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“Yo, Cas?” A loud thump against the bottom of the door, then Dean’s voice again. “C’mon, I’m freezing my ass off out here!”
Castiel extracts himself from the complicated nest of comforters with as much grace as he can muster, his bones protesting with every move. By the time he makes it over to the motel door, blanket trailing behind him, Dean’s worked up to a steady rhythm of stomping and shuffling, punctuated with a few choice curses.
He fumbles the door open and levels what he hopes is a soul-crushing glare at Dean, who’s got his hands cupped in front of his mouth to warm them up, an over-filled plastic bag from Walgreen’s hanging off his left wrist. “You have a keycard.”
“De-magnetized.” Dean pushes into the room past him, shaking off the snowflakes that have settled on his hair and coat collar. “How’re you holding up?”
“Still dying. Unpleasantly.” He coughs, to prove his point. “The amount of mucus the human body can produce seems unnecessarily high.”
Dean makes a face. “Uh, okay, gross.” He tosses the bag on the table and shrugs out of his coat. “Still cold?”
“Yes.”
Dean starts rummaging through the bag, pulling out an assortment of medicine bottles and small boxes that rattle. “You’re probably running a fever, then, and the NyQuil should help with that.” He holds up a box of tissues. “And these, so you can stop blowing your nose on that scratchy motel shit.”
Castiel slumps into the chair by the table and inspects the items in front of him. “These both say ‘NyQuil’ on them.”
“Yeah, well, one’s the syrup and the other’s pills.” Dean looks mildly flustered. “The syrup stuff tastes like ass, but I didn’t know if you’d want to swallow the pills or not, they’re kind of big.”
Castiel tears the box open and inspects the jelly-green capsules. “You have very little faith in me, Dean.”
“Hey, you never know, okay?” Dean grumps and walks over to the sink to fill a cup with water. “Sam couldn’t swallow pills until he was seventeen; he’d start choking on them every damn time.”
Castiel does actually panic just a little in the split second after he swallows the first pill, his newly-human instincts kicking in and sending frantic abort! abort! signals to his brain. The moment passes, though, as soon as he realizes he can still breathe, and he rolls his eyes at Dean (who’s been watching him anxiously the whole time) and tosses back the second capsule without a hitch.
He settles back in his chair, wrapping the comforter around his shoulders. “What else is in the bag?”
“Ginger ale, and tea—that green tea stuff you like.” Dean grabs the soda and carries it over to the mini-fridge. “I got a couple’a things of soup and some microwave mac-and-cheese, too.”
Castiel leans in to inspect the bag, and finds another larger box hidden underneath the food. He unearths it gingerly and holds it up in front of him. “You bought Christmas lights?”
Dean flushes, deeply this time, and shrugs. “Uh, yeah? I thought since we’re not going to make it back to the bunker in time, and we decorated that tree and everything…”
(Dean decorated the tree with an armful of tangled strings of lights and ornaments that he’d been slowly collecting from gas stations and shops during every hunt they’d been on since mid-November. Sam sat at the table and read. Castiel informed them both that it was 86 degrees Fahrenheit the afternoon that Christ was born, and that the magi didn’t show up until a whole four years later.)
Watching Dean now, still sputtering aimless excuses, Castiel can’t for the life of him fathom how he’d been so grumpy and aloof about the whole thing before. He smiles and tosses the box to Dean. He’s caught off guard and the box hits his chest, bouncing lightly into the crook of his elbow as he swings his arm up, last-minute, to trap it.
Dean blinks twice, then grins in return. “Where do you want ‘em?”
The window is Castiel’s first choice, but it turns out to be harder to drape the string than it looks, and without nails or tape it keeps slumping down. Dean finally gets it precariously wedged in behind the window frame, only to discover that the plug won’t reach any of the outlets. Castiel laughs hard enough that Dean threatens to decorate him instead.
Eventually, they settle on wrapping the string of lights around the TV cart, looping it up and around the tiny television as many times as it will reach. It’s not really anywhere close to being tree-shaped, but once the other lights are turned off and Dean plugs the string in, it doesn’t actually matter that much.
Castiel settles back against the foot of the nearest bed with a contented sigh. He’s still cold, but in a kind of surface way that can be cured with warm blankets and multi-colored lights, not the bone-deep chill from earlier.
Dean brings over a mug of tea and a ginger ale for himself, sitting down on the carpet next to Castiel. “Cheers, I guess,” he says, tipping his bottle forward to clink.
They drink in silence for a few minutes, Castiel blowing on the surface of his tea and testing it with cautious sips. He studies Dean’s face, mesmerized by the tiny points of pink and blue light reflected in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he says suddenly, because it seems important. “I’m sorry we won’t be at the bunker tomorrow.”
Dean shrugs. “Not your fault, Cas—it’s not like you tried to get the flu.”
“I know. But if this were last year, I could have transported us back.” And he wouldn’t have needed to in the first place, because he wouldn’t have gotten sick and left Dean to deal with the tulpa on his own and slowed down their drive home, grounding them in a Travelodge in southern Ohio on Christmas Eve.
“Yeah, well,” Dean responds, “Christmas last year was shitty. Sam was in the middle of trying to work out this summoning ritual and he lit up the wrong batch of herbs—stank up the whole bunker and we had to evacuate. We ended up eating dinner at a Denny’s because it was the only place open.” He nudges Castiel with his shoulder. “Trust me, this is an enormous improvement on last year.”
“We just decorated a television set.”
“Cas, you weren’t there last Christmas, okay?” Dean says it in a rush, quiet, as if the words are trying to escape without either of them noticing.
Castiel freezes, mug half-way to his lips, and feels the blood rushing to his ears. “Oh.” They’re sitting very close to each other, he realizes suddenly—he can feel the heat where Dean’s leg rests next to his even through two layers of motel comforters.
“So, you know,” Dean gets out—trying for casual and failing miserably—“that’s, um. Nicer.” He’s leaning in slightly, head tipping imperceptibly towards Castiel.
“Don’t kiss me.”
Dean flinches and pulls back. “Right,” he says quickly, and Castiel can see his eyes harden despite the blush across his cheekbones. “Yeah, obviously not.” He shifts away from Castiel and grabs at the ginger ale, tilting the bottle back for an angry swallow.
“Dean—”
“Just drop it Cas, okay?” Dean keeps his eyes glued to the bottle in his hand. “I fucked up, it was stupid, end of story.”
Castiel huffs and burrows deeper into his blankets. “I thought you said it wasn’t my fault I’m sick.”
“…what?”
“I said, I thought it wasn’t my fault that I’m sick, and now you’re acting like it is.”
Dean just stares at him blankly. “I don’t—“
“Dean, I have the flu,” he explains exasperatedly, because why is this so difficult to understand? “Viruses spread through saliva.”
Something nervous flashes across Dean’s face, and in the second before it vanishes, Castiel thinks: hope. “So,” Dean hesitates, “you meant: don’t kiss you…because you’ll get me sick?”
“Obviously, what else would you have thought I meant?”
Dean doesn’t answer, just continues to stare at him, but there’s warmth back in his eyes, and a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “So I can’t kiss you tonight.”
There’s suddenly less air in the room, and Dean’s knee is brushing his own again. Castiel swallows. “I think you probably shouldn’t.”
“Because I’ll get sick.”
“Because you’ll get sick.”
“Fuck it,” Dean mutters, and leans in.
It’s not a perfect kiss by any means, mostly because there’s a tickle in Castiel’s nose and he’s preoccupied with trying to will himself not to sneeze in Dean’s face. But between the warm, multi-colored glow from the window and Dean’s hand against the back of his head, fingers tangled in his hair—well, it’s pretty damn close.