inonebasket | (no subject)

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?"

"And you didn't fall and die? No, Cas, I do not need some help."

Dean will get up on the roof on his own, thank you very much, he'll just do it with some grunting and ungraceful flailing.

"Great. There's stars in the sky, good for you. And hey, there's the big dipper! Do you remember it now? Can we go back in?"

Cas reaches over with a sigh and places his hand just barely over Dean's mouth, palm against his lips, before withdrawing and lacing his fingers over his stomach again. "A common human misconception is that space, as a vacuum, has no sound. This isn't true; objects within space don't produce a sound humans can hear due to the lack of air molecules. However, angels can hear waves, and space contains every conceivable kind of wave ever to exist."

Well, that shut him up for all of half a minute.

"So what, angels are just up in heaven, sitting on a space beach, listening to space waves? Would it be so hard for you to just pick up a shell?" He pantomimes holding one up to his ear for Cas' benefit because he has no idea if Cas will understand that reference or not. He doesn't get it at the most inconvenient times.

No he doesn't get it. This look should make it obvious.

Sigh. Knew it. Dean sits up.

"Okay, when kids, human kids, go to the beach they get these shells, okay? Big ones. Some kind of snail thing. You hold the shell up to your ear, and you can hear the ocean."

He lies back down again, hands behind his head.

"Sam told me it's actually the echo of your blood or something. Honestly, I don't really get it, I just know that you hold up a shell and you hear waves."

"Perhaps because when you find the shell, you're already at the beach."

DUH.

"You take them home with you, Cas! You don't hold them to your ear while you're there, it's so you can remember the damn waves when you're gone!"

DUH.

"Why wouldn't they remember without the aide of a shell? Are their memories being altered?" What the heck are parents doing to their kids these days.

Dean covers his face with his hands.

"It's just a...y'know what, never mind. Forget it." Why does he ever try to explain humanity to Cas?

Why indeed.

Castiel returns his attention to the sky, hands on his stomach, and crosses his ankles. After a moment he sits up, shucks off his jacket and reaches over to drape it over Dean's chest before laying back down, as if it were the most normal thing to do.

Oh for--

Dean chucks the jacket back at Cas.

"Dude, I've got at least 20 pounds of muscle on you. You're gonna freeze before I do."

"You were complaining about the cold earlier." Castiel gently chucks it back. Don't be a bitch, Dean. Take the jacket.

"Look, I just found you again after I thought you'd freaking drowned, okay? Forgive me if I don't wanna see you freeze." Dean chucks it back--again--and scoots back toward the edge of the roof.

"I'm going back in. Don't you dare stay up here all night."

Castiel sits up, holding his jacket and feeling as if he'd just done something wrong. Frowning, he slips it back on and follows Dean off of the roof to head back inside. "I'm done."

"Nah, man, you stay up there. You looked like you were enjoying the view."

It isn't that Cas has done anything wrong. Not exactly. It's just Dean being his usual gruff, concerned self, doing that thing where he worries about people but pretends nothing's the matter. He scoots back in through the window and heads back to his bed.

Castiel is already off of the roof by the time Dean tells him to forget about it, but instead of climbing in through the window he leans his elbows against the sill, clasping his hands. The curtains ruffle slightly in the breeze, brushing against his sleeves and knuckles. "Dean."

Cas stops, takes a deep breath and plows forward. There's something intimate about discussions in the dark, just the sliver of moonlight falling over his shoulder to illuminate the room. "You need to tell me what you need me to do. I don't-" He tilts his head in a familiar gestures, attempting to find the correct words. "I'm trying to be something...different. Something you can more easily relate to."