It was cold outside. Castiel didn't like it. Snowflakes tugged at his hair and blustered against his lips. The wind laced icy fingers through his coat, and he shivered as he shrugged the collar higher. One of his hands was shoved deep into his pockets, clinging to warmth, but the other one was dragged forward by Demon, the thick leash wrapped many times around Castiel's fingers. Demon wagged his tail and strained forward, snapping at snowflakes as they fell towards the ground.
"Stop eating the sky, dude." Demon ignored him. "Come on, just pee so we can go home." Castiel loosened his grip on the leash, and nudged his dog towards a patch dead grass. He felt like an idiot, standing here trying to convince his dog to take a leak. A cold, desperate idiot.
Everything was gray today. The sky was a deep, sunless backdrop to the park. The trees were barren, their leaves long fallen and blown away. Nobody was outside, and the grass was crunchy and frozen. The snow gathered in his hair and brushed against his coat, melting against his skin. The clouds were thick as they dropped their bounty, but Castiel found no comfort in their whimsy. Today held a loneliness he had not felt for a long time, and he didn't care to linger.
The snowflakes petered out for a moment, and Demon shoved his face into the grass, snuffling in a tight circle as he completed his business. "Thank god," Castiel muttered, and he began to pull the ninety-five pounds of dog out of the park back towards their apartment. Demon strained against him, digging his claws into the grass. He snapped at the snowflakes as the began to swirl around him again, tough lolling out the side of his mouth and tail whipping through the air.
"You wouldn't be so happy if you didn't have all that god damn fur," Castiel told him. He pulled against the leash again, and soon Demon was ahead of him, following the familiar concrete path to home. He never stayed focused for long.
The wind was howling by the time the pair returned. Castiel stomped the snow off his boots and brushed the snow off his coat and onto the stairs. His fingers were shaking as he tried to open the front door, and he fumbled about for a few moments before his finally shoved the key in the lock. He should have brought gloves.
He shouldered the door open, and Demon pushed past him into the dark hallway, nails rattling against the hardwood as he shook a few obstinate flakes out of his coat. Castiel flicked the light switch on as he shoved the door closed with his foot, then turned to the dog. His shaking fingers struggled with the metallic clip of the leash, but he soon got it off with a satisfying click. Demon took off through the house, his trip to the park already forgotten. He was a good dog.
Castiel sighed out of his dark coat and kicked off his boots, cramming them both into a pile behind the door. He dropped his keys onto the wobbly table in the hallway, noticing his growing pile of bills and pretending he hadn't. He would deal with them later, when he wanted to. Or when they shut the power off.
His home was, if possible, the opposite of open concept living. The hallways were thin and the rooms were cramped, and if the door to the closet was open then you couldn't get to the bathroom, and if the door to the bathroom was open you couldn't get up the stairs, and neither of them actually fit into their frames, so closing and opening them was not the easiest of tasks. The floorboards creaked and the stairs were suspicious, and everywhere you went you were sure to bump against or knock over something. At least he didn't need an alarm system.
He did not love it, but he did not hate it, and that was enough.