Work Text:
The shout immediately wakes Dean up.
His eyes snap open. His heart pounds against his chest and every muscle in his body tenses up.
“Don’t make a sound.” He thinks to himself as his mind tries to decide whether this is a ‘get up and start swinging’ or a ‘curl up under the bed and hope that no one finds their way to your room’ kind of situation.
It takes a minute before he realizes where he is.
Vegas. Home. Alone. Safe.
The commotion he hears is coming from his neighbors who seem to be playing a game of beer pong with way too much enthusiasm.
He exhales, punching his pillow and slamming his head against it with a muttered fuck. His chest aches as he tries to steady his breathing and he can’t help the way he flinches when he hears another yell from the next door apartment.
Fuck.
He tugs at his hair and repeats to himself that he’s ok. No matter how many times he says those words though, no matter how hard he convinces himself, his body won’t listen to him. His muscles are starting to hurt from how much he’s clenching them. He knows in his mind that he’s safe, thousands of miles and many years separating him from the danger that he’d anticipated when he startled awake, but his whole body is screaming at him to do something. Run. Scream. Hit someone. Fight. Hide. Claw your way out of this. But there’s no this to get away from and it makes him want to claw his own skin out.
He stumbles out of bed and starts pacing the apartment, searching all the corners to make sure that everything really is ok. He checks a few times that all the windows and doors are locked and that his bat is in its place under the bed. He’s still all keyed up though and he knows that there’s no way he’ll be going back to sleep tonight.
After one last look around the apartment, Dean shuffles back to the room and grabs his phone. He checks the time on the cracked screen: 4 am. Well, at least he managed to catch a whole 2 hours of sleep. He taps against his phone as he works out what he’s going to do now that those fuckers woke him up. His whole body is jittery and his fists burn with unreleased tension. He briefly considers going out to the strip and picking a fight with some random drunk. Maybe a well-placed punch to the jaw and a couple of split knuckles will calm him down. But Dean’s not 20 anymore- can’t afford to be reckless like he used to be back then. He’s got responsibilities now and people expect things from him and that train of thoughts only gets him more agitated.
He ends up playing around with his phone because it’s the least destructive thing he can think to do in that moment. He doesn’t have much on it: A few apps, that stupid Angry Birds game that Seth insisted he download and a couple of numbers. He scrolls through his contact list for some sort of distraction. There’s no one on there that he can talk to, really. Roman is with his family. Seth is probably either sleeping or doing his CrossFit stuff. And all the other numbers on his phone are for takeout or laundry.
He pauses when he sees Renee’s name. They’d exchanged numbers a couple of weeks ago. Their only communication so far was a text from her with a book recommendation and a thank you text from him in return. He likes Renee. They tend to spend a lot of time together in catering, bonding over books and music and stuff like that. They’ve even ridden together a couple of times. But they’re not anything more than work friends. Then again, she’s always been so easy to talk to. Conversation flows effortlessly between them for hours at a time. And Dean needs that right now. He needs the distraction of a familiar voice and light conversation to bring him back down. It’s already early morning in New York so she’s probably up by now. At least he hopes so.
Dean decides on sending her a text first, so as not to wake her if she’s still asleep. He goes with a quick text telling her that he was done reading the book she recommended, and he has to retype the text a few times before sending it; his fingers keep shaking and making him press the wrong buttons.
He’s not expecting her to reply, doesn’t think his text even warrants a response, but whatever; at least this gets his mind off of the need to slam his fists against every wall in the apartment. He’s pacing his room again, phone in hand, when he feels it vibrate.
what did you think???
He’s still sending back a response, fingers stumbling over too-small buttons, when his phone vibrates again, signaling a call from Renee.
“Hey.”
“Hey. Sorry but I just can’t do book talk over text. How was it? Tell me everything. Also did you spend all night reading it or something? Cause isn’t it like 4am in Vegas right now?”
“Yeah… somethin’ like that.”
They end up chatting for about an hour while Renee eats her breakfast and Dean waits for his stomach and his breathing to settle.
He spends most of the conversation focusing on her voice, grounding himself in her laugh. It’s so comforting yet new and exciting all at once and he finds himself more relaxed with every passing minute.
Six months and at least a dozen calls like these later, Renee invites Dean to spend his day off with her in New York. And when he wakes up shivering after a nightmare, she’s right there to bring him back down.
She is softness where he’d expected danger, lightness where he’d expected another fight.
Two years after that, Dean startles awake after hearing the sound of sirens passing by.
But Renee is by his side: a steady weight next to him that signals home. Safe. Protected. He curls up closer to her and lets their breathing synchronize.