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Dean did have that idea, actually. It's not an unusual idea for him to have.

He spends twice as long in the shower as Cas did, determined to enjoy himself thoroughly. Which he does. Happily. Okay, so he's helped out by the fact that he's in his 30s, which slows everything down, but whatever.

Half an hour later, Dean emerges from the room, duffel hefted over his shoulder. He shoves his things into the trunk, takes his coffee from Sam--what a good little brother--and shoves his way into the driver's seat of the car.

"So I say we figure out something to put Cas' Grace in, split our asses up, and go clean up some damn Leviathans. If anybody's got objections, voice 'em now."

Cas raises his hand in the backseat. Sam hides his smile by sipping his frou-frou vegan latte or whatever the fuck it is.

Edited 2011-11-25 06:44 (UTC)

How convenient that raising a hand doesn't count as "voicing."

"Right. Let's get moving, then." He starts the car and pulls out of the parking lot.

Excuse you sir. Cas half-stands in the back and leans forward over the seat. "I have objections. We shouldn't part ways to hunt the Leviathan; we should track them down one at a time and pool our strength."

"You want your mojo back or not? This is the fastest way, Cas."

"I don't care about speed." You freaking idiot. "We should also tell Bobby to hide himself; better yet, we should collect him ourselves."

"My car is cramped enough without Bobby's bitch ass in it, too." He wants Cas back to himself as fast as possible. He'd very much like to have an angelic healbuddy on his side.

"Dean." He just doesn't understand. Cas sets out to explain it. "They most likely have already discovered that not only do we have a way to kill them, but that I'm capable of reabsorbing my Grace. We need to be more careful."

"I think Cas's got a point," Sam pipes up, concerned. "I mean, they'll go after all of us first. And they know that we're each other's weak points; you can't say that if me or Cas get nabbed, you won't go charging straight in after either of us." It's given that if Dean were to get snatched that Sam would also barrel after him. Cas- maybe, but then again the Leviathan, with all of Castiel's memories, probably know that as well.

"Dammit, Sam!" Dean slams his hand into the steering wheel and winces. Note to self, stop doing that. The bruise is getting better, but that still hurts.

"And if we're all together, they can do the same thing! They already--Sam, you didn't see it, but one of them came after me--" That's Cas' dirty laundry. Screw it. "Look. We're screwed no matter what, so why not keep doing like we've been doing?"

"Are you trying to get rid of me, Dean?"

"Hey, you're the one that ditched me, remember? I was all set to hunt monsters, but no. No, you decided you couldn't deal with me anymore!"

Cas is wise to be staying out of this sibling spat.

Yeah, he is staying the hell out. Don't mind him, just sitting in the back seat silently and staring at them both. This reminds him of Michael and Lucifer, before Lucifer fell. ...yeah he's not going to mention that.

"I never said I couldn't deal with you, I said I couldn't deal with what you were doing to yourself! I thought that if you had some time alone you'd get your head on straight, like last time." Y'know, when he called and you told him to get lost, and then called like ten minutes later and was like 'Sam I need you again come back to me,' right? Remember that?

Sam wrenches open the door and shoves a leg out. "But you know what, that's fine. I don't want to get in the way. I'll go to Bobby's and we'll work together."

"My head is on straight, Sam. I'm sorry that things happened and I got a little upset about them, okay? I am so freaking sorry for having a completely normal reaction to thinking someone I gave a crap about was dead!"

Okay, so it wasn't a healthy normal reaction, considering he's spent quite a while drinking himself into a drunken stupor just to force himself to sleep at night and lately Dean is entirely too good at functioning when hungover, but that's not the point. The point is that Sam is obviously overreacting.

"So yeah. Yeah, you go work with Bobby. Tell him I said hi."

No, the point is that Dean is a dick. Sam was happy to see him doing better and happy to see Cas, and now all Dean wants is a freaking honeymoon tour across the states with him.

"Yeah I'll do that." Sam slams the door, stands sulkily by the trunk until Dean pops it for him, grabs his things and marches off to find some poor sap's car to hotwire and steal. You are a complete and utter dick, Dean.

Cas clears his throat after a moment of silence. "Should I collect my things as well?"

"No." Dean slaps the steering wheel again before slouching against the seat. "Dammit, Sam."

None of that is how Dean meant that conversation to go. For half a day, things were fine and now Sam's being a bitch again and this is probably all Dean's fault, but is it really that wrong for him to want some time to himself? It's not exactly fair for Sam to just butt the hell back in whenever he wants is it?

Or no, dammit. Dean's being selfish again, isn't he. Good job, Dean. Always with the selfishness. No wonder everybody leaves.

Cas climbs out of the backseat, watches Sam walk down the road and climbs into the front once he turns the corner. He sits and waits patiently for Dean to get his head back on and start driving again.

Dean is quiet for a while and it's several minutes after Sam has vanished around the corner before Dean growls and starts the car up again, tearing down the road with more speed than is safe. He's quiet while he drives, glowering at the road ahead of him as if it's offended him somehow. When they stop for lunch, he even eats his burger with the kind of single-minded aggression he usually reserves for things like werewolves.

Cas, meanwhile, is busy being hyper aware of every single person that walks by. He refuses to sit with his back to anybody so they end up getting a corner booth, and every time the waitress comes by Cas stares at her. Needless to say, by the time lunch is over the staff is very glad to see them leave.

They don't have a single Leviathan encounter for five days straight. On the sixth, Castiel is starting to get very antsy; he doesn't like their silence, spends a lot of his time mumbling to himself about how they think, what they're doing. He spends hours on the phone with Sam, and then Bobby (once Bobby finally agrees to talk to him) about their movements, any news, whether or not they'd found any. They hadn't.

Sam doesn't once ask to speak to Dean.

Five days of absolutely nothing and it's starting to get to Cas. The tense line is back in his shoulders, bunching them up, and twice he'd wound up somehow sleeping on the floor in the middle of the night.

Then again, for five days he hadn't so much as touched Dean for longer than two seconds, let alone kissed him at all. Any action initiated on Dean's behalf was met with stonewalling and a quick escape. Cas is keeping himself distant.

They're holed up in yet another cookie-cutter motel room and Cas is sucking on cubes of ice as he flips through one of the tomes acquired from Bobby's house back when he and Dean had first visited.

Dean spends most of those five days sleeping or drinking. He still manages to lie like a champ when they need to get in somewhere and he's nothing short of gentlemanly and concerned about Cas, making sure they eat reasonably and trying to get Cas back into bed the times he's ended up on the floor, but it's clear he's not happy.

The first time Sam calls Cas up, Dean actually looks a little cheered, but when the phone clicks shut and Sam hasn't even passed on a hello, Dean tightens his jaw and sticks his face back into the book he'd been reading. By the fourth or fifth time Sam spends a conversation with Cas without so much as mentioning Dean, he takes to leaving the room the second he hears the phone--any phone--ringing.

Worse, he can't even distract himself, because they're busy hunting Leviathans and when they do have downtime, Cas won't even look at him. It's not like Cas has ever been an amazing conversationalist, but Dean has never been cockblocked like this before (literally or figuratively).

This is what he gets for being a selfish bastard, isn't it?

Dean realizes he's been staring at the same page of the same book for the last 20 minutes without absorbing any of the information it contains. He grunts, chucking it onto the table.

"You wanna tell me what's up?"

Cas looks up from the book, brow furrowed in confusion. "...the Leviathan are too quiet. They haven't even made an attempt on our lives." Cas is sure that was fairly obvious. Is it weird to be bothered by that?

"Better quiet than trying to kill us." Dean knows that's a stupid thing to say the second the words leave his mouth. No Leviathans means no Grace. No Grace means Cas stays human.

Dammit, Dean, what is wrong with you?

"I meant more the...sleeping on the floor again thing. Or the leaving the room if I bump shoulders with you thing."

"Ah."

Right. Those things. The floor, Cas can't explain. He doesn't know why he sleep-transfers himself onto the floor when there is a perfectly good bed with a perfectly warm (and attractive) body in it willing to hold him or be held all night long. Yeah. He's not sure.

The other thing though- "I...don't want to introduce anything that would make you uncomfortable." Like. Y'know, the necking thing that you didn't care for. "You said you wanted time to grow accustomed to the idea."

He rubs his hands over his face. "Cas, if I touch you, you don't have to back away. It's pretty damn likely that if I make a move, it's because I'm okay with making a move, got it?"

At least he can fix this.