Chapter One.

It saddens me to know that he is so deeply broken. He's never told me as such, but it takes an angel hardly a second to see the innermost thoughts of the tortured and damaged. He is strangely and beautifully human. But Still. I spend each day watching. I count the stubble around his mouth when he speaks, just to make sure each hair on him remains. His heart is broken. His soul is bare, but his outside remains the same.

"Don't you ever eat, Cas?"

I look at him. He should remember that I tried that once. It did not end well. "My hunger was satiated when Famine left. It was Jimmy's hunger. You remember that I sustain him?"

"Yeah, Cas, it was kind of a rhetorical…I know already, I was just…" His voice drops. He becomes silent. I realize I have gone on too long with evidence he did not need. This vessel's voice fails me. Dean sighs and leans against the poorly papered wall and lifts the top from the long necked beverage. The bubbling release of tension from the bottle is sickening to me, but to Dean, it is a comforting sound.

That night I brought him a bacon double cheeseburger from a burger 'joint' down the road. The woman would not let me order from the drive through without a car, so I had to go inside. I misjudged the time it would take to get into the building and she shrieked in terror. The burger was free.

When I returned I learned that Sam was hunting alone, a lesser poltergeist in a local home, and Dean, in his loneliness did not leave the motel bed. I did not want to disturb him, but I watched from outside the motel until I saw him stir. I called before I came in, but as I thought about standing next to him, it came to pass.

Sometimes I feel my control over this vessel wavering. Or, perhaps it is just in Dean's presence.

"I don't feel like myself," he whispers when he notices me.

I cannot tear my eyes from him. The sunlight pours from the lines in his face, but he feels the intense darkness bubbling to his surface. I feel a strange sensation in my vessel's chest. Jimmy starts to stir.

Again. I've let my guard down.

"I can see that, Dean."

He closes his eyes. I imagine being next to him and without my prompting it has come to pass. I am next to him on the bed and his body jumps with fear.

"God dammit, Cas, you can't do that. It freaks me out. You gotta give me some damn warning." His voice cracks at the end of his sentence.

"I apologize."

I want to wrap these arms around him. I can feel his need to cry.

Sam finds it hard to sleep with me in the room, so I leave and take up the post outside once again. He arrived slightly bruised, but he banished the poltergeist on his own.

"I am sorry Dean and I were not present for that hunt, Sam."

"It's fine, Cas. He needs to recuperate. It's been… hard for him."

The hatred I feel for Zachariah is uncanny, for hurting them the way he did. Sam has handled it much better than Dean. Then again, Sam never really knew his mother, and Dean still has nightmares about the night she burned.

Like tonight.

I enter the room again. Sam is dead asleep, but Dean's face is twisted in horror. The sweat on his brow trickles down and I hear him whisper "Please, no." I feel Jimmy's heart skip as I go to him. I watch him for further signs of distress. His pulse is elevated and his blood pressure is bizarrely high. I wonder if I should wake him.

Instead, I lay my hand across his brow and whisper an Enochian incantation, one I know should calm him and allow him peace in slumber. This is not the first time I have used this on Dean. I used to watch over him when he was a child, and for years, night after night, he knew nothing but fear in his sleep. With this, he should not remember much in terms of disturbance and pain.

First, the small muscles of his face relax under the tips of my fingers, and he sinks into a more pleasant sleep. He sighs deeply, and a soothing calm washes over me.

I sit with my hand on him for what feels like eons. When I see the corners of his mouth curl into a smile, I lift my hand and touch my forehead to his. I close my eyes and breathe. Things will get better with time.

The hunters cannot see me the next morning when they rise, but I am present more often than not. Especially with Dean in his intensely distressed state, I worry about the darkness within him.

Sam stands and stretches while Dean opens his heavy eyes.

"Hey, man. You sleep okay?" Sam says. He pulls a grey shirt from the cargo bag next to his bed, and slips it over his shoulders. He half-jumps back onto the bed and looks in Dean's direction.

"Yeah. I just… Weird dreams, Sammy." He almost smiles. "I dreamt that Cas was… Well, I don't know. I was dreaming about mom, and then-"

"You're still having nightmares?" Sam interrupts, his voice alight with genuine concern. He pushes his fingers through his hair in an effort to comb it out of his face. He stands and pulls a belt from a torn pair of pants and slips it through the loops on his jeans.

Dean sits up in his bed and brings his hand to his face. He digs into his eyes with his knuckles and sighs. "They won't just stop, Sam."

"I know. I just thought that after the thing with Michael-"

"You thought what? That after seeing mom tell me she never loved me, that she was happy she died, to get away from me that I would be fine? That I could somehow just accept that?"

"Dean, you know it wasn't true. He was trying to get to you."

"I know."

Sam slipped his shoes on and grabbed the keys to the Impala from the motel desk. "Look, man. I'm sorry. I know you're having a rough time. I'm going to go get us some breakfast."

"It's noon."

"Okay, so… lunch. I'll be back in a while. Take a shower or something, it'll make you feel better."

The door latched behind Sam as he left the motel. Dean sits in bed and cracks his neck, moving his head in small circles. He exhales deeply with each crack of his vertebrae. When he stands, he lets the covers drop around his feet and he walks in short boxers to the bathroom.

Dean has never told me, but one of the simple pleasures he enjoys most are the fluffy towels motels provide for bathing. He picks one up and lifts it to his face and whispers into it. I try to make out the words, when he hands the towel on the rack next to the shower and reaches inside to start the water. He twists the faucet and it squeaks as he finds the correct setting.

It takes a few minutes, but the bathroom becomes a heaven of steam and cologne. Dean drops his boxers and tentatively steps inside, the dimples in his flesh stretching in relaxation as the near-scalding water rains down about his body.

He leaves the shower curtain slightly askew and does not shut the door. I stand outside the room and avert my gaze to his mussed bed.

When Dean is happy, he sometimes sings while he washes himself. His voice is rough, but strong and on key, and I lament that I have not heard his voice in this way in weeks. I am quiet as I listen to his sighs. He is fond of cracking his bones for pleasure, as he sighs with relief at the onset of every pop.

"Ah, dammit," I hear. I know he has found another bruise or cut from a previous hunting trip. If I were standing next to him I would place my hand over his wound and whisper while new skin grew and his pain disappeared beneath my hands, but currently I am unable to perform this service.

There is silence from him for a while, but the water continues to fall and the steam begins to plume from the bathroom and enter the bedroom of the motel. Dean shortly after finds his voice. I hear him whisper.

"What am I doing dreaming about Cas…?"

Before I knew I had gone, I find myself soaked with the hot water of the shower, standing directly behind dean.

"HOLY SHIT CAS. WHAT are you DOING in here?!" He quickly tries to cover himself with his hands.

"You called. And there is no need for you to cover yourself. I am around you more often than I am not. What do you need?"

"What?! I'm taking a shower, I don't need-"

I see the cut along his hip, digging into his thigh. It is deep and jagged, but has not bled for days. The gash was stubborn and was taking too long to heal, and I knew the prolonged risk of infection grew by the day. For his benefit, I pushed him backward into the spray of the hot water and lay my hand over it, whispering. I felt the would close and Dean closed his eyes and mumble something I could not understand.

When the wound had calmed from the incantation, I release him. "Dean. Are you alright?" I ask. He stares at me, starting to shudder despite the high temperature of the water.

He casts a glance at me that expected some sort of understanding but I am unsure as to what. "I'm still confused as to why you are in the shower with me. Not that I don't appreciate the hip thing, but…"

His eyes are downcast as he looks for some semblance of a scar. My words, however, were perfect, and no such scar exists. If only there was some way I could erase his internal scars as easily as I could the wounds on his body. My thoughts move quickly and I watch the flutter of Dean's eyelashes move in perfect unison. He doesn't know, but his green eyes contain flecks of gold. An angel's blessing.

I feel… something strangely strong pulling from within me. Jimmy shoves me to the back of his mind and I watch in sudden, mild confusion as I reach out to Deans face, and bring my own close to him. I feel the sharp curve of his neck and the rough patches of shorn facial hand beneath my hands. I bring him close and I place my lips upon his without warning. Jimmy fades almost immediately and I realize I am consciously holding the continued embrace. Dean's lips are tight at first, but the soften against mine and he sighs, his hands fall as he ceases to cover himself and I feel him come forward to meet my vessel's body.

I am rather unsure of how this kissing thing works.

Deans lips part slightly and I pull back. He stares at me, his green eyes misted from the steam of the shower, his mouth still open. In a moment of panic, I sense Sam approaching the door.

"I am going to go now," I find myself saying, just as I hear the latch of the front door release.