The Little Things

Cas didn't like sleeping.

Well, it wasn't that he didn't mind it, per se, but it wasted perfectly useful hours of the day. The time that he spent sleeping, that was anywhere from five to ten hours that he could have been doing something else. And on the rare occasions where they did manage to get almost ten hours of sleep, that was ten hours. That was almost half of a day spent, unconscious.

As an angel, he hadn't had to worry about it. He never needed to sleep, for he was never tired. But now, only a few, long weeks into being a human (and did time pass differently for humans, because 'a few weeks' had never seemed so long when he was an angel), he was still getting exhausted at the most inopportune moments, like in the middle of a hunt or sitting next to Dean in the front seat of the Impala, and Cas had already become the butt of the Winchester pranks thanks to the latter.

He just wasn't used to controlling fatigue. How could humans be so impossibly tired, twenty-four seven?

So, Cas wasn't particularly fond of sleeping, but it was one of those things that he had learned that he had to live with.

Like now, as he tried to keep his eyelids open, trying in vain not to fall asleep over the table full of books and materials in the middle of the hotel room. To be fair, Sam and Dean weren't fairing much better, running on what they called fumes. Dean had already drifted off more than once, only to jolt back awake seconds later and resume his research.

Cas was starting to have the same problem. He would blink, the blink would take slightly longer than average, and, shortly afterwards, he would close his eyes to blink again and they wouldn't open. They were too heavy and he was too weak, his body too drained from the day's activities to listen to his demands. But, then it would, somehow, and his eyes peeled back open. But now, the words on the page he was reading were starting to bleed together, and his eyes stung from exhaustion.

He looked away long enough to yawn.

"Et tu, Cas?"

Castiel covered his mouth and then looked over at Dean, licking metaphorical exhaustion from his lips. "I'm sorry?"

"We're all tired, Dean," Sam interrupted, pushing the book away to put his head into his hands.

"Yeah, but if Cas is breaking, you know we've gone too long without sleep."

"I'm not very familiar with my human limits yet," Castiel admitted. "I find myself needing to sleep at an alarming frequency, especially as of late."

"And that's what happens when you overwork," Dean muttered. "Look, can't we take a break?" he asked, sitting up straight. "Just fifteen minutes, power nap, we'll be ready and raring afterwards. Besides," he added, "you know we aren't getting anything done like this."

Sam sighed. "Yeah, okay, fine. Whatever." He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "We'll take a break."

"Great." Dean pushed himself to his feet, stretching with a groan. "Yep, I'll be in bed if you need me." He walked the ten feet over to the bed and fell onto the mattress, sighing heavily. He didn't move afterwards.

"Great," Sam muttered, sitting up straight.

Castiel looked back at Sam.

"There has to be something..." Sam muttered. He glanced up, caught Cas's eye, looked back down, and then looked back up again. "Oh, go, if you're tired," he said, raising his voice. "I don't care."

"It's your bed," Castiel said.

It was something long ago decided upon; if they ended up in a double, it was rock-paper-scissors for the beds. Cas thought he was at a disadvantage, but then Sam had let slide the little fact that Dean always picked the same subject matter for his play, and Cas had ended up winning in pretty much an equal ratio to losing.

Or, they went in cycles, a clockwise-motion, Dean had called it, going Dean-Sam-Cas, or depending on who had gotten a bed last. Either way, Castiel was on the sofa for this case. He wasn't particularly fond of it; it was too cramped and, right now, covered with fast food wrappers.

"I really don't care," Sam said, immersing himself back in their paperwork. "I'm going to try and make sense of this."

Castiel frowned slightly. Interesting. Hadn't both of the Winchesters been falling asleep over their research? They had reached an impasse, a stalemate of sorts, but Sam wasn't going to rest? "You should rest," he said aloud.

"So should you," Sam said. "You look bushed. I'll catch up on sleep later."

Cas opened his mouth to say something - there was something here to be said, something human that he wasn't sure what yet - but he was interrupted.

"For God's sake, Cas, go to bed," Dean griped, voice muffled into the blankets. "You two are like a couple of little girls. You're interrupting my cat nap, damn it!" He huffed, grabbed the blanket, and rolled over, effectively putting his back to them while simultaneously wrapping the blanket around himself.

Castiel stiffly got to his feet. "Very well." He had a feeling that this conversation was one of those metaphorical 'lost battles', and a sleep-deprived Dean was not one of Cas's favorites. Sam seemed to handle it better, and Cas's body was heavy with exhaustion. If Sam wanted to bear the brunt of their tiredness, his own included, Castiel would let him for now.

He stepped out of his shoes and knelt onto the bed, the mattress bowing under the weight of his knee. He swung his legs up and shimmied underneath the blankets, unable to stop the quiet sigh escaping parted lips as his head hit the pillow. This was luxury. Nevermind that it was a cheap motel room with extra-firm mattresses and flattened pillows, it was definitely luxury.

Or maybe he was just tired. That was a very real possibility.

It was funny how skewed human perception became when the human body was in dire need of something. Castiel could be annoyed at the sheer laziness of spending hours in bed while he was awake, but now, body dragging with exhaustion, he thought it was possibly the best thing in the world. Warm blankets and some place reasonably soft to stretch out the body and relax... These were the things that were the closest Castiel had come to tasting heaven on earth.

So, was it truly the little things in life that were so important? Could it be that something as simple as a bed when one was tired was really 'the best things in life'? Human perception was so very strange. A year ago, he wouldn't have been thinking about this at all.

Castiel yawned. He tugged the blankets closer and rolled onto his side.

"Don't let the bed bugs bite," Dean muttered from the next bed over, buried somewhere beneath the blankets.

Castiel didn't open his eyes. "I have no control over the matter."

"And we're simply too tired to give a rat's ass," Dean muttered in return, voice trailing off at the end.

Cas mentally agreed, but, instead of speaking, he just yawned again as sleep lulled him further into the warm embrace it held.

If you know me from being in the Sherlock fandom, you know I like sleepy!Sherlock. So, next, sleepy!Cas. (Which I actually haven't witnessed, if it's a legit thing. I'm only on S5... but Jimmy curled up in bed was just about the cutest thing ever.)

Please no spoilers for S5 onwards. I do not own Supernatural. Thank you!