Castiel comes on business. That's Dean's experience so far, at least. If the angel shows up, it's either because they prayed to him or because he has important, usually dire, news for the Winchesters. So when he arrives this time for no apparent reason, it almost spooks Dean out of his delirium.

"Cas, what...?" Dean struggles to sit up in bed, but a wave of dizziness overcomes him and he sinks down again. He's upstairs in Bobby's house, sequestered away in the spare bedroom to keep from infecting anyone else with the mysterious malady that hit him after they killed that witch. Luckily she wasn't very powerful – so far it's no different from a regular fever, and the most damage it's done is to Dean's ego, because he Does Not Get Sick. It's a rule. One which has now apparently been broken, because he's been fading in and out of consciousness for almost twenty-four hours, alternating between feeling overheated and getting the shivers. It would help if every time Sam came in to check on him, he would stop making that vaguely disapproving face. It's not like Dean got whammied on purpose. He hates being confined to bed, and the only reason he's there at all is because he gets wobbly and feels like he might puke every time he tries to stand up.

And now he's got an angel standing at the foot of the bed, head tipped slightly to one side as he appraises the invalid with narrowed eyes. "Hello, Dean."

"If you've come to tell me we need to go save the world," Dean says weakly, "It's gonna have to wait. I'm a little busy being cursed right now."

"I can see that." Castiel makes his way around the corner of the bed and approaches Dean. "It's not dangerous. It will pass of its own accord."

"Huh. You can tell that?"

"Yes." And then he does something rather unexpected by sitting carefully down on the edge of the bed, all the while continuing to regard Dean with that scientific gaze. Before he knows what's happening, Dean feels a cool hand pressed lightly against his forehead. "You're hot."

"You're not that bad yourself," Dean replies weakly, with a pale attempt at his usual cocky grin.

Castiel's brows draw further together. Either he doesn't get the humor or is purposely ignoring it. "I can make you cooler."

On automatic, Dean opens his mouth to argue that he's already the coolest dude on the dude ranch, but he stops himself before saying anything. No point in confusing the guy any more in regards to literal versus metaphorical temperature. Instead, he finds himself saying "Okay."

No sooner is the word out of his mouth than Castiel has disappeared, but before Dean can get annoyed, he's back, with a wet washcloth in his hand. Dean raises an eyebrow in surprise. "Seriously? I thought you were going to mojo me healthy or something."

"No. As I told you, the hex must be allowed to run its course. Alone, it will not cause you any lasting damage. But mixing its effects with my powers could be... unpredictable."

While speaking, the angel has carefully laid the dripping cloth on Dean's forehead, and he has to admit, it feels nice. Not as nice as being zapped instantly well again, but if Castiel is reluctant to do it, Dean decides he doesn't need to try speedballing angel and witch magic together. He closes his eyes and lets out a long breath, suddenly feeling a bit closer to sanity. "Why did you come, anyway, Cas? Anything important going on?"

"Yes." Castiel sounds surprised. "You are ill, Dean. That is important."

Dean finds himself smiling, just a tiny bit, eyes still closed as the coolness spreads into his skin. "So you're here to watch over me till I get better, is that it? Got nothing better to do in all of Heaven and Earth?"

"No, nothing better." The angel's voice has softened now, almost a whisper, and the way he repeats Dean's words gives them a new, tender weight. "Sleep, Dean. I will be here."

***

When Dean's finally well again, he thinks about what Castiel did and feels inexplicably irritated. He's not a baby, after all, doesn't need some nursemaid angel coddling him. Another small part of him hums with happiness at the memory of the angel's quiet, cooling presence in the midst of his pain and delirium. But he steadfastly ignores that part.

The next time Castiel appears, it's hard to keep ignoring it, though. About as hard as it is to ignore the way the angel looks at him – the same unblinking stare as ever, but now it's tempered with an almost startling gentleness, and Dean can barely meet those blue eyes for a few seconds before needing to look somewhere else.

They work another case, a simple salt-and-burn, and Dean is just going through the motions. Maybe his illness took more out of him than he realized. He feels distracted, like he left part of himself back in his sickbed.

"You all right, Dean?" Having finished the job, they're in a diner grabbing a bite to eat before they hit the road again, and Sam is making his worried puppy-dog face across the table.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Dean hadn't told him about Castiel showing up at the worst part of his sickness, but an offhand comment from Sam a few days afterward had revealed that he and Bobby had known about it. In fact, they were the ones Castiel had questioned about the best way to take care of a feverish human. Since then, Sam hasn't blinked at the new glowing looks Castiel keeps sending Dean, and Dean isn't sure what to think about that.

A few days later, the brothers are buried in research in their hotel room when Castiel arrives with food. Dean is dumbfounded, but Sam, with a tiny smirk in his brother's direction, just says "Thanks, Cas."

"You brought us lunch," Dean states, trying to wrap his mind around this new turn of events as he accepts his burger. "...Why?"

"I thought you might be hungry," is Castiel's simple response.

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, man," Sam advises, chowing down on his sandwich.

And Castiel just gives Dean that new look of his, like nothing makes him as purely happy as bringing food to the Winchesters. Dean doesn't know what to say, so he takes a big bite of burger. It's a bacon cheeseburger. His favorite.

***

Dean manages to pretend nothing's wrong for almost a week – he's a Winchester, he's good at that – but in the end, it's Sam's lack of agitation that gets to him. Dean's hurt his hand battling a vamp and is back at the motel getting doctored by his brother when Castiel flies in, with apparently nothing to do except make a thorough examination of Dean's war wounds. After he says something pointless and oddly out of character like "You should be more careful, Dean" and leaves again, Dean can't help it anymore.

"Sam, seriously!" he bursts out as soon as the angel's gone. "What in the hell is going on here? Why are you acting like it's totally normal?"

"Like what's totally normal?" Sam replies distractedly, dabbing iodine on Dean's knuckles. "Okay, just sit there for a minute and don't move your hand."

"You know exactly what I mean. Castiel, he's been acting different. Ever since I got sick, he's been all – extra nice or something."

Now Sam smiles a bit. "Yeah, I noticed that. I think he's relieved you're okay."

Dean scoffs. "What? It wasn't that a big a deal."

"Dean." Sam gets his schoolmarm look. "You were in bed for three days. You were having fever dreams and shit. Cas was scared. He didn't leave the room for about twenty-four hours during the worst part of it."

"Scared? No he wasn't." Dean stretches his fingers slowly, now that the iodine has dried, and winces. Then the rest of Sam's words sink in. "Twenty-four hours? I only remember him being there for a few minutes."

Sam blinks. "Do you seriously not remember that? Well, I guess I'm not surprised. You were pretty out of it." He stands up and stretches, but pauses mid-stretch. "Wait––so, what else do you not remember?"

"How am I supposed to remember what I can't remember?" Dean grouses, starting to take off his shoes. The only thing on his agenda now is bed. "All I remember is him popping in with a cool cloth and saying he couldn't heal me."

Sam's eyebrows slowly slide upward. "That's all you remember."

"Yeah. What, is there something else I'm supposed to remember?"

The eyebrows go even higher. "Um, yeah!" Sam laughs in disbelief. "You don't remember what you said to him?"

"No, I guess I don't!" Dean is getting irritated now. "But since you obviously do, any time you feel like sharing––"

"Well, I wasn't there, but he came and told me later. He was so happy he couldn't keep it to himself. He said he'd been sitting with you through a particularly bad bout when you'd been whimpering about Hell and stuff––" (Dean grimaces at the word "whimpering") "––and when you regained semi-consciousness you apparently said 'I love you, Cas' to him."

Sam's grinning now, having realized that Dean honestly can't remember any of this, and it's Dean's turn to feel his eyebrows heading for his hairline. "You gotta be shitting me."

Sam shrugs, still grinning. "Just reporting what I was told. You might want to talk to him directly for the full story."

One shoe on and one off, Dean gets up and limps toward the bottle on the dresser. If there ever was a time he needed a nightcap, this is it.

***

Dean Winchester doesn't say "I love you". The words are simply not in his vocabulary. If pressed, he would argue that a Winchester doesn't talk about love; he shows it. So he's annoyed at his self of a week ago for having forgotten this fundamental rule. Even if he was delirious and completely out of it, as he evidently had been, that was still no reason to go around spouting out declarations of love to anyone who took care of him while he was sick.

Although, if he's completely honest with himself, he's pretty sure it wouldn't have happened with anyone else, no matter how loopy he'd been. If he had to be idiot enough to say something like that, it makes a stupid kind of sense that it would be to the angel who's practically obsessed with him. Now he has to figure out some way to undo this mess. Because it's pretty clear from the way Castiel's been acting lately that he must have taken Dean's ill-considered (in every sense of the word) statement at face value.

Well, there's no time like the present, and knowing how awkward this is going to be, Dean decides to just get it over with. Alone in the motel room, he closes his eyes and speaks to the emptiness. "Cas? We need to talk." His mouth is open to say something else, but he can't think of anything else to say, so he closes it. After a moment there's a fluttering of wings, and the angel is standing in front of him, about six inches away but looking at Dean as if he's peering across an endless plain. Dean automatically goes to take a step back, but the bed is right behind him, so he finds himself sitting down rather more suddenly than expected.

"Uh, hi, Cas."

"Hello, Dean." It's not his imagination: that low voice definitely has a rough warmth to it that wasn't there before.

Dean licks his lips and jumps into his speech, eyes on the ground, before he can get stage fright and back out. "Listen, I think we might have had a... misunderstanding. When I was cursed last week, I was––I guess I was more out of it than I realized. I might have said... some things, that I, um, didn't really realize I was saying." Castiel is silent, so Dean continues, almost nervously. "That happens sometimes, when people are delirious, you know, they say things they don't mean. You shouldn't take it to heart, is all I'm saying." Relieved to have got it all out, he finally risks a glance up at Castiel's face.

The angel's eyes are bright and sharp, fixed steadily on him. "But what if it comes from the heart, Dean? Then doesn't it belong there?" His voice is soft but weighty. "You forget, I know yours. Better than you do, sometimes." Although he won't admit it later, Dean is struck speechless at this moment. He's never seen Castiel so sure of himself as he is right now, and for a moment the vessel seems to become irrelevant and Dean can almost sense the pure being of light that stands before him. The angel steps forward, even though there's really no room to do so, and gazes down at him from stormy blue eyes. "Everything you say, Dean, everything you do, I take to heart." He pronounces the last three words carefully, as if he's unfamiliar with the idiom but has decided he knows exactly what it means.

Against all his own expectations, Dean feels a rushing buoyant sensation at the angel's words, a sensation that terrifies and thrills him at the same time. It sparks through his body like adrenaline, like the ocean, gigantic, unfathomable, alive. In the space of a second there's been a power shift between the two of them and Dean sees just the tiniest peek of something far too big for him to comprehend. He suddenly feels very young and foolish for thinking he could apply any of the rules he knows to this situation. He swallows with a suddenly dry throat, looking up at the angel that stands over him, and whispers the only word that comes to mind: "Okay."

Something in Castiel's expression shifts, and the corners of his mouth twitch. "Now, I believe it's my turn to tell you: I love you, Dean." His solemnity would be hilarious in any other situation, but right now, Dean's not laughing. He does manage a small smile, though, feeling a bit like a survivor after a flood waking up to discover that even if everything you know has been washed away, the sun will still rise the next morning. And some part of him realizes that just as Jimmy Novak's body is merely a vessel for an Angel of the Lord, those three little words are only a vessel for something much larger and more powerful. He's not sure what it is yet. But he thinks maybe he's going to find out.

~ fin ~