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The first thing he noticed waking up was that he had obviously forgotten to close the blinds. He opened his eyes to sunlight pouring through the gaps, and as he instinctively moved away, he noticed the second thing.
Holy fuck, his head hurt.
He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, intending to move the hair away from his eyes but grimacing when his hand came back wet from sweat. gross.
It took him a moment to shift from his place under the covers, swearing under his breath when his bed sheets and shirt stuck to his skin. He felt like he had been hit by a truck, and his eyes hadn’t fully opened since he looked out of the window.
The moment he knew he was in for a great day, however, was when Parker chose that moment to walk in, the mere sound of the door creaking open earning a flinch from Dean and another muttered swear.
“You told me to remind you that-..”
Dean didn’t even bother responding to that, whatever Parker was going to say before cutting himself off, in all honesty, he couldn’t care any less about.
“Uhh… are you..?"
..
“Dean?”
Great. Looks like Dean’s gonna be the one to start this conversation.
“I’m okay,” he replied plainly. Every word felt like it had scraped against his throat. He was sure his voice alone had done the complete opposite of reassuring Parker that he was okay.
There was a long stretch of silence before Dean continued again. “We have a live scheduled for tonight.”
“You know, we could reschedule i-”
“No.”
“Okay…”
Dean half-lifted, half weakly shoved the sheets off of him and swung his legs off the side of the bed, suppressing a groan at every little movement. He was completely fine yesterday, why now of all times did he have to get sick?
The second Dean was fully out of bed, he realised he missed the warm covers. He was so cold and tired, and the sheets just looked so enticing. All he wanted to do was go back to bed and-
“Dean?”
Oh. Parker was speaking
“Yeah?” He winced at how his voice sounded.
“Did you hear anything I said?” Dean shook his head and immediately regretted it, remembering just how much it hurt to move. Parker sighed and walked over, closing the blinds, relieving the pressure building behind Dean’s eyes.
“We aren’t going live today, Dean.”
He opened his mouth to reply before being cut off by Parker stepping towards him. He lifted his hand to run his fingers through Dean’s hair, pausing slightly to feel the heat radiating from his forehead. He leaned into the newfound cool touch. Parker’s expression tightened.
“You have some kind of fever, we gotta reschedule.”
“It’s not that bad, and you travelled all this way so we could go live in person! We already told everybody we were going live soon anyway…” oh my god his throat hurts so much he needed to stop talking.
“They’ll live, but to be honest, I'm questioning whether you’ll live with all this stubbornness.”
…
“Dean?”
He nodded, his throat still recovering from the grand total of 2 sentences he’d spoken. He was so tempted to argue back, convince Parker that he’s completely fine, and tell him that they can still go live but he just didn’t.
Parker moved his hand from Dean’s hair to his back, pulling him against his chest and using his spare hand to wrap around him.
“It’s okay, I’ll post saying we’ll be live another day. Let’s watch a film or something”
“But-”
Parker pulled him tighter and Dean leaned into him before he realised what he was doing. He felt so tired. “Come on, let’s get you to the couch”
Dean nodded again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Get off me I can walk”
“You’ve nearly fallen like 6 times stop being stubborn”
Dean swayed on his feet again as he moved towards the couch. Parker automatically raised his hands to stabilise him, but lowered them again as Dean flopped onto the couch, mumbling something about being cold. Parker left and the room immediately felt colder.
Dean shifted (slowly to avoid angering his growing headache) further onto the couch, curling and placing his head onto the armrest.
Fuck it really was freezing.
He didn’t even lift his head as Parker walked back into the room, footsteps far too loud for his liking and carrying something making a clinking noise. Dean pressed his head further against the armrest and closed his eyes in an attempt to stop the nose from piercing through his ears. He heard a sigh from the other end of the couch, still closer than Dean thought Parker would be.
“Up”
‘No’ He thought. His throat already felt like he’d swallowed nails and his head hurt far too much for him to move. Besides, he felt so warm and comfortable in his position he couldn’t possibly move from it. There was some rustling before the voice spoke again.
“Dean”
That sounded a lot closer than before. He opened his eyes and nearly flinched away from the sight of Parker sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him, holding a bottle of medicine in one hand and a spoonful in the other.
He was not about to be spoon-fed. He sat up, despite every bone in his body screaming at him not to, Parker sat up onto his knees to match Dean’s height from the couch. He clumsily took the spoon from Parker and mechanically swallowed the medicine, ignoring the way his throat burned as he did.
Parker smiled at Dean, his gaze lingering on him for a moment too long, before he climbed up onto the couch next to him and wrapped a blanket around the both of them. Dean closed his eyes again
The tv turned on, loud at first but quickly got quieter as the volume lowered to a whisper. Dean leaned his head on Parker's shoulder, he stiffened at first, clearly shocked and then relaxed, leaning into Dean the same way. He moved his arm to wrap around Dean’s waist and tug him slightly closer, careful not to disturb him too much.
Parker listened to Dean’s breathing until it evened out next to him.
“I love you” He whispered.
But Dean wasn’t awake to hear it.