Chapter Text
He catches up with Cas in Topeka. Cas is sitting on a bench by the bus station. This is more or less where Sam has suspected he would be. Cas might’ve gotten a head start, but he hadn’t caught Cas hiking along on the side of the interstate at any point in the past three hours, so he’s been figuring that either Cas has invoked the powers of the public transportation system of Kansas, in which case he might catch up with Cas at some point down the line, or else Cas has taken to hitchhiking, in which case he might not.
Sam parks the Volvo up against the curb. He still feels sort of bad about the Volvo. Sam’s stolen cars at variously depressing moments in his life. He usually does feel bad about it. Sometimes not. He’s feeling bad about this whole thing, really, and he isn’t sure why. He thinks, logically, reasonably, I shouldn’t be doing this. It’s a bad idea. It’s not safe. I should take the Volvo and head back to the bunker. But he also feels like he shouldn’t turn around. That going after Cas is the right thing to do. It’s disconcerting. He picks up a few quarters from the Volvo’s floorboards and dispenses them into the parking meter. He feels bad about that, too.
He thinks Cas has seen him. He squashes down whatever traitorous part of him still wants to leave and approaches the bench, with some caution. But Cas doesn’t bother looking up. He’s slumped over, his chin in his hands and elbows resting on his knees.
"Hey, Cas," Sam says.
"Hello, Sam," Cas says tonelessly. "You found me."
"Yeah," Sam agrees. "Wasn’t that hard. You wouldn’t have gotten very far, you know. Dean has a GPS tracker on your phone.” Cas frowns and takes his phone of his pocket. He turns it over in his hands, squinting. "Can I sit?”
"No," Cas says in that same dead voice. Sam drops down on the bench beside him anyway. "You are intruding," Cas says.
"On what?" Sam asks, genuinely curious.
"On me.” Cas is taking up the entire length of the bench. He doesn’t do any of the things that a normal person would. He doesn’t put his backpack on his lap so that Sam can have some room. He doesn’t shuffle down the bench to put some space between them. So Sam ends up dumping the backpack on the sidewalk at their feet and shoving at Cas with his shoulder. ”Move.”
"No," Cas says. "I was here first."
Some scuffling ensues. Sam applies more force with his shoulder until he’s managed to push Cas half a foot down the bench. Cas goes with it, more or less. Sam can remember a time when trying to move Cas against his will was about as productive as trying to relocate Mount. Everest using a toothpick. Now it’s a lot more like dealing with a resistant, resentful bag of slightly sour laundry.
He reaches over and kind of pats at Cas’s arm, at the crook of his elbow. He instantly feels dumb, so he takes his hand away. He never really knows what to do around Cas. ”Hey,” he says. “This is really great. Really good. That you’re here.”
Cas is staring down at his arm like he’s suddenly puzzled by its function. “I’m glad to see you, too, Sam,” Cas says. He doesn’t sound too certain about it, though.
"So, Cas," Sam says, casual. "Whatcha up to?"
Cas rouses himself at that. He smiles at Sam, like he’s got some sort of news that he’s fairly sure Sam will be glad to hear, but that he himself is slightly unsure of. Sam knows that smile. He’s seen what it does to Dean. Dean gets this helpless, drifting look on his face whenever Cas looks at Dean with that pleased, uncertain smile. “I’m leaving.”
That is more or less what Sam had figured. Still, it’s good to have all the facts. “You mean-” He doesn’t quite know what to say. “Is this, uh, permanent? Or only for a little while?” Maybe Sam’s wrong about all of this. Maybe Cas is just going on a day trip. To Topeka. For some fresh air. Maybe this isn’t a situation at all. Certainly not anything worth stealing a station wagon over. Sam lets himself hope.
"Forever, I think," Cas says, pretty definitely.
Sam’s heart sinks somewhere around the sidewalk. He’s starting to worry, now. Dean had gotten up, silently punched a hole in the kitchen wall, and then left in the Impala, citing a need for supplies, for cash. Sam hadn’t understood him. But Dean will be getting back soon. Dean will be coming home to a bunker without Sam or Cas in it. Dean’s going to march from room to room shouting for Cas and then Sam and no one will be there and then Dean’s going to stop being angry and start being hurt. And then Dean’s going to get that look on his face that he gets whenever he’s too hurt to even be angry.
So okay. Sam gets it, a little. He doesn’t particularly want to come home to that look on Dean’s face, either. That’s one thing he and Cas have in common. But, still. Cas just got here. “I don’t get it. You can’t just leave.”
"Yes I can," Cas says.
"We just found you. You just got here. You just died,” Sam says, and something under his skin snaps unpleasantly. It tells him to go, go. He ignores it, for the moment. “We’re not a motel, okay. Can’t you stay with us for more than one night?”
“No,” Cas says, and Sam asks, “Why?”.
Cas says, very quietly, “Dean thinks that it would be best. For me to leave.”
Sam isn’t following, but alarm bells are ringing. ”Cas,” he says, suddenly feeling like every law of the universe he’s ever taken for granted has just been proven false, “Cas, Dean wouldn’t want you to go, why—” He stops, because he’s starting to think that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing for Cas to go. Disaster follows Cas wherever he goes. He’s being assaulted with images of avenging angels, hordes of demons. The bunker going in flames. His laptop melting.
"This is stupid," he says, frustrated.
"No," Cas says. "It’s the truth." His head starts drifting down into his hands again.
"Cas," Sam says, slow. He’s thinking it over. He doesn’t like what he’s thinking. "But where are you going to go?"
And Cas just says, “I don’t know.”
Sam has been sort of pissed at him for the last four hours. Not really pissed. More like furious. But now he’s feeling a little less pissed and a lot more sorry. So he ignores the sick feeling building up in his throat. He says, “Okay, well. I’ll go with you.”
—
“What are we doing?” Cas asks, kind of concerned. Sam’s working the wires on the Volvo, but nothing’s happening.
“I’m helping you,” Sam explains. “We’re running away from home.”
"I am not," Cas says, dangerously, "running away.”
"Whatever," Sam says.
The Volvo doesn’t start.
"Fuck," Sam says.
He has Cas hunts for change in the backseats. They feed the meter. Cas looks critically at the peeling green paint, the rusting door handles. “I like your car, Sam,” Cas tells him. ”Is it new?”
“Uh,” says Sam. “Yes. It is new. It kind of sucks, though.”
"I think it has character," Cas says.
"I wish,” Sam says, frustrated, “that it had a working alternator.” His fingers twitch. He could fix it, if he had time. And parts. The right tools. There’s a garage full of tricked-out vintage automobiles that Dean keeps sneaking off to gloat over in secret, when he thinks Sam is busy elsewhere. The cars are impressive, Sam will allow, but at some point he’s gotten a taste for fixing up junkers. He’s fixed the Impala. He’s had his hands in her guts and he’s put her back together. It hasn’t been all Dean. He’s brought her back to life, too.
He goes with Cas back to the bus station and they stare at the maps, the routes, the prices. Cas counts through a wad of cash crumpled inside a plastic baggie.
"Where are we going?" Sam asks him.
Cas looks like he’s wondering the same thing. “Omaha,” Cas answers, after a minute. Sam cranes his head at the map. The next bus for Omaha doesn’t leave until the next day, eight a.m.
Then Cas says,”You can go back, Sam. I’ll be all right.”
"Nah," Sam says. Part of him still thinks that’s a really good idea. The rest of him doesn’t. It would be pretty awful to abandon Cas here, like all the running and hunting and the chasing after him that Sam has just gone through didn’t change things at all. "I want to stay. I could keep you company."
Cas stares hard at the map and doesn’t look at Sam. He mutters something, quietly. It sounds like, “Angels don’t need company.” But he also says, louder, “Thank you.”
The next bus for Lebanon isn’t for four more hours. There’s another bus that leaves at six a.m. Sam checks when Cas isn’t looking. Either way, they’ve got time to kill. They walk up and down the streets for a while before camping out in front of a drugstore. He gives Cas the rest of the quarters from the Volvo’s floorboards and leaves him frowning over a handful of quarters in front of the gumball machines.
He goes inside the drugstore and uses the bathroom. Cas is still at the gumball machines when he gets back out. As he watches, Cas carefully inserts quarter and quarter and garners a collection of mostly red gumballs. He comes back up and Cas puts a purple gumball in his hand.
“I don’t like purple,” Cas explains.
“Thanks,” Sam says.
They sit on a bench just outside the drugstore. Sam teaches Cas to blow bubbles. He doesn’t teach Cas to take the wad of chewed gum and stick it under the bench, but Cas does so anyway. Cas lists for him all the different types of chips he has learned to enjoy since he became human.
"Ranch Doritos," Cas says. "Garden salsa Sun Chips. Potato chips, thinly-sliced. Potato chips, crinkle-cut. Potato chips, sprinkled with sea salt. Potato chips, sun-baked. Cheeze-Its."
"Those aren’t chips," Sam says. "They come in a box, not a bag." He sticks his gum under the bench and instantly feels guilty.
Cas ignores him. ”Cheetos. Pringles. Pringles don’t come in a bag,” he adds, meaningfully. Sam turns his head and glances at him. Cas is looking kind of tired.
"Stay here," Sam says, and climbs to his feet. He goes back inside the drugstore and buys a chocolate bar, some water, a box of nutrient bars. He gets to the cash register and stops. He goes back and picks up a bag of Cheetos.
He goes back outside. Cas is waiting for him on the bench. Sam passes him the chocolate bar. He’s been wondering for a while now if Cas might be diabetic. Or something. He never eats anything but junk food. He should probably mention it to Dean. Cas nibbles at the chocolate like he’s not really interested in it, but the entire bar is gone the next time Sam glances over.
Cas ignores the nutrient bars. He opens up the Cheetos and passes the bag to Sam. They sit there on the bench, silently passing the Cheetos back and forth.
"When I ran away from home,” he says to Cas, “I lived off Doritos and Funyuns and Mr. Pibb and pizza.”
The Cheetos are gone. Cas goes back to picking at the candy bar wrapper. ”Why would you run away from home?” he asks.
"I don’t remember," Sam says. Cas can tell it’s bullshit. He frowns at Sam. Then he carefully crumples up the empty wrapper and puts it back in the plastic shopping bag. "Okay, lots of reasons," Sam tells him. "My dad. Dean. I was mad at them. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to make them feel bad."
He watches as Cas squares his shoulders. He thinks to himself that Cas doesn’t look any smaller as a human. Sam had sort of expected him to be smaller. He’s not, though. Sam still feels slightly in awe of him, sometimes. Like when Cas turns his head sharp and watchful, seeing something only he can comprehend, or when Cas does something that makes Dean go soft around the eyes, like wiping up spilled milk off the floor or carrying Dean’s duffel bag to the Impala or carefully folding fitted sheets up and setting them on the edges of everyone’s bed, Sam’s and Dean’s and Kevin’s, like he had last night.
"Is it common?" Cas asks. He sounds thoughtful. "Running away from home?"
"Well, yeah," Sam says. "It’s, like, up there with lemonade stands and red wagons. Every kid runs away from home once. It’s a classic childhood experience. It’s in pretty much every sitcom."
"Oh," Cas says. Then, "I am not a child."
"Yeah, Cas," Sam says. "I know. I wasn’t either."