This was inspired by a strange soft-centred nightmare I had. And I wasn't intending it for Valentine's Day, but it seemed to be heading that way, so I finished it off and here it is!

"Dean. Are you alright?"

Castiel stood at the top of the steps that led down into the kitchen of the Men of Letters' bunker. Dean Winchester - hunter, Righteous Man, the man that Castiel had personally rebuilt, recreating his body and fusing it with his poor, damaged soul - faced away from him, the sleeves of his thin shirt rolled up, his arms wet and soapy from washing up. To his right, on the drainer, was a stack of crockery and pans. To his left, another stack, ready to be washed - although they didn't look as if they needed it.

"M fine."

Dean resumed his activity, the hollow scratch of a metal scourer rubbing rhythmically in time with the twitch of his shoulder and arm muscles.

Castiel considered this statement. It was one he'd heard many times before from this human's lips and, at first, he had made the mistake of taking it at face value, disregarding Dean's physical state and entirely unable to interpret his mental state from any of the subtle or not so subtle clues.

But now, however, the angel knew himself to be much more experienced in these matters. In fact, he prided himself on his knowledge of the complexity of human emotional responses, if priding himself wasn't a sin, which it actually was, but Castiel had fought hard for his free will and if he chose to commit a few sins along his angelic way (or more than a few), then that was his business.

Dean Winchester was not fine.

For one thing, it was late - the time designated by humans as two thirty-six ante meridian at this latitude, in fact. Not that that was, in itself, an indication of not-fineness. It was just one clue. But if you added it to the washing up of things that didn't need to be washed up and the brevity of Dean's words, not to mention the lack of any enquiry as to the angel's own well-being, as well as the fact that the human remained facing away from the angel, with no characteristic over-the-shoulder smirk or greeting that would usually fall under the heading of 'chirpy'... Well…

The kitchen was dimly-lit, the low frequency side-lights switched on, but not the overhead striplight.

The human response to lighting was something that Castiel had noted with interest. These dim yellow lights seemed to soften their mood, whereas the bright white high frequency striplight that Dean had himself installed in the kitchen, made humans efficient if they were well-rested and irritable if they weren't. Dean was proud of his alteration, though, saying that it gave good light for working and that 'the Men of Letters wouldn't recognise a Lumen rating if it crawled up and bit them on their collective asses.' Castiel hadn't (and wouldn't) admit that the ultra high frequency bordered on the lower ranges of angelic speech - the range particular to Gabriel, when he tried to tell a dirty joke in Enochian, which didn't even have most of the words he needed so he had to make them up.

The angel trod softly down the steps, feeling like he was entering the firelit cave of a primitive human. A cave would not have been so clean, though. He ran his fingers over the work surface - newly scrubbed, though Dean always cleaned up after himself straight after cooking and complained when Sam didn't. Scanning the rest of the surfaces - the cupboard doors, the floor and even the ceiling, Castiel could detect dampness, the residue of cleaning agents and absolute minimal signs of life in terms of bacteria and the other tiny creatures that actually decorated the whole of the planet even though their patterns were invisible to the human eye. There was a small colony in one low corner, behind the refrigerator, but Castiel was, at heart, a merciful angel and so he wouldn't reveal their presence. Dean had clearly been expending considerable time and energy by cleaning a kitchen that was already clean, in the middle of the night.

The human upended the receptacle he'd been scrubbing, allowing water to drain out. He placed it, upside down, on the drainer, and then selected another clean item to scrub, unnecessarily.

Perhaps, Castiel thought, this was one of those repetitive activities that Dean found soothing, like the obsessive dismantling and cleaning of all of his projectile weapons - a task that he carried out on a regular basis, even when they hadn't been fired.

Castiel would watch him, studying the sure, graceful touch of those clever fingers as they moved in a learned sequence that had little to do with conscious thought and much more to do with the memory that lived in the nerve-fibres and the parts of the brain that had been there even before God had given these creatures the higher thought patterns that made them what they were.

No. When Dean cleaned his weapons, his limbs were loose and relaxed, the line of his shoulders smooth and tension-free. Now he was all sharp angles and fine tremors and, as he approached, Castiel picked up scent-traces of ammonia and the variety of mineral salts that made up human sweat. The back of his thin shirt was wrinkled, sticking to his skin and his hair was similarly mussed, strands sticking out to left and right, up and down, which could either be evidence of no sleep, or restless sleep. Castiel wasn't sure.

The angel stopped, the tips of his sock-clad toes (the blue socks with the bees on them that Dean had given him) precisely eighty-nine centimetres from Dean's unsocked heels.

(Eighty-nine centimetres, interestingly - or what Castiel considered to be interesting - would once have been measured as two cubits. Castiel's precise memory-catalogue showed him the stored image of the expression on Noah's face when he'd been told to construct an ark three hundred cubits long, fifty wide and thirty high. Castiel could now interpret the expression and applied one of Dean's phrases to it - 'as if someone pissed in his Cheerios'. Sometimes it was 'shit in his Wheaties.' Always, it was a type of breakfast cereal. Castiel had categorised the whole matter under the heading of 'inexplicable human sayings.')

At a distance of two cubits, however, Castiel's olfactory sensors, which his grace made far more sensitive than their natural human capacity, picked up another trace - various human hormones, released by the parasympathetic nervous system, and in particular, those hormones that were released in human tears.

"Dean."

"Jesus fucking Christ, Cas!" There was a clang and a splash as Dean dropped the pan he'd been scrubbing. Soapy water sloshed onto the floor and as the human spun around he slipped and would have fallen if Castiel hadn't grabbed hold of him, gripping one elbow and the other shoulder, his hand squeezing the tear-shaped shoulder muscle as it had when he'd plucked Dean's soul from hell, reforming his body as he rose through the veils of reality.

Dean shrugged him off, his bare feet squeaking on the wet floor.

"Why d'you have to sneak up on me like that? What the fuck, man?"

"I had announced my presence, Dean."

"Yeah, like five minutes ago. And then you went all ninja on me. Jesus."

Dean ducked his head and rubbed his face with one pink, rubber-clad hand. The washing-up water diluted the stress hormones and made all of his face wet instead of just the vertical tracks of his tears. This was deliberate - he didn't want the angel to know he'd been crying.

So, now Castiel was faced with a problem. Dean had been crying. Dean was distressed. This needed fixing, obviously. But Dean was hiding his distress and would not want to share. Did he want to feel better? Of course he did. Did he want help to feel better? Yes, actually, all evidence to the contrary, he did want help. Would he ask for or accept help when it was offered? No.

One of the human gestures that had first appealed to Castiel and one that he had worked hard to imitate, had been the eye roll. He carried out the act now, when Dean was still looking at his bare toes, which must be cold and should be covered with something warm.

"You're washing up," said Castiel, as a neutral statement that could surely not be interpreted as a threat to Dean's manliness.

"Well, duh."

An acceptable response. Castiel countered, "I will dry."

He picked up a towel and began.

"Uh, sure. If you wanna."

"I do."

Dean washed and scrubbed and rinsed. Castiel dried and put the things away and Dean didn't have to tell him where anything went, because the angel had learned that there was a certain order to Dean's kitchen and that he appreciated that order being adhered to. It was mildly amusing to watch Sam contravene the rules and suffer Dean's wrath.

Castiel returned the large stock pots to their cupboard, nesting them one inside the other.

Dean finished scrubbing right into the corners of a deep roasting tin, rinsed it and placed it upside down on the drainer. His movements had slowed, though. His hand remained flat on the scrubbed metal surface, making the tin rock slightly on its handles. Then he shook his head - just a tiny back-and-forth - and reached into the brimming bowl again to pick up a whisk, which didn't have anything stuck in its wiry convolutions as far as Castiel could see, but Dean squinted at it disapprovingly and acted as if it were filthy.

Castiel watched as his favourite human, his first real friend, ran his rubber-clad fingers around each loop of the whisk, multiple times - over and back, over and back, over and back.

Had he forgotten his angel was standing next to him? Would he startle again if Castiel spoke? No. No - every so often, Dean's eyelashes would twitch as he flicked a subtle sideways glance toward his friend. The now familiar ache in Castiel's chest started up - the one which had got him into more serious trouble in the past few years than in all his millenia of existence. It was the ache that told him to act when humanity (aka Dean Winchester) needed him, when there was suffering right in front of him and he was an angel so he should just go ahead and fix it, no matter what orders he'd been given.

What humans would refer to as his heart, (although really the feeling had nothing to do with that particular blood-pumping organ), ached and burned and longed to alleviate the suffering of this fragile, indestructible human who never seemed to know what was good for his well-being, either physical or emotional.

Castiel put down his dish towel.

"What's the matter, Dean?"

Dean twitched, dropped the whisk into the washing up water, picked it up and shook the water off it, then hesitated, holding the whisk in front of him - just staring at it as if it held the answers to a great problem.

Then he shrugged, put the whisk on the drainer and said, "Nothing. It's nothing."

"Dean." Castiel had found that could say this simple one-syllable name in so many different ways, to mean so many different things. Or even say it without anything in particular in mind and leave Dean to make up his own mind what was intended.

"Really. It's nothin'." Dean shook his head and his shoulders wriggled in a shaking-it-off shrug. "Just had a stupid dream. Then I couldn't sleep. Thought I'd do something useful."

Castiel wasn't about to question the usefulness of rewashing all of the clean kitchen utensils. Not when Dean was actually talking to him.

"A nightmare?" he prompted.

Dean turned away from the washing up, shaking his head. "No. Well, yeah." He leant against the sink and stripped off the pink gloves, slowly pulling each finger free, a muscle in his jaw fluttering. The tension was still visible in the line of his shoulders, in the tendons of his neck, in the furrows running across his brow and vertically from the bridge of his nose. His was the first human face that Castiel had truly learned - learned by heart, as the human saying went.

"Hmm." This was a sound that could occasionally work wonders, or at least serve as a placeholder to indicate that a conversation wasn't over. Sam was good at hmms. His were usually accompanied by slanting eyebrows, peaking toward the centre, which often elicited a response from his brother, although not always a positive one.

Dean remained silent, twisting the rubber gloves between his hands.

More placeholder activities were required. Castiel could get beer from the fridge. He could switch on the coffee machine. Neither of these drinks were particularly good for humans to drink in the middle of the night, although Dean frequently did. The other option was tea and, though Dean pretended to despise tea-drinking as something inherently feminine (where did these beliefs come from?), Castiel knew for a fact that his friend did actually appreciate a correctly-brewed cup of tea - made on the strong side, with the tiniest drop of milk and slightly less than a level teaspoonful of sugar, and served in a sturdy mug rather than the floral bone china teacups and saucers which Castiel felt a strange inclination toward.

The angel picked up the kettle from the hob and when he approached the sink, Dean moved aside and let him fill it. Castiel then lit the gas and set the kettle on to boil, by which time Dean had taken out the large brown teapot and assembled all the other tea-making essentials, including the cookie tin and two plates.

Although it was supposed to be a myth that kettles took longer to boil if you watched them, Castiel suspected there were actually mischievous spirits who delayed the whole process. He flicked at the water with his grace and the kettle began to sing. He poured the water into the pot. They both sat down at the table. Dean took two homemade double chocolate chip cookies. Castiel took one of the plain cookies that Dean made especially for him, which contained as few ingredients as possible so that he could join in the cookie-eating without his angelic taste buds being assaulted with an overly confusing melange of molecules.

Another brush with his grace encouraged the tea to brew. He poured it out and added the tiniest drop of milk and the almost-but-not-quite level teaspoon of sugar to Dean's tea and nothing to his own.

"Thanks, Cas."

"You're welcome, Dean. Thank you for the cookie."

Dean, with a mouthful of tea, jerked his head and grimaced, which seemed to stand for 'You're welcome' when you couldn't speak. Then he swallowed and emitted a long, "Aaaah," which indicated satisfaction.

Castiel allowed himself a small smile. But now the tea-making had been achieved and they were sitting at right-angles to each other at the kitchen table. It was an ideal situation for sharing emotional turmoil or having a 'heart-to-heart', as it was commonly called - Dean's heart directly communicating with Castiel's - their metaphorical hearts, that is. An image of two internal organs connected together appeared in Castiel's mind. No.

So, how to proceed? A direct question? Castiel bit into his cookie, chewed the resulting crumbs and swallowed. He took a gulp of his tea. The tannins were sour on his tongue, which he quite liked.

"You had a nightmare, Dean."

"Yeah, well, you know… just the usual kind of thing."

Castiel did know, having been drawn to Dean mid-nightmare on a number of occasions, the human's distress calling out like the most abjectly pleading of desperate prayers.

"It was upsetting."

"No. Yeah. No more than usual."

Castiel looked up from his mug of tea. Dean was gazing into his own, his eyes shaded by his lashes, his mouth set in a tight line. Would this man ever be free from pain? Was there anything that would soothe his memories so that he could sleep undisturbed? Memories of hell, memories of purgatory, memories of family and friends dying and lost to him forever - all of them followed him into his sleeping world, and more besides. This man had seen enough horror to populate a lifetime of nightmares, or more. Drugging him with grace would work, of course, but you couldn't do that every night and it was, besides, unethical.

Dean sighed and his shoulders sagged. His face fell even further into such an expression of loss that the angel felt an impulse to smite something with all of his power.

"It wasn't the bad stuff, though. I'm used to that." He pushed the handle of hIs mug so that it slowly rotated in place. "It was something else. Something that… I dunno. It was just…" He broke off, scrubbed over his face with one hand, shook his head and took a deep breath. "It was just this weird thing. Like, you know how in dreams, time's just fucked up? Well, no, you don't. But, well, a dream can seem hours long and you've only been asleep five minutes. Or it can seem like just a coupla seconds and you're tangled up in the sheets like you've been fighting it for hours."

Castiel sipped his tea and hummed again, encouragingly.

"So, there was just this - like, this space in my nightmare. It felt like just a coupla seconds long. Just this little… space." He rubbed a hand around the back of his neck and shuddered. "It really threw me."

"It was unpleasant."

"No."

The word was ragged, torn from Dean's throat, and he looked up, directly at Castiel, his eyes shimmering in the dim light. He wiped away an unseen tear with the back of his hand.

"No, it wasn't. It was- it was good. It was nothing but good. It was so- so calm and peaceful and just like I had nothing to worry about and nothing could hurt me and there was nothing wrong at all."

"I don't understand, Dean. This good part of your dream was upsetting?"

"Yeah." Another word that sounded torn from the depths of his soul. "Yeah, it was just… It made me feel like… like how has it been so long?" The pain in his voice brought tears to Castiel's eyes. "How has it been so long since I felt like that? Because it wasn't just a dream, it was a memory. I know I've felt like that, once, a long, long, long time ago and I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten you even could, that feeling like that was a thing you could do, a way you could be. And it broke me up, man. It just broke me."

He put his head in his hands and his shoulders shook and tears fell onto the wooden tabletop with a steady pat, pat, pat.

Castiel looked at the trembling, hunched figure in front of him. Angels, he had been taught, were supposed to be compassionate toward human beings, but remain detached - sympathetic, but not empathetic. At one time, Castiel had been able to achieve such an attitude. However, detached compassion was simply no longer his goto modus operandi. He had to help with this emotional storm - he had to make Dean feel better.

But Dean was so strong, his defences so high, and even now he was wiping his tears away, pulling a rueful face, picking up his mug and taking a shaky gulp.

"I guess I just hadn't realised." He shrugged and made a pathetic attempt at a smile, his lips trembling. "I hadn't realised that there's always something there, you know?"

Castiel didn't really know and found himself falling into the attitude of puzzlement which had been Jimmy Novak's originally, but had become his own through inhabiting that vessel - his eyes narrowed, his head tipped slightly to one side. "What is always there? Where?"

Dean tapped his forehead. "In here," he said. "Or I guess maybe it feels like in here." He swiped a hand down his torso to his stomach. "Just this tight knot, this 'what next?' kinda thing. The thing that means I can go from zero to a hundred like that." He snapped his fingers. "It's just part of being a hunter. Living like we do. You know - the hurt, the death, the things that are normal for us, but aren't really, shouldn't really ever be normal." He picked up his half eaten cookie and tapped it against the plate. "Fear, really. That's basically it. No point pretending you're not afraid, cause you'd be stupid not to be afraid of all this shit - apocalypses, demons, hell… angels." He gestured with his cookie toward Castiel.

"Are you afraid of me?"

Dean laughed. "Hell, no. Not you. Not now. I mean, yeah, I was shit-scared of you to begin with - a fucking Angel of the Lord? You were terrifying! But then, pretty soon, you were just Cas." He dunked his cookie in his tea and muttered. "Just my friend, Cas. My best buddy."

Dean had laughed. He'd smiled. He'd stopped crying and was dipping his cookie in his tea and then eating the softened section before it lost its cohesion and fell into his drink. This was all normal Dean Winchester behaviour. But his eyes were hooded and his shoulders still had a dejected slope. He wasn't happy. And that was unacceptable.

"This moment of peace, of safety - you said it was a memory?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, I think so."

"From long ago?"

He nodded. His head sank further. And he whispered, "A long time. Real long."

Castiel waited and eventually Dean cast a quick glance up at him.

"I think maybe it was my Mom? A memory of her. Maybe what I felt when she… uh, when she held me or something? I dunno. I just felt like I said - safe, happy. And not one thing, not a single fucking thing spoiling it. Just for a coupla seconds. In the middle of a nightmare." He shrugged. "Pretty dumb, huh? Nightmares I can deal with, but a good dream freaks me the hell out."

"It's not dumb, Dean."

"No. I dunno. I'd just… I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten anyone could feel that way - that you could be, uh… you know - that free? Free from hurt? And that makes me… it, uh…" His head ducked again. Castiel couldn't see his face.

"It makes you sad."

The head nodded. He sniffed.

A blue-white fire kindled and rapidly flared inside Castiel. A fiery need that, if he let it, would consume his human shape and explode into the vast angelic mystery of his true form. It would overwhelm the room, the building, the whole surrounding area and would take the small, sad, insignificant human and his sorrows and joys and subsume him and elevate him to the heights of heaven. It would wrap and enfold the earthbound soul, freeing it from its physical form and making it a part of the majestic truth that was an Angel of the Lord. Dean Winchester's soul would become a part of Castiel and they would be immortal forever and ever. And he would never feel pain again.

But if this were offered, what would Dean say? Yeah, bite me, Cas. Can an angel get a beer? Can angels taste pie? No? What's the point, then?

And he'd be right. Dean Winchester, Righteous Man, was who he was because of his suffering. He had always been a bright, loving soul, but the trials that life and death and life again had brought him had refined and tempered him so that, though he might present himself as a gruff, determinedly masculine hunter and killer of evil, inside he was motivated by joy in simple things and by deep compassion and above all, by love. He was beautifully, perfectly, fallibly human, and should and would remain so, for as long as Castiel could protect him.

Dean dipped his cookie into his tea again. But his hand shook. And he was leaving it in too long, so that soon it would disintegrate.

How, then, to help him? How to relieve him, to give him the peace and calm and safety that he craved? That such a man should be in constant, unremitting pain, so that for him it had become a normal state, was agonisingly painful for Castiel himself, as if all of that hurt reflected from the human's soul, directly to the angel's true self.

Dean sniffed again, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand again, but also took another bite of his half-melted cookie and chewed it, which represented all that he was - carrying on doing what he did, despite his sadness.

It was an unacceptable situation. So Castiel pushed back his chair and stood up.

He rounded the corner of the table and simply reached down and curled his hand over the back of Dean's bent neck, and said his name. "Dean."

Dean straightened and looked up, his eyes bright with tears, his lips still trying, and failing, to curl themselves into a smile.

Castiel's hand slid from his neck down to his shoulder. "Dean," he said, once more. And into that one syllable he put all the love that this man had taught him, all the concern and caring that Dean would spend on others but not himself, and he softly touched the side of this precious man's face, curling his fingers around the line of his jaw, his thumb brushing away a fat, translucent tear.

"Cas."

This human, that had taught him the true meaning of love, had also taught him how to smile. So Castiel smiled.

Then there was a scrape and a crash as Dean flung back his chair and let it fall. And his arms were around the angel, all the way around, holding him tightly while his face pressed into the side of Castiel's neck.

This was right, thought Castiel as his arms slid around Dean and held him close. This was what Dean needed. Just to be held while he cried, to be held and accepted and loved as himself, just himself - a man who had broken again and again but always managed to rebuild, always, in the end, managed to put himself back together - because he believed so strongly that it was his duty to be there to protect others, but also simply because he loved life and was determined to carry on loving it, no matter what.

Castiel slid his fingers through Dean's short hair, holding his head gently, stroking softly, his other hand firmly clasping around the human's waist. And not long ago he would have had no idea what to say in such a situation, but now he knew that it didn't really matter what he said, just as long as it was a repetitive murmuring of small things that meant far more than they said.

"It's alright, Dean. I'm here. I'm here. You're safe. You can cry. It's alright."

And it seemed like Dean believed him. Because he stayed, where he might have broken away, embarrassed. He stayed, his arms around his angel, and Castiel's arms around him. He stayed, and let the whispered words trickle into his ear, over and over and over, until his breath slowed and his warmth and weight were softer and heavier, pliant and relaxed.

"I'm here. You're safe," Castiel whispered again.

And Dean eased back just a little way, just enough so that the angel could see his face. The dim yellow light awoke moss-green lights in his eyes, which were puffy and reddened, but still beautiful.

Dean cleared his throat, gruffly. "Uh… I think I might've found it again."

Castiel couldn't help it. The tilt of his head, the narrowing of his eyes were reflexes that were now a part of him. "What, Dean? What have you found?"

"I've found that thing again." His eyes flicked down. His already pink cheeks reddened even more. His arms were still around Castiel, holding him tight.

Castiel's fingers scratched gently in Dean's hair, and his other hand stroked the small of his back, encouraging him to speak.

Dean looked up again. "Uh… that thing, where I'm safe, happy, with nothing to spoil it." His lips quirked in a shy smile. "I guess I'll never really know if my dream was a memory, or what. But now - now it's you," he said. "It's you, Cas."

And Castiel smiled.

I hope you enjoyed that soft smooshiness! Happy Valentine's Day!