There were a surprisingly large number of rooms in the Bat Cave. Many of the doors to those rooms were boarded up. Sam and Dean wisely decided to leave those ones alone for the time being. However, the rooms which were unlocked were fair game. Very dusty fair game.
Sam was the one who had the bright idea to catalog the contents of each room. Dean didn't mind exploring the rooms, he was probably more enthusiastic about it than Sam was, but he had zero interest in turning exploration into a snooze, literary feast. Which was why he convinced Sam to ask Cas to help him out instead, by announcing that he was going on a booze run and rushing off before Sam could say anything.
Cas was perfectly happy to help which was the only reason Sam didn't try to stop Dean.
They had only been in the first room (a large spacious one, with one window that showed a lovely view of dirt and more dusty boxes) for a little less than an hour when it happened.
"Oh." said Cas followed by a loud thunk and a very ominous sounding tinkle.
"What did you do?" Sam turned around apprehensively expecting the worst. To his surprise the only thing he saw was a vaguely irritated and very dusty Castiel.
"It was heavier than it looked." he said, gesturing towards his feet.
Sam looked down to see a cracked box wooden box at Cas's feet.
"Shit. Do you know what was in it?" He looked back up at Cas and that's when he saw it.
A singular sprig of mistletoe floating about a foot above Cas's head. Attached to nothing. Just floating there.
"Fuck." Sam said. Dean was not going to be happy about this.
Cas looked up at it.
"It could be nothing." He suggested halfheartedly and took one step to the left.
The mistletoe followed.
He took a step to the right.
It zoomed right back into place, a foot above his head, no hesitation at all.
"Fuck" Cas said.
"Okay," Sam sighed, abandoning his box (a medium sized black one that been slathered with old, wrinkly, sticky tape) and moved towards the box Cas had destroyed.
While he inspected the box, Cas tried to grab the mistletoe. It never seemed to move, but somehow, every time Cas got close to the touching it, it was just an inch more out of reach.
Luckily for them, the mistletoe box was one of the few boxes that the Men of Letters had decided to label. Unfortunately, none of that labeling, or the pages that Sam found inside, were in English.
"Looks like we're going to have to call Kevin," he said, flipping through the pages. "This isn't in a language I recognize. It might be Aramaic"
"Sam."
"- or it could be Hebrew. Huh. "
"Sam."
"Yeah, Cas" he said absently, still focused on the pages.
"I can't move."
That got his attention. "What?"
He looked up, and jerked back when he found Cas standing way too close to him. Or at least, he tried to jerk back. But he couldn't move.
Sam looked up at the mistletoe.
"Oh no."
On the bright side, they now knew that the mistletoe trapped anyone that stepped under it and refused to let them go until they kissed. On the not so bright side, he now knew exactly how chapped Cas's lips were, knowledge he certainly could have lived without.
Kevin took one look at the floating mistletoe and Sam's and Cas's expressions, and evacuated the room with a "Yeah, no. Later."
Sam sighed. "Well, guess we're doing this by ourselves then."
Cas just grabbed a book off out of a nearby shelf, flipped it open to somewhere in the middle, and glared at it.
Okay, looks like it was just going to be him then. Sam sighed again as he took a seat at the table. He'd only wanted to do some cataloging
A little while later, Cas sat down as well.
It didn't escape Sam's notice that Cas took a seat at the farthest corner away from Sam. He didn't blame the guy, Sam wasn't too keen on getting too near Cas either at the moment.
It didn't take long before Sam identified the language.
"It is Hebrew." he announced, peering at the pages. "And, it looks like it's just some a joke. Some bored apprentice made it in his free time. All you need to do to get rid of it is-oh."
"Oh?" Cas closed his book and turned towards Sam expectantly.
"All you need to do," Sam continued slowly, eyebrows high. "Is kiss your true love by midnight. Or all your hair falls out. Like all of it. Not just from your head, but from- yeah."
That was a pretty messed up joke.
"Kiss my true love." Cas repeated dryly.
"I'm paraphrasing." He really was. The apprentice had used some seriously racy language to describe potential curse breaking partners and he was not repeating that, no thank you. "Someone you have deep romantic feelings for might work."
Cas oddly enough glanced at Dean's jacket which had been left draped over the back of a chair.
"Sam." He said solemnly. "I'll be honest with you. So far being human had not been so great."
Sam tried to give him a reassuring smile.
"Well, at least it can't get any worse." He offered.
And that's when Dean walked in.
"Hey, you nerds taking a break?" He said, dumping a overladen bag of groceries on the table with a grin. "Finally realized how boring cataloging is?"
He seemed to completely miss the floating piece of shrubbery above Cas's head. In his defense though, pretty much no one would think to check for pieces of floating plants above someone's head.
Sam, on the other hand, didn't miss the way that Cas's eyes focused on Dean the moment he entered the room or the way that Dean chose to stand near Cas's end of the table.
Interesting. An idea formed in his mind.
"Hey Dean," He said, as innocently as he possibly could as he got up. "Stay right there for a minute."
"What?" Dean said, rustling through the grocery bag, clearing only listening with half an ear.
"Sam," Cas's eyes widened in alarm as he realized what Sam was planning. He made an aborted move to stand up, but he was too late.
Sam reached out, taking care not to step too close, and gently, but firmly, shoved Dean into Cas.
And then he ran like hell out of the room, ignoring the dual shouts of anger.
It was for their own good. Really.
He peeked in a few minute later, just to make sure that the curse was actually broken and the two weren't just standing there lost in each others eyes like they often did, only to jerk back in horror.
"What the hell guys! We eat on that table!"
Written for interncastiel
Happy Holidays! I hope you like it.
I wrote this last year for the DeanCas week exchange, but completely forgot to post it here.
