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Cas showed up at the Men of Letters bunker one morning looking like one of those scraggly-bearded douchebags that gets themselves dropped into the wilderness for a week of survival and reality TV fame.
It had been three months since the sky dropped an assload of confused, frightened, pissed off angels into the world, since Dean stopped Sam from closing the Gates of Hell. That was fun, by the way. It left Sam feeling perpetually under the weather, plus they were saddled with a half-cured, all-dick Crowley who'd been almost immediately dethroned as the King of Hell by Abaddon. Now he's more like Hell's buttbuddy, so, yeah. Fun.
It was Sam more than Dean that offered Cas that whole 'mi casa es su casa' welcome mat thing, though, obviously, Dean wasn't going to turn him away. The guy took three months to get there. If he wanted to be there, he would've got there sooner.
That is Dean's logic, anyway, and it's that line of reasoning that has him keeping Cas at arm's length, because Cas in the bunker? A temporary thing. Cas is going to put some calcium in his bones and when he isn't such a pathetic sight, he's going to bail. Like he always does.
Except, he's around constantly now, hovering over both Sam and Dean in the library while they try to figure out a way to finish what they started with the trials without getting either of them killed. He's hogging up the showers in a way Dean really doesn't want to think about, but, come on, there's really only one reason a guy ever spends thirty minutes being voluntarily waterboarded.
Cas, as it turns out, is unabashedly uncaring about the state of his junk. The guy pops the weirdest boners, and the only thing worse than their frequency is Cas' non-attention to them, like he shouldn't be required to pay any more mind to what's happening down below than if he had the hiccups.
There were an awkward few breakfasts where Cas showed up with morning wood and Dean was expected to eat in peace when he couldn't even look up from his damn plate without knowing the size and shape of what Cas was packing.
But it's two weeks later and Cas is still there, marginally more aware that, even though he's in a household of men, on-the-verge-of-puberty Kevin Tran included, that doesn't give him a free pass to subject the rest of them to his every stiffy. No one else walks around with their pants tented, right? Because that's private, shameful business.
("Don't say--" Sam had been there for Dean's 'no more public boners, Cas!' conversation. He'd frowned at Dean with real disappointment, then sighed, "You shouldn't feel ashamed, Cas."
"But we don't want to see it," Dean had repeated, emphatically so.
"But," Sam had countered, "it's perfectly natural."
"This the 'everyone poops' talk?" Dean wanted to know. "'Cause I'm out."
"I'm just saying, don't make it so Cas thinks he's doing something wrong. You're going to psychologically damage the guy."
"Psychologically damage--what are you, Oprah? Cas, you know what I mean, right? Any time little-Cas wants attention, take care of it the same way the rest of us do. Behind closed doors where we can pretend we're not massaging the snake."
"Don't--call it that, god, Dean."
"What? Cas gets it."
"Yeah, 'cause he's like a lost baby duck that's imprinted on the world's most gross--"
"Hey!"
"'Massage the snake,'" Sam repeated in a deep, gravelly voice, then, "that's your advice?"
"Better than yours! 'Your body is a temple. Let your wang fly free.'"
"I never said that!" Sam sputtered.
Then Cas had finally said, "I'll tend to my body's urges. In private," he'd added after Dean facially coached him to. "Thank you."
So, yeah. Dean had parented the crap out of that.)
There's a loud thump from the kitchen, followed by the crashing of dishes, then some dark mutterings that don't sound English at all.
Dean pokes his head into the room. "Everything okay?"
Cas is standing in the middle of spilt cereal. The soggy stuff is fanned out around him, some of the splatterings making it as far as the work table on the other side of the room. The milk, at least, is being soaked up by Cas' socks.
"I miscalculated," Cas says. It's more like an accusation aimed at the toppled over bowl.
"Yeah, I got that." Cas heaves out a sigh, one of his woe-is-poor-human-me kind, and steps out of the mess. He almost slips when he puts his foot back down, but catches himself at the last second, which has Dean biting back a laugh. "How are you so bad at this?" he teases, moving to help out.
Cas yanks away from Dean's balancing hold and almost faceplants again. Dean straight up laughs that time and Cas scowls. "Of course you find humor at my expense."
"Dude, you're ice-skating spilled milk. So, yeah. You suck at this," he notes, pulling Cas from the accident zone.
"It's difficult," Cas defends. He lets himself be manhandled to a dry area, where Dean gestures for him to toe off his wet socks. Cas ignores it like he ignores everything else Dean asks him to do that he doesn't understand the purpose of, so Dean sighs and crouches down to do it himself.
Kevin comes in when Dean's working on the second foot, and the way he's hunched in front of Cas' crotch and how Cas has his hands steadied on Dean's shoulders, well, let's just say Kevin's dainty yelp makes sense.
"Eyes," Kevin's whining, a hand slapped over his face as he fumbles his way back out of the room, "scorched retinas, oh god. Please let me be blind, please let me be blind--"
"I'm helping him take his socks off!" Dean shouts by way of excuse.
He hears Kevin make a grossed out groaning noise and then, "They gave it a creepy euphemism, why? Why me? Ow," he says, bumping into something on his hasty retreat.
Dean looks up at Cas with a smirk, but Cas is furrowing his brow at him in that 'does not compute' way that makes him look like a broken robot. And, oh, Dean's still eye-level with the guy's junk, no wonder. He gets up quick, which makes Cas squint at him even more, which in turn makes Dean feel like he has to defend his life choices.
"Stop with the face," Dean hisses at him.
Cas quirks his head and opens his mouth to say something, but Sam comes in pointing a finger behind him.
"Um, I think you guys scarred Kevin. Again."
So, three days ago Kevin had caught them in another compromising position, but Dean had just been lined up behind Cas teaching him how to hustle at pool. It's not Dean's fault Cas requires hands-on training or that Kevin is a prude with a dirty mind.
"I miscalculated," Cas says again for Sam's benefit, and Sam eyeballs the mess on the floor. Then his eyebrows lift to his hairline and his gaze sneaks over to Dean real cheekily.
"Don't wanna know," he says quick, the implication there being Dean and Cas were, what? Screwing around together?
"Not like that," Dean insists, and Sam smiles a smile that says 'yeah, maybe not, but you wish' and Cas is staring at Dean like he went around the wrong conversational bend. Dean becomes suddenly aware he's holding one of Cas' socks, and Sam notices at the same time. "Shut up," he defends himself with.
Sam holds his hands out innocently. Dean stalks off. Still carrying Cas' sock, son of a bitch.
He hurls it into the room behind him and Sam laughs.
&
Another day, another dropped meal, only this time it's a sandwich that clatters to the floor. The plate breaks too.
Dean eyes Cas from his spot at the table in the library, where Cas was heading to join him.
"Man, what's gotten into you?" he asks, already up to help.
Cas stands there and looks confused. "I don't know."
Something about the way he says it makes Dean look up, concerned. "Cas, you okay?"
Cas shoots a freaked out look at Dean, then grabs his stomach and curls in on himself, and it's only because Dean raised Sam, the pukiest kid ever, that he even thinks to reach for a waste basket.
Dean barely has time to hold it in front of Cas before Cas starts dry heaving, and then he's full on vomiting.
&
They worry first about angel doings and once-dormant plagues and monster illnesses from cursed objects around the bunker, but Sam WebMD's Cas' symptoms and diagnoses him with: the flu.
So, of course, Cas takes it like Death itself is at his heels, like he's on the verge of croaking.
"Dean," Cas moans at him from his bed, across the hall from Dean's own room. He's sweaty and clammy and shirtless, tangled in his sheets, in the throes of sickness-induced delirium.
Dean had smiled over Cas' mutterings at first, only because they were so hilariously random. The guy was obsessed with fish, who knew. Then Sam had put his hand on Cas' forehead and glowered at Dean. "He has a fever. His brain's pretty much frying right now."
Which shut Dean up, and now he's mother henning Cas, hunkered down in a beat up chair he pulled to the side of Cas' bed. The projectile vomiting phase ended more than a few hours ago, but any time Cas moans and rolls around, Dean's stomach pitches upwards, anticipating another round of 'try not to get spewed on.' There are just some bodily fluids that aren't meant to be shared between two people, okay.
Cas flops onto his back and groans, "Dean," a second time.
"I'm right here."
Cas lifts his head towards Dean's voice, then groans, "Dean," again. "You're shaking."
Dean snorts. "Think that's happening on your end, buddy."
"No, you're very glowy right now."
Glowy? Dean's going to remember that for later. "Fever vision," he assures Cas, but Cas is sitting up in bed, the sheets twisting around his legs even more.
"You have always shined brightly, Dean," he says, and it comes out so loaded and full of awe, Dean laughs it off.
"Right." He gets up, attempting to escape without it looking like an escape. "Sounds like someone needs water."
"Don't," Cas says, intense all of a sudden. He gets himself out of bed and cuts Dean off, lucid but still pretty crappy-looking. "Dean--"
Dean plants his hands on Cas' bare shoulders, which are burning up, and guides him back to the bed. "Alright."
"Dean." His eyes are shining with his fever and it makes him look manic. "I deserve this."
Dean sighs and pushes Cas onto the bed. The fever he can deal with, but Cas unloading his guilty conscious onto him? He didn't sign up for that. "Come on, lie back," he tells him, but Cas grips both his wrists and keeps Dean near.
"I can never fix the things I broke--"
Dean tugs his hands out of Cas' and moves away, rolling his eyes. Funny how he's been waiting for Cas to admit he screwed up big time, but now that it's happening, he doesn't want to hear it.
"Dean, please," Cas says, and it's the self-loathing in it that finally gets a rise out of Dean.
"You were wrong," he agrees easily, and Cas ducks his head to avoid the truth of it. "You pull the same crap over and over and every time, you're wrong."
"Yes."
"It's like you don't even listen, man. I mean, do you not think I'm on your side?"
Cas looks up with heat in his eyes. "You had Sam to tend to--"
"Yeah, and where the hell were you, Cas? God, it's like you--" Dean cuts himself off and swallows hard. They're not getting into this. Not when Cas is loopy on flu medicine and Dean's running on two hours of sleep.
Only Cas demands his attention and when he has it, he says, "Like what? Dean?"
Dean sighs and holds eye contact with the ceiling. Then he admits, "You don't care. Alright? And shut up, I don't mean about me, I mean Sam and every god-awful thing he's gone through. We needed you, man."
Cas looks away guiltily. "I had no way of knowing Metatron was lying."
"I know," Dean tells him softly, but still. "You should've listened to me, Cas."
"Because you knew what you were doing?" Cas accuses him, lifting off the bed. He's trying to hold his own, but he stumbles, weak from dehydration and an empty stomach. "You failed too. So tell me, why should my choices be made from your command?"
"Seriously?" If Cas thinks this thing between them boils down to command, holy shit, they are way more broken than Dean figured. "All I asked was for you to trust me--"
"Why?"
"Because I was right!"
"I didn't know that!"
"That's what trust is, you idiot!"
"And where do I fit in? Because as I recall, you were basing your decisions off Sam's well-being--"
"No crap, my brother not dying is pretty much priority number one--"
"Yes, constantly, at the cost of your judgment."
That stings. It lands like a blow, and Dean rocks back with it. He's not going to have his protection of Sam thrown back in his face. "Yeah, Cas, you know what--"
"I saw an opportunity to exact revenge and I took it. I understand your instinct to keep Sam alive. Can you not understand my need to take back what was stolen?"
"I just--I can't."
"For months I was little more than a puppet and my 'family' didn't suspect a thing."
"Cas..."
"Then I was made to destroy the one being in all of creation that still had faith in me. I put a sword through my brother because Naomi told me to, and I would've done the same to you--"
"Okay, well, you didn't."
Cas looks away. "I did." His throat bobs, and maybe it's the fever talking, but he sounds completely wrecked. "Time after time, there were--simulations--scenarios. Of your death, at my hands. I killed you, Dean, so yes, I wanted Naomi to know my wrath."
Dean blows out a breath. "Cas."
"I failed. The state of Heaven and now the world is my fault and I can't fix it. I can't even fight off a virus. But I didn't do it because of lack of trust or disobedience, I did it because I believed Naomi deserved to die."
When Dean finally finds his words, his voice is rough, hollow. "She was a real dick" he concedes, and it makes Cas huff out a surprised breath of laughter. The argument drains out of them both as quick as it came, and Cas, now that he's not all righteously fired up, looks worse than ever. "Come on," Dean tells him, "get back in bed."
Cas glares at the bed but he lets himself be manhandled back into it. Dean absolutely doesn't tuck him in, but he waits to make sure he's comfortable before stepping out.
"Don't go," Cas says, same as before. He's poking his head out of the nest of covers he's burrowed himself in.
"You need water," Dean tells him. And soup and maybe a sandwich if he can stomach the other stuff first.
Cas pulls back the blanket and holds it out like he expects Dean to crawl in there with him.
That is what he expects, Dean realizes, and--jesus christ, no.
"No way," he grounds out in a low hiss, just in case Sam or Kevin are near and might somehow know what's being asked of Dean.
Cas just keeps up with the wordless invitation. Then he starts hacking up a lung, hit with a coughing fit, and Dean scowls.
"Alright, alright," he barks under his breath, and, miracle of miracles, Cas drops the cough just as soon as he gets that affirmation. Dean toes off his boots and slips in beside Cas, muttering, "You big baby."
"I'm sick, not hard of hearing," Cas throws back, but there's no bite. He's sighing, actually, scooting close to Dean so Dean can be included in his sick-cave.
Dean goes stiff right away. This, people, is regret. "Dude, stop," he whisper-yells at Cas, who is snuggling into him like he's a body pillow. "Like I want your grubby secondhand germs."
"We'd need to be much more intimate than this." Then he hooks his chin onto Dean's bicep, staring at him. He's giving off so much heat, it's like laying next to a furnace. "We could, if you'd like."
Dean's heart starts pumping furiously fast for no reason. "No!" That's a shouted whisper, too.
Cas smiles all dopily and drops his head back down to the mattress. His forehead butts into the back of Dean's arm and it's actually pretty worrisome how hot he still feels. "I was joking."
Dean twists so he can lay his palm across Cas' forehead. "Ha," he drawls, distracted by what's got to be a temperature high enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room.
Cas wiggles into the touch, sighing out happily. It happens accidentally, but Dean winds up running his hand over Cas' hair, smoothing the sweaty strands back. Cas shivers and Dean pulls away.
"Cold?"
Cas doesn't say anything, just burrows even closer, but Dean can see the goosebumps. Dean worries again that this is more than medicine and soup can fix but he shuts that voice in his head up, hiking the covers over the both of them.
"Tell Sam about this and forget the flu," he warns, "I'm killing you myself."
&
Early the next morning, the bedroom door creaks open. It's Kevin's lulling, carefully hushed voice that wakes them first. "Hey, Sam wants to know if either of you--"
Then Kevin spots them curled up together in bed.
Dean is the little spoon.
"No," Kevin groans in his outside-voice, bolting out of there and pulling the door shut after him. "NOOOOOO."
&
Sam is smirking when Dean drags himself, bleary-eyed and his mouth tasting like death, into the kitchen for some coffee.
He ignores him but Sam keeps it up through Dean's perusal of the fridge; his yelling at the dishwasher for still housing dirty dishes; his thirty second rinse of a mug he takes from the sink with the decision that it'll do; the pouring of his coffee; that first sip.
Sam is still smiling when Dean finally says, "What?"
"So, Kevin said--"
"Kevin needs to learn to SHUT HIS DAMN TRAP."
Those words are shouted in the direction of Kevin's room. Half a second later, they hear his door slam.
Dean turns Sam's smirk back around on him, as satisfied and self-congratulatory as the one he'd been blasted with.
Sam, however, is more emotionally mature than Dean. He sips at his own cup of coffee and asks knowingly, "How's Cas, anyway?"
"Cured. And I mean completely. See, 'cause when two guys spoon at night, magical things happen--"
"Dean," Sam complains.
"Quit looking at me like that, then."
"He's still sick? Any new symptoms?"
"Yes," Cas answers himself, standing there in the kitchen's entranceway. He's in Dean's robe (thieved only days after Cas first got there, and Dean still mourns its loss) looking like hell warmed over, squinting like the room's too bright. "And yes."
"Hey, look at you though. Up and at 'em! Sorta," Dean hastily tacks on, because Cas is looking wobbly.
"I don't feel very... at them," Cas says, and his voice has gone scratchy. He stands there a second longer, blinking with vacant, glossy eyes, before turning and disappearing back down the hall.
Sam's gaze scoots from where Cas last was, over to Dean. It lands on him with a lot of silently doled lecturing, all, 'Cas needs medicine, you're his mama duck, quit neglecting him, you jerk.'
"Okay, okay," Dean huffs like a lot's being asked of him here and he wants Sam to know that. He points an accusatory finger at him on his way out. "You're on spoonfeed duty."
&
The day mostly passes with Cas passed out, napping the germs away. Dean uses the time to scour the internet for anything relevant to fallen angels or Abaddon. He scopes out Cas' room too, only because it's the first time he's been in here, not counting the day Cas first showed up and they cleared the space out for him. It's nearly as bare and void of personality now as it was then. The only sign someone even stays in the room is the stash of junk Cas keeps on his bedside table. Dean feels like a creep thumbing through it, but he's bored and Cas is clingy and, besides, it's just old receipts and ripped newspaper articles and what looks like a postcard from Colorado. Nothing in the pile gives anything of Cas away except, maybe, that he's a hoarder.
Whenever Cas stirs long enough to hold a conversation, Dean keeps him awake by talking the family business with him, or they watch boring ass food documentaries on Sam's computer that Cas seems worryingly into (Dean is slowly being brainwashed about GMOs and pesticides and it makes him hate life.) Dean heats Cas up some soup and tries to pretend the warmth wrapping around his sternum as Cas slurps his way through it has only to do with feeling useful.
Now they're sitting knee-to-knee on Cas' bed, a deck of cards between them. Dean shows Cas how to hold his handful of cards without letting Dean see what he's got, and as he goes through the game's instructions, Cas' eyes get narrower and narrower.
"You got a seven?" Dean asks him to start, and Cas looks his cards over.
He squints from card to card, then looks up at Dean, deadly serious. "No."
Dean snorts, then covers the sound up by dragging a hard noise out of the back of his throat. "You gotta say it, man."
Cas squints even more, then remembers, "Go fish."
It's said with such solemn conviction, Dean barks out a laugh. Which, honestly, is the whole point, getting Cas to say that is why he went with this game over anything else. And, okay, a part of him also remembers days like this when Sam was sick as a kid, the two of them spread out on motel beds and their dad gone on a hunt. It's stupid and nostalgic and he knows it's not the same with grown ass men, but those are good memories and, hell, introducing them to Cas can't hurt anything.
Cas' gaze has gone suspicious, in addition to being slightly pink from his temperature. Dean grins and pulls a card from the deck. "Your turn," he tells Cas, who peers at him intently.
"Four."
Which Dean has, and he hands it over. Cas takes it like Dean takes the last piece of pie, pleased at his good luck and a little bit greedy. He pairs it up with the card he already has and stares at Dean again, eyes boring into him as if he's reading his damn soul. Then, "Two."
Dean chucks his two over. It winds up in Cas' lap, and Cas huffs at him, unimpressed with Dean already acting like a sore loser.
Dean loses his Jack and a nine card before it's his turn again, and by then, Cas looks proud of his doings, like this is some serious business shit, not a card game for kids.
Sam comes into the room when they're halfway through their third game, the tiebreaker, since Cas won that first time and Dean won the second and now they need this one to know who can rightfully gloat.
"Uhhh," Sam says, laughing some, but it's a worried/little bit uncomfortable sound. "Really?"
"Give me your eight, Dean," Cas is demanding, and not for the first time either. "I know you have one."
"Go fish," Dean says pointedly, even though, yeah, he totally does have an eight.
"Dean," Cas says.
"Cas," Dean copies.
"Give it to me."
"Take your 'go fish,' man."
Sam comes up behind Dean and snatches the eight from him, handing it over to Cas with a strong dose of his judgmental eyes locked on his brother. "Cheating, Dean? At 'Go Fish'?" He says it the same way he might accuse Dean of beating babies or voting Republican.
"Oh." Dean smiles. "That eight."
Cas scowls, but it's a piss poor attempt to hide his own smile, which is tugging the corners of his mouth upwards.
"What are you, twelve?" Sam harasses him.
Probably he shouldn't have said that, because it just awakens the big brother part of Dean that wants to good-naturedly bully his little brother around. He swats at Sam's gigantor head, pushing him away by the heel of his hand.
"No girls allowed," he says. "Scoot."
Sam frowns the frown that's supposed to let Dean know he's being a dick. "Ha. Funny," he says, rolling it out sarcastically.
Dean ignores it and bats Cas' knee. "Go."
Cas picks up on Dean's cue and pays no mind to Sam, whose starting to get that huffy, my-brother-is-such-a-jerk look to him. He studies his own cards, then looks at Dean. "Two."
"Go fish."
"Dean..."
A quick, genuine laugh bursts out of Dean. "I'm serious! No two."
Cas searches Dean's eyes long and hard and eventually decides it must be the truth. He grabs a card from the middle, then smiles; it gave him a six to make a pair with the six he already has.
"Son of a bitch," Dean complains. There's no way he's winning this game.
"Hey, so, me and Kev?" Sam says, and he's looking at them both with his eyebrows raised real high, acting like he's not wound up tight from being excluded. "We got a lead on Abaddon, we think. You guys feel like joining us out there?"
"Jack, Cas. Fork it over."
Cas does, with a grumpy glower, his forehead furrowing at having to surrender a card.
Sam says lightly, "You know, hitting the books? Looking up leads?"
"Seven," Dean asks after some consideration. There's only a small stack of cards left, so either he's about to get lucky, or --
"Go fish," Cas says, and for someone who once was a bad ass angel of the Lord that's been around for a millennia of time, he sounds way too smug over a friggin' card game.
Sam waves a hand in front of them both. "Hello?"
"Can't you see we're busy here?" Dean barks, gesturing between him and Cas with the expectation that Sam understands they are in the middle of something super important. His mouth makes little outraged movements, and Sam stares back silently before he looks over to Cas, who is mirroring Dean's exaggerated offense.
Sam huffs out a laugh through his nose, then backs off. "Yeah, sorry. You guys keep doing... this. And I'll research with Kevin."
Dean just shakes his face to say: duh.
"Now go away," Cas says with his attention on the cards, and Dean snorts, unexpected as the sass is. If Cas is being a brat, to Sam of all people, it must mean he's feeling pretty okay.
Sam does disappear, but not without pinning Dean with a look he hopes Cas didn't also catch, because it was just short of an actual 'wink wink nudge nudge' and that's not what this is about.
Afterward, some of the honest-to-god fun drains out of the room, but Cas says, "This is pleasant." Which is maybe the word Dean would use to describe a tampon commercial, not the doings of two men, but Cas is smiling at him so earnestly, and when does that ever happen?
He exhales a small, self-conscious laugh. "Yeah."
"I forgot how gratifying these contests could be. Of course, I used to play opposite a demon more competitive than even you."
Dean scowls at the dig -- and the reminder of Cas' time in the loony bin with Meg keeping watch. It ruins his mood a little, and instead of finishing the game, which he's already lost anyway, he starts collecting the piles around them, shoving the cards all together.
"Good times," Dean say through a hard, fake smile, because Cas is watching him carefully.
"I like this," he says. It's wary, too, like Cas is admitting something big here and he doesn't know what the reaction will be. Dean's gaze snaps to his as fast as if someone yanked it by a string. Cas ducks away from it at first, then meets it head on. "You're a good friend, Dean."
It's about as sappy as it gets, but instead of being repelled by Cas' honesty, Dean is hit with the urge to reciprocate. He smiles back, and it's mushy as fuck, and his heart feels like it's swelled up the size of his whole chest, but this is the best it's ever been between them in -- ever, maybe. Since before Purgatory, at least.
"Yeah." He tries to laugh the roughness out of his voice but it stays stuck in his throat. "You too, Cas."
&
Several hours later, Dean stirs to with Cas rocking into him from behind.
His first thought is to reach for the garbage can so Cas can be sick into it, but as soon as he moves, Cas throws an arm around his waist, stopping him.
They fell asleep after cards, Dean's mind groggily supplies. "Cas?"
"This feels--" Dean's suddenly 100% aware of Cas' dick poking at him from behind, so he knows what it feels like, thanks.
Dean breaks out of Cas' lazy hold and twists to his back as far away as he can manage, glaring at him in the dark. "You insane right now?" he says and only just remembers to keep his voice low.
From the other side of the bed, Cas stares at him in actual, legitimate contemplation, which, given their history, is fair enough. "No?" he eventually decides, squinting.
"You can't just go around humping people, Cas! Jesus."
Cas exhales loudly and flips onto his back. "I wasn't 'humping' 'people,' my body was reacting to you."
Dean presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose and counts to five. Then ten. He isn't any less calm, but his voice is steadier when he says, "Do we need to have another talk? 'Cause I can get Sam."
"I understand your limited perception of arousal--"
"You had your dick to my ass! That's not limited, Cas!"
"I'm attracted to you," Cas says back reasonably, like it's an explanation and excuse all in one. Of course it makes Dean gape at him before he bolts into a sitting position.
Dean runs his hands through his hair and closes his eyes to see if, when he opens them again, he'll wake up and this whole thing will have been some weird dream. But the only thing that happens is that Cas sits up too, swaying a little.
"Lie back down," Dean bites out, stupidly concerned about the bastard despite everything else.
"Were you unaware?" Cas asks him instead of listening.
"Really not talking about this with you," he says, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, but Cas stops him from leaving by softly calling out his name. Dean sighs until his body feels relaxed again and this whole crazy mess is only a distant bother. Cas is attracted to him, so what. Dean's seen Cas get a boner over the ugly chick on Dr. Sexy. Cas is clearly working with a faulty libido.
"It's gone already, if you're worried," and that is Cas talking about his erection. It's fine. They're adults. This doesn't have to be creepy. "It went away on its own, without a--massage," Cas assures him and, nope, nevermind. They're not doing this.
"Go to sleep, Cas," he bites out, laying back down.
The bed dips between them. Cas shifts restlessly, which makes the blanket tighten around Dean. The bed dips some more.
"Cas," Dean snaps.
"I lied," Cas admits after a beat. "About my--"
"Yeah. Got that."
There's another pause, some more shifting. "Dean--"
"Holy crap, Cas, think of, I don't know, Mother Teresa in a bikini." He can already feel the confused stare at the side of his face, so he tacks on a helpless, "I don't know! That usually kills it for me."
So Cas, armed with this visual, sets to will his erection away while Dean lies next to him and reminds himself he's been here before with an awkwardly prepubescent Sam, and if he could survive that kid's marathon masturbation phase, hell, he can get through this too. It's just nature. And science, probably.
And, okay, Cas said he was attracted to Dean, but who cares, he probably meant it in a generic 'Dean is classically handsome' kind of way. Nothing personal.
The bed shifts again and Dean's stomach, dumb thing that it is, flips over, this anxious flutter. He has to swallow past a sudden dryness in his throat, aware that his dick is starting to pay attention to the things his brain is telling him Cas is doing. And while he knows there's no way Cas is over there jerking off, try telling that to the mush in Dean's head.
"Cas," Dean whispers. He sounds as sick as Cas, who stills abruptly like Dean's going to snap at him again.
"This is more frustrating than usual," Cas confesses, and Dean thinks, with startling clarity, yeah, and then he thinks, just as clearly, same here.
It's that last thought that has him reaching for Cas before he even knows he's doing it, but it's like the second he moves, they're in this shit together. They meet in the middle of the bed, chest to chest, and Cas wasn't lying, he's still impressively hard. Dean's only got a semi going on right now, but even that's messing with his brain so there's this constant mental shout of "WHAT ARE YOU DOING, DUMBASS!" happening.
Dean's never listened to it before. He's not starting now.
"I thought," Cas starts, but he breaks off to marvel at the hand he's running through Dean's hair.
Dean slides a leg between Cas', aware now, more than ever, of their different states of dress. Cas is clad only in a pair of boxers, stripped so because of the fever, whereas Dean's in his jeans and t-shirt still.
"We're horny," Dean tells Cas like that is the only reason this is happening. It probably wouldn't hold up in a courtroom, but it's solid enough for Dean.
Cas just inhales hungrily and says, "Yes," rubbing himself against Dean in a way that makes it hard for Dean to focus on anything but the slow drag, the bite of his zipper, the way his brain is slowly starting to white out all the bad so he's in a nice, happy, pre-sex haze.
"You want this," he says into the air between them where their breaths are starting to mix until it's warm and humid, and he doesn't even know what he's looking for here. Agreement? Denial?
Cas licks his lips and makes himself swallow. From his slight wince, Dean guesses his throat must be sore, and that should be a cold dose of reality, but Cas doesn't give it time to fester. "Stop saying stupid things we've already established as fact."
Dean runs his hand down Cas' back. He's sticky with sweat, still crazy warm.
"Cas, you're sick," he reminds him gently, half-hoping it'll be the thing that gets them both to stop. "Can you even think straight right now?" He pulls back and holds up three fingers. "How many?"
Cas swats Dean's hand away. "I don't have a head injury. I can think just fine. Dean," he says then, straining, "blow me."
Dean only has a second to think holy shit before Cas kisses him. He reels back a little from the force of it, wrapping his arms around Cas who is pretty much pushing him into the mattress, fitting himself on top of Dean because apparently they've both lost their damn minds.
Cas, at least, can always claim fever-brain, but the only excuse Dean has is 'was horny.'
The thing he's realizing, though, the thing he's maybe been in denial about for a while now, is that he definitely specifically has a thing for Cas. Like, sex is sex, he's done it dozens of times with as many partners, but doing it now and thinking and feeling and knowing Cas is what's doing it for him. He is painfully, shamefully hard, and all because Cas is wiggling around on top of him.
"Dean," Cas says, pulling back to stare at him. "What did I say?" He raises his eyebrows and waits for Dean to remember, and when Dean does -- 'blow me' -- he wraps his legs around Cas' and flips them.
Cas, from below, stares wide-eyed at Dean.
Then Dean makes his way down Cas' body and Cas gives up the staring to squeeze his eyes shut.
&
Kevin knocks on the door that next morning and doesn't wait long enough for an answer, so it's really his own fault he gets an eyeful of Cas sucking Dean off so spectacularly, neither of them even notice the interruption.
At least not until the door bangs shut and Kevin can be heard yelling, "JESUS!" straight through the wood. There's actual anger and blame this time.
Busted, Cas stills and, from his spot perched between Dean's knees, meets Dean's eyes with Dean's dick still in his mouth. Then they both decide 'screw it' and Cas goes right back to the blow job and Dean's mind blanks out in pleasure. The slight fever Cas still has makes his mouth almost unbearably hot and seriously, fuck everything else, Dean is never leaving this room again.
"WHYYYYYYYY," Kevin cries one last time.