A Car's Tires on a Road

There's a worry that I can't place

A moment ago, I could swear I saw the little plastic angel on my Christmas tree light up its eyes and set fire to everything, then I suddenly felt a hand on my face. I cracked open my eyes, feeling kind of sticky when a blurry version of Cas came into view, looking down on me like I grew a second nose.

"What's going on?"

"Dean," he said in his gravelly voice. "I think you had a bad dream."

"Okay?"

"I woke you up."

He still had that hand on me, the heavy warmth of his skin on my sweaty cheek, neck, temple, and everywhere I really didn't need it to be a presence I couldn't really handle. "Last time I checked you only needed one finger for that."

"My apologies." He said, then pulled away his hand, leaving my face cold.

I sat up and rubbed my forehead, trying to wake up from what was supposed to be only a short nap. But when I looked outside I figured it was nighttime already. I must have slept for several hours. Cas still stood there at the side of my bed, looking concerned, and I couldn't shake the feeling that he knew what I'd been dreaming.

His hand re-settled on my shoulder, somewhat uncertain, though. "Don't worry," he said. "Christmas decoration cannot set a tree on fire, Dean. Unless it's candles because then of course—"

"Alright, alright. Way to stalk my dreams, you creep."

It seemed Cas took that rather as an insult than the joke it was meant to be, and I already saw five layers of explanations and apologies brewing in his face. One might think a creature as old as him should know the difference by now. Luckily, Sam and Carly chose that exact moment to come crashing into the motel room, laughing and, again, without knocking first. Carly instantly fell silent, her eyes jumping back and forth between Cas and me while her eyebrows seemed to rise a little more with each look.

"Uh, Cas," Sam said helpfully. "This is Carly. She's a hunter and helps us with our case."

"Uh, excuse me. You're helping me with my case," she said. Sam smiled.

"Pleasure to meet you, Carly," Cas said, reaching out his hand to her like the proper stick-in-the-ass gentleman he was. There was enough eye contact between them to fill an entire year of casual eye contact statistics, and something in my brain felt the need to break it. Carly's eyes beamed in a not so casual way, and for some reason I had the feeling there was a silent conversation going on between them.

"So," Sam interrupted their little moment. "We've just been at the morgue"

"Really? And there I thought you two have just been fishing all night."

Cas threw me a confused look.

"Fishing?" Carly asked.

"Dean," Sam chided.

"It's a metaphor," I said, turning to Carly. "You know, something to do with hooking up and all that"

"Oh," she made.

"Dean"

"What about the dead body?" Cas asked.

Sam ran a hand over his face. "Alright, so get this. The vic, one Karen Mulligan, also lacked her eyelids, though this time there were bite marks on her neck"

"Vampire?" I asked.

"Sure looks like it," Carly said. "Maybe a new, creepy gourmet type of vampire that has it for eyelids? Maybe it's a delicacy, who knows?"

I pulled a face. The picture of eyelid-eating vampires wasn't really appealing right after waking up from a dream involving evil supernatural Christmas decoration. "But the other vics didn't have any bite marks"