SUMMARY: A storm crashes through town and knocks a few more things down than you expected. 3.8k
WARNINGS: angst. dean winchester is heavily traumatized. at this point this is a john winchester hate account. ptsd. minimum mention of death/alcoholism. friends to lovers. dean winchester is bad at feelings. and needs the biggest hug ever. pining. hurt/comfort. fluff.
The storm has been going for hours.
It started with just a few droplets as Dean drove you to a motel, both of you exhausted after Sam had sent you on a werewolf hunt while he stayed with Bobby, looking into the colt and who the fuck this Crowley guy is.
By the time you’d said your goodbyes and went to your respective rooms, it had started pouring. It was calm enough that you’d been happy about it, grateful to be able to get more than five hours of sleep with the rain as background noise. But by the time you’d gotten out of the shower, it’d been a full-on tempest.
Fallen trees, roaring thunder, flickering lights—the whole deal. You’d turned on the news just to find out the storm would move out of town by morning, but that left you with a whole night to get through.
Thankfully, the ceiling wasn’t dripping, the streets weren’t flooding yet, and it was just cold enough for you to snuggle into the covers. So you’d simply placed all your things on top of a table and decided to make the most out of it, the tapping of the rain on the window and the whooshing of the wind lulling you into an almost-sleep. You’d curled up under the thick blankets, sighing as your muscles relaxed and your eyelashes fluttered, and changed the channel.
You’d been half-watching some soap opera entertaining enough to keep the voices at bay, your consciousness starting to slip, when all the lights went out.
It took you a second to catch up with what just happened, but when you’d gotten out of bed and looked out of the window, all the streetlights and signs were also off. Lighting struck across the dark sky, and your shoulders had dropped in annoyance.
One night. You just wanted one easy night.
So now you’re here, scrambling through your bag to grab your flashlight and look for some candles. You know you packed some, because you’re always prepared for any spontaneous seances or rituals. But instead of your usual, simple white taper candles, your fingers find a glass tube at the bottom of the bag. You pull it out with a frown just to find the Cuddling with Dean Winchester-scented candle Sam had bought for you at the Supernatural convention.
You half regret not getting him that Rufus body-pillow you’d found.
Still, this is your best option. So you pick up your lighter and hold it near the wick, praying that its quality is good enough not to explode and burn down the motel room.
You barely have time to think about how weirdly accurately the candle smells like Dean’s clothes when there's a knock on the door.
It makes you jump, trying to look through the window for any signs of danger. But the whole glass is fogged, and there’s not much you can do without giving yourself away, so instead you grab your gun and walk up to the door.
Slowly, you twist the rusty knob, only opening it enough for you to see who’s outside.
Dean attempts to give you one of his boyish, charming grins, but it’s shadowed by the fact that he’s soaking wet, trembling in the cold breeze and looking more like the wettest, saddest dog at the shelter.
“Dean!” Your gun clatters on the ground as you let go of it, swinging the door open and gaping at your best friend. You can barely see his face under the moonlight, but you still notice his tight features and bitten-red lips. “What the hell are you doing outside?”
He attempts to answer, but his teeth are chattering too hard. A frosty, early-winter breeze hits you, and you don’t miss a beat as you pull him inside the room, closing the door behind you and tugging at his wrist until he’s sitting on the edge of the bed.
“J-just thought I’d come check on you,” he stutters as you wrap the thickest blanket around him, the one you were laying on a second ago and which must still be warm from your body heat. “Wanted to make sure you didn’t get scared by the blackout.”
You laugh, rubbing your hands up and down his arms. He’s still shivering, his face devoid of any color except for the angry red on his cheeks, and the stupid heater had to be broken tonight. “I was covered in werewolf guts just a second ago. I’m not scared of a little darkness, dumbass.”
He chuckles, but it’s the tiniest bit strained. You frown, softly brushing his damp hair off his forehead. His irises flicker with the candlelight, the golden flakes in them glowing a little stronger, but there’s something ghostly behind them. Something haunted. But Dean always looks haunted lately.
“Right, right.” He closes his eyes at your touch, and you almost think he leans into it a little. You must really be tired. “But you never know. Sammy’s faced literal demons, and he’s still scared of Ronald McDonald.”
“To be fair, the guy’s a little off-putting,” you giggle, but you keep studying Dean’s face carefully. You’ve known this man for years, ever since he was just a twenty-two-year-old with nothing but a roguish grin and a pocket knife, and you know when something is wrong.
More wrong than usual, that is.
His teeth have stopped chattering, and his eyes are a little less clouded, but there’s something in the tremble of his hands, and the way he’s not pulling away from your care with a grumble of “I don’t need to be babied, sweetheart,” that worries you.
You let your hands slide off of him, walking away to go look for the packets you’d bought from the bending machine before you’d gone into your room, a flimsy attempt to offer him some comfort he won’t reject.
Dean shuffles on the bed so that he can keep his gaze on you, and it burns on your skin as you fumble with the plastic bag you’d left on the corner table. You hear him wiggling around quite a few times, and you try to find a way to ask him what he’s still doing here that won’t chase him away.
Because he checked on you, and he saw you’re fine—alive and sleepy and a little cold, but pretty good for your usual circumstances. Still, he hasn’t moved from your bed. His mission was accomplished, but he doesn’t look like he plans on leaving any time soon. And as much as every part of you is glad—because everything always feels a little safer and cozier with him present—it’s still weird.
Because yes, you two spend more time together than is probably healthy. Too many nights camping out in the forest while chasing a wendigo or evil woodling, too many hours curled inside the Impala driving across state lines, endless days of research in packed libraries or small couches. But it hasn't been like this in years.
Back when you first met, during that ghoul hunt somewhere in Alabama, it had been only the two of you. What’d started as a strategic team-up soon shifted into something deeper—post-fight dinner leading to breakfast the next morning and lunch later that day, and before you knew it, you were climbing into the Impala to never look back.
From then on, it had been you and Dean against the world. Driving across the country, fighting evil sons of bitches, and getting too close too quickly. Those years feel like ages ago now—back when you didn’t know about angels, or the apocalypse, or hell. You both have been so naive, so easily consumed in the feverish high of finding a soul that’s made of the same thing as yours.
And then John had gone missing, and Sam had joined you, and it’d been like a bucket of cold water washed down on you. Dean had taken a step back, he built a wall you could see through but weren’t brave enough to climb, and you just stayed there and waited. For the right moment, for the day he’d knock down his guard and finally let you in again.
But life has been nothing but danger since then—running, fighting, praying. Clinging to your sanity with the tip of your fingers, begging the wind to blow slowly, so you can keep Dean for just a moment longer.
So the wall has stayed up, and you don’t think it’s ever coming down.
Even now, after you thought the worst was over, the battle doesn’t end. You still wake up in the middle of the night with his name wrapped around your throat like a noose, flashes of his vessel being worn like a puppet and him being trapped back in hell—or somewhere worse—plaguing your mind.
So you’ve spent years teetering along a line neither of you is brave enough to cross, terrified on this side of a conversation you’ll never come back from. Still waiting. Always waiting for what will never come.
Which means that now, even though you and Dean are still just as close as before, you barely spend any time together without Sam or someone else there.
It doesn’t change the fact that you love him. That you’re so in love with him, it even seemed to transcend the laws of heaven and hell, when you’d closed your eyes at night during those forsaken four months and he’d been there, in your dreams—tortured and bloody, but still beautiful. Still Dean Winchester.
You’re still not sure it wasn’t just your brain trying to keep you alive, conjuring images of him so that you wouldn’t pull the trigger, but it’d felt so real. His soul calling to yours just like it is now, his fire seeping into your flesh and his voice rumbling through your bones. Maybe one day you’ll ask him if he remembers, if maybe all those nights of screaming his name really did something.
But for now, you stand here in front of the definitely radioactive microwave of the motel’s poor attempt at a kitchenette, with the everlasting mark he’s left on you throbbing along your ribs, and hope some divine wisdom comes to you in salvation.
“What are you doin’, sweetheart?”
You hum, pouring some carton milk into two paper cups before picking up the cocoa packets you’d been surprised to see earlier. “Shitty hot chocolate. The bending machine had this instant cocoa thingies, so I bought some.”
“Damn, I would’ve come earlier if I knew you had the good stuff.”
You giggle, thoroughly mixing the powder as much as you can before reaching for the microwave. Only then it hits you that the power is, indeed, out.
You’re getting cold cocoa, you guess.
You finally turn around to face Dean, leaning back against the counter and crossing your arms. He still has your blanket around his shoulders, looking tired and adorable, and by now the whole room smells like him.
Stupid candle, you’ll have to trick Sam into going to next year's comic-on and convince everyone he’s a cosplayer.
“Don’t get too excited yet.” You grin at him, his soft demeanor—the dim lightning and frozen-red cheeks making him look more like an angel than the sword heaven claims him to be—melting your heart into something gooey and dumb. “There’s still the chance we’re about to get lead poisoning.”
Dean throws his head back in laughter, but it’s suddenly cut off by the roar of thunder.
It’s like he’s been shot. His back snaps straight, his eyes wide and fearful in a way you’d seen such a few times before, something dark and ugly flashing over his face. He doesn’t reach for a gun, doesn’t try to run or dodge, he just freezes.
Immobile, like if he moves just a bit, it’ll all come crashing down.
You’ve never seen Dean like this before. You’ve seen him angry, and grieving, and murderous—but never this utterly, undeniably afraid.
“Dean…” you whisper, and he seems to snap out of whatever spell he’d been put under. His eyes focus again, finding your form and staying on your face under the orange light of the flames. “Are—are you afraid of lighting?”
He shakes his head, but he slowly starts to curl into himself, and something in the center of your chest pulls you forward. Closer and closer until you’re sitting on the bed, knees brushing his as you wait patiently for him to speak. To give you a sign to back off, or to finally let you in.
“When I was younger, dad would send me away sometimes. If I pissed him off to much, or fucked up too badly.” You chew on your tongue to stop yourself from snarling, because you and John Winchester had never seen eye to eye, but Dean doesn’t need you bitching about it now.
Instead, your hand finds his. You intertwine your fingers like you haven’t done in years, and it makes him look up. He grips onto your hand like it’s the only thing keeping him afloat, like he might drown if he lets go.
“I know. That’s how we met.”
His chuckle is bitter and bruised, and you can help the way your body moves closer to him. He seems to welcome it. To welcome you. The wall starts to crumble right in front of your eyes, and you just watch as every block shatters.
“Yeah, but by the time I was eighteen, I could choose where to go.” He shakes his head, his thumb tapping against your knuckles in what you recognize as a Metallica tune. The one he hums when you’re standing guard outside someone’s house and the one he drums against the steering wheel when Sam falls asleep during a long drive. “Before that, he’d send me to these random places. Hunters’ houses, homes for delinquent boys, simple cases. This one time, he sent me to stay at his friend’s cabin in freakin’ North Carolina. He dropped me off at the edge of the woods, and I had to hike for like, thirty minutes to get there. I was twelve, I think.”
There’s more thunder outside, the flicker of the lighting filtering through the curtains, and Dean shudders. Your other hand finds his cheek in a desperate attempt to comfort him, to hold him together until he’s whole again. He looks shocked by the touch at first, jaw clenching under your palm, but then he leans into it with a soft, almost relieved sigh.
You don’t know if it’s the darkness of the storm or the fact that you’ve been on the verge of death more times than you can count lately encouraging you, but you start to softly run your fingers through his short, damp hair. It’s so simple, yet it feels fundamental. Like a puzzle piece falling into place, where it was always supposed to be.
“Turns out this guy had died a few days ago,” he continues. “No one knew, since he wasn’t close with many people. They just assumed he’d crawled into some hole for a while, you know hunters. I found him, when I forced my way through the door. He drank himself to death in that cabin.”
“Oh, Dean…” you murmur, squeezing his hand as you softly scratch his scalp. He shakes his head slightly, so you let him keep talking.
“A storm started before I could make my way back down the mountain. I think it ended up being the tail of some hurricane, I don’t remember exactly. But all the phonelines died, though I don’t think dad would’ve picked up anyway. It was raining too hard for me to try and bury the guy, and there were no candles or food anywhere. I just—”
He takes in a quivering breath, his eyes glossing over as they get lost somewhere in the peeling paint beside your head, absorbed into the heart-wrenching memory. His chest hitches, and his nails dig into the skin of your hand.
“Hey, hey,” you murmur, gripping his jaw and guiding him back down, until his eyes focus back on you. He blinks a few times, like he doesn’t really know where he is. “Come back to me, baby.”
Whether it is the touch or the pet name, Dean seems to ground himself. He nods, his grasp in your hand loosening but not letting go, his voice still labored but present.
“I had to spend the night there. The guy was already starting to smell and everything was so damn dark. All I could hear was thunder, shaking the walls and echoing through the empty place. I was a kid, I just—I didn’t know what was happening. I was… scared, sweetheart. I was so fucking scared. Water was dripping from the ceiling and the lighting strikes only seemed to get closer and closer. Then a fucking tree fell down on the roof and I thought—I really thought I would die there, in that shitty cabin with some stupid dead dude.”
A long, silent moment passes. The images flash through your mind like stabs to your gut—a twelve-year-old Dean, all alone in the middle of nowhere, curled onto himself like he was just a second ago, convinced he’d die all alone.
“I’m sorry, Dean,” you whisper, because they’re the only words that come to you. There’s so much you want to say, so much pain you wish you would erase from his body, so much love that will never fit into any language. “That’s so fucking awful, baby, I’m—”
“I don’t want your pity.” His words are rough and meant to cut, bloodied and full of edge. An edge that’s not meant for you, an edge that he wields in a desperate attempt to protect all the soft spots on his armor. An edge that has been aimed at you before, but that bounces right off your skin every time.
“It’s not pity.” Your other hand leaves his to find his cheek instead, gently cupping his face completely, keeping him carefully angled away from the window. “It’s the truth. You deserved so much better, Dean. You deserve the whole goddamn world, and I’m so sorry life has been so fucking cruel to you.”
The words leave you with an intensity that seems to feed the fire of the candle, and suddenly everything glows. Red and orange dance across every surface as Dean blinks at you, breathing roughly for a moment before his head drops forward.
Then, when Dean’s only held up by you, the wall tumbles down completely. “I–I’m sorry I came to bother you, you were probably ready to fall asleep and I woke you up. I just—I don’t wanna be alone. I can’t be alone anymore.”
“You don’t have to.” You look for his gaze, smiling at him softly. Your thumbs rub circles on his cheekbones, and you let yourself step over the line. Let it vanish under your feet as you make your way through the ruins of Dean’s guard. “For as long as I’m here, you’ll never have to be alone.”
More thunder comes crashing down, but Dean’s attention stays solely on you.
“Why?” You frown, not understanding Dean’s earnest question. “Why are you so good to me,” he whispers your name in that devoted tone that always makes your heart skip.
Another beat goes by, and something in your chest is ready to snap. “You wanna do this now?”
“It’s the end of the world, darlin’.” He gives you a weak attempt at his signature smirk. “If this is it, and we’re going up in flames, I wanna be with you when it happens.”
You can’t contain the relieved smile that takes over your face as you lean in to kiss him.
You always thought that if you ever got to kiss Dean, it’d taste like tears stains and could’ve-been’s. That it’d come with bloody wounds and final goodbyes. That it’d be one last mercy before the lights went out.
But his lips taste like nothing but pure fucking hope.
There’s coffee and whiskey and something sugary on his tongue, and you let yourself get lost in it, knowing that you will never have to worry about finding your way back. He’s got you, just as much as you got him.
Because Dean kisses you with even more need than you do. His hands fly to your waist as he drapes himself all over you, until his whole body weight is on you and he can wrap your bodies with the blanket on his shoulders. He’s not as solid against you as you thought he’d be—instead, he’s soft, still sturdy but mauled. Raw in a way that molds into you, the ache in on his chest matching the ache in yours, blending together until they’re one throbbing force.
“I adore you, Dean Winchester,” you mutter against his lips, letting him tug you up the bed until you’re a mess of tangled limbs and fabric, where you can’t tell when you end and he begins. “And I’ll spend every single stormy night with you, for the rest of our lives, if you let me.”
“I love you, baby. The thought of not having you hurts more than fucking hell. I want you, forever.” He peppers kisses down your neck, nuzzling into the tender skin and slumping on top of you. You wrap your arms around his shoulders, and you pity any fuckass archangel that’s stupid enough to try and take him away from you now. “You’re a miracle.”
It’s your turn to shake your head—because really, you’re anything but a miracle—but he shushes you before you can. Any other time, you’d argue until he agrees with you or gives up, but you let him have this one, just because you love the fucker.
You spend the rest of the night in bed, sipping your cold cocoa and babbling about random, simple stuff. No armageddon, no Lucifer or Michael, no hanging sword. Just Dean’s silly jokes and your smartass comments, as he likes to call them. He kisses them right off your tongue, so you continue to annoy him until everything melts into a haze of Dean.
As you cuddle, you keep him carefully facing away from the window. You catch the lighting on the sky first and press him a little closer to you before the thunder comes, whispering in his ear and kissing every inch of his face until all the fear is gone, and he’s back to being the goofy asshole you love so much. It takes a few hours for you to fall asleep, but once you do, it’s peaceful. Nightmareless, only Dean’s heat and his firm touch filtering through the veil of your unconsciousness.
By the time you wake up, it’s almost noon, the power is back, and the candle you’d left burning has completely melted.
“Why the fuck does the whole room smell like my body soap?”
NOTES: shout out to the person in my ao3 comment section that called dean "the wettest, saddest dog in the shelter," and therefore inspired this. dean being scared of "normal" things is so dear to me, even if I have to make up trauma for it.
how many times can i put this man in a situation until y'all get tired of me? because I have at least thirty different ideas. thank you for reading, I love you!
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