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“Look at us. Just a couple’a fucked up guys gettin’ drunk on the floor.” Dean leans his back against the edge of the motel bed and sprawls his legs out. An empty beer lays next to him, and he’s working his way through another.
“Look at us,” Castiel repeats, in that flat, monotone voice. He’s sitting rigidly across from Dean, his back flat up against the edge of the couch, his legs crossed neatly. He’s nursing a beer that Dean has to remind him to drink from. It feels like sacrilege, it feels like religion.
“Y’know,” Dean starts, turning his head to look up at the ceiling, because he can only look at those eyes for so long, “I always knew I was disappointing one father. Never thought I’d be disappointing two.”
Castiel doesn’t respond. He’s always been bad at this- conversation, that is. At talking, instead of just listening. Dean doesn’t tease him about it, this time; he’s grateful to have someone to talk to.
Castiel is silent for a moment, and at first Dean thinks he isn’t going to say anything. He starts to inwardly curse himself for overstepping, but finally, the angel speaks. “Yes,” Castiel says hesitantly. “It is… difficult. When your father is God. To feel as if… you’re doing it all wrong. Not to receive back any fraction of the devotion you have given Him.” He pauses. “That was blasphemous.”
“Yeah,” Dean agrees with a little laugh, lifting his beer and motioning for them both to drink. A toast, to disappointing your father. “Think my whole life has been blasphemous.”
“Mine is only just beginning to be. It is terrifying.”
“Does it scare you? To… to think stuff?”
“So much,” Castiel confesses.
“Yeah.” Dean looks up at the ceiling again. Same popcorn ceiling as always, just different shaped stains. Motels don't differ much. If he tries, he can imagine he's twelve again, gripping a shotgun and staring up at the ceiling in bed, waiting for his dad to come home. Waiting for an absent God to return.
“My dad- he might as well have been God, for all I cared. He created my whole world, and left over and over again. Hell, at least I got some sorta closure for mine.” He fixes Castiel with an apologetic look. “You don't really have that.”
“Fathers are often Gods,” Castiel says, turning his face away. Dean nods and sets his empty glass to the side, reaching out to pluck Castiel’s out of his hand. Castiel doesn't seem to mind. Fathers are often Gods. Dean turns it over in his head as he drinks. Maybe God is on Earth, the Holy Spirit spread between all the deadbeat dads of the world. He thinks of how many times his dad said I put you into this world, I can take you out of it.
Dean gazes at Castiel and thinks it’s so easy to look at the angel this way. When he's not looking, not fixing him with that intense stare, like he can see through into his very soul. Hell, he probably can. Sure has before. Looking at him feels like divine worship.
“Can I ask you something?” Castiel says, turning back to Dean, who quickly drops his gaze.
“Shoot.”
“Do you ever pray?”
Dean snorts and shakes his head. “Nope. Not once. Not even when my ma died.”
“But you pray to me.”
Dean scratches the back of his neck with an embarrassed expression, looking anywhere but the too-raw (not yet learned dishonesty) angel across from him. “Yeah.” He doesn't elaborate. How could he? He can’t pretend to understand it, either. Praying to Castiel felt so much different from praying to some immovable deity. It had hope. Faith.
Castiel doesn't press. Dean is grateful. They're silent for a few minutes, both staring up at the ceiling together. It might as well be the starry night sky, for the way they look at it. “I try so hard to be like him. To do the things I was meant to do,” Castiel says. “And yet, I find myself asking questions. Having doubts. Making choices and doing things that I was not ordered to do.”
“Rebellious phase,” Dean jokes, but he nods like he understands. God, he does. “Hell, Cas, I’m no angel, but I was raised like a soldier, same as you. I’ve been there.”
“How do you move past it?” Castiel whispers, and he looks so afraid, so honest that it rocks Dean to his core.
“Honestly?” Dean asks, and Castiel nods. Dean sighs and offers the beer back, and Castiel drinks it gratefully. Dean knows the feeling. “You don't. You ask the questions. You have the doubts. You do more than you were made for or you’re gonna spend your whole life following your dead dad’s footsteps. I won't exactly call myself a great role model for that, but that doesn’t make it less true. Ain’t nothin’ gonna change that.”
Castiel looks so pale, so still. Dean wonders why angels even need blood in the first place, why he's not always pale. How this cosmic being can sit across from him and share a beer. He knows he should feel like an ant in relation, but he doesn’t. He feels like this is the first Holy thing to ever make him feel seen. He wonders what his dad would think. He knows what his dad would think.
He also knows, in the back of his mind, that he much prefers Cas’s company to his father’s opinions.
“I think I am going to fall,” Castiel says quietly.
Dean nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Think you’ve already started, man.”