So many thoughts that I can't get out of my head
I try to live without you, every time I do I feel dead
I know what's best for me
But I want you instead
I'll keep on wasting all my time
"Over and Over" by Three Days Grace
Castiel had no idea where he was going. Dean's car smelled like gun smoke and apples, and the radio wouldn't turn off, and it was far too warm in there anyway, but the rain outside lashed the windows threateningly and he had no where else to go.
It was much better that way. Castiel punched desperately at the radio knobs. Everything he touched got ruined anyway.
He was on a highway now. Where was the town on the map shoved into the glove department? Where was the motel?
Castiel sneezed. He was getting a cold from the rain he was sure, and a flash of green eyes made him shiver. Dean'd wanted to help. Make this better. Talk about cheeseburgers and Alice Cooper. Castiel squeezed his eyes shut. They hurt now, like he'd stared at the sun and burned out his irises. Bleached them.
He kept driving.
...
"Hey, buddy, you okay?" the man at the motel desk was gaunt thin and wore wire glasses that warped loosely around his knobby nose. Castiel leaned against the oatmeal-colored wall, kneading his palms into his eyes. He glanced up at the sudden sound, the Impala keys digging bloody ridges into his fist.
He didn't reply, just dragged himself up and over to the desk. The clerk scratched at a rash on his elbow.
"You wanna room, then?" He asked loudly. Castiel nodded. The clerk squinted, reaching underneath the desk to yank a yellowed plastic room card from a hook. "You sure you're good, man? You look a little...off."
"It is not of import."
Castiel found his room, still damp from the rain. He sneezed again, and his head spun a little as he flicked on the light, dropping the car keys and room card on a wobbly table.
The room was small, similar to the first one he'd ever stayed in. A crooked bed, palely dubious stains littering the off-white duvet. A brown shag carpet. The lingering smell of cigarette smoke and something sweet and something illegal. There was a painting on the wall, or a picture of a painting.
It was an angel. White wings spread widely from the back of the blonde woman dressed in a golden gown. Before her feet lay an army of men. Crude blood spilled from their wounds, and Castiel found himself staring at their lifeless, painted-on eyes in a sort of daze.
The angel stared ahead. She did not mind the dead at her feet.
Castiel turned his back and turned on the TV.
...
The man stopped outside the door, holding his umbrella above him with gloved hands. He liked the sound of rain on the fabric, the tiny slap-slap of water across the spine of the umbrella. It slid down the handle, slicked down onto the pavement.
He traced a finger over the room number. Behind him, a black car became like a shadow, illuminated only by a passing delivery truck's headlights. The highway was silent once more.
The man wasn't sentimental. He hated the tense silence in waiting, and he flicked away a bit of rain from his face as he reached into his pocket to retrieve the bobby pin.
All the same, he took his time as he picked the lock.
...
Castiel flicked through the channels. He'd found a sci-fi movie channel a few minutes ago, and he kept coming back to the dusty images of stars and spaceships. The hero stood triumphantly over the scene of a celebrating home planet.
He didn't like drinking, but tonight he would have appreciated the constant irritation of alcohol at the back of his throat and skull. It could distract him from images of Dean, standing alone in the rain. Anna, body crumpled and pale against the dark cement, the wind snaking her red hair into little patterns. Balthazar on the porch, his silhouette smaller and smaller as the car sped away–
"Damn it." Castiel held his head in his hands. He blinked, licked his lips. "Damn it."
The door was shaking. It must have been the wind, but Castiel's head snapped to watch it anyway, and empty, almost frightened feeling in his stomach.
After a minute, his heart was on fire, pulsing against his ribcage. There was someone at the door. He rose from the floor, his fingers momentarily entwined in the dark of the carpet.
He knew there were weapons in the back of the Impala, maybe a shotgun, or a spare knife. But, he realized in a moment of panic, he didn't bring any in with him.
He remembered, at the back of his head, a passing warning Dean had thrown at him in Lawrence.
"If it bleeds, you can kill it. Just make sure you can make it bleed first."
...
The man opened the door with careful nervousness. He twisted his arm, pulling off the gloves and shaking rain from his umbrella as he entered the room. Dull light flooded the dank dark of the motel, and he dropped the umbrella there on the carpet.
The only other sound was the harsh breathing of the other man in the room. He stood by the television, his tie crooked and his eyes wide and far too blue. He clenched his fists, fear and anger written in the thin line of his mouth, snapped shut.
"Balthazar," he said.
Balthazar felt strange. He wanted to twist his mouth and sneer. He wanted to laugh loudly. He wanted to shoot Castiel's eyes out.
Instead, he sighed, shrugging nonchalantly and closing the door carefully behind him. He flicked on the fluorescence of the motel light, and turned back once again to face Castiel.
"Hello, Cassie dear," he said laboriously. The cheer in his voice was practiced, vain. "Thought I'd drop in for a spot of tea." he gestured around to the near-OCD neatness of the room. "Love what you've done with the place, by the way. That table new?"
"Get the hell out of here, Balthazar," Castiel growled in return. He pointed a shaking finger at the door. "Get out before...before I make you."
"It's hard for you, isn't it? Controlling those feelings." Balthazar smiled, taking a step forward. As if connected by a string, Castiel moved back. "The shaking. Does your head hurt, too? You ever get really bloody angry?"
Castiel shook his head, his eyes narrowed in confusion.
"What are you doing here?" he asked. Balthazar did not answer. He only pulled up the sleeve of his coat, the thin black lines of a feather tattoo dark on his skin.
There was silence. Castiel sneezed. It would have been funny, if Balthazar couldn't feel the weight of a gun in his pocket and the itch of the tattoo on his forearm.
"It's just business, Cassie," Balthazar offered. "They offered good money for this. Made me superhuman. I'm a goddamn super hero now. You, too."
"No. I am not. That's...impossible." Castiel's breath caught, and he snarled out his words. "I am nothing like you. I'm normal. You lied to me for years."
Laughter. Balthazar sighed.
"Oh, you really are hopeless. Such a good little believer, weren't you?" he pushed himself forward, into Castiel's personal space, the cruelty of his words thick and sweet on his tongue. "You thought I loved you. Well, that's a laugh on it's own, but dear God you have no idea what you are."
Castiel looked up at him, anger spilling over the dazed confusion. He tilted his head.
"What–"
"You're the same as me, Cassie. Nothing can touch us! We're perfect. God's perfect creation."
He gestured towards the bawdy painting on the wall, and when Castiel turned to look, he laughed again at the disgust in his eyes.
"Like angels," he said, in Castiel's ear. "We're like angels."
...
Dean clutched the cell phone in a white-knuckled fist. Cass, being stupid, had left it there in his trench-coat and Dean had both now. He didn't know where Sammy was, but Ellen assured him he was okay. Something about him being a "funny drunk" and "poor kid needed a break".
She'd asked him what the matter was, and he'd replied with a husky "nothing", like he'd always done. In truth, he din't even know how to start to explain anything. The Impala was gone. Cass was gone. Dean only had his damp trench-coat and his defective, Heaven-issue cell.
He leaned now against the bar of the Roadhouse, letting the smell of dust and beer fill him up. He didn't like the feeling filling him up–it was unfamiliar, uncontrollable. When, in his life, had he gone so wrong? He was like a goddamned chick-flick on legs now.
He was supposed to hunting down the murdering bastard that took his mother and his sister-in-law to-be.
Instead, he was months off-track and in love with a man.
"Cass," he whispered, to himself. "I know you can't hear me. But I'm here, okay? I'm coming. Just...just stay there," he dragged a hand across his face, raked his fingers though his sticky hair. "I'm coming."
The next day when Ellen came back to open the bar again, she'd find a wad of cash labeled For Sammy and a cell phone she didn't recognize.
Jo's truck would be gone, and Ash and her daughter wouldn't quite know what to feel about that, but Ellen would chuckle.
She had, after all, been in love before.
...