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He’s angry.
It washes up, a rising swell he can’t stop, curling his fingers and bunching the fabric he holds. It’s new. Untested. The currents are something he doesn’t know how to navigate, so he stands and waits, not knowing which channels they’ll take.
Wrath, he knows. Righteousness and Heavenly rage and the cold, distanced need to kill for a mission. He knows those feelings. Anger for his own sake is different. It’s copper and vermilion, where he’s used to steel and obsidian. The metallic taste of it makes his lip curl.
“You okay, there, Cas?”
Dean’s voice doesn’t ground him. It jolts him, knocks him off balance. If he can be said to be balanced at all, the absence of weight at his back something which constantly threatens to pull him down. Worse, he doesn’t know how he’s meant to behave. He doesn’t know how to rein this in.
“Yes,” he says. Snaps, he supposes.
It’s so hard to tell how the sounds will come across, how the lines of his body and his face will be read. No-one gave him a dictionary for this, and he’s having to build one from scratch while pretending he’s already fluent. He thinks that might be another thing that has anger ringing in his ears.
“Gotta say, you don’t look okay,” Dean says.
“And how am I meant to look?” Cas asks. His jaw aches from not shouting. He keeps his back to Dean. “How am I meant to act?”
He hears Dean sigh. It feels like judgment.
“You’re not meant to act, Cas,” Dean says. “This ain’t some show. Just…just be yourself, man.”
This one he knows. Confusion. It winds its way through the anger, creating eddies and pockets but doing nothing to calm him. Be himself? He doesn’t have a self to be.
The fabric in his hands is thin, worn. It’s kind of Dean to lend him something to sleep in. He wants to rip it to pieces and stalk out into the cold. He doesn’t.
“I’m gonna get supplies,” Dean says, into the silence Castiel thinks might smother him. “You get changed. And watch that arm.”
The door clicks shut before Castiel can ask how he’s meant to maneuver the shirt over his head when he can’t make his hand work properly. He doesn’t know how to get out of his existing shirt, for that matter. Dean always expects him to behave as though humanity is his base state, a lifetime of knowledge and experiences buoying him up in these alien currents. As though being an angel was an act, and Castiel has returned to real life.
Dean’s a Selkie in reverse, shedding each borrowed skin when it’s helped him through a case and slipping back into the waters he’s used to, but he seems to think Castiel can do the same when he’s never been the human or the seal. As soon expect a creature of the deep seas to walk out of the waves and into a home, a job, a human life.
At least the Giant Squid or the Gulper Eel or the Giant Pacific Octopus are used to being made of flesh, not light.
He’s struggled half of the buttons undone when the sound of the key in the lock catches him sitting on the bed, his eyes closed on the tears that threaten. Again. Humans are mostly water. He knew that. But he didn’t expect the experience of being human to be quite so soggy. Or tiring.
Now he isn’t light, he finds he has to shut it out sometimes, that he has to just shut his eyes and try to find his footing in the darkness.
A blast of cool air and footsteps tell him Dean’s in the room before Castiel has chance to pretend he was doing something other than giving up partway undressed, and he blinks his eyes open to see his friend frowning at him. There’s a crease across Dean’s brow and his lips are pressed together like he wants to say something, but can’t think of the words.
Maybe Castiel is having trouble finding the right words, too. He isn’t sure if he can still call Dean a friend. He isn’t sure if he’s allowed.
“You need some help, there?” Dean asks.
He still holds a bag in one arm, a six-pack of beer in his other hand, and he drops both on the bed near the door as he crosses to Castiel.
Castiel doesn’t nod. He finds he can barely summon the energy to hold his head up, let alone move it. Besides, under the weariness that’s swept in, he still feels that anger, that pulse of something deep and powerful. He wants to lash out, to shout at Dean and shove him away and scream at him to stop talking. He wants Dean to stop speaking to Castiel as though there’s concern there, as though there’s affection.
Dean told Castiel to go, and he doesn’t even know what he did wrong.
“No,” he says, but it comes out weak, barely more than a shaped breath. He tries again. “No. I can do it.”
That’s better. Sharper, at least.
Dean crouches in front of him, concern slipping into annoyance. Castiel thinks it’s annoyance. It’s a familiar enough look on Dean’s face, and his voice is often hard when he wears it.
“Yeah. No. You’re not doing so great there, buddy.”
Dean’s hands are on him before Castiel can protest, cradling his wrist and slipping the fabric of his shirt over his forearm, over his hand, and free. The warmth of Dean’s skin is shocking, a point of solidity Castiel wants to cling to.
He pulls his arm away.
Still holding the edge of the sleeve, Dean narrows his eyes.
“Let me get the other one. You’ll feel better when you’re in something more comfortable. Lounging around in a shirt’s no good.”
As though Dean’s forgotten that Castiel wore a shirt for years, that it’s what he was used to. As far as it went.
“I can do it.”
“But you don’t have to,” Dean says.
But Castiel does. He isn’t naive enough to think Dean will stay beyond morning. It’s a surprise Dean hasn’t already set off home, to the Bunker. Where Castiel isn’t welcome.
“I can manage. I’m managing.”
Raising his hand, Dean backs off, rising and setting about pulling bread and cheese and ham out of one of the bags. A plastic bowl of pre-washed salad joins them, and Dean shrugs, his cheeks flushing as though Castiel had said anything.
“Wasn’t sure what you liked,” he says.
“It’ll be fine.”
And it will be. Castiel hasn’t had the luxury of disliking food.
He works the sleeve off his other arm, pulling the shirt onto his lap and sitting half naked on the bed. Dean’s still fussing about at the small table, setting out cans of some drink and a couple of chipped plates he’s found in the kitchen area.
“It’s not much,” Dean says, straightening and managing a lopsided smile at Castiel. “Guess it’ll have to do, though. We can get something hot in the morning. You working or do you want me to drop you off at home?”
Home. This is the closest Castiel has come to homely since he sat at the table in the Bunker and was told he couldn’t stay.
That anger curls in his gut again, warming him, and he’s almost grateful. He’s yet to finalize his list of things he most detests about being human, but being cold is certainly near the top. Now, the surge of heat in his flesh almost makes him feel like himself. He lets his fingers grip the shirt, wishing he could rip it. It would be satisfying. For a moment.
“You planning on getting dressed before you eat, or is this a free show?” Dean asks, and the amusement in his voice grates.
The T-shirt Dean’s given him is soft, and thin, and Castiel has no idea how to get it on without knocking his injured hand, and pain is so much worse now he’s mortal. Lifting his chin, he drops the bloodied shirt and crosses to the table, taking the seat opposite Dean and refusing to consider why the corner of Dean’s mouth curls up, showing a glimpse of white teeth. It doesn’t look like amusement, but he can’t place it, so he ignores it.
“Eat up,” Dean says, after a few moments.
Castiel does. Slowly. He takes a bite from the sandwich and makes himself chew it steadily. Bolting his food can make him sick and doesn’t fill him up any faster. Not really. And it gives him something to focus on, something that might not make him want to overturn the table or kick the chair or throw something at Dean.
“So, er, you been doing all right?” Dean asks, but the question has no weight behind it, no intent. It doesn’t sound like Dean really wants to know. “Met any other girls? Other than Nora?”
“Yes,” Castiel says, sealing his words up with another bite of food.
He isn’t naive. Being unused to humanity isn’t the same thing as being naive, and he’s still trying to compile the clues, still trying to build up an understanding of the code, but he knows a lot more than he did. He knows what Dean’s asking. Still, a part of him exults in answering the way he would have done a few years ago, when he would only have picked up the surface level of that question.
Dean nods, the approximation of a smile on his face slipping. No doubt he wants details, or to laugh at Castiel trying to date. He certainly seemed amused at the idea of Nora, even though he hasn’t said much of anything about the date turning out to be something else.
“And you?” Castiel asks.
He isn’t sure what he’s asking. How Dean is. If he’s met a lot of women lately. More.
“Er. Yeah. Yeah, been keeping busy,” Dean says, which isn’t an answer at all. “And you’ve been learning a lot about selling beef jerky.”
Castiel isn’t sure why that sounds biting. Flat, but biting. He isn’t sure why Dean looks down on being a sales associate. It’s a purpose, a mission, however small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. And it’s difficult to screw up badly enough that it will affect an entire species. There’s that.
“Yes,” he says.
And scowls.
They eat the rest of the meal in silence, Castiel not managing to hide his yawns as he finishes the salad. The crunch of it’s pleasant, and he thinks having to eat might be more bearable if he could have food like this.
“You should sleep,” Dean says. “Are you getting enough sleep?”
As if he cares. If Dean cared, he’d have let Castiel stay.
The bed looks tempting, though. He’s only slept in beds a few times since falling, and it’s endlessly preferable to the sleeping bag in the stockroom. And he doesn’t have to do much to get undressed, kicking off the jeans easily enough and crawling under the covers.
He glances at Dean before he closes his eyes, and finds the man staring at him. He stares back for a moment before turning his head, closing his eyes.
In the morning, he’ll go back to work and Dean will drive away, and Castiel will be no closer to resolving this anger that fills him. He grips the sheet with his good hand and lets the fabric bunch.