“And only once,” Dean croaks.

“I understand,” Castiel says, so seriously that Dean kind of wants to smack him. But besides being chronically earnest pain in his ass, Cas is also the only thing standing between him and days of rationing toilet-puking privileges with his brother at the Norfolk Motel 6, so he’ll allow it. Just this once.

It’s otherwise a nice day in Norfolk, bright and cooler. Dean squints into the sun, then looks back at the car, trying to gauge if he’ll make it all the way across the parking lot. Next to him, Castiel is peering intently at his face, fingers creeping towards his arm. Dean immediately holds up an unsteady hand.

“No.”

“But—”

“Hell no. Do you see that?” Dean points, and his eyes are doing that weird doubling thing and he’s dizzy and sick but he thinks the blur crawling towards the Impala is Sam.

“There is absolutely no way I could have predicted that reaction,” Castiel says defensively.

Of course they’d tried the Magic Fingers first thing— it’d seemed logical at the time, to cure divinely-induced illness with your very own Christopher Lloyd in the outfield. Dean is so used to it by now the bright zing barely registers; he hadn’t given it a second thought. He’d even let Sam go first.

Sam, who’s currently on his hands and knees in the gravel, trying to get the Impala’s back door open without coming any further out of the fetal position, face a color Dean usually sees in corpses. Yeah, he’s not trying it no matter how sorry Cas looks.

“Sammy?” Dean calls, just checking.

“Bluugh,” Sam gurgles back, which is enough to finally send Dean wobbling down the wooden stairs after him.

“If we drive, I anticipate a further logistical difficulty,” Castiel says, following close behind. He’s festooned in extra clothes, gear bags, weapon cases, the works, because if Dean has to carry anything heavier than his own damn self right now he’s going down and not getting up. Sam can’t even do that much.

“God, Cas, just— figure it out,” Dean says, exhausted.

“But—”

“Please.” Ugh, the sun is so sunny, ugh. “Please, I am begging you, do not make me talk anymore.”

“… very well.”

The ‘further logistical difficulty’ is Sam, flopped all over the back seat like the giant fucking asshole he is. He’s facedown and unmoving, filling all available real estate with his legs sticking out the open door.

“Hey,” Dean says, kicking them. “Scoot up.”

Sam moans.

“Hey!”

“We could try to fly,” Castiel says, again, the world’s most obnoxious Clippy the Paperclip impersonator. “There’s nothing to suggest that you both will have the same response to it as to restoration.”

Sam moans louder. Dean says, “Restoration?”

Castiel sighs. “Please go sit in the front seat.”

This is how Dean ends up slumped low on passenger’s side, annoyed and so nauseous he can barely keep his head up. Castiel takes his sweet fucking time maneuvering all of Sam into the car, closing the doors and climbing behind the wheel. He’s talking in his low, calm ‘you dumbshits’ voice, explaining reconstiwhatnow— something about reversing rather than accelerating something something and how mortal bodies usually fared better if blah blah blah. Dean understands basically nothing. He’s too busy shivering and trying not to upchuck into the map pocket.

“Dean?” Castiel says, tone suggesting it’s not for the first time.

“What,” Dean says, not opening his eyes.

“The keys. I’ll need the keys.”

“Fucking… pants pocket,” Dean mumbles, then bats away Castiel’s hand. “I’ll get ‘em, just…”

He cracks open an eye and sees Castiel leaning over him, eyebrows knitted and mouth curved down. “Dean…”

“Don’t fucking look at me like that,” Dean says, and manages to drag the keys from his jeans.

Sitting up is bad. Sitting up while the car is moving is horrible, worse than anything, and Dean screws his mouth and his eyes closed and manages to hang on for the first five miles or so before he calls uncle. Castiel pulls off next to a bridge and Dean makes it out of the car and into the ditch weeds, at least. While he’s folded over himself, contemplating the swirl of mud and bile in the water through watery eyes, another door opens behind him and there’s the sound of someone tossing their cookies out on the asphalt.  

“Sam, if you fuck up my finish, so help me Jesus,” Dean says, coughing miserably.

“You are not faring any better,” Castiel says from close behind him, and a hand grips Dean’s shoulder. “Water?”

The bottle is open and tepid but he drinks it all, after he rinses his mouth out. He stays in the cattails for a few more minutes to make sure everything’s out, then wipes cold sweat away from his forehead with his shirt and pointedly doesn’t let Castiel help him back to the car.

“You could lay down if you wanted,” Castiel says as the engine turns over.

“Unless you’re driving from the floor, no I can’t,” Dean says, huddled against the window. The seatbelt is digging into his chest but he’s not interested in moving for the next, oh, twenty years.

As they start picking up speed, there’s a click, and the pressure eases. Dean lifts his head and squints at Castiel as the sash loosens across his torso. Castiel’s eyes are on the road, but his hand is on Dean’s arm.

“Cas?”

Castiel starts to pull him over, slow but inexorable. “Lay down.”

Pulling against him is useless, or at least useless when Dean’s muscles feel like overboiled spaghetti. “Where? I told you, there’s no—”

Dean’s cheek hits cheap chinos and he stops talking, staring at the bottom of the dashboard.

“There,” Castiel says.

It’s a little uncomfortable, with his legs still in the footwell. It’s an angle Dean hasn’t seen in— decades, maybe. Probably. It takes him a second to find his voice back.

“Uh, Cas? What’re we doing here?”

“I am driving. You are resting,” Castiel says quietly.  His leg shifts under Dean’s head as he brakes for a curve.

There are marks in the plastic under the wheel, little knicks and scratches that are so familiar they make his eyes ache. It’s weird. Dean doesn’t remember the last time he was small enough to do this, that Dad would let him do this.

But… the engine is a sleepy rumble under Dean, and there’s a breeze coming through the open windows. It smells like yellow grass and country road dust. The sun slants in low and warm over the seats, spreading heat over his legs and his chest where his shirt is still damp.

He moves his shoulder in, so the angle for his neck isn’t so bad. A leg propped up on the seat helps too, and he sighs.

“Dean?”

A hand settles on his head, light but sure.

“Keep ‘em at ten and two, man. Don’t make me say it again,” Dean says, and closes his eyes.