He was half asleep on the couch when I came downstairs, his pillow smashed against his face. I rolled my eyes, making my way to the kitchen for some much needed coffee. It was only noon. I snorted. Only. I only woke up at 12:00 p.m. I made a pot of coffee and got myself some cereal, waiting for either Castiel to wake up or the coffee to finish brewing. It turned out that Castiel was up first. He came into the kitchen, his hair a big a mess as mine. He smiled lazily and went over to the just finished coffee, pouring both of us a mug. He'd easily made himself at home here. I admired that.
He sat down next to me, setting my mug down next to my bowl of cereal, and sipped his own.

"So, I was thinking this morning," I started.

"Uh-oh. That's never a good thing," he said with a wink. I rolled my eyes.

"Anyway...it was because of a dream I had last night," I continued, trying to figure out how to rephrase this. And yes, we were to the 'sharing dreams' phase of our friendship. We'd gotten there much quicker than I anticipated. "It was about colors..." I trailed off again, brow furrowing as I figured out how to say this. The truth was, I wasn't entirely sure what I'd dreamed last night. It had been about colors and fire and blacks and whites and ironically, my dad had been in it. Strange, even when he wasn't here, he still haunted me. He'd been drunk, of course, and had whipped his belt buckle across my back and I had found the crimson of my blood very intriguing. I remember thinking that colors were strange and that crimson is an expressive color, the color of roses, and that blood and roses shouldn't be the same color. And then I thought that crimson was the color before roses died, and that it was also the color I bled when I tried to slit my own wrists three years ago. Crimson was the lifeblood of all colors.

"Annnnd?" Castiel prompted, rolling his free hand for emphasis. Finally, I settled on;

"It was about colors."

"Colors?" he repeated, raising a brow. I nodded my confirmation.

"Colors. I'm not sure why...but I realized something now; colors are practically meaningless."

"How can colors be meaningless? Oh, you're going to start a rebellion against colors; I can see the headline now. 'Boy Protests Against the Need of Color'. Yes, brilliant," Castiel deadpanned. I rolled my eyes.

"No, no, no. You see, we don't really know what color is what. We see a different shade of something and give it a different name, when really, colors could all just be different shades of black and white. But we wouldn't know, because how could we know what black and white really looked like?" I shook my head and sipped my coffee. It was too early for this. Castiel stared at me for a long moment, and then laughed.

"Man, Dean...it's too early for this..." He took a breath, sipped his coffee, and set his mug down. "I guess, however, you are right about that. But, can you tell me off the top of your head what your name is?"

I nodded.

"Okay, what about how old you are?"

Again, I nodded.

"What kind of car you wish you had?"

I pursed my lips, but nodded.

"Right. So I guess, somehow, we have to have some knowledge of what's going on otherwise we wouldn't really be able to understand anything that we are currently going through," he said.

"But," I protested. "How do you know we do understand? I don't understand why my parent's named me what they named me. I don't understand why I want a '68 Chevelle. I just do," I said, raising a brow. He nodded, quiet for a moment.

"Well," he said after a beat of silence. "Your parents liked the name. Bam. They wanted something unique, and what is more unique than Dean. Maybe it's some messed up version of 'raw fish', who knows? But obviously there was a reason. I don't think they picked random letters and put them together. And what is it that you like about Chevelles?"

"I'm not sure. Just the way it looks, I suppose," I said, slowly understanding where he was going with this.

"So that means you do understand. I think you're looking at this more philosophically than you need to. You're asking how instead of why, why instead of why not? Contrary to popular beliefs, there is a reason for everything we do," he pointed out. I blew out a breath and nodded.

"Yeah, I guess so," I mumbled. He smiled smugly. God, that was the most intimate discussion I'd had about one of my dreams. It was a bitter relief. Castiel finished off his coffee and stood.

"You got a bathroom, D?" he asked. I blinked rapidly. No one had called me that for seven years. Slowly, I nodded.

"First door on the left," I replied. He nodded and headed off into the bathroom. A moment later, I heard the water running. As soon as I heard that, I dropped the façade, shoulder's slumping. D. That's what he'd called me. I let out a long, slow breath.

I ran trembling fingers through my hair. I hadn't slept well last night, either, getting twenty minutes here and there, maybe an hour if I was lucky. I didn't know why it was happening now, but I could feel myself falling apart at the seams, no matter how well I was able to hide it. After all, I'd been hiding it for seven years. But it was getting harder and harder to do so. I took a long pull of my coffee, my fingers aching for a pen even though I had nothing to write.
I guess that wasn't entirely true. I knew something I could always write. I had my father's gun and a pen and paper in my room. I could write my suicide note. But then, that wouldn't really be fair to Castiel, would it? Ah, fuck it. I'd been trying to make other people happy for far too long. That's all I'd done because, really, if I couldn't be happy, if I didn't deserve it, other people did, right? Other people weren't as messed up as I was.
And, for the first time in seven years, I thought about how unfair this all was. Why me? That was the question I always wanted to know, wasn't it? Why? This time, it was different. This time...God, I didn't even know. I didn't deserve this, did I? Did I do something to piss off the big guy upstairs?
Rage poured through me and I hadn't ever wanted to hit anything as bad as I did right then. I didn't think about it. I put my fist to the wall, three, four, five times, feeling my knuckles bruise and swell, the skin crack and bleed and I relished in it, relished in the destruction I was causing, in the pain. So I did it again, and again, until I heard a crack and felt fiery pain course up my arm. Then, and only then was I able to stop. I sank down the wall, pulling in a deep, deep breath, fighting back tears. I would not cry. I would not. As I took the stairs two at a time, I felt everything I'd worked so hard to build come crashing down. I saw the fire reflecting in the windows, the flashing lights of the too-late firemen, my father selling Marvin to an animal shelter, my father's belt coming crashing onto my back, his harsh words of "It's your fault your mother's dead! Why didn't you save her?!" rang through my mind, "your fault" echoing in an endless loop. Why didn't you save her, Dean? Why?

I found my blade and slashed at my wrists mercilessly. Crimson poured down my arms and to the floor in rivulets. My eyes caught a picture of my mother on my nightstand and I couldn't be in that house anymore. I bolted down the stairs, running outside in nothing but sweats and a tee-shirt, blood running freely from the wounds in my arms, and I ran. No one would see me, no one was out to see me. It was raining too heavily for anyone to be out. I barely felt rocks dig into my bare feet, didn't feel the freezing rain as it pelted my body, didn't hear the panting of my own labored breaths.
I did feel the tears running down my cheeks in rivulets, feel heaving sobs shaking my body, and I collapsed in the middle of the empty road in sobs. I turned my wrath on God, screamed at Him.

"WHY ME?!"

It was a broken question for a broken boy.

I cried some more, feeling weakness take over my body as I lost blood. I didn't care. I wanted to die. I'd wanted to die for seven years. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't speak, I couldn't scream at God for what he'd taken. How could I blame God when I didn't believe he was there? Easy. I needed to put the blame somewhere, and since mom had believed in Him, it was so, so easy.
I screamed wordlessly again, letting out all the pain and anger and tears I'd been harboring since I was ten.
It was then that I heard a yell of my name from a too familiar voice.

"D!" It sounded so worried. I looked blearily around, swearing I'd heard my mother's voice. She sounded so scared. Huh, everything was getting black. My vision fuzzed around the edged and the ground rushed up. I wasn't sure how my cheek ended up pressed to the ground, little rocks digging into it. My eye's fluttered and sweet, sweet oblivion took hold and dragged me into a pain free darkness.