A Long Hunt

Preparations

Dean woke up to Sam and Gabriel pounding on the door to their motel room.

"Cassie! Get your boyfriend up! We've gotta get going soon!!" Dean heard Gabriel call through the door.

The eldest Winchester groggily rolled over and rubbed his eyes before he sat up tiredly. Him and Cas had an exhausting, but extremely fun night last night. He was surprised that they hadn’t kept the entire motel up with the amount of noise they were making. They were both helplessly and undeniably in love with each other and just simply couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Besides, they had a lot of catching up to do.

Dean looked down and was pleasantly surprised to see that Cas had already used his mojo to dress him.

"We're up, we're up calm down!" Dean called back as he tried to blink away the sleep.

The pounding stopped and he heard Sam call, “Well you better hurry your asses up! We're wasting daylight!"

Dean rolled his eyes and threw the covers off of himself.

"I guess I'm ready now...." Dean called back as he looked down at the outfit that Cas had put him in. At least Cas had picked something nice. Dean was wearing his black AC-DC t-shirt (that Cas seemed to just a little obsessed with) and a pair of lose comfortable denim jeans. He was good. He was ready for this….. not really.

As Dean began packing up the last few weapons that they had left out, he tried to ignore the shaking of his hands. His heart had begun to race and there was a horrible twisting feeling in the pit of Dean’s stomach.

‘Pull yourself together Winchester!” Dean scolded himself. He never got like this before a fight. EVER. ‘Don’t do this now…. Stay calm. Don’t freak out… Don’t….’

Dean had to pause for a moment to collect himself again. His back was to Castiel, so the angel couldn’t see just how freaked he really was.

Slowly, he took a long, quiet, deep breath. His closed his eyes and focused only on the simple stretching feeling of his chest slowly expanding, while his lungs grasped the air. Dean breathed until his lungs were at maximum capacity. He held his breath momentarily as he felt simple burning his chest from lack of oxygen.  Then in a slow, semi-controlled motion, Dean parted his lips slightly and quietly let out the trapped air.

Dean’s eyes were still closed tight as he felt his heart sink deeper. The breathing had done very little to calm his nerves. Just as the hunter opened his eyes, he felt a pair of long slender arms wrapping around his body. Dean jumped at first and whipped around to stare wide eyed into Castiel’s brilliant blue eyes.

“Damn it Cas….” Dean breathed gently. “You know you can’t do that to me man.”

“I’m sorry Dean. You seemed worried.” Castiel’s face reflected his concern. “You heart rate had rapidly increased and I felt the tension radiating off of you.”

The angel’s worried looked became even more upset when he said, “Then your heart rate started to drop… You were standing so still Dean.”

“Cas, I’m fine.” Lie. Dean felt guilty lying to Cas, but he didn’t want to make everyone more nervous than they already were. If something like this bothered Dean…. Everyone would be concerned…“I promise,” Lie. “ I was getting myself pumped for the fight today.” Lie Finally Dean growled, “I-  just  want to rip Crowley’s lungs out through his ass.” That part was true. Dean was looking forward to ending Crowley’s miserable demonic life. It was going to happen one way or another. Dean was sure of that.

This douche canoe had already over extended his life expectancy with the Winchesters on his tail. Any normal demon or monster would have already been dead. Crowley was like Azazel…. Or leviathans…. Horrible and hard to kill.