Title: Enlightenment
Author: NariB
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Not mine *sighs*
In those moments, those briefest of moments, Castiel sits and waits, as Dean has commanded. His sits on a chair, in the darkened motel room and watches over his charge as he sleeps. He has been told, in no uncertain terms, that Dean needs to sleep, four hours at least, Dean was very resolute about that. He reasons that waiting is more important than his search for his Father, because he is tasked with protecting Dean first and foremost.
He looks quietly around the rundown room, taking note of a small web in the uppermost corner. He can feel the spider patient in its game, waiting for its prey. He can sense the movement of the tiniest of creatures making their journey across the carpet, herculean in its immensity for things so small. He smells the cheap colognes and perfumes of previous occupants, as well as other odours that are sharp and puzzle him. He can hear the static of current through the wiring. The room is its own micro universe and Castiel can read it all in the moments between seconds. When you can read the universe and have existed millennias in its embrace it is the tiniest of details that enthrall.
Castiel has fought for longer than existence. He was created for it. He knows two things for certain, he is a soldier of God and God is everything. He is the sun that rises, the stars that move, the darkness that creeps and the creativity of man. It was that creativity that Castiel was currently pondering.
Buttons. Buttons puzzle Castiel. He had wielded swords of pure power, healed with a thought, raised a sinner from perdition, but one thing truly defies his power, mocks him and that was the top button on his shirt. He could not tell Dean, he had shared his doubts, truly exposed himself to the human, but how do could he ask him this.
Castiel likes to be neat, but his lack of ability with buttons meant he is in a permanent state of disarray. Uriel had suspected and mocked him for it, Dean had an expression, payback was a bitch and now Castiel knew it to be true. He regretted now how he had mocked Uriel when the other had ended up wearing a pig for a time. Uriel had pretended he had done it on purpose to make the others laugh, Uriel was after all, a funny guy, but Castiel knew different. Uriel drunk on rapture had whispered the truth to him. Perhaps mocking for four thousand years had been a excessive, but it was funny after all, and goodness knows, between the smiting and all, the heavenly comedic moments were thin on the ground.
Castiel was thankful for small mercies, most of his buttons were closed when he had taken Jimmy, but the top button bothered him. He had tried to close it himself on more than one occasion and had ended up smiting it out of frustration. He was glad that Dean had not seen him bringing down the righteous wrath of god on the button and thankful that he had encountered a demon to take his ire out on shortly afterwards. As sure as there was a God this button had been sent to test him, maybe to teach him humility. Castiel was enlightened by this revelation and smiled.
Perhaps he would ask Dean to close it for him after all.