Chapter Text
They drive somewhere between vast nothing and the sparse idea of civilization, their thin line between sleepy silence and saying too much.
Or one-sided sleepy silence; to Cas, that doesn’t really apply. But regardless, they’re both quiet. The silence is fragile and rare, the quietest moments Dean has had this week.
They don’t really need to talk.
Dean talks almost all the time if he isn’t alone- he’s skilled in spitting and vomiting out everything but what he truly needs to say.
If he doesn‘t talk and if he says too much in the wrong moment he‘d be unmasked, and so he always balances on the edge he calls „meaningless shit.“
But right now, there is no need for control, no need for worrying. He‘s quiet and tired and that‘s that.
And God, he loves his little brother but he can‘t have these moments around him. He‘ll either use them to get Dean to tip over into spilling out his emotional guts because he‘s too quiet, or turn them into talking again.
Dean not speaking (not being able to) had always been a bad sign when he had been a kid.
When any kind of non-sulking silence falls, Sam fights it ferociously even if Dean doesn’t want him to.
They have the need to cover it up because silence in their family always had meant tenseness, boiling feelings, something terrible.
And so they‘ll both squirm through words none of them need to hear because Dean clams up and Sam can‘t help it but to do the same.
Dean raised him, after all.
Weirdly, with Cas silence means peace. It‘s the moment he lets go of a discussion as a peace offering; it‘s when they ponder over any- and everything; it‘s the quiet moments when they share a look, knowing something everyone else doesn’t, just quick before guilt sours Dean‘s gut.
Because he hates Cas for it. He hates how comfortable he makes him feel. How warm and soft and- and vulnerable. Because he‘s not supposed to feel that.
And then he remembers it‘s his own fault, that it‘s unfair to hate him just because Dean‘s a damned fool and not good enough for anything, and then he gets angry at that fluttering feeling, and at Cas because he’s the reason it exists again.
It‘s all an endless cycle.
He rubs his fingers over the steering wheel. Exhaustion sits in his bones, a deep constant. The night before them doesn‘t stop.
There‘s a thick clump caught in his throat, pulling him down, and before he gets the absurd urge to talk, to rip out his words with his own hands, he pulls over and looks Cas in the eyes. The blue, blue (lovely) eyes that swallow him whole.
„I need to take a nap“, he says and almost cringes at how raw it sounds. He‘s tired. They’re too far away from, well, everything.
„I will watch over you.“
Dean hates how intimate it sounds, like a faint memory of hearing his parents talk quietly in the front seat, and how both of their foreheads seem hellbent to gently collide against each other.
He breaks away first, and Cas takes that as his cue and gets into the backseat.
It’s still weird seeing someone else than Sammy sitting next to him in the car, and it’s even stranger falling asleep with someone else in here.
He curls up on the seats on his side and haphazardly tugs his jacket over himself.
And he listens- listens to Cas in the backseat, the clump finally settling into his stomach like the Chernobyl‘s elephant foot of human emotion.