Trails To Happiness

Darkness Upon Thy Door

The words were spoken quietly and with a touch of fear that pulled Cas's lips into a frown.

"Dean, do not say such things. You will come back, you always do."

"But what if this time is different?"

"It won't be."

Cas sounded so sure and determined to believe his own words that Dean had to let it go (at least for now). Of course, Castiel would worry for Dean while he was gone, but there had never been anything that Dean couldn't do when he put his mind to it and Cas had faith that this time was no different.

"I'm not sure what to do." Dean admitted as he gazed to his side at Cas.

"I will support you no matter what, but I think you should speak with Sam." The florist advised and Dean knew he was right.

"Probably."

"He will not be pleased."

"No, probably not." Dean chuckled a bit at the flat tone that Cas had used, but grew serious again as he pulled out his phone.

Castiel rose off the ground to get Dean a drink (since he had clearly not been taking care of himself while he was absorbed in reading), and give him some privacy with his brother over the phone.

Dean called Sam and told him all about what was going on, which caused the younger brother to immediately announce that he was coming over.

Sam hung up, and then was knocking on the door five minutes sooner than he normally would have taken if he came from his own house.

Clearly, he had broken some traffic  laws.

Dean proceeded to show Sam everything that he or John had found on the situation, and Sam read through it quickly.

When he was done, the man collapsed backward on the part of the couch he'd been sitting in.

A moment passed before he spoke. "I've been having that dream about Jess again."

That was all it took for them both to know that the research was true. In the hunting life there were no coincidences, which meant that the dreams were some kind of psychic vision.

They weren't going to agree to anything just yet, but there would definitely be some precautions taken that wouldn't have been taken before.

High alert was the new constant.

(Time Skip)
It was 11:00pm three days later, when Sam called Dean in a panic.

"We need to come over. I had the vision again, but I was awake this time and it felt different. Can we come?" He said in an anxious voice

"Yeah, you can come over here, but be quiet because the kids are already asleep." Dean told him.

He and Cas had been sitting up in bed talking when the call had come in, and the kids were already asleep.

However, they weren't sleeping as they usually would be, but instead all of the girls were having a 'sleepover' in Claire's room while the boys were having a 'sleepover' in Jack's.

None of the kids knew exactly what was going on and their parents had tried to keep them as calm as possible, but they were safer and easier to get to fast if they were in groups.

The kids didn't seem to mind the new arrangement too much (especially Claire because she had some inkling of what was happening, despite them trying to avoid it). Hopefully, the boys wouldn't mind it too much if DB was bunked with them too.

Sam (looking stressed), Jess (looking tired), and DB (looking asleep) showed up not long after the call and moved their way into Ben's room with an air mattress (it wasn't good for Jess's back, but the guest rooms were too far away for optimal protection and Ben hadn't gotten his queen-sized bed yet).