Each phone call from Cas sounds like a postcard. A cardboard piece too small for confessions, too big for silence. Just enough for a few muttered words that he could have as well scribbled out on his knee between sips of watered down coffee from a vending machine.

"I've passed through the state line, the weather's really hot. I'm fine," is all he'll ever say about his hitchhike. Like he's on a self-discovery road trip across the States, taking pictures of Grand Canyon and the World's Biggest Ball of Twine, snaps of greasy burgers and dead crows on the roadsides.

Not like he's on the exile.

His voice—the low timbre that has lost its gravel when his throat spilled out his Grace—falls so painfully plain. There's no despair, no contentment in it. He sounds fine, always, and utterly so. As if the fine is an armor: against Dean's concern, against the scorching sun of early summer. Against the whole shitty mess Dean put him in.

"I told you I'm fine."

Sometimes Dean wishes those phone calls were actual postcards, just so he wouldn't have to hear that tone. And they'd give him the names of towns Cas passed through, something tangible; a trail he could trace across the map.

All he gets are timestamps of the answered calls, time adding up.

—

"It's been pouring rain all day. I think something died in this motel room. I can't wait to move on."

Dean cracks a joke to that and opens the weather report. The fifth of June, day eleventh. Half of the east has been on the brink of a flood.

Cas doesn't find the joke funny at all.

"Need more money?" Dean asks. "I could wire you some."

"No, I'm good."

"Need anything? Just say and–"

"I'm fine, Dean."

Dean pulls the microphone away from his lips so his frustration doesn't get tangled into the wires. And then, before he opens his mouth again, there comes the "how are you and Sam?" And that's it, there's no getting anything more out of Cas after that. He tried, every time.

Sometimes Dean wishes these phone calls were actual postcards because then he wouldn't have to answer.

For now the only answer he's got is the same old song: "I'm peachy, but Sam's still not up to speed. The trials really got him good." He should have recorded it on a tape: press play, sound semi-honest. Maybe he's not that much better at this than Cas. "No news on the angels."

He throws in a story from the latest case for a good measure.

—

That's how they go about the whole communication thing. Every few days, a new postcard:

"Lake Michigan is magnificent. I saw it coming to existence, but there's something about hum— I think I'll stay here for a while."

Dean puts a mental pin somewhere on the shore of the lake. It's not that far away.

"I got a lift from a woman in so much pain." Cas would have taken that pain away if he could, Dean knows. That's the guy Cas is. "She said she was going to Canada to see Aurora Borealis."

Dean thinks maybe Cas should have gone too.

"I'm starting to miss the fields."

The fields are right here, Cas, Dean craves to say but dares not. He ordered Cas to go, he never told him to try and leave the fucking continent. It's been only two weeks and it might be the calls or it might be the guilt or maybe something else entirely, but…Dean's got things that he's starting to miss too.

"There was an angel slaughter on the outskirts of New York City."

"Are you–?"

"Yes, I'm alright, I got here a day after that."

"Should we–?"

"No, don't come, there's no point. There's nothing left to investigate. Nothing a human can do. Unless—?"

"Still nothing."

Dean grows restless after that one. Should he come anyway, despite what Cas says? And despite what Ezekiel says. Not that Dean could oppose the angel. But if even Cas, the "I want to help the angels" Cas says there's nothing they could do—none of them—maybe there really is no point. So they don't go.

—

"I ran out of East. The ocean's a lot like a lake. You can't even see how much bigger it is with these eyes."

Turn around, there's a lot of West left to travel and home waits half-way, Dean wants to say, but doesn't. There's no home waiting for Cas, is there? All Dean can offer him is, "Sam's still too weak."

Cas barely ever calls after that. Settled, hasn't he? There're no more postcards left for Dean. There's only "I'm fine. How are you and Sam?"

—

Three weeks since the last call wear Dean down at a steady pace. He could try and call Cas first, but that's not how payphones work. Cas simply hasn't got new landscapes to speak of, that is all. Nothing he could say that wouldn't have Cas in it and those Cas doesn't do.

—

It's one of the last scolding afternoons of the year, Dean's phone finally rings with the familiar tune and an unfamiliar number flashing on the screen. Dean lifts the cell to his ear, breath withheld—doesn't let it out until Cas's even tone comes out of the speaker.

"Dean."

"Hey Cas." Dean can't help smiling into his phone. "How are—"

"Dean," Cas cuts him off with the last words Dean expects to hear, "I need you to come."