I

The cardboard cup had no distinguishing name or logo, just generic line art and a blank cardboard sleeve. Dean stared at it before taking another sip.

Was coffee on Monday morning at work more or less friendly than whiskey on Friday after work? What did it mean? Did it mean anything at all? When was coffee just coffee?

"Damn head games," Dean muttered, scratching the back of his neck.

Dr. Novak had delivered this cup much like he'd delivered last week's, ducking into the lounge for just long enough to hand it to Dean before leaving with a shy smile and downcast eyes – no wink, this time, though there had been considerably more eye contact that Dean wasn't sure what to do with. The surgeon had already donned his scrubs, leaving Dean bereft of another opportunity to see him in street clothes, a strange sentiment that left Dean wondering why he had the sudden craving to see jeans and tee shirts when he rarely cared about such things.

He'd combed his hair this morning. He'd tried to tell himself that it was for no particular reason, and that it was just a good idea to appear well-groomed for the five minutes between the car and donning a scrub cap.

Dean was not very good at lying, but he was well-accomplished at outright ignoring certain inconvenient truths.

II

Dr. Novak was literally twiddling his thumbs. Dean sighed and looked toward the door to the core. Any second now, Ellen would be back.

Behind the drape, Bobby was arguing quietly but passionately on the phone with the anesthesia charge nurse over the anesthesia of choice for the next patient; Dr. Novak's request for aid had already fallen on deaf ears from that quarter. In Dean's mind, he could see Ellen moving swiftly through the shelves of the core and finding the bin of crucial eschmark bands empty. They couldn't start until they had one, and the one that Dean had let slip through his fingers and bounce across the floor would do no one any good.

"I'll just use an ACE," Dr. Novak said as the seconds ticked by. "Help me up with the arm."

"There's no one to –" Dean began to protest, but fell silent at a glance from the surgeon and hoisted up the elbow of the patient. Dr. Novak wrapped the bandage around the arm tightly, forcing the blood from it, then took the weight of the arm from Dean.

"Break scrub and turn the tourniquet on for me," he said, nodding in the direction of the tourniquet. "Let's do 220. And then while you're at it, plug in my headlight."

Dean shrugged and stood, pulling his table to within arm's reach of the surgeon before he stripped off his gown and gloves. Turning on the tourniquet was a simple matter of pressing a button – something he could easily have done through the shield of a sterile towel without breaking his scrub – but plugging in the light source of Dr. Novak's head lamp would, of course, be another matter entirely. If he was going to break scrub for the one, he may as well do it for the other.

"Tourniquet up," he announced as the machine hummed, and Dr. Novak began stripping the patient's arm of the ACE bandage.

"Thanks. Light cord is in my back pocket."

Dean nodded as he circled behind the surgeon, parting the back of the surgeon's gown and reaching inside, fingers following the light cord that trailed down from the back of the headlamp Dr. Novak wore. The light cord was inside the gown to prevent the unsterile cord from swinging into the surgical field; that necessitated the surgeon having to put on the unplugged headlamp before going to scrub, which meant he was reliant upon the nurse to grab the fiberoptic cord from beneath the gown and plugging it in for him. Most surgeons put the end of the cord in their back pocket to avoid having it trail behind them on the ground; fiberoptic cords were expensive and broke easily.

Dean tugged at the cord, reaching behind him with one foot to pull the light source closer.

The end of the cord stayed resolutely in Dr. Novak's pocket.

Dean tugged harder, with the same result. "I think it's stuck on something," he said, unthinkingly reaching down to where the surgeon's back pocket should be.

Abruptly and without warning, Dean was broadsided with the notion that the warmth he felt on his hand was the body heat radiating through the thin scrubs from Dr. Novak's back. He froze, his hand hovering centimeters from the small of Dr. Novak's back, and he found himself having to tamp down on the sudden inexplicable urge to move his hand those few centimeters and lay it there in a caress.

"Probably a stray thread," Dr. Novak said, shifting on his stool and inadvertently crossing those few centimeters himself, pushing back against Dean's hand. Dean withdrew it as though he'd been burned, and his mind raced to try and connect Dr. Novak's words with what was currently at hand –

Yes. The light cord. Stuck. Dean swallowed and forced his mind away from any thoughts of skin and backs and hands as he followed the light cord down further into the back pocket of Dr. Novak's scrubs.

The end of the cord was indeed stuck on a loop of thread within the pocket, and Dean's tugging had managed to slip the loop of thread into one of the ridges of the plug. "Gimme a second," he muttered, trying to manipulate the thread to unhook it, unable to ignore the flush of heat that spread from his middle up to his neck and down to –

Dean swallowed and redoubled his efforts to focus on the light cord and only the light cord, unspeakably grateful that his mask hid most of redness that was undoubtedly coloring his cheeks.

"What is going on back there?" Dr. Novak asked, twisting in his seat, catching Dean's eye before Dean had a chance to avert his gaze.

The cascade of heat had already gained too much momentum, and the sudden eye contact made Dean's stomach jump. Nearly unconsciously, his tongue darted out to wet his lips in a nervous response as Dr. Novak's expression very, very slightly changed from mild irritation to one of inquisitive surprise.

"It's – just stuck," Dean said, the words clumsy in his mouth. "Gimme another second and I'll have it out."

Dr. Novak reached over to the table and plucked a pair of scissors from Dean's setup. "Here." He held them out carefully, letting Dean take the scissors from his hand without touching Dr. Novak's glove.

The scissors made short work of the offending thread; Dean finally pulled the end of the light cord from under Dr. Novak's gown and plugged it into the light source.

"Intensity good for you?" Dean asked, dialing up the brightness.

"That's good. Are you going to kill me in my sleep if I touch your sharps?" Dr. Novak's hand hovered over the knife handle on Dean's table.

"Go for it." Dean coughed as he placed the scissors onto the dirty instrument cart, keeping his eyes on his task. "I'm gonna go rescrub."

The faucet at the far end of the scrub sink never dispensed warm water. Dean headed straight there, tearing his mask from his face, and slammed his knee against the panel that started the flow, cupping his hands beneath the frigid water and bringing them to his cheeks.

The shock of the water against his skin knocked his mind out of its feedback loop of rapidly building lust and he stood with his hands bracing him against the sink, breathing deeply as he willed his body to calm down. Silently thanking whichever god had decreed he wear boxer-briefs today, providing him some sort of dignity where hiding his unexpected arousal was concerned, he grabbed another mask from the boxes above the sink and tied it on.

"Jesus," he muttered to himself, closing his eyes and taking one last deep breath before he ripped open an iodine scrub brush. "Are you fucking fifteen? Get a grip."

III

The duffel bag hit the floor with a resounding thunk, and Dean paused to take in his surroundings. The motel room was certainly cleaner than the likes of what he'd grown up in, but there was still that feeling of non-permanence, the air of transience that meant the bed made no attempt to be like home and no apologies for its lack.

Dean forgave it anyway as he sat at its edge and toed off his shoes before swinging his legs up and grabbing the television remote. He let his mind wander as he flipped aimlessly through the channels, more for something to do than in search of anything to occupy his mind.

He'd left champagne chilling in an ice bucket on the table, surrounded by the Christmas lights he'd dug from the garage. He'd considered candles for the ambient light, then immediately dismissed them – he wasn't intending to stay home and watch them, and both he and Sam were understandably leery of house fires.

He'd also left a simple card, some gooey Hallmark nonsense, congratulating his brother and soon-to-be sister-in-law, telling them he'd cleared out for the evening to let them have some privacy in their home and to enjoy the champagne. It would all be terribly embarrassing if there was any chance of Jess declining Sam's proposal tonight, but the chance of that seemed laughably small.

It felt strange to be on his own tonight. It struck him that this was the first night alone since he'd shown up on Sam's doorstep that he wasn't spending in either their spare room or his room in their house. Even during his short time living with Cassie, his room at Sam and Jess's had still been his. He had always somehow taken for granted that they'd made a place for him, and that it would always be his.

And yet it had felt gauche to stay there tonight, when Sam and Jess would be celebrating. Sam had not asked Dean to make himself scarce; Sam would never request something like that. Just like, Dean surmised, Sam and Jess would never actually ask him to move out.

But there would be clashes. Dean knew that already. Sam and Jess were family, but they were doubtless going to be starting a family of their own before long, and while that didn't mean Dean would not be welcome in their home…

Dean realized that he'd been staring at an infomercial for microwave pasta dishes for several minutes without seeing it. He turned the television off and kicked off his jeans. The hour was early, but he felt troubled enough that he knew sleep would be elusive for a long time.

They'd never ask him to leave. But that didn't mean he shouldn't start making plans to let them start their lives together. They'd been there for him in the dark months after Dad had died; they'd supported him while he went back to school. Now he had a job – a career – and it was time to turn his mind to the possibility of truly being on his own for the first time.

IV

He'd been right.

The red digital numbers of the clock gleamed at him accusingly, as though he actually wanted to still be awake at seven minutes past one. He turned over so he couldn't see them, punching the pillow into a different shape, hoping without much conviction that the familiar ritual would allow sleep to come this time.

His mind had already raced through options for apartments and leases, deciding how and when he could pack his belongings, and figuring out how he could tell Sam and Jess about it without it sounding like an accusation or making him seem like a martyr. He'd already berated himself for the sickly tendril of fear at the prospect of being on his own, truly alone in a place that was nominally his. He didn't have the disposition to be alone. He needed to have people, a support structure, even if it was only in the background. Even here, tonight, he felt dreadfully small in the empty motel room. He could die there and no one would know. Well, the cleaning staff would, and the surgery center would probably wonder where he'd gone, and that was comforting in a morbid sort of way.

Mind having handled these insecurities so many times that the edges had grown worn, it now turned to a new trouble that had been hiding beneath the surface, waiting for Dean to stop paying it mind. Unbidden, the image of blue eyes floated before his own, and he felt a sudden odd pressure blooming in his chest that was not entirely unpleasant.

Dr. Novak had not mentioned the moment of clarity that had passed between them with that glance; Dean had to wonder if he'd perhaps imagined it. If Dr. Novak was ignoring it, that was probably for the best as well; neither of them truly needed the complications that would arise if either of them acknowledged what had happened there.

What had happened there was a matter of some confusion that chased away any possibility of sleep. Dean sighed and rolled onto his back, studying the shadows on the ceiling.

He could blame it on being starved for touch; his last encounter that had had any sort of satisfying release had been years ago, unless he was inclined to count his near-daily interactions with his hand, and he was not. The idea of his touch being welcome to someone else – nearly anyone else – was greatly appealing, if he had the energy or the time or even the desire to go out and find someone interested in that sort of exchange.

The idea that someone might want to touch him in return seemed so alien that it could not find a place to settle and instead floated in the front of his thoughts, attaching for brief moments to snatches of images of hands that Dean could not deny belonged to Dr. Novak. Hands that curled around a tumbler of whiskey in the dim light of a bar; hands that held nondescript cardboard coffee cups; hands that lingered on his shoulder for a long beat before they'd separated on Friday night, late enough to call it Saturday morning.

Dean closed his eyes in mild embarrassment at the association of memories and desires. He must be more exhausted than he thought, if his mind was lingering on such notions. Dr. Novak had simply been a warm body close to his, and something had triggered a reaction to it. That was all. That was all he wanted it to be. That was all it could be.

Dean was not very good at lying, but he was well-accomplished at denying inconvenient truths. The clock glowed two o'clock before his mind grew weary enough of denying that it surrendered to sleep.