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Dean hates everything.
That’s not true. His bed’s still comfy as anything, and it’s really nice to wake up in the cradle of someone else’s body; he only got that a few other times in his life, and between the hiding it from Dad, and the way things with Cassie and Lisa went downhill, too many of those memories have gone sour. Cas isn’t making him forget, but he’s smoothing over things day by day, like long brush strokes on a bare wall.
But Dean’s been clogged up for a couple of days now, muffling his wet coughs with the back of his hand. As much as he’s tried to hide it, he gave in to carrying a package of tissues into his room last night. In the light of day – once he has to grind his fists into his eyes to get the crusts out, Christ – the box is striped bright blue and yellow, and he has to wince back from it. Too friggin’ cheery for this goddamn cold.
“Hey,” he gets out when he feels Castiel shifting at his back. God, he doesn’t even recognize his own voice, stuffed with snot, probably. “I feel like shit.”
“I could tell,” Cas says in response, and Dean’s not minding this whole no sex thing as much as he thought he would with anyone, but the truth is if they’re gonna stick to it Cas should just never speak in the mornings. His voice is gravel on a dirt road and honey on his tongue all at once. The wriggles against Dean don’t help much, either. “You’re not as good at hiding these things as you think.”
Dean buries his face in his pillow, pulling back quick once he realizes how utterly gross that is. “You probably shouldn’t be here with my snotty ass,” he grumbles, then hates that he said it when the line of warmth at his back moves away too quickly. “I mean – you could get sick too,” he sputters out. “I don’t – I want you here, okay.”
He lets his eyes close. More sleep sounds so good right now, anything where he can just forget about the burning in his throat and his arms and legs weighing a couple of thousand pounds each. “Don’t forget that.” He’s sleepy enough that the words leave his mouth with no resistance.
“I wouldn’t,” Cas tells him in return. Dean’s eyes are still closed, the foam curving its way around his body; Castiel’s at the door, not on the bed, but Dean finds himself smiling anyway. It’s his last thought before sleep swallows him up again, mercifully, the darkness of it wiping the brightness of the room out of his eyeballs.
Dean plods out of bed a few hours later, not bothering to comb his hair or change his shirt. He’s gonna look as gross as he feels, dammit. (And it’s totally not kind of awesome that Cas’ eyes still rake over Dean’s shoulders and chest when he first sees him.)
Sam’s gone on his first solo deal since the failed third trial. It’s not even a hunt, just checking out some old files and books Jody Mills found. Crowley’s still nowhere to be found, but they figure it’s better to keep in touch with their contacts, however few, now.
He’d been twitchy the whole week beforehand; when Sam’s nervous, it’s always been obvious, his ridiculously oversized body not carrying nerves well. “It’s just a few hours down the road,” Dean had told him, more than once. “We know you’re not abandoning us.”
Trust was an unfamiliar language, still. At least it was out there, and they were trying to work on it.
With Sam gone, Dean, Cas, and Kevin haven’t found much to do. They talk with Charlie every couple of days, because she’s got the techno know-how to set up a system to look for any rogue angels, but there’s been nothing. None of them are sure whether they’re relieved or more freaked out than ever.
Dean’s getting himself used to relaxing, funnily enough. Settling in to settle in. Every time he leans back in one of the big plush chairs they’ve bought, every time he eats until the fullness of it settles in his stomach, every time he wakes up warm with Castiel and his bed holding him, he fights against the jolt that takes hold in his guts and spine alike.
He can sleep six hours now. It’s something.
“Kevin’s in his room, asleep,” Cas tells him, moving toward the fridge. Kevin’s had bizarre hours as long as they’ve known him. He’d eat breakfast sausage at 9 PM and spent his nights in the bunker’s library; they’d find him in the mornings collapsed across the desk. Says it’s something with being used to it from SAT prep and mountains of AP homework. It’s a world Dean never knew, but the fucked-up hours, sure, he can meet him halfway on that.
Cas pulls out cold cuts and tosses them with a minimum of care against the countertop, where they fall with a slap. He takes out the huge head of lettuce they’d picked up earlier the week despite Dean’s protests, and the enormous loaf of Texas toast Dean had insisted on buying to make up for the friggin’ veggies. His movements are sharp, jerky, and Dean always wants to ask exactly how used he is to his entirely human skin, even after months have passed.
Feed a cold, starve a fever. Dean knows it from when Sammy used to get sick, shoveling an extra portion of Spaghetti-O’s on Sam’s plate, tipping water into his mouth when his forehead went hot. “You makin’ lunch?” he asks, biting back a laugh.
“Yes.” Some of Cas’ clothes are still Dean and Sam’s; those hang loose on him, too long or stretched at the shoulders. But most of them, at this point, are his own, and Cas had been stuck between sizes so he tended to go for the smaller size. His jeans strain hard against the backs of his thighs, and his shirt rides up as his hands work to put the sandwich together.
Cas was made for killing, and fashioned into it the same way Dean was. His hands knew blades and figured out guns almost frighteningly quickly. The guy can still kick all kinds of ass on a hunt. But now he spends his days brushing his thumbs over Dean’s cheekbones, and squeezing peppers when the farmers’ market is in town.
Dean’s glad a fit of coughing overtakes him, because shit like this makes him feel utterly helpless and too damn lost.
When he’s done hacking up a friggin’ lung, he finds himself staring down at a massive sandwich. He’s practically gonna have to unhinge his jaw to swallow the thing down. And – of course Cas was making it for him. He keeps staring, like if he keeps looking the perfect way to say thanks, but no thanks, because you don’t have to do this, all of this, for someone like me will show up on the goddamn bread.
“You are aware that if I was ill, you’d certainly be thoroughly ridiculous about it,” Cas points out, brow deeply furrowed even as a smile threatens to crack across his face.
“That’s not the same thing.” All the shit Cas had been through, he deserved a day – or maybe the next couple of millennia – off. Still, Dean finds himself hoisting the sandwich up with both hands, and swallowing a huge bite.
It’s just a sandwich, and he could go down to the diner in the nearby town and get something like this. Maybe they’d even deep-fry it there. But goddamn, it’s good, and even better when he’s got Cas and his smug little smile and his too-tight t-shirt right in his peripheral vision.
Dean’s practically a snot factory, but the next few hours are actually pretty awesome. He calls Sam, who actually found some useful lore on demons and djinn alike, then works to shelve some books in the library with Cas. Cas smiles when he all but pushes him away from the most dust-covered books, telling him it’ll only exacerbate – he would use words like that, of course – his cold. Dean ends up putting away a few of those books, anyway, sniffling through it and trying not to get too distracted by Cas’ stupid tight jeans and his awful thighs.
Then, his limbs exhausted by too much movement and his head thick like cement with all the dust floating around – not that he’s telling Cas he was right – he promptly collapses on the sofa in the living room. It’s not his bed, nothing is, but the cushions are outright squishy, and he’s fallen asleep on it after Star Trek marathons (and, okay, after a couple of episodes of Dr. Sexy too – he still wasn’t caught up, though, and that sucked).
When he wakes up, it’s dark, a lamp on a side table by the sofa the only source of light. His mind’s only working at half-speed, but God, he needs to piss; he stumbles toward the bathroom, hands dragging against the wall to guide his way there in the darkness.
Dean’s hands smack the tiled wall of the bathroom, too, once he’s pushed the door open, half-blindly searching for the light. That’s when he realizes the light’s already on, because someone else is in the bathroom with him.
It takes another minute for him to catch up to what he’s seeing: Cas, with his dick in his hand.
It’s gotta be Dean’s compromised immune system that makes him think, right after, that it’s a nice dick, pink against his hand and so wet as he leaks out against his fingers. Those hands, again, goddamn it.
“Uh,” Dean sputters, intelligently, giving his brain a few beats to start working again. “Sorry, I – wasn’t really expecting to find you in here too –”
“And I wasn’t expecting you to come in here,” Cas says, fumbling his cock back into his pajama pants. The curve of it’s still hard against the fabric. And inviting as anything, fuck.
The two of them – they stand there in the bathroom goggling at each other. They’ve never lost that ridiculous ability to stare at each other, but this look is a new and old one at once, the guarded look when they’re not sure what the next move could be.
Dean breaks the silence, forcing how strange his voice sounds both sick and echoing off the walls of the bathroom out of his head. “Taking it slow’s been great – really,” he adds, chuckling because he still can’t believe it himself. “But if you want to do anything else, and I wasn’t –”
“Sick,” Castiel interrupts. He’s definitely smiling now, the fucker.
“Yeah.” It’s probably the most mature discussion he’s ever had about his sex life, and he’s had it wearing worn slippers and thick socks with his nose running. “Alright, glad we –”
“Yes.”
Dean shakes his head, and brushes past Cas to leave the bathroom. There’s another one downstairs, anyway. But he’s grinning too, now, and that smile’s still on Cas’ face, and the whole thing is ridiculous and somehow entirely awesome among all the crazy.
From what Dean could tell, Cas’ strokes were harder than Dean uses on himself. Dean’s fucking salivating for that hand on him, or to teach Cas to take it a little slower sometimes. He wants their hands together when they do that.
Together has a lot more punch now, and even though it feels like his lungs and throat are stuffed with cement and he still has to piss, a smile works its way across his face.
It’s been hard to get to sleep when he’s sick, but once he gets back to his own room and he’s pulled the sheets over his body, he’s lost to it almost immediately, and it’s bliss.
The next morning, when Dean wakes up, he – wakes up. There’s no crust on his eyes, and it doesn’t feel like anybody’s sitting on his chest any more. He sweeps the damn tissue box right off the side table, just because he can. His yawn sounds big, lusty, and the walk to the kitchen’s fucking great when it doesn’t feel like the iron dumbells from the old gym downstairs are strapped to his legs any more.
There’s a full house, relatively speaking. Sam’s back, talking with Cas and Kevin about the runes he’d been investigating with Jody. “You look better than you sounded on the phone,” Sam says, smiling.
“I’m feeling better,” Dean tells him. He tries not to aim a grin of his own in Cas’ direction. “A lot.”
“Great, you can help us cook now, but try this first.” Sam pushes a big bowl of bright red soup in his direction. “We all helped.” Sam’s got a funny look on his face, too, and Dean’s pretty sure he gets all the implications that are right there.
Dean’s first instinct is to protest, of course. It’s right there on his tongue, the I don’t need this, I’m feeling better, the need to push it right back on all of them and go to the stove and start cooking himself. Sam must have had a long drive and not much sleep, after all, and the circles under his eyes were starting to go plum-colored again. Kevin hadn’t stopped looking exhausted since he landed on Garth’s houseboat, and Cas was ground down by so much human bullshit.
But this is for him, and Dean’s trying to understand that now. He thinks he’s got as good a chance as any here in the bunker.
As it turns out, the soup tastes full and rich in his mouth, and sharper than he was expecting. It’s delicious, and he eats the whole thing. Tomorrow a host of demons that have been in hiding this whole time might come swarming, and maybe the cold he caught is only taking a break, but right now, everything seems pretty awesome.