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Dean comes to you in the night, and you turn yourself into an instrument for his comfort.
You can’t pinpoint the exact moment it started, became what it is now, because there’s so many different phases you’ve gone through.
At the beginning, it’s just sex. Good sex, no, great sex, between friends. On paper, you were and still are nothing but colleagues, acquaintances, but on paper doesn’t account for the way you open up to each other, the way you’re pretty sure Dean hasn’t to a lot of people, and you know you haven’t. Late night talks, until the birds start singing outside, both of you bleary-eyed and tired, but your souls lighter.
When you start sleeping with each other, you’re sure that connection is going to break – you’ve long suspected Dean can’t fuck a woman and love her at the same time. And for a while, he pulls back, draws back into himself, and while you love the way your bodies work together, you grieve for your friend.
It’s not that sex with Dean isn’t fun – he’s an attentive lover, but it also feels like he’s going through the motions. A long studied script that is sure to get you off, but sometimes, sometimes, it feels like he’s not even really there. Like he’s performing, but he knows the play so well, he doesn’t need to pay attention to his lines anymore.
It’s doesn't creep you out, exactly, but it makes you unenthusiastic to continue. You can take care of yourself, and you’d rather have Dean back as your friend, where you actually feel like you are special, mean something to him. You tell him, and it confuses the hell out of him. He’s not used to being rejected – not with that face, those shoulders, that swagger. The ass. You’re a strong woman, you think to yourself. But it actually works, and after a few weeks of reacquainting yourselves with each other, you have your confidant back.
Dean still flirts with you sometimes. Oh boy, does he. You’re pretty sure he can’t help himself. It’s more a compulsion than anything else. You smile, but gently reject him.
It’s when you already live in the bunker that you start finding Dean up at night. Sometimes you hear him move deep in the bowels of the old Men of Letters construct. He’s quiet, but your hunter skills are attuned enough to hear him. Almost like a mother who can pick out her baby’s cries among a crowd of them. You push that thought away. It’s weird. But it is also true.
When you find him in those nights, he acts like he’s fine. But there’s always something weighing on him. He takes on the weight of the world like it’s nothing, like he’s used to it at this point, but you see how it tenses his jaw, how he holds himself, how often his hands are balled into fists.
It’s on one of those nights that you’re sitting next to him, talking, and your fingers land on his neck, press against the knotted muscle there. He flinches, then jokes, but something about the feeling of his skin makes you continue, and Dean doesn’t tell you to stop.
For a moment, when it starts feeling good, he looks terrified and you’re sure he’ll ask you to quit touching him in a second. But then his eyes fall closed. Goosebumps raise on his arms, you see, and you keep going, don’t talk. His breathing’s shallow.
After a few minutes of this, you get up. He blinks his eyes open, thanks you bashfully, ready to deliver another joke, but then you move behind him, lay both hands on his neck.
“You don’t have to—” he starts, but then you are pressing your fingers against him again. He goes quiet. You can’t see his face, but you keep going, and after a few more minutes, you realize his breathing is slower, deeper. You keep touching that soft skin of his when suddenly his shoulders are shaking. You run your hand over the back of his head, through that soft hair.
“Dean?” you say quietly and lean forward. His eyes are closed. His expression is…
You can’t describe it. It hangs somewhere between pain and lust. And there’s tears running down his cheeks.
He wakes from it a second later. Runs the back of his hand over his face as horror sets in, horror at his perceived weakness. He stands up, nearly sends his chair and you flying. The way he looks at you is as if you’ve just walked in on him naked, seen everything, when all this time he’s been trying to convince you that he doesn’t have skin.
Weeks of avoidance follow. Dean doesn’t look at you. He’s short with you, barely friendly, but that’s it. You try to talk to him, but he blocks you. You almost give up on it when he comes to you.
It’s a normal night, or what you would consider a normal night. You’ll never know what in that day made him change his mind. Maybe it was just time amassing, like drops in a puddle. It doesn’t matter.
The knock on your door is so gentle but it wakes you immediately. Habit of the trade.
“Yes?” you say into the dark. The door opens, a strip of light falling in. He doesn’t turn on the light. He doesn’t want you to see him.
“Dean, are you okay?” you ask quietly, but he doesn’t answer. There’s a moment where you wonder if something terrible is about to happen, or already has happened, and he’s going to tell you about it. He closes the door behind him and you hear him move towards you, towards your bed. Then he sits at the edge of it. He’s quiet for a while.
“Can you do it again?” he asks and you are lost for a moment, and then you understand. The thing that has caused this chasm between you.
“Come here,” you say, and tug on his arm. He doesn’t budge for a moment, but then you say: “Dean, I’m tired, I want to lay down.” He follows you down onto the bed.
He lies next to you, and your hands find his neck, start massaging. He makes a noise in his throat. It’s difficult from this angle, though, and you really are tired, made infinitely more tired by the big, warm body beside you, so you change to running your hand over his back, up and down and up and down. You sling one leg over him simply because it’s more comfortable. Dean sighs, a sigh so heavy it breaks your heart.
When he eventually moves, you’re sure he’ll leave. But he doesn’t. He rolls over you, kisses you, uncoordinated. Plump lips on your cheek and chin before they find your lips. He pulls at your clothes, and at his own, becomes almost frantic. When he finally pushes into you his breath stutters. He comes within a few thrusts, whimpers like a hurt animal. You can’t see him in the dark, but as he moves to pull out, move away, you wrap your arms around him, pull him close. He lets you. You lie like that for a long time.
So that’s how you get here, to your little ritual. You never know when Dean will show up. It’s made your sleep light, and you wake up many times throughout the night, sure that you’ve heard him. It’s fine, you tell yourself. He’s your best friend, one of the people you love the most in this world. It’s fine.
During the days, you’re joking, laughing together. Fight sometimes, but rarely. Work. Things are good, but sometimes you miss those talks you used to have. They have been exchanged for Dean’s nighttime visits.
He comes into your room and lies down next to you. Over time, the way you do things has changed a little. At some point, Dean fucked you as soon as he came to your room, but it was just that same performance as it used to be. It’s not what you want, and it’s not really what he wants, so you’ve made sure he understands not to do it. It also strangely feels like some sort of payment, and you don’t like that.
So he comes in, lies next to you, like a dog waiting to be petted. You begin running your hands over him. He’s tense as a balled fist at first. It’s half the stress of the day, but the other half you think is the fear that this is the night you’ll reject him. You rub it out of him until his shoulders go down, his breathing slows. Until he hums, content and rich, and your heart flutters so hard it makes you dizzy.
Then you take off his clothes. Let your hands run over all that warm skin, impossibly soft, which surprises you over and over again, a map of the world speckled with scars. He should feel like touching metal, you think, considering how hard he's made himself to the outside. Sometimes you massage him and sometimes you just stroke him and sometimes you just wrap him up in your arms. You’ve learned to read the signs of what he needs each night so well.
And sometimes, but not always, you make love. It’s what you call it, but you’re not sure if it’s the least accurate or most accurate name for it. The point is that Dean’s there, he’s present, with you. When he pushes his face against your neck, he’s pushing it against your neck. When he kisses your lips, he kisses your lips. When you get on top and ride him and have him gasping and nearly sobbing under you, because he’s being touched by someone who loves him after years and years and years of only being touched by strangers, and he reaches his hands up to hold your face in them, he’s holding your face.
When you drop down next to each other, you hold him again. He presses against you like an unloved pet or a child begging for forgiveness. He tells you he loves you, and you believe him, even though with no amount of time and words could you ever describe what kind of love it is.
He’s always gone in the morning. You don’t wake up when he goes, and you’re not sure if that’s because Dean can be even quieter than you were aware of, or because your brain is being kind to you by not waking you when he leaves. It hurts, at first, and sometimes it still hurts after you’ve already been doing this for a long time. You don’t know if it’s because it actually disappoints you, or because you’ve been taught to expect love to come in a certain shape.
Sometimes you ask yourself if this whole arrangement makes you happy. It does. Touching Dean like that and being there for him, being his haven, is a pleasure the height of which you didn’t know existed. It’s intimacy on a level that’s dizzying if you look at it for too long. It also makes it impossible for anyone to ever get close to you, or him, for that matter. You occupy each other, like a reservation at a restaurant where someone does and doesn't sit at the same time.
You chuckle to yourself, run your hands over your face. You need to stop thinking like that. Why does it need a name? Why does it need a shape? Why can’t it just be love?
You’re distracted from your thoughts by the sound of your bedroom door opening. You see his outline for a second, and then the room is swept into darkness again. Shuffling, rustling, and when you open your arms, he’s in them a second later. Strong and warm and solid, but really, you are the solid one. Dean’s the ocean crashing against your shore, and when his head lands on your chest and you hear that content hum, you hope that this is all you’ll ever need.