inonebasket | (no subject)

Castiel still hasn't figured out how to save numbers so the contact list is absolutely blank. He considers having Dean show him how later as he slips it back into his jacket pocket. "I don't have any money with me." He'd been planning to do...well, some thing, if he'd survived the encounter with the Leviathan. Maybe see if there were any soup kitchens he could crawl to, or a shelter or a kind stranger.

Yeah. Cas has been winging it for a little while now.

Again: Cas is an idiot.

"Yeah, so we'll get McDonalds or something. It's cheap and you like burgers, right?"

Dean will cover Cas. That's what he does. Takes care of people.

Cas does like burgers, oddly enough. Except that it makes him think of Jimmy, and again Castiel sends out a prayer hoping that at the very least, James Novak made it to Heaven. If Jimmy was stuck in Purgatory-

Well. It was another thing he needed to rectify. He won't abandon that man's soul to eternal unrest with the monsters of the world.

"Yes. Thank you." Except that Castiel is racking up these favors in his head and he's going to need to repay Dean with like a hundred years of servitude at this rate.

Lucky for Castiel, Dean doesn't want a hundred years of servitude. He just wants his family back in one piece.

Without another word, he changes directions toward a more major road, following it until he finds something resembling civilization. There's no McDonalds after all, but there's a 24 hour diner. That'll be good enough. And hey, the waitress is cute. Dean could watch her serve up burgers and coffee alllll day.

"So after this," he says between bites of burger, "I figure we find ourselves a place to crash for the night, and then we'll head back up to the safehouse. Sam's still out on a hunt, but Bobby'll have something for us to do."

Despite being absolutely starving -he's still getting used to reminding himself to eat at least once or twice a day, it's so freakin' inconvenient- Cas picks at his food.

"Dean. It might be for the best if you warn them of my arrival."

"I'll warn them." He shoves more food in his mouth.

Yeah, he'll warn Bobby, he just won't do it far enough out that Bobby has time to gather weapons.

You know what, even without having mind-reading powers Cas can still tell when Dean is full of shit.

"Before we arrive at his house, ideally."

"Yeah, Cas, I know. Before we arrive at his house."

The driveway is technically before the house.

"I'm not gonna hang you out to dry, so relax"

"I'm not worried about that." Castiel finally takes a bite of his burger. "In everything you do, you put the well-being of others first. It's a trait not commonly found in this era." This is Cas's idea of light conversation.

Cas really needs to learn how to talk to people. He's bad at it.

"Yeah, well, only because your angelic buddies shoved it on me first." Dean will always deny how much he sacrifices for the people around him. It's just something he does, not something he thinks about. Or wants to think about.

He flags down the waitress and pays the bill, getting another couple burgers and two slices of pie to go. Next step, motel. He waves for Cas to follow him, heading back out to the--oh. Hey, motel across the street. He'll take that. One room, two beds, and he takes the one closest to the door. Just in case Cas changes his mind about staying in the middle of the night.

"No," Castiel sighs, taking the bag from the waitress and following Dean out of the diner. He doesn't elaborate further, knowing that Dean would just deny it out of a sense of shame or some other weirdo human emotion that gets in the way of accepting compliments. Or more of that self-loathing. Cas despises that most of all.

Castiel wordlessly removes his boots and lays down on the bed. When he stretches, his joints pop. He wonders if Dean thinks that Cas will regain his Grace over time, and decides that if Dean's going to throw his chips in with Castiel he might as well know what he's getting into. "Dean. You know that I won't be regaining my angelic power, don't you?"

Dean glares at his own knotted laces. "You said you lost your wings, Cas. I kinda guessed the rest."

It's something he'd rather not think about. He's starting to realize how much he preferred the invulnerable Cas. The idea of a Cas who could take a hit the wrong way and never get up again isn't an idea Dean likes. It's one he'll do his damn best to keep from happening.

"You just stay out of trouble, you got that?"

"You stay out of trouble," Cas grumbles, rolling over onto his side. He's more worried about Dean getting into a scrape that requires some divine intervention and not having any on hand to spare.

Okay, that was kind of funny.

"Who knew you'd make such a cranky-ass human, huh. You do know that whole, little kid 'no you!' thing is overplayed, right?"

Was that funny? "I'm a few centuries behind on what constitutes contemporary humor." Not that humor had ever been Cas's kind of thing, that was more Uriel's show. Cas was better with biting sarcasm and completely missing the point.

"We gotta get you watching more TV. George Carlin. You'd like him. He's an asshole, too."

Dean flops down on his bed and rolls to face the door.

"Get some sleep. We're gonna get moving early tomorrow."

Castiel doesn't answer, instead drifting off into a soft doze. Even after months he still hasn't gotten the hang of sleeping, and it's not even two hours before he wakes up, unable to reach true unconsciousness. He glances over at Dean's bed before sitting up as quietly as possible, pulling on his boots and heading outside.

There's a drainpipe bolted to the wall that looks promising.

Castiel grips the pipe and scrambles up it with no small amount of noise, wincing and hoping he didn't wake any of the other patrons of the motel, but especially Dean. Gripping the gutter and hefting himself up with a wheeze -while Jimmy had always been on the thin side he wasn't exactly the most muscled of men- before rolling onto the shingles.

There. Castiel crawls further onto the roof, draws up his knees, loops his arms around them loosely and watches the clouds drift lazily across the stars.

Dean likes to fancy himself a light sleeper, but the truth is, once he's out, he's out, barring nightmares. He's slept through storms and hunts and Sam's snoring, so he certainly sleeps through Cas sneaking out of the room.

He doesn't sleep through the awful clatter of the drain pipe, though, because damned if that doesn't sound like something enthusiastically breaking into the motel. Dean yanks himself awake, automatically reaching for the gun stashed under his pillow.

"Cas! You hear--"

Shit.

"CAS!"

Dammit, dammit, dammit!

Oh. It sounds like Dean's panicking. That's not good.

Castiel edges toward the lip of the gutter, finding a handhold among the shingles and gripping it tight. "Dean," he calls as loudly as he dares, hoping Dean can hear him through the window panes. "I'm out here."

What--

Dean whirls toward the window, lifting the gun. Lucky for Cas, he manages not to shoot it. Dropping the gun back on the pillow (very safe), he heads over and yanks the window open, sticking his head outside.

"Cas? What the hell are you doing on the roof?"

"Remembering the stars." Gosh, Dean. What else would he be doing on the roof?

"What do you need to remember them for, they're right there! Come on, Cas, get your angelic ass back inside, it's freezing out here."

Cas, you fail at human.

No he's remembering them because your dumb mortal eyes can't see shit. Besides, he just got up here. Go mother someone else for a while.

"I'll be back in later. Go back to sleep, Dean." Cas says it like it's an order and disappears back over the edge of the roof to stretch out on his back. Besides, it's not that cold.

There's nobody else here that Dean cares about enough to mother. He wriggles his way out the window, sitting on the sill and glowering up at the roof.

"Dammit, Cas! How'd you even get up there?" No way he's going to manage sleep, not with a used-to-be angel perching on the roof like a friggin' seagull.

"The drainpipe." Now that Cas is laying down he's actually kind of comfortable, but it sounds like Dean is having some issues with climbing onto the roof so, reluctantly, he rolls over and crawls back to the edge. "Do you need some help?"