For @AllieSaysWhat, part of @cloudyjenn's Twitfic Exchange. Specific prompt by @LazyDaizy26. (Thanks! :D)

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“You hear that?” Dean asks.
 
“No,” Castiel says immediately. He doesn’t hear anything anymore, not like he used to. Now it’s car engine and wind, music playing low and his own heartbeat thudding soft in his ears.
 
Dean leans forward, switches off the radio. He is quiet and still, head tilted at an angle as he listens to something Castiel cannot hear. “Shit,” he says, and Castiel mimics his pose, trying to pick up on the problem.
 
Dean steps gently on the brakes and guides the car to the shoulder. They are on a deserted stretch of South Dakota two-lane, and Castiel glances around quickly, trying to determine what it is that they’re doing. He’s nervous, these days. He is frighteningly aware of his own mortality, of the thin web of flesh and muscle and bone and cartilage that keeps him, impossibly, alive.

"Get out," Dean grunts, swinging open his own door. Castiel fumbles with the handle, then stretches his legs as he steps out of the car. Something in his back pops, the whip-crack of half a dozen vertebrae shifting. He breathes out a surprised sigh and stands.

They are an hour from Bobby's, maxing out their allowed purchases of ammo at every Wal-Mart within a forty-mile radius. It's the last gasp of Team Free Will. Tomorrow they will drain two demons in empty suits and head for Detroit, where they will offer up Sam Winchester as their sacrificial lamb. But today he has an ID in his wallet that shows Jimmy Novak's face next to the name <i>Arlo Reynolds</i>. Today he is running errands with Dean, desperate to escape that house, where Bobby sharpens his knives obsessively and Sam worries at his lips until they bleed.

"Flat," Dean grumbles, kicking the front tire on Castiel's side of the car. "Shit, look at that. Big hole right in it. Musta driven over something in the parking lot last time."

Castiel stands stiffly to the side while Dean runs a hand over the lower half of his face. "Should we call Bobby?" he asks, hand already slipping to his pocket.

Dean looks over at him. "What? Nah. Pop the trunk, we got a spare back there under the rest of the stuff."

When he hefts the tire over to Dean, he feels the pull of the scar tissue across his chest, knotted into the ghost of a sigil. When he'd been in that coma, everybody had thought he'd been the victim of some sort of satanic ritual--that his body had been dumped off a pier, bloodied and disfigured. When he woke up, it was easiest to simply create a story that matched these assumptions. That is what humans do, he'd been told once: lie.

A few minutes later Castiel is crouched by Dean's side, catching lugnuts. Dean grunts as one sticks, and Castiel watches, fascinated, as all the muscles in his back and shoulders flex with the strain. Then the nut gives, groans just a bit counterclockwise, and it's off.

"You gotta know how to do this, man," Dean says, swiping the back of one hand over his eyes. "I don't want you getting stuck somewhere."

Castiel nods. He watches closely, tries to memorize what Dean is doing. He is already stuck somewhere, but he understands the sentiment.

"We're not gonna..." Dean starts, hesitantly. He's facing away, checking the jack nervously. "Not gonna just, y'know, abandon you."

Castiel blinks slowly, his grip on the wrench Dean had handed him tightening.

"I was an asshole," Dean says, tugging the tire off, "but you gotta believe that I never wanted this to happen. And not just because an angel for a copilot is more useful than just another guy. I never wanted you to have to, jesus I don't know, <i>sacrifice</i> so goddamn much. But it's a house specialty, I guess."

He reaches around Castiel for the spare, carefully not looking at him. As if the only way he can do this is by pretending to be alone.

"So what I'm trying to say is," he continues, shoving the new tire into place, "I'm not gonna just, like, leave you to figure this stuff out on your own. I'm not gonna leave you again, man. Not if you still want me around. And I'm gonna help, if you'll let me, best I know how."

Castiel hands the lugnuts back one by one, watching Dean tighten them into place. "Thank you," he says, even if it feels inadequate.

"Don't mention it," Dean replies, and Castiel gets the feeling he means that.

Five minutes later they're back on the road, the miles slipping away under three decent tires and one bald spare. It isn't pretty, but it gets the job done.

"There," Dean says, "you hear the difference now?"

Castiel still cannot distinguish the exact sound of good tire vesus bad one, but that isn't what he means anyhow when he replies, "Yes, I do."

Dean looks at him out of the corner of his eye and smiles.

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