Days passed, as days are wont to do, and Cas was surprised that they did not drag as he had assumed they would. Rather, they lurched by in odd dollops of time, and it was with puzzlement that he looked up from the bucket of dirty mop water early one evening to realize that five weeks had passed, and that he had not thought about Dean at all today.
He should start thinking about getting a place of his own. The hostel was in some ways cheaper than rent, but saturated him with the feel of temporariness, as though he were holding his breath.
Even if it hurt, he had to start breathing again.
In the stuttered motions of someone still learning the patterns of something new, he stowed his cleaning cart in the utility closet in the hallway, nodding farewell to the surgeons and nurses as they passed him. They liked him here. He was thorough - always a good thing for a man who cleaned operating rooms to be - and he was quiet. No one seemed to look down on him, either, which was…refreshing.
And there was a girl. Not that he had any interest in her - she was a good ten years younger than his supposed age - but she did in him, and that was intriguing. She smiled at him as he swiped his badge to get into the locker room, and he found himself smiling shyly back. He shouldn't encourage her. He didn't want to be the reason she ever stopped smiling.
He pulled on his street clothes with a distracted air, tossing that day's green scrubs into the laundry hamper on his way out. He had a day off tomorrow. He could spend the time looking for a place to live. The thought somehow cheered him, so much so that it was difficult to believe that the same thought had caused him such despair not even a month ago.
"I guess a lot can happen in a month," he said to himself as he pushed open the door to the stairwell. He'd taken to doing that - talking to himself. It would often be the only words he would speak on days he didn't work - narrating his morning cup of coffee, musing about the differences between whole wheat and nine-grain bagels. He worried slightly that he was going insane; he finally settled on the theory that he was just lonely. Just wanted someone to talk to, even if that someone was himself.
It was dark outside; the city had not yet gotten around to fixing the streetlight outside the often-ignored side entrance to the hospital, and the trees on either side of the street blocked the orange glow of the other lights. Cas pushed open the door and stepped out - and then halted, his breath freezing in his chest almost painfully.
Dean uncrossed his arms and pushed himself away from the post of the burned-out streetlight he'd been leaning against. He looked just the same as he always had, and somehow wildly out of place as he thrust himself into the haven of normalcy Cas had tried so hard to collect around himself.
Swallowing, his Adam's apple bobbing, Dean took a step forward. "Hey."