9. What Do You Mean?
In the weeks following, Dean found himself wandering off more and more.
In the moments between the action. In the stillness of the morning and the late night. In the space between breaths and the moment while the sun hesitated to rise and the moon refused to budge just yet. He'd start walking. Around and around the scrap yard, around the motel block, around the city. They left Bobby's soon after leaving Piper, and Castiel had seemed at least moderately content to travel with them. He wanted to go, Dean thought, it just took convincing him that they wanted him as well.
Either way, off they went.
Castiel fit into their lives almost seamlessly. They'd both made him spend several hours shooting at cans. He was a good shot, they discovered, and could fight hand-to-hand just as well as Sam or Dean. They forgot sometimes, Castiel had been a warrior for a very long time. Any inconsistency in his fighting style because of his lack of Grace, he quickly tied up with some help from Dean. His wounds healed, and the burns around his neck and wrists were nothing but thin white lines.
He smiled a bit more now and didn't crawl up inside himself as much. There were good and bad days, but Dean was glad at least something seemed to be going mostly alright. The gig with the kid seemed to have done him good. As far as they could tell, the apocalypse was still looming, looking for right moment.
Until then, they'd just keep on doing what they did best. Hunting.
The thing was...
Dean couldn't sleep.
And it was not like he didn't want to. He hadn't slept since he woke up that first time.
And he tried. He really tried.
But he just wasn't tired. On the contrary, he felt like something was crawling under his skin. Too much energy. Dean didn't know what to do with it. It kept him on edge and jittery. He felt like there was something he ought to be doing, but he didn't know what.
So when it was late and Cass and Sam were both asleep, Dean would sit up in the couch in their motel room and listen for any disturbance. If there was none, he'd stand, lace up his shoes, and ease out the door.
The night was good. The air was never the same. He'd walked on wet nights, crisp nights, warm nights, snowy nights.
He thought he liked wet nights the best.
If they were in a city, he'd find a dark corner and watch the lights sparkle and splash off of the puddles. The city bled energy and light, and he enjoyed this. It felt familiar. The cities refused to rest as well.
If Sam or Cass noticed his nighttime wandering, they didn't say anything. Although, Sam was sometimes astonished by all of the stuff he managed to get done. He once did an entire salt and burn in one night. His companions never even had a chance to discover the problem, much less fix it.
Who knew how much time was wasted in those six to eight hours used to sleep?
Dean had no idea why he wasn't tired, but he did not want to think about it. It was easier to put in the same category as his lack of hunger and as his ability to see... things.
He'd rather ignore that. It terrified him. Wandering was simpler.
If he ever got tired, he would sleep, Dean told himself. Until then he would keep up his night time patrol.
Castiel knew something was different about Dean. Some differences were obvious, and other times there were only very slight deviations he only noticed because he was looking for them.
Cass dialed Sam's number and chewed his lip irritably. He was getting the hang of the computer and had recently been allowed to use it without Sam watching over his shoulder nervously.
Across the motel room, Dean lay on his stomach on the bed, picking at the fibers of a sickly yellow, fraying blanket. He sighed loudly. "Is he picking up?"
"No," Cass grunted. The phone continued to ring until Cass finally hung up and set down the cell.
He glanced over at Dean. "He ought to know the creature is not, in fact, a-"
Cass could feel Dean rolling his eyes even though his head was turned away. "Dude, he's been doing this for ages. He's fine. It's just a beer run. Right now he's parking outside and his phone is dead."
His logic was sound but more confident than Cass would have guessed. "You cannot possibly know that."
"Whatever." Dean shifted and sat up.
He winced and then glared at Cass's slightly concerned expression. "I'm fine, Cass. Just a headache."
He was getting a lot of those lately.
Cass considered his friend carefully. "Dean-"
"Don't," Dean interrupted. He shut his eyes and leaned back against the headboard. "I probably need sleep."
"We woke up a few hours ago."
This only got a sad, tired sort of look before he shut his eyes again.
Before Cass could ask another question, the door jingled, and Sam entered with a box of beers, some junk food, and, strangely enough, a bottle of aspirin.
"Good. You're back."
Sam tossed the aspirin idly in Dean's direction, and Dean caught it without opening his eyes. "Thanks."
"For what?"
"The aspirin?"
Sam blinked. He looked at the aspirin bottle in Dean's hand. "Did… did you tell me to get those?"
Dean shrugged and popped some of the pills into his mouth. "Probably. I was hoping you would."
Sam nodded slowly but dropped the issue. Turning a questioning eye on Castiel, Sam sat down in the desk chair and the day continued on as normal.
But Cass was relatively sure Dean never asked Sam for that aspirin.
And sometimes… sometimes Dean just knew things. Things he shouldn't. Things he couldn't possibly.
Another time something strange happened, Castiel couldn't exactly confirm it because he was slightly intoxicated.
"Naw, honey, I'm good." Dean smiled stiffly at the scantily clad young woman who'd come up to their booth. Sam was buried in two stacks of research and was oblivious, and Castiel had a strange buzzing in the back of his mind he had never experienced before. Dean seemed to have made it his mission to get the former angel drunk. He'd stuck him on the inside of the booth so that he couldn't escape and kept smirking at him. Apparently, he found this humorous. The woman shrugged and left.
Castiel flicked up his gaze at the woman and she was pretty he noted, and then glanced at Dean in surprise. He cocked his head. Words were… difficult right now. He didn't think he handled alcohol very well.
"Why aren't you…" He gestured vaguely in the direction the girl was walking away in, her hips swaying back and forth with each step.
Dean snickered and relaxed into the back of his seat. "She's one of those screw-you-broke kids."
Castiel blinked uncomprehendingly.
"She was gonna steal my wallet. Totally messed up moral compass. Couldn't you tell?"
Was he missing something in this conversation? All Castiel could see from her right now were her…
Well.
Anyway.
Castiel never did figure out if that conversation actually happened that night.
But that was just a little thing.
More often than not, it was Dean that spotted the monsters now.
They weren't even on a case once. Sam was bickering with Dean at the breakfast table of some tiny diner in the middle of some high altitude forest town. "This is stupid, Dean. You didn't eat-"
"Blah, blah, blah." Dean rolled his eyes. He flicked some egg off of his fork and onto Sam's shirt. They did childish things like this because otherwise, they'd be actually shouting at each other.
Sam very slowly wiped the egg off. He glared, but when Dean didn't yield, he muttered under his breath and forcefully set about eating his own food.
Castiel watched this confrontation quietly over his own breakfast (he liked breakfast by the way. Food ought to always be sweet). These sorts of arguments were more common than they used to be. Castiel didn't mention the fact that he knew for certain Dean hadn't eaten in much longer than a missed meal here and there. He did eat, just not without any particular gusto. Ever. Castiel hadn't understood that this was a problem until Sam exasperatedly explained to him one night that Dean ought to be hungry. He was always hungry.
As they sat in the diner, Castiel's gaze wandered to a table across the room. A young girl in yellow tights giggled as she ate a pancake.
The sight made that stone in Castiel's chest return and it took him a few seconds to categorize it. Sadness? Why?
Yellow. Right.
"How do you think Piper is doing?" he asked suddenly, eyes still on the little girl.
Both brothers paused in their bickering, a bit surprised. "Um," Sam started, "I'm sure she's fine. I mean, that was weeks ago, Cass."
He was right of course. It had been weeks.
It was stupid of him to keep thinking about her.
Suddenly, Dean stiffened. He grabbed Sam's arm and gestured with his eyes toward the entrance. "Not even three seconds of quiet," he muttered.
Before either Case or Sam could stop him, Dean stood up and followed a dark-haired man out. By the time they caught up to him, Dean had already pocketed four hex bags from the astonished witch. "Save your dignity and don't try to convince me you were not going to use these to make someone itch themselves to death. I mean, props for creativity but…" The witch's shock only lasted a second, and then the man attacked.
It was three there to one, the creep didn't stand a chance. As it turned out, that guy had been slowly killing his roommates for years.
Dean refused to say how he knew the man was a witch.
An inkling of an explanation was forming in Castiel's mind, but he did not dare speak it. After all, it was ridiculous.
But if it wasn't that, what could it be?
Eventually, Sam and Dean's near constant bickering came to a head. They were in Alabama chasing a possible haunting, and Sam found Dean wandering alone outside while they were asleep.
Cass woke up to the sounds of their steadily rising voices. Was something wrong?
"You're not my friggin' nannie, Sam!"
"How long have you been gone?"
What time was it? Past two in the morning at least, Cass thought. Castiel yawned and forced away his exhaustion. He sat up in the bed and ran a hand across his face. He had the bed this time because it was his turn. Dean almost always took the couch in the motels with only two twin beds. Something about "Go to sleep, Cass, you look like crap. Don't argue with me."
It was an unusual display of kindness on the hunter's part.
Castiel walked to the window and pushed down the blinds. Sam and Dean were just outside, carved out of the night by the orange light of a streetlamp. Sam towered over Dean, who glared at him defiantly. After a few seconds, Dean threw his hands in the air. "You're one to talk!" he spat. "You spent ages sneaking off getting fat on friggin' demon blood from your black eyed girlfriend! At least, I'm doing something useful!" Castiel winced. It was only when he was really mad that he brought that up.
Sam was frozen in shock. He suddenly didn't seem so tall. "I-I know, Dean. I just want to make sure you're okay."
Dean snorted. "Don't lie to me. It won't work." With a final curse, Dean swung around and started toward the Impala.
Sam chased after him. "Dean, please!"
In angry dismissal, Dean swatted behind him. He threw open the car door and was about to get in when Sam said something in a much softer voice. How Sam was not a storm of fury was beyond Cass. It spoke bounds about how concerned for his brother he was. For one, if Dean was okay, he would never have thrown that into Sam's face.
He was seriously messed up and neither of them really knew why.
Carefully, Cass eased open the motel door. He felt like he ought to let them argue in privacy, but on the other hand, he really did want to know what was going on with Dean.
Dean's words filtered through the night damp, quiet and weary but growing in earnest intensity with each word. "You don't know what it's like, Sammy. It's, it's so…" He struggled for a description. "Loud. In my head. All the time. I can't sleep. I can hardly think. I ain't doing nothing useful laying there all night!"
Sam took a small step back. The anger in the air was gone but the tension remained. "Dean, when is the last time you slept?"
"I don't know." Dean's eyes flicked to meet Castiel's. The simple motion was enough to encourage Cass out from the doorway. He walked slowly.
Sam waited.
Dean rolled his eyes. "It's been a while."
How long, would have been the next question, but Dean ducked into the car. He slammed the door shut, and at the same time, the street lamp above them exploded. Both Sam and Castiel flinched in surprise. Before they could stop him, Dean drove into the night, leaving them in the dust.
Neither of them said anything for a long time. The darkness was a heavy, wet thing.
"Maybe he did die," Sam said tentatively after a long moment of complete silence. "When he was in front of your Grace. Maybe he died and-and went somewhere horrible. Maybe that's what's wrong with him."
Castiel didn't know, but he thought that if they were going to find out, they would find out soon. Dean couldn't hide this forever.
They did not sleep any more that night.
AN: *drags this out like a mile-long red carpet* hi, so we are getting close to a peak here, don't worry. Also, those of you worried about Piper fear not she shall return. Later. Quite a bit later, but it will happen. Please leave me a review and tell me what you think of this!
