Chapter 40.

Dean woke in the night from a deeper sleep than he had enjoyed in a while. He'd expected to be unable to sleep, tormented by desire or uneasy that Anael was going to be awake all night, but neither problem had arisen. He found her company soothing and lying with his arms around her felt natural.

"You're awake." she said in the darkness.

"Yeah." he said.

"How do you feel?"

"Honestly? Pretty great. I don't know how I'm gonna explain this to everyone tomorrow, but I don't care. This is good. It feels right. That is, if it feels good to you, too." He turned on the light to see her face and was relieved to see a relaxed smile.

"When I'm with you," she said, "All the fear and confusion fades away. Nobody else has that effect and I don't know why you do, but lying here with you, that effect is magnified. I was afraid you'd wake up and call this a mistake and be angry with me again."

"It was never you I was angry with." he said, "But this doesn't feel like a mistake. I just hope the others don't make it more complicated than it needs to be, but maybe, if they do, we could move into one of the old hunter's cabins for a while."

"Leave the bunker?" she said.

"You'd be perfectly safe. You don't still consider Jack a threat, do you?"

"No, I just never thought you'd consider leaving the bunker."

"I never had a reason to before. I hope I won't now. I hope they can accept this situation, even if it makes no sense."

"I think they'll all respect that it makes sense to us." she said, "Castiel and Jules have defined their own relationship and made their own rules and everyone is fine with that, so why can't we do the same thing?"

"That's a good point." he said, "What they came up with seemed pretty weird at first, but they've made it work. Angel/human relationships are never gonna be simple, even with a human as well-adjusted as Jules, but those two are rock solid now." He thought about Cas for a moment. He was still the biggest problem. If he could not accept their relationship, it could not endure, because Dean could not risk losing either brother. "I hope he'll understand all this." he said.

"Cas and I talked earlier," she said, "And I think he's sincerely supportive now."

Dean doubted whether she understood Castiel's feelings any better than her own, but then, somehow, she seemed to understand his. When he had talked about unmet needs, it had been an attempt to explain and possibly excuse his behaviour. He had not expected empathy and understanding, but her proposition and her gentle and entirely non-seductive behaviour had shown both.

Her own feelings of isolation had made her sympathetic concerning his. From the tart of her stay at the bunker, he had struggled to remain cold to her, because it worked both ways. He knew how it felt to hate what he was expected to be. He understood feeling like a stranger to his own species, even as he sacrificed everything to save it. He understood why she wanted another option, although he suspected that the one she had chosen to chase might be a big disappointment, as might he.

Despite all their differences, even past animosities, they understood each other. Out there, with too large an audience, each wore their masks of bravado, bluff and sarcasm. Each was strong, each capable of pushing on through anything, clinging on past hope out of sheer bullheadedness.

Then here, in the privacy of his room, in an act of mutual trust that seemed more intimate than their previous acts of passion, they had both dropped the act and admitted a mutual need. Under normal circumstances, such honesty would have been unthinkable and he had no idea why it had been possible for him this time, but it was something to do with Anael herself.

It wasn't even about guilt, for once, although he did still feel guilty about the way he had treated her. If anything, seeing her beside him, all pretence of invulnerability abandoned, made him even more aware of how he had hurt her, but it also showed her capacity for forgiveness.

She could have come to his room to argue, to hurl accusations, all of them valid. She could have used her proposition to trick her way into his bed and once there, it would have been easy for her to overcome his willpower and inveigle him into more beautiful errors of judgement. She hadn't even tried. She had simply curled up beside him, harmless as a kitten.

He remembered the early years of his life, when hugs and kisses were always available and such fears as ever came to him faded away in the face of his mother's warm smile. For a short time, he had known how unconditional love from both parents felt. He could remember having a bad dream and being held by his father, feeling perfectly safe, knowing that he was perfectly loved.

The fire had broken his childhood like an axe through a sapling. His mother's scream would never stop resounding in his head, often drowning out the memories of her gentler words and sounds and the smell of smoke made him forget the more domestic smell of baking pie. Who cared that it came from the Piggly Wiggly? It was always reheated to perfection.

His father had stopped holding him and reassuring him. He understood that now, but at the time, it had seemed obvious that he was to blame. He had taken Sam out of the house, but had not tried to save their mother. John's dark moods seemed like anger to him and he had already been inclined to feel that Mary's death could have been averted if he had been stronger or braver or good enough to deserve a favour from those angels that were allegedly watching over them.

He could rationalise it all now, but that didn't mean a thing. However well it was all understood by the man, there was a child inside who would never get it and would continue to long for the affection he could barely remember. Other women had given him a taste of it, enough to get him through the night, enough so he could tell himself he had what he needed, but the feeling never lasted and deep down inside, he knew it was nothing like the real thing.

"Castiel will be okay." Anael assured him and he realised that he had been too quiet. She was anxious.

"Yeah. I'll make sure he understands." said Dean, "Sorry. I'm overthinking stuff again."

"Me too." she said, "I worry when you go quiet."

He could understand that. He had not been consistent or reliable so far. "I wish I were better at this." he said.

"You're here," she said, "And you're giving this a chance. I know that isn't easy for you."

He smiled. "Actually, right now, it feels like the easiest thing in the world. Tomorrow, it gets complicated, but, here and now, this feels perfect."

She rested her head on his chest and whispered, "You don't have to say it back, now or ever and I don't ask for any relationship more than this, but I love you."

He stroked her hair and turned the light out again. "I know it feels like I don't care, but I do. I wish I had Sam's way with words. Even Cas and Jules had their Bible code. All I have is a lifetime of saying the wrong thing."

"What if there are no wrong things?" she said, "What if the truth is all I want?"

"I'm not always great with the truth." he said.

"Neither am I," she said, "Not when I can deflect attention with a quick and clever lie."

"Sometimes, most of the time, that's just easier."

"Yeah and we take the easier way every time." she said.

"Maybe we can take a few more risks, when it's just the two of us." he said.

"Sounds good." she said.