The following week passed by without incident. Sam continued to work on translating the tablet and had so far determined that the text was indeed related to Purgatory in some way, but that was about it.
The younger Winchester brother watched as Dean was seated across from him in the war room one day, tapping away on his phone. He looked amused, with a slight smile lighting up his features. Meanwhile, Sam caught Cas's gaze as the angel emerged from the kitchen with two cups of coffee. He didn't appear to be as happy as Dean.
"Here," Cas said a little gruffly, setting a coffee cup down on the table in front of Dean. "Don't let me interrupt you."
"Thanks," the older Winchester replied distractedly, eyes still glued on his phone screen.
Sam cast the angel an apologetic look but Cas just scowled and took off with his own coffee toward the library.
Sam cleared his throat to get his brother's attention. "You're being kinda rude to Cas," he noted, raising an eyebrow. "Why're you ignoring him?"
Dean briefly looked up from his phone to give Sam a confused expression. "I'm not," he said, sounding a little offended.
"You're on your phone like all day, man. For years you and Cas have been practically joined at the hip and now all of a sudden you're just... ditching him."
"I'm not ditching him," Dean said, finally setting his phone down. "Since when have I even left the bunker in the past week? Oh yeah, I haven't. You've been going out to get all the groceries and take-out and shit. How can I ditch Cas when I'm usually in the same room as him?"
"You might be here physically but clearly your attention is elsewhere," Sam pointed out, looking down at Dean's phone for emphasis. "Who're you texting?"
"How do you know I'm texting anyone?" Dean challenges, sounding defensive.
"Because you've been smiling at your phone like an idiot for the past two hours. The only person who can make you smile like that is Cas, and I know you haven't been texting him."
It was then that Sam had a terrible thought.
"Wait," he said, frowning. "You're not... You wouldn't..." he lowered his voice to a whisper even though the angel could probably still hear him regardless, what with his freakish hearing abilities. "You don't have some kind of secret lover, do you?"
Dean's eyes practically bulged out of his head at the question. "God, no. Don't be an idiot, Sam. Secret lover? What does that even mean?"
"I'm just saying—"
"Well, I don't," Dean cut him off. "I'm just texting a friend."
Sam narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "Who?"
Dean sighed and looked down at his phone, which had just pinged with another new text message. He seemed for a moment as if he wouldn't answer, but eventually said, "Anna."
Sam was still lost. "Anna?" he repeated. "Who's that?"
"The angel Anna," Dean clarified, sounding a little exasperated at having to explain himself any further. "Except she's not an angel anymore. Look, I didn't wanna tell you 'cause I knew you might get weird about it."
"You mean... the angel you had sex with in the backseat of Baby?" Sam said, raising both eyebrows. "Does Cas know?"
Dean rolled his eyes, "Yeah, of course. It's really not a secret, Sammy. I'm not tryna hide anything from him—or you."
"Okay... um..." Sam trailed off and shook his head in an attempt to gather his thoughts. "Well, whether she's just a friend or not, you're still spending all your time texting her instead of talking to your real-life boyfriend. I think it's starting to piss Cas off."
"He doesn't mind," Dean said dismissively. "He has more free-time now to do whatever angels like to do in their free-time."
Sam gave his brother a withering look. "Stop being a dumbass, Dean. You're hurting his feelings."
"Oh yeah? How do you know that?"
"Because I have eyes!" Sam whisper-hissed. "He looks at you like you're the only thing in the whole universe that matters and you won't even spare him a glance. How can you not see that you're hurting him?"
"If he was bothered by it, he'd say something," Dean argued, though he seemed a little more uncertain now.
Sam quirked a brow, "Really? You really believe he would? He's just as stubborn as you are when it comes to talking about how he's feeling. You know he wouldn't say anything, Dean."
Dean glared at Sam but finally relented and got up from his seat. "Fine, I'll go talk to him. Will that make you happy?"
The younger Winchester smiled, "That's the spirit."
The bunker's library was condensed into a small-ish room but contained probably close to, if not over, a thousand books and novels and other related objects. Dean found Cas sitting in an uncomfortable-looking wooden chair at the end of an aisle-way against the far brick wall. He was reading some old book with a title that had long worn off with age.
"Hey," Dean said, announcing his presence even though the angel had likely already heard him walk in.
"Hello, Dean," Cas replied, not bothering to look up from his book.
"Are you um... enjoying yourself?" Dean asked awkwardly, not really knowing where he wanted this conversation to go.
Cas glanced up at him, looking more than a little annoyed at the interruption. "I was, until you walked in."
Okay, ouch, Dean thought to himself.
"Well I was wondering if you maybe wanted to watch a movie or play a game or something," he forced himself to continue, even as he wanted nothing more than to bolt from the room to escape whatever might be coming next.
"I'm fine here, thanks," Cas said in a clipped tone. "You can go back to texting Anna now."
Dean blinked, thrown off by Cas's bluntness. He didn't know how to respond.
"It's fine," Cas continued, though the ice in his gaze said that this was anything but fine. "Don't let me stop you."
"What's so wrong about me wanting to talk to my friends?" Dean said, a little angry. "You and Sam aren't the only people in my life, you know. I do have other friends."
Cas scoffed and rolled his eyes, "Right. Jody is your friend. Donna is your friend. Garth is your friend. So are Claire and Alex. So is Eileen. And yet you don't seem to be going out of your way to talk to them, are you? Hmm, no. I don't think so. It seems like the only 'friend' you're interested in talking to is Anna. But please, correct me if I'm wrong."
Dean opened and closed his mouth over and over again like a fish gulping water. "That's—that's not the same," he sputtered out.
"Why not?" Cas challenged, slamming his book shut suddenly and standing up from his seat. "Because Anna's not just a friend? Because suddenly she's your BFF that you can't go five minutes without texting?"
"She's not a hunter," Dean tried to explain, though he felt like he shouldn't have to explain himself to Cas. "We can just chat about normal-people stuff. It's... it's nice, is all."
Cas's eyes narrowed, "And you can't do the same with Sam and me?"
Dean shrugged, "I'm stuck with you two all day, everyday. Look, Cas, you mean a lot to me. Really, you do. I just... I'd like to have at least one friend that's semi-normal."
"Anna used to be an angel," Cas pointed out, still eyeing Dean with suspicion.
"But she's human now and she's lost and confused and she just wants someone to talk to," Dean insisted. "Once she makes friends of her own I'm sure she won't be texting me as much."
"Okay... I guess I kind of understand. But you've been ignoring me all week, Dean. I miss you."
"I know, Cas. I'm sorry. I've been an idiot. How about I make it up to you now, though?" Dean offered with a small, hesitant smile.
"How?" Cas asked, tilting his head slightly.
"Let's go out to dinner tonight, just you and me," Dean said. "It'll be fun."
The angel looked uncertain. "Are you sure that's a smart idea with Raphael probably looking for me?"
"We'll be careful," Dean assured him. "I've been shitty to you and I wanna fix that."
Cas finally smiled, all the annoyance and suspicion leaving his face. "Thank you, Dean. I appreciate it."
Everything was going alright until Dean announced to Sam and Cas that he'd invited Anna over to the bunker to help with translating the tablet.
It had been about two weeks since Cas and Dean had their "date night", as Sam liked to call it, and the two were more or less back to normal. Dean would alternate between helping his brother with research and watching TV with Cas. He only spent a small portion of each day texting Anna.
"The reaper chick, Adrian, cornered me in the grocery store last night demanding to know what was taking so long to find the box," Dean was saying. "We have to get this tablet translated soon, before Death gets suspicious and decides to pay us a visit themself."
"What about Rowena?" Cas asked. "Does she still want it?"
Sam nodded, "I spoke with her a couple days ago and told her that we found the box but don't have the tablet translated yet."
"I assume we're trusting her with whatever contents the text may hold?" Cas said.
"Depending on what they are," Sam answered. "I think we can count on her, though."
"But she doesn't know what the tablet says?" Cas asked, confused.
"She said she has a general idea but that's it. She doesn't want to say too much in case the information gets overheard or otherwise taken by unwanted individuals."
"You mean by Death," Cas guessed aloud.
Sam shrugged, "Possibly, yeah."
"Okay, great. We already know all this shit," Dean cut into the conversation. "Our time for getting the thing translated is running out, which is why I think we should get Anna involved."
"Why?" Sam asked at the same time Cas gave a resolute "No".
"Because she was an angel once, and—no offense, Cas—she was older and had more experience than you. She might be able to read some of it," Dean said, ignoring the angel's comment.
"How do we know that we can trust her?" Cas challenged, crossing his arms indignantly.
"She has no reason to help anyone else, Cas. She's human now, remember? And besides, we don't have any other options."
"I disagree," the angel protested. "We can decipher it just fine on our own."
"But it'll take too long," Dean argued. "We don't have enough time for that."
"I agree with Dean," Sam said, though he sounded reluctant. "Especially with Raphael and his faction of angels also trying to snatch it from us. It's only a matter of time before he catches one of us off-guard and tries to force the information out of us."
Cas frowned, "I still don't think this is a good idea, guys."
"Well we don't have the time for good ideas," Dean said with a huff of annoyance. "And since when do Winchesters have good ideas anyway?"
