Work Text:
For the last twenty minutes, he could feel it coming. Another freaking anxiety attack.
Internally, Dean groaned. They were half an hour out, only so long until he reached a motel where he could deal with his body thinking it was dying for no reason what so fucking ever in the privacy of an irritatingly concerned younger brother.
Not to mention the equally as irritatingly concerned angel in their backseat.
Dean flickered his gaze to his rear-view mirror. Cas was still staring intently out the window, but his gaze didn’t waver with the movement of shrubbery and random signposts outside. In fact, he didn’t seem to be looking at anything. He had fallen back into that freaky trance-like thing he did, where he just got very, very still and verging on unresponsive, staring at nothing with bright blue eyes that seemed to have dulled over the years. Dean often wondered if his subconscious was wondering, reporting back to Heaven or something.
Sammy’s eyes, however, reflected the laptop he was glued to, gaze flickering as he read passage after passage of their latest case. His fingertips hovered over the keyboard, twitchy in the way he got when he was focused. Absolute nerd.
Dean smirked at his own internal monologue, focusing back on the road just as another wave of oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck impaled his chest with even more intensity, as if angry at his attempts to distract himself from it.
Two can play at that game.
‘Hell’s Bells’ filtered through the speakers, and Dean turned it up louder, ignoring the glare Sammy sent his way. Instead, he focused on the words, on the lyrics, on Bon’s voice, on the way the base rippled through his legs.
...Hells Bells, you got me ringing.
Hells Bells, my temperature’s high...
Dean mouthed along with the words, tapped the drumbeat against the steering wheel with a forced-relaxed grip, bouncing his heel in time, anything to force the buzz of nervous energy out of his system, anything to distract himself.
The heat rose to a point where it was flowing down his back in fiery waves, dampening between his shoulder blades and down the back of his neck. It made it harder to breathe in time, but he forced it, quietly, calmly, don’t bring attention to yourself.
...I won’t take no prisoners, won’t spare no lives.
Nobody’s putting up a fight…
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sam reaching for the dial, and he slapped his hand away. Blocking out the protests, he focused harder on the music, on the change in the guitar, on the way the drumbeat thudded beneath his feet, on the rise and fall of Bon’s voice, on the lyrics. It gave him something to do, mouthing along with what was probably a concerning amount of intensity but it was better than paying attention to the still growing ache in his gut and chest and fucking everywhere . His whole body vibrated with this meaningless fear.
...Hells Bells, Satan’s coming to you.
Hells Bells, he’s ringing them now…
His chest constricted, and he let out a breath, effectively muttering the lyrics. He squinted at the road. Why isn’t it fucking working?
The loss of his usual coping mechanism was terrifying, which wasn’t exactly helpful.
Flickering back to the rear-view mirror, his already pounding heart was startled when a pair of deep blue eyes stared back.
Dean swallowed, continued mouthing the lyrics, distract, distract, distract.
“Dean, your heart rate has been settled at one hundred and eighteen beats per minute for the last two minutes.”
For a second, Cas’ statement surprised him so much that he forgot about his current...uh, predicament , which only made it suck that much more the second after. He didn’t look, even when Sammy straightened, paying attention with that damned irritating concern. Even when Cas’ hand settled on his shoulder, he just kept mouthing along, determined for this to work. He would not lose his main coping mechanism.
Cas was talking - he could tell by the incoherent gravel sounding in his ear, but he didn’t pay attention.
...Hells Bells, there’s no way to fight.
…
...Hells Bells.
The grip on his chest tightened as the last guitar riff faded out, and the radio went silent, replaced with the gravel beneath Baby’s tyres and the gravel behind Dean.
When the radio didn’t blast another wave of blissful distraction, Dean simply held his breath, bit down on the panicked tears, refused to give in.
Refused to give in to the humiliation of it. The humiliation of weakness.
He was the older brother, afterall. The grunt, the anchor, the glue that held the broken form of his family together. His strength, both physical and mental, was the one thing he had left to be proud of, and now it was crumbling before him.
His chest killed with the exertion of the breath he held with quivering defiance. He would not be weak.
“Dean.”
His grip tightened on the wheel as he stared with warped vision at the road, willing, hell, pleading for the radio to turn back on, to give him something, anything to focus on other than the angel and his brother watching his walls crack right before their eyes.
His foot slammed on the breaks, distantly, verging on unintentionally, barely felt the jolt of the car stopping in the middle of the barren track.
The hand on his shoulder was warm, intensifying the heat, and if he could breathe he would tell it to piss off because it hurt and he didn’t want it to hurt anymore. The air was tight, tense, like his chest, like his fingers on the wheel, like the fingertips digging into his shoulder, hard, painfully, distractedly, almost...relieving?
The pain leaked from those fingertips in what Dean could only describe as pure, cool relief , and he felt himself relax alongside the clutch on his chest. His eyes drifted closed, and he couldn’t bring himself to care about the tears tracking down his cheeks because the pain was grounding, relieving, dragging him back up for air.
Dean finally let go of his breath.
The grip loosened, and in a moment of panic, Dean grabbed it, pressed on it in a gesture he hoped was as clearly read as he intended.
Please don’t leave me here.
“Dean?”
Sammy’s voice was tentative, cautious, and Dean almost rolled his eyes at how scared he sounded.
Dean hummed back in acknowledgement, eyes still slightly closed, hand still wrapped around Cas’.
“Uh…” Sammy swallowed audibly. “You, uh...you good?”
Dean couldn’t help the short laugh that left him, the pained smirk that automatically grew on his face, stretching his stiff cheeks. ‘Good’ wasn’t exactly the word he’d use.
He opened his eyes, fixed them on the road, before letting them drift to meet Sammy’s. He hesitated, and he could tell that Sammy could tell and that Cas could tell and that his deepest, darkest secret was finally out in the open, whoo-hoo, let’s go, fucking perfect.
And yet, he did exactly what Sammy and Cas most likely expected from him, as they always have and definitely always will. He did what he was known for, the infamous ‘Dean Winchester Trademark Move’. The one thing Sammy had always chastised him for, and the one thing Father Dearest had always admired about him.
“Yep.”
He let go of Cas’ hand, straightened and pressed the gas pedal with an intensity that left no room for questions to be asked. He turned up what he now saw to be the turned down dial on the radio, and ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ faded in.
“Hah, classic.” He threw and easy grin Sammy’s way, ignored the way both passengers fixed him with that fucking concern .
He simply mouthed along, tapped out the beat, nodded in time.
Because distraction and denial were better than admitting to the humiliation of weakness to those damned blue eyes that could pull the safest secrets from any man.