InsaneJournal

Who: Dean + Castiel Winchester
What: Dreams, and power ups that come with significant drawbacks
When: 10/31 Thursday
Where: Casa de Winchester
Rating: Low. Maybe one too many tylenol taken? Uhh.
Status: Complete





It wasn't often Castiel had those kinds of dreams -- not the ones that really mattered or seemed pertinent. Sometimes he dreamt about creation, other times about standing on newly formed shores and reflecting. Recently he'd had a dream about watching the library of Alexandria being built and feeling a swelling sense of love and pride for those who built it.

This wasn't one of those kinds of dreams. This was the other sort -- the kind where Dean was in and simultaneously the most important and most infuriating person in existence. They weren't good dreams -- but weren't the worst things that he could imagine either. They just were. Castiel was good at putting those things aside in favor of what he had in real life. The fights and blood and impossible tasks they were all given in the dreams seemed less important to him when he could instead focus on Dean here.

When he woke, he realized it was incredibly late -- nearly noon. Dean, he recalled, was starting out real work in the shop he and Scud had opened officially this week. But something was off. It was something like buzzing? Static? Noise.

He tilted his head to the side, and looked over at the alarm clock, thinking perhaps he'd just set it wrong. But it wasn't on, and the longer he was awake, the more the noise increased.

Tylenol was taken, tea was made and he tried ignoring it. It didn't work. It only got louder, more frantic, and increasingly familiar. Impossible to concentrate.

Castiel gave up on the tea in favor of feeling so incredibly overwhelmed by the noise (was it screaming?) that it was physically painful. He spent such a remarkable amount of time in the bathroom vomiting because of it that he decided it was probably just best to stay there. At least the tile of the floor was cool, and he didn't have to move very much in order to get to the sink or the tylenol.

Work had been at least interesting. For now, it was mostly just him and Scud hanging out, shooting the shit. There was a phone meeting with a client who wanted some work done on their classic thunderbird that was mostly Dean actually being professional and Scud spinning around in his chair. Frustrating, but livable.
Dean got home and half expected Cas to still be at work, but Cas’ shoes were still there and his keys right in the spot where they belonged to boot. Normally, he would have gone to start dinner. Now? Now he sure as hell was looking for his husband.

“Cas?” he called, walking hesitantly up the stairs. If that yielded nothing, he’d check downstairs and bring his gun while he was at it. One of his guns. Whatever.

Despite all the noise in his head, Castiel did hear Dean calling for him -- but didn't quite answer in a format that was particularly useful as far as real communication went. He tried, he really did. He wanted to call out, to ask Dean what he was doing home so early, but instead only managed to make a pathetic sob of a noise before dry heaving over the toilet again and shakily reaching out for the pills that had so far done absolutely no good. He thought, maybe, if he could actually keep them down completely it might help. So far he'd had little luck with much of anything other than pressing his cheek against the cold floor and fading in and out of proper reality.

Dean got up the stairs a lot faster when he heard that faint whine, taking them two at a time to catch Cas fumbling with tylenol. Judging by the few that had been lost elsewhere in the bathroom (that Cas was probably too foggy to notice,) he’d taken too much already. Dean took the bottle and propped Cas up.

“Hey,” he said quietly, looking almost completely terrified at his husband. “What’s wrong?”

"Nooo--" Castiel somehow managed to both lean into Dean, head falling on his chest, and reach out for the bottle. It was too loud, too sharp. He let out a pained noise, something straight from the back of his throat that he had no real control over. "Please, it hurts."

“What hurts?” Dean asked, stroking Castiel’s hair, trying so very hard to figure out what was going on, silently praying that anyone could help him figure this out.

Shakily, Cas gripped at Dean's shirt, twisting his fingers into the material and just clinging on for dear life. He slammed his eyes shut and dipped his head down lower, pulled his knees up against his chest. "Stopstopstop," he begged, voice breaking like he felt like his head was breaking into a million tiny pieces. "It's loud, you can't--" It was nearly impossible for him to form coherent sentences, to make any sense at all when he could barely think for all the other noises -- Dean somehow suddenly being the loudest of them all.

Dean held Cas closer, holding him as tightly as he dared as if he could protect him by sheer force of will. In response, he kept completely silent, still hoping that some angel somewhere had their ears on and could figure out how to help Cas. Please, guys come on. I need your help. He was betting this was some kind of angel problem. Cas only seemed really desperate when other angels were involved.

Trembling in Dean's arms, Cas couldn't figure out if he was pushing or pulling, trying to get nearer or farther away, could hardly force himself to swallow down the burn of acid at the back of his throat. He moaned, a desperate little noise and thought nonsensical things about oblivion and extra strength tylenol. "Praying," he managed finally, forcing the word out from tongue and teeth. "Don't." Did that even make sense? Had he even said it?

See. Angel problem. Dean fucking knew it. “How the hell else am I supposed to call in help for you?” Not like the kid was answering his phone and Cas’ brother just pissed him off. He was running low on options here.

Struggling seemed like too much effort anymore, but at least he'd been effectively able to communicate enough to get Dean to stop with his dial boosted to eleven prayers. He slumped a little more, like maybe acting bonelessly might remove some of the pressure in his brain. "Can't," he said, "just --" but he didn't know what to suggest and so let the words die on his lips, unfinished.

“Just what?” Dean got up, picking Cas up bodily to get him to bed. “You gotta help me help you out here, man. Angel radio ain’t in my repair skillset here.”

It wasn't far to the bed, but Cas lolled his head close to press against Dean's chest anyway, kept his eyes closed because he wasn't sure how to focus with all of his senses plus more going at once. Really, everything was just blurry, and he mostly wished he could just fade out again, even if he was aware it would scare Dean.

"Subsonic frequencies," he muttered out, thinking about how he knew that mattered but wasn't sure how to apply any such thing, let alone explain it. It was clear angel radio repair wasn't something that was much in Castiel's current skill set either. "Tylenol?"

“How much tylenol have you had?” Dean asked firmly, “because if you take much more, I’m gonna be praying like hell to get someone to pump your stomach.” It was the most effective threat he could manage.

Cas whimpered at that, like it didn't take too much effort to actively imagine it. Not even the stomach pump, the praying. "Dunno," he said, out of it and curling up on the bed until his knees were drawn to his chest. He'd lost track of a lot of things since he'd woke up -- time passage clearly being one of those things.

"I threw up," it came out so lamely, like he was ashamed but also using it as a proper excuse for trying again at medicine.

Dean rubbed slow, calming circles against Cas’ back. “Did what you took even help?” Dean didn’t think it would. This was a problem that stretched far, far beyond anyone’s normal capacity to treat. Anyone somehow included their medicine cabinet, but normally Dean could jury rig anything effective out of whatever he had available to him.

Settling his hands over his head, Cas didn't actively answer the question. He didn't know, really. Probably not. If anything, it'd probably just made him more ill feeling. He'd had such high hopes and aspirations for it, though.

He exhaled, slow and listless and tried to focus only on Dean's hand on his back. "I don't like being an angel," he said, and was well aware it was whined out.

“Yeah, you and the kid can start your own reluctant angels club then,” Dean replied dryly. “Can I get you anything that you won’t overdose on?”

"Unconsciousness," Castiel said it like maybe it was a thing that Dean could get him off the Dollar Menu, or possibly it was just something that was already stocked in their kitchen cupboards. He tilted his head into the blankets, focused on breathing, Dean's touch, not vomiting again. Anything but the spike and stab of noise in his head.

“Right, well, we don’t have liquor in the house and I’m not hitting you upside the head so how about you figure something else out,” Dean replied, tone still too soothing to be as sassy as it normally would have. “I could sing.” Wherein sing equaled hum, but it was a distraction and Cas might like that.

Oddly, the both of them had gone so long without liquor now that Castiel hadn't even considered that a viable option in the first place. Hadn't thought of it at all. He curled up a little more, hands open in front of him and fingers loose. "Okay," he mumbled out, and it was as close as he was getting to putting on a brave face about this whole ordeal.

Dean curled up around him, protectively covering Castiel’s back while he played lightly with his fingers. He hummed softly, just Metallica because his repertoire was a bit limited, but it wasn’t quite so metal when it happened to be soft, low tones in Dean’s throat.

Cas curled his fingers loosely around Dean's, just barely holding on, and he blinked teary eyes like any relief of pressure in his head might do and crying was definitely just a good idea at this point.

Otherwise though, he just kept still and quiet, listening to his husband humming to him, focusing himself entirely on the act until everything felt a little fuzzy around the edges. It was a little better, it helped better than the medicine had.

Dean kept going with the Metallica for a while. It was good that their songs were obscenely long. Less good that after a while they all began to sound the same. He didn’t think it’d matter much to Cas, that the sound and the contact were the important bits, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to start annoying him pretty soon.

Dean honestly could have made any tune up and Castiel probably wouldn't have minded at all. Occasionally he hummed softly along with notes he didn't know or completely understand, but it was a relief to be able to pay attention enough to do so. The noise was still there, chasing around in his skull, but it wasn't as prominent as before.

"Stay," he said, nearly begging which was silly since he knew Dean wouldn't leave. "I want to sleep." It didn't matter it was still technically early in the day, there'd be no real functioning for him anyway. Castiel was only glad he'd remembered to call his job before it had gone too downhill.

“Of course,” Dean said, staying close to Castiel and getting as comfortable as possible. “Get some rest, gorgeous. I’ll be right here.”