Dean sighed as he ended the call with Cas. Sam stared at him from his disheveled bed, a grim line where Dean could still remember happy smiles having once been. His baby brother sat up and ran a hand through his long sleep messy hair; somehow even now at well over six feet tall he still managed to look twelve years old.
"Didn't go so good huh?" Sam asked as he straightened his rumpled shirt and made for the bathroom.
"Does it ever?" Dean mumbled as he lifted his weary body from his own bed which was still made and didn't look like it had been slept in at all save the slight depression on the pillow where his head had been.
"You don't have to be so snippy with him all the time you know." Sam talked to him through the door of the bathroom; even after all they'd been through being around Sam was still as effortless as breathing.
Being around Castiel however was… tiring.
Dean didn't respond to Sam and he waited until he heard the shower start before he walked to the small kitchenette. The bottle on the counter was almost empty, barely enough to fill his flask, which was exactly what he did before taking a long swig from the shiny metal container. It was too smooth in his rough hands and the liquor burned down the raw inside of his throat. He pocketed it before grabbing his keys and going on a coffee run.
Dean could barely keep his eyes open and he wondered if this was how Sam had felt like when Satan had been playing pinball in his melon last year. The yellow lines on the road blurred as his baby galloped down the interstate, he found himself getting lost in their movement and blinked hard. He turned up the Metallica song he'd found on a local station as much as he could without waking Sam who'd dozed off about 30 miles back.
His coffee was almost gone and he was pretty sure he hadn't slept more than two consecutive hours in a week. He could feel the caffeine in his system in the way his knee jiggled from excess energy and the amount of bathroom breaks he took, but he didn't feel alert, or rested. Hell, he didn't even feel sane. Just tired and wired.
When he slept he dreamed. Not of hell. Not of torture. Not of any of the things that he used to lose sleep over. He almost wished for a nighttime visit from Alistair; at least then he'd get a break. All he dreamed about these days were things he couldn't have. Stuff he couldn't fix. It was driving him insane.
He could just drink himself into sleep, he'd never had any trouble with that before, but now somehow the whisky just made it worse. When he was passed out it was like being pinned down in those dreams while a cold hand peeled him open and prodded the wounds of his heart until they bled. Those mornings he woke with a hard on, the taste of vomit at the back of his throat, and the urge to pray.
He never prayed anymore.
Spring was late. Sam drove slowly over the frozen road while Dean slept in the back seat. He'd had too much to drink, more than Sam had seen him drink in a long time. More than he'd seen him drink since he got back from Hell. After he'd made a significant dent in the second bottle Sam had forcibly stopped him, the bottle shattering on the asphalt of the hotel parking lot and Dean following soon after.
He rarely saw his brother cry, and almost never like he had then. His brother's body had shaken with the force of his sobs which were ragged and frighteningly silent. His pants were soaked from where he had collapsed in the snow, palms an angry red from the cold as he grabbed Sam's arm for an anchor. After that Sam had loaded him into the Impala, safely on his side in the back seat, and drove them as far away from that lot as he could get.
Sam was thinking somewhere warm and sunny. Maybe then Dean would cheer up.
As he drove Dean pressed his face into the leather of the seat as if it would help to stop the silent tears streaming down his face. And not for the first time in his life he wished he couldn't feel a damn thing.
His throat was raw again. Not from drinking or crying but from screaming. The words still stuck to his tongue and clogged his airway; Dean thought they might suffocate him.
"CASTIEL!" Nothing.
"CAS!" Nada.
"PLEASE!" Ziltch.
"I NEED YOU!" A soft flutter behind him.
"What is it you need Dean?" The voice was cold and business like, Dean couldn't bring himself to turn and look at the angel.
"You." His voice was softer than he'd anticipated and cracked at the end of the word.
"I am here aren't I?" Castiel sounded bitter, Dean felt his heart wrench as he realized Cas had never sounded like that before purgatory. No. Not before purgatory, before they left purgatory. "What's your problem Dean? I've got a lot of work to do."
"I'm sorry Cas." Dean took a huge breath of air and turned to face him. The angel was wearing a new suit and tie, the latter of the two was straight and tightened round his neck, but on top of it all was the coat. The dirty tan trench coat was still there. "You kept it." He said mirroring a very similar conversation they'd had before.
"Yes." Castiel's voice was cold but his cheeks were pink and his blue eyes were sad.
"Look Cas I should never have said what I said ok? I don't know what I was thinking. It was just too much for me to handle and I panicked. I was wrong."
"Wrong about which part exactly?" Cas's eyes flashed from sad to angry in an instant, and his anger crept into his voice. "Wrong about it not meaning anything or wrong about you not wanting me anymore?"
"Both." Dean held his hands out begging. "It meant- MEANS more to me than you know. I do want you Cas, and it's more than that, I NEED you Cas. I've got to have you."
Cas made a scoffing sound and made to walk away but Dean grabbed the sleeve of his coat and tugged.
"I mean it Cas. I gotta have you. I'm a mess. No amount of coffee, no amount of crying, no amount of whisky, no amount of wine. NOTHING ELSE WILL DO CAS. I've got to have you." Dean could feel the tear in his eyes and the lump in his throat but he spoke through them. "I can't sleep, or eat or focus on anything. Every dream I have is of you. Every single regret I have is how badly I fucked things up between us. Every worry that keeps me up at night is about you. I could drink myself into a coma and still not be rid of it." He looked up at Cas who still wore and angry, if somewhat softened expression.
"You hurt me Dean." His voice was a sad whisper and Dean felt the cold hand around his heart again.
"I know. I'm sorry. Please." He swallowed hard and held his arms out further. "Please Cas."
Neither moved and Dean hung his head and closed his eyes waiting; trying to block out the pain of the inevitable rejection. He'd fucked up too badly this time.
Then he heard a whisper of wings and opened his eyes. Cas was gone. He choked on his sob and fell forward never expecting the strong arms that caught him, wrapping around him from behind.
"I've got to have you too Dean."