Work Text:
Dean furrowed his eyebrows and slammed his foot down on the accelerator. Whatever Sam had been about to say was cut off when he was flattened against his seat. Obviously Sammy wasn't catching on that Dean did not want to talk about what had just happened. Reaching over to the center console, he cranked the volume of the radio way up. Fittingly, “Back on the Road Again,” by REO Speedwagon was playing. He let a small indifferent smirk find it's way onto his lips as he once again stomped on the gas pedal.
For once Sam left the volume up.
By the time the twosome made it back to the crappy motel, Dean had vented most of his anger out by driving at highly illegal speeds. The music helped too, as it often did for him. He cut the engine and clambered out of the Impala, slamming the door behind him and locking it. Dean shoved the keys in his pocket and pulled out the room key and tossed it to Sam. His younger brother looked at him quizzically.
“I'm just going to go grab a soda. You want one?” he inquired gruffly, not quite ready to let go of his grumpy mood just yet.
“Nah, man. I'm good. I think I'm just going to take a shower and then crash for the night,” Sam replied as he turned to unlock the door. Dean grunted in reply and went in search of the nearest vending machine. He needed to just forget for a bit. Clear his head. Hopefully being out in the crisp, fresh air would help to keep his head level.
Dean eventually did stumble upon the drink machine. It was placed tantalizingly close to the lobby door as if to entice you to spend even more money (not to say that the motel was particularly expensive).
Pulling his wallet out of his back pocket, Dean withdrew a dollar and fed it into the machine. He replaced his wallet in its designated pocket and returned his gaze to the soda machine and swore when he realized his dollar had been rejected. Grumbling under his breath, the already quite irritated man wrenched the dollar out of the hunk of metal and turned the bill around and attempted to feed it back into the piece of junk that way. Once again the dollar was rejected by the vending machine. He repeated the process after flipping the bill over, and then again after trying to flatten the dollar out, and then again with a different bill. Over and over the machine rejected his money, Dean becoming more agitated each time the dollar was spit back out. So far all this process had accomplished was to make his earlier anger resurface, even worse than before. And then finally, after his thirteenth try, he became so frustrated that he lashed out at the machine and punched it – hard. All this process had done was rekindle his previous anger. Having no other way to express his frustrations, Dean continued punching the machine. Over and over and over again his fists smashed against it until the glass front was cracked and his knuckles were bloodied and bruised. Finally he recognized the wetness on his face as his tears and he wiped them away frustratedly.
He had always told himself that he wasn't a crier, but sometimes he felt like he cried more than Sammy – the (supposedly) softer of the two. Dean was supposed to be the strong one. The invincible older brother with absolutely no cracks in his armor, but sometimes he just couldn't be that person. Sometimes he had to let down his walls, even if it killed him to do so.
Slowly he turned away from the stupid hunk of metal he had just finished pounding and slid down so he was sitting with his back against it. Dean closed his still wet, green eyes and tried not to let the tears keep falling. Unwillingly, the fight he had been having with Sam earlier came back to mind. It was the whole reason he was so torn to pieces in the first place. Not the fight so much as what it had been about. Lately Dean's nightmares had been amplifying to the extreme. He was barely sleeping. The thing that really gave him away were the massive bags under his eyes and his constantly glazed expression. Simply put, he looked like crap. Even his appetite was dwindling, which was something even he himself hadn't expected. Even Cas, the deadpan angel, could tell something was up. Then again when it came to Dean, he could always tell when something was up.
Cas' infrequent appearance to the Winchester boys were the bright spots in Dean's life as of late. At first he hadn't really realized it, that or he hadn't wanted to, but it was steadily becoming more and more obvious to him that his feelings towards Cas were more than just platonic. Even though that was the case, he would never admit it to anyone, not even to himself. No, definitely not. Dean Winchester was into women. And angels – well one specifically, the voice at the back of his mind whispered manically.
“Besides,” he muttered quietly, “Even if I was into Cas – which I'm most definitely not – it's not like...” He trailed off. “It would be blasphemy or something, right? I mean...” A gay angel? It seemed like the beginnings of a terrible joke. A joke Dean probably would've told a few years ago. Now he wasn't so sure. No one would ever dream of that happening. Especially not Castiel.
Dean sighed and put his head in his hands. He was angry that he couldn't sleep. He was angry that he was a self-pitying idiot. He was angry that something with very blue eyes was still stuck in his head, no matter what he did. He was just angry. And tired. Oh, so tired. He had been awake for the last 72 hours and could no longer keep his eyes open. Dean's eyelids drooped and then slowly slid shut. He fell asleep right there, leaning against the vending machine.
He must have been sitting there for longer than he had thought because an indefinite amount of time later he was startled awake by the soft sound of someone whispering his name in his ear. “Dean?” It was Cas. The deep, gravelly voice had made the angel instantly recognizable to the Hunter.
“Cas?” Dean mumbled, not really needing to hear the answer to know that it was.
The only response he received was a quiet, “Hmm...”
“What are you doing here?”
“Sitting with you,” Cas replied, looking confused as to why Dean would ask such a silly question.
“You know what I mean, smart ass,” Dean rolled his eyes.
He got no response and for awhile they just sat there shoulder-to-shoulder. Dean and Cas were both waiting for the other to do something – anything, really. Finally Cas spoke up. “Dean? Why were you crying?”
Flustered, Dean scrambled for his usual sarcastic wit, but for some reason it evaded him on this occasion. “I-I don't know, Cas. A lot of reasons. Can we not talk about it right now? No chick-flick moments, remember?”
Castiel nodded, “I remember, Dean.”
Dean stood up and brushed off his dirty jeans. He knew quite well that Cas would sit there all night and freeze if Dean had sat there with him. “Alright Cas, come on. Let's go back to the motel room. I need to crash,” he paused and awkwardly added more to his previous statement. “Well, I mean, you can stay if you want, but you don't have to. Plus it might be weird since you don't sleep, so, uh yeah... Either way, if you're coming, let's just go.”
Not checking to see if the angel was following, he turned around and started walking back to the room. He reached the door, relieved to see Sam hadn't locked it, seeing as his younger brother still had the keys. Dean looked over his shoulder, to see if Cas had followed him back to the motel room, and flinched. “Cas, Jesus, personal space,” he said, for the angel was almost pressed against his back. Cas nodded once and took half a step back. “Thanks,” Dean muttered gruffly, opening the door and stepping inside with Castiel right on his tail. Once the both of them were inside, Dean shut the door and locked it.
“Sammy,” he called, hearing the water running and realizing Sam was still in the shower. “Hurry up in there! I found something,” Dean cast a smirk in Cas' direction.
A look of confusion colored Castiel's face. “I don't understand. Where is Sam?”
Dean chuckled. His mood was lifting, if only slightly. Probably because of Cas standing there looking ridiculously confused. The expression on the angel's face was kind of cute, though if anyone asked he would deny ever having thought it. After all, he had just reminded Cas about not having any girly, chick-flick moments.
“Sam's in the shower,” he explained repressing a smile. And then, figuring that his feathery friend wouldn't say anything, Dean continued talking, “Once Sammy gets out of the shower and drags his ass out here, you two can look for a case or something around this area. I figure we'll hang around for a while.”
Again, confusion etched it's way into Castiel's already chiseled features. “Where will you be while Sam and I are 'looking for a case or something'?”
“In the shower,” Dean deadpanned.
“Oh. I see,” Cas nodded his head. The silence that ensued wasn't exactly comfortable. In fact, it was anything but comfortable. For Dean anyways. Cas seemed to have little problem with silence of any kind. The fact that Dean was pretty sure he didn't have much in the way of emotions, probably had something to do with it.
What felt like ages later, but in reality was only a few minutes, Sam came trudging out of the steamy bathroom wrapped in only a towel. “Uh, Cas, hey,” he swallowed hard and a slight blush rose to his cheeks. Sam walked over to grab his clothes that he had laid out on the bed and then shuffled back into the bathroom to change into them. Approximately two minutes later, he sauntered back out – fully clothed – and sat down at the table, in front of his laptop. Dean motioned for Cas to go over and help him. Sam started when he saw Cas behind him and averted his gaze.
“I'm going to go shower now. Assuming that there's any hot water left,” he only half-teased his younger brother. “You two look for a case in the area. Don't have too much fun now, ya hear?” Dean winked at Sammy and walked to the bathroom remembering to bring his change of clothes. Once he reached the closet sized bathroom, he locked himself inside and stripped down, turning on the hot water and was pleasantly surprised to find there still was some. He climbed inside the cubicle and let the heat rush over his tanned skin, leaving trails of water wherever it went. Dean rubbed, his badly knotted shoulder muscles and closed his eyes. Unconsciously he touched the anti-possession symbol inked onto his chest, directly above his heart. He seemed to do that whenever he was thinking about something that was particularly vexing.
The first thing that came to his mind when he thought of the word “vexing” was Cas, but he pushed that aside for a moment and tried to focus on what he could do to make the nightmares disappear. Dean sighed when he came up with nothing. He started massaging his head to help him think and quickly decided just to wash his hair. He found Sam's shampoo and started scrubbing it into his light brown hair. After a minute or so of scrubbing he rinsed it out and washed everything else. By the time he was squeaky clean, Dean still had not come up with a single thing that he thought could help to make the nightmares go away. Instead of thinking anymore, he just stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. Once dry, he pulled on his clean clothes and stumbled out of the bathroom with his dirty clothes in one hand.
“Hey. I was just about to yell for you. Cas and I may have found something, but it's too late to start working the case now. We can head in first thing tomorrow though,” Sam reported, smiling at his brother.
“Awesome. Why don't we both get some shut-eye then,” said Dean. Then he turned to Cas, “ You, my friend, are welcome to stay, I guess, but if you wanna get out of here we'll see you tomorrow, right?” Cas nodded and then was gone. “Great,” Dean mumbled, “See ya in the morning, Sammy.”
“Night, Dean.”
Dean woke up screaming. This nightmare had been worse than any of the ones previous. He had seen Alistair torturing him, but then it had morphed into something different so quickly that it nearly gave him whiplash. Now it was Dean himself torturing some innocent soul who had gotten dragged into the pit probably for some trivial mistake they had made. Dean had made them scream; he had made them beg for mercy, even beg for death to come again. The worst part of it all was that he had enjoyed it. What kind of sick person enjoys something like that? He felt the wetness once again stream down his face and growled with frustration at himself.
Just then, Cas appeared in front of him. “Dean? What's wrong?” he asked quietly, not wanting to disturb Sam, who had surprisingly slept through his brother's latest episode.
“Everything, Cas. Everything is wrong,” Dean cried, grabbing the lapels of Cas' trench coat. The angel sat down on the bed next to his shaking form. “I just want the nightmares to stop, Cas. Is that so much to ask? I try my best to be strong for Sammy, but he's notice already that I can't sleep. I just can't-”
Surprisingly, Cas cut him off, “Shhhh. It's alright, Dean.” He pulled the Hunter into a hug and ran his fingers through Dean's hair comfortingly. Then, Cas did something even he didn't expect. He started singing an enochian lullaby to calm his friend down. Dean didn't understand what Cas was saying, but he was grateful nonetheless.
Slowly, Dean's eyelids started closing again. Cas' voice was gently lulling him to sleep. Before he was completely unconscious he could've sworn the he felt a pair of lips press to his forehead and a whisper of, “Goodnight, Dean,” but he would never be sure of it. But one thing he would never forget was how Cas, his angel, had sung him to sleep and banished the night terrors. Not forever, but long enough for him to get the best sleep he had had in a very long time.