**Time skip brought to you by: Dean's inability to take care of himself**
Lance opens his eyes and lets out a long low sigh from having to wake up, but he needs to go make waffles for Cas. Lance gets up and tries not to wake up Keith as he gets dressed and leaves the room, he slides on his blue lion slippers and shuffles into the kitchen, he yawns stretching his arms over his head, but stops suddenly when he sees Dean's unfinished bowl of ramen, no more finished then it was last night.
Not a good sign.
Cas suddenly comes running out of his room. "Lance, where's Dean? He's not in our room."
"Uh, I'm not sure, he didn't finish his dinner, where would he have gone?" Lance looks around worriedly, he literally has no idea where Dean can possibly be, but then he sees someone's silhouette through the foggy glass door to the small landing in the back. "Is that Dean?" Lance wonders out loud.
Cas glances over and sees what Lance notices. "He couldn't possibly be that stupid, could he?" Walking over to the door, he pulls it open, and for just a second, he freezes in shock. "Or maybe he could."
"OH MY GOD DEAN!" Lance rushes over to him and yanking him up after shoving his hands under his arms. "Get inside right now!" Lance drags the half frozen man into the living space and throws him on the couch. "Take off your cold clothes, Cas go get him some fresh ones." Lance commences the two of them.
Dean's a mess. His lips are blue, he's so cold, and he's shaking so hard, he can barely pull his shirt off, but he manages it all the same. He looks up at Lance with sleepy green eyes, and for just a second, he might be three years old. "I - I'm so-sorry." he says, his words broken up from the shivering. He isn't sure exactly what he's done to upset the other man, but he can tell there's something and he knows from long painful experience that it's always better to apologize.
"I'm not mad Dean," Lance looks and Dean's fingers which are white except the tips which are bright red, then checks his pulse, it's so slow, Lance wonders if it's even there. "Dude, I think you have hypothermia." Lance says softly. "Shit." he swears under his breath running into the bathroom and stopping the water, then his room and grabbing as many blankets as he can and then dumping them on Dean. "We need to slowly bring your temperature back up."
"I d-don't got hypo-hypother-hypothermia." Dean says, his words slurring together like the night he had gotten drunk. "Dad said th-that's n-not a re-real problem." Lance scowled at him.
"You could die, Dean. it is a real problem, and no one in this apartment wants you that way, so let's get your temperature back up." Lance says wrapping the blankets around Dean tighter than grabbing a heating pad or seven from his closet, he plugs them all in and put them on low, shoving them under the blankets to touch Deans skin and help raise his body heat to a normal temperature.
"Th-that's hot." he mumbles, trying to push them away. Then just starts coughing again and honestly can't particularly stop.
"God, Dean, just try to breath, where is Cas?" Lance stands and heads for Dean's room. He opens the door, slightly expecting to find Cas looking through Dean's clothing not knowing what to grab, but instead found him crying on Deans bed, his face in a pillow.
"Cas." Lance says softly sitting next to him. "Are you ok?" ha asks, Cas shakes his head no.
"I can't help him, I want to help him." he cries into the pillow. Lance doesn't quite know what he's talking about but knows the feeling. He puts an arm around Cas's shoulders.
"You can help, I need you to show me where Dean keeps his clothes, so we can get him in something that will help him warm up." Lance squeezes his shoulders comforting and Cas nods. He stands and helps Lance get him some clothes then helps him bring them out to Dean.
"Hey Cas." Dean says his eyes half lidded. "When did you get here?" he says so softly Lance could barely hear him. Cas and Lance ignore his random rambling and get him dressed Lance gets a tub of warm water to put his feet in while keeping the heating pads on his upper body and legs, they turn up the heat so the air will be warm and heat up his lungs and air passages. Lance goes in the kitchen telling Cas to keep an eye on him and keep him awake and talking while he makes some hot cocoa and heats up his ramen from last night.
His coughing is bad, his voice was low and slow, his heart slowly becomes stronger after he eats his ramen and starts warming up from the inside as well. The hot cocoa helps a lot. But it's still taking a little longer then Lance hoped. He knows he should have called 911, but he doesn't have the money to pay for that, not after Keith's arm and concussion.
Lance checks Deans temperature one more time, it's almost normal, now they just need to make sure it doesn't drop, the heating pads are on hot, and wrapped onto Dean under some blankets, they let him fall asleep, because it's quite obvious he didn't during the night. He kept saying things out of the ordinary, but didn't respond when they would talk back to him.
"Lance~" Keith groans from their bed room. Lance looks over his shoulder.
"Cas could you keep an eye on Dean so i can tend to Keith?" he asks, Cas nods eagerly and Lance gets up to go see how Keith is.
"Lance my head huuuuuuurts." Keith whines sitting up in bed, Lance grins getting an idea that might help. He walks over and sits on the bed next to his legs, and softly kisses his forehead.
"Better?" Lance asks softly. Keith's eyes remain closed. He isn't sure if what just happened really happened, if it was a dream opening his eyes would end it and he doesn't want to do that. "Keith?" Lance brings him back to the present.
"Hmm?" he opens his eyes half way to look at him. "Yeah Lance?" he asks, truthfully he forgot all about his headache. Lance smiles at him.
"How you feeling buddie?" Lance asks patting his leg softly. Keith shrugs slightly.
"I'm good," he says, "how are you." he's obviously drowsy, and injured, he doesn't know how to stop himself from being like this when he's sick or hurt. It just happens.
'You know, the norm, I just save Dean's life, he was on the back porch all night long… he's got hypothermia.' Lance thinks about saying, but he doesn't want Keith to worry, so he doesn't. "I'm good, I'm just gonna make some waffles, Cas has never had them before." Lance says with a small smile.
"Mmm, waffles." Keith hums closing his eyes again. Lance giggles, not able to suppress it. "That was cute." Keith points at him and Lance's breath hitches in his throat.
"What?" Lance asks Keith puts his hand down but doesn't answer. "What did you just say?" Lance asks more curious then angry or anything. Keith just giggles in response.
"Mmm, waffles" he giggles some more. Lance rolls his eyes and stands up, he shoves Keith good arm back slightly.
"Get some rest you idiot." Lance chuckles, Keith nods and lies back down to wait for waffles. Lance checks on Dean before trying to get breakfast started. He changes into a tank top and shorts due to the heat of the waffle maker and the apartment. He continues to check in with his two patents as he also cooks breakfast for Cas. Lance would say he should get some kind of award for that, but right now he's too worried about everyone he lives with to even think about himself, not even once, even when he burns his hand, he hears Keith call for him and doesn't bother to even run it under cold water before going to Keith's side.
Soon Dean wakes up, he isn't talking much, but Cas and Lance are able to get him to eat a waffle without to much trouble. Lance then brings some into Keith, who's fallen asleep again, Lance slightly panics that he's entered a coma and shakes him awake, Keith sits up straight.
"What? Who is it? Who's attacking?" he says holding out his knife that he keeps under his pillow when he sleeps. Lance chuckles a bit and takes his knife setting it on his night stand.
"No one is attacking, Keith. I brought you waffles." Keith looked at the plate in his hands, the waffle he had brought had butter on it and a little syrup. Lance thought waffles would be ok since he was doing better, but they would start out with one.
"Yummie." Keith took the plate and crossed his legs placing it on his lap. Lance smiled and went out to make sure Cas got some waffles too. He made Cas a plate and brought it into him so he could eat while he watched Dean. Lance then took his plate into his room to eat with Keith.
"So Keith, guess what." Lance sat next to Keith on the bed, Keith took a small bit and looked up at Lance through his bangs. He shrugged. "It's Christmas eve." he smiled at him and Keith smiled even bigger than Lance thought was possible.
"Yeeeeeeesssssssssss." Keith whispered. "Can we make Christmas cookies?" he asked. Lance looked Keith up and down wearing a large sleep shirt and some flannel PJ pants. His hair was a total mess, it hadn't been brushed through since the crash, but he was adorable.
"Sure, we can make Christmas cookies." Keith grinned around his full mouth and Lance added. "After I help you get ready for the day." Keith's shoulders sank, but he nodded.
"Alright Lance." he pouted. Lance brought out their dirty dishes and then came back to help Keith only to find he had started without him, but lacking the mental strength to finish, he had his shirt over his head with his arms still in it, and was stuck. "Lance." he muttered when he heard him come back. "I'm stuck."
"I can see that." Lance walks over to him and yanks his shirt off the rest of the way. "There you go, now you can see." Lance said, he helped him take the pants off. "Would you like to change your boxers by yourself?" Lance asked in a joking manner.
Keith wasn't to far gone that he couldn't get embarrassed, his cheeks turned a light shade of pink and he nodded, Lance chuckled and stepped out of the room and Keith changed his undergarment in privacy. It only hurt his arm a little bit, he had gotten second degree burns up to his elbow and had to change the bandages every day, for three weeks.
"All finished?" Lance asked from the other side of the door. Keith nodded before realizing Lance couldn't see.
"Yep." he said popping the 'P'. Lance came in and helped him get dressed for the day in something that could accommodate with the warm house. Lance brings Keith into the kitchen ties an apron around him and tells him to sit in a kitchen chair. Lance goes into check on Dean who is scowling angrily at the floor.
"Dean?" Lance crouches next to him, Dean ignores him. "How you doing buddy?" Lance rests a hand on Dean knee.
nice cliff hanger? I hope you enjoy it, the next chapter will start off right where this one ended, stay tuned! Let me know what you think is going to happen next and what your favorite part was, I can't wait to see! lots of love! -Sam