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3. Puzzle Pieces, Broken Mirror
Castiel woke up next morning suddenly like he had been called. His first thought was that Naomi hadn't visited him last night. He lay there, blinking and staring at the rumpled bed sheet in front of his eyes. It was too close, all blurry and spinning but that could just have been his eyes. He'd been drunk last night. From what he'd heard from Sam and Dean, he knew how waking up the next morning went. So Castiel lay still, postponing the moment. He noted that his coat and shoes were off, but he was face-first and sprawled exactly as he'd fallen last night. He tried to remember what he'd dreamt about. Something about Egypt 1400 B.C., the sun raining down in flames and then melting into the river, Michael wearing Sam's face and Lucifer wearing Bobby's. The rest slipped away fast. Castiel wondered if humans had dreams this odd all the time, or if it was just him, drunk. Maybe that was why Naomi hadn't come. She must have smelled the deep stench of alcohol in his messy head. As far as he could tell, that would be the only good thing about being drunk. He'd watched Dean drink himself to sleep many times, when memories haunted him and family disappointed him. Castiel didn't know why he did it when it looked like Dean didn't even get drunk anymore. But who knows with Dean. He might just like the numbing bitterness on his tongue.
It was time to face it. Castiel took a deep breath, air scratching at his dry throat and nose, and tried sitting up slowly. As an Angel he'd gotten a mild headache. As a human, he got a feeling, that made him think of death and abandoned gutters flowing with broken bottles. Drown me in the Nile, he thought. He felt like he was being stung by the thousand suns that reflected on the longest river on earth.
Castiel finally managed to sit up. He lifted his hand to scratch at his hair, which was sticking up and sticking to his face and itching like mites were gnawing under it. His fingers hit something foreign stuck to the back of his head. He grabbed it and brought it to his face. It was a yellow square paper with a sticky band at the back, and had Dean's all-capital, blocky handwriting scrawled on it. Castiel had to close his eyes for a moment before the world stopped shaking long enough for him to read it.
Goin' out, won't be long. Water and food in the kitchen. Left some clothes, take a shower!
The last part was underlined three times. Castiel stared darkly at the pile of fabric on the bed next to him that he now recognized as a new set of clothing. He lifted through them with his fingers. The jeans and the black shirt would fit him, but the washed-out brown hooded sweater looked much too big. Must be Sam's. Now that he was reminded, though, the room and especially himself smelled downright offensive. Jimmy's black suit jacket was rumpled beyond saving, and sticky in places where beer had been spilled without Castiel noticing. Castiel grumbled, swung his leg over the bed and almost fell flat on his face.
It took some trials and a lot more errors but Castiel managed to clean himself, change into the new clothes and even take the food out of the fridge. There wasn't much in the fridge. In the middle shelf sat a white plate with a precariously constructed burger on top. Castiel sat down, only an empty room and a messy table breathing with him. The bunker was eerily quiet without anyone else, without the noises he'd always been able to hear before. Drops of water from a loose tap, busy footsteps of ants under the sink, wind as it rubbed against the window. Now all he heard beside himself was a distant sound of a clock somewhere, and even that faded into the background when he didn't concentrate. Castiel assumed it was day but couldn't be sure. The bread of the sandwich was roughly round, with lots of jagged edges. It was cold because Castiel didn't know how to heat it. The cheese was flat and there was very small amount of lettuce. Castiel still thought it tasted something like heaven. Something like home.
Dean wasn't back even after he finished everything Dean told him to do. Castiel made the bed. He picked up the discarded pieces of clothing – Jimmy's suit and the trench coat that Dean had kept – but didn't know what to do with them, ended up just folding them up neatly. He wandered back into the main room, stood in the middle with nothing to do. After a minute, he couldn't stand the purposeless void anymore. Castiel wondered if it was a human trait, the constant boredom. It made sense only because human lives were so short. They would feel like they'd have to make every moment count. It was one of the things that Castiel only truly understood after becoming a human himself.
Castiel first tried leafing through some books, presumably Sam's, but his eyes kept glazing over them. It was frustrating that the meaning wouldn't just enter his thoughts anymore. He had to process the words and make sense of them manually. Castiel closed the book and sat for a minute. His eyes fell on the table in front of him. Compulsively, he started organizing the stuff on the big table. He picked up books from the floor and when the table was clean he went to the kitchen. He washed the dishes gathering fruitflies in the sink. Remembered the short time he'd spent with Daphne, thinking he was human and that God had plans for him like she'd told him. He'd believed it then. He wasn't sure anymore. If his Father had had a plan, then either it'd gone terribly wrong or it had just been a terrible plan from the beginning.
A brush and a dustpan were crammed into a corner of the kitchen, obviously neglected for so long, and Castiel picked them up. Cloud of dirt exploded from beneath them. When he was done sweeping the place, he was sore all over so he went to sit at the table. He noticed that the top of the table had some unrecognizable stains and handprints and a lot of dust, so he went back for a rag. He remembered how Daphne used to do these things, and wet it carefully and squeezed it tight. Castiel was tentative and clumsy with everything. He had to concentrate on every step, had to figure out the best way to wipe the table or wash the soap off the dishes. He found the whole thing rather soothing. A continuous work of the body to distract the mind.
When he'd finally done everything he could, he sat down at the clean table and Dean still wasn't back. Castiel figured he could wait then, like he used to do. Only humans had not been made to wait. He absently wiped at the wooden hand mirror lying on the table with a paper towel, until the surface shined like the first light God had made and he couldn't bear the look of Jimmy's face staring sadly back at him. He had always meant to give it back but now he'd stolen it.
Castiel found his thoughts drifting, his body was heavy with the sudden physical work, and soon his mind was floating through a void, cracks in his mind. A nurse became Naomi became Dean's voice and Sam had blue eyes, flowers were red and they were dripping blood. Castiel realized he was falling asleep but didn't know how to wake himself. Helplessly, he felt his eyelids flutter, drop, fall.
Naomi is waiting for him. They are in the middle of a city that Castiel doesn't recognize. It is so different from the usual setting, the bare metallic room, that Castiel is disoriented. He almost thinks this is just another dream when he spots Naomi in the crowd. She is wearing the dark-colored suit he knows well. Castiel watches in dread as she weaves her way through the oblivious crowd. Castiel stands under the eave of a tall office building. Naomi walks across to him on the busy sidewalk. People are rushing past like endless streams of water. Castiel stands still in the middle like a small rock imbedded in the soil, water sweeping over it. Men with their briefcases, women in their black high heels and teenagers with earphones in their ears. Everybody has somewhere to go, Castiel stands still, and Naomi comes to him. Nobody bumps into her because it is her dream. They just move out of the way at the last minute.
Naomi greets him with a nod. There is a wide road behind her, and a dense cluster of skyscrapers. Cars grumble and pollute the air gray. A young woman is tasting a brand of pasta on the huge advertisement board on the biggest building. It is a bank, or a hotel, or maybe both. The road is busy but the traffic isn't stuck and cars move fast. They are black, grey, red, blue blurs speeding their ways to wherever they need to go. Castiel feels dizzy from the people, from the cars, from the city. He doesn't understand why Naomi has brought him here. So he asks. "Why are we here?"
"I told you." Naomi says, amused. She is enjoying her new challenge. A light smile hangs from her lips. Her eyes sparkle with the joy that is loosely covered by a thin mask of professionalism. They are clear blue, Castiel notices. Her eyes. She gestures with her hands to the city behind her.
"Do you like it?"
"Why did you bring me here?" Castiel asks again, because she hasn't answered it. Naomi half-watches Castiel, the other half busy admiring her handiwork. Every human, a puzzle piece, exactly in their places, she mutters.
"You couldn't kill Dean. I told you we need to start small."
"What does that mean?" Castiel frowns. He finds he doesn't like Naomi's lips curling into a smile. It brings a deep sense of unease and fear into the creases in his forehead.
"Ah, well, there is the last piece of the puzzle, of course." Naomi says. Before Castiel can ask her the same question again, because he always seems to be repeating himself these days, Naomi turns her body and looks at something, expecting Castiel to follow. Castiel resists for a few seconds, but he looks in the end. He follows Naomi's gaze.
A figure is standing on the edge of the sidewalk. He is looking across at the buildings on the other side, then looking at a paper in his hand. All crumpled, careless handwriting on the back of a receipt. The man is standing so near the edge that a strong wind might knock him down, send him onto the hectic road. The cars would flatten him in a minute. His bones would crack and then be grinded. Blood would draw erratic circles on the road. Castiel knows who he is.
He's always been quick to catch up to things, despite what Dean tells him, often with weary amusement and a mask of frustration. Sure, he might not understand the purpose of high heels when they obviously bring so much pain, but this – what Naomi is about to say, he understands this. What he is about to do, although he will resist until he wastes out.
"Now, I understand that it is hard for you to pick up a blade and kill him." Naomi says reasonably, like she is discussing a particularly difficult school task with a particularly slow student. Castiel just stares at her. She continues, still in that kind tone.
"So I made it easier for you. He's already standing so close to the edge. All you have to do is push, just a little push."
"Standing so close to the edge?" Castiel repeats without really thinking about it. Somehow the entire scene in front of him shifts in his eyes, although Naomi hasn't altered anything and it is still a busy city. Castiel sees an edge of a cliff that Dean is standing on. The half of his right foot is already in the air. Pieces of rocks fall to the endless height beneath. Already standing so close to the edge. Dean is still squinting at the paper in his hand, then at the buildings across. Trying to figure out which is the one written on it, perhaps. Castiel blinks and the cliff is the sidewalk again. The devouring greens of the trees become the red light of the traffic light. Another blink, and they are suddenly right behind Dean.
"He's going to fall anyway. Let the cars do the work for you." Naomi says, kindly. Castiel thinks she would be one of those teachers who have good intentions, ends up ruining a student's life forever.
"I can't." Castiel answers stubbornly. "My answer is never going to change."
"You won't?" Naomi asks, a first hint of impatience drawing over her features.
"I can't." Castiel repeats. He looks at Dean's back.
"There's no such thing. You can do anything. You just won't." Naomi says. Dean does not seem to hear the exchange behind him. He keeps looking at the paper, then ahead, like a doll in a human museum.
"He won't even know what hit him. You won't even be visible." She coaxes. Castiel remembers it used to be just like this, a long time ago. The firsts. The first Deans had been passive, immobile, and Castiel had been invisible. Then slowly Dean began to move and talk and flinch at the sound of wings. The Deans began to resemble the real Dean and Castiel began to be visible again. The last one, Castiel was fully visible and Dean was like Dean. Castiel had watched the familiarity of the puppet's movement. He'd walked right up to him and killed him even while the fake Dean pleaded and clung to his coat.
"Do you have to make this difficult?" Naomi says. Castiel knows what comes next but he can't prepare for it. He can never prepare for it.
A pain, so intense, so acute. Right between the nose and the right eye. He feels blood rolling down like tears. Feels himself fall to his knees but no sounds comes out. The pain is so real it is almost ethereal. It stops everything and everything stops to matter. Castiel clutches at whatever he can find. Can't even scream, it is so raw.
It doesn't last long. Seconds later, that feels like years, Castiel finds his vision again. He is staring at the pavement, breathing hard. What he is clutching at his hand turns out to be a piece of glass. Blood is forming a tiny circle on the burgundy-colored bricks of the pavement. So many pieces, scattered about. Somebody must have dropped a glass bottle here – Castiel thinks, then remembers it is all Naomi's creation.
"You know the drill. I could keep going, forever." Naomi says. She sounds tired. She seems to be remembering the ten thousand persuasions and the ten thousand one puppets. The last one hadn't needed a prod. "Best if you cooperate, Castiel. It would make everything so much easier. Why do you keep resisting when you know it's pointless?"
It's all I can do, Castiel thinks. When his voice doesn't meet the silence amidst the distant white noise of the city, Naomi sighs.
"You know, I dressed up as a nurse to get to you faster."
Castiel slowly looks up at the unexpected opening. The sun isn't anywhere but the light is, a little paled behind the clouds. Naomi continues. "I couldn't wait for you to fall asleep. I thought it would be easy." Castiel still doesn't say anything.
"My point is, I can do it again and do you know how easy it would be for me, to go into Sam's room and stop his heart? Or get creative, switch the liquid into acid and watch it flow through his veins…"
"Stop." Castiel is standing up. He feels fear choke his throat. He doesn't know what his face is saying but it must be a good expression, because Naomi is smiling wide. Still a strong curiosity lingers in her eyes.
"You've become human." She tells Castiel.
"He took my grace." Castiel says, though he knows it's not what she means. Naomi simply smiles. She knows that he knows, and that the knowledge will break him one day. She jerks her thumb at Dean, then holds her hands together in front of her in practiced patience.
"You think I won't do it?" She lifts her chin a little. Then, again looking at Dean, "just push. It's just a dream, anyway."
Castiel finds himself stuck in the folds of forces. A piece of saggy lettuce between rock-hard breads. Naomi waits. Castiel knows she will kill Sam without a hesitation. She would do that without the invitation. Sam is Lucifer's vessel. She has always admired and despised him, Castiel knows. The only reason Sam is still alive is because of this – this, a leverage against Castiel. A human leverage for a former Angel now human.
So Castiel closes his eyes and steps forward. He pushes. It's just a dream.
Dean lets out a yell like he's never heard before.
It was his own scream that woke him. Castiel sat in the dark and his breathing came in tattered strips. It took a moment for him to realize where he was. In the bunker, yes, he'd fallen asleep. It looked like it was still empty. He'd had a dream. Just a dream. Castiel tried to find comfort in that. Naomi couldn't really hurt him in a dream. She just made him think he was in pain. She couldn't really have driven a metal rod into his skull between his eyes. She just made him think… and he didn't know the difference anymore.
Castiel sat up slowly, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Something else was wet. Castiel pulled his shaking hand away from his face, finding it smeared with dark blood. It was coming from the gash in the middle of his palm. He let his gaze fall to the table and the old hand mirror was broken, glistening in the dark. The pieces lay all over the table, across his laps and some were on the floor. Blood, his blood, was splattered in the midst of them in little dots like flower petals.
Castiel felt his breathing quicken. He tried to calm it down. He got up slowly, careful not to step onto the pieces. Tied his hand tight with a long white piece of bandage he found in the drawer of the living room, hurried to clean up his mess before Dean got back. He got the broom and gathered the broken pieces of the mirror. When he bent down to pick up the pieces on the ground, he found his faces looking up at him. There was a face in every piece, split and not whole, and every one of them had eyes on him. They watched him even as the bristles of the broom swept over them furiously. Then he wiped the blood from the table and the chair.
Dean pulled the car to a stop in front of the bunker. It was nice to have a place to return to, he thought briefly. Maybe home was pushing things a little too far, but it was a non-motel place he could come to at the end of the day and the mattress remembered him. He walked down the short steps to the door after patting the baby affectionately on the hood and fished out the key. He was in a good mood, relatively speaking. For the first time in a long time he didn't feel like he'd rather drown on the spot – the ghost of a betrayed brother – so he counted that as a win. He'd gotten in contact with Kevin. Kevin had told him there might be something on the tablet about Sam's problem. Note from God, in case of emergency.
Despite all that, he was in a relatively good mood. Even felt like listening to Metallica, which he'd forgotten about for some time now. It really said a lot about the quality of a guy's life when he forgot to listen to Metallica. Dean unlocked the door and walked into a dark room. The lights were off. It was six o' clock and the evening was settling in nice and warm. It was much darker inside the bunker, though. Dean wondered if Cas had been up at all or if he'd slept through the whole day. He shrugged the jacket off, threw it on the dark outline of the table and reached to turn on the light to the big room, which he called the command center and Sam called the study.
What he saw made him stop for a minute. He almost didn't recognize the room. The books were all piled neatly to the side, in a sturdy pyramid with the largest books in the bottom. The papers were gathered. The horrible hand mirror, that Dean had always meant to get rid of but hadn't bothered yet, was gone too. The surface shined like the tables in the advertisement of IKEA. Feeling a little wonderstruck, Dean walked into the kitchen and found it similarly shiny. Like the first time they'd found the place. The Batcave gave off a glow like it had missed the old clean days before Sam and Dean.
"Huh, whaddya know. We got ourselves a house elf." Dean murmured. It was a little funny to imagine Castiel sweeping and wiping and washing the dishes – they now sat in a neat row beside the sink, drying the last of the water droplets – but he couldn't complain. Dean wondered why Cas had done it. He hoped it was because the messiness was annoying the crap out of him and he had nothing else to do. He hoped it wasn't because Cas was feeling useless.
Dean went back to the big room, hesitated, picked up the jacket he'd thrown carelessly on the table. It looked out of place, almost like a desecration. He hung it up on the wall hanger instead. He knocked tentatively on Cas's door but it looked like he was sleeping. Dean decided to let Cas rest. He checked the fridge and the burger he'd made was gone. Somehow that filled him with a profound sense of relief.
He popped a bottle of beer and sat carefully on the chair in the kitchen. He thought that he'd need to be careful to drink around Cas now. He got drunk even quicker than Sam. Who would have guessed.
Dean didn't sleep much. He felt that torching the night with alcohol was better than lying in an empty room, staring at the wall or the ceiling and trying to pull sleep over himself like a blanket that was too small. He'd only slouched to his room when the beer had run out. He hadn't checked his watch when he went to bed, but when his eyes blinked open the next morning it was six ten. Dean lay in his bed still in all his clothes from yesterday. He hadn't bothered to lift the sheets. He'd slung his dirty green jacket over himself, a blanket too small.
Dean looked to his side, an instinct. Even after months of living in the Batcave and in his own room, Dean still couldn't shake off the habit. Maybe it was that he didn't want to. Each morning he looked to his side to a bed that wasn't there, to look for Sam who wasn't there. Each morning Dean took a second to remind himself that Sam was fine, just in the other room. His room. They were not crammed in small motel rooms anymore. Sometimes Dean wondered if he missed it.
This morning, though, Sam wasn't in his room. Not here, anyway. Dean thought back to the white room that had Sam and a pale blue plastic curtain and the blue flowers he didn't know the name of. He thought that maybe the flowers need to be watered, although he didn't know much about flowers and how long they lived after being slashed away from their roots. He would go to Sam and maybe make Cas change the flowers. But he had something to do first.
Cas was in the kitchen when Dean walked in after throwing on relatively cleaner clothes and splashing his face with water.
"Hey," Dean said, pausing. Cas looked different. The stubbles on his face was a little darker, reminding Dean of Purgatory and the dark, almost black, blood on their faces. Obviously Cas hadn't heard about combs, so his hair was a mess. Although it hadn't exactly been that neat before. It was the clothes, though, that made Dean pause and blink. Cas wasn't wearing his saggy trench coat. The coat, it wasn't just a coat, though. It was something else that left a blazing hole in its absence. At first it was the uniform. Frigging Angels and their rules. Hammers, hard and iron and just extremely dislikeable. Dean had always associated the flapping of the wings with the flapping of the loose tail of the trench coat, the suit and the loosened blue tie, and it was douchey because Angels were Douchebags with big black wings.
And then it became something else. It was just a coat that Jimmy happened to throw on before his life came apart, except it wasn't anymore. It was Castiel like Bobby's cap was Bobby and Sam's flappy hair was – as much as Dean hated it – Sam. Over the years it became something much more than, just, something. When the black goo took him over and ripped him apart underwater, Dean had picked up the trench coat and couldn't throw it away. He carried it from one stolen car to the next, feeling like it was the piece of Cas that he could save. The only piece. When Castiel came back and remembered, Dean gave it back. Castiel wore it over Emmanuel's bland navy sweater and it fit him like a puzzle piece. His head broke and he fell into the cracks in his mind. When he woke up he put the coat over the white hospital gown and grinned like an idiot when he asked Dean to pull his finger. He'd watched bees and listened to Don McLean sing Vincent in Meg's car, but the trench coat stayed on. It followed him to Purgatory and the sight of it, lying across the dirt like some wounded animal where Castiel sat by the water, had filled Dean with hope. That maybe everything would be all right now.
Dean stared at Cas in his jeans and black shirt, in Sam's oversized hooded sweater that Sam didn't wear anymore. It felt like a piece of Cas was missing. It reminded him too much of the year 2014 that never came. The smile, the jokes, the broken ankle and the drinking. The death. Betrayal. Of his own eyes staring back at him, broken and deceiving his friends, to sacrifice them. He never forgot them. Even if it really had been just Zachariah's trick like he'd been trying to convince himself, it scared him to know that such eyes could exist. That he could fall so far to become something like that. He thought maybe he wanted to tell Castiel all this. He opened his mouth.
"Like your new look." Dean said. Cas looked down at himself like he was surprised.
"Thank you." He said. "Is this Sam's? I think it's too big for me."
"Yeah, it is." Dean said, chuckling at the sight of Cas moving around in the giant gray. He looked like he was swimming in it. Dean strolled to the counter to put on the coffee.
"We're gonna get you new clothes." He said to Castiel. "Something that fits. We can keep the trench coat…" his voice slid over it smoothly, made it sound like just another thing. Just a coat, anyway, " … and the suit. But you can't wear the same clothes all the time now."
"Yes, I realized." Castiel answered. He sounded tired. Dean wondered if Cas had tried to do the laundry. And that reminded him,
"Hey, Cas, did you clean up the place yesterday?" He asked off-handedly. A short pause, in which Cas was probably staring at the back of Dean's head but Dean didn't turn to check. He waited for the water to boil.
"Yes." Castiel said after a pause. Dean didn't know where that pause came from. Then he realized that he was trying to guess what Cas might be guessing about him. He thought about the play again. Wondered if all this was making sense somewhere, on the script.
"Why?" Dean finally asked. He waited for Castiel's answer, still not looking at him.
Castiel didn't know what Dean was thinking. It might have helped if he'd been able to see his face and expression, but then maybe not. Castiel tried to read the answers in the back of Dean's head and the fingers on the counter that he was drumming.
"I… don't know." And he didn't. It wasn't a conscious decision, he thought. He'd just seen the mess and started cleaning them. It took his mind off of other things. The dream, the decision he would never make. To say that, though, would be to invite unwanted questions. What did you have on your mind? What's troubling you? He would have to lie again, a partial truth that spoke so little.
"I thought I'd help around here… and be a little of use." Castiel heard himself speak. And he didn't know what it had done to Dean but it had done something because Dean's shoulders suddenly lost the tension and the drumming of his fingers stopped. Dean stood with his back to Castiel, silently. The coffee was ready. Dean poured Castiel a cup, handed it to him before his own.
Castiel wondered if it had been the right answer, or the wrong one. He desperately didn't want to be wrong, but there just was no way of telling. Castiel looked into the clear black liquid in the cup and felt the heat curl around his cheeks.
"So I thought I'd go see Kevin today." Dean said, and whatever indication there had been, Dean's reaction to Castiel's answer, was gone. Dean leaned back into the counter and sipped the coffee like it wasn't still scalding hot. Castiel tried to take a sip, paused as Dean's words sank in.
"You heard from Kevin?" He asked. Dean nodded.
"Yeah, he's holed up somewhere in the city. He gave me the address – " Dean patted the chest pocket of his jacket. It was the heavy green jacket again. Even Castiel could tell it needed a wash pretty soon, but Dean either hadn't noticed the faint bloodstains in the left shoulder or didn't care. " – I'm gonna go talk to him about the tablet. If there's anything about reversing the ritual. And then I'll come pick you up, we can go to –"
"I'll come with you." Castiel said, almost not recognizing the sound of his voice. It was urgent and desperate. He didn't like it. Dean looked surprised, words cut in the middle and hanging in the air.
"I mean," Castiel hesitated. It was different now, he was human, and maybe Dean didn't need him to come. He probably didn't. Maybe Dean didn't want him to come. Didn't want to look after a former Angel like a helpless puppy. "I mean, if it's… if you're okay."
"Yeah," Dean said, a little slowly. The surprise hadn't yet washed off from his face. "Yeah, if you want to. You can come."
Castiel nodded. The more he was around Dean the more he would have to lie, but he couldn't face the empty bunker with nothing but the pieces of a broken mirror stashed under the bed and the sleep that would come like a troop of marching guns and blades. Sleep, dreams, and what he would have to do. The second time, when he'd fallen asleep again last night, Dean had stood a little further from the edge of the pavement and it had taken a bigger push. Naomi had made him stay long enough for him to hear the first bones crack.
"Thank you." Castiel said.
"Okay," Dean said slowly. He felt warm, suddenly. The warmth from the coffee cup he was holding in his hand was spreading to every cell in his body. He felt like all his thoughts were overloading and exploding. It wasn't a terrible feeling. In the wake of its destruction was the warmth of the freshly made coffee, the clean kitchen of his new home and a friend, coat-less but still the same. Cas had issues, sure, and Dean wished he hadn't felt he was so useless he needed to clean the house to stay in it. Still he recalled the sweep of the familiar beige trenchcoat on the ground in Purgatory and how it had filled him with such hope.
"We'll go find Kevin together and then come back to Sam. Hopefully Kev will have something for us." Dean said as he finished the last of his coffee. It burnt the roof of his mouth. He felt good.
"Even if he doesn't," Dean added after a beat. "We'll figure something out."
Cas nodded, grimly like he always was. Dean wasn't too keen to see the loose grin and self-deprecating chuckle of the junkie Cas, but he did wish Cas would relax a little. Maybe that was why he grabbed the trench coat on their way out, finding it neatly folded on Cas's bed. To Castiel's questioning glance, he shrugged and said, "we'll get this cleaned."
And Cas's expression shifted into something like a real smile, the smallest.