Simply a short one-shot that may be seen as romantic. Supernatural and characters belong to respective owners.

He was sitting, his head in his hands, his guns spread across the bed cover. Sam snored gently in the other bed, murmuring and struggling his way through the routine nightmares.

Castiel watched him, and knew the young hunter didn't see him. Dean's mind would not rest. There were too many questions, variables, problems and millions of possible solutions. There were too many ghosts walking the corridors of his mind for him to sleep. He saw Jo and Ellen, he saw John and Mary, he saw hunter's he could have saved fall. He saw Sam; his face screw up with pain then drop open in shock as he fell to the ground with a blade clean through his spine.

In the moonlight, Dean's naked shoulder's caught the silver light and dappled in hollows and valleys of carved muscle and raw scars. Sinew shifted as he rolled his shoulders, sitting up a little straighter. In the time it took Cas to blink, there was the black, gaping mouth of a double-barrelled shot gun glaring at him, nestled comfortably against Dean's shoulder. He lowered it slowly as the angel stepped out of the shadows.

"When the hell are you doing here, Cas?" he snapped as quietly as he knew how. He glanced at Sam, who muttered something illegible and rolled over.

"You don't sleep. You don't eat. You should be more careful, Dean" said Cas.

There was agony in the green depths as he looked away and put the gun carefully on the bed, the shells in his hand.

"I'll pass on the self-help lecture, thanks all the same"

Too much to do, too much to think about, too many unanswered questions. The one that plagued him the most; the scar on his arm that pulled him from damnation to...having the choice.

Castiel stepped close to Dean's shoulder and placed his hand on the scar. His hand was cold and smooth, and the scar tissue was rough and warmer than the rest of his body.

"Destiny, Dean" Castiel reminded him.

Dean looked at his shoulder, when Cas's hand fit perfectly over the scar...a little too perfectly. For a moment it was as though the blemish was erased. He tried to read those blue eyes, and got nothing.

"You said you could toss me back to the pit..." he said slowly, thinking.

"Yes. But I don't think I would have"

"Why's that?"

"It took a lot of effort to pull you out" he said simply, softly, and pulled away.

Without his hand there, Dean could see the ugly, brutal redness of the scar and winced. He looked at the clock on the bedside table. It was 5am. Time to get moving. He reached for his shirt, and by the time he'd pulled it one, Castiel was gone.