Four men sat around a table at a bar for their customary post-filming beers. They'd wrapped filming in record time and found a small local place that was still open that same night. But unlike their usual celebrations, this one was marked by stunned, introspective silence (as well as the addition of one extra participant). Castiel was worried and had elected not to leave Dean's side just yet, and Dean wasn't about to start complaining.

"Ghosts are real." Kevin's voice sounded hollow.

"Ghosts are real," Bobby echoed.

"What the hell have we been doing, poking around in these places?" Sam asked, half-rhetorically. "We've never seen anything like that before now. Why?"

"That's what I want to know," Dean agreed, giving a glassy-eyed stare to the table in front of him. He ran a thumbnail over the corner of the label on his beer bottle and picked at the stubborn adhesive. He picked and picked and picked.

"Strictly speaking, that was incredibly uncommon," Castiel addressed the table. His voice didn't seem to be capable of sounding soothing, but he was trying anyway. "For him to manifest in physical form that you could actually see and capture on camera is just a marker of how strong his emotional connection to that house was. I doubt that you'll see any more spirits anytime soon."

"Yeah, but you will." Dean turned to Castiel, who in turn allowed his eyes to wander around Dean's face, searching. "You see these things all the time. You really have got a… a 'constant stream of information' running through your head, don't you? How do you even cope with that?"

Castiel's face softened. Dean hadn't realized just how much tension Castiel carried around his eyes until it dropped and evened out for just those few seconds. Castiel looked tired, still, but years seemed to wash away from his features with just this one expression of what might have been either sadness or gratitude.

"It is the only thing I have memories of doing," Castiel said. "I don't know what living without these things is like, because they are the only thing I have ever known."

Unease drifted across the group again as they contemplated their drinks in silence.

"Hello, boys."

Dean breathes slowly in and out. Crowley's standard greeting never spelled good things for them.

"Crowley," he replied back with restrained neutrality. Sam placed his phone down on a small square of table that was free of plates and mugs and maple syrup. There was a low murmur of conversation around them in the diner, but Crowley's tinny speakerphone voice didn't seem to be bothering anyone particularly.

"Loved the footage you sent us." Dean could never quite tell if Crowley was mocking them or if his voice just naturally oozed extreme levels of smarmy arrogance. Maybe it was both. "I see you had quite the adventure in the Fletcher house. And I'm sure what you edited out was even more interesting. Things get a little too intense, did they?" He knew, god damn him, he always knew.

"Something like that," Bobby answered into his cup of coffee.

"So what is it this time?" Dean asked, "Are you sending us to pick up another psychic?"

"No, not another psychic." He sounded amused. That was never good. "But, speaking of which, how is Castiel?"

"He seemed fine when we dropped him off at that pastor's house in Virginia a few days ago," Sam replied.

"What a shame," Crowley sighed dispassionately, and nervous glances flitted around the table. "Where are you now?"

"Philadelphia, headed to that mansion in Connecticut with the ghost… horse…. thing," Dean said. "But you knew that, so why ask?"

"Well," said Crowley, "I took the liberty of giving an advanced screening of last week's early edit to a few interested parties. Had quite the reaction, to say the least." Again, the men looked at each other. Intern Kevin fidgeted awkwardly. He never said anything during these calls, even when it seemed like he wanted to.

"How so?" Dean asked after a moment had passed.

"They were quite receptive to Castiel," Crowley said, then chuckled; a truly ominous sound. "In fact, they found the dynamic between the two of you to be rather refreshing." Dean opened his mouth to say something, but Crowley continued. "Relax, squirrel, no one's replacing your moose. We are, however, expanding your motley crew to include your new psychic pal." Dean scrubbed a hand over his forehead in vague irritation.

"For how long?" Bobby asked.

"Oh, who knows?" Crowley responded, sounding falsely casual. "Maybe a few episodes, maybe the whole season, we'll see how things go. Maybe you'll end up wanting to keep him forever." Dean could imagine him sitting in his cushy corner office with is feet up on his desk as he thought of new ways to torture them. They couldn't argue back; he was the one signing their paychecks. "For now, I'd suggest you finish your lovely brunch and head back get him." He chuckled again. "Have fun."

The line went dead. Sam huffed a sigh and put his phone back in to his pocket.

"Well that's great," Bobby grumbled, "More driving."

"We're halfway there," Kevin leaned back from the table and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked tired, and Dean didn't blame him. "Couldn't Castiel, like, take a bus or something?"

"Something tells me Crowley wouldn't be his charming, friendly self if the dude got lost," Dean said, pinching at the bridge of his nose.

"He's right," Sam agreed, "Guess we'd better head back then."

"I can do it," Dean said, dropping his hand. At Sam's look, he continued. "It'll be easier for all of us if you all continue on in the van, and I can just take the Impala and get him."

"He's got a point," Bobby shrugged.

"I can go with you," Sam offered, "We can trade off driving."

"You and I both know I can get there faster by myself," Dean said, giving his brother a flat look. Sam refused to let Dean drive more than 15 over the speed limit, and his music selection sucked. "Look, you can go, start setting up, and I'll meet you there tomorrow." He punctuated his argument by filling his cheeks with a forkful of pancake and that was that.

"Hello Dean."

"Hey, Cas."

Dean stood beside the Impala and stretched his cramped limbs. Four hours of driving, and eight more to go— eight hours in a car alone with Castiel. It's not like Dean hated Castiel, at least now that he'd gotten to know him a little bit, but Castiel was about as responsive to Dean's pop culture-riddled conversational skills as a cardboard cutout.

Sometime around hour two, Dean had had enough stony silence.

"So," he said over the dim background sound of classic rock—Highway to Hell, as if that wasn't ominous as fuck—"How'd Crowley rope you into coming on the show again?" He cast a quick glance at Castiel, who was squinting at the road in front of them. Dean could almost see Castiel's mind working through Dean's choice of words. He was so busy imagining that Cas saying something like I don't understand, Dean, there were no cords or strings involved (given the way he'd reacted with blank stares the last three times Dean had used fairly common idioms) that he almost missed Castiel's actual response.

"I am not entirely sure," Castiel said, looking at Dean now. "But there is a kind of pull that tells me to go in your direction. I don't know what that is." He paused. "And I was worried about you."

Dean responded only with a slightly shocked nod, and Castiel didn't say more.

Dean was, therefore, trapped inside his own mind as the miles slipped beneath his car tires. And his mind was on Castiel. As reluctant as he'd been to have Castiel join the show, he knew it was probably for the best. Everything had gone all topsy-turvy when they'd filmed the last episode, and he couldn't just go back to a life where paranormal things didn't really exist (even if he really wished he could). And Castiel, strange and awkward as he was, was probably the key to navigating through this new reality.

But Dean still couldn't explain the sort of effect that Castiel had on him. When Castiel had said that he felt as though something was pulling him towards Dean, he'd given a name to a sensation that Dean had been feeling as well. He felt oddly comforted when Castiel was around, spirits or not. Castiel was weird, and Dean was beginning to like that.

Around hour four, Dean took a wrong turn that sent them on a long detour through the empty, rolling hills of Pennsylvania. He was blinking back the hypnotic numbness that had settled over him as the daylight faded, and an hour later his eyes were starting to droop. There was no pressure to get anywhere that night though, and so Dean eventually gave up on his failed goal of making the trip as short as possible, and pulled into the least unpleasant looking hotel. This turned out to be one of the midlevel chain type places that he'd stayed in from time to time. He used the 'emergency-only' credit card provided by the network. Crowley could suck it.

The receptionist had glanced between the two of them in that significant way that he was already used to getting when he was with Sam as she told them that they didn't have any double rooms left. He shrugged it off, and found his way to their single room with Castiel following silently behind.

The room was nice— generic, but otherwise non-offensive. Dean dropped his bag by the door and flopped ungracefully, face-first, onto the room's sole queen sized bed. He knew he should probably get up and take his day clothes off and brush his teeth and call Sam and tell him what as going on or he'd regret it all in the morning, but damn this bed felt nice. He could fall asleep right then…

Slight vibrations of the floor snapped him from his near-sleep state. Oh, right. He was hogging the whole bed meant to be shared with Castiel. Dean pushed himself up onto his elbows to find that Castiel was not standing by the bed, as he had expected, but rather stood staring out the sliding glass door a few feet farther away. The doors led to a small fenced in balcony and, beyond that, the Dean could only see the rush of headlights passing on the highway nearby.

Dean sat up and scraped a hand through his hair while he fished his phone out of his pocket. He sent Sam a quick text—in PA, spending the night— and then set about removing his shoes and shirt and otherwise making sure he'd feel as un-shitty as possible the next morning. By the time he'd emerged from the bathroom with the taste of spearmint mouthwash lingering on his tongue, Castiel was still standing by the glass door. He'd removed his overcoat and draped it over the armchair beside him, but was otherwise in the same position.

"Do you, uh, care which side of the bed?" Dean asked. He shouldn't have felt this awkward; he and Sam or Bobby or Kevin shared hotel beds all the time. But Cas was… well, he was different, to put it lightly.

Castiel turned and looked at him for the first time in a while. Dean was struck with the strange wish that he were wearing more than just boxers (even though it was summer, and it was hot as balls, and he'd never had any problems showing off his body before). Castiel looked through him and into him and he felt decidedly naked. Again.

"Either is fine," Castiel said, and it took Dean an extra half-second to remember his own question. Castiel hesitated, and then said, "Actually, I don't really sleep much. If the light doesn't bother you, I'd like to stay up reading for a while."

"Oh, uh, yeah, sure," Dean nodded his agreement, slightly surprised. Castiel reached down to his own small duffel at his feet and pulled out a worn-looking paperback. Dean didn't catch the title. Castiel turned on the small reading lamp beside the armchair and settled into it. He still faced the doors and the balcony and passing cars but his attention was now on his book and, as far as Dean could tell, that was where it was going to stay.

Dean's exhaustion hit him again. The bed sheets crinkled against him as he lay down; they were cool and smelled freshly laundered. This place really was a step up from most of the places where they stayed.

He spared one last look at Castiel, bathed in the soft yellow glow of the lamp and the red glow from neon signs outside. Dean watched him until his eyelids drooped closed.

When Dean awoke, Castiel was gone. The bedding beside him was unrumpled. For one disorienting moment, Dean thought maybe Castiel had run away (deciding, like a sane person, not to involve himself in Dean's strange nomadic life). He thought he'd have to either spend the day searching this unfamiliar town for any sign of Castiel or end up in Connecticut empty-handed. But then he spotted Cas' duffel on the floor and his book on the table beside the lamp and his tan coat still draped across the armchair like a message telling him not to worry. The he became aware of the soft hiss of the shower running, and he relaxed back into his pillow with a long exhale.

The room had a coffee maker, praise the lord. He found a small bag of ground coffee beside the minibar and emptied it all into the basket, finding that he didn't care about how much these sorts of places charged for things. While it finished percolating, Dean threw on a shirt and jeans and then glanced inside the fridge itself and found it stocked with nips of liquor. Not a bad selection, either. He grabbed a miniature bottle of Irish cream, cracked the seal, and emptied it into his mug of coffee in lieu of regular cream or sugar. Hey, it wasn't his credit card they were using.

Dean stood on the small balcony, leaving the door open behind him. The air was misty and cool and quiet; it was still early. The sun had come up only a little while before, and below him a street lined with fast food signs and convenience stores and other motels blushed in pale purple-red light. Across from him, a few cars whooshed by on the raised hill of highway. Dean took a sip of his coffee. It left a slight burn in this throat. He breathed in the cool morning air. The heat wave had broken like a fever in the night.

A few minutes later, there was a rustle of fabric beside him. Castiel hugged his elbows close to himself in what was a gesture of insecurity or of being cold, Dean didn't know. They stood that way for a while. Dean sipped his coffee. Castiel tracked the cars with his eyes as they passed.

"People think spirits are most common at night." Castiel's voice was quiet.

"Yeah?" Dean asked, "When is it really?"

"Dawn," said Castiel. He spoke with the reverence of a deep secret revealed and, Dean realized, maybe that was exactly what he was doing. Dean took a mouthful of his coffee and swallowed the question he wanted to ask: what do you see now?

They were quiet again for a while. The cars passed. Cas watched them. The light grew stronger, glinting orange off some broken glass in the road below. Dean finished his coffee and was considering going back inside for the rest of the pot when Castiel spoke again.

"Dean, can I try something?" he asked. Dean turned an inquiring face towards Castiel, but his words died at the way Castiel was looking at him with such a pleading expression. He gave a stiff nod. Castiel reached his hand across the small space between them. Dean tried not to flinch. Castiel's hand came to rest on the side of Dean's jaw, his pinky finger trailing down to Dean's neck and his thumb breathtakingly close to Dean's lips.

A warm sense of calm washed over Dean, as it had after he'd seen the ghost just a few days earlier. Castiel's face relaxed. The lines between his eyebrows smoothed as he raised them. His expression was a mixture of surprise and relief and something that Dean couldn't quite place, but somehow knew that he was feeling himself. It was more emotion than Dean could remember seeing from Castiel in the short time that they'd known each other.

"Amazing," Castiel all but whispered, and Dean felt a thrill run through him.

"What," was all Dean could say in response, his voice cracking against his dry throat.

"The voices stop." Castiel sounded thoroughly, impossibly tired, and yet happy at the same time. Dean's breath caught as something heavy seemed to settle in his chest. For a fleeting second, he imagined what it was like inside Castiel's mind, and he was terrified. "Everything stops." He closed his eyes. "I don't know how it's possible, or why. But it has something to do with you, Dean."

"Cas…" Dean didn't know what he was planning on saying. Moving his mouth had made Castiel's thumb twitch closer to his lips, touching them at the corner and making Dean forcefully aware of the thoughts and feelings welling up inside him. Crazy thoughts that Dean didn't want to acknowledge he'd been thinking since the first day he'd met Castiel. He'd refused to give them a name or a shape in his own mind, but Castiel's words and touch had catapulted them to the forefront of his thoughts.

Dean cared about Castiel. He had begun caring about him sooner than any other person who wasn't his brother. Dean wanted Castiel around, just to watch him do the weird things he'd do and to feel his company. Dean was, quite possibly, a tiny bit attracted to Castiel.

What in all nine levels of hell is happening? Dean felt dizzy. He tightened his grip on his coffee mug or risked dropping it. He leaned into Castiel's hand ever so slightly. Castiel was watching him again with intense eyes. Half of Dean wanted to sprint away as fast as his legs would take him, or teleport to someplace far away, or jump off the balcony and hit the ground running. The other half wanted to stay here submerged in the sensation of warmth and safety and affection that flowed between his connection with Cas. That was the half that won.

"It's as though you are a focus point," Castiel said, like Dean were a particularly difficult puzzle he was trying to decipher. He stepped closer, marginally. "A ballast or an anchor, perhaps." Their faces were close together now. Castiel was only shorter by a little; their eye levels were almost equal, their mouths the same. Something that looked like realization flashed over Castiel's face, and Dean found himself fearing that Castiel's powers of perception extended to reading minds and severely hoped—prayed, even—that that was not the case. Castiel's eyes drifted down to Dean's mouth. He swiped his thumb across Dean's bottom lip and back experimentally. Dean released a shaky exhale and his eyes unfocused.

And then Castiel pulled his hand away slowly and withdrew. He watched Dean with a mixture of surprise and confusion and what might have been sadness, until he blinked a few times, his eyes regained their wrinkled tension, and his face became its usual stoic mask once again.

His mouth was set in a hard line as he gave Dean a stiff-necked nod, and then retreated back into the darkness of their room without another word.

Dean ran through every curse, oath, and profanity he'd acquired in 29 years of life. If Castiel could read minds, which Dean still seriously hoped he couldn't, he was currently being treated to a string of expletives the likes of which could probably be used to strip the paint off a wall.

He'd found Castiel waiting beside the Impala after another few minutes of mild panic during which he'd been almost certain that Castiel had left for good. Castiel's belongings were gone this time and Dean had rushed to pack and checkout until he'd found him. They'd left right away and spent the last two hours in total silence. Dean was starting to regret his coffee-only breakfast.

Dean was in full-on crisis mode. He'd been attracted to plenty of people before. But those people had been almost entirely women. Any men he'd been interested in had been either celebrities (like Robert Downey Jr. or Dr. Sexy, but who could blame him?) or they'd been men he'd met in passing on his trips across the country. And each time, he'd squashed those feelings before they'd truly risen to the surface. Cas, however, could not be squashed so easily.

He was going to be joining Dean and Sam for at least the next few months. In some sick and distant way, Dean was fairly sure Crowley had done something to plan this. But as much as Dean tried to reason his feelings away, he couldn't get Castiel out of his mind. It didn't help that said man was seated directly beside him the entire time that he was attempting to work through these thoughts, and then of course there was the small matter of the 100% non-metaphorical magic that seemed to flow through them when they touched, since apparently magic was real now. That was definitely a factor.

The traffic was getting denser as they neared New York. When they came to a standstill, Dean finally turned to look at Castiel. He was squinting more than usual and the ridges between his eyebrows were especially deep, an expression that Dean was beginning to recognize as distress. He wondered if it was what had happened earlier that day that was affecting him or if it was the number of people in the cars surrounding them, or maybe the number of people who had died on this particular stretch of road, or even some other influx of information was overloading Castiel's senses. Either way, he took a gamble on the solution.

Castiel looked down at the hand that Dean was offering him, either startled or debating. Then he took it with his own and visibly relaxed as those sensations of calm safety drifted over Dean with growing familiarity. They each turned to face the front windshield once again in unbroken muteness, but their fingers remained intertwined.