Chapter Text
It would have been mortifying, had the first time happened anywhere but half submerged in the dirt, shuddering with the aftermath of being buried alive, dust in his mouth and splinters driven deep into his fingertips. With the shadow of Hell a blood-red haze lurking behind his eyes and shock making him tremble, the only bodily function that he was able to focus on was the desperate heave of his lungs. He had huddled in the blasted remnants of his shallow grave for what might have been hours, a strange, nameless thing birthed from Hell-fire and the dark clutches of the earth, and thought of nothing.
It was only later, when tears had washed the worst of the soil from his eyes and his shocky trembling had finally stilled, that he became Dean Winchester again. Always the big brother, his first coherent thought that wasn’t panic or pain was Sam. He had to get to Sam, find him before something happened. Something was as nebulous as it had always been, and yet somehow more menacing than ever; he was alive, which meant that his baby brother might not be.
With Sam in some potential, unknown danger, the fact that he was damp didn’t really cross his mind. The smell of stale urine was lost under the cloying scent of grave-dirt and the memories of sulfur. Distantly, he was aware of what had happened, but he didn’t have the reserves to be embarrassed about it. He had just clawed his way out of a grave (out of Hell), found himself inexplicably in a body that was alive and breathing and not at all torn to shreds; the idea that his bladder may have released somewhere along the way wasn’t even all that surprising.
It would have been nothing; forgotten, had it not happened again.
The second time, he put it down to drunkenness. It was beyond humiliating, but also not the first time that he’d gotten himself so far into the bottom of a bottle that he’d woken up in a compromising position. He had a hazy idea that they’d been hunting… something. Whatever it had been was dead, and he hadn’t been able to sleep. Sam had been watching him judgmentally from across the room, which was probably why he’d woken up propped against the wall of what he could only assume was a roadhouse bathroom.
It was entirely possible that he was wet through from sitting on the floor; he’d certainly tell Sam as much if his little brother chose to ask. The pain in his head, coupled with a warning nausea, was bad enough that he didn’t really care. He’d been covered in worse things, and sat in worse places than a bumfuck nowhere bathroom. He washed any thought of it from his mind with a few swigs from his hip-flask.
He drank himself to sleep most nights that he dared to sleep at all, but the third time couldn’t be put down to anything but his own failings. He woke up cold, drenched in sweat and hunting out Hell-fire. He found monsters in the dark at first, gun in hand before he’d so much as blinked, but a few shallow breaths and a wild glance from wall to wall brought him back to where he was with a sickening rush. Motel room, somewhere in North America, the bed across from him empty.
Sam had left sometime during the night. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence, but the lack of another living body in the room made it that much harder to settle. An edgy swallow from the bottle on the side table didn’t help either, which had Dean shifting in preparation to stand. It was only then that he noticed it, and with the chill beginnings of horror he reached under the covers to check. His hand came away wet, tacky and distinctive. His jeans were clinging to his thighs, the sheets stained in an incriminating circle around him.
There was no excuse. For all that he felt sick to his stomach he wasn’t actually unwell. His body, remade from whatever rotting remnants had been buried in that coffin, had been healed from any imperfections save the burn of Castiel’s grip on his shoulder. He was neither ill nor injured, and nowhere near drunk enough to lapse into slack unconsciousness. For the first time since he had been five years old, he’d wet the bed.
It was one of the few times that Dean was wholeheartedly glad that Sam wasn’t with him. Near-withering with humiliation, he skulked out from between the sheets, aggressively stripping the evidence of his shame from the bed. There was a wet patch on the mattress that seemed to watch him with accusing eyes. Standing naked and shivering Dean hauled it from the frame; flipping the mattress to hide what he’d done.
Dean wanted to shower; wash any trace of it from him, but the thought of Sam coming back, the idea that his little brother might see , drove him to get dressed as quickly as he possibly could. The sheets were quickly balled up and hidden, ready to be burned at the first opportunity that presented itself, his clothes wrapped up along with them. The phantom voice of his father scolded him for wasting perfectly good garments, especially when he had so few at present, but the idea of stepping back into those jeans, even freshly laundered, made him cold with shame.
He imagined that everyone was watching him as he crept from the room, despite there not being a soul in sight, heading for reception to ask for new bedding. The spotty near-teenager at the desk gave him a dry look, though he provided what Dean asked for without comment. All the same Dean read judgement in his eyes. He felt hunted; the Angles’ Righteous Man hiding wet sheets as if the Almighty wasn’t glaring down at him, weighing his worth and finding him lacking.
Dean didn’t sleep that night, didn’t dare so much as sit on the freshly made bed for fear that he’d contaminate it. It was as if everyone would suddenly know if he so much as touched it. Instead, he sat in the room’s most uncomfortable chair, gun in one hand and a bottle at his elbow, and waited for morning.
It was there that Sam found him some hours later. Dean looked up at his brother’s return; he had half a mind to ask Sam where on earth he’d been, but the majority of his thoughts were wrapped up in relief that his brother hadn’t been witness to his lapse in control.
“Man, do you never sleep?” Sam sounded concerned despite his eyes landing unhappily on the bottle, now mostly empty, that Dean hadn’t had the energy to put away.
Dean grunted, tired and irritable. “I sleep,” he snapped, taking a deliberate swig because he knew it would piss Sam off. It had the desired result; Sam wasted no time telling Dean how much of an asshole he was and by the time they’d finished sniping at each other they were on the road and the topic of sleep (and its consequences) was well and truly dropped.