This is what my mind does to me while I'm at work. I'd love to know what you think, as it's my first Supernatural fic!
Sharing is Caring
It had been a very strange few weeks indeed for Dean, between discovering that Cas was no longer an angel, trying to figure out what to do with the half-human King of Hell, and running around the countryside investigating every supernatural blip on the radar in case the ex-God Squad was involved. At this point, his entire family could come back to life and start up a polka band and it wouldn't surprise him; nothing would.
Or so he thought, until one night when he was about to collapse into his bed he discovered that someone was already in it.
"Cas, why the hell are you in my bed?" Dean demanded, slightly alarmed. Cas was lounging leisurely on top of the covers, reading - to Dean's bemusement - a battered Bible. The guy was torturing himself, and besides, didn't he know everything in it? He'd been there, after all.
Cas looked up, entirely unphased at having been caught. "I am reading," he said, lifting the book slightly for emphasis.
"Yeah, I mean," Dean pushed, "why here?"
"You weren't using it," Cas explained, his eyes returning to the pages. "I find it more comfortable than the couch. It's possible Jimmy Novak was developing back problems when I took him as a vessel."
With a pang of guilt, Dean realized he hadn't thought much about Cas' sleeping arrangements. The couch was supposed to be a temporary fix, but they'd been so busy looking for the other angels, barely spending any time at home, that it had slipped Dean's mind. They didn't exactly have the money for another bed, but Dean made a mental note to see what he could do about it tomorrow. "Damn it, Cas, why didn't you say something? I'll take the couch tonight, you can-"
"No, Dean," Cas interrupted. "I would not want to inconvenience you. Besides, you are even older than Jimmy Novak."
"I'm what?" Dean's hand flew to his face as though he expected to feel wrinkles spring into existence.
"It's all right, Dean. You look statistically young for your age."
Too stunned to say anything clever, Dean did his best to blink away the comment, as he often found himself doing with Cas. "Well we gotta do something. I'm not letting you turn into Quasimodo just because you stole a meatsuit with arthritis."
Cas turned his head and surveyed the stretch of smooth bed next to him. "This bed seems to have been designed for two people. Perhaps we could share."
"I'm sorry, did you just say share?" Dean waited for Cas to say something, but the angel - ex-angel - only blinked owlishly at him. "No offense, man, but I haven't shared a bed with my own brother since I was eight. I love him, but he kicks. Now, there is no way we are both sleeping in this bed tonight. You can just take it."
"I am a fairly stationary sleeper," Cas pressed. "I always wake up in the same position in which I fell asleep. We would most likely make no physical contact."
Dean tried very hard not to squirm at the words "physical contact." He hastily shoved aside images of how exactly he normally contacted people when they were in bed together, because this was Cas, and that was just - that was -
Possibly not as bizarre as it should have been.
But there were things that happened to men most every morning, and while that wasn't a big deal when Dean was alone or - though this hadn't happened in what seemed like lifetimes - with last night's catch, Dean wasn't sure how he was supposed to go about handling that with Cas six inches away from him.
Again Dean had to suppress several unholy images.
Cas' burning blue gaze did not waver from his face, and Dean cleared his throat uncomfortably, his mouth suddenly very dry. The angel - former angel, damn it - was breaking his resolve. Well, the fact that Dean was exhausted certainly didn't help. It would be that much easier for both of them if he just... gave in. It was only one night. The world wouldn't burn if Dean Winchester spent one night in a bed the other half of which happened to be occupied by another man.
"All right," he said in defeat, then held up one finger. "But just this once, all right? Tomorrow we're getting you your own damn bed, I don't care if we have to sell ourselves on the corner to get it."
"I don't understand what that means," Cas said predictably, "but thank you."
And so Dean Winchester, with all the awkwardness of a nervous virgin, crawled into bed beside Actual Virgin Castiel the Not-Angel, turned out the light, and prayed for a swift and merciful death before dawn came.
At around four o'clock, Dean began to accept that he wasn't going to fall asleep tonight.
His body may have been bone tired, and he may well have been dying to lie back and let oblivion take him, but he was still somehow unnaturally alert, lying rigid with his back facing the peacefully slumbering Castiel. He cursed himself for being stupid - Cas didn't care, was perfectly content and unaffected on the other side of the bed, so there was no reason for Dean to care, and yet there he was, stiff as a board and too terrified to try to relax. He didn't even know what he was afraid of, exactly. The apocalypse could come and go and Cas probably wouldn't wake up; it was like he hadn't slept for a millenium. Well, he hadn't, but then, he hadn't really needed to.
Cas hadn't been wrong; he was a stationary sleeper. He hadn't so much as twitched that Dean had noticed, and he would notice, because they were in the same bed. There was plenty of space between them, in a technical sense, enough that Dean could turn on his back and they still wouldn't even brush.
But it wasn't going to happen. Not at this hour, not if it hadn't happened yet. Dean could just wait until Cas woke up in the morning, and then... And then...
Dean woke feeling pleasantly warm and better-rested than he'd been in a long time. He buried his face deeper in his pillow, enjoy the softness beneath his cheek, tightening his arms around it and pulling it closer to his chest. If only every morning were like this, then life might just be a little more worth living...
"Good morning, Dean."
Dean's eyes flew open, and with a strangled shout, he threw himself backwards to disentangle himself from the lump of limbs that was Castiel. He wound up rolling off the bed and hitting the floor on his knees. Good God, had they been snuggling?! "What the hell!" Dean yelled, his brain struggling to catch up with him. Oh God, the "pillow" had been Cas, hadn't it, and this was exactly why Dean had been against this whole idea in the first place, and he was going to kill the man, he really was, and-
"What time is it?"
Even Cas seemed surprised by his choice of inquery. "It's fourteen minutes to noon," he said. "If I had known the time would upset you so much, I would have woken you."
"How long have you been awake?" As in, how long had Cas been conscious and aware while Dean was groping him?
"Approximately three hours."
Dean tried not to panic. Okay, so he'd been groping Cas for three hours and Cas had just... laid there? "And you didn't wake me up because...?"
"You seemed comfortable."
Before Dean could come up with a response for that, there was a knock on the door. Sam's voice followed, muffled by the wood. "Dean? Are you up yet?"
"Uh, yeah," Dean replied. "Something up?"
To his horror, Sam started to open the door. "Yeah, I can't find-" Sam stopped, his eyebrows shooting up at the sight of Cas in Dean's bed and Dean kneeling on the floor, some of the covers still trapped beneath his legs. "-Cas?" Sam finished.
"Found him," said Dean. "Now get out and never bring this up again, ever."
Sam nodded mutely, walked through the door, looked back once and opened his mouth as if it say something, thought better of it, and shut the door behind him. Dean thought he heard a muttered "About time," but it could have been his imagination.
Cas recovered rather quickly. "I believe you said we were going to buy a new bed today," he reminded Dean, "even if we had to sell ourselves on the corner. Should I ask Sam to use the Internet to find the nearest furniture store located on a corner?"
Dean thought about it. He had said that, but, well, to be fair, they did have more important things to do today, like trying to find the other ex-angels and find out how to reverse whatever that son of a bitch Metatron had done. They didn't really have time to hunt down a bed, never mind finding a way to get it to the bunker. Besides, Dean had to admit to himself, once he'd let himself fall asleep, it had turned into one of the best night's rest he'd had in a long time. It might have been a coincidence, but he should probably check just to make sure, and he couldn't well do that if they went out and got Cas a separate bed.
"You know what?" he said. "It can wait."
