Secrets and Camera Flashes

Chapter 63

“Hey, Cas.”

Castiel ignores that.

“Hey, Cassie!”

Castiel ignores that, too.

“Cassie, wake up!”

Castiel just groans. It’s too early for this.

“Cas, get your ass up! It’s Christmas and we wanna do Christmas things!”

Charlie alone would never be able to get him up, but the mention of other people is enough to motivate him. He doesn’t mind annoying his friend, but he doesn’t want to hinder the Christmas celebration for anyone else. He reluctantly sits up to find a few people already in the living room -- Charlie (obviously), Sam, Jess, and Ash -- but definitely not the whole party. She really woke him up for this?

“Oh, cool, that worked!” Charlie says with a grin, and Castiel has the feeling no one actually wanted him to wake up. “Okay, before we do Christmas stuff, I’m stealing you for a sec.”

Castiel groans and lies back down on the couch. If he doesn’t have to get up, he’s not getting up. It’s as simple as that.

"C'mon, wake up!" Charlie whines. "You can't just sleep in the middle of the living room on Christmas morning. That's, like, a class one felony."

Without opening his eyes, Castiel says, "Guess I'm going to jail, then."

"Wake up!" Charlie insists. "Please? I am literally begging you."

Castiel sighs. "What time is it?"

"Almost 7:30."

Castiel scoffs. "Oh, god, no. I'm going back to sleep."

"And what happens when everyone else inevitably wakes up in a minute because it's Christmas and it's impossible for anyone but you to sleep in on Christmas?" Charlie asks.

"Dean only went to bed, like, six hours ago," Castiel says. "I don't know about anyone else, but I don't think he is gonna wake up soon so I'm fine."

"How do you know when he went to bed?" Charlie asks, and Castiel wants to slap that suggestive tone out of her voice (but that would involve getting up and he's not going to do that).

"Because we stayed up to watch Die Hard," Castiel reminds her.

"Oh," Charlie says. "Okay, that's fair. But I wanna talk to you."

"We can talk later," he says. "For now, I just want to sleep."

"But —"

"Let me sleep or I'll slap you."

Charlie groans. "Fine, be that way."

And she does let him sleep… for about 10 seconds.

"Oh, hi, Dean! Hi, Jo!"

Castiel doesn't dignify that with a response. If she thinks lying about Dean and Jo is going to convince him to wake up, she is sorely mistaken.

But then Jo says, "Merry Christmas!" and Castiel comes to the unfortunate realization that she probably wasn't lying after all.

"Is Dean really up?" Sam asks, which makes Castiel think that maybe Charlie was lying. It's getting really hard to figure this out with good eyes closed, and if he cared any more, he'd probably get up.

"Yeah, he's making coffee," Jo says, and he's back to believing Charlie was telling the truth. "Guess he had a late night."

"So I heard," Sam says. "Cas, if you're awake, thank you for taking the bullet for us and watching Die Hard with him."