Author's Note: It's not weird at all to be inspired by captcha codes, right? Well, that's where this came from. One simple word, "mother," and this sprang into my mind. I don't own Supernatural, but I hope you like it.

Dean slouched in the driver's seat of the Impala, beer bottle dangling loosely in his fingers. The car was quiet and empty as he sat parked in the shadows, keeping an eye on a house across the street.

A soft whoosh of air alerted him to the fact that the car was no longer empty.

"Hello, Dean."

"Hey, Cas," he replied, and took a swig from his bottle.

"Have there been any changes?" Castiel inquired, staring straight ahead at the street. Dean rolled his eyes and looked over.

"Man, what d'you think? I've been watching a freakin' house for three hours. If something had happened, you guys would know." He paused to take another mouthful of beer. "And if you were so curious, why didn't you or Sam just, I don't know, call or whatever?"

Castiel turned his head towards Dean, but his eyes flickered away from his face. "I was... restless," he admitted. "The hotel room is confining."

"And you think stakeout duty was gonna be more interesting?" Dean snorted. "Man, you have no idea. I've had, like, I don't know how many bottles of beer because there is seriously nothing going on. At all."

Castiel frowned slightly. "If the mother is truly in danger, should you be drinking? Should something occur..." Dean laughed, probably harder than he should have, and waved a hand in dismissal.

"I really, really doubt anything's gonna happen tonight, Cas. It wouldn't fit with the pattern. You read the section in Dad's journal, right? It won't attack tonight."

Castiel's forehead furrowed even more. "Then why are you..."

"Casing the joint? 'Cause Sam's paranoid, that's why." Dean stared into his bottle, avoiding Castiel's gaze. "And 'cause it'd suck if the mom died just 'cause we were wrong. That's all."

Although Dean couldn't see it, Castiel's face softened as he looked at him. "I understand, Dean." He paused. "Would you...do you mind if I stay and keep watch with you?" Dean snorted again and rolled his head over to his shoulder to look at Castiel sideways.

"Sure, man, do what makes you happy. Want a beer?" The angel shook his head silently. Dean took another sip and stared at Castiel thoughtfully. When suddenly, completely out of the blue—

"Cas, d'you have a mother?"

The angel stared at him, utterly perplexed.

"I beg your pardon, Dean?"

"You know. A mom. Do you have one? I mean, you call God your father or whatever, but if you have a dad, you've gotta have a mom, right?" He stopped, his rather-fuzzy brain still processing this new concept. "Or do angels not work like that? Does God just go, okay there's gonna be an angel now right over there, and poof, there's an angel?" Castiel continued staring. Dean made a derogatory noise in his throat and flopped back against the headrest. "I don't know, man. I was just wondering."

Castiel looked down at his hands thoughtfully. "I'm not sure, Dean. Angels...we aren't born like humans are, by the combination of genetic material. God—well, He makes us." He made a frustrated noise, halfway between a hiss and a sigh. "There isn't an equivalent human word for it." His face took on a look of intense concentration, as if he was trying very hard to think of the closest word.

Dean hurried to say, "Cas, I get it, I was just curious. You don't have—"

"Shapes us," Castiel interrupted. "Forms us. That's the closest I can get. He—do you know how some humans say you are made of stardust? Because all matter in the universe is recycled, according to your scientists?"

Dean blinked a couple of times at this apparent non-sequitur. "Uh. Yeah? I guess? I mean, I've heard that before. Somewhere. Probably Sam. He likes that sort of stuff."

"They are partially correct, in a rather strange way," Castiel admitted, fiddling with the seam of his tie. "But if one applied the same definition to angels, it would be more correct. Angels... we are born, made, shaped, from starstuff." His expression grew distant as he remembered something far beyond the human field of knowledge, and for a brief second, Dean could swear there was an actual goddamn glow in his eyes.

He hated to interrupt the angel's reverie, but he absolutely had to ask. "Okay, wait, hold up. You're saying—what you're saying here is that angels are made of stars? Are you—you're pulling my leg, right?" Castiel's eyes snapped back into focus and he turned his head with a sharp movement to look back at Dean.

"No," he said slowly. "I am not... pulling your leg. Does that mean you are asking if I am telling untruths?" Dean only nodded in reply. "We are made from stars, Dean," he murmured quietly, and looked up, and out, through the windshield into the blackness of the sky above their heads. His eyes closed, and if he had been anyone else, Dean wouldn't have been ashamed to call his expression downright angelic.

"The Lord forms us from stars, when he feels it is time," he whispered into the stillness. His hands came up from his lap, moving in such a way that Dean felt he could very nearly see something invisible, being lovingly shaped between his fingers, as if he was trying to recreate what he saw in his mind. "I was very privileged to have been at the Throne the day the Lord created Balthazar," Castiel said, and the corner of his mouth twitched as if it was trying to hold back a smile. "When the moment comes for an angel to be... born, or made, He takes the matter from the heart of a star and... crafts it, molds it, in His hands, to take on the shape of the angel He sees."

A smile unlike anything he'd seen before swept across the angel's face, and Dean couldn't help but stare. Fucking hell, he was radiant. Sitting there with his eyes closed and his teeth gleaming in the darkness as he recalled a moment that no human words could truly describe, and god, that smile. Well, it just wasn't fair, and that was that.

Castiel let out a rush of breath as he opened his eyes and turned to look at Dean, and good lord but that was even worse (or better, but he wasn't exactly sure). That unearthly glow was back in his eyes, and if Dean had been paying just a little more attention to his surroundings, he would have noticed that the interior of the Impala was the slightest bit brighter. "Oh, Dean," breathed Castiel, and it was all he could do not to drop his beer right then and there. "You can't imagine it. There... there is nothing like that moment, nothing at all. When He holds the stars in His hands and He begins to shape them, to allow the angel He sees to be formed, and the angel begins to, begins to be..." He trailed off and shook his head, his lips tightening in frustration at his inability to string the correct words together.

Eventually, he simply said, "It is glory."

Dean didn't even know how to respond to that. He just stared at the angel sitting in his passenger seat, and marveled.

The pair sat in silence for a few minutes, when Castiel lifted his head again and looked at Dean. "To answer your question, I do not know if I have a mother. Perhaps the closest thing I have to a mother is... well, the universe itself." Dean shifted in the driver's seat, plunking his empty beer bottle down between his legs. He sat there for a moment, trying to process what he'd just been told. In the end, he chewed his lip and decided he only had one very important question.

"So if the universe's your mom, does that mean I'm in your mom right now?"

Castiel let out a choked snort of horror and astonishment. "Dean," he said, shocked, and then it was all they could do to sit up straight for laughing.

As he rocked backwards from the force of his laughter, Dean looked over at the passenger seat. Castiel was hunched over and clutching his stomach because he was laughing so hard there were actual tears welling in the corner of his eyes. He grinned with all his might as his eyes drank in the image of the angel sitting next to him, his angel, with a heart made of stars, and God could very well damn him for it, but Dean knew he wouldn't trade this for anything in the world.