Broken, a Destiel Story

Part 10

Sam woke up the next morning and went for a run, and then showered before going to check in on Dean and Cas. He found Dean with his head on the side of Castiel's bed, snoring, mouth open, and drooling. Typical, he thought, grinning.  He walked over and shook Dean's shoulder, waking him. Dean picked up his head quickly, mumbling something incoherent and wiped the drool from the side of his face. "Sammy?" he said. "What time is it?"

"8am," Sam said. "You were in here all night, Dean." He could tell by looking at his brother's red, puffy eyes that he'd been crying. Dean didn't respond. He just blinked his eyes and rubbed his face.

"Where's the coffee?" he said only somewhat coherently.  "I need coffee."

"Coming up," Sam said, just excited that Dean was talking and wanted to drink something other than beer. "I can make you some breakfast," he offered.

"Sure, yeah, okay," Dean said, rubbing his forehead with one hand and waving Sam away with the other, clearly trying to wake up and not ready for a conversation.

Sam left the room with a smile, feeling more lighthearted than than he had in a while. After breakfast he planned on talking with Dean about reaching out to Gabriel again to see if there was anything more they could do for Cas.  Gabriel had seemed so sure that he would recover, and they needed to be focusing their attention on getting their Mom and Jack back from the Apocalypse world before it was too late. And Sam was pretty sure he'd found a way, finally, to make it happen.

**********

As Dean undressed to take a shower he saw his face in the mirror and realized just how crappy he looked. His had bags under his eyes, his hair was a mess, he hadn't shaved in days, and he stunk like the north end of a south bound rhino. Kinda matches the way I feel, he thought. But even he couldn't handle his own stench anymore so he'd decided he would take a shower, and shave, and maybe that would help him feel a little bit better. Or at least allow him to be in his own presence without gagging.

After showering, shaving, and dressing he joined Sam in the kitchen for breakfast. "Listen, Sammy," he said, still feeling exhausted, but at least clean, "I'm sorry about the last couple of weeks, I know I haven't . . ."

"Dean," Sam cut his brother off softly. "Forget it. You don't need to apologize. I get it. You are worried about Cas."

"Yeah, but I should have been helping you find a way to get Mom and Jack, and I just . . ."

"I know, Dean," Sam said gently, sitting across from his brother at the table. Dean hadn't eaten much but he was drinking his coffee.

"Listen, I'm just saying, I think . . . I think I'm okay, for now, anyway," Dean said. "What do you got?"

"Well, it was slow going there up until last night actually, but I think I found something. It turns out there's a spell we can use to open the rift, but we need some ingredients, and that's the tricky part," Sam said. "Archangel grace we can probably get from Gabriel. But we also need Fruit from the Tree of Life, the Seal of Solomon, and the blood of a Most Holy Man."

"Oh, good, that should be easy," Dean said sarcastically. "How the hell are we supposed to do that? Where do we even find those things? And actually convince some guy to give us his blood so we can open a rift into another dimension? Come on. That's not exactly your Saturday afternoon cup of coffee conversation, Sam."

"Well, Gabriel might know about the Fruit and the Seal of Solomon," Sam pointed out. "Maybe we could get Rowena to help. And, if it comes down to it, we might just have to find this Most Holy Man and knock him out to get some of his blood. I mean, this is Mom and Jack, Dean, and they've been trapped over there for weeks now. We have to try."