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Dean drags himself through the halls of the bunker, unsure of which feels heavier--his beaten body or his broken mind.
Generally, he’d claim his least-favorite monster is a witch. They’re sneaky and unsanitary and a pain in the ass. But tonight? He’s not a big fan of werewolves, either.
Especially ones that outsmarted him and his brother and managed to mangle a couple more victims before the hunters took care of business.
Dean stops at his bedroom door and pounds his fist against the wall. The boy and girl were set to graduate high school next week, and instead, their parents get to bury them.
He stands at the threshold of his room for too long, a hand on either side of the doorframe and his head hung. Eventually, his screaming muscles and the freshly-bandaged claw marks on his ribs register, and he allows himself to step inside. But he doesn’t shut the door. Not completely. He can’t be fully trapped with his despair, so it stays open a crack.
Rummaging through his dresser, he numbly thinks he’s due for a round of laundry. He accepts his last clean t-shirt--a well-worn gray one--and chooses his hot dog sleep pants over sweats. The two don’t really match, but who cares? They’re soft.
Dean climbs into bed and throws his blankets over his legs. Propped up against the headboard, he stares into the middle distance. Normally, his headphones would be his savior right about now, but even those seem useless tonight.
He closes his eyes with a deep sigh and then unlocks his phone.
***
If there’s a better feeling than zipping down the highway after a successful hunt and a hot shower, she doesn’t know it.
Scratch that.
Actually, that feeling can be improved upon at night, when traffic is light and her truck’s speedometer flirts with triple digits.
She only travels 10 miles before her phone vibrates. Her brow scrunches, and she lets her gaze flick over to where the device is mounted on the dashboard.
The Caller ID announces it’s Dean, and her stomach flutters.
She answers immediately. “Hey, you. What’s up?”
Three seconds of silence prove to be her limit. “Dean? Are you there?”
“Yeah. Yeah, sorry.” He clears his throat, but it doesn’t help his dejected tone. “I just needed… I just needed to hear your voice.”
She’s lucky she doesn’t swerve right off the road. A variety of emotions hit her like a bug on a windshield, but she swipes them all aside with a steadying breath. Her focus lands on what she can do for him, the burdened, selfless man who stole her heart years ago.
The man who needs her.
“Want me to tell you about my day?” she suggests. So she can talk, and he doesn’t have to think.
A rustling registers over the line. Her best guess is that he’s settling into bed.
“Please,” he responds.
She cracks a half-smile and considers where to begin. “Mm! So, I met the most eccentric professor. Folklore studies. The dude had zero books in his office, but had a dozen bookshelves full of maquettes. There was barely room for a second person in that place…”
Fifteen minutes fly by as she covers the college campus, the motel with a jacuzzi but no air conditioning, and the oversized load she passed on I-80 that was, hand-to-God, a gigantic toilet.
Dean’s replies to her comments gradually decrease, and his voice grows syrupy. Finally, a yawn from him causes her to pause.
“You sound exhausted,” she observes without heat.
“Yeah,” he mumbles.
“I can let you go.” Not that she wants to. Another option occurs to her. “Or I can stay on the line while you get some sleep.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he counters softly, and it’s clear he’s only saying it because he hates the thought of troubling her.
Those butterflies dance again.
“It’s fine,” she insists. “I’m just drivin’.”
Her grip on the steering wheel reaches white-knuckle level as she waits for him to give in.
“Okay,” he eventually agrees with a rough swallow. “Thanks.”
“Anytime,” she nearly coos. Suddenly, their connection comes with a mild echo, and she realizes he put her on Speaker.
With a warmth in her chest, she wonders, “Comfy?”
A faint “mm-hmm” tickles her ears.
She doesn’t want to make Dean talk anymore, so she turns on the radio. It gifts her a soft rock station immediately. Sending a thank-you to serendipity, she lowers the volume.
She bites her lip, hesitating, and then starts quietly singing along.
His gentle snores join in before the first song fades out.
***
Dean jolts awake to the bunker’s entrance slamming shut. Damn, that thing is loud. Which is for good reason, but it really sucks early in the morning. Why Sam likes to jog at the ass-crack of dawn, Dean’ll never know.
After taking a few seconds to gather his bearings, he runs his palm around the bed until he locates his phone. It slid off the pillow during the night and got lost near his bicep.
“Sweetheart?” His voice is all gravel. He licks his lips, trying to moisten his throat. “You still there?”
“I’m here, Dean.”
The returning tension in his chest eases a bit, just from hearing her again. He exhales, and refuses to ponder what that means.
A brief knock sounds on his ajar door.
“Sorry, one sec,” he regretfully tells her. With a groan, he pulls himself into a seated position in the center of his mattress.
Now more presentable and prepared to give Sam crap for not using the garage door when he came home, Dean addresses his visitor, “Yeah?”
The door opens the rest of the way. She appears with her phone in one hand, a box and cup carrier balanced in the other, and a smile brighter than sunrise.
***
“Sam let me in,” she offers casually. After a beat, a chuckle escapes her as she revels in Dean’s dumbfounded expression.
She ends the call, pockets her phone, and strides toward him. “I brought sustenance.”
Dean watches as she places the two large coffees and the grocery-store cherry pie on his nightstand.
“Pie for breakfast?” His face compares to a child’s on Christmas morning, and combined with his sleep-tousled hair, it’s almost too much for her heart to handle. If she doesn’t look away, she might get teary. Or kiss him. Neither of which she will allow herself to do, so she concentrates on sitting on the edge of his bed.
“It’s dessert time somewhere,” she states with a shrug and reaches for one of the plastic-wrapped forks she grabbed from her truck’s overflowing glove compartment.
Dean accepts the eating utensil, but makes no other move. She sips her coffee while he stares, still half-tucked underneath his blankets. She’s not sure if it’s all due to shock or partly because he’s not fully awake yet.
She grasps his to-go cup and extends that to him, too. “Maybe you should start with this, cowboy,” she suggests with a wink.
If he surprises her by taking both of their drinks and shoving them back onto his nightstand, then he absolutely floors her when he gently trails his hand down the length of her arm.
Every muscle in her body clenches while she processes receiving such a touch from Dean Winchester. Perhaps she’s the one who is not fully awake, because she sure as hell feels like she’s dreaming.
Incredibly, his unexpected gesture was only a precursor.
Before she knows it, Dean has his arms around her waist and his face buried in her shoulder.
His desperation has her responding on instinct. She holds him back, a palm pressed between his shoulder blades. Her free hand lifts to his hair, and she lightly scratches her nails through his bedhead.
“I’m here, Dean,” she echoes her sentiment from earlier. “I’ve got you.”
Driving for eight hours straight was definitely the right decision.