Dean leans back in his seat to look at the angel, and there he is. He almost can't believe it; snoring softly, even, though with Castiel's general demeanour he's surprised he doesn't sleep completely silently, board-straight, eyes open, like a horse.

Instead he's curled like a child in the folds of his coat, hugging himself, one cheek slurred against the impala's window, his dark lashes soft against his face.

Dean turns back to the road but he can still see him in the driver's mirror; a fucking angel, of all things, asleep in the back of the impala like it's nothing. This car has seen everything; Dean's childhood, for one, but in amongst that there have been captured demons in the back seat, werewolves on the hood, vampires shoved against the windows, weapons in the back, holy water in the cup-holders, salt in the glove box.

He smiles - and now an angel, an angel who sleeps, who eats burgers, who said to him yesterday, completely straight-faced, "I just don't see the connection between a box of what is essentially just trans-fats and happiness, Dean." and had kept Dean laughing for a good few hours on that alone.

Sam is in the passenger seat, sleeping too, so he's turned his tape player off and is listening to the car instead, feeling her move. It's the apocalypse; it shouldn't be funny, really, nothing should, and he especially shouldn't be glad to be here, of all places, because tomorrow they could all be dead, fucking angel included, but -

There's just -

There are so few moments in Dean's life when there is silence. A form of peace, any kind of peace, be it even as temporary as this lull, where the only sounds he can hear are the angel gently snoring, and the snuffling of his brother as he dreams.

He's still smiling when he pulls in to the first motel they hit, when he gets out of the car to go make the reservation, when Sam wakes with a snort and mumbles blearily, "Are we here?", voice clouded by sleep. He swipes at his face, trying to brush the grogginess away, and stops Dean when he tries to get out of the car. "I'll do it. You - sort him out." he slurs tiredly, and Dean nods, laughing a little when he looks back into the backseat and sees Cas still there, still pressed against the window, looking so much younger than his millions of years. He only realises he's let Sam go alone - that he trusts him enough to go somewhere unaccompanied, that he feels no twinge of unease about it - when his brother has already left the parking lot.

He gets out of the car, taking care to close his door quietly, and opens the door that Castiel is leaning against, slowly, catching him on his shoulder when Cas nearly falls out onto the floor. He's tired; which makes sense, because Dean doesn't think he's ever slept before.

"Hey." he says quietly, and Cas, on his shoulder, opens his eyes very slowly, turns them up to meet Dean's, bright blue through his dark lashes. He's unfocused, lazy, his eyes flickering shut after a few seconds, like he's been looking too long at the sun. Dean laughs at him, then shrugs - it's not far to the motel, and this kid - who really couldn't be further from a kid, but looking at him Dean can think nothing else - has earned a rest, to say the least. They all have.

He puts one hand under Castiel's armpit and pulls him, gently, the angel staggering on legs like a newborn calf, out of the car. Castiel mumbles something like "I should go," and Dean just laughs, the question of 'how?' not needing to be asked. He puts one of Castiel's arms over his shoulder and lifts him to stand, the angel still half-asleep, head lolling forward. Dean closes the door to the impala with his foot and looks over to the mouth of the parking lot, where Sam is standing there waving vaguely, the keys to a room in his raised hand. Dean locks the car, fumbling against the weight on his shoulder, almost falling over as he stoops to turn the key in the car door whilst trying not to drop him. He manages it, though, and starts his weary trek across the tarmac towards Sam.

He can hardly imagine Cas as an angel, sometimes; he tries, but can never get away from his human face, those eyes, which are Jimmy's, he knows, but which hold the wisdom of the angels. They're appropriate, though maybe the coat and the tie are a little much - he can't imagine Castiel as anything else but this great thing inside a tiny capsule, can't imagine him with lion's heads or masks or talons, or anything out of myth - he can, however, imagine his wings. Right now he thinks they could be folded against his back; untouchable, unreal to the human eye, but there, still, real wings, like a giant bird, with blood pulsing through them, with brown feathers like an eagle or a hawk, powerful. Wings so huge they could blot out the sun, could encapsulate the car in their span, could cover Dean and Sam entirely.

Cas is saying things to him that he doesn't understand, the syllables unfamiliar to him; it takes a second before he realises he's fallen asleep again, that he must be murmuring dreamily in his mother tongue, perhaps relaying the secrets of the universe against Dean's shoulder in Enochian, though they'll never really know.

He gets to Sam, half-dragging Cas, who puts one foot in front of the other but can apparently do little else. "Did it go okay?" he asks, voice hushed, though he knows that nothing could wake the creature on his shoulder now. Sam is grinning at them both as he says "Yeah. Fine.", a little mocking, a little pleased. Both of them are running on the strange, unnatural energy that goes with knowing something huge, something terrible is going to happen. Dean finds himself - and it's strange - unworried. Tomorrow he'll wake - in fact, perhaps tonight he won't even sleep - and it will hit him. The end of the world. Rivers of blood, fire raining down from above, angels and demons and humans pitted against one another, waging war on fate itself, and at the centre of it will be the Winchesters, again - and Bobby, and this one, lonely, waning angel.

"He's cute like that." Sam says, his voice still thick from sleeping the whole journey up here, and Dean snorts in surprise as he follows him to the room.

"Yeah, sure. When he's not threatening to send me back to hell, or exorcising demons just by touching them. Cute." Sam looks at him like he always does when he thinks Dean is being a little bit mean, and they reach the room's door - it's a two-bed room but he can take the couch, and both of them probably won't sleep much, anyway.

Dean goes in first, Sam letting him pass awkwardly through the doorframe sideways, the angel's weight soft against his arm until he gets to the bed and lays him down. Castiel curls up immediately; wraps the coat around himself and buries his face in his neck until he's just a mud-coloured shape with tufts of black hair and incredibly sensible shoes, making an indent on the bed.

Dean chuckles at the ridiculousness of it; Castiel starts snoring again; but he reaches over and touches the side of the angel's face; brushes back some of the hair there, lets his thumb linger on the whorls of his ear. He looks back at Sam, hand still on Castiel, and both of them grimace, caught between humour and loss.

It might be the end tomorrow, but there's a mini bar, there's his brother, there's this little weirdo in the coat who keeps trying to keep them safe.

For a few hours, that can be enough.