Dean couldn't sleep.

That was normal, of course, for a Hunter. He was under a lot of stress. Had a lot on his mind. What with the Leviathans and Bobby's death and Sam's head and the fact that the Impala was still stashed somewhere unceremoniously, no one could blame Dean if he missed a few nights of sleep.

That's what he told himself, anyway, as he took pulls from his flask and tried not to think about the nightmares that had chased him out of bed, of dark water closing over darker hair and outstretched hands disappearing beneath the lapping ripples.

The flask ran dry before Dean was even close to drunk enough, and a cursory investigation of the cabin they had commandeered revealed nothing to refill it with. Dean cursed under his breath as he set the empty flask back on the kitchen counter. He was pulled taut tonight, vibrating with the strain of it. Sometimes he was almost fine, these days, and sometimes it hit him all at once and it was all he could do to lean over and grip the edge of the table to try to keep himself from shaking apart. Only the booze could take the edge off it.

The booze, and one other thing.

Dean left the flask on the table as he went out into the warm night air, closing the door softly behind him so as not to wake Sam.

The not-Impala that they were currently driving was parked at the end of the long driveway between the cabin and the bumpy two-lane road. Dean looked back at the cabin, every window darkened, and then down the road in each direction. Nothing but trees, stars, and asphalt out here. He wouldn't have dared to get sentimental in a hotel parking lot where anyone could see him, but here, out of Sam's sight and far from civilization, he allowed himself a moment of weakness.

He popped the trunk. Nestled in there between the shotgun shells and the semiautomatics was a rumpled lump of tan fabric.

It had used to be folded, but after moving it between more than half a dozen cars it had sprawled itself out amongst Dean's things, taking up more space than it was meant to. Dean never bothered to re-fold it or tuck it away. He liked being able to pass his fingers lightly over a hemline every time he grabbed some extra ammo or replaced his knives after a hunt. Dean never spoke a word about it, and Sam never asked. It was a silent passenger and a constant reminder of the person who might have been sharing the ride with them, and who never would again. Maybe it would have been easier to just get rid of it, but every time Dean thought about burning it or throwing it away he got sick to his stomach. For such a massive presence to be reduced to a mere article of clothing was tragic, but for him to be reduced to nothing at all was unfathomable. There had to be something left, something for Dean to cling to when everything else had failed him.

Dean pulled the lump out of the trunk. Its sleeves and belt stuck out at odd angles, stiff with blood and grime. Dean gripped it by the shoulders and shook it out until it resembled a coat again.

It was usually enough just to hold it in his hands. Sometimes, if he was absolutely sure that Sam wasn't looking, he would press the edge of the collar to his lips. There was a sort of calming warmth that radiated off the thing and into Dean's skin, which might have been some leftover divinity rubbed off from the coat's former owner or, more likely, just Dean's imagination. Imagined or not, Dean felt some of his anxiety melt away as he played the fabric out over his hands, replacing the sharp pain of fear and panic with the slow, dull ache of loss.

It wasn't enough. Not tonight. Tonight, Dean whipped the coat around his body and jammed his arms through the sleeves. He hugged it to himself, its terrible warmth seeping in through his clothes, and then even that was not enough. He peeled the coat off, wriggled out of his shirt, and threw the coat back on over his t-shirt. A moment later, he repeated the dance so that he was wearing the coat over bare skin.

This wasn't helping. If anything, it was making things worse. But Dean couldn't stop now, not when every inch of his skin was begging to touch that filthy coat, to be inside that cold comfort.

Dean glanced back at the cabin one more time before kicking off his shoes and crawling into the back seat of the car. There, he scooted his way out of his jeans and boxers, letting them take his socks with them on their way to falling into the gravel. Then he closed the car door, leaving himself alone and naked and trying in vain to draw warmth from a garment that hadn't held a living body in months.

For a long time now the coat hadn't smelled of anything but dried blood, monster juice, lake water, and, more recently, mildew. It was stiff, each wrinkle held in place by caked dirt. Dean ignored the smell and the discomfort as he pulled his knees to his chest and ducked his head, trying to fit his whole body inside the coat. There was no more warmth or comfort in it, and maybe there never had been in the first place, but it still meant something to Dean.

Even if that something was just memories and regret and a wound deep inside him that might have healed one day if Dean would only stop picking at it.

After a while Dean relaxed his legs and his neck, uncurling to lie full-length across the bench seat. The crushing tide of emotion brought on by the coat was fading, leaving him empty and exhausted in his soul. Without the motivation to get up, he let his hands wander absently over the coat, feeling his body underneath and remembering how it used to feel when someone else's flesh lay beneath the fabric.

A hand clapped to a shoulder. A fierce grip on an arm. A body pressed against his in a dark alley. They hadn't touched often, but every occasion was burned into Dean's mind. He had always been left wanting more, but he had been either too proud or too cowardly to ask for it, and now the chance had flown. This was now the closest he would ever come.

Even through his despair, those flashes of memory awakened poorly-repressed fantasies. He could feel the shoulder beneath the coat and the warmth radiating from it. He could see the sleeves sliding down slender arms. He could smell something almost-forgotten, like sweet flesh and crackling power untainted by the stench of rotting blood. Without his permission, Dean's body began to respond to the images playing out in his mind. So, with no will left to resist, Dean reached down and helped things along while pretending that the firm strokes were coming from someone else's hand.

There was barely any pleasure in it. Just a joyless catharsis, and soon there was one more stain on the coat.

He crawled out of the car like he was slinking home after a tawdry affair and pulled his clothes on piece by piece. He almost folded the coat before putting it back in the trunk, but then he thought better of it. He wadded it up and arranged it as best he could to look like it had before he had removed it – spread messily between jugs of borax and machetes. Hopefully Sam would never notice the difference.

Dean paused before closing the trunk, noticing dispassionately how dark the stains looked in the starlight. All logic said that he should have cleaned it long ago, but he kept putting it off. He told himself that it was to remind himself of what had transpired, a splash of blood for each murder and a spot of black goo for each monster let loose from Purgatory. But the truth was that Dean could not bear to wash those stains away because for him, they represented his own guilt.

He had had countless chances to ensure that this coat would have remained wrapped around an angel instead of crumpled in the trunk of a stolen car. There were countless truths he could have spoken, but instead he had opted for the cruel lies. He had leveled accusations and pointed blame when he should have simply said, "I love you."

So in a way, every stain that now marred the surface of the coat belonged to Dean, and not just the whitish smear on the inside near the waist.

The manic anxiety that had kept Dean awake was gone. He was hollow once again, and numb to the pain that rushed to fill the hole. The coat lay there, ordinary and useless, and Dean couldn't even tell what he felt about it anymore.

Before closing the trunk and heading back to the cabin where he would slip back into bed without Sam ever knowing he had been gone, Dean pressed his hand to the coat one last time and intoned, almost like a prayer, each syllable sticking to his tongue and sounding strange in his deadened, wrecked voice:

"Castiel."

Many miles away, a woman woke in her bed. She rolled over to see her husband sitting upright, ramrod-straight and glistening with sweat. His body was taught, leaning, straining forward. His mouth hung open as if tasting something in the air, his eyes were flown wide as if searching for something in the shadows, and his head was tilted as if he could hear something more interesting than the wind outside and the hum of the heater.

"What's the matter?" she asked sleepily, glancing about and cocking her ear.

Slowly, her husband turned his head to look at her. His eyes, blue even in the darkness, looked almost surprised to find her there. "Someone was calling to me," he said.

She reached up to stroke his face, pulling him back down beside her. "It was the voice of someone who needs your help," she said soothingly.

Her husband laid his head back on his pillow, but he still seemed ill at ease. "I must find him," he murmured, "He sounded so lost."

"God will guide him to you," she promised, kissing his cheek, "Go back to sleep, Emmanuel."