Dean's gaze glossed over a sentence, too exhausted to read it by this point.
They were supposed to be flicking through different volumes about the intricate and unsolved structures of dead languages. He compared some of the symbols on page 178 to what Kevin had written down, but they didn't quite seem to match. A few footnotes tried explaining how people might have written the symbols with varying arches, and some symbols might have gone into one another to refer to something else, and—well, bottom line, it all made complete sense, and Dean was certain that this wasn't the language they were looking for.
Which was an absolute lie. All of the words on the pages in front of him seemed to skitter out of view as soon as he looked at them, and the meaning of every "English" sentence was forgotten by the time he reached another period mark. He was a little afraid to wonder who might have written something like this, and then how the Men of Letters could stand to try reading these psychotic scribbles. They probably hadn't. They'd probably just thrown the books in with the rest of the "Z" titles to fill up their shelves. And now Dean was being slowly tortured to death at the library table, his eyes swimming and head spinning, though Kevin and Sam took no notice. They were too busy blinking at their own books. As the hours passed, he would glance up to see frown lines growing ever-deeper on their faces. It was a little relief, at least, to know it wasn't just him who could barely stand to look at this stuff any longer.
That was when his saviour called. "Hey," he said, his voice sounding more tired than he'd thought it would. Two weary pairs of eyes darted over to him. He held up his finger to ask for a minute and got up from the table, groaning and stretching a bit as Cas rushed to explain himself over the phone.
"I think I've found something suspicious. It might be a case. Um, three missing children, each from different homes, all missing within a week. And two of the houses have had break-ins since then."
He chuckled softly. "You know you didn't have to find a case to call, right?"
"Well, I wasn't…" Cas seemed to be struggling with something and gave up on the thought. "They're all in southern Rexford, Idaho. I just thought you might like to know about it…" Some more random sounds came through.
"Is everything good over there?"
"Yes. Mostly. Ugh- fuck. Dean, I should go—"
Dean pulled away from the hallway wall he'd leaned on, as if he could somehow get closer to Cas and prevent him from disappearing again. "Hold on, are we gonna meet somewh—?" A click. Dean muttered to himself as he pulled the phone away. He appreciated the gesture of calling, but sometimes Cas' abruptness could get annoying.
Sam said about that much while he was throwing his stuff into a bag.
"You're really leaving right now? He didn't even give you any actual details."
"Relax, Sam. A little investigating never hurt anybody." His bag had about four sets of clothes and a basic array of hunting gear, nice and compact. There would always be stores around if he needed anything else. Pack too much, and Sam would really be all over him.
As it was, his brother tried to stop him in the doorway of his room, but he managed to push past—letting his bag do most of the shoving so that it wasn't taken aggressively. He could have sworn his eyes were still stinging from those books—and if Cas was inviting him out to Idaho, Dean wasn't about to rebuff him. Sam kept to his heels, reminding him about this and that and how he had no real reason to be going anywhere. For a second he wondered if this was 100% Sam speaking, but he pushed the idea away as soon as it surfaced, never allowing himself to think like that. Ezekiel always let him know when he was doing or saying something, and it hadn't been for anything dumb yet. The angel wouldn't just take control of Sam.
"Hey, you guys are great with all this nerd stuff," he said with an upbeat tone, if only to buy himself enough time to get to the top of the stairs. "But my brain's gonna explode if I stay another second. Okay?"
Even from below, Sam was great at making his exasperation well known. Those ADHD complaints he'd been digging into Dean with for the last year really weren't helping his case here. Kevin, too, almost dissuaded him in his silently disappointed way. But he'd known what he needed to do next as soon as the ringtone started blaring on his phone. This whole situation was his fault, and he was finding it increasingly hard not to take commonplace remarks as personal reminders that he'd left a thread—actually, a massive fucking rope—hanging. He didn't like having Cas sent away any more than he did when he'd first felt forced to, and it had all been made worse by the slow progress Sam was making to recovery. He knew Cas was only growing more pissed and distant with the more time that passed. This might end up being his last good chance to make things right, and he was going to see if he couldn't make the most of it.
Castiel wasn't sure how the Impala pulling up to the gas station hadn't caught his attention, but suddenly the drummer from ZZ Top had a twenty dollar gas bill, and Dean was ringing the little bell over the door with a smile. He glanced up quickly to find his surprise met with a, "Hey, Cas. How're things?"
He glanced towards the back room, wondering if he might get in trouble for talking while he was supposed to be working. But his boss had gone in there only a moment ago, so he had a safe minute or two. "I thought you came to work on the case," he said tersely.
"Funny you should mention that—I was gonna ask if you wanted to check out a few of the homes with me, maybe ask the cops a couple questions."
Castiel snapped the receipt out of the register and handed it off when he noticed that Dean had decided to make himself comfortable, leaning on the glass counter. "I can't."
Dean took the receipt, nonplussed. "Why not?"
"I'm working, Dean." But the store was empty, so he took the opportunity to grab a box of mini chip bags for restacking purposes.
"You can't be working all the time."
He avoided turning back around, knowing that Dean was just a couple feet away, trying earnestly to catch his gaze because he knew Castiel always found it so hard to turn things down when Dean gave him a special, requesting look. The chips were already pretty well-stocked today, but he would have to go to the other side of the store to restock things that were actually low right now, and he didn't want to make it seem like he was ducking away from Dean—well, not anymore than he already was. "I've asked for a lot of extra hours recently. I won't be able to help you very much with this, regardless."
Dean hedged his way against the chip box so that when Castiel stood again, he ended up looking Dean in the eyes. "C'mon, you don't need extra hours. An ex-angel?" The Doritos were overflowing on the shelf. He shoved them back farther to make room, barely caring if a few bags got a little crushed in the process. "You were fighting Heavenly battles a couple months ago."
"I was. And now I'm here." He gave Dean a pointed glare.
"I—" Dean sighed and stopped Castiel's hand when he went to try and throw more chips onto the same shelves. "I didn't mean it like that." He held onto Castiel's next glance long and hard. "I could use your help, man."
Recognizing a losing battle, he watched the bag of chips bounce as he dropped it into the original box. "Without my powers, I'm afraid I won't be of much use."
"I've gotten on fine without any fancy angel mojo."
"Yeah, well, I'm not you, Dean." He threw his hands out to his side, wondering when Dean would just drop the idea altogether and leave him alone again, like he'd said was necessary in the first place. "I'm a sales associate now. And my shift doesn't end for a few more hours."
The Winchester raised his eyebrows and looked away. He heard the little inward sigh, but he ignored it. Castiel thought it was an all right job to have—especially when he hadn't known much about getting hired in the first place. At least he was useful around here. Lucky? Probably not. But he was learning to make it work… sort of.
Dean paused to give him one last half-smile to show just how disappointed he was that Castiel wasn't coming and stuck a few bills between the candy racks, fully aware that Castiel would have rejected them if they'd simply been handed over. "Okay. Call me if anything changes, then." Castiel watched him get into the Impala and start her up with a familiar purr before he took the bills from between the racks, and realized he'd been overpaid for the gas. By a couple hundred dollars.
It was obvious that he was trying to be kind, but Castiel couldn't help wondering if he really gave off that kind of impression to Dean.