In the attic lights
Voices scream
Nothing's seen
Real's a dream

Leaving the things that are real behind
Leaving the things that you love from mind
All of the things that you learned from fears
Nothing is left for the years

-"Toys in the Attic," Aerosmith

"Cheapass hotel doesn't even have the waffle iron thing. . ."

"Isn't the continental breakfast intended for guests of the hotel only?" Castiel's whisper is nervous and carrying. Leaned in close to Dean's side, his eyes dart to the front desk like the guy there watching soaps is going to yell "stop thief" any moment and rally a mob with torches and pitchforks. Turning his head, Dean can't quite help but grin at how frikkin' hilarious it is that Castiel is apparently so damned rule-abiding that this is scandalous to him.

Particularly since from what little Dean knows of Cas's history, he knows he's blown off nearly every rule put in front of him, professionally speaking.

Taking the plastic scoop out of Castiel's hand, he finishes its halted journey into the fruit salad, and gives Cas his first generous scoop of morally questionable food. "Just enjoy your illicit cantaloupe, Cas. I promise if you get arrested for it, I'll bail you out."

"Isn't that technically my job? And you're assuming you wouldn't be arrested too." Sam Winchester is not what Cas expected. When he turns to take in Dean's younger brother for the first time, his eyes are on his nose and travel up from there. The brief description he received in the car trip over was that Sam was a lawyer in California, a genius, and clearly loved by Dean, who looked so proud to tell him these things. He warned that he might be 'a bit' protective, a statement offered with an eye roll and no shortage of exasperation. That his girlfriend would be with them, and it would likely be safe to assume that he was equally as protective of her given that she is recently pregnant. And then they were there, Dean's heavy foot on the accelerator and the short trip from the apartment to the hotel making further explanation impossible.

And now he is being cautiously examined by a giant.

"I wouldn't be arrested. I'm pretty damn sure I could outrun that guy. Few too many of the hotel Krispy Kreme, y'know?" Dean smirks, and then as if tempted by his own joke piles a few of the same donuts onto his own plate, foregoing the fruit and completely belying his criticism of anyone'sdiet. "Sam, Cas. Cas, Sam." He gestures a hand negligently between the two of them, the entirety of his introduction made, and darts a glance at Cas.

And then drops a donut on Castiel's plate too.

Castiel knows that this is significant. He's meeting Dean's family, and even without any particular relationship experience himself he knows that this is something he does not want to mess up.

"Hello, Sam." He eventually settles on, his grip on the paper plate of stolen food in his hands making offering his hand awkward and delayed. Sam's grip is just shy of painful, hazel eyes narrowed slightly, and Cas can see something of Dean in them. Not just the muddy greenish undertone, but the wary, cautious way the younger Winchester takes him in. It makes him wonder how Sam has been hurt, given he knows now how much of Dean's own caution is born of past experiences.

"Hi. Sorry, I didn't know Dean was bringing anyone with him. . . "There's a question there, for one or the other of them, but Dean turns slightly and shoots his brother an amused look asking if the man who brought his pregnant girlfriend across the country with him without warning was reallygoing to try and use that line. The bitchface Sam gives him in return is frikkin' awe inspiring, and Dean smirks. Won that one.

Castiel resists the urge to shuffle nervously. He had not envisioned being a deliberate point of contention between the brothers immediately, and while he is not part of this silent conversation between them, he is not entirely oblivious to it.

"Cas was Dad's doctor." Dean eventually gives Sam, and it's an incomplete and entirely impersonal description of his role for Sam and for the uncertain Cas, who is desperately attempting to figure out how to represent himself to Sam. His role is not something that he and Dean had the opportunity to discuss in their brief trip. It is also a reminder of the hospital, and that makes Cas wince.

"I'm sorry that we were unable to do more for him." No, that's a hospital line. That is the professionally sympathetic doctor giving bad news. Cas grimaces, floundering for a second in awkwardness, before Sam takes pity on him and rests a broad hand on his shoulder, face softening into sympathetic lines that. . . it's their loss, he is not attempting to garner sympathy that he lost a patient, particularly not when that patient was theirfather.

"I'm sure you guys did everything you could." There's still something wary in Sam's eyes, as he falls into the buffet line beside Castiel and takes up the scoop for the sliced fruit. "Is 'Cas,' short for something, Doctor. . .?" And now he has Sam using his title, confusing the situation further.

"Castiel Novak." Cas has the distinct feeling that anything short of his full name would be met with suspicion, and that the use of his full name may result in unofficial background checks on him. A suspicion confirmed when the next question is a too-casual "Huh. I don't remember you from around here growing up. Where you from?"

"Illinois." He's being interrogated, politely, but Dean looks back to him at his stilted, answers-only response and quirks a faint grin at him, clearly taking amusement in what Castiel knows must look like awkward, panicked fumbling. Eventually, he too takes pity on Cas and breaks off his game momentarily, rolling his eyes and reaching out to tug at the sleeve of Cas's shirt, directing him to a table.

"Where's Jess?" Dean asks, and he pulls out one of the four chairs around the table, sitting himself next to Castiel. Sam draws the opposite chair out, which will leave Cas under Sam's direct scrutiny the entire meal. Dean, conversely, is completely comfortable, dropping an elbow onto the table and picking up his donut, seeming to cram half of it into his mouth at once.

"Morning sickness. She's, uh. Not exactly cheerful right now. I'm supposed to get her something that won't mess up her stomach on my way back up. . ."

Castiel is morbidly fascinated by Dean's eating habits. And then just fascinated, when the demonstration ends with him deliberately licking misplaced glaze off of his lips and fingertips in a manner that can only be deliberately lascivious, as he meets Cas's eyes the entire time.

Cas shifts in his chair uncomfortably, tears his eyes away to resist the urge to taste the sugar on Dean's tongue, and finds Sam staring at him with an expression that leaves little doubt that he has figured out exactly where Castiel's mind is at the moment. Swallowing his bite of fruit becomes inexplicably difficult, and Cas drops his fork.

"I. . . I should get us coffee. Do you want coffee, Dean? Sam?" His words are tripping over each other, and Dean rests his chin on his fist and grins, actually grins, and it does amazing things for him, that joy on his face even at Cas's expense, and that is complicating matters further and he's fairly certain that the temperature in the room rose ten degrees in the last thirty seconds and. . .

When Dean's other hand lands high on his thigh beneath the table, squeezing in a manner that may or may not be intended to be reassuring, it only gets worse. The motel table rocks as Castiel pushes away from it, muttering under his breath about coffee in a desperate attempt not to make a fool of himself in front of Dean's family, and Dean watches him flee with laughter in his eyes.

"Wow. So, I didn't think people actually could blush like that outside of cartoons." Sam draws Dean's attention back to him, and his brother shrugs one shoulder, leering.

"Adorable, innit? Gotta say, I kinda like making him squirm." Sam was willing to let it pass, just hold off on commentary, but he knows Dean too well to buy this at face value. Dean's putting on a front, even with himself: he's never that casual, and here he is playing the shameless Omega, a stereotype he hates.

"Seriously, Dean? What are you trying to prove here?"

All of the laughter drains out of Dean's eyes in moments, and he stares back at his brother flatly across the table, tearing his next donut in half between his sticky fingers and pausing before taking another bite. "The fuck do you think I think I need to prove, Sam?"

". . . That sentence doesn't even make sense." Sam folds his arms, leaving his too-healthy breakfast food crap untouched for the time being. He's trying to be supportive, trying to take care of his elder brother, and all it's doing is making Dean more defensive, no matter how earnest his attempts. "Dean, you just got back here. You can't have known this guy for more than . . . what, four days? You don't need to go out and just. . . pick up the first Alpha who looks at you and be. . ." He waves a hand at Dean, who seems to slouch farther into his chair in response. "Dad died, and now you're back here, and I get that brought up a lot of messed up things . . ."

"I'm handling it, Sam. I'm fine."

"No, you're not! Neither of us is fine, can you just stop saying that!" Any casual observer could see the family resemblance in them now, the stubborn sets of their jaws, the identical closed-off postures, the furrow creasing between their brows. "Dad's dead, Dean. . ."

"Thanks for pointing it out, Sam, I almost forgot that." Dean's sarcasm is sharp enough to cut, his voice dropping lower, an unconscious attempt to out-bass his brother. "What the fuck does that have to do with me bringing Cas here? He's a good guy. . ."

"You don't even know him, Dean." Sam's exasperated voice is pitched to keep Cas from noticing their fight, and he rakes a hand through his too-long hair, shoving it out of his face and trying to reach his brother, driving them back on topic. "Dad's dead and what he said to you . . ."

"Drop it, Sam." There's something cold and forbidding to Dean's words, his brother's name clipped off and icy.

"I can't. I'm worried about you, and you. . . Dean, you frikkin' idolized Dad, you took his shit a lot longer than you should have, and I know it messed you up, and now there's no way for him to make it right. Look, if I'm wrong, if you're finally moving on from the drunken shit Dad said and whatever Alastair did to you. . ."

"I said drop it." The chair scrapes across the tile, his voice is a whipcrack of command, and every eye in the motel lobby is drawn to Dean where he stands. A few feet away from the table with three cups of coffee and a plate balanced on a plastic tray, Castiel stops in his tracks, blue eyes widening as Dean's gaze falls on him. The elder Winchester tears his eyes away from the concern he sees there, on to the curiosity of everyone else, and Sam's naked worry. He's trapped, stared at, a freak, and he can't stay there, can't wait until people start talking behind his back, he needs tomove. "I need some air."

"Dean. . ." Cas turns in place as Dean stalks by him without stopping or looking at him, and only Sam's hand on his shoulder keeps Cas from following after him.

"Just. . . give him a couple minutes." Sam sounds exhausted suddenly, old beyond his years, and he settles heavily back into his chair with his long legs awkwardly folded to the side, fingers pressed over his eyes. Castiel sets the tray down on the table and frowns at the door out into the parking lot, where he can see Dean take a seat on the concrete bench beside the front door of the hotel. He moves his chair to the left before sitting, so that he can see Dean even seated, before turning his eyes to Sam. This should make him more awkward. They've just fought, and now he is left alone with Dean's brother. . . but his nervousness has abated, replaced by something else entirely. Strained social conversations he apparently can't handle. Conflict he knows, though.

"What just happened?"

"I screwed up and just blew any chance of getting Dean to talk by pushing when I should have waited." Sam admits forlornly, staring down at his food, and Castiel observes that the Winchesters also look alike when they're blaming themselves for things. Canting his head to the side, he tries to get a read on Dean's brother. "Look, Doctor Novak. . ."

"Castiel. . . or Cas." He'll gladly embrace Dean's nickname for him, and given the circumstances he can't stomach being called by another honorific. Especially another one that may no longer be valid come his disciplinary hearing. Wrapping his hand around one of the cups on the tray, he takes a sip and grimaces at the terrible motel brew, wondering if it's still worth it to bring Dean a coffee in a moment, considering they've both already had a mug at Cas's.

"Castiel, then." Sam raises his head, and if Castiel hadn't been in far more threatening situations in his life, he might be intimidated by the look being leveled at him. As it is, he can recognize the protectiveness for what it is, and he doesn't react. Dean had warned him of this, after all. "Look. It's obvious that you and my brother are screwing around, or you're leading up to it. If you're just sniffing around my brother just to be able to bag some Omega . . . move on now. I'm not going to stand by and watch you fuck him over. He's been through enough."

"I'd gathered that." Castiel answers quietly, eyes darting back to take in the stiff set of Dean's shoulders as he stares out at the street blankly. "He told me. . ."

"He didn't tell you anything." Sam counters immediately, harsh and rough and completely certain. He knows Dean, better than anyone. He loves his brother. But he has a realistic expectation of the likelihood that Dean was spilling all of his deepest darkest secrets to a guy he met days ago. He points at Dean's abandoned chair indicatively. "That? That's the only reaction I've gotten out of him in five years of trying to talk to him about what really happened. Whatever you think you know. . ."

"I already know he was assaulted." Castiel's brow is furrowed, and he wonders if he's in the wrong to speak about this with Sam. Dean hasn'tactively spoken to him about this. . . from the sounds of it, he might never. This topic has Castiel unsettled, concerned and angry: there was no way for him to have known Dean, to have been able to protect him then, but he still wishes he could have done something, anything to prevent it. "On the day your father died, several of what I gather were his previous assailants attacked him in the parking lot."

Sam curses sharply, and Castiel is now glad his anger isn't aimed at him. "We should have killed those assholes." That was the last damn thing Dean needed, especially on the day his dad died. "You were the person who helped him out with that?" Castiel doesn't answer aloud, but he doesn't need to. He picks at the donut Dean put on his plate, the careless fingerprints Dean left in the icing, keeping Dean in his view. It's not that he's afraid he'll be left somewhere. He could get home from here, busses are departing from hotels all the time, but he doesn't want Dean leaving him again after this. He doesn't want to wait for a phone call that might never come. Their day just started, and he wishes they could be back in bed together, that nothing had happened to tear away the fragile contentment he'd had just holding Dean.

Watching Castiel thoughtfully as the quiet, dark-haired doctor goes from frowning at his breakfast to fixed staring at Dean's back, Sam proceeds slowly. He doesn't know what to think of this guy yet, but he's starting to think. . . maybe only part of what he'd seen from Dean was an act. Dean wasn't above fucking with Sam's expectations, either, making him uncomfortable or turning around and reminding Sam that while he may be the Alpha and the 'bigger' brother technically, he's still the younger brother and should be made uncomfortable recreationally. If this guy who stutters and blushes and stares and seems to be completely the opposite of Dean's usual 'type,' even beyond being an Alpha, was someone Dean was actually considering being in a relationship with. . . then what he got in return from his brother was a pretty cold reminder of probably the worstmemory he could bring up at that time. He can't undo it, can't change history and can't yank back having brought it up, but if that's something Dean's finally reaching for, he needs to know that Castiel isn't going to bolt at the first sign of trouble. "Dean was just a kid. . . much as he's ever been allowed to be a kid I guess. I was still too young to really get what was happening yet, and it . . . it was bad."

Castiel had figured that much out for himself. He's trying not to speculate too much as to what that entails. Dean will tell him when he's ready. Hehopes Dean will tell him when he's ready. He hopes that this, with Dean, lasts long enough for trust to grow. He has the distinct feeling though that Dean wouldn't be happy with he and Sam sitting around discussing his welfare over breakfast without him, two Alphas working out their plan for an Omega like a child or like property, so he's determined to stay silent.

". . . But bad as that was, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about him going missing for four months, Castiel." Castiel's head snaps up, eyes widening, and Sam isn't lying to him, isn't making this up. "Four months of not knowing if my brother was alive, or dead in a ditch somewhere. Four months, a couple years back, where I still don't know all of what the hell he was put through." And what he did know, he wasn't sharing. He doesn't know this guy and the Winchester Family secrets are deeply ingrained and fiercely protected by both of John's sons."So yeah, you seem like a decent guy, and whatever happened at the hospital I'm glad you were there. But he's my brother and I've almost lost him before. If you hurt him in any way . . ." The threat is implicit, and Castiel can understand it completely, empathize entirely. "I can't do that again."

Tucking his chin down, Castiel closes his eyes for a moment, trying to process what he now knows, trying not to allow his mind to spin horror stories when he realizes that he knows nothing. Nothing but the bare details, and how broken Dean had seemed the night before, how tentative everything has been between them.

Taking a deep breath, Castiel gathers himself, assembles his professional mask behind closed eyelids and allows it to school his face, and then gestures with two fingers off of his coffee mug at the plate on the tray in the center of the table. "That is for Jessica. Nothing on that plate should further agitate her morning sickness, and will suffice for nutrients for herself and the baby. I should go join Dean, and find out what we are doing for the day and where I'm needed." Raising his head, Castiel meets Sam's eyes evenly, unflinching: he has just included himself in their family events for the day, and short of Dean asking him to leave he intends to stay. Dean's faintly bitter, glib remark about speaking later in the day if Castiel still 'wanted anything to do with him' is fair indication that he expects exposure to his life and his family and his problems to dissuade Castiel from his interest.

Castiel isn't going anywhere. He's embarrassed to admit how much he is already affected by Dean Winchester. And he cannot let knowing more change anything about that: Dean is still Dean.

Sam blinks first, breaking the unconscious staring contest growing between them by nodding, once. "I'll. . . uh. I'll bring Jess her breakfast. Thanks, for that." When he's not angry or posturing defensively, Sam seems an entirely different person. It's easier to forget how large he is when he's hunched over in the chair, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, and apparently afraid to go face the wrath of his pregnant fiancée when she's ill and uncomfortable. "Let you know how it goes over in a couple of minutes."

"We'll pray for your safe return." Castiel's quiet, deadpan joke makes Sam blink, turning back to Cas as if trying to figure out if he's serious or not, before he huffs a reluctant laugh.

"Yeah, okay then. I'll. . . I hope everything goes okay for you with Dean, then."

As Sam slouches away food in hand towards the elevator, Castiel gathers up two of the coffee cups, and a few packets of sugar in case the jet-fuel quality of the coffee is going to dissuade Dean from drinking it. . . and then with a nervous glance at the front desk, he combines the fruit on his plate and the donuts on Dean's, and covers it with another paper plate. Castiel tries his best to look nonchalant, and as if he has every right to be eating their food as he walks towards the rotating front door, feeling the stare of the clerk on his back prickling between his shoulder blades the entire time. It takes using his chin on the plastic lid of the coffee cup to keep everything balanced, and by the time he startles Dean on the bench, he needs the help Dean offers, jumping up and taking the cups out of his hands before they topple.

"You didn't finish your breakfast." He offers as explanation and excuse for his theft, and after a long moment staring at Cas, Dean barks a laugh, setting the coffees and plate between them on the bench, taking the offering from Cas's hands as he sits beside him. "We'd already taken it, and I . . ."

"'Waste not, want not?'" Dean parrots Castiel's drunken words back at him teasingly, and Castiel watches with wonder as the dead look leaves his eyes, as Dean carefully drags himself out of whatever memory had leeched the light out of him. He still looks sad, still grieving, but so strong, so determined. Dean is not a victim putting on a brave face, he is a man building himself into what he wants to be, reconstructing himself in the aftermath of every tragic and horrific experience of his life. "Look at you, Cas. Turning into a hardened breakfast-stealing crime lord right before my eyes. . ."

The suddenness of Castiel's kiss startles Dean, cuts his words off mid-breath as Cas leans across the food between them and presses his lips to Dean's. Castiel doesn't pull away at the first sign of tension and fear the way he has in the past; it lasts only a few moments, and then Dean is kissing him back, knotting fingers into the longer hair at the crown of Cas's head and taking control, keeping him bowed over the barrier of food and coffee between them. Dean determines when Cas is allowed to pull back, tugs to keep him from pressing closer, and Castiel lets him for now. If he will take what Dean is willing to give him, he knows that Dean will give him more in time once he has proven his own trustworthiness.

A hollered "Get a room!" from the parking lot is met with a middle finger from Dean, and his tongue curling against Cas's palate, sweet as the glaze of their stolen donut, but an unsubtle cough from behind them breaks Dean's attention finally. Sam, with Jessica tucked against his side, raises an eyebrow at his brother as he breaks the kiss with a wet pop, and Cas resists the urge to strain against the hand in his hair and settles back onto the bench, as both of them turn to look at the younger Winchester and his bride-to-be. Hand sliding to the back of Cas's neck, Dean's staring at him in clear challenge, daring him to say another damned thing about his older brother's behavior, but Sam doesn't rise to the bait.

"We going to Ellen's first, or. . .?"

It's a small triumph, but Dean will take it.