Cas had fallen asleep standing up in one corner of Samantha's room about three hours into their vigil - er, not vigil. Cas was holding the vigil. Dean was just… there. Not emotionally there, of course. Just… along for the ride. Because they were his roommates and it was just polite. - over the cow. (He'd finally gone to sleep in the middle of a conversation about orange chicken and why, exactly, it was called orange chicken when it was very clearly brown.)

Which meant that Dean had been stuck carrying his roommate - for the second time in how many days? - into the bed they shared (not that it meant anything, nope, his brain was quite, completely, absolutely focused on helping his roommate to bed and not at all being distracted by anything) and then sitting beside a sick cow (who was, of course, not at all cute and adorable and anything other than an inconve- nope, he couldn't even think that… okay, fine, she was cute, now shut it, he still didn't care).

At least it wasn't that unpleasant an experience: sitting in a room for hours at a time, not sleeping, and watching over a sick baby… replace cow with kid and it was any given night with a sick toddler Sam Winchester.

Except Samantha was a hell of a lot less picky than Sam. No way would Dean's little brother be nearly as happy about half a bag of animal crackers. (And yeah, maybe he shouldn't be giving the cow all the animal crackers because Cas had already used half of them for teaching her tricks, but she deserved a little treat while she was sick. Not that Dean cared. At all. Obviously.)

She was still shivering - he may or may not have brought her curtain lump from the corner and swaddled her with it… but that was irrelevant. To anything or everything. - and she felt oddly tense - not that Dean knew what her muscles should have felt like because he was certainly not the kind of person to just sit and pet a cow in the mornings before heading to class. Of course not. - but she was still mooing in a way that he thought was happy whenever he handed her another cracker or combed his fingers through her hair just how she liked (not that Dean knew what her preferences were, of course).

His eyes had picked up with their familiar burning at sometime about three o'clock - and, really, he probably should have gone to the bedroom and actually started sleeping long before then - but someone should probably stay and watch over the cow (not that he cared about the cow… and also not that he was avoiding sleeping with C- er, not that he didn't want to sleep with C-... uh… sharing a bed with C-... er, resting with Cas… he was just being practical).

He'd go to the actual bedroom whenever he decided to go to sleep. Probably.

– – –

Evidently, he hadn't, if waking up while still in Samantha's room was any indication. (No, he was not going to address the fact that she'd ended up curling up on his lap at some point in the night and was still asleep there… she was probably cold and needed warmth during the night, obviously. It might have been the only reason. And he was also not addressing the fact that he still had one hand scritching at the top of her head when he woke up. It didn't happen.)

He was also very frustrated to find a still-warm mug of coffee waiting nearby because that meant Cas had come in very recently and, in addition to not waking him up (because, really, that much sleep was just excessive), had apparently wasted his own time making him a drink he could very well have made himself. (And he absolutely was not going to address the fact that finding said coffee - and the slight edge of sugar that… well, fine, okay, it tasted good, alright? Shut it. - made him smile).

Or the fact that finding a second cup of coffee - drowned in milk and with enough sugar that it had started crystallizing on the side of the mug - along with a note ("Don't tell your dad." in Cas' familiar handwriting) also made him smile.

Of course not.

Instead, he just picked up the coffee, mentally thanked anyone listening that it was still the weekend (not, of course, so they could both still monitor Samantha through the whole cow sickness thing, but yes, so they could both still monitor Samantha through the whole cow sickness thing), and twined his fingers back into her coat.

Not that he cared, of course.