Chapter Text
“So, uh. Sorry your date was a bust.”
Castiel turns to Dean in surprise. They have made the drive back from Nora’s house in near silence. Dean didn’t question him when he climbed into the Impala, and Castiel didn’t ask where they were going, too heavy with exhaustion to do anything but let himself be pulled along in Dean’s wake.
Now, in the parking lot outside a seedy motel, Dean sits very still in the driver’s seat of the Impala, still gripping the steering wheel tightly. The scrolling red neon sign picks out the edges of his profile.
Chiaroscuro. Castiel learned the term from a library book, picked up during those first few days of human wandering because the picture of an angel on the cover made him ache for home, and discarded because the ones inside did nothing to assuage that aching. He read a little before he discarded the book, though—enough to know that artists employ the technique deliberately, a little light in the darkness somehow showing brighter than full day.
Dean is avoiding his eyes. Something in that makes Castiel wonder if he really meant what he just said. Perhaps—as is so often the case—there is something hidden between the lines here, in the silences, that Castiel is supposed to pick up on, or to pick up on and then pretend not to hear. What it is, he couldn’t say.
Many things are obscure to him lately. Heaven, of course, hidden from his human eyes. The voices of his brethren no longer call to him, and though he knows many among them would wish him dead, their silence muffles him like a heavy blanket. But humans, too, are opaque.
Castiel has never understood their customs fully. Even after his years with Dean and Sam, he finds himself wrong-footed in interactions, puzzling over missed references while the conversation moves on without him.
Before, he had a higher clarity. Even when the nuances of communication eluded him, he could see the human soul, bright as a beacon. The essence of the humans in his charge, visible to him even under layers of resentment and annoyance, of defensiveness and distrust and fear. Even when he was the cause of those things, that light reached him. Broke through Naomi’s hold on him in Lucifer’s crypt; granted him one last moment in which to make his apologies before the Leviathan took hold. He never had to doubt it.
Now, it seems, he has little but doubt.
He studies Dean’s face for clues as to his true meaning, or the appropriate response, but finds none. “It wasn’t a date,” he offers, at length. “That was my mistake.”
Dean opens his mouth as if to reply, seems to think better of it, and gets out of the car.
----
He leaves the motel room door open behind him, and after a moment, Castiel follows him in. He closes the door quietly.
Dean crouches in front of the refrigerator and retrieves two beers, pops off the caps, and hands one to Castiel without a word. It’s a ritual he has watched Dean and Sam conduct countless times: confirmation of a hunt successfully concluded. Or concluded, at least.
There doesn’t seem to have been anything particularly successful about tonight. Unless Castiel counts his own survival, he guesses. He’s still undecided on that score.
Dean sits on the edge of the bed and toes off his shoes. He doesn’t set them neatly in the corner along with his other things, the way he normally would. A measure of his tiredness, or his distraction; Castiel doesn’t have the means to tell which.
Normally, he’d sit on the other bed, opposite Dean, and they would talk across the safety of the gap in between. There is only one bed in this room, and so he hovers before the door until Dean eyes him irritably and says, “Dude, you can sit, I’m not gonna—”
He breaks off. Castiel sits, and doesn’t ask what Dean is not going to do.
The mattress dips beneath him. Castiel fidgets around on it, trying to find the appropriate distance at which to sit. He thinks he understands, right now, the discomfort Dean used to feel when he stood too close, stared too hard; his insistence on personal space. Dean is so close. Castiel can feel the warmth of him, how the mattress moves when he shifts his weight. They are almost touching, but he feels like he can hardly see Dean at all.
He takes a swig of his beer to distract himself. Runs his thumb around the rim of the bottle to wipe off the condensation, and looks up to find Dean watching him.
Dean swallows and looks away. Discomfort seeps into the silence between them. Castiel casts around for something to say. Something neutral—or at least, something that has nothing to do with dates or the Gas ‘n’ Sip or out-of-control Rit Zien.
“How is Sam?” he asks.
Dean’s frown deepens. He worries at the label on his beer bottle. “Better,” he says, after a long moment. “He’s—yeah. Better.”
He doesn’t sound convinced, but Castiel doesn't press him. He drinks another third of his beer, considers and rejects a few more conversational non-starters, and is saved from having to attempt them when Dean looks at him sideways and says, “When I said I was sorry. I meant—about all of it.” He looks away again, quickly.
Castiel studies his face, but finds no explanation there. “All of what?” he asks.
Dean waves the hand that isn’t holding his beer. “All of this,” he says. “Not just what’s-her-name—”
“Nora,” Castiel supplies, and gets a dismissive grunt in reply.
“The whole thing,” Dean goes on. “The stupid-ass job, the psycho angel, whatever rat-infested shithole you’re living in right now—” He pauses. “Where the hell are you living, anyway?”
It would be appropriate to lie at this juncture, Castiel thinks. It would be the kind thing to do. He dredges his mind for something to say, but comes up with nothing, and by the time he opens his mouth to say that it doesn’t matter, there is a stricken look in Dean’s eyes.
“Seriously?” Dean says. “You don’t have anywhere?”
Castiel looks down. “I’ve been staying at the Gas ‘n’ Sip.”
“Jesus.” Dean is staring at him now, a crease between his eyebrows, like the whole thing surprises him.
That, too, is hard for Castiel to understand. Dean told him to leave the bunker, knowing that he had nowhere else to go. What did he expect?
Castiel resists the urge to reassure, to say that it is okay, that he has shelter and food and that is all he needs. It would be a lie, and he doubts he has the energy to make it convincing.
“Man, we gotta find you a place,” Dean says, then. “I’ll show you how to use the internet, or whatever. You can’t just crash at work. Gonna get yourself fired.” He tears a strip off the label of his beer bottle, frowning. He sounds as though he is angry at Castiel for not knowing this, though experience tells Castiel that Dean’s anger is usually at himself, bursting out at those around him because it has no place else to go.
“I would appreciate that,” Castiel tells him. That, at least, isn’t a lie. The process of acquiring even simple things as a human is complicated. There are forms to be filled out, references to be provided, financial information to be given—things Castiel doesn’t have, and doesn’t yet know how to fake.
Dean grunts. “Least I can do,” he says, bitterness in his voice. He seems to gather himself, then; looks Castiel in the eyes and says, “You should, uh. You should stay here tonight.”
“You only have one bed,” Castiel points out. It appears big enough to hold both of them, but he’s aware that there are complexities to human sleeping arrangements. He doesn’t think he should presume.
“I’ll take the chair,” Dean says. “Can’t be worse than that crappy mattress anyhow.”
Castiel frowns and bounces up and down a little on the bed, testing it. “It seems adequate to me.”
“Guess I’ve gotten spoiled,” Dean says, and then abruptly goes quiet, apparently realizing too late that he has said the wrong thing. He looks guiltily away.
A small, selfish part of Castiel is glad that he does.
Dean’s purpose in sending him away from the bunker is still opaque. It’s true that angels might seek revenge on him, if they learned where he was, and that his presence might bring the bunker to their attention. But Kevin Tran is there right now, with Sam. Both angels and demons might seek to gain a prophet for their own ends. Is Castiel’s own presence really so burdensome as not to be worth the risk?
Part of him is not sure he wants an answer. Still, in the absence of an explanation, he’ll take regret.
Dean finishes his beer, gets to his feet and announces, “I’m beat. Gonna turn in.” He yawns theatrically and sheds his jacket. Castiel is sure he’s simply seeking an end to the awkward conversation, but nonetheless, he feels tiredness tugging at his limbs. The pain in his injured wrist throbs with each beat of his pulse as the adrenaline of the evening and the painkillers he took from Nora’s bathroom cabinet wear off. He feels heavy, and he can already tell that he will ache tomorrow.
“Me too,” he says, and bends to unlace his shoes.
When he looks up, Dean has arranged himself in the chair, jacket pulled up over him for a blanket, eyes closed. He looks far from relaxed.
Castiel frowns as he undresses, arranging his shoes in the corner of the room alongside Dean’s boots and folding his clothes carefully. He lays them in a little pile on top of Dean’s duffel, and makes to climb into the bed.
Dean is very still, very quiet. His breathing is not even enough for sleep—and in any case, Dean is rarely still when he sleeps. He tosses and turns; mumbles to himself; makes noises of fear or protest or—very occasionally—pleasure. There was a time when Castiel could soothe his unquiet dreams; place a hand on his forehead and pour light and peace into him until the darkness clawing at his soul subsided and grew quiet.
Castiel hesitates a moment, then reaches for a pillow. There are two on each side of the bed, which seems wasteful in a room intended for one occupant. He holds it out to Dean.
“You should take this,” he says.
Dean opens his eyes. He averts them right away when he catches sight of Castiel, and takes the pillow awkwardly. “Uh. Thanks,” he says, and keeps not looking.
Castiel blinks and looks down at himself. His eyes go to the bandage around his wrist, and then to the cut on his palm, cleaned up and covered with a Band-Aid, also stolen from Nora’s medicine cabinet. But Dean treated Castiel’s injuries himself; and in any case, they’re minor compared to those that Dean and Sam routinely sustain over the course of a hunt. That can’t be why Dean doesn’t want to look at him.
Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s shirtless? Plenty of humans are uncomfortable with exposed skin, though Dean is modest by nobody’s standards, and accustomed to sharing motel rooms with Sam. That can’t be it, either.
Perhaps he’s just done with looking Castiel in the face for today.
The thought sinks inside Castiel like a stone, and he sighs heavily and turns away, putting the light out before he crawls under the bedcovers. He closes his eyes.
Despite his tiredness, sleep doesn’t come. The evening’s events rattle around inside his skull. His mind keeps returning to the pain that Ephraim sensed from him, that seems to be an inextricable part of the human condition. He could raise no logical argument against it—living is more painful than not-living; that much seems undeniable—only, I want to live anyway. It seems impossible to disentangle the joy in life from the pain.
Like this, now. Dean’s presence should bring him happiness. It does, in some measure. That Dean still cares enough to come see him, that Dean wanted his help—and then his company, when he proved useless in the field—are things he holds close inside of him. They warm him against the disappointment of Nora’s rejection and the fear of Ephraim’s attack.
In the morning, Dean will leave, and he will not take Castiel with him. It is inevitable, and it makes the good things ache in his chest, and yet Castiel holds onto them anyway.
He sighs and opens his eyes, and finds Dean looking at him in the dark. The light of the motel sign creeps in between the drapes, catches the shine of his eyes.
Dean stiffens when he realizes Castiel is looking at him, and Castiel thinks he is about to turn away again.
“Dean,” he says, to stop it. “What’s wrong?”
It is probably the wrong thing to ask. Dean is never less likely to answer a question than when it is asked directly.
But Dean sits up in the chair, closes his eyes, and then opens them again. “I just—it sucks, man,” he says.
There’s a moment of silence, and Castiel wonders whether he is supposed to ask what sucks.
“I’m sorry,” Dean says, again, then. “That you’re stuck here.”
Apologies from Dean are rare things, for all the guilt he carries around with him. Castiel wonders, sometimes, if he fears them like bursting a damn, is afraid that acknowledging one of his sins—however small—will bring the whole weight of them flooding down on him.
Castiel remembers how that fear felt. How it seemed easier, once, to run from his own wrongs than to put the pieces of his mind back together and see them clearly.
Knowing how rarely Dean apologizes makes the whole thing more difficult to understand, not less. Castiel rolls onto his back, looks up at the ceiling instead of at Dean. He doesn’t really expect an answer, but he ventures a question anyway:
“You say you’re unhappy that I’m here. So why did you tell me to leave the bunker?”
Dean doesn’t answer. He just sighs, and when Castiel turns to look at him again, his eyes are closed, his jaw tight.
Despite everything, something soft uncurls itself in Castiel’s chest. Dean has caused him pain, but he finds he has no wish to cause it in return.
“You look uncomfortable,” he says, hoping that a change of subject will lessen the tension. Dean’s eyes fly open, startled. “This is a double bed. You should sleep here too.”
Dean lets out a breath that might be exasperation or relief at the change of subject. “I’m fine here,” he says.
“Dean.” Castiel puts a note of sternness into his voice, something he’s had no cause to do since the fall. He doesn’t know if it will work, now that he no longer has his old power. Authority feels strange to him, lately.
“Cas.” It’s a reply, at least. Castiel decides to count that as a success.
“You will complain at great length tomorrow if you sleep in that chair,” he tells Dean. “I would prefer that you didn’t.”
That, at least, gets a laugh from Dean. “Fine,” he says, after a moment. “Have it your way.” Dean gets out of the chair and picks his way around the bed, flopping down heavily on the far side of the mattress. Then he sits up and fixes Castiel with a look, pointing a finger at him for good measure. “But I’m warning you,” he says, “if you’re a sleep-cuddler, I will kick you in the nuts.”
Castiel frowns. “How would I know if I was?” he asks. The night he spent in April’s apartment was the only occasion he’s had to sleep in close proximity to another person, and he’s avoided thinking about that in too much detail since.
Dean shrugs. “Just don’t spoon me and we’ll be fine,” he says, and rolls over to face the door.
Castiel watches the back of his head, but no explanation is forthcoming.
It isn’t that he’s never thought about touching Dean. It only seems like a natural extension of the bond they already share, the way they gravitate toward one another. If he thought that Dean would react favorably, he would reach out and trace the lines of Dean’s shoulder blades and the muscles of his arms with his palms, press his mouth to the soft skin at the back of Dean’s neck.
With his old eyes, he could see the way Dean’s soul strained toward him, even as his mind and body kept their distance. Sometimes, he wondered if that meant that Dean wanted the same things.
He also saw how hard Dean fought to clamp down on it, how tightly he held himself in when they got close. Castiel never found the words to break through those barriers then; he certainly wouldn’t know where to start now.
He sighs and turns over. Sleep doesn’t come at once, and Castiel lies on his side, watching the lights of passing cars make patterns on the opposite wall.
“Cas.” Dean’s voice is soft in the silence. Castiel lifts his head, turns toward it.
“Yes?”
There’s a long pause, and then a sigh, the sound of Dean’s head dropping back onto the pillow. “Nothing. Forget it.”
Dean says nothing further. Castiel lies still, listens to Dean’s breathing as it slows, and eventually they fall asleep back-to-back, like quotation marks around separate speeches.
----
“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty.”
Castiel blinks his way to wakefulness and the sharp smell of motel coffee. He must have turned over in the night; he’s lying with his face to the indent Dean has left in the mattress.
“Hope you take sugar,” Dean tells him, with the false cheeriness he so often employs to stave off unwanted conversations, and waves a Styrofoam cup in front of Castiel’s face. Whatever defenses he let down last night, however briefly, they are back up now.
“Yes,” Castiel says. “Thank you.” He levers himself into a sitting position, the blankets falling down to bunch around his hips, and takes the coffee. He sips at it cautiously. It’s far from pleasant—both too bitter and too sweet, if that’s possible, and hot enough to burn his lower lip—but the first jolt of caffeine through his system nudges him toward alertness, helps stave off his incipient early-morning headache. He swings his legs over the side of the bed, and stands up.
Dean nods and turns for the door. “No prob,” he says. “Now put some pants on, Iggy Pop.” He pauses, then; hovers before the door for a moment before turning and dropping his keys on the table. “And, uh, if you’ve got anything you wanna leave here while you’re at work, go ahead. Room’s paid up for the week.”
Castiel stares after him, but before he can muster a thank you, Dean is out the door.
----
Castiel slept better last night than he has done since he became human, despite the thoughts swirling inside of his skull. His shoulders don’t ache the way they do after a night on the storeroom floor. Still, at work he finds himself distracted, staring out of the window for long minutes after the Impala has pulled out of the parking lot and vanished down the road.
He goes through the motions. Flashes his usual smile when the polite customers wish him a nice day; lets the petty rudeness of others wash over him. Nora takes his arm as he is about to leave for his break, and offers another, apparently genuine, expression of gratitude for last night, her eyes big and shining.
Castiel smiles and reassures her and extricates himself. He understands that she means well, but the date fiasco has shown him that that is all he understands. When his mind flashes back to it, he is discomfited, reminded of how much he still has to learn before he fits in.
He volunteers to stay an extra hour at the end of his shift, although it is Nora’s turn to lock up. It’s become a habit, since he’s done this so many times in order to sleep in the storeroom unobserved. Now, he has a bed of his own, albeit a temporary one, but the thought of returning to the motel room alone holds little appeal.
He pulls his cell phone from his pocket, and thinks about calling Dean. Then he puts it away again.
----
It’s late when the car pulls up outside. It screeches to a halt in the parking lot with smoke coming from under the hood, and a scowling woman climbs out of the driving seat and aims a kick at one of the front tires. She glares at the car a moment longer, and then droops, rubbing tiredly at her eyes.
Castiel watches her a moment longer, then goes over to the coffee machine and puts a dollar from his own pocket into the slot.
A moment later, he lets himself out the front door, balancing the cup carefully so as not to slop coffee over the top, and approaches the miserable woman.
She doesn’t look up. “Look,” she says, once he’s in hearing range, “I know I’m not supposed to park here, or whatever, but I don’t know what’s wrong with the damn thing. I’m just gonna have to wait here for a mechanic, okay?” She crosses her arms and finally meets his eyes, staring at him defiantly.
Castiel frowns, taken aback. “That isn’t a problem,” he assures her, and holds out the coffee cup.
She eyes it suspiciously.
“On the house,” he prompts. He’s fairly sure that’s the standard phrase for situations like this, and it surprises him when she laughs.
“Thanks, barkeep,” she says, but then she reaches over and accepts the coffee cup. She pries the lid off and sniffs at it before taking a sip.
“I’m told it’s very bad coffee,” Castiel says, apologetically. “My friend called it ‘Satan’s piss’.”
The woman grins. “Your friend was probably right,” she says, “but that’s not what I was worried about.”
Castiel regards her in confusion, and she holds up a hand.
“Look, no offense. I’m sure you’re a real nice guy. But when you’re a woman driving alone this time of night, you don’t take just anything a strange man gives you.”
“Oh!” Castiel’s confusion clears. “No, I—I don’t mean to hurt you.”
She rolls her eyes. “Like you could,” she says, and takes a gulp of coffee.
This time, the sleeve of her jacket rides up a little, revealing the edge of a tattoo on her forearm. The design looks vaguely familiar, and Castiel peers at it in the darkness. A sigil?
He has to wait for her to take another drink before he can get another look. Once upon a time, he could simply have touched her hand and read any mystical signs she wore, but now he sees only half of it. Definitely some kind of spellwork, though without the full symbol, he couldn’t say whether or not it’s something he’s familiar with.
Perhaps she is a hunter? Castiel risks a glance at the car. There are no obvious weapons, but a box of books sits on the backseat. Old, heavy books, like the ones in Bobby Singer’s library and the Men of Letters bunker.
He pushes the thought of the bunker away and look back at the woman. At second glance, she looks too well-dressed for a hunter, clean and buttoned-up in a smart skirt suit and high-heeled shoes. Besides which, most of the hunters Castiel has encountered have been on the run from some kind of law enforcement or another. They’re more likely to steal and abandon cars than to wait around for mechanics.
On the other hand, she could be in disguise. Perhaps she’s posing as an FBI agent, or a professor—something of that kind. It seems to be a standard component of the job. As for the car—well, Dean is a hunter, but he would never abandon his Impala.
The woman pulls her cell phone out of her pocket and glances at it, frowns and replaces it. She finishes her coffee and sets the cup down on the roof of her car. Then she begins to pace, pausing once to kick at her car’s tires again.
Her frustration seems greater than a simple mechanical problem would warrant—though Castiel has become aware that humans are not always rational about these things. He hesitates a moment, then ventures, “If you were here about the deaths in town, the case has been solved.”
The woman’s head snaps around, and she looks sharply at him. “What makes you think that’s why I’m here?”
It isn’t a denial. Castiel gives her an encouraging smile. “I saw your tattoo,” he says. He gestures toward the car. “And the books. I’m familiar with hunters.”
“Hunters.” The woman’s eyes go hard, and then she smiles. “Now, why would a sigil and a few old books make you think I was one of them?” She leans in, then, grasping Castiel’s wrist with a strength that belies her slight stature. “Maybe you don’t see quite as clearly as you think.” Her eyes bore into him, and he feels the hairs on his arms stand up,
He jerks his hand away, taking a step back. “Then what are you?”
“What?” She puts her head on one side. “Can’t you see?” He voice rises in pitch, takes on a mocking tone. She follows him, step for step, as he inches his way back toward the doors. Reaches out with her right hand, but stops short of taking his arm again.
Castiel doesn’t hear what she says next. It’s Latin, he thinks, but there’s a resonance to her voice that his human ears struggle to grasp.
And then red fire curls from her fingertips, snakes toward him through the air.
Toward him—and into him, right between his eyes. It strikes like lightning, gives him no time to get away. He feels it burn behind his eyes, hears her voice inside his head.
See everything, she says, and then blackness crawls up around him and he sees nothing.
----
“Steve!”
Castiel wakes to somebody shaking his shoulder. He’s cold, and the surface beneath him is hard.
“Steve,” the voice says again, and this time he places it. Nora.
“What happened?” he says. He opens his eyes, and shuts them again once he realizes how bright the lights of the storefront have gotten while he was out. They didn’t hurt to look at, before, did they?
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Nora says, but the humor in her voice is underpinned by worry. “I went to collect Tanya from my sister’s place after work, and ended up staying for dinner, so I only just realized I forgot my keys. When I came back to pick them up, you were out here on the floor.”
Castiel struggles to sit up. Nora’s hand flutters over his shoulder for a moment, then falls back to her side.
The lot is empty. The woman—the witch—and her car are gone. If a tow truck came to collect it while he was unconscious, there’s no sign of that, either.
“Did you see anybody else?” Castiel asks.
Nora shakes her head. “Was it a robbery? Did somebody hit you?” She reaches out as though to touch Castiel’s face, and he pulls away. Presses his own hand to the back of his head. There’s a lump there, tender and sore beneath his fingertips.
Castiel shakes his head. Then he stops, because it hurts. A painful throb is starting up behind his eyes, and he wants nothing more than to close them and sink back into unconsciousness here in front of the Gas ‘n’ Sip.
“There was a woman here,” he says, fighting to stay alert. “A customer. She—” He breaks off. Nora’s a civilian. He can’t expect her to understand what happened here. “She must have gotten scared and left,” he says.
Nora nods. “I should take you to the ER.”
“No!”
His voice comes out louder than he expects, occasioning a burst of pain at the base of his skull, and Nora’s eyes widen. “Steve—”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to—startle you.” Castiel swallows. His throat feels full of grit. “I’ll see a doctor tomorrow, if it’s necessary. But I would appreciate a ride.”
Nora nods and guides him over to her car. He sits in the shotgun seat while she puts out the lights in the store and locks up, wincing when the sound of the shutter going down lances pain in through his temples.
Nora’s car is modern, its engine quiet—nothing like the bassy growl of Dean’s Impala—but Castiel feels the sound of it in his bones as they drive back to the motel. He has kept the key to the room in his pocket all day, and it digs into his thigh.
“You’re living here?” Nora asks, as they pull up in the motel parking lot. Castiel doesn’t have the energy for an explanation, so he just nods.
She schools her face into neutrality, but he sees the glimmer of disbelief and sympathy behind her eyes. It’s clear as day, written in the silver-white of her soul.
Castiel blinks, and it’s gone, leaving him blinking at the afterimage of whatever he thought he saw. He lets himself out of the car and into the motel room, murmuring a thank you that he barely hears himself as he leaves. Perhaps Dean left some painkillers.
----
By morning, the pain in his head has dulled to a manageable ache. Castiel takes a shower—a luxury—and drinks coffee and goes to work, and nothing untoward happens, except that the world still feels a little brighter and sharper around the edges.
He knows that he should call Dean.
But there seems little point, until he knows what the witch did to him—and perhaps a part of him is afraid of hearing Dean’s voice say, Sorry, man, no can do. I can’t come, instead of, You can’t stay.
He’s still puzzling over it a week later, as he stacks shelves and idly watches a middle-aged man hover in front of the coffee maker. The man obviously can’t figure out the buttons; in a moment he will come to the counter and ask Castiel for help.
He is learning to read people, if only in the smallest of ways.
The man turns, and Castiel drops the bag of chips he’s holding. They fall to the floor with a soft crunch.
The man’s eyes take the daylight and throw it back at him. They are flat and unreal, like roadside reflectors.
The man is a shapeshifter. And Castiel can see it.