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A hand landed on Cas's knee. He blearily squinted out from his blanket cocoon on the man cave couch and hummed.
"Are you dying?" Dean asked. He sounded only half like he was actually worried about the possibility.
"No?" Cas said. The lamplight in the room was too bright, and the walls kept tilting in and out. He closed his eyes.
"Hey." Dean squeezed Cas's knee. "Buddy, wake up for a minute and talk to me."
"I'm not dying." Cas pressed his thumbs into his cheeks. It made the pressure in his face ease for a second.
"You're still wrapped up in the blanket," Dean said.
Cas blinked at him. "You're the one who wrapped it around me."
"Yeah, it's just." Dean gave him a quick, sheepish grin. "You don't usually like it."
A pang of something -- guilt, maybe -- struck Cas in the breastbone. "The blanket's warm and I'm cold." He wanted to rub at the frown line between Dean's eyes until it disappeared.
"Cas," Dean said, slipping into a mild interrogation mode, "why did you eat so much at supper last night?"
Cas had his eyes closed again. He leaned against Dean, listened to his heartbeat for a second. "You're a good cook."
"But you don't really like food. You're always saying it tastes like a pile of molecules."
Dean sounded hesitant enough Cas made himself focus. "I… The chicken pot pie didn't taste bad. It didn't taste like anything."
He pressed into the hand on his jaw and sighed at how lovely it felt to be touched.
"You have a fever," Dean said, sounding surprised. "How can you have a fever? And you've lost your sense of taste, because that pot pie was full of flavor, dammit. Baby carrots, pearl onions, spring peas, and two -- two! -- types of paprika."
"I don't know," Cas mumbled through a yawn, in response to at least one of the points Dean had made.
"I think you have an angelic sinus infection." Dean took away his hand.
Cas mourned his retreat. "My head feels too full," he said, in a frayed voice.
"Yeah, that's a sinus infection for you. Cas? Cas."
"What."
Dean let out a laugh. "Okay, I was just going to say, why don't you go to bed and maybe you'll sleep this off. But sleeping on the couch is fine too."
Yes, Cas thought, because I am not moving. He'd laid down and stretched out, and the pleather cushions squished under his weight as if to mold themselves around him. He could feel how hot his cheek was compared to the back cushion and sought the coolness of the fake leather, even though it smelled like a pair of sneakers. With his eyes squeezed shut he could almost block out the room's light. He shivered and shivered.
"All right, c'mere," Dean said quietly. He tugged at the fabric wadded up beside Cas until the blanket came free.
He tucked the blanket back around Cas, from shoulders to feet. When he was done, he put his hand on the back of Cas's head for just a second.
"You are a good cook, though," Cas murmured at the edge of sleep.
"Thanks," Dean said.
He leaned over and placed a feather-light kiss on Cas's temple, and it was the last sensation Cas knew of in the waking world for many hours.