Dean demanded pretty early on that the laptop be angled down. A lot. He hadn't thought much about it before asking, apart from the fact that the screen became warped and tinted when it was at a normal angle compared to Cas. He wasn't actually typing anything into the browser or opening up the half-dozen tabs they now had running in the background—but he needed to see the screen nonetheless, in order to help direct Cas and make sure nothing slipped by the person who was still new to navigating computers, let alone the web as a whole.

He'd taken up a position sitting near the trackpad of the laptop, where he wasn't much in the way of Cas. It was a little uncomfortable—he was practically pinned, with Cas behind him, and his arms stretching out to either side for typing or using the trackpad. All of his movements seemed so fast. Perhaps not at ridiculous lightning speeds, but seeing limbs that big shift so dramatically was little less than disconcerting, even if Cas hadn't made any more moves to touch or tease him. They were both focused on scrolling through odd occurrences in nearby areas, old articles, and whatever else Dean could think of while his mind worked at about 50% efficiency. It was just so hard to concentrate like this, despite the way Cas listened to his every suggestion.

And it became twice as challenging when Cas finally hunched inwards completely by laying his arm right behind Dean and using it to rest his chin on. The action brought Cas far too close for comfort. Hell, he could feel it every time Cas breathed out. Quite a few boundaries had gotten pushed once Cas started sticking around during the Apocalypse—but it was one thing to jump every time he caught Cas waiting for him to wake up, and it was another thing to have Goliath right behind him. Cas muttered some question about closing the current tab, sending warm air past the top of his head.

Dean whirled around in his sitting position. Initially, he was face-to-face with Cas' arm. He was forced to pull back and crane his neck as far as it would go in order to give the ex-angel a good glare. "Do you have to lean over me? It's weird, man."

"I can't see the screen otherwise," Cas whispered, sounding like a whining toddler who hadn't thought things through.

The ex-angel drifted away from his gaze, but Dean remained resolute all the same. "Well—just—don't do it. Get away from me."

Cas watched Dean wave his arm, shooing him away with that tiny frown of his. The hand he'd been relaxing on top of the computer suddenly descended on Dean with a little poke in the side. "Are you ordering me around?" He slung his teases back softly, staying ever-mindful of his own volume.

"Hey!" Dean wormed away from the intrusive digit and ended up bumping against Cas' arm, which had stayed put in defiance of Dean's orders. He didn't want to be touching either one, but as Cas brought his index finger even closer again, he backed up, feeling the warmth and tiny give of Cas' forearm against his back. "Don't!" He sent out a little kick, which was awfully timed and would have been pitifully ineffective if Cas wasn't toying with him right now; leaning his hand nearer, then farther away. He glanced all the way up towards where Cas was watching him from a few yards—stories—feet?—above, having forsaken resting his head on his arm for a better vantage point. There was a mischievous grin working its way onto Cas' face even though it was obvious Cas was trying to hide it and act serious. Dean might have good-naturedly scoffed out his frustration with the idiot if Cas hadn't given another attempt at poking him. He planted his feet against the index finger and shoved this time. It stalled Cas' finger for a second—and then he received some actual opposition, and his knees caved upwards, pushing his back and elbows into Cas' arm.

Finding himself able to use Cas' limb like a wall, he dug each of his elbows upwards and was soon on top of Cas' arm. It hadn't initially caught his attention—and then he noticed how the skin shifted under his movements a little, and the advancements ceased. Dean shot a glimpse upwards, expecting Cas to be incredibly uncomfortable with it, or pissed, or… weirded out. But the two huge orbs hanging over him just had a curious look in them. He wasn't sure which reaction to be more concerned about.

"You're supposed to be typing stuff up, not attacking me," he groused, hoping he might be able to pull Cas back down to Earth.

Another soft nudge to his side sent Dean scrambling further up the length of Cas' forearm and losing his balance with each new move against the unstable surface. "And I thought you were running away from me, not over me."

His cheeks started warming up. "Then don't prod me like some science experiment."

Cas continued to watch him for another minute. It was less than comforting to be under the scrutiny of such large, motion-honing eyes, but he also didn't think it would be the smartest of all his ideas to start up another argument right now. Finally, Cas retracted his hand, and Dean could feel minute shifts in the muscles under him as Cas balanced his weight. "Do you want to sit on my shoulder?"

"... What?" His face screwed up. That had to be a joke, coming from an angel who only half-understood humour.

"We might both be able to see the laptop that way."

Dean watched Cas for a minute, scanning his overly-large face. There was still curiosity in his gaze—though he thought it looked a little more like a childish version, more wondering and awe-struck than what he'd seen for. Or maybe he'd misinterpreted it. Reading Cas certainly hadn't gotten any easier when Dean could only see certain portions of his expression at any given time.

"Only—" the powerful voice started, sounding entirely powerless— "Um, if you want to. I simply imagined that it wouldn't be much different from what you're doing now."

He shuffled himself into a sitting position. The movement caused a little jerk from Cas, and then the arm muscles below him stiffened and froze in position, as if Cas was afraid to move. All the ways Cas' suggestion could go terribly, stupidly wrong came to his mind first. Their ideas weren't always the smartest, and while being in such a precarious circumstance, Dean was being distrustful of almost everything. But there was also no chance of him getting cured if they didn't get the research done. A little ring of quiet sadness seemed to overtake Cas' eyes the longer he hesitated. Judging by the way Cas had stopped moving as soon as he became truly conscious of Dean's chance of slipping and smacking into the table, he tried to reason that Cas was probably the most attentive person he'd met. And this was probably just to humour Cas and stop him from looking like a kicked puppy when Dean didn't immediately show his trust, but… "Sure."

Cas lit up at the word. "Really?"

He extended his other hand—the one he'd used to nudge Dean with—to rest where Dean sat on his forearm, palm facing up. It was a weird kind of invitation, but definitely far more welcome than Cas' earlier tactic of just grabbing him. He inched towards it, like someone trying to slink from one rocking life raft to another. Standing was absolutely not going to happen. After a few moments, during which Cas remained amazingly patient and unmoving—or as unmoving as possible—he sat in the middle of Cas' palm and gave him a hesitant thumbs up. Then, like an express elevator, he was brought almost instantly to the edge of Cas' shoulder.

In all likelihood, it was one quick move for Cas. But Dean had to close his eyes and swallow, multiple times, as he tried to keep the bile down. He wasn't trying to think about how high up he was right now, just a few feet from an unquestioningly deadly fall, even while Cas was sitting down. And he didn't mean to imagine how, when getting off Cas' hand, there were any number of ways he might—

"Dean?"

"Gimme a sec," he said, but it must have been too quiet. He felt the way Cas moved to be able to look at him, felt the heavy gaze lingering on himself again, felt the nausea rushing back up from being suspended too far away from the ground. His eyes snapped open to stare at the tip of Cas' shoulder, still adorned with his own plaid shirt. It seemed too small. Too unstable. There was nothing to hold on to or be caught by if Cas made one accidental move.

"Do you want me to put you back?"

They analyzed each other for a second. He was grateful Cas wasn't calling the shots for him right now, because he didn't know how his stomach would react to being suddenly dropped, if it was anywhere near as fast as how Cas lifted him up. Even if he did prefer to stand by himself on the table, there was still the problem of working with the laptop. Dean couldn't manipulate the buttons—no, he was NOT jumping from key to key on a fairly expensive computer—and Cas couldn't see much of the screen no matter how closely he leaned over into Dean's personal space. Then he glanced down from Cas' eyes a bit. "How 'bout there?" He pointed to Cas' collarbone area and immediately put his hand back to his side, fearing to lose his balance despite how he was still sitting.

But Cas got the memo. He drew Dean up near his neck. It took him another minute, but Dean ultimately spanned the gap without any sort of disaster. He braced his feet against the actual bone, while the rest of his weight leaned on Cas' neck, and his back shoulder muscles acted like a kind of cushioning… despite how weird that sounded in his head. Dean's knees were forced to be up near his neck, so his position looked more like how a child might lean against their parent, but it wasn't particularly uncomfortable. In fact, Cas was pretty warm compared to the rest of the motel room. He was modifying his position just a bit more when Cas' voice rose up—and not only was it extremely close by, but he could feel the power behind Cas' whispers and the muscles of his jaw working, just in small portions, before the sound reached his ears. "Comfy yet?"

Dean was so enthralled by the novelty of the whole situation that he almost missed Cas' pointed sarcasm. "Touchy, much?" He refused to believe this could be any weirder for Cas than it was for him. Though, he stopped himself from shifting around any more. It was a little confusing when Cas didn't move for a moment. Then Dean answered with, "Okay."

He was taken at his word and Cas was soon readjusting himself, too. All of his movements were slow enough so that Dean could manage his own balance. It was less worrying to be here compared to the edge of Cas' shoulder anyways. If he did manage to fall, it would be a significantly shorter distance, and he'd be hitting Cas' lap instead of a solid floor. But he did his best to focus on every other kind of thought. Like how it really was impossible to see any inch of the screen from the angle Cas had set it to before, or the way Cas didn't even move his hands very fast when he went to type something else into the search bar, yet he could still feel muscles moving in his shoulders. It was completely surreal. Cas was on his own for the research portion until Dean finally snapped-to ten minutes later. From then on, they exchanged quiet conversation within the otherwise dim and silent motel room, looking for any leads on suspicious activity near Rexford.

Castiel felt little movements around his jugular, little hands and Dean's hair brushing up to rest against his neck. At first it was foreign and made him uneasy to feel the slight amount of weight there—it was more like having a few feathers brushing along his neck, giving him a type of itch he couldn't scratch. But after a couple hours of sitting in front of the laptop, trying to sit like a statue in order not to disrupt Dean from the perch he seemed to be enjoying, Castiel developed another opinion on it. The shuffling had died down, but from time to time, he assumed Dean just felt a bit restless. He didn't say anything about it. Castiel preferred to think it showed a semblance of trust.

"Click that one."

"Which?"

"Right there. No, Jesus. The carnival thing—Cas, literally, it's right there."

"Well you weren't making it very obvious," he snarked, feeling his voice rise. He was already learning Dean's little patterns. And whenever Castiel started getting pissed again, Dean would lean away, even if it might have only been done subconsciously. For the rest of the time, he tended to be curled up against his neck, oddly reminiscent of how April had buried her head into Cas' shoulder and neck while they were falling asleep. She'd been plotting to kill him, of course, but it nevertheless seemed like a fairly intimate gesture, and it probably touched him more than it should have. Or at least, it retained his attention more than that kind of action normally would have. He blamed his current humanity. "And you're right next to my ear, remember."

"I was too busy making sure you didn't click on that ad with the pretty ladies."

He laughed a little and scrolled through the article page, seeing nothing. Apparently Dean didn't find anything either, because he closed the tab without getting his ear shredded to bits.

Castiel tried to stifle a yawn that arose from out of nowhere, but Dean was able to catch it, somehow. "When was the last time you slept properly?" the Winchester asked, sounding a little worn out himself.

Castiel blanked for a second. "I'm not sure how to judge that…"

"You're an idiot, you know that?" There came the tiniest of sighs. "It's late, I guess. You wanna pack it in?"

"Sure." He held a hand up to his shoulder and made sure it was acceptably positioned before waiting to feel that Dean was safely stationed in the middle, and drew it down to the table, taking his time with it.

His fingers jerked slightly at the ticklish way Dean jumped from his hand, using a hand for support that was infinitely tiny in comparison to his own. Then Dean turned back to face him, and a question blurted itself out before Castiel could check himself. It'd been floating around his head the whole evening. "Dean, why wouldn't burning the hex bags have negated the effects of the spell?" He realized the stupidity of it only once it was out—him, asking about age-old magic tactics. It should have been the other way around. "I've seen hex bags accomplish some odd things, but the spells were always tied to the hex bags. That's why they were used in the first place."

Dean stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Honestly, I dunno. I thought hex bags were supposed to channel intentions, but… I guess if it was just used to channel a spell, once the spell attaches to someone, it doesn't need anything else." A miniature shrug.

"Well, whatever it is, we'll have it fixed soon enough," he promised. He thought Dean gave him a tight-lipped smile, but he only had about a 50% chance of being correct on that. "What're you going to do about sleeping?"

"Not sure," Dean chuckled. "But the bed's available, so, uh—feel free to take it."

"Do you want my sleeping bag?"

"... No offence, but, I actually do like the table better now."

Castiel grinned at the Winchester's typical moodiness and got up from the table. "You should have some kind of cushioning, though." Dean was saying something about not being a mother-like female chicken when an idea clicked. He ducked into the bathroom for a minute and returned to a confused Dean with one of the towelettes that hadn't been touched yet. He folded it in thirds and laid it out by the laptop, close to Dean but not so close that he would risk bumping into or making Dean jump.

"A… cloth?"

"It's soft, I imagine. It's sort of like… a pillow and a blanket. You could overlap this portion to raise it…." He fiddled with it some more until he noticed the weird look Dean was giving him.

"I think you need your own double measure of sleep."

"I'll poke you again," he said off-handedly. By the time he was done with the cloth, there was one raised portion to act as a pillow, and a part ready to fold over like a blanket. Dean sat on the edge of it as soon as Castiel pulled his hands away. He never said anything before Castiel turned himself away and fixed up his own position on the bed, but he was pretty sure that in Dean's private language, it was about as close to a proper "thank you" as anyone usually got.

The bed was nice. Perhaps firm, but he really had no reference besides Dean and Sam's typical complaints and jokes. He could only say with a certainty that it was much more supportive than the sleeping bag. Adjusting to blankets that were separate from the bed was a little odd, but it was warm. He was unconscious within the first couple minutes.