The water’s lukewarm at best, but it’s cleaner than the blood on your hands, so you stand under it anyway. The sound echoes through the makeshift shower barracks: tin walls, concrete floor, rusted pipes that whine if you twist the faucet too hard. It’s the only place you’re ever alone anymore. You close your eyes and tilt your head back, letting the water slide down your face, trying to rinse away the grime, the ash, the latest loss. The door creaks open. You don’t move. Don’t need to. You know that gait: heavy boots, sure steps, carrying a weight that’s got nothing to do with the weapons strapped to his belt. Dean.

“Didn’t know someone was in here,” he says, casual like he’s walking into a kitchen and not a half-rusted warzone shower.

You snort without turning around. “Yeah, right.” There’s a pause. Then the soft thunk of his boots hitting the floor. The metallic jingle of his belt being undone. You feel it before you hear him, heat behind you, close enough your skin prickles with it. “You here for a shower, Commander?” you ask, voice sharper than it should be, but he doesn’t flinch at the bite.

“Something like that.” Then he steps in. The water runs between you. Your back to his chest, his body solid and warm in a way that nothing else is anymore. The tension coils between your ribs, tight and familiar: the edge of something unsaid, something you’ve both ignored for too long. He doesn’t touch you. Not yet. Just stands there, his breath brushing your shoulder, quiet for a beat too long. “Rough day,” he mutters, voice low and hoarse.

You nod. “When’s it not?” His hand finally moves, up your arm, slow and deliberate, fingers ghosting along the bruise on your bicep from this morning’s patrol. You don’t pull away. You never do, not with him.

He leans in close, mouth brushing just beneath your ear. “You keep pushing like that, you’re gonna break.”

“Guess that makes two of us.” His breath hitches, just slightly, and then his other hand slides around your waist, grounding you, steady. You let your head fall back against his shoulder, exhaling hard. You don’t have to fake strength here. Not with him. This isn’t the first time. Probably won’t be the last. It started as stress relief, something to burn through the rage and fear, something physical in a world where touch had become a rarity. But it’s changed. Slowly. Quietly. Now, when he holds you like this, not hungry, not desperate, just there; it’s something else entirely.

“I could’ve waited,” he murmurs, lips close to your neck.

You almost laugh. “No, you couldn’t.” He doesn’t argue. Just presses his forehead to the back of your shoulder and stays there. Long after the water starts to cool. And in this broken world, where everything is ash and ghosts, Dean Winchester holds you like he still believes in something. Maybe not hope. But you.