As far as Dean's concerned, Castiel knows how to work his cell phone just fine. He's got Dean, Sam and Bobby on speed-dial, knows how to send a text message, and comes back to Dean whenever he starts running out of minutes. (Among the things that Dean has yet to successfully teach the angel are credit card fraud and hustling, so more minutes are still Dean's responsibility.)

But, no, Sammy has to go and show the angel how to take photos with his cell phone. Next he's probably going to teach him how to download that emo-pop crap he calls music, and then Dean will be stuck listening to it anytime he calls and Cas doesn't immediately pick up the phone.

Cas, in the meantime, seems quite pleased with this new use for his cell. He takes a few photos of Sam, but mostly, they're of Dean. It gets to the point where Dean flinches any time he hears that weird, electronic click-whirr noise that's programmed into most digital cameras to make them seem less digital and more... not.

"Look, Cas, you gotta stop taking my photo all the time. It's... creepy."

"Sam says that taking photos is a way to preserve special moments that you want to remember," Castiel says, his voice as serious as if they were discussing the potential end of the world, which Dean recognises because they do so on a regular basis.

"Sam is a giant girl," Dean retorts, snatching Cas's cell phone right out of his hand. He flicks through several pictures, and upgrades 'creepy' to 'obsessive stalkerish behaviour'. He doesn't want to think too hard on why a picture of Dean sleeping in the Impala - eyes shut, his head tilted back and his mouth open, and he's drooling a little, dammit - is saved as Cas's wallpaper. "And what's so special about me eating pie? Or -" his face scrunches in a mixture of embarrassment and disgust even as he hits delete "-whatever I was doing there?"

Castiel plucks the phone back out of Dean's grip and gives him that pissy, offended look he can manage without changing his expression at all. "They are my special moments that I want to remember, and therefore I do not have to explain them to you. But if you insist, I will stop taking your picture."

Dean's not quite sure why that makes him feel like he's being a dick, because hey, obsessed stalker-angel taking pictures of him scratching his ass or whatever, but it does. "I'm not saying you can't take photos, just not so many of me. They don't all have to be 'special memories'," he rolls his eyes just a little, because Sammy is a giant girl, and Cas is just too... Cas to recognise when the sasquatch is tripping on too much oestrogen, "it might just be something you see when you're not with us, and you want to share it."

This makes Cas look thoughtful. "Yes, Sam said I could send the pictures to other people if I wanted to."

"Right. That'd be great." Maybe it'll give him some idea of just what the angel does get up to when he's not with them. "But no sending pictures of me, okay? Bobby and Sammy have both seen me eating pie before."

"Fine." The agreement's still a little bit on the pissy side, but it is an agreement, and Dean relaxes.

Then Cas starts sending him photos.

The first time his cell phone goes off, and he flips it open to see there's a photo from Cas, he's feeling just a little bit of anticipation. It turns to puzzlement as he finds himself staring at what looks like cracked pavement, with no accompanying message in explanation. He decides that maybe Cas sent it by mistake, and shrugs it off. But when he gets the picture of the tree-bark, he's not so sure.

These aren't all that Cas sends him. There's a veritable flood of strange photos - an oil-slicked puddle, random people doing random things, a truck-stop sign advertising a special on apple pie a la mode that Dean is sure is intended as a taunt because teasing him with pie he can't have is just mean. It seems that anything and everything is capable of catching Castiel's attention in the right situation, and Dean's just a little bit jealous - not that he'd ever admit that.

As for giving him an idea about what the angel does when he's not with them, Dean's now wondering if Cas actually does anything. Or maybe searching for God just leaves him with a lot of spare time. With everything that's happened, Dean thinks it's quite likely time moves differently for angels; perhaps that's why sometimes Cas seems so impatient with the way that they do things. (Like car rides, but that whole zapping places thing is never going to win Dean over. His baby is worth the extra time, and doesn't leave him constipated for a week.)

There's a brief period when Cas goes on an animal kick. It starts with a photo of a cow, looking towards the camera with an expression of somnolent bovine curiousity. Then there's a rash of cats and dogs, with an emphasis on kittens. Dean is beginning to wonder if he needs to have the 'cats don't like to live in cars' conversation again. Cas pouted for a whole week after that one, and Dean didn't miss the new addition at Bobby's the next time he visited, a slightly-bigger-but-still-familiar ball of fluff that bullied Bobby's dogs incessantly. But he still saves the photo Cas sends of a pigeon with sooty-grey feathers, its head cocked to the side in a way that makes him think of the angel.

Then Sam gets the idea of teaching Castiel to use the internet. Dean knows the second the words are out of his brother's mouth that it's a bad idea, but they both dismiss his objections. After all, Sammy argues, this way Cas can help even more with the research.

It takes Cas all of five minutes to discover the existence of cat macros. Dean wishes it was porn, instead, because then it would seem a bit more understandable that the angel can spend several hours in front of the laptop, surfing the internet and staring intently at pictures. He doesn't react like most people would - which is to say no laughing or snickering. Sometimes he has to ask Dean to explain the captions, and he tackles the odd spelling like it's another language for him to learn, but Dean always knows when he's found one that he likes. His eyes widen a little with suppressed excitement, and he seems to sit just a little straighter, as if to avoid squirming about in his chair. It's kind of funny to watch, if a bit inappropriate for cat pictures.

Dean's going to bitch up a storm if he starts getting emails filled with thirty-plus pictures of other people's cats doing cat things. But he figures the internet has now derailed Cas's picture-taking obsession, so he's a bit surprised when he receives a new one, then glad that he's alone in his motel room when he opens it.

He immediately calls Cas back with his location and room number, then adds a no-nonsense, "Now," to the end of the conversation, flipping closed his phone and tossing it aside to wait for Cas's arrival.

Perhaps he shouldn't have assumed Cas never found the porn.