Ahh, the lack of smut. Basically I wanted to introduce DeanandCas the unit, before I rounded out the family side of things. So this is a fairly quick round up of their relationship/pack.
Dean wakes up with a furred chest rising and falling beneath the fold of his ear. The biscuity scent of musk creeps out of the soft hair under his nose and he sniffs it lightly, eyes closed and legs folding up as he tries to stay near the warm bulk.
Castiel's jaws creak as he yawns, nuzzling close to the ratty blanket underneath him. Dean can't remember feeling this warm before, he hasn't slept next to another living thing since he was with his parents.
His stomach makes a small rumbling sound. Castiel makes a noise that sounds like a smothered laugh.
By the time hunger prompts them to abandon the safety of the den there is no longer a question of Castiel leaving Dean's side. Neither of them mention it, and Dean offers him half of the rediscovered burger.
That's how their pack is formed.
Dean usually stays in his dog form all the time, scavenging for food and shelter and sleeping under a covering of fur and with the protection of teeth and claws. Castiel however, values his humanity slightly more and spends a lot of time as a human, stealing clothes whenever he shifts back and forth, and sleeping rough like any other teen on the run.
No one's looking for him after all.
Dean compromises by finding an empty gas station on the edge of town where they can shift back to human and spend the night. He does it grudgingly but without being asked, and only on especially cold nights does he insist of sleeping as a dog. Privately he admits he sleeps better as a man, but he isn't going to let that on to Castiel.
It takes less than a week for Dean to readjust to spending time as a human, he still lacks social graces but Castiel isn't exactly clued in on social norms, so it works out. The main change is that he was last human just as puberty was kicking in, and he's never had anyone around who was even the same species as him, so now he's woken to it in a rush. It's not exactly a big deal, they're both in touch with the lower impulses of both their human and animal sides, and both of them relish the new bond between them.
That's kind of another reason Dean submits to being human some of the time – he'll wash as a dog, eat like one, sleep like one, live like one. Screwing like one would just be creepy. Not to mention that Castiel is a lot bigger than he is when they're transformed and there's no way he's going to admit he can't, you know reach.
They spend the days circling a few miles from the gas station, looking for food, bits of clothing or anything else that they can drag back home between the two of them. Then at night they shift back and go to bed, though really it's more a nest than anything else.
Despite never having had access to the education system or internet porn, neither of them are exactly stupid. And after find a particularly good way to rub against each other, they get down to it as often as they can.
Having lost touch with humanity at the age of five, Dean doesn't even know there's a word for what he is, for what they're doing, until Castiel notices and attempts (patiently) to explain homosexuality. Dean thinks it's a pretty strange and that surely, from a breeding point of view, people must eventually mate whether they feel like it or not.
Cas is adamant that they don't, with all the stubbornness of someone who learnt something at the age of nine and refuses to let it go. He'd had to sit though Gabriel explaining why he had a boyfriend and he was finally getting to use that wasted time for something.
Privately Dean just thinks it's because Cas is Cas and that's the end of it, but the other boy maintains that at some point Dean would find at least one other man attractive.
Dean stubbornly insists that if it hasn't happened yet it won't.
Cas just sighs and snuffles his collar bone, sucking on the side of Dean's neck until he stops complaining.
It'll be years until Dean catches Castiel leaning against the corner of their couch, apartment curtains drawn as he reads a book on child psychology and wonders aloud if they were disturbed from becoming 'sexually mature' at such a young age.
Dean insists it's the least weird aspect of their relationship, and that Castiel's councillor is an asshole.
At sixteen neither of them had such worries, and eventually, after much experimentation, discomfort and resentment, they managed to find out for themselves how they were supposed to fit together.
At eighteen Castiel pointed out that they were old enough to work, old enough to rent a roof over their heads rather than crouching underneath someone else's. Dean found a bicycle repair shop that wasn't too strict on background checks, and he learnt to but his hard won technical skills to use, reasoning that if he can sew up a cut in his own stomach there's really nothing he can't learn how to do.
They begin to lose their more primitive edges, leaning instead into the comfortable domesticity of having a home. More house pets now than wild dogs. Dean works and Castiel keeps their home as clean as a couple of rooms, a mattress on the floor and a refrigerator can get. At night they still sleep as people, but sometimes they shift and go out, chasing each other or rats or other strays and falling asleep in a hedge somewhere.
It takes very little in other words, to bring them together and for them to work for a normal life, now that they have the other around to bolster them.
They're each the end to the other's story, the resting place after a long struggle.
But they're also the end to someone else's story, which begins in a general store in Pontiac, Illinois.
