"Sam?" Castiel set down the book that he'd been holding- not necessarily reading, just skimming through- upon the sight of the younger Winchester bracing either side of his head with his hands and squeezing his eyes shut.

"'M okay, Cas," he managed through clamped teeth. "Just got a headache."

That was a lie. Castiel had seen this happen a sufficient enough amount of times by now to know that Sam was not, in fact, okay. Fortunately, he'd also seen it happen often enough to know what Dean did to help. The first thing Cas did was turn off all of the lights in the room.

"Cas?" Sam asked, forcing his eyes open, if only to a squint. "What're you-"

"Shhh." Castiel quickly crossed the room, pressing a long, gentle kiss to Sam's forehead. "Is this better for you? Darkness?" he asked, voice low and soft, the way that Dean's always was when Sam was hurting like this.

Sam hesitated and then barely nodded, just once, eyes falling closed again. "Yeah. Yeah, it's better."

Cas brushed the backs of his fingers against Sam's cheek and then turned away again to go find him some medicine. What was it that Dean was always giving him? The angel thought for a moment before coming up with the name Aspirin. It didn't take him long to retrieve it, along with a bottle of water, and return to Sam, who was now rocking slightly back and forth, knees drawn up to his chest. Castiel sat down beside him on the edge of the bay window seat and opened the cap of both bottles, handing Sam the pills first.

He took them and, without looking, shook six out into his palm, popping them into his mouth before Cas had time to question it and grabbing the water bottle from him to wash them down. "Thanks," he whispered, and then went back to rocking.

Castiel was still thinking through the steps, and realized that now he should likely be making some kind of physical contact. Slowly, timidly, he reached up and placed a hand on Sam's shoulder, which he relaxed back into immediately. Good. That was a good sign. The way that Sam was breathing, however, was not.

"Cas..." Sam said hesitantly, reaching out to clutch at his shirt.

The angel was fairly sure that he understood this gesture. When the younger Winchester began clinging to the elder, he was nearly certain that it generally meant... "Sam? Are you going to be sick?"

Sam bit down on the insides of his cheeks, giving them the outward appearance of being sunken in, and shrugged.

That was enough of an answer for Cas. He helped Sam up, locking an arm around his waist to support him, and guided him swiftly but carefully into the bathroom, easing him down onto the edge of the tub.

Sam pulled Castiel down beside him, whimpering and burying his face in the angel's neck. It wasn't the type of behavior that he generally directed toward Cas, but Dean wasn't here, and he was desperate.

"Would you like me to turn out the light again?" Castiel asked in the same quiet, gentle tone as before.

"Please," Sam whispered, letting go of Castiel for long enough to allow him to stand and flip off the light switch, but attaching himself back to the angel as soon as he was seated again.

Cas tentatively wrapped his arms around Sam, almost carefully kissing the top of his head.

Sam whimpered again, but this time it sounded more afraid than pained.

"Do you need to... move?" Cas hated this for Sam. Not that he didn't always, but he'd never been the one on the front lines before. It was much different this way. Much harder. Dean was very strong, staying calm and supportive all the way through it. Cas hoped that he could be that way now.

This time, not even bothering to try and brush it off, Sam shook his head yes and allowed Cas to maneuver him down from the tub to the floor so that he was resting on his knees in front of the toilet. He knew that he shouldn't fight it. Knew that it was inevitable, and that he may as well just get it over with, but he couldn't keep himself from swallowing each time that the bile rose in his throat. That was all it was- bile. He'd been feeling bad all day and hadn't eaten simply from lack of hunger, which, now, made sense. Sometimes he could feel migraines coming on hours beforehand in manifestations of other symptoms. He should've seen this coming.

"Sam," Castiel said, cutting off the younger Winchester's train of thought. "I understand how unpleasant this is for you, but Dean always says that it isn't good for you to attempt to hold it in, and I don't believe he would ask you to go through something that would cause you so much pain and discomfort if it weren't necessary."

Sam sighed, clamping his teeth together again. He was entirely aware that Cas was right, but that didn't mean his body was giving him any say in it.

The angel sunk to the floor next to Sam, past caring about breaking personal boundaries, and slid his hand under Sam's shirt, pushing it up to rub between his shoulders. "It's okay," he soothed, just as he'd heard Dean do a thousand times before. "I'm here."

For some reason, that broke Sam's reserve, an, with something that sounded like a strangled sob, he pushes himself up over the bowl, gagging for a moment before a throat full of bile emitted itself from his stomach and cut off his air supply long enough to splash into the water below his face.

It hurt. From the beginning to the end, it burned like a son of a fucking bitch, and it was all Sam could do to keep half his attention trained on Cas's hand, tracing some kind of pattern down his spine now, so that the pounding ache in his head wouldn't become enough to push his stomach over the edge again. For about half an hour once it was over, he was skeptical about moving, and once he finally did, he was almost entirely reliant on Cas to hold him up until they made it back to the living room, where he promptly collapsed onto the couch, head in the angel's lap, and fell asleep.

When Dean came in, the door opening was too loud and the door shutting was even louder and Dean asking why the hell all the lights were out was loud enough to make Cas want to stand up and punch him in the face.

Luckily for Dean, Sam didn't wake up. He stirred slightly and contorted his features into a discomforted expression, but rolled over so that his face was pressed against Cas's stomach and settled back down.

As soon as Dean's eyes adjusted and he took in the sight before him, he rushed to Cas's side, dropping to his knees in the floor and placing his hand in Sam's hair. "What's goin' on?" he asked, voice muted now.

"He had a migraine," Castiel reported. "Still does, I'm assuming, but he's been sleeping for a while, and that usually helps to some extent, doesn't it? His head was hurting first, so I turned out the lights, and then he got sick and I wasn't entirely sure how to comfort him but I tried my best to remember how you-"

Castiel was cut off by the press Dean's mouth to his own, the elder Winchester's hand coming up to rest at the nape of his neck. "Thank you," Dean breathed, leaning their foreheads together and before tilting his head down to brush his lips over Sam's exposed right cheek. "Thank you for takin' care'a my baby boy, angel."

Castiel smiled softly, peering down at Sam's sleeping face, and then looked up again to meet Dean's grateful eyes. "It was nothing I couldn't handle."