If You Dare Challenge - #50 (A crawl space)

Fanfiction Writing Month: November [956]

Dean slept for nine hours after he was Tased; while he slept, Cas stayed with him, holding his hand and talking to him. Sonny tried to make him leave to go to bed, even threatening him with extra chores, but Castiel would not move. He just interlaced his fingers with Dean's, kissed his knuckles, and blinked his large, blue, sleep-deprived eyes.

"I don't," Sonny began, "think you should be here when he wakes up, Cas."

"Why not?" Cas' voice was gravelly and low.

"He can get a little...dangerous in times like this, son. You know that."

"I have to be here," Cas declared. "I have to be here when he wakes up."

So Sonny got him a sleeping bag and a plate of food and left him with Dean.

When Dean awoke, he was sluggish, almost cognitively absent. Instead of speaking (it sometimes upset Dean in the morning after he'd had a nightmare), he signed. DEAN? OKAY YOU?

Dean blinked at him.

OKAY YOU? Cas was starting to get scared. What had the Taser done to him?

Dean shook his head. "What?"

OKAY YOU?

He pressed his hand against his forehead. It hurt immensely. "I'm fine… What happened? What—" He stopped, and his eyes grew wide. "Sam."

Cas gulped.

"Sam," Dean repeated. "Where's Sammy?"

"Dean—"

"Where's my little brother?"

Once Dean remembered, Sonny had to come in to try to calm him down, but it proved to no avail. Dean began throwing things and smashing picture frames against the wall; he screamed and cried and pulled the dresser from the wall. He punched the pictures on the wall so hard he sliced his knuckles open on the glass. Sonny and Cas waited outside on the other side of the door until the violent storm was over; once it was quiet, Sonny knocked. "Dean?"

At no response, Cas tried. Knocking, he called out, "Dean? Dean? Are you okay?" Again, nothing. "Esne bene?"

When they entered the room, they found Dean kneeling in the center where the bed used to be, his gaze empty and his body still. Cas kneeled carefully among the broken glass; "Dean?" he whispered.

Dean looked as though he had murdered someone in the rage of passion and was still reeling with the shock of what he had done. His hands were smeared with blood from the cuts in the glass; some of that blood streaked across his face in thick lines, as though he'd been clawing at his face in his anguish. His eyes were glassy and blank, and he stared past Cas as though he were a ghost instead of his boyfriend.

He touched Dean's scarred, bloody hand, and was shocked to find that Dean didn't respond at all. He didn't flinch away or lean towards him. Dean didn't do anything at all.

Dean was empty.

Cas touched Dean's face. Nothing. "Dean?" His voice shook; he was legitimately scared. It was as though the loss of Sam had morphed Dean's heart into stone. There was no emotion there; there was no fear, no anger, no hate. No love, no laughter, no joy. He leaned, trying to get into Dean's line of sight, but it didn't work. Dean had slunk back into the crawl space of his brain where following orders and repressing all emotion meant safety.

Dean Winchester was gone.

Dean was a soldier; whenever someone ordered him to do something, he automatically performed that action. He didn't do anything without an order. Sonny had to order him to go downstairs just to start lunch. Cas sat beside him every single day, but Dean never responded. Cas told him to eat every bite to make sure he stayed healthy.

It was clear to Sonny that Cas hated ordering Dean around, but if he didn't, Dean would do nothing. When Castiel left Dean at the table while he did his chores out in the field, a couple of the boys found Dean in his blank state. When Cas came back, he heard laughing coming from the kitchen. "Try again, try again!" He recognized Luke's dry chuckle and rushed inside, dropping his bag. "Hey!" he growled. They were crowded around Dean; Luke and TJ laughed again.

"Come on, Castiel," Luke called. "You've gotta see this. It's hilarious."

Cas' hands curled into fists. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he hissed.

Luke grinned. "Watch." He jerked his chin at Dean, who was staring robotically at the wall. "Open the soda can, Dean." Dean did as he was told. "Pour it on your head."

Dean dumped half the can over his head before Cas reached it, snatching it from Dean's hands and throwing it at Luke. "You stay away from him! You hear me?"

He grabbed a towel from beneath the kitchen sink and began mopping up the mess, drying Dean's hair and face while he sat there, motionless. "Kinda reminds you of our first kiss, right?" he said quietly. His eyes burned. "I never really thanked you for that. You were so sweet… And somehow managed to get all that permanent marker out of my skin in one night." He pressed the towel against Dean's shirt. "You're a miracle worker, Dean." Cas laughed emptily. "And I love you. You're kind and protective and funny and smart… And now…" Before he knew it, he was crying. "Now you're just stuck like this, and I can't do anything." Tears spilled down his cheeks faster than he could stop them. "Please, Dean, please. Come back to me…" He sobbed so hard he couldn't speak; he gingerly held Dean's face in his hands and pressed a shaky kiss to Dean's forehead. Then he kissed him on the mouth and held him close, but Dean was far away.

A/N: Thanks for all of your support! The next chapter will go deeper into Dean's reaction to the loss of Sam.