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Dean likes ghosts, he really does, because they're funny and good company and always give the best advice (they're dead, they know the deal), but sometimes they take it too far.
Sometimes they walk into his dreams.
They are dead, and sometimes they forget that. Sometimes they float in when he's sleeping, float into his body and through his soul, crushing him, freezing him, and he catches glimpses of life, but mostly of death, and things he shouldn't see, things nobody should see, things beyond death– and it's empty, it's so empty, is he having a heart attack? His chest flares in pain, like he's been sucker punched. His soul doubles over. Everything is too bright and too dark and he can't see.
Bobby's death is particularly horrible. Jody's is slow and painful; she's dying in a hospital and her son is an atheist praying. Victor's is a heavy, pressing tragedy. His hurts the most, in every way.
Tonight he sees Jess, he is Jess, she's got a crush on a boy and she's lovestruck and walking home from a date with him and falls asleep with the stove on, and he's there, she's dreaming about him. He's tall and handsome and so kind. An hour later she wakes up abruptly and smells her own flesh burning and faintly remembers she forgot to call her mother yesterday. It's her own fault she's dying, and her mother is going to cry. She's going to wear black. Her heart is going to break into sharp ceramic pieces. They're not going to have a body to bury.
Dean wakes up screaming out for someone to help him. He's not Jess. He breathes in, he breathes out, he isn't Jess.
Castiel is there, suddenly, by the bed. It's too much, all at once; Cas is there with a glass of water and he's wearing Dean's old college shirt and a ratty pair of sweatpants and Dean wishes, stupidly, that Cas hadn't heard him scream.
"It's going to be okay," Cas says, and it sounds like something he heard on TV, it doesn't sound right but it sounds like he means it, it sounds like he cares but he doesn't quite know the right thing to say. It's okay, Dean understands.
He drinks the water, and Cas sits tentatively on the edge of the bed. Dean kicks off the blankets. "Sorry," he says. "You can go back to the other room, if you want."
"Tell me about her," Cas says. Dean doesn't ask how he knows.
"Fire," Dean tells him. "There was a fire." Just like his mom, just like Victor. He thinks there are tears in his eyes. He hopes Cas can't see them. He hopes Cas never sees him cry. It's more than the fire. Jess was young and beautiful and in love. He wishes he'd seen her life instead of her death, but it's never that easy. It's never okay.
Cas sits there, on Dean's bed, and keeps sitting there. Dean does too; Cas stares at the wall and Dean stares at the side of Cas's head, a little bit, he follows Cas's profile with his eyes and blushes down to his collarbone when he gets caught looking. He shifts his gaze to look to the window. Cas pulls his knees to his chest, and at some point light starts filtering in through the window. It's morning. Very, very early.
"Breakfast," Dean says, and it comes out hoarse. "I'll make you something, I'm off work today."
"Okay." Cas slides off the bed and bounces forward a little. Then he turns around and looks Dean in the eye.
He doesn't say anything, just stares.
"You okay?" Dean says, and puts a hand on Cas's shoulder. Somewhere above them, there's the sound of a lightbulb shattering.
"Yes." Cas nods.
"Good," Dean says. The fabric of his college t-shirt is so soft under his hands. He forgot. Cotton. Cas likes cotton. Cas is electricity.
Dean thinks he knows who shattered the lightbulb.