Don't Look Back
Title: Don't Look Back
Summary: Uh, I wrote a Thanksgiving story? Kind of? It's basically the fluffiest fluff to ever fluff.
Rating: I think Dean says F once or twice. PG?
Cas has been having nightmares lately.
It’s been three weeks since the fall, and he’s mostly done being freaked out by human things, so it’s not like they aren’t impressed. It took him two days to eat, because he worried about the way the consistency of the food changed when he chewed it, and finally Sam figured out that soup was a good way to start, and then they started putting potatoes and carrots in the broth. Now mealtimes are his favorite, and he hovers around the kitchen (hovers figuratively, the literal hovering is a thing of the past, there was one night they were up for hours rubbing his back to soothe phantom pains from absent wings) asking Sam what he’s cooking and trying to sneak tastes before it’s finished. Sam likes to swat him away with a dishtowel, which is charmingly domestic and reminds Dean of something someone else did once, maybe, a long time ago.
The first time he slept it was because he was just flat exhausted. It had been a week. They weren’t pushing it because, well, they’re idiots, and they hadn’t realized it wasn’t happening, and then he passed out on the couch and they covered him with a blanket and he woke up screaming.
That wasn’t a nightmare, though. That was just confusion.
The nightmares started two days ago, and he doesn’t scream his way out of sleep, so there’s no way to know. What happens is, they walk in on him sitting ramrod straight in the chair Dean put in his room (everybody gets their own room, welcome to the future) staring at nothing and shivering.
“What happened?” Dean asked him, the first time.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Dreams, I think.” He’s been around long enough to see them claw their way out of plenty of nightmares. “I didn’t know they were like that.”
Dean got him some warm milk and sent him back to bed.
It happened again the next three nights in a row, though, so it doesn’t look like that’s going away anytime soon. Which is okay. They’ve handled worse. They’ve handled worse from Cas. At least he’s sleeping, and, you know, not trying to take over the world. At least he’s not fighting a literal war. Nightmares are fine. Nightmares happen to everybody.
***
He finds Sam hunched over a pile of books that’s probably taller than he is, turning pages too fast to be actually reading. “What’s going on?”
“Looking for a cure.”
“A cure. For what?”
“Nightmares. Angel nightmares.”
“I don’t think angels have ever had nightmares before, Sammy.”
“Human nightmares. Whatever.” Sam looks up, and his eyes are bright in that way Dean knows as well as he knows exactly where Sam’s body is when they hunt together.
“You’ve got a fever.”
“What? No.”
Feeling the kid’s forehead is a formality at this point, but Dean does it anyway, and yeah, he’s right. He’s always right about Sammy. “Yeah. About a hundred, I’d say.”
“101.2,” Cas contributes, coming in from the hall. He’s wrapped in a blanket and his feet are bare.
“How do you know that?” Dean asks.
“This is a climate-controlled space.”
“So?”
“So it’s normally seventy two degrees in here, and the slight increase in temperature…”
Sam laughs and then dissolves into a coughing fit. Cas watches him with that worried, fascinated look he uses for everything lately.
***
“Dean.”
“What?” He’s trying to make breakfast. It’s not going that well. Sue him, it’s not like he’s ever cooked anything before about a month ago.
“Sam won’t get out of bed.”
Shit. “What?”
He turns off the stove and follows Cas to Sam’s bedroom. There’s a part of him that’s been waiting for this, the inevitable meltdown, ever since all the Cage craziness kind of dried up inexplicably a couple years ago. The thing is that in their lives, things that are too good to be true are always, without exception, literally too good to be true. There’s never just a good thing. It’s never that simple.
So he’s ready for Sam to be wide-eyed and babbling in Enochian (and hoping against hope that this is one of those times Sam wants closeness, because there is literally nothing else for Dean to do besides hold him when it’s bad like that), but instead Sam is curled up under the covers with his eyes squeezed shut, shivering so hard it rocks the bed frame.
“He’s so hot,” Cas whispers.
“Get the thermometer.” Holy shit, Sammy.
“The what?”
“The...never mind. Rub his back. Gently. Don’t hurt him.”
“I wouldn’t hurt him.” Cas sounds scandalized, but then he lays a hand on Sam’s back and of course Sam jerks away from the touch and Cas gives Dean this goddamn terrified look and Dean needs another adult around here, or, failing that, a smaller fucking house so the thermometer would be right here and not all the way downstairs.
“How high is his fever?” Fuck it. He can’t leave Sammy.
“103.9.”
“Jesus.” Sam does not get sick like this. Sam has not been sick like this since they were little, small enough that Dean could sit up all night and hold him and feel those shuddery breaths against his face.
Sammy’s so big now.
“What do we do?” Cas is reaching out like he wants to touch Sam, and then pulling his hands back.
“You can touch him.”
“It hurts him…”
Dean sits down on the bed and runs a slow, firm hand up and down his brother’s back. Cas hesitates and then does the same. Sam stiffens, but he doesn’t pull away.
“We need stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“Supplies. Can you get them?” Cas has been grocery shopping twice now and has done all right at it. Probably he just shows the lists Dean makes to the clerks and gets them to find everything, which is an annoying way to behave, but on the other hand, nobody would be alive if it weren’t for Cas so Dean’s fine with them having to help him find the Cheerios. He makes the shopping list as specific as possible and hands it over.
“Dean.”
“What?”
Cas hesitates. “He won’t die, right?”
“No, he won’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Because humans die.”
“Go to the store, Cas. I promise Sam will be alive when you get back.”
***
He stretches out on the bed and wraps an arm around Sam, pulling him in close. A moment later Sam relaxes into him. “Heya, Sammy.”
“Hey.” Sam’s voice is muffled, his face pressed into Dean’s shirt.
“Pretty sick.”
“Sorry.”
“Nah.”
“So cold.” Sam burrows into him like he’s forgotten they’re grown up, which, in fairness, maybe he has. “So fucking cold.”
“I know, I gotcha.”
“Gonna get you sick.”
“No, no way. I’m a tank. I don’t get sick.”
“I don’t get sick either.”
“You do now. Happy retirement.” He rubs the heel of his hand between Sam’s shoulderblades and thinks about how much worse things could be, how much worse things have been, and if they’ve traded in that life for one where Sammy occasionally runs a fever, he’ll fucking take it, because he knows how to fix this.
***
Cas comes back more quickly than usual, which Dean appreciates - the guy is prone to the kind of detours he usually doesn’t mind indulging, like stopping to watch the lobsters in the seafood tank for twenty minutes, but he doesn’t have time for that today. Together they sit Sam up and help him drink juice and swallow pills, and Sam leans his head on Dean’s shoulder and shivers and lets them take care of him.
“Why is he crying?” It is entirely possible that Cas has never seen anyone cry in real life. As far as Dean knows, he learned about it from TV.
“He’s sick. He just feels fucked up. It’s okay. It’s okay, Sammy.” The kid’s pawing at his face like he’s embarrassed.
Cas bites his lip and leaves the room.
“Sorry,” Sam says.
“Hey. Don’t be.”
“Made him leave…”
“You didn’t make him do anything.”
“He’s scared, Dean.”
“Well, what has he got to be scared of?”
Sam pushes his face into Dean’s shoulder and breathes out a helpless sob.
***
That night, he finds Cas in the upstairs hallway, leaning against Sam’s closed door. “What are you doing?”
Cas opens his eyes. “Hello, Dean.”
“Yeah, hello. What are you doing, Cas?”
“Making sure he’s alive.”
Dean sighs. “Cas, quit doing this to yourself. No one’s dying.”
“Everyone’s dying.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Humans die, Dean.” He looks wretched.
“Yeah, okay,” Dean agrees. “But not when they’re thirty and the only thing wrong with them is a fever. Why are you worrying about this?”
Cas closes his eyes and breathes once, in and out.
“Cas?”
“I dream about it,” he whispers.
“That’s what your nightmares are about? Sam dying?”
“Sam dying. You dying. Me dying…”
“Cas. Cas. Hey.”
“We’re all going to die, Dean.”
“Not for ages. Fucking ages.” It hits him how long Cas has probably been around, how forty or fifty more years probably don’t seem like all that much to him. “You can’t just sit around waiting for us to die. We have a lot left to do first.”
“If Sam dies…”
“Sam isn’t dying. He’s sick. Come on, let’s go in and see him.”
They do, and pile into the bed together, and Dean decides separate bedrooms was a stupid idea.
Cas doesn’t dream again that night.
***
“We should have Thanksgiving,” Sam says. He’s propped up in bed, watching TV and eating everything that is set in front of him. The fever broke an hour ago and he’s ravenous.
Dean raises an eyebrow. “The hell do you know about Thanksgiving?”
“There’s food, right? I love food.”
“Me too,” Cas says. He’s sitting on the floor trying to figure out how to put the laces into Dean’s boots. “Dean, I can’t get this.”
“Figure it out.” Dean keeps his eyes on the TV. “You’re the one who unlaced them.”
“I thought you had to do that to put them on.”
“Come here, Cas.” Sam takes pity on him. “It goes here, see?”
“They should make shoes that are simpler,” Cas frowns.
Dean laughs. “They do. For goddamn kids. You want velcro shoes, Cas?”
“I have no idea what that is.”
“Dean.”
“Sammy?”
“Thanksgiving.”
“It’s January.”
“Yeah, but I want it.”
“I’m sorry, Veruca.”
“I want Thanksgiving too,” Cas says.
“Do you even know what Thanksgiving is?”
“I know there’s food!”
***
They have Thanksgiving. No one knows how to cook a turkey. They don’t own any measuring cups. Sam makes three kinds of pie and a stack of grilled cheese sandwiches, and Dean surprises everyone, himself most of all, by figuring out stuffing. Cas mashes the potatoes.
Sam tells them he’s thankful for them, and for the house, and Dean rolls his eyes because that thankful-for game is stupid. Cas says he’s thankful for food and not dying. Dean says he’d be thankful for them shutting up, and Sammy flicks a spoonful of stuffing at him.
That night they all pile into Sam’s bed again, because it’s the biggest (because he’s the biggest) and watch Bad Santa, and Sam asks if they can have Christmas next. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea. They’re due for a little fun.
Cas wakes them up in the middle of the night with another nightmare, and they hold him and talk him through it. It’s okay. Nightmares happen to everybody.
Summary: Uh, I wrote a Thanksgiving story? Kind of? It's basically the fluffiest fluff to ever fluff.
Rating: I think Dean says F once or twice. PG?
Cas has been having nightmares lately.
It’s been three weeks since the fall, and he’s mostly done being freaked out by human things, so it’s not like they aren’t impressed. It took him two days to eat, because he worried about the way the consistency of the food changed when he chewed it, and finally Sam figured out that soup was a good way to start, and then they started putting potatoes and carrots in the broth. Now mealtimes are his favorite, and he hovers around the kitchen (hovers figuratively, the literal hovering is a thing of the past, there was one night they were up for hours rubbing his back to soothe phantom pains from absent wings) asking Sam what he’s cooking and trying to sneak tastes before it’s finished. Sam likes to swat him away with a dishtowel, which is charmingly domestic and reminds Dean of something someone else did once, maybe, a long time ago.
The first time he slept it was because he was just flat exhausted. It had been a week. They weren’t pushing it because, well, they’re idiots, and they hadn’t realized it wasn’t happening, and then he passed out on the couch and they covered him with a blanket and he woke up screaming.
That wasn’t a nightmare, though. That was just confusion.
The nightmares started two days ago, and he doesn’t scream his way out of sleep, so there’s no way to know. What happens is, they walk in on him sitting ramrod straight in the chair Dean put in his room (everybody gets their own room, welcome to the future) staring at nothing and shivering.
“What happened?” Dean asked him, the first time.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Dreams, I think.” He’s been around long enough to see them claw their way out of plenty of nightmares. “I didn’t know they were like that.”
Dean got him some warm milk and sent him back to bed.
It happened again the next three nights in a row, though, so it doesn’t look like that’s going away anytime soon. Which is okay. They’ve handled worse. They’ve handled worse from Cas. At least he’s sleeping, and, you know, not trying to take over the world. At least he’s not fighting a literal war. Nightmares are fine. Nightmares happen to everybody.
***
He finds Sam hunched over a pile of books that’s probably taller than he is, turning pages too fast to be actually reading. “What’s going on?”
“Looking for a cure.”
“A cure. For what?”
“Nightmares. Angel nightmares.”
“I don’t think angels have ever had nightmares before, Sammy.”
“Human nightmares. Whatever.” Sam looks up, and his eyes are bright in that way Dean knows as well as he knows exactly where Sam’s body is when they hunt together.
“You’ve got a fever.”
“What? No.”
Feeling the kid’s forehead is a formality at this point, but Dean does it anyway, and yeah, he’s right. He’s always right about Sammy. “Yeah. About a hundred, I’d say.”
“101.2,” Cas contributes, coming in from the hall. He’s wrapped in a blanket and his feet are bare.
“How do you know that?” Dean asks.
“This is a climate-controlled space.”
“So?”
“So it’s normally seventy two degrees in here, and the slight increase in temperature…”
Sam laughs and then dissolves into a coughing fit. Cas watches him with that worried, fascinated look he uses for everything lately.
***
“Dean.”
“What?” He’s trying to make breakfast. It’s not going that well. Sue him, it’s not like he’s ever cooked anything before about a month ago.
“Sam won’t get out of bed.”
Shit. “What?”
He turns off the stove and follows Cas to Sam’s bedroom. There’s a part of him that’s been waiting for this, the inevitable meltdown, ever since all the Cage craziness kind of dried up inexplicably a couple years ago. The thing is that in their lives, things that are too good to be true are always, without exception, literally too good to be true. There’s never just a good thing. It’s never that simple.
So he’s ready for Sam to be wide-eyed and babbling in Enochian (and hoping against hope that this is one of those times Sam wants closeness, because there is literally nothing else for Dean to do besides hold him when it’s bad like that), but instead Sam is curled up under the covers with his eyes squeezed shut, shivering so hard it rocks the bed frame.
“He’s so hot,” Cas whispers.
“Get the thermometer.” Holy shit, Sammy.
“The what?”
“The...never mind. Rub his back. Gently. Don’t hurt him.”
“I wouldn’t hurt him.” Cas sounds scandalized, but then he lays a hand on Sam’s back and of course Sam jerks away from the touch and Cas gives Dean this goddamn terrified look and Dean needs another adult around here, or, failing that, a smaller fucking house so the thermometer would be right here and not all the way downstairs.
“How high is his fever?” Fuck it. He can’t leave Sammy.
“103.9.”
“Jesus.” Sam does not get sick like this. Sam has not been sick like this since they were little, small enough that Dean could sit up all night and hold him and feel those shuddery breaths against his face.
Sammy’s so big now.
“What do we do?” Cas is reaching out like he wants to touch Sam, and then pulling his hands back.
“You can touch him.”
“It hurts him…”
Dean sits down on the bed and runs a slow, firm hand up and down his brother’s back. Cas hesitates and then does the same. Sam stiffens, but he doesn’t pull away.
“We need stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“Supplies. Can you get them?” Cas has been grocery shopping twice now and has done all right at it. Probably he just shows the lists Dean makes to the clerks and gets them to find everything, which is an annoying way to behave, but on the other hand, nobody would be alive if it weren’t for Cas so Dean’s fine with them having to help him find the Cheerios. He makes the shopping list as specific as possible and hands it over.
“Dean.”
“What?”
Cas hesitates. “He won’t die, right?”
“No, he won’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Because humans die.”
“Go to the store, Cas. I promise Sam will be alive when you get back.”
***
He stretches out on the bed and wraps an arm around Sam, pulling him in close. A moment later Sam relaxes into him. “Heya, Sammy.”
“Hey.” Sam’s voice is muffled, his face pressed into Dean’s shirt.
“Pretty sick.”
“Sorry.”
“Nah.”
“So cold.” Sam burrows into him like he’s forgotten they’re grown up, which, in fairness, maybe he has. “So fucking cold.”
“I know, I gotcha.”
“Gonna get you sick.”
“No, no way. I’m a tank. I don’t get sick.”
“I don’t get sick either.”
“You do now. Happy retirement.” He rubs the heel of his hand between Sam’s shoulderblades and thinks about how much worse things could be, how much worse things have been, and if they’ve traded in that life for one where Sammy occasionally runs a fever, he’ll fucking take it, because he knows how to fix this.
***
Cas comes back more quickly than usual, which Dean appreciates - the guy is prone to the kind of detours he usually doesn’t mind indulging, like stopping to watch the lobsters in the seafood tank for twenty minutes, but he doesn’t have time for that today. Together they sit Sam up and help him drink juice and swallow pills, and Sam leans his head on Dean’s shoulder and shivers and lets them take care of him.
“Why is he crying?” It is entirely possible that Cas has never seen anyone cry in real life. As far as Dean knows, he learned about it from TV.
“He’s sick. He just feels fucked up. It’s okay. It’s okay, Sammy.” The kid’s pawing at his face like he’s embarrassed.
Cas bites his lip and leaves the room.
“Sorry,” Sam says.
“Hey. Don’t be.”
“Made him leave…”
“You didn’t make him do anything.”
“He’s scared, Dean.”
“Well, what has he got to be scared of?”
Sam pushes his face into Dean’s shoulder and breathes out a helpless sob.
***
That night, he finds Cas in the upstairs hallway, leaning against Sam’s closed door. “What are you doing?”
Cas opens his eyes. “Hello, Dean.”
“Yeah, hello. What are you doing, Cas?”
“Making sure he’s alive.”
Dean sighs. “Cas, quit doing this to yourself. No one’s dying.”
“Everyone’s dying.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Humans die, Dean.” He looks wretched.
“Yeah, okay,” Dean agrees. “But not when they’re thirty and the only thing wrong with them is a fever. Why are you worrying about this?”
Cas closes his eyes and breathes once, in and out.
“Cas?”
“I dream about it,” he whispers.
“That’s what your nightmares are about? Sam dying?”
“Sam dying. You dying. Me dying…”
“Cas. Cas. Hey.”
“We’re all going to die, Dean.”
“Not for ages. Fucking ages.” It hits him how long Cas has probably been around, how forty or fifty more years probably don’t seem like all that much to him. “You can’t just sit around waiting for us to die. We have a lot left to do first.”
“If Sam dies…”
“Sam isn’t dying. He’s sick. Come on, let’s go in and see him.”
They do, and pile into the bed together, and Dean decides separate bedrooms was a stupid idea.
Cas doesn’t dream again that night.
***
“We should have Thanksgiving,” Sam says. He’s propped up in bed, watching TV and eating everything that is set in front of him. The fever broke an hour ago and he’s ravenous.
Dean raises an eyebrow. “The hell do you know about Thanksgiving?”
“There’s food, right? I love food.”
“Me too,” Cas says. He’s sitting on the floor trying to figure out how to put the laces into Dean’s boots. “Dean, I can’t get this.”
“Figure it out.” Dean keeps his eyes on the TV. “You’re the one who unlaced them.”
“I thought you had to do that to put them on.”
“Come here, Cas.” Sam takes pity on him. “It goes here, see?”
“They should make shoes that are simpler,” Cas frowns.
Dean laughs. “They do. For goddamn kids. You want velcro shoes, Cas?”
“I have no idea what that is.”
“Dean.”
“Sammy?”
“Thanksgiving.”
“It’s January.”
“Yeah, but I want it.”
“I’m sorry, Veruca.”
“I want Thanksgiving too,” Cas says.
“Do you even know what Thanksgiving is?”
“I know there’s food!”
***
They have Thanksgiving. No one knows how to cook a turkey. They don’t own any measuring cups. Sam makes three kinds of pie and a stack of grilled cheese sandwiches, and Dean surprises everyone, himself most of all, by figuring out stuffing. Cas mashes the potatoes.
Sam tells them he’s thankful for them, and for the house, and Dean rolls his eyes because that thankful-for game is stupid. Cas says he’s thankful for food and not dying. Dean says he’d be thankful for them shutting up, and Sammy flicks a spoonful of stuffing at him.
That night they all pile into Sam’s bed again, because it’s the biggest (because he’s the biggest) and watch Bad Santa, and Sam asks if they can have Christmas next. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea. They’re due for a little fun.
Cas wakes them up in the middle of the night with another nightmare, and they hold him and talk him through it. It’s okay. Nightmares happen to everybody.