Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 16

Dean insisted on driving, but they had barely cleared Chicago's suburbs before exhaustion swept over him and he almost drove them off the road.

"Dean! Let me drive." Sam glared at him and the elder Winchester glared back, but when his eyelids drooped in the middle of their stare-off and his shoulders slumped, he had to concede the point.

"You need sleep," Omega echoed from the backseat. "You have cycled through a tremendous amount of energy tonight. Your system needs to shut down to complete repairs."

"You make me sound like a computer," Dean groused, putting the car into park. He gripped the steering wheel for a moment, then opened the door in surrender. Sam opened his door to trade places and then Omega joined them.

"Where do you think you're going?" Dean asked with narrowed eyes.

"I'm moving to the front seat so you can sleep in the back with Cas," Omega said and his tone of voice brooked no argument. Sam stood where he'd stopped, at the front of the car, watching the two vampires in their battle of wills. He could see the moment that exhaustion swept over Dean again. His eyes fluttered and his body slumped. He put a hand out to catch himself against the Impala's frame before he crumpled to the ground.

"He's right, Dean. You won't care where you are once you pass out and I have questions we probably need him to answer."

Dean's only response was to open the back door and clamber into the seat next to the paralyzed angel. Sam didn't comment on his brother's capitulation as he slid in behind the wheel and Omega joined him in the front seat. Dean was asleep and snoring before Sam could get all four tires back on the road.

That was how Dean woke up with his head in Castiel's lap. At first, he only registered warmth against his cheek, a light pressure on his shoulder and a total sense of contentment that he had almost forgotten after the angel died. Once he fully realized his position, he sat up like a Jack in the Box going off and glared out the window with a faint flush creeping up his neck. He told himself the heat filling his cheeks was anger, but a little voice in the back of his head whisper that he was embarrassed, even if he wouldn't admit it. He told that voice to shut the hell up and glanced at the other occupants in the car to see who might have noticed.

"Hello, Dean," Cas said in his gravelly voice that, after years as friends, felt like home to Dean in the same way Sam's did. "Do you need to feed?"

"I'm fine," he mumbled, looking back out the window.

"You should feed," Omega said from the front seat. "It's better to feed when you are in full control than wait until you are starved. The sun will be up, soon, and while it won't kill you, it will sap your strength."

"Yeah, I figured that out a couple of days ago." Dean sat up and shifted his attention to the others in the car now that it had been established that no one would say anything about his head in Cas's lap. "But, seriously. I'm fine. I don't…I don't want to knock Cas out again already. What happened to you two, anyway?"

Omega briefly explained their capture and escape from Asmodeus. Cas added a few details and Dean cursed when they told him that not only was Lucifer back in their world, but he had gotten away from Cas during their flight out of the demon stronghold.

"We have to find him," Dean said.

"And Jack," Cas tacked on. Dean glanced at him, but nodded. They couldn't forget the Nephilim in all of this.

"Yeah. Jack too. And Mom. And apparently some souped-up version of Michael, not to mention anything else that comes our way on top of this whole vampire thing." Dean huffed and sat back in his seat, arms crossed. Sam glanced at him in the rear view mirror.

"Our plate's full," he said. "That's nothing new. We handle this the same way we handle everything: one step at a time, one problem at a time. We'll figure it out. Like we always do."

"Yeah. Sure." Dean grumbled, but he glanced at Cas, then at their new ally, Omega, and grudgingly admitted they might have a chance. Maybe.

Author's Note: To everyone who has read this fanfic, I'm so glad you stopped by and I truly hope you enjoyed it. I do have a sequel started, but I can't make any guarantees I will finish it. If I start posting it, rest assured it's completed. I think I will only be posting completed works from now on unless I notate it's not completed at the beginning.

If you did enjoy the fic, please drop a note. If there was something you didn't like, please drop a note. I'm pretty thick skinned and as much as I love glowing reviews, I *learn* more from critique. I do also share my writing time with my original fiction, so if you're interested in my original work, just let me know. So, until next time, Carry on my Wayward Son.