Work Text:
It goes like this: Dean dreams again, every night.
The three of them settle in the bunker, restless and awkward and re-learning how to live a life not quite full of monsters, and after a few months of a strange contentment, the nightmares come back with a vengeance. Dean barely sleeps at night, spends the days trying to look inconspicuous, trying to keep his cool. He supposes a life of violence and blood can’t be so easily shed, and in the face of this glaring domesticity, his mind returns to his inner demons rather than the ones that used to lurk outside.
So he deals with it the only way he knows and keeps his fears shut and close to his heart, where they won’t disturb the peace that finally reigns on his, Sam and Cas’s shared home. After all, Sam is well, Cas is alive and so long as Dean can keep them close and kicking, he doesn’t care about making small sacrifices.
His room is far enough from Sam’s that his brother won’t hear him pant and beg at night, but that doesn’t keep the fallen angel from being aware. He’s heard Cas walking past his door on his nightly strolls, but he has never brought the subject up. After all, the angel has his own things to worry about; he seems to be unable to grasp the concept of regular sleep, and he drifts awake for three or four days on end, keeping the books in the library company through the night, until he drops out cold somewhere and sleeps like the dead for twenty straight hours.
Sometimes, when Dean can’t take his nightly visions anymore, he’ll join Cas on the couch at three in the morning and they’ll watch a movie, silent and content in each other’s company. Cas will sit with both feet on the couch, his fingers sneaking beneath Dean’s thigh seeking warmth, and Dean will feel grounded by that little point of contact, sheltered from the bloodshed of his dreams. On some of these occasions, surrounded by darkness and the presence of Cas and the brink of blissful sleep, Dean will wonder about that thing that used to dance between them before Cas’s fall, and feel that same, old dull pain knocking against his heart.
—-
One night he’s having an especially gruesome nightmare. He remembers this kid’s face so vividly, and how blood poured out of her beaten mouth as she begged to him for mercy, how her throat rasped while he twisted her toes, one by one. How she heaved and her chest burst and how the smile crept up his own mouth at the carnage he had created. He wakes with a start, feeling sick and disgusted with himself, and the first thing he registers is a pressing weigh over his calf.
He bolts his head up, and through the light coming in from the hallway he makes out Castiel’s form sitting at the foot of his bed.
"You were dreaming," he says, matter-of-factly. Dean hasn’t yet shaken the remnants of the dream off, but he grunts, and he half nods, and he believes Cas knows him enough to take the admission for what it is.
"Sleep, Dean," he says again, "I’ll watch over you."
Dean nods, aware of the irony of the statement; he will let this powerless creature look after him now that he has nothing to fend his inner demons with, when he wouldn’t allow it back when he was full of grace. Whatever the case is, Cas stays with him through the night, laying quietly by his feet, and Dean manages to get some rest.
When he wakes up the next morning, Castiel is snoring, half sprawled over Dean’s legs, and Dean does his best to crawl out of bed without waking him up.
So it goes. Cas occasionally sneaks into his bedroom at night, until every other morning Dean wakes up with six feet of fallen angel drooling all over his sheets. Some other mornings Castiel isn’t even sleeping: he watches Dean in silence and Dean is past telling him how creepy that is. He accepts it, just like he accepts that he sleeps better when Cas is around, and that Dean’s bed has become Cas’ sleeping place, regardless of Dean’s thoughts on the matter.
Cas coaxes Dean out of his nightmares with soft caresses, murmurs his name in his ear, calms his shaking body with steady arms around him and Dean would be lying if he said he didn’t appreciate this, that he didn’t like waking up, grounded with the feeling of Cas around him. So it comes to pass that Cas migrates from sleeping beside him, to sleeping against him, to sleeping over him, which makes something bittersweet tug at Dean’s heart, because Cas is nothing but gentle and kind to him, Cas gives him something he never thought he could have with someone he wasn’t, at the very least, having sex with. (Which he has thought about, a time or two, but he hasn’t gotten laid in years and after everything that happened, after all the violence he has lived through, he isn’t even sure he can get it up anymore. And hell, for once, it doesn’t even matter, and that thought scares the shit out of Dean.)
…And Cas.
Cas is good to him, Cas eyes him reverently, Cas believes in him and Dean has no doubt that Cas loves him as he is and for what he is, whether Dean deserves it or not, loves him fervently and whole, and perhaps Dean is just waiting for Cas to catch up on it.
—-
There is this one dream he hasn’t had in a while, more memory than fabrication, and it takes all of Dean’s strenght away.
He remembers the rack, clear as day, and Alastair standing at his feet with his crooked smile and a crooked knife in his hand.
Dean watches him in horror. He’s being skinned alive.
He feels the hand of his torturer on his thighs, sees the knife work at his flesh, watches with lidless eyes, shouts with a tongueless mouth. His skin goes, little by little, and the pain is unbearable, but he doesn’t pass out from it; in this tainted world unconsciousness never comes. All that exists between him and the knife is pain, and his body feels raw and open, the bare muscles that touch the slab underneath him twitch and itch and hurt and he wishes, over and over again, to die, to cease to exist. He’s skinless, hairless, drowning in his own blood.
This is the moment in which he gives in.
Alastair will sink his knife in Dean’s shoulder, and Dean will break the first seal.
He can see the hand of his maker raise, except that when the demon charges at him and sinks his blade into him, all Dean can feel is a sudden surge of warmth.
Dean.
Warmth, and something soft and smooth running down his arm.
Dean Winchester, you are saved.
Dean rouses with the vague image of Alastair’s cruel face in his head, and squirms. He knows this is Cas. He knows Cas is around him, a hand on his shoulder, stroking his arm where a knife should have been ripping it out. Cas kisses his neck and holds him close, and Dean feels sick to his stomach; feels like he’s stealing something he should never have. But the angel is stubborn, and as much as Dean kicks and thrashes, weakened by his nightmares, Cas holds on to him with the strength of his unwavering affection.
For the first time in years, Dean cries. He shakes and sobs with Castiel pressed to his back, because he’s never been taken care of like this, and the enormity of Cas’ love makes him come undone.
"Cas," he sobs, "Cas, I love you."
"I know," says the angel, his voice soft against Dean’s drenched shoulder, "I know."
Dean falls asleep sometime after that, and when he opens his eyes the next morning he feels lighter, more like himself than he has in months. Cas is still by his side, the tip of his nose barely touching Dean’s. There is light coming from outside over his face and his half open mouth as he snores louder than usual, and Dean thinks with some work, he could get used to this.
He smiles, and for once it reaches his eyes.