Hello hello! This chapter is based on a prompt from NinjaDevil2000, asking for something with one of the boys having a nightmare in a motel and they have a pillow fight after when they can't sleep. I'm a sucker for Winchester nightmare stories (I read and write a lot of angst okay?) but hopefully there's enough cuteness to balance it out for you guys ;)

Still don't own anything. Sam is 12 and Dean is 16 in this story. Also cross-posted on AO3!

The car was getting cold. Sam checked his watch for the fourth time in the last twenty minutes and saw that Dean, John, and his hunting buddy had been gone nearly two hours. John had said it should be an easy case, so why was it taking so long? What if something had gone wrong?

Sam angrily flipped his jacket sleeve back over to cover his watch. Him sitting in the car waiting for them to come back was stupid. He could be out there helping or keeping watch. But no. Instead, his father had decided that the safest place wasn't even at the motel, it was sitting in the car waiting for them to come back.

"Stupid," Sam muttered out loud. He wasn't bored with all the time passing, he was worried. His book and flashlight sat forgotten on the bench seat next to him, lying unused for the last hour or so once he started getting worried.

There was no point in trying to read Frankenstein for his school report when his family was out there dealing with a real monster and hadn't come back yet.

Sam thunked his head back against the Impala's seat and sighed before he closed his eyes. Maybe if he willed it, time would pass faster and everything would be fine.

Perhaps his wish had been granted, because less than five minutes later, he heard his name being called from outside the car. It was John, and Sam could hear him getting closer as he shouted.

"Sam! Grab the med kit!"

Sam was out of the car before John even broke through the tree line, and had the trunk open and was rifling through the correct duffle. He had the kit out by the time he could finally make out his father's shape coming towards him.

Only it wasn't just John. He was supporting Dean, who looked like he was barely on his feet and was being dragged as opposed to walking. His gray shirt under his jacket looked black and glistened in the moonlight.

Blood.

"Sam, grab some bandages, we need to stop the bleeding. Sam. Sam!"

John's voice increased as Sam couldn't tear his eyes away from his brother. How was he even standing?

His training finally kicked in and he grabbed a wad of bandages and held them out for his father, who was maneuvering Dean around to the backseat of the car.

It would've been a success had Dean been a little more coherent and had a higher percentage of blood in his body. But neither of those were the case, and Sam was helpless to watch as Dean's eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed bonelessly to the pavement.

John kept shouting his name, but Sam was rooted to the spot, tears in his eyes as the bandages fluttered to the ground.

"Sam! Sam!"

"Sammy!" That one was louder, and as Sam took in a heaving breath, the bloodied pavement disappeared from his vision. The hard ground turned into a sweat-soaked bed beneath him and the black landscape parted to reveal the soft glow of a lamp.

But most importantly, Dean was sitting on the edge of the bed next to him, hands on Sam's shoulders, eyes wild with worry.

Eyes open. Alive.

"Sammy? Hey, man, come on back around," he said in the soothing voice he had adopted for dealing with people that got way too freaked out by their line of work.

"Dean?" Sam whispered. His chest was still tight and his heart pounding, but he started to feel more normal the longer he realized that things were not as they had seemed. "You're okay?"

Dean dropped one hand but kept the other on Sam's shoulder. "Yeah, of course, I should be asking you that. You were having one helluva nightmare, I couldn't wake you up."

Ah. So that would explain it. "Did I wake you?" he asked immediately, noting Dean's sleep-ruffled hair and wrinkled t-shirt.

Dean only shrugged. "Don't worry about it."

"Where's Dad?"

"Out with Tyler," Dean answered, "probably won't be back until morning. Celebrating the job well done." There was a note of annoyance in his tone, but it vanished as soon as Sam picked up on it. "But that doesn't matter. You, Sam, are you okay?"

Sam struggled to nod and pursed his lips. "Just a nightmare, sorry I woke you, you should go back to bed." He wouldn't be getting any more sleep, that was for sure, but Dean deserved some. Especially after the night he'd had, which was very slowly starting to come back to Sam.

"That one doesn't warrant a just, Sam, you were close to hyperventilating." Dean's eyebrows stayed crinkled together, forming just a few worry lines that looked out of place on his teenage face.

Dean was still in high school, but Sam knew he carried too much on his shoulders. Between doing enough homework to pass—even though Dean was much smarter than that—hunting, and looking after Sam, he was spread so thin already. Sam didn't want to add the burden of what was going on in his head to his brother, especially when he couldn't do a whole lot to fix it.

Dean finally dropped his hand when Sam started fiddling with the blanket. He wanted to talk to Dean, to someone, about it, and it certainly wouldn't be their father. His brother was right, as usual, it wasn't just a nightmare. It was a memory twisted into a nightmare, which was much worse.

"It was about tonight, wasn't it?" Sam couldn't even fault Dean for picking up on it when Sam hadn't said anything. He should've expected it, given how perceptive his older brother was.

"There was so much blood," Sam whispered, looking at his hands in the blanket.

He didn't have to look up to know that Dean was clenching his fists; he could feel the tension against the mattress. "It was all the wolf's, Sammy, you know that, I'm all good, everyone's fine."

Sam nodded, because he knew all that, but it didn't help the pit in his stomach.

"But…" Dean trailed off and sighed, "I'm sorry you had to see me like that. I told Dad you'd have been fine at the motel, but he wouldn't listen-"

Dean rarely spoke ill of their father, so it caught Sam a little off guard. Still, he broke one of his hands away from the blanket to touch Dean's knuckles in hopes of getting his hands to relax. "It's okay, Dean, it's not your fault. It just…scared me a little."

A lot, it scared me a lot, thinking of what could have happened.

Dean huffed out a humorless laugh. "Yeah."

"I'm serious. And I'm okay now, you should go back to bed." He tried to put as much force into his words as possible, but he mostly just felt exhausted. It had been a long day for both of them.

Sam rubbed a hand across his eyes and, discovering dried tear tracks there, made his way to the bathroom without Dean saying a thing. Sam didn't even bother checking what time it was, just splashed some water on his face, calmed down a little more, and prepared himself for a long night.

When he turned off the bathroom light and stepped out, he was surprised to see the room light still on. "Dean?" he asked and looked quizzically at his brother, who had returned to his bed but was fiddling with a pillow in his hands.

He was even more confused when Dean glanced at him, smirked, and tossed the pillow in Sam's direction. Sam caught it easily, but was completely unprepared when a second flew in much faster than the first and hit him in the stomach before plopping to the ground.

"What are you…?" Sam trailed off, pillow hanging from his hand.

"No talking. Fighting." Dean said simply and grabbed another pillow.

The confusion wasn't leaving Sam's head, was Dean actually serious? His high school attending, muscle car driving, classic rock loving, for all intents and purposes macho big brother was challenging him to a pillow fight at some ungodly hour in the morning?

Dean was staring him down, eyes alight, smile on his face, amulet resting on an army green t-shirt. Sam was so grateful for all of those little details that he decided fine, may the best guy win.

He threw the pillow in his hands at his brother, using it as a distraction so he could grab the one on the floor and duck behind his bed. Dean blocked the attack easily, but couldn't launch his own successful offensive before Sam was hidden.

Instead of going for the sleep pillow next, Sam grabbed one of the cylindrical decorative pillows he had pushed against the wall before going to sleep. He threw it like a javelin and laughed in victory as he heard Dean take an impact.

"Gonna get you for that!" Dean promised, and Sam could hear the smile in his voice. He threw another fluffy, white pillow, which landed right on top of Sam's head. Sam quickly threw it back and reached for another, only to realize that there were no more.

"Should've counted your ammo, little brother," Dean tsk-ed him.

Sam did a mental count and looked up over the edge of the bed so Dean could see him before he rolled his eyes. "You stole one while I was in the bathroom, jerk."

"You should always be aware of weapons at your disposal, bitch," Dean shot back, full on grinning as he picked up two pillows and tossed them in quick succession at Sam.

In a bid to not let one hit a painting, Sam reached out a hand to grab it and took the second across the face. Dean, in his glee at his hit, let his guard down and received one in a similar fashion when Sam immediately flung it back.

Dean tried using his own cylindrical pillow as a javelin, but Sam blocked it with the remaining pillow in his hands and made a move forward. Instead of throwing the pillow, he held onto one end and hit Dean across the side with the other.

His brother let out an audible 'oof' before he changed his tactic from long to short range too. Dean still had a height advantage, so while Sam went after his torso and thighs, Dean got in some pretty good shots to his shoulders and ribs.

When Sam tried to get the pillow away from Dean, it turned into a grappling match, which ended up with the two of them on the floor rolling around in the pillows. Dean eventually pinned Sam, holding the pillow over his chest with his forearm as his other hand stopped Sam from grabbing one of the other fallen pillows.

"Think this means I win," Dean commented happily, slightly out of breath from their tousling match.

"You did get a jump start on it, I think that's an unfair advantage." Sam looked unamused back up at him, but he knew Dean could tell he had a good time. "Quit gloating, get offa me," he kicked out with his leg and Dean withdrew his pillow weapon to flop onto his back next to Sam.

"You get credit for putting up a decent fight, little brother, I'd take that as a win, even if you still failed miserably." Dean chuckled as he rolled to sit up and avoided Sam's punch to his shoulder in the process.

For a second Sam thought he was getting up to go back to bed, but he outstretched his hand to turn off the lamp on the bedside table and then lay back down. He muttered to himself about the 'stupid lumpy motel pillows' and grabbed one that was wedged under his legs to put beneath his head instead.

Now that the spark of adrenaline was leaving his body, Sam was feeling the exhaustion left by the nightmare and the hours before. The floor was decently clean for once, and he didn't quite have the energy to climb back into bed by himself.

"What if Dad comes back and sees us like this?"

Dean scoffed. "Tell him we're preparing for sleeping in the woods or hard ground or whatever. Don't worry about it."

As Sam was getting his own pillow comfortable under his head, he saw Dean look over at him and returned his gaze. They were sprawled on the floor next to each other with a pillow between them and a few others strewn nearby. Even in the darkness, he could see the sudden seriousness in his brother's eyes.

"Don't you worry about a thing, Sammy, you hear me?"

Sam only nodded, not trusting that his voice wouldn't crack under the hidden weight of his brother's words. He was rewarded with a smile that seemed to light up the room and a hand that ruffled his hair before Dean's arms crossed over his chest and he closed his eyes.

"Good. Now, get some sleep."

On any other night, Sam would've needed to be told twice. But that night, in the peaceful darkness with his brother, alive and breathing next to him less than an arms length away, the one caring suggestion was all he needed.

I hope you guys enjoyed! With all the bantering these boys do, I 100% believe they've had a few pillow fights throughout their lives. As always, feel free to leave me a prompt in a review or a PM, I'd love to read and write some happy stories, particularly with how the world is right now (especially here in California, my heart is with everyone up north right now dealing with the fires, and anyone else affected by the literal hundreds of others currently burning in the state). Stay safe and thanks for reading!