t snapped in two.

Novak steps in once more and walks over to the machine, glancing at the screen. Something in his face changes. Not much. Just a flicker. But Dean’s trained to read flickers. You don’t spend eight years in a war zone without learning how to spot the moment something goes wrong.

“What?” he snaps. “You get whatever answers you needed?”

“Some,” Novak says, tone neutral. Too neutral. “Your olfactory receptors are overstimulated. And your hormone levels are… elevated.”

Dean scoffs. “No shit. I’ve been stuck in the same pit of stinking Alphas for months.”

Novak doesn’t rise to the bait. He just walks over to the tray and scribbles something down. “When was your last rut?”

Dean blinks. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m establishing a baseline,” Novak says, not looking up. “Routine. If your suppressors aren’t… working as intended, you could be experiencing low-grade symptoms without a full hormonal cycle.”

Dean bristles. “You think I went off my meds?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you’re thinking it.”

This time, Novak does look at him. His eyes are sharp, but unreadable. “Have you?”

“What? No!” The chains rattle when Dean tries to move his hands in explanation, and he works his jaw at the annoying sound. “I don’t think you rank high enough for an interrogation, doctor.”

Novak, again, stays calm, just blinks at him, and Dean’s suddenly hyper-aware of how his every movement, every breath, every reaction is being tracked and analyzed. He forces himself once more to keep his cool, but the more he talks with the doctor, the harder it gets.

His scent is strong, though not overpoweringly so, and it sticks in Dean’s nose, makes him want to sneeze to clear his sinuses of it.

“Thank you for being honest,” Novak says, even though he of course has no way of knowing that Dean was. It makes Dean blink, his anger momentarily forgotten, until he speaks again. “And you’re right, which is why this is a medical intake. So, when was your last rut, Sergeant?”

Dean works his jaw, yanks against the restraints without meaning to. “I don’t know. Months ago.”

“That’s vague.”

“You have to know they give us drugs for that.”

“I also know they usually take you off them at least once a year.” Yeah, he would know, wouldn’t he, also being an Alpha. Too bad that Dean’s job actually serves to make a change out there, and while Novak might like getting his knot wet for a week in a dirty tent with one of his Omega nurses, Dean just can’t turn his back onto the battlefield because of something as stupid as biology.

“Your files say your last rut leave was over two years ago,” Novak states when Dean doesn’t say anything.

Who does he even think he is? Naomi, the doctor that was here before Novak, never made such a fuss about any of this. Too bad her car hit a landmine a couple months back, now Dean’s stuck with this stickler for the rules.

“Why are you asking me stuff you already know?”

Novak’s mouth twitches, though Dean can’t tell whether he’s holding back a frown or a smile. “Forgive me, I must have forgotten you soldiers exchanged your manners for guns.”

His face doesn’t change and his voice is as dry and deep as ever, and it’s only that absurdity that startles a snort out of Dean. He rolls his eyes when Novak actually smiles at that, his temper rising again. He’s not here to make small talk, let alone friends, goddamnit.

“So I take it I will find your last dosage adjustment in here as well?”

Dean just nods, watching the doctor from below his lashes as he checks through the file. Secretly, he’s glad he didn’t ask. Because he doesn’t fucking remember. He takes what they give him. He swallows the pills – it’s what he’s always done. He shows up for the med checks when the Captain barks his name. That's it. No questions asked.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Novak mutters, more to himself than Dean. “I’ll need your blood.”

“Get in line,” Dean says flatly.

Again, Novak’s lips twitch, and Dean ignores the way it makes his scent mellow out for a second, if only slightly. He hopes the doctor doesn’t notice, but judging by the way he’s quick to scribble some more onto his file, he’s not optimistic about that.

Dean closes his eyes, lets his head fall back against the thin cot pillow. The room smells like disinfectant and recycled air and something bitter under the surface, his own sweat, maybe. His own failure.

He's not unstable. He’s not. And fine, maybe once this is over he’ll let himself take his rut leave, if that’s all it takes. For now, he lets Novak break his skin with a sharp needle and tries not to let his growing sense of despair show in his scent.