Forgot about this fic! Written prior to the Season 9 premier for the Hoodie-Time comment meme prompt:
"Post S8. Sam is sick, Castiel is freshly human, and Kevin is angry and trying to flee from the bunker whenever he's given the opportunity.
Dean is left to take care of all of them, and he's stressed as hell; really, the insomnia comes as a surprise to no one. (The exhaustion is quick to follow.)
Of course, Sam, Cas and Kevin don't notice anything at first, caught up in their own problems. Then it gets bad and it's their (mostly Cas and Sam's) turn to take care of Deeeaaan.
(Bonus points if they suck at it, though they try. Extra bonus points if Kevin is being antagonistic always, because really, who could blame the kid?)
Gen or Dean/Cas preferred, please! :)"
Enjoy!
The sad thing is, Cas is probably the most functional of the three. Sam doesn't seem to want to do anything but sleep, and Kevin has decided to have his teenage rebellious streak at the most inconvenient freakin' time imaginable – but Cas seems content to follow him around like a lost puppy as Dean chases his tail and tries to do too many things at once.
Right now, Dean's got a pot full of soup bubbling in the kitchen as he sticks a thermometer underneath Sam's tongue and prays that he won't have to dunk Sam in another ice bath. The bathrooms in the bunker are old, and the puke green tubs were made for a smaller people of a different time, and the last time he had to cool gigantor down in a hurry, he'd nearly brained the heavy fucker with the soap dish. When the thermometer comes out, Cas peers cautiously over his shoulder, blinking heavy eyelids in a way that still disconcerts Dean. He can't really recall Cas – blinking. Before.
"Is that too high?" Cas asks. Dean squints and leans into the light to get a better look. "I think that is too high," he concludes tentatively, like Dean had whenever his dad had asked him a question and Dean was only half-sure his half-cocked answer was correct. It had been funny, having to tell Cas exactly how hot the human body was supposed to run. It made Dean feel a little insecure about the fact that Cas had stitched him back together so many times, but maybe angel healing mojo didn't require any actual knowledge of the humans they were knitting back together. Who knew.
"Yeah, Cas," Dean says, running his hand over his mouth. "It's too high. Jesus. But I think we can get away with just a few ice packs today." Cas nods seriously and follows behind Dean as they tromp down to the kitchen. Kevin glares at them from a big table in the great room. He's very defiantly not working on the Angel Tablet, and he makes sure Dean knows it. Every time Dean circles back through the great room with Cas on his tail, Kevin hoists aloft a comic book and narrows his eyes over the rim of it. Yeah, he gets that Kevin isn't all that happy about having Crowley stowed away in the root cellar, but this is getting ridiculous, and this time, Dean can't resist rolling his eyes, stopping abruptly. Cas runs straight into his back, scrambles backward, and rights himself with none of his angelic composure. It's weird to Dean how he sort of moves like he's unbalanced, like there's a weight missing from his back that he expected to be there. Dean knows abstractly that Cas had wings before, because he heard them flapping enough in the last few years to at least be aware, but it was hard to imagine them having any kind of substantial weight when all Cas was for Dean was whip-thin Jimmy Novak.
"You have something to share with the class, Kevin?"
He narrows his eyes further over his Astonishing X-Men. It's a classic Cas squint. Dean nudges Cas in the ribs like they're sharing some kind of private joke, but Cas just rubs his side like he's been violently assaulted, squints like it's going out of style, and goes ahead of Dean to the kitchen. He doesn't like handling the ice packs because apparently they're too goddamn cold for his delicate freakin' angel-baby skin, so Dean knows he's just going to be waiting by the freezer and glaring when Dean goes in there.
Dean throws his hands in the air and says, "Soup's on the stove."
"I don't like soup," Kevin snaps.
"Of course you don't like soup. Why the hell would you?" And Dean goes into the kitchen to ladle him some anyway, get the ice packs out of the freezer so Cas doesn't have to hurt his hands. Cas is, just as he predicted, standing by the freezer with his eyebrows furrowed. The aroma of the soup wafts around the bunker's kitchen, and even though it should remind him that he's really goddamn hungry because he knows he hasn't eaten in – god, how long has it been? More than a handful of hours now. Christ, it's probably been more like a couple days. He hasn't eaten in a couple days, but all the smell does is turn his stomach. As if remembering the fact that he hasn't eaten in so long reminds the rest of his body that it probably isn't all that healthy, the world feels a little fuzzy for a second, and he can hear his blood pumping in his ears.
He determinedly foists off the feeling and says, "Soup's on, Cas," instead.
Cas' eyes move to scrutinize the soup burbling merrily in its pot on the stove.
"Is this literal soup? The last time you said that the soup was on, there was no soup at all."
"Well, yeah, it's an expression too, but it's literal this time. Actual soup's on."
Cas says, "I don't think I like soup."
Dean opens the freezer and pulls out three ice packs, crinkling them in his hands to break up the blue gel and then swaddling them in hand towels so they won't be too cold on Sam's overheated skin.
"You've been eating for less than a week. I don't even think I've made you soup, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only one feeding your ass."
"I've seen soup before," Cas says gravely, like that settles it. Knowing Cas now, human Cas, as Dean has gotten to fairly well in the past couple days, he probably doesn't want it because it's going to be a lot more work than stuffing a sandwich into his face. Cas likes finger foods. Cas doesn't like utensils. Dean knows he isn't fucking stupid, the man knows how to pick up a fork. But these days, everything is just so much harder than it was when he was an angel – Dean listened to Cas rant about breathing for about twenty minutes right after Dean drove eight hours straight to pick him up from buttfuck nowhere with Sam gasping misery in the backseat – and utensils are deemed as needlessly complex. Yesterday he watched him eat an entire plate of spaghetti noodle by noodle with his fingers, totally straight-faced a whole goddamn hour. There isn't really a way to straight face your way through chunky soup without using a spoon, and Cas probably knows that.
"Well, you need to eat, and soup's all I got, so you might have to deal with soup."
"There is still bread," Cas says, gesturing the ancient breadbox on the counter. Dean knows where this is going. "And there is still – "
"Christ, Cas, you can't eat a grilled cheese sandwich for every meal."
"You would eat a cheeseburger for every meal."
"That's different, dude, there's meat, meat's got protein. And lettuce, it's a vegetable. And…ah, ketchup. Grilled cheese is just cheese on bread." Dean wants to sound authoritative on this shit, picking up some of the Sammy-salad -condescension, but the best he can do is a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do resignation. He knows he's a hypocrite. He also knows Cas' body has been starving for like three years whether it knows it or not, and it's probably gonna want to pack on the pounds. Cas will kill him later if the first thing he lets him do after all that shit is make his vessel tubby.
"If I'm not mistaken, there's also butter involved."
He sighs. "Yeah, that too. But butter's not exactly a food group staple. I'm teachin' you about nutrition, Cas. Take note." Dean takes three bowls down from the cabinet, starts ladling out big spoonfuls. And it is a healthy, hearty soup. Didn't even come from a can. Dean zombied his way through a grocery store after badgering Kevin into babysitting his brother for a couple hours. He'd bought veggies and chicken broth and meat, and he sautéed and he browned and a he simmered and now there's soup. Because fucking sick people fucking love soup.
"I can make my own grilled cheese," Cas says airily. It's an idle threat. He'd watched Dean make him one for almost every meal earlier this week, when Dean was still feeling charitable toward Cas' plight, still cared about how difficult breathing apparently was, but he hasn't really had a chance to sleep since before he brought Sam home, so he's feeling decidedly less charitable now. But he won't do it. Dean thinks maybe he's afraid of burning himself. If Dean's honest, he's a little afraid he'll burn himself, too.
"Or," Dean says, not taking his eyes off the ladle, "You could just eat the soup."
Cas narrows his eyes further. Dean puts the ice packs on a tray with the soup, then puts a glass of water on as well and remembers.
"Have you had any water to drink today?"
"No."
"Haven't you felt thirsty at all?"
"I – perhaps."
"Well then why the hell haven't you?" Cas has his own pitcher of purified water sitting on the counter. He won't drink the shit they keep in the fridge because he can't take the freaking temperature, but they can't really drink the stuff straight from the tap because the Men of Letters apparently took real good care of everything but the goddamn pipes. It's passable for getting clean, but they can't exactly call a plumber out to tell them if it's safe to drink.
"Why haven't you?" Cas quips back.
"Listen, man, I can manage my own fluids intake, I'm not some freshly human angel who doesn't know a nutritious meal from a chunk of deep-fried roadkill." Cas glares even harder than he had been for a moment, then tromps out of the swinging kitchen door and into the great room. Sensitive little bastard. Of course he'd hit a nerve, Dean can't go five freaking minutes without stepping on anyone's toes. God forbid Dean remind Cas he's just a sack of meat like the rest of them. He runs a hand over his mouth.
Suddenly, Dean feels a surge of nausea, a crippling moment of lightheadedness in the empty kitchen. He thinks he might be sick, and then he thinks he might pass out, and then he thinks he might be sick again, and he must be right that time, because he vomits into the big porcelain basin sink by the old gas stove. He's almost surprised when he does as much. It's mostly bile. He hasn't eaten – right, he hasn't eaten much of anything, he remembers again. He washes it down the drain matter-of-factly, and goes to get bread out of its box.
Dean should have taken the hint his body was trying to send him right there, because it wasn't like it was even subtle about crapping out on him this time. Instead, he makes three grilled cheese sandwiches, puts them onto his trays next to the rapidly cooling soup, and takes one to Kevin. He goes back to the kitchen to get the second, and then he has to search the whole goddamn house for Cas, and by the time he finds him in – in Records Room 6A, the door says, the soup is completely cold, and Dean's head is pounding like a bitch.
Cas doesn't look at him, but he does take half the grilled cheese sandwich and say, "I am trying to learn." Dean makes him drink the entire glass of water, hand pawing awkwardly at his hunched back, before he goes to deliver food to Sam.
Sam's fever has spiked, and Dean loads blue gel cold packs onto the arteries in his neck. His eyes are sunken and glassy, but he's lucid enough to say, "Dude, the soup is stone cold," as Dean is trying to aggressively choo-choo train his goddamn meal into the only mouth that he thought didn't have a choice about eating it. Sam picks up the grilled cheese with shaking fingers, and Dean decides it's time for bed. Or a nap, at least.
The problem is – bed isn't bed. Bed is blinking dry eyes into his pillow until he hears Sam moaning one room over, or until he can hear Crowley complaining from their sex dungeon, or until Kevin slams one too many doors too loudly, or until Cas comes in to ask him some asinine question about how to brush his teeth. Dean is too keyed up to sleep. He tries to even his breathing, tries to settle himself down and knock himself out. He likes to think he dozes for a few minutes. He at least zones out for a bit, until the pillow is too hot for him to want to lay on it anymore.
The memory foam sighs like it laments his absence when he gets up, and Dean avoids looking at himself in the mirror as he walks out the door. He peeks into Sam's room to find Sam propped against the headboard, reading.
Sam says, "I thought you went to take a nap? You were barely gone a half hour. I'm fine, lay off."
Dean says, "What? Only a half hour?" He thought he'd managed some kind of something in his room. He blinks. It felt like he'd been in there blinking blearily at the wall for an eternity. Sam still has the cold packs on, though, and they're clearly still cold. So it couldn't have been that long, really. He shakes his head quickly to clear it, trying to remember, and staggers a step toward Sam.
Sam's got the wounded puppy look on. "Dean, maybe you should sit down." Sam lifts his hand, palm toward himself, as if to check the air for a fever, and then gestures toward himself with the other. "C'mere, sit on the bed, lemme check your temperature." Dean shakes his head more purposefully this time, and makes like the stagger was intentional, going for the tray full of uneaten soup on the bedside table.
"Nah, Sammy. Like you could tell anyone's temperature anyway; you're a furnace right now, you'd just light me up too. I'm going to take this down to the kitchen." And he takes the tray and leaves.
The funny thing is – he gets a little bit lost on the way to the kitchen. The bunker is big, but it's not like the path between the kitchen and Sammy's room isn't well-trodden. He's cold, and there's a restless squirming in the pit of his stomach. He feels sort of disconnected from the situation, and by the time he's realized that he's been walking aimlessly for a while, he's freezing, and he's in one of the subbasements, and Crowley's screaming from down the hallway because he heard footsteps Winchester and he bloody well knows someone is there! Huh. From there it's a giant pain in the ass to find his way back up, because climbing stairs is a whole hell of a lot more difficult than going down them.
Kevin is still reading a comic book in the great room next to his own uneaten bowl of soup, but when Dean sort of wanders in, he stands abruptly and says, "I'm leaving! You can't keep me here, you know!"
They've had this argument a thousand times already. Kevin doesn't like being locked up, but Kevin also doesn't seem to remember that the last time he wasn't locked up, he was nearly tortured by the King of Hell. Granted, the King of Hell is locked away in the sex dungeon now, but there's a whole hell of a lot of things that aren't, and Dean had gotten real tired real quick of trying to remind him that he shouldn't actively be trying to get himself killed, because Dean would feel like shit if he did. Needless to say, Dean doesn't have the energy for it right now, and it's all a show anyway. Dean calls his bluff.
"Fine, Kevin," Dean says through a cracked throat. "You know what? Take the Impala." Dean fishes the keys out of his pocket and puts them on the table one-handed, still balancing the tray full of uneaten soup in the other. Kevin looks at him like he's grown a second head.
Then Kevin says, "Dean? You look— Is…is Sam okay? Maybe you should sit down."
Dean ignores him and goes into the kitchen, where he finds Cas staring down the stove. It smells faintly of gas, and Dean wonders how long he's been marinating in toxic airspace before he goes to flick the stove off.
"You gotta wait until it catches the spark, dude. If you wanted another sandwich or something, you should have come to ask to me."
Cas tilts his head to look at Dean, and his eyes widen. "I thought you were asleep. You should be asleep, I think."
Dean's about to retort with a and why the hell do you have a right to tell me this when he gets a little bit lightheaded again and tips forward into the stove.
"You should sit down."
"You know, that seems to be playin' on all the stations right now."
"Dean –"
"S'just the gas." It's not just the gas, but the gas sure isn't helping. If he was having trouble thinking before, if he was having trouble coordinating his movements before, now he feels downright sloppy. The great big tureen of godforsaken soup is still sitting on one of the stove burners going cold. He should put it in the fridge to save, because he damn well made it, he should keep it for later, for if anyone in this fucking house ever felt like eating it. Christ. But his hand doesn't cooperate when he goes to grab the handle. He's suddenly irrationally irritated at the goddamn soup, and he jerks his hand uncoordinatedly around the handle at the same time Cas booms, "—Dean!" in that big authoritative voice that Dean hadn't heard since Cas had his grace intact.
And then he wakes up in a bathtub.
Wait – what?
And then he wakes up in a bathtub with three figures hovering over him, sort of tittering quietly to themselves. He groans and realizes there's a thermometer in his mouth, stuck haphazardly under his tongue. He must have bumped his – everything going down. And Christ, is he bleeding, because he's absolutely covered in –
"Soup, Dean. You had to pass out in a puddle of soup. Couldn't sit down like we asked, no, not Dean Winchester –"
"Kevin," Cas and Sam say at once, and that prompts Dean to open his eyes further, squinting as the light bores holes into his brain. Sam has a blanket draped around his shoulders, and he's sitting on the toilet. He's sweating lightly, but he doesn't look like he's about to keel over.
"Mmmwhat're you doin' outta bed?"
Sam gives one of his little condescending nasal laughs the drives Dean absolutely crazy, and Dean almost bites through the thermometer.
"Really, Dean? You're asking me that?" Cas takes the thermometer out from under his tongue and studies it very, very somberly.
"It's too high," he says definitively, and pride battles openly with distress on his face. Sam takes the thermometer.
"Jesus, Dean! I'll say! You're at like 103, dude!"
Dean lowers his eyebrows, skeptical. "What? No. Seriously? No." Sam holds out the thermometer and sure enough, when Dean takes it, it's hovering just below the 103 mark. Shit. He's about as high as Sam'd been reading before the ice packs.
Dean struggles to sit up. Cas rushes to help him, and he slips slightly in the slimy trail of vegetables that must stretch straight from the kitchen to Dean's bedroom. Goddamn.
"Well, we've gotta bring it down," someone says.
And then, without any warning, Kevin turns on the tap, and the water groans its way straight to the showerhead and straight to Jesus-fucking-Christ-on-a-cracker cold. Dean's teeth immediately start chattering, and he scrambles to sling himself out of the bathtub. Sam reaches a massively long gorilla arm over to switch the tap from ice age to lukewarm at the same time Cas pushes him gently back under the spray.
"D-damnit, kid!" Dean slurs.
"Two birds with one stone!" Kevin crows. "Gotta wash the soup off anyway, don't we?"
Cas glares hellfire and damnation over his shoulder, but his hands are still wrapped firmly around Dean's biceps. "As misguided as Kevin's actions were, I do believe this is necessary, Dean. My apologies."
Dean looks at Sam over Cas' shoulder. "Nothing I'm not guilty of m'self, I guess."
Sam's face softens. "Dean."
"Thanks for the adrenaline shot, but I can take it from here," Dean slurs into Cas' shoulder, doing a better job at righting himself this time, leaning forward into the spray and going for his buttons with trembling fingers. His slips and slides on the plastic until Cas reaches forward and gently disentangles his hands, then goes to town on Dean's soupy buttons for him. Then he strips off Dean's undershirt with quick efficiency. It's quiet in the bathroom, and there's a strange bedroom intimacy to Cas' gestures that Cas clearly doesn't recognize, or he might be blushing the same way Dean most certainly isn't. Sam clears his throat, and then Kevin just clears out, throwing his hands in the air like he clearly can't be fucked with the whole situation any longer.
Cas ignores Kevin's exit in favor of grabbing at the button on Dean's jeans and Dean says, "Whoa, hold on a second there eager beaver."
"Are you not uncomfortable?" Uncomfortable is an understatement; Dean feels like a drowned cat.
Sam says, "Give him a minute. He can probably get at his pants himself." Cas sits back on his haunches and waits. Dean wonders vaguely how long he's expected to sit shirtless under the pounding water being impotently scrutinized by his younger brother and his ex-angel before this becomes socially awkward.
"Well," Dean says.
"Don't 'well,' us, you idiot. You passed out in a puddle of soup."
"Damn waste of soup that no one even fucking ate."
"Did you eat any?"
"Sam –"
"When was the last time you did eat?"
"Oh, I dunno, lemme just go get by fucking food diary, Sam –"
"Dean."
"Dear Diary, today I ate some filet mignon while Sam was dying of a fever down the hall –"
"You idiot." That's Cas, and it surprises he and Sam both.
"What! Really? I've had shit to think about, in case you didn't notice!"
Cas looks at him sternly and then just goes the same way Kevin had, leaving him and Sam alone in the puke green bathroom. He squints his eyes and wills away the headache.
"This was stupid and childish and easily avoidable."
"Yeah, yeah." Dean leans back against the tub, resigned.
"Need is two-way street, man. You think you need us? We need you to be okay."
You need a whole lot more than that, kiddo. "I am okay!"
"You scared him."
Dean rubs at his nose and feigns ignorance. "Who?"
"God, Dean, you know who."
"He's seen worse. He's seen a helluva lot worse."
"Forgive him if he's feeling a bit more fragile than usual. Look, just drink some water and get some sleep and then you can dote on us all you want, you asshole." Sam reaches out to feel Dean's forehead, hand lingering slightly too long on Dean's hairline. Dean bats the hand away after tolerating the touch maybe just a second too long.
"I feel like shit."
"Me too. Let's finish getting you cleaned up, and then we can both go pass out."
It turns out that between him and Sam, they make almost one functional human being, and they manage to remove his pants and boxers and hoist him into bed. Dean feels like shit for leaning on his weak-and-dying-off-and-on brother, but Sam just pats him on the back and turns off the light as he staggers out of the room.
Dean tries to sleep.
A few minutes later, Kevin comes to the room, sops up the soup that had been congealing on the floor, and he sets a glass of water on the nightstand alongside the keys to the Impala. Without the smell of floor food, his stomach feels less like it'll turn on him at the drop of a hat, and he's able to down half the water. He didn't even realize how (hypocritically) dehydrated he'd been, but in hindsight, maybe that is what all the vomit had been about. Kevin is miraculously quiet as he leaves, and maybe they've finally done the smart thing and gagged Crowley, because the whole bunker is suspiciously and blessedly quiet.
Dean's head pounds anyway, and he tries to sleep.
It should be easier now that Sam seems to be doing a little better. He flips the pillow over the cool side. His face is hot.
Cas must sulk for a while before coming to see Dean again, because he only shows up maybe an hour later, and Dean thinks bitterly that he might've been sleeping by then if he hadn't been completely physically unable to, apparently. Dean had his eyes closed, but he peeks open one to find Cas hovering over him with a plate in his hand. Dean pats the bed, and Cas takes the hint and sits down.
"Sleeping is hard, isn't it?" Cas says, then nods like he's agreeing with his own thought. "I'm having a hard time getting the hang of it."
Dean pops open both eyes with a grunt, and from this angle he's able to see the food on the plate now. It's – it looks like a sandwich, but the outer sides of the bread are…buttered?
Oh. Dean laughs, he can't help himself.
"Grilled cheese minus the grill, Cas?" Cas lifts up the top slice of bread to reveal solid chunks of unappetizingly cold cheese.
"I'm afraid of the stove," he grounds out, more gravelly than usual.
"Says the angel who's faced down the apocalypse."
"I'm only a man now, Dean."
"Only. I'm only a man, too, y'know."
"Yes," Cas says firmly, solemnly. "I know."
"Hm."
"Hm."
They're silent for a moment, and Dean takes the opportunity to snag a piece of the cheese and take a bite. It's the least he can do. It sits in his throat in a hard lump, but it satisfies Cas enough that he puts the plate down on the nightstand.
Dean's starting to feel less completely wide awake with Cas in the dark beside him, and hell, apparently all he needed was Cas hovering over him while he slept, just like the old times.
"Sleep with me?" Cas says, and Dean is so glad Sam and Kevin aren't here anymore, because they would be having a field day. As it is, Dean is having a hard time holding back a chuckle. Cas means what he says, though, totally innocently. They're both insomniacs apart, too busy worrying about one another and every-fucking-thing else to sleep. Maybe they can sleep together.
Dean wordlessly lifts up the sheets, and Cas wastes no time in shoving up under them.
"I get so cold," Cas confides in him, bumping his back up against Dean's chest. Dean doesn't shy away. "I didn't even…before. I didn't even know."
Dean just says, "Yeah, well, lucky for you I've got a fever." Cas damn near purrs.
They lay for a while, breathing. Dean feels himself getting tired. Cas turns to face him, and his eyes too have gone sleepy and calm.
"I'm trying, Dean."
"Yeah, man," he yawns. "Me too."
Together, they sleep.