inonebasket | (no subject)

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.

"Understood." Cas picks up another ice cube from the bucket and sucks on it. The motel room's AC unit is busted and it's hot as sin inside. He hesitates before asking, "May I make a move also? Would that be acceptable?"

"As long as you back off if I tell you to, yeah, that's fine."

Thank god. Dean's screwed up a lot of things in his life with his stupidity, but at least it looks like Cas isn't one of them.

The way Cas is eying Dean while sucking on the ice is probably telling as to how badly he'd like to make a move right now.

Still, it doesn't seem appropriate. Dean's obviously upset about Sam leaving, and Cas has made himself too concerned with the Leviathan and giving Dean space to make an attempt at puzzling out all the sources of Dean's depression. He should make more of an effort; ignore the Leviathan problem, at least for now, and try to put Dean at ease.

See, that's where Cas is wrong, because Dean isn't depressed. He can't be depressed, he's got too much to do. Besides, he isn't moping around or crying into his Wheaties every morning, no, he's getting up and going out and getting things done.

See?

Not depressed.

"So we good?"

Dean doesn't even eat Wheaties.

"Yes." Cas hadn't realized they weren't good in the first place. But to seal it, he chews on the last bits of his ice cube as he crosses the room, then leans down and kisses Dean on the mouth. Not a nervous gesture, or one with the intention of pushing into something more, but pure affection. Something casual, like it's normal, like a handshake or a hello.

Exactly. Ergo, he is not crying into them.

Dean blinks in surprise, shaking his head slightly. A second later, the corners of his lips twitch up into a hint of a smile. "Good to know."

"...Dean. What do you do to relax?" Besides drink.

He shrugs. "Sleep. Drink. Shell out for a massage from a hot chick. Preferably naked. Huge bonus for huge..." He gestures at his chest, obviously referring to breasts. "Y'know."

Massage.

Cas doesn't see why a masseuse would need huge breasts. Or would even need to be attractive; the recipient would be laying on his stomach the entire time, so what's the point in having a pretty face? Cas would think that having strong hands and a flawless understanding of the muscles in the human body would be better.

"I can do that." Of course he can do that. He rebuilt Dean's body, for fuck's sake. He knows the exact number of hairs on Dean's head and the freckles on his shoulders when he gets too much sun. Dean doesn't know as much about his body as Cas.

Cas really doesn't understand a lot of things, does he? He obviously doesn't understand happy endings.

"Do what?" Have huge tits? Dean doesn't think so.

Obviously not. "Give you a massage."

"Come on." The tone of his voice makes it pretty clear that Dean doesn't believe that. Really. Angel of the Lord. Soldier. Dean gets those things. But masseur? Hah. Right.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

"Take off your shirt and lay on your stomach." He'll show you.

Dean raises an eyebrow--but y'know what, Cas is actually looking pretty serious about this. He shrugs, pulling his shirt over his head and crawling onto the bed to lie down.

Masseur. Sure, Cas. Let Dean be the judge of that.

See, there's two things that make Cas so confident, even if he's never had or given a massage in his entire life. One: Cas knows the construction of Dean's body down to the last muscle fiber, the last cell and atom. He knows how to pull and push a muscle to make it malleable, how they should feel in his hands when they're new, relaxed, healthy. How they should feel attached to the bone.

Two: Castiel sees all humans as works of art, but Dean's body he worships as both his own work and God's. God may have created Dean first, but Cas restored him, and Dean's body is beautiful because of the sureness of Castiel's hands. He's confident.

Whether or not that confidence is well-founded, he'll see.

He kneels on the bed beside Dean. They don't have lotions or oils but it's not like Cas would have thought to use anything like that anyway, but luckily the room is hot and Dean is just a little bit sweaty so Cas's hands don't scrape over his skin with friction.

Shoulders, upper arms and upper back first. Then the neck, down to the lower back, sides, back to the shoulders and all over again. That he's touching Dean in a way that could be perceived as sexual doesn't even occur to Cas, he's so absorbed in doing this correctly.