I've got you, Sweetheart

Part 4

One nightmare. All it took was one nightmare to keep Dean awake. He thought that with you being in a much safer place now, everything would be okay. That he would be okay. But that wasn't the case.

Looking over to the right, he realized that he had only slept for a couple of hours after taking notice that the time was just a few minutes past one. He let out a soft groan as he shifted his body around to face you. It was dark, but Dean could tell that you were still asleep by the soft snores that came from you, something that should've given him enough comfort to fall back asleep again, he the man knew without a drink he wasn't going to be able to.

Dean did his best not to wake you as he sat himself up and pushed the covers off of his body, and when he had finally got up onto his feet, he slowly walked over to the door. He kept his arm stretched out so that he wouldn't accidentally bump into anything on the way. There wasn't a window, so no moonlight was shining into the room just to help the man see where everything was and he knew that it'd wake you if he had turned on the lamp that was settled on top of the nightstand.

But he managed. When he had got to the door, he opened it up just enough to slip himself out of the room and into the hallway. He shut the door quietly, before walking further down the hall and straight to the kitchen, where as he inched closer, he found himself growing rather confused when he noticed that the light was on.

He didn't expect anybody to be awake at this hour, especially his little brother, considering how he was an early bird and due to that, he liked to get to sleep earlier. But when Dean stepped into the room, he saw that Sam was sat down at the table with his laptop, a few tabs of different articles were open. 

The younger man let his gaze drift away from the screen for a moment and upwards when he heard a pair of footsteps trudging their way into the room. After realizing that it was just his brother, he focused his attention back onto the article he was currently reading; something about how a married couple and their two young children were simply enjoying a camping trip up in Nebraska, but things quickly turned south when the kids went missing and their parents hearts were ripped out. Police say it was an animal attack, but Sam knew it was something else.

"Hey." Dean was the first one to speak up, breaking the silence that was lingering in the air. "What are you doing up?" He asked, making his way to the fridge to get out a bottle of beer. As he did, he couldn't help but take a quick glance at what Sam was looking at. But from where he was standing, he couldn't really see anything. 

"I couldn't sleep." Sam mumbled, shutting his laptop to focus on his brother, who was now making his way over to the table. He watched as Dean popped off of the lid of his bottle before taking a long swing. "I was, uh.. worried about Y/N. I didn't realize how bad her condition was until she tried talking earlier." He admitted. "What about you?"

Dean brought the beer back down to the table and reached a hand up to run it down his face, a heavy sigh escaping past his lips. "I was asleep for a couple of hours, but I had a nightmare, so.. here I am." He finally said after a while, dropping his hand down to wrap it around the bottle. "I honestly thought things would get better now that she's here and safe, but I can't stop imagining what Paul did to her and how her own mother didn't even try to stop it."

"I can't either.." Sam admitted to his brother. 

"I don't know, man." Dean mumbled, shaking his head as he picked at the label on the beer bottle. It was something he got a habit of doing any time he was feeling nervous or down. "I feel like if I hadn't been such a coward and just fought to stay so that Y/N and I could've gotten her shit packed up, she wouldn't be in this situation right now."

"Dean, you would've gone to jail if you had stayed." Sam tried to be the voice of reason, but his brother only let out a scoff, shaking his head as he brought the beer back up to his lips so he could take another drink. "Can you imagine someone who passed off as this sweet, religious man who everybody in town just thinks he could do no wrong because of the clothes he wears and a woman who would do anything to protect her husband telling the cops that you, Dean Winchester, was beating up your own girlfriend? In case you don't remember, we don't exactly have a great history with the law. You would be in jail and Y/N would still be in an unsafe house."