"Sam! Did you have someone over last night?" Dean pulled the hotel stationary off of the refrigerator before grabbing a beer for himself. He normally wouldn't have paid much attention to the stationary taped to the fridge; Sam had a tendency to leave notes to himself all over if they stayed in one place for very long, but the handwriting grabbed his attention. It was large, elegant, and in cursive. He hadn't seen Sam write in cursive for years, but definitely knew that that was not his brother's hand.

"Be back soon." It was a simple note, not threatening or of any import, but an unknown like that did not sit well with him.

"Sam!"

Sam emerged out of the bathroom just as Dean opened his mouth to yell again. He was dressed in a pair of pajama pants, and his normally smoothed hair was messy and tangled. His eyes were bloodshot.

"You think you could make any more noise?" Sam asked, rubbing his forehead and reaching for the mini fridge handle, "I was up all night trying to find out what in the hell is happening here." Dean stared Sam down, hoping for some sort of tell. Something that would expose his little brother's "betrayal". Sam just gave him an odd look and reached for a water bottle and half a sandwich that would be his breakfast.

"You were here, alone. The entire night?" Dean probed before getting the box of cereal they'd bought the night before out of the kitchen's single cabinet. Sam was in mid-bite when he knitted his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. He can play dumb all he wants, Dean thought while pouring his lucky charms. (Neither had grown out of their childhood favorite.)

"Cas was here, but other than that there was no one else. Why?" Dean handed Sam the note and leaned back on the counter.

"Explain that." He urged. He wasn't trying to be a hardass or mother-hen his brother, but the kid had reamed Dean enough about not focusing on hunts that it only seemed right to give him a hard time for the same.

He laughed, "I'm not going to rag on you for taking some time off, but you've at least got to have the decency to admit it. Especially when your fling's leaving possibly ominous notes around the house." Dean waved the piece of paper, grinning wider than the Cheshire cat. There hadn't been a lot of joking recently. They'd just killed a monster that was responsible for killing 4 large families, and none of them could find it in themselves to crack jokes with any regularity. Some things were just a bit too heavy some days.

Sam rolled his eyes and grabbed the note after a brief struggle with Dean's other hand.

"I hate to disappoint, but I don't recognize the writing. And I already told you. I was busy last night."

Sam wouldn't lie about something so stupid as having someone at the hotel while he was gone. It didn't matter all that much as he was just trying to give Sam a hard time, but he couldn't help but read the note in a malevolent light. Be back soon.

"If it wasn't someone for you, then whose is this?"

Dean barely got the words out before Cas came through the door at a dead sprint. He was holding a milk jug, leaking furiously from a cut near the handle. Grocries fell all over the floor, oranges rolling under the table, and a 5 pound bag of sugar spilled half its contents.

"Cas." Dean caught a glass jar filled with what looked like apple butter seconds before it hit the ground.

"Sorry for the mess. Thought I'd get some food. All we had was cereal, jerky, and beer. I accidentally dropped the milk on the way in."

Realization hit Dean as soon as he saw the now milk-sodden note. Castiel hadn't been the note leaving type pre-fall, but he was human. Writing notes probably seemed pretty human to him now.

"Did you write this?"

Cas looked up from the milk jug whose stream had weakened considerably and nodded.

"Figured you'd like to know where I was."

Sam rolled his eyes and laughed before heading to the couch, "I'm going back to sleep."

Cas cocked his head to one side, a gesture that Dean was fond of, but that he had been seeing less and less. A downside to Cas's incredible learning curve.

"You've got the girliest handwriting I've ever seen." Dean commented. The confusion left Cas's face.

"Good penmanship is not a masculine or feminine quality. You could use some work on your handwriting as it is. I could barely read that incantation you copied from that rotting book in the bunker cellar. Much less anything you do in a hurry." Dean left Cas mumbling about penmanship and the importance of it while he surveyed the damage to the motel's parking lot. At least twenty dollars of groceries made a trail from the corner of the motel to their door. Dean smiled.

He may miss some of Castiel's mojo. Smiting, poofing, and the like, but he wouldn't trade that for anything. He liked his angel, whether he was an angel or not.