As Balthazar spoke in hushed tones with Castiel, whose expression didn't waver in the slightest to the news he was hearing, Dean ordered his food and ordered Cas's as well. Since the encounter with the horseman Famine it was pretty clear which foodstuff got the Angel's mouth watering and Dean had given up trying to get his attention as the man's blank stare seemed insistent on trying to burn holes through the table in front of him.
The poker face Castiel held stirred a certain uneasiness in Dean and he looked aimlessly between the two Soldiers of Heaven, both of whom had chosen against their previous lifestyle of blind faith in the divine plan God had supposedly set that had coerced the beginning of the end of the world and tried to pick up any stray word that Balthazar uttered, suddenly feeling considerably ostracised from the whole conversation. The truth of Dean's growing discomfort due to staring at his friend's impassive features soon shifted to curiosity upon gazing at the fitfully expressive face of Balthazar, whose perception of personal space matched that of Castiel's own, his arm slung behind his brother, body turned within centimetres of contact and his mouth ghosting along the shell of his ear as he conveyed every piece of information he knew on the subject of Cas's Grace.
Dean fought the urge to express the general social benefits a few more centimetres would have held between the two in the eyes of the waitress who walked apprehensively towards them.
The petite waitress lay down the two plates, a cheese burger sitting fitfully on top of both and muttered her pleasantries before skittering away, face red with embarrassment as she convinced herself she'd just possibly interrupted an intimate moment between the men sitting dangerously close. Dean widened his eyes in an exasperated manner as he pushed a cheese burger under Castiel's nose and watched as the man stared at it, confused for a second, before looking up and giving Dean a grateful smile.
Dean's eyes flitted to Balthazar as he thought "Suck on that, attention hog," before being struck by how utterly childish and needlessly jealous he was being.
Wait, he was jealous?
That was new.
Suddenly wary of himself and before his brain could bombard him with countless unwanted possibilities, Dean stemmed all cognitive processes by clumsily cramming an impressive half of the cheese burger into his mouth.
Balthazar stared at him for a moment, perplexed, before shuffling out of the booth and into the walkway.
"I'm afraid I've got to be off, gents." He said, "Cas, I've told you everything I know so far, so if anything comes up expect a visit from me as soon as I can untangle myself from my business up above. Dean, be a dear and don't choke and die on that disgusting mouthful." He gave Dean a curt nod, which was met with a half-assed wave in response, before tearing out of sight in a flurry of displaced air.
Finally alone in the diner the silence hung like a dead weight, the only sound being Dean sloppily finishing his generous helping of cheese burger and forcing it down his gullet as he clapped eyes upon Castiel absentmindedly staring through the double-glazed window at the desolate road.
"So," Dean began, "What's the news?" he looked down at his plate and when he looked back up Castiel was staring at him.
"My batteries are fried," Castiel answered, following up with a hefty dismissal of breath he'd been holding since Balthazar's leave. "My brothers and sisters have been conversing on the subject of the whereabouts of my Grace for the past three hours and none of them are sure of its location. Most of them are glad, since I was disobedient, that I can't return as of yet but others such as Inias have agreed to help Balthazar locate it."
The fleeting look of hurt that shot across Cas's eyes upon the mention of the Angels happy with his dismissal from Heaven stabbed at Dean's chest painfully.
"Alright…" Dean sighed, "Hey, cheer up, man – Bobby's lookin' for ways to track your Grace as we speak. Eat your food and relax."
Castiel eyed up the burger hungrily as his hands slithered towards it from underneath the table. He reckoned the tightness he felt in his stomach was caused by starvation inflicted upon his vessel in the years he hadn't needed to eat, so he wolfed the burger down mercilessly as Dean watched in a mixture of horror and pride. They both made short work of their meal and Castiel agreed on dessert.
The ice-cream Sundaes, complete with sparklers and carried by an unnerved waiter, confused with the men's sweet tooth at half eleven in the morning, plonked onto their table and Dean watched the curiosity flare in Cas's startling blue eyes as he reached out to grasp the spoon and dig in to one of the many colours of frozen cream presented to him.
He didn't expect the sudden change in atmosphere when he posed the question: "What about the nightmare this morning got you so hot and bothered, anyway?"
It was a completely innocent query but as Dean looked up the effect it had on the man worried him. Castiel had gone completely blank, stoic expression once again masking any emotion he'd portrayed before and face blanching as white as snow.
"I was falling." He answered idly, hand moving to caress the back of his neck and very human body language projecting the fact that the question had derailed him. The sudden guilt Dean experienced was accompanied by a scolding thought - What the hell else would terrify a frickin' Angel? A fall from grace and being stripped of everything you are certainly seemed like a traumatising concept. He looked uncomfortably away through the window, avoiding the sight of the man sitting, unmoving, probably trapped in a sudden torrential rain of his own thoughts in front of him.
They sat out the rest of their meal in a cold quiet.
The walk back to Bobby's up the deserted road was stiflingly awkward, Castiel lagging a few paces behind as Dean lead the way down the narrow side-road. Dean cleared his throat, intending to start some harmless conversation but the heated stare he got in response told him Castiel wasn't in the mood for a good ol' chat. Dean turned his back on the man and sucked in a frustrated breath. How much farther was Bobby's, again?
When the door swung open and the two silently filed into the kitchen, Sam knew exactly what was wrong judging by the faraway look on the ex-Angel's face. He turned to Dean, his lips pursed and eyes flaring in accusation to which Dean responded with a shrug that just about screamed "I didn't know he was going to react like this!"
Just as Sam was about to suggest an activity of learning something useful besides weaponry, Castiel gravitated towards the fridge that Dean loitered in front of; Surprised by the distance being covered so quickly Dean shuffled away like an opposing magnet. Castiel's eyes bore into him for a moment before flitting to the alcohol stored in the fridge. That was the ticket.
Upon close analysis of Dean, the only human reaction to wanting to forget something – in his case that damned nightmare and his lost Grace – seemed to be the consumption of alcohol. So, following in Dean's footsteps, Castiel effortlessly flipped off the lid and chugged the liquid with off putting speed, both Winchester's looking on in stunned silence.
"Uh, Cas. You feelin' okay?" Sam asked, momentarily locking questioning gazes with his brother before looking back towards to the man in question who leaned back onto the counter, inspecting the label of the bottle he held. Bobby arrived on the scene and hesitantly hovered in the doorway, eyeing up the new addition to the house.
"No," Castiel answered bluntly. He motioned to the bottle in his hand and asked "Do you have anything stronger?" his face an unnerving stone mask.
"If you wanna drink away your sorrows, go to a bar." Bobby chimed in, not pleased by the idea of having an intoxicated and upset Angel of the Lord screwing around on his property if the man was so intent on drinking himself into a stupor. He briefly recounted the amount of times Dean had drank his woes away to the bottom of a bottle of beer in front of the easily influenced Angel and mentally registered this whole situation Dean's fault, giving him a judgemental look. Dean looked directly at him and scrunched up his face in disbelief, finding a recurring theme emitting from both Sam and Bobby.
Basically, everything Castiel did was somehow Dean's fault. Great.
Dean threw his arms up in surrender. "Right, I get it – he learnt it from me. 'You're a bad role model, Dean.' Oh, boo-hoo, I'm going to the bar myself. C'mon, Cas." He swiftly marched out of the kitchen and into the hall, exiting the house and clambered into the Impala. "At least you don't saddle me with all the blame, do you, Baby?" He sat and sulked, waiting, before the familiar tan coat rounded the corner of the house and Castiel climbed into the passenger seat.
"Bobby told me to inform you that when we get back he's going to kick your ass for being a brat." Cas recited flatly, turning a blank gaze on Dean who stared at him in quiet disbelief before letting out a grunt of frustration with the happenings of his thought-to-be-quiet Saturday so far.
The engine roared into life and Dean pulled quickly out of the yard and started off down the single road that ran past Singer Salvage.
The two found themselves in the bar still as men crowded in for drinks at the end of their day. The sun had set a good few hours ago and the Saturday night party atmosphere had settled over the establishment leaving the two men pressed side by side by the rabble around them. Neither of them seemed to mind the length of their legs pressed tightly together and their arms almost tangling into each other and continued exchanging stories from their pasts. With the numbing buzz of the alcohol coursing through their bodies, Dean found that Castiel was a lot more susceptible to being convinced that sharing his experiences since the beginning of time was a brilliant idea.
When Dean asked what it felt like to fly - his tipsy state forgetting it might've been insensitive to ask - instead of completely shutting down like he had before, Castiel shot into an upright position and leaned in close to Dean in excitement.
"'t's beautiful," he slurred, jutting forward, knocking shoulders with Dean as he swayed with the current of the surrounding crowd. "'t's just stunning blue skies and fluffy white clouds. Hell, I didn' even mind when I accidentally flew through a rain cloud one day – it was really cold but refreshing at the same time, but I don't recommend it, Dean." He gave a theatrical shake of his head and poured a shot of vodka down his throat. Dean watched, grin plastered on his face at the new side of the man he saw sitting in front of him – he may have been intoxicated to the point of liver failure but the life in his eyes and the free way in which he spoke struck a chord with Dean, and he was really enjoying watching the Angel slur his words.
"Were you born knowing how to use your wings or… taught… by someone…?" Dean waffled around the question, mind becoming a tad hazy. Completely human, Cas's heavyweight alcohol tolerance collapsed into barely being able to stand after three pints of Fosters and two vodka shots but Dean was hot on his heels, slumping quickly into a drunken state which he welcomed with open arms. He smiled when his gaze fell onto Cas trying to remember, eyes narrowed at the bottles decorating the shelf.
"Gabriel taught me. Michael tried but he got mad when I kept twitching my wing into his hip," he laughed at the memory; Dean smiled as he continued, "Michael was a bit of a dick." He concluded bluntly, hand twitching as if he'd plucked the profanity from the air and Dean snorted into his drink. Maybe the man was picking things up from him.
As the bar became louder and the conversation took a nose dive into "What?"'s and "I can't hear you!"'s, Dean decided it was best the two of them leave. Castiel clambered clumsily down from the bar stool and followed Dean out of the bar into the cool night air, sighing in delight as the wind whipped around him, body warm and clammy from his time in the packed building.
"Oh." Dean mouthed, looking lost at the Impala sitting in the car park. "Aha, I forgot I was driving."
Dean inwardly kicked himself as he and Castiel, completely inebriated, slid into the driver's and passenger's seat of the beloved 1967 Chevy Impala parked immaculately, if Dean did say so himself, and pondered how they were going to make it back to Bobby's. He conveniently dismissed the idle threat of an ass-whooping for being moody when they eventually walked back into the household and plucked his phone from his pocket, sweeping through his contacts list and coming to a halt when it landed on "Sam." He dialled the number and held it up to his ear as Cas looked distractedly around the interior of the car muttering something about how "utterly fascinating" it was.
A clicking from the earpiece pulled Dean from staring at his companion's awe-struck expression and he cleared his throat, embarrassed to find himself so intrigued by the guy.
He was acting strange lately, he told himself, before a sleep-roughened "Hello?" sang into his ear.
"Sammy! Hey," he voiced with more cheer than intended. He could feel Sam rolling his eyes at him.
"Dean, it's three in the morning, where are you?" His brother sighed, voice crackling.
"Yeah, about that… I forgot I was driving and drowned myself in drink, so could you be a sport and come pick us up?"
The silence that met him on the other end of the line was deafening and he turned to find Castiel staring at him intently, eyes glazed over and body swaying in the seat; he looked pale. Dean took a precaution, reached over and rolled down Cas's side window, deciding he'd rather die than have to clean up Angel vomit. Cas gave him a drowsy smile before hanging his head out the window.
"Sorry, Dean, I can't." Came his brother's voice, the phone crackling as Sam exhaled into the mouth piece, "You have the Impala and none of the cars in Bobby's yard are fit to drive."
"What about Bobby's car?" Dean pushed, voice pushing the borders of a whine.
"Tires're off." He answered flatly.
"Aw, dude, you suck." Dean breathed, defeated.
"Goodbye, Dean." Sam groaned, followed by a beep and the dial tone.
Dean snapped his phone shut, glaring at the wheel for a few moments before finding his resolve and putting the keys into the ignition, revving up the engine and carefully pulling the car out of the car park as smoothly as his lead body could manage in a haze of drunken indecisiveness, hoping he could steadily drive up the two streets onto the road to Bobby's without incident.
He wasn't going to drive all the way home drunk and blind in the night - he was just going to get onto the way and park it on a side-road after about a mile or so then save the rest of the drive for when he woke up, he decided.
Luckily for him he didn't get into any trouble before he slotted the Impala between two fields on a dirt road and turned off the engine, letting out a sigh of relief before reclining the driver's seat and nestling in, Castiel supposedly asleep beside him, head rested on the open window.
An hour or so passed and the two sat in silence, both thinking the other was quietly sleeping in the time that stretched on before Castiel turned his head, took a sobering gulp of air and tapped the man who lay still, head resting to the side, arms crossed and awake in the darkness beside him. Dean jerked his head round at the sudden pressure by his knee and pulled himself up.
"What is it?" He asked, head rushing at the speed at which he'd bolted upright.
Castiel tapped his hand on the dashboard of the interior of the car and paused a moment. "Thank you." He said.
Dean furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "For what?" He asked, manoeuvring the back on his seat upright and leaning into it, full attention on the man beside him.
"I first thought that I wasn't going to be able to stand being human," he began, head bowed. "But after tonight I think I'm more confident." He raised his head a little and shot a shy glance Dean's way. Dean searched his face, finding Castiel's mannerisms endearingly human and smiled back.
"Good, I'm glad." He answered distractedly, before reluctantly turning his attention to the stars that shone beautifully in the navy sky above them. Castiel followed his gaze.
"I suppose this punishment is worth it." He murmured, scanning the heavens. "To be able to look up at the stars knowing that billions of humans are, too – ones that could potentially have died because of my father's disregard and my brother's selfish actions… it is certainly a… warm notion."
Dean slipped a grin at the awkward edge in the man's wondrous tone beside him and hummed his agreements, the sobering conversation drawing to a halt. The two locked drifting gazes and spontaneously sank into soft laughter, the heavy air from that morning dispersing into the still night air, the pent up negativity towards their situation subsiding in a landslide of warm emotion and companionship, the two sitting cosily inside the Impala, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but comforting thoughts and each other.
Dean decided the constant presence of the naïve Angel wasn't going to be as obnoxious as he first thought and looked forward to seeing the man slowly wind down and settle into the family Dean considered him already a beloved member.
Castiel's tormented thoughts organised themselves and he welcomed the mortality he so stubbornly denied before, choosing to cherish the time he had chained to only one world, Heaven slowly but undeniably becoming a distant concept to him.
His family was here, now.
And he wasn't letting them go so easily.
Author's note: Gosh guys, I'm so sorry! I hope this is a good follow on from last chapter, I try to make the transitions as smooth as possible from one chapter to another but I'm still new to this and need to work on it. I hope it's satisfactory. Tell me what you think!
