Dean felt a niggling sense of apprehension tingle up his spine when he saw Sam walk through the bunker door with his arms full of groceries and his mouth stretched in a wide smile; a feeling that only intensified when Sam's large brown eyes immediately latched on to him, his expression nothing short of gleeful. Cas followed his giant of a brother shortly after. The angel had both his hands full of bags as well and so turned to shove the heavy iron door closed with his foot as if it weighed little more than cardboard.
Dean had to hand it to the guy, even since loosing most of his mojo, Cas still seemed to have retained a freakish amount of raw strength, something which he frequently liked to show off.
"Hey!" Sam called to him cheerfully as he stomped down the stairs.
"Hey..." Dean cautiously replied. His gazed flicked between his nearly bouncing brother and Cas, stoic as ever and giving nothing away.
Sam went flouncing past where he was sitting at the huge table, likely heading for the kitchen to put away the food in his arms. Cas was slower to follow, in no apparent hurry as he drifted over to the table and set down his own bags with a vacant expression.
Dean would not have thought it possible, but since becoming as close to human as an angel could get, Cas had seemed to become even more day-dreamy and absent minded than ever, often staring off into space for long periods of time, or drifting around with glazed eyes - like his body was on earth but his head was in the clouds. There were times when he wouldn't say a word for days on end - unless someone asked him a direct question, and even then Dean would sometimes have to snap his fingers under the angel's nose to snap him out of his trance. Some days it was worse than others but Cas still seemed to be able to go about daily tasks like research and taking care of himself with no problems, so the brothers tired not to worry.
Today seemed to be one of those days where the angel just didn't seem to be able to break out of his own head and Dean stared up at him with a frown, taking in the slow blinks that were too far apart and the sluggish curl of Cas' long fingers around the handles of the plastic bags.
"You ok, Cas?" He asked, keeping his voice light. He knew that if he got an answer at all it would be 'yes, Dean.'
"Yes, Dean."
The hunter closed the book in his hands and tossed it on the table, rising from his seat to come and stand close to the angel.
"You should get this stuff to the kitchen so it doesn't go bad." He suggested, peaking into the closest bag.
"Sam has all the food." Cas replied dreamily, his gaze fixed on the middle of the table even as his hands dipped in to the bags and started pulling out other supplies.
Dean watched him closely, unable to help the little jolt of concern he felt even though Cas' grip on the items in his hands was strong and he set them on the table without knocking anything over or anything. The angel's gaze gradually lowered to the bags in front of him as he continued to unload them.
He settled his hand gently on the angel's shoulder, leaning in front of him to grab the other bag. As expected, Cas didn't so much as twitch out of his stupor.
Reaching in to his own bag, Dean frowned when he felt something made of wood, looking down at the object in his hand and feeling confused.
"Uh, Cas...is this a bird feeder?" He asked pointlessly. It was very obviously a bird feeder – made of cheap, flimsy, unfinished wood that was frayed and splintering around some of the edges. He glanced down into the bag and saw two more like it. "Cas?" He asked again when he got no response.
The angel looked over at the bird feeder Dean held aloft, giving one slow blink.
"Yes." Surprisingly, Cas raised his eyes and locked on to Dean's own, a touch of awareness drawing his eyebrows together. "Sam found them. He said it would be fun."
His confusion doubled and he looked back at the feeder in his hand. "Fun?" he echoed.
"Yeah!" Sam had re-entered the room, non of his previous joviality had dissipated, and he reached out to grab the bird feeder right out of Dean's hand. "We found them at the dollar store. Look, they came with little paint sets and everything!" Sam gushed, reaching into the third bag Cas had set on the table and pulling out a handfull of tiny acrylic paint tubes.
Anything Dean might have said froze in his throat when he caught the glint in his brother's eyes, shining through his smile like the reflection on a scope in the sun, belying danger.
His eyes narrowed and his brother's shit eating grin widened in response. Beside him he saw Cas pick up another of the bird feeders, turning it over slowly with a frown.
So Sam fancied himself an arts and crafts day. Well, what was more likely was that Sam fancied making him do something totally girly with Cas so that he could rib him about it for all eternity.
He felt his face collapsing into a scowl. "I am not -" He stopped short when Cas reached up to pluck the tube of yellow paint out of Sam's hand.
"I think I'll paint bees on mine." The angel informed them airily, looking between them with an expression that suggested his mind was barely tethered to the moment, before turning and sitting down at the table.
Dean stared down at him, something squirming in his chest.
"Here, Cas." Sam dug a paint brush out of the third bag and handed it to the angel. "You'll need a brush." Then he turned to Dean and held out another brush without a word.
Dean snatched it out of his brother's hand, baring his teeth in a silent snarl, and then pulled the chair beside Cas away from the table, dropping into it petulantly and ignoring Sam when he placed the paints on the table between him and Cas.
"I'll go get something to use as a pallet." Sam said, scurrying off.
'Fuckin' Sam and his fuckin' bullshit .' Dean thought savagely, grabbing the black tube in his fist. " I'll fuckin' show that smarmy little prick...'.
Cas suddenly hummed, whether in contemplation of his plan of attack for the bird feeder or because some stray thought in his incomprehensibly vast mind managed to intrigue him, Dean didn't know, but it grabbed his attention either way and his grip on the tube of paint loosened.
Cas was twirling the cheap paintbrush in his hand like it was a switchblade while he stared dreamily at a point just over the top of his bird feeder.
It was more than a little strange to see someone who had once seared the eyeballs out of people's faces sitting there with such serene look on his face, but it did a good job of settling some of the annoyance Dean was feeling. After all, if a bad ass ex-warrior of God could be so chill about arts and crafts then so could he.
Feeling a little more calm and reasonable, Dean unscrewed the cap on the tube and held it over the feeder, crushing it in his fist. The black paint oozed onto the wood and the hunter tossed the empty tube aside, picking up his brush and starting to smear the paint around sloppily. He looked over and saw Cas watching his...progress, his brows drawn together again in vague bewilderment. Then his blue eyes slid upwards to catch Dean's before they flitted away and he set the yellow tube down, grabbing the blue and white instead.
With a swelling bubble of amusement, Dean watched Cas copy him, unscrewing each of the caps and then just squeezing the paint directly onto the wood. The paintbrush in his other hand stopped twirling and Cas started pushing the white and blue paint around the wood.
Dean felt a grin tug at his lips before he turned back to his own bird feeder.
It was then that Sam wandered back into the room with a plate in his hand. "Interesting approach you're taking, Dean." he drawled, taking a seat next to Cas and setting the plate between them. "And I see you're teaching Cas your method." He continued, freezing when he spotted the mess of blue and white the angel was shoving around the wood, seemingly with no kind of system.
"This is how real men paint." He grunted, pushing the goopey substance around some more as he stole a glance over at Cas.
The angel still had that dreamy, detached look on his face and it was hard to tell if he was actually watching what he was doing or if he was staring off at a spot just beyond his bird feeder; either way he'd managed to make fuzzy, blended swirls of the blue and white paint look just like tiny, drifting clouds on the wood. That always seemed to be the case with the angel; there had been many times in the past few months that Sam and Dean had worriedly watched the angel just kind of...shut down in the middle of something - doing the dishes, translating a text - and for a second he'd freeze but then he'd just start moving again and sluggishly pick up the task again just...with the absence of his attention.
It was weird and still made Dean feel worried and uneasy whenever it happened. But Cas was weird and he seemed to be doing ok.
As if to prove it, Cas had managed to arrange the swirls of paint into a freakishly real looking cloudy blue sky on the rough wood.
"Whoa, that's pretty good, Cas." Dean exclaimed before he could stop himself.
But the rush of heat to his cheeks and the smirk from his brother was worth it because Cas suddenly blinked a few times and then turned his gaze on the hunter, his blue eyes sharp and focused for the first time in several days.
All the moisture in Dean's mouth seemed to vanish and he drank in the angel's attention like water.
"Hey." He breathed, paintbrush forgotten in his hand.
Years ago if anyone had tried to tell him that one day he'd miss being on the receiving end of that surreal, intense stare he'd have laughed in their face. Now, the moments when Cas drifted back down to earth were so few and far between that Dean found himself chasing them, often going out of his way to snap Cas out the chaos of his vast mind just to see his big blue eyes sharpen and fix on him.
Castiel blinked again and then dropped his gaze to the blackened bird feeder, a small frown pushing his eyebrows together.
"Uh...it'll make sense when I'm done." Dean explained quickly, his face heating up again. He quickly looked away from the angel, instead glancing over at his brother's. Sam had already painted most of his feeder bright yellow and he was about to make a smart ass remark about it but got distracted when Castiel reached up to snag the tube of green paint that was sitting by Dean's elbow.
The three of them spent the next twenty minutes in near silence and even Dean was willing to admit – if only to himself – that he found himself quickly absorbed in painting his little bird feeder. What had started out as a messy glob of paint had evolved into a smooth, black coating that had covered all the light coloured wood. What he was left with now was...he leaned back. If the impala suddenly turned into a bird feeder for some reason he supposed it would look like this.
It was weird. Bird feeders weren't supposed to be black. He'd messed it up. He wondered if he could even salvage it now.
He snuck a peek over at Cas'. The angel's bird feeder was shockingly elaborate...especially since it had only been about twenty minutes since they'd all sat down. He looked back at his own project, scowling down at it's drying, matte black surface. With renewed determination, Dean pulled the feeder closer, snatching the tube of red paint and squeezing some out on to a scrap piece of paper nearby.
He'd show Cas. Stupid angel and his stupid Michael Angelo looking bird feeder...
"I didn't know you could paint, Cas." Sam suddenly said.
The angel hummed contently but said nothing, swirling his brush around with graceful twirls of his wrist.
Dean attacked his own project with renewed gusto and quickly lost track of time. When he finally looked up from his now perfect bird feeder, he had no idea how much time had passed.
"Ha!" He exclaimed, throwing his brush down. "Is that not the most kick ass, rock and roll bird feeder you've ever seen or what?"
He looked up in time to see Sam huff a laugh and shake his head, a grin splitting his face. "That's great, Dean." He chuckled, pushing his own bird feeder away. It looked like he was done too; he'd painted his mostly yellow but some of the sides and slats of wood had been painted random colors in a confusingly disjointed pattern that poked at the minor OCD in Dean.
Cas', on the other hand, was a fucking masterpiece and Dean felt his jaw drop a little when he looked over. The blue and white had been swirled into flawless clouds on the roof of the feeder and the sides were a rich, deep blue that was so far from what Dean would have thought he could get from mixing the cheap paints. The base of the feeder had been painted green and he could even see little variations in the color and, with a start, Dean realized it was fucking blades of grass. And then, all up the sides there were a bunch of tiny bees, complete with black strips and wings.
It was like a fucking Norman Rockwell on a bird feeder.
"That's...that's..." he trailed off, glancing up to find Cas grinning wide. Like a real smile, that showed his straight white teeth and made the corners of his eyes crinkle and those big baby blues were sparkling. "...awesome." he finally managed.
The angel's gaze dropped down to Dean's bird feeder and the hunter felt heat rising in his cheeks again.
"ACDC?" Cas asked with a quizzical tilt of his head. "That's one of the tapes you play in the car, right?"
Dean scratched behind his ear, a nervous laugh wobbling past his lips. "Yeah."
"You did a very good job on the lettering. It looks just like the logo." The angel praised gently.
Blood punched it's way into Dean's face and he quickly looked away, his stomach managing some interesting acrobatics. "Oh, yeah...thanks...I mean, but yours though..."
Sam suddenly heaved a dramatic sigh and shoved his chair away from the table, the loud sound of wood scraping across the tiled floor nearly making Dean jumped right out of his seat and he glared up at his brother.
Sam grumbled something about making lunch as he left the room.
"Oh..."
Dean looked over to see Cas frowning over at the empty bags they'd pushed to the edge of the table. The angel's eyes swept over the pile of other supplies they'd bought like rolls of duct tape, rope, bleach and other things Dean hoped the person ringing the items through hadn't paid too much attention to.
"What's wrong?" He asked, glancing over the items himself and not seeing anything to warrant the deep frown on the angel's face.
"We didn't buy bird seed." Cas answered gravely.
The hunter smiled, feeling the blush finally recede from his face, and he leaned back in his chair, squeezing the angel's shoulder. "No worries, man, we'll grab some next time we're in town." He rubbed the side of his nose, glancing towards the door Sam had left through to make sure his jerk of a brother wasn't eavesdropping. "Maybe we could head back in tomorrow and pick some up and, you know...maybe stop by that - that dollar store Sam mentioned. See what else they have..."
He watched Castiel's face closely, looking for those microscopic changes that would tell Dean what the angel was thinking and he wasn't disappointed when the corners of Cas' mouth twitched upwards and blue eyes blinked over at him.
"I like painting." The angel abruptly informed him. "We should find more things to paint."
Dean suddenly remembered Sam talking to him once about how painting and drawing was a common therapeutic technique that doctors used to help those suffering from...issues. And, while they all had issues, Cas' were literally on a cosmic scale. But right now Castiel was looking at him like he hadn't in days, his attention all on Dean, no hint of fuzziness around the edges of his gaze and Dean thought right then and there that he would buy every fucking bird feeder in that dollar store if it meant Cas would keep looking at him like that.
So this was inspired by a bird feeder I found at the dollar store and painted like the ACDC logo and someone asked for a fic...so...here's the bird feeder I made if you want to see what Dean's looked like.
castiel-for-king dot tumblr dot com/post/114358345668/holasoysuperweona-castiel-for-king-i-found-an (just replace the dot's with . obviously)