Meg took a sip of her own coffee, letting it burn the roof of her mouth and the tip of her tongue. Having never bothered with it before, it was something of a new experience for her. She'd once read a passage in a book describe it as being "as black as midnight and as sweet as sin." The image had stuck with her, and made her smile even now. With that in mind, she had loaded down her small mug with enough sugar for the liquid to almost reach its saturation point, and she drank from it a bit too quickly. Before long her entire mouth stung from the scalding heat, but she didn't mind. The feeling was almost better than the drink itself.
She could see his concern when she mentioned who had helped her, but brushed it off. She hadn't told the kid what she was, or what he had been, or anything of real import. She'd expected more questions than she'd gotten, but he'd seemed to take her reluctance to speak in stride. She had a feeling she might like the kid, if she ever got around to actually liking people. Propping her feet up on the chair next to her, she grabbed a magazine she'd left on the corner of the table and began thumbing through it, casting furtive glances at Castiel as he ate. She wanted to lie to herself. She wanted to pretend that she only cared because he needed food to survive now and she wanted to make sure he was getting it, but it wasn't the truth. She wanted him to look at her and smile, to make her feel useful again. In her long existence, she'd only felt really appreciated by four people. Two were dead now, one as trapped in the pit, presumably forever, and the other sat across from her, eating eggs and bacon and drinking coffee, as though there were nothing out of the ordinary in sharing his morning routine with her. When he did smile, that small, almost imperceptible smile, it took a great deal of will power not to return it, and to force her eyes back onto her magazine.
As it usually did, the want...no...the need for his validation rankled, and she rolled her shoulders in an unconsciously defensive way.
"Don't get used to this Donna Reed schtick," she said, shooting for nonchalance as her eyes scanned the same line of text in front of her over and over again without really taking it in. "I won't always be here to hold your hand, you know." She flipped a page in her magazine with a little more force than was strictly necessary, wondering if he'd take her comment literally. She sighed. He probably would.