Hell's Greatest Weapon

Chapter 26: Freud

The cut on the back of your head was throbbing when you took Dean’s clothes out of the dryer, but you knew that reaching back to touch it might mess up your hair and expose it to the world, which was the very last thing you wanted to do.  Electing to push through this minor little blimp of pain, you only took Dean’s clothes out and folded them while walking over to the bathroom.

You didn’t even knock on the door when you opened it, figuring it was safe to walk in since the shower was running; after seeing the steam and hearing the inconsistently falling of water to the ground as it rushed over a body, you knew you were in the clear.  Walking over to the toilet seat, you closed the cover and set Dean’s freshly warmed clothes down, waving a hand over them to make a type of invisible bubble to keep the warmth in for when he put them on.

“Y/N?” You heard from the shower, followed by the sound of the curtain opening.  Because you were on the way out of the bathroom your back was to the shower; nonetheless, you imagined Dean’s head poking out one of the sides as he looked at you.  “Hey, what’re you doing?”

Dean’s voice was soft, honestly curious as he asked this, and you could hear the exhaustion clearly in his tone; beyond the exhaustion, however, you heard the pain, the suffering, the absolute guilt and sheer terror that must have been coursing through him at that very moment in time.  The fragility that so rarely made an appearance in the man’s voice would have broken you if you weren’t already shattered into a thousand tiny pieces, and it was right then that you decided you were done fighting.  You weren’t done fighting to find another cure for the Mark—any other cure for the Mark than the one Metatron had spoken of or Death had confirmed—but you were done fighting Dean. A few days ago you would have turned and left the bathroom, you would have walked out and told yourself that it was okay, that you were doing the right thing in distancing yourself, in removing any romantic connection you held with the man, but the person that was standing, then, the person in your body was different.  Tired, scared, worried that the one human she’d let herself fall for over her centuries-long existence might be dying and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

So you stopped fighting and turned to face the shower, seeing that Dean’s face was, indeed, poking out of the corner of the shower curtain.  You cleared your throat and gestured to the clothes.

“I, uh,” you smirked and looked back up at Dean, “I just got them out of the dryer, I figured you might want to have some warm clothes to put on.”

Dean looked at you, his eyes linking to yours and within seconds you saw any hint of shadow fade from them; there was certainly a hint of the demon in him when you walked in—not nearly as prevalent as when you’d seen Dean with Metatron, but there nonetheless—and you’d noticed a bit of dark fog coming from around the shower curtain, but now… now he was winning.  He was beating it.  And that made you smile.

Naturally Dean smiled at the sight of your smile, and his eyes fell to the ground a moment before he looked back up at you.

“I know you probably have things to do,” he said hesitantly, softly, before shrugging, “And I get that, but would you mind just staying here with me for a little while?” 

Had this been anyone else, the request would likely have not meant a thing to you; you would have easily been able to walk out of that room and go make yourself some coffee, drink until you couldn’t see straight, maybe watch a class black-and-white movie because those were your favorite but… there was the fact that the eldest Winchester, the I-have-no-weaknesses poster boy, was asking you in the most tender way to stay with him. You already saw the vulnerability in his eyes, the terror, but somehow hearing him essentially admit the existence of that vulnerability made your stomach clench.