Six months later.
"It's not such a bad thing, Dean." Dean gasped through the pain while Alistair lay on the floor underneath him. He was suspended in the air on hooks through his shoulders but the pain from that was nothing new: he was hung like that every day - fresh skin, healed and new, cut into with sharp hooks and then hung there like meat in a butcher's shop. Which is exactly what he was. Alistair was on a board with wheels under Dean with a small thin knife and a bloody rag. He was poking tiny holes into Dean's feet and wiping them with the rag which was soaked in something that felt like paint stripper. "Joining us down here."
"It may have," Dean tried not to but he had had hours of this and that hurt so he groaned, "slipped your notice, asshat," Alistair laughed and stabbed Dean again, "but I am down here."
"You know," Alistair chewed away as he spoke, slow and calm as always, "you're always so aggressive towards me."
"Can't imagine why." Dean felt it coming up but didn't let on. Then he threw up all over Alistair who closed his eyes and mouth. Dean spat out the last bit. "I really can't."
Alistair wiped his eye and smiled before stabbing Dean in the ankle and Dean yelled out.
He sat bolt upright. The room was pitch black and he was sweating. He turned to the other bed which was empty, Dean panicked, Sam had been there when Dean had gone to sleep.
"He's getting gas." Dean's head whipped to the figure standing in the corner looking out the window. "He's just left," Cas looked to Dean, "I think he had trouble sleeping."
Dean sighed, pushed the covers back a little and wiped his forehead. Cas walked over and sat on the bed next to Dean's left side, he raised his arm towards Dean who flinched. "Cas!" He put his hand up and Cas paused. "What are you going to do?"
"I was going to cool you down?" He waited. "You're sweating."
"I'm okay, I'll go get a flannel and run it under the cold-."
"Here." Cas lowered the same hand a little and Dean saw he was holding something that wasn't there before.
Dean hesitated and then took it from him. He could immediately feel how cool it was. "Thanks." Cas just sat there looking at him. "What are you doing here?"
Cas shrugged. "I always check in when I can." Dean nodded as he put the flannel on the back of his neck and moaned a little. "Dean," Dean hummed an answer, "was Hell that bad?"
Dean froze and looked to Cas. "What?"
"Sometimes, when I'm checking in, I catch you while you're sleeping-" Cas started.
"You watch me sleep?"
"Well-"
"Cas we talked about this, that is creepy, don't do that!" Dean pulled the covers back and clambered out of the bed on the other side.
"It's not intentional but you and your brother keep quite abnormal sleeping schedules, I can't always be sure." Cas shrugged as he stood and faced Dean. "That's not exactly what I was asking you about."
"Then what were you asking, Cas?" Dean screwed up his face and turned to look back at him.
"I thought I already did ask. Was Hell so bad that it haunts you at night?" Dean shuffled on his feet, more confused. "You seem quite distressed when you sleep. Sam barely makes any noise, I only watched him to compare, I realise that a lot of humans sleep differently but the only people who make the same noises as you and sweat like that are," he looked up to the side and counted on his fingers, "Steve Groman, 41 years of age who hit a twelve year old girl with his car ten years ago; Elaine Turning, 27, who suffers from the guilt of killing her husband last year and hasn't been caught yet; and Roger Kirk, 11, who is terrified of the monster in his closet which is the twisted memory of his aunt Marie coming into his room late at night when he was 9 and abusing him, he also wets the bed though and I haven't seen you do that." He took a breath. "That's all I have collected so far." He looked back to Dean.
Dean looked to the side and then shook his head. "I don't want to talk about this." He went to turn away. "And stop spying on people in their beds!" He looked back. "And, do something for Roger at least, he's just a kid!" Cas nodded and disappeared. Dean walked into the bathroom and the door to the motel opened.
"Dean?"
"In the bathroom Sam, where were you?"
.
"I just don't understand why Cas has to be here?" Dean whispered.
"You know he can hear you, right?" Sam dipped one eyebrow and they turned to look at Cas who was too busy looking at a book to look up. "Because we could use his help, because we're hunting these missing things from heaven and because it's Cas. Since when do you not want him around?"
Dean sighed. "It's not that I don't want him around, it's just," he lowered his shoulders, "I don't know what it is."
Sam furrowed his brow and slowly looked when Cas called to him. They both walked over. "We're not going to get anywhere here, I'm going to check back in Heaven."
"No, wait Cas-" And he was gone. Sam looked to Dean. "Nice going."
Dean sighed and turned to watch Sam walk away.
.
"Do you know there is no such thing as tomorrow, Dean?"
"Is that a fact?" Dean sighed and fell to the ground, he let out a half-groan, half-shout as he fell onto his knees. Everything hurt, everything was aching and ringing throughout his entire body. The pain from his knees ringing in his eyes, the pain in his hands pressing on his lower back.
"It is. Think about it." Alistair took out his ripper, it was a knife that actually rotated like a mini chainsaw. It made Dean feel weird, not because he could feel his nausea in his teeth or because he felt dizzy in his fingernails, no this was because a tool like that was not one he would have associated with Alistair which meant that either Alistair was becoming unpredictable, even now, or that Dean was so far gone he couldn't read him anymore.
"I'll pass." Dean leaned back when Alistair pushed his head back.
"Well," he turned the mini-saw on, "I'll just have to explain it to you." He started lightly cutting into Dean's shoulder and he screamed. "You see, on that cesspit you call home," Dean gritted his teeth, "there's Monday and then there's Tuesday, right?"
"Nice one, Einstein." Dean yelled out when he hit bone, Dean was covered in blood, sweat and tears. He tried not to look to his right at his ear on the floor. The answer to 'do you ever really feel your ears' was 'well I do when it's been scissored off'. Dean tried to close his airway to the sick rising in his throat and joints.
"Well on Monday," Alistair bared his teeth a little as he wiggled the saw and pushed down, Dean screaming louder with each movement, "Tuesday is tomorrow but when Tuesday comes it's no longer tomorrow is it? It's today. Tomorrow never comes." Dean said nothing that wasn't a swear word. Alistair shrugged. "I was just making conversation, these sessions can feel very one sided when you're not cursing at me."
"Dean!" Alistair shook Dean's shoulder and Dean bolted upright grabbing his wrist but then realising that is was actually Sam. "Dean, it's me?"
Dean exhaled and looked down. "Sam, don't do that." Sam raised his eyebrows and Dean looked down. He was still gripping Sam's wrist. "Oh, sorry." He let go.
"It's fine, are you okay?"
Castiel was stood in the corner, watching, unseen. Dean insisted that he was but he had seen, he had seen the sweating, the mumbling, the crying and the writhing. Dean's back arching off the bed and Dean screwing up his eyes in pain. He had seen Sam wake out of his sleep and look at Dean, he had watched Sam think about waking Dean but he had seen Sam decide otherwise. He had watched Sam walk into the bathroom, he had looked back to Dean while Sam changed and then observed Sam go over and wake his brother, as if he was just waking him up like always and not because his brother was shouting in his sleep.
Castiel now watched them converse about a witch they were chasing and how Dean had blew off a waitress the other night.
Castiel wondered if Dean wasn't in the mood, if he didn't find her attractive, if his head was too filled with the case. Cas wondered if Dean was too tired because he didn't sleep very well and hadn't done for a while. He wondered if it was because Dean didn't want to fall asleep next to her. Cas wondered if Dean had ever really came back from Hell at all.
Castiel looked out of the motel window when he was called. He took one last look at the brothers as Dean bundled out of bed rubbing his eyes as if he was about to go for a much needed sleep instead of rise from a bad one. Then he went home.
"I don't like them, Dean!" Sam shouted to Dean in the bathroom.
"Yeah, just try not to get the clap from this one." He smirked in the mirror and then looked down avoiding the gaze of the memory that smirked back.
