Chapter Text
It was no love at first sight. There were no thunderbolts or lightning. No rain or romantic music in the background. But how could he not fall in love with a soul so bright?
~~~~
The room was in a run-of-the-mill small town, in a seen-better-days hotel. This was why he managed to find the man in the room at all: because this was his usual hunting ground. It still took him the better half of a week. But finally he was here.
It looked like the man was searching for something, apparently by himself, going over every piece of furniture the place had.
"Dean," said the angel quietly, "what are you looking for?"
The man in the room jumped and quickly turned around.
"Castiel! How good to see you!"
"Are you actually happy to see me?" Now the angel was a little bit confused. "I thought you wanted to hide yourself from me. This was why you were blocking the signal."
"What signal are you talking about?"
"The one that helps me find you," answered Castiel in his matter-of-fact way.
"Oh, that ... signal," said Dean and turned around to resume his search.
After another five minutes of searching every nook and cranny, he apparently found what he was looking for: a picture of an old woman. Attached to it was some paper: an ordinary case file, by the look of it. His whole expression changed but Castiel couldn't read the sentiment behind it.
"Let's blow this joint Castiel. Can you beam us up?"
"Beam? Is this some kind of reference that I don't get?"
"Yeah, sadly that's the case, but fear not my brave knight, I'll teach you the joy of meaningless popcorn movies. But first thing first, let's go."
"Without Sam? Where is he anyway?" Castiel looked around the place again like he was expecting Sam to turn up from under a tipped over chair.
"Oh, don't you worry about him. He found some lead, that he wanna follow up... alone. He will join us in a couple of days. Let's go."
Apparently not one who was disobeying a direct order, the angel touched Dean's shoulder and in the next second the room was empty again, with only the upturned furniture left to tell the tale.
~~~~~
The case that Dean had picked was really strange. Even for them. The elderly lady in the picture was actually part of a set. Triplets. And she was old. Like as old as Methuselah. The angel hadn’t realised it at first because for him everybody under a millennium was just wearing diapers.
But the weeks he was spending with the hunter had taught him a lot about humanity. Or rather one human being in particular.
And why was the case so strange? Not just because of the ladies' age. (Though that alone was curious enough.) More like the way Dean had been pursuing this hunt, seemingly at odds with his brother, who still hadn’t joined them even after the lead he was following apparently didn't pan out.
He called Dean a couple times a week, and more times than not they had a big argument, which meant another week or so of radio silence.
And in the meantime whatever they managed to dig up, he and Dean, pointed in the same direction: that strange longevity aside, the ladies were boringly normal. Maybe to somebody not totally cut off from society it would have looked peculiar that these three sweet old ladies were without any family to speak of and they didn't live together or at least not in the same city. But no such suspicion could arise in the angel, and the human didn't mention it either. Instead, they went on a cross-country trip, looking for clues.