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Dean has been baking for what feels like 24 goddamn hours, as he expresses to Cas between enthusiastic kisses, and he deserves, he deserves, to eat the last scrapings of the cookie dough if he goddamn well pleases.
“Dean,” Cas burrs, the sound vibrating up through the corner of Dean’s jaw due to Cas currently being occupied exploring that general angle with his mouth. “I’ve been reading about salmonella, and it’s very serious—I think you should really be careful about it.”
“Cas, I’ve been human for a lot longer than you have,” Dean tells him, arching his back midway through the rebuttal as Cas does something exceedingly clever with his hand. “I think...ah, I think I know how to not die of food poisoning.”
“Disrespectful,” Cas breathes, nipping roughly at his jaw. “Fortunately for you, my current priority is distracting you enough to get the health hazard out of your hands. Which I’ve just done.”
(Which is how Dean ends up chasing Cas around the kitchen, hurling handfuls of flour at him and trying to grab the cookie dough bowl back before Cas can get it to the sink.)
*
In the library, Eileen and Sam have about 6 gallons of popcorn overflowing out of all of Dean’s good serving bowls and they are stringing it together on yards and yards of thread, signing at each other and snickering between kernels. The floor is a mess of tiny popcorn fragments, because Dean apparently lives with friggin' animals.
Cas, as it turns out, has bought everyone socks. He makes a circuit of the room, handing out lumpy hosiery with giant balls of knitted footwear shoved into the toes.
“Stockings of stockings,” he explains, looking disgustingly pleased with himself. “It’s wordplay.”
“Oh, I know about stockings,” says Jack happily. “It’s a Christmas tradition.”
“After the stockings,” Cas says, taking the seat next to Dean’s, “there’s usually a fawn that gets slaughtered—I don’t think Dean and Sam partake in that bit, which is good because I don’t think we could find a fawn willing.”
“Nobody partakes in that bit, Cas,” says Sam, scandalized.
“Hmm?” says Cas. He looks at them, squints a little in thought. “Oh, that may have been the Picts. Sorry, the traditions get adapted so fast.”
“Don’t ever change, pal,” Dean says to him. He concentrates diligently on untangling his stocking of stockings. If he doesn’t concentrate he’s going to reach for Cas again, because he’s had three peppermint beers—alright, that overpriced holiday craft shit Sammy picked up is pretty good—and Cas looks endearing as hell right now. (There’s a smudge of brown sugar on Cas’s temple and god help him, he wants to lick it off right here in front of everyone.)
“Oh, these are going to go great with the Christmas sweaters,” Sam crows, holding up his socks, which are emblazoned with tiny snowmen.
“You didn’t,” says Dean in horror. His socks have tiny slices of pie on them, which is objectively awesome.
“I did, and everybody is wearing them for dinner. Yours has some very beautiful felted poinsettias on it.”
“We’ll see who’s laughing when you have to try on the Christmas clown pajamas I got you,” says Dean, which shuts Sam up pretty quick. He points at the sheaf of mistletoe they picked up from the florist that morning. “Where do we want this?”
“Doorway,” Eileen chimes. She cracks open a second beer and points with the bottle. “Right there.”
Dean tosses the branch to Sam. “All yours, you giraffe.”
Cas watches Sam standing on his tiptoes to affix the mistletoe. “That’s not for summoning the old gods of devastation to our hearth, I’m assuming.”
“Dude, no,” says Dean. He picks up a stray scrap of the mistletoe from the floor and glances over in time to catch Cas’s smirk. “Oh. You’re joking.”
“Yes, Dean.”
“Ass,” says Dean. He tucks the mistletoe behind Cas’s ear.
Cas smiles at him. “I learned from the best.” His expression is so achingly fond that Dean has to drop his eyes. He tangles his fingers in Cas’s, under the table.
“Cas, what is this?” says Eileen, sorting through the beginnings of the gift pile at the other end of the table. She picks up a glossy atrocity that looks more as though someone crumpled up an entire roll of gift wrap versus anything that actually contains a present.
Cas looks aggrieved. “You can’t see the object inside,” he says. “Isn’t that the only stipulation?”
Dean raises his eyebrows at Cas—he thinks that might be the gift he and Sam had picked out for Jack, actually, and Cas was supposed to wrap it, not embed it in a square yard of scrunched-up laminate.
(They’d driven to the general store in Lebanon two days ago, Dean handling Baby carefully around the snow-dusted curves. Caitlin had waved to them from outside the diner, on her way in for the afternoon shift. A handful of kids he didn’t even recognize had called out a holiday greeting from the sidewalk as they drove past, and damn, Dean still can’t get used to people around town knowing who he is, even if it’s under a fake name.
“What the hell do we get him,” he’d muttered to Sam as they stood in the toy aisle. “This one says...ages eight and up. Is he older or younger than eight?”
“Let’s just...get him some candy,” Sam had said, and they’d picked out the largest sampler box they could find.)
Eileen blows a strand of hair out of her face and pokes at Cas’s wrapping paper disgrace. “I need to show you how to make an accordion fold,” she laughs, hands flitting demonstratively through the air. Her phone lights up, interrupting her. “Oh—the tree’s ready for us to pick up, Sam.”
*
Dean tidies up the kitchen, wiping traces of flour and cinnamon off the countertops and thinking about the next order of business—roast into the oven as soon as the pie comes out, and then he’ll tackle the sides while it’s cooking.
Cas pads into the kitchen. At some point he’s traded his flour-dusted shirt from this morning for a clean one, a worn-out Zeppelin tee that he definitely stole out of Dean’s drawer. He looks serene and content in a glowy, rosy-cheeked way, the mistletoe sprig still planted securely behind his ear. Dean’s heart aches, to look at him, but it’s a sweet, warm ache, not the sharp pang of thwarted longing he used to feel when he looked at Cas and wanted—wanted, with every fiber of his being, never thinking he could have it.
“Jack went out to shovel the driveway,” Cas says. “It’s starting to snow again.” He comes over to lean against Dean, laces his hands around Dean’s waist. “The pie smells incredible.”
Dean hums. “Hope it turns out well.”
“It will.” Cas rests his chin on Dean’s shoulder. “You are a very good baker. One of your many talents.”
Dean scoffs, pretending to dust flour off his jeans so that he has an excuse to look down. He can feel his cheeks getting warm.
“Don’t demur,” says Cas. His arms are warm against Dean’s stomach and back. He smells like apples and nutmeg and popcorn, and underneath it, buried deep but still there, he smells like lightning and raw pine and the air right after a storm. He smells like Cas.
God, Dean almost lost all this. Almost never had all this. He breathes around the sudden lump in his throat, turns to look over his shoulder at Cas. “You know, we do have to kiss under mistletoe, and it looks like you have some right there.”
“Really,” says Cas, bone-dry. “I have no idea how that got there.”
Dean rolls his eyes.“C’mere, handsome.” He hooks his fingers into Cas’s belt to tug him closer. Cas crowds him against the kitchen table, plants insistent kisses against Dean’s chin and the corner of his mouth, and then—Dean stifles a yelp of surprise as Cas tucks broad hands behind his thighs and lifts—Jesus, there has to be a little bit of angel still in Cas, because that’s the only thing that would explain how freakishly strong he still is—lifts Dean effortlessly onto the edge of the table.
And then it’s all wandering hands and lips for a while, just Cas’s hot mouth and the soft sounds he makes when Dean pushes a knee between his legs, just Cas’s teeth grazing against Dean’s jaw and collarbone and Cas’s thumbs digging into Dean’s hips, the meat of his thighs.
After what feels like a long time but is technically only thirteen minutes, the oven timer goes off. Cas makes a noise of complaint as Dean starts to pull away.
“Pie’s not gonna come out by itself, dude,” says Dean.
“I’m not gonna come by myself, either,” Cas gravels into Dean’s ear, and alright, those words in that voice send a little spark of heat all the way down to Dean’s groin, but pie is important enough that he masters himself and swats Cas’s questing hand away.
Cas sulks while Dean disentangles himself and takes the pie out, and then sulks some more when he burns his tongue trying to taste the bubbling caramel oozing out from under the hot crust. Dean plants a kiss on the top of his head and shoos him away—he needs to set up the meat thermometer for the roast and Cas’s scowl is entirely too distracting.
*
The roast is in the oven and Dean’s sweeping up the popcorn debris that has somehow spilled out of the library into the war room, when Jack comes tramping down the stairs with pink ears and cheeks, snow melting in the creases of his jacket.
Jack smiles at him; something warm unfurls a little more, in Dean’s chest. He’d talked to Jack, after everything with Chuck and the Empty went down—it’s still hard, sometimes, to look at the kid and not see the flat-eyed, serene person who’d killed his mom, but—but Jack isn't that person, not anymore, not with his soul. And Sam was soulless for a while, Dean reminds himself, and Cas was a dick for a bit, and he’s done things, himself, that turn his stomach to remember. They've all got blood on their hands that they're trying to atone for. And Mom—his throat hurts a little, thinking about it, even now, but it’s something bittersweet and gentle, seeped in love, not the wrenching grief and rage that it used to be.
“Hey,” he says to Jack. “Where’s your hat, kid?”
“It wasn’t that cold,” Jack protests.
“If you catch pneumonia I’m kicking your ass,” Dean promises. “Here—hold still.” He scrapes a handful of snow off the kid’s shoulders. “Alright, check this out.”
Sam is a few scant feet away, wrapping string lights around the stairwell with the concentration of a heart surgeon. It’s almost too easy, which doesn’t deter Dean at all—he steps over and drops the fistful of snow down Sam’s collar with perfect aim.
“Fuck—DEAN!”
“Too slow, Samantha!” Dean dodges Sam’s wild swing. He cackles as he backs around the map table.
“How OLD are you?” Sam rages, as he swivels his head to the left and right, clearly looking for more snow to use as ammo, because he’s a goddamn hypocrite.
“I can go get some more from outside,” Jack offers.
“Traitor,” says Dean. “Also, you’re not allowed back out without a friggin’ hat and that’s an order.” He looks around to see if he can get some backup from Cas, but Cas and Eileen are still having the same silent, heated argument they've been conducting for the last twenty minutes. Dean assumes it has something to do with the tree still leaning against the wall between them, given that they keep gesturing at it and signing with increasingly irate expressions.
“What are they arguing about?” Dean says to Sam under his breath, trying to leverage the argument as a distraction, since he can’t get an actual assist from Cas. “C’mon, put some of those sign language lessons to work.”
Sam gives him a withering look. “They’re signing in ISL, Dean.”
Alright, so maybe Dean forgot that there were different sign languages and that Cas would be fluent in all of them—sue him.
Cas turns to shoot an irritated look at Dean. “I am trying to explain,” he says, still signing, “that the tree should go in this corner, this is the best spot for lighting reasons, I have done the trigonometry involved—”
“And I’m saying,” says Eileen, with equal testiness, “that it’s bad luck to place the tree at that angle to the door, we should put it over there instead—”
“There is no plausible causation of good or bad fortune resulting from the placement of—”
“Why don’t we just split the difference and put it over there,” Dean suggests, pointing at a spot between the two contested corners.
Eileen and Cas round on him, demanding simultaneously, “Why would we choose a third, worse option, Dean—”
“Alright!” Dean half-yells. He jabs a finger at the depowered nephilim kid currently licking snow out of a fold in his scarf. “Jack—you’re the tiebreaker. Sam, you’re not an unbiased voter, you go finish your damn lights.”
*
The hour before dinner passes in relatively controlled chaos. Dean is busy shuffling dishes in and out of pots on the stove, running back and forth between the kitchen and the library to fuss with the place settings. Cas has won the tree location battle with Jack’s swing vote—Eileen darkly muttering about nepotism at work—and is now smugly assisting Jack in constructing a gingerbread house of dubious structural integrity.
“Got Jody on the line,” Sam calls, popping his head into the kitchen. Dean turns down the heat on the potatoes and follows the sound of loud chatter back into the war room, where the map table is a mess of popcorn strings and gingerbread shrapnel.
“Heya,” he grins at the tablet Sam is trying to prop up against a tub of frosting. “Merry Christmas.”
On-screen, Jody is trying with little success to keep a bowl of pie filling away from Alex. They look pink-faced, a little breathless, and very happy. “Dean,” Jody says cheerily. Alex grins and takes the opportunity to swipe a fingerful of cherry compote.
“Dean!” someone yells from off-screen, and Donna’s forehead fills the feed for a moment. “Merry Christmas, you guys!”
“Merry Christmas,” Jack calls from the end of the table, where he’s suturing two mismatched halves of a gingerbread door together with far too much icing. It kicks off a chorus of returned greetings and Donna revolves on the spot with the camera, so that Dean catches a glimpse of Patience curled up by the fire with a mug and a book, Claire and Kaia snuggling on the couch and waving.
“Oh—” says Sam, as the tablet starts chiming, “sorry, Charlie’s calling, merry Christmas guys—”
“Happy New Year, too!” Jody laughs, leaning back into view. “Listen—you’re all coming up this time next year, you hear me? Donna and I can’t corral four teenage girls on our own—”
Claire yells from off-screen, “Cas, check your texts, I sent you another video—”
“Alright, bye!” Sam says loudly, and swipes to open up Charlie’s call. “Charlie, Stevie—hey, Merry Christmas!”
*
Then dinner’s ready and Dean’s stomping around the Bunker yelling for the rest of his family to get their asses into their chairs before his four-course masterpiece gets cold.
The food is good—better than good. Dean watches with satisfaction as everyone has seconds. Sam grins at him across the table and Dean can’t help smiling back, feeling a lightness in his chest that he’s having to get more and more used to, these days.
Courtesy of Sam, Dean’s wearing an incredibly ugly sweater with the promised fake poinsettias. He doesn’t feel too torn up about it, partly because everyone else is also wearing their own awful variant on the theme, but mostly because in return he’s forced Sam to don an antler headband that’s easily adding six inches to his height.
Jack helps him clear the plates and serve the pie, which is phenomenal, the crust perfectly flaky and the apples just the right mix of sweet and tart. They’re halfway through the pie and Dean’s about to suggest getting an early start on the pile of presents when there’s an odd, musical jangle, like a chorus of tiny bells, and the Bunker door blows off its hinges.
Dean’s on his feet in an instant, cursing himself for not having his gun at hand. He snatches the scimitar off its display stand and charges into the war room, only to skid to a halt at the sight of what he can only describe as a dozen honest-to-god fucking forest elves teeming around the map table with high-pitched battle cries.
“What the—”
And then there’s a razor-sharp blade that looks like it’s made from wood and bone and possibly holly berries, cleaving toward him, and he has to shut up and get the scimitar up to block it. After that he doesn’t really have much time to dwell on the absurdity of it all because he’s too busy trying to not get stabbed by a willowy leaf-haired being with pointed ears and eyes like green coals and fucking beetle wings .
It’s nearly his height, but a lot less bulky, and he manages to duck past the blade, grab it by the shoulder, and hip-check it into the nearest wall before spinning to parry a slice from yet another elf-thing. It’s complete and utter pandemonium in the war room; he catches glimpses of Sam and Cas wrestling with a pair of squat bearded beings in leaf armor, and in a corner Jack is clobbering a wispy sprite-creature over the head with what looks like the left gable of his gingerbread house.
“Guys! These are fey!” he hears Eileen yell, from the top of the stairs—Dean has no idea how the hell she got up there so fast. He looks up just in time to see her snap kick an eight-foot-tall, antlered humanoid so hard in the chest that the thing goes cartwheeling over the rail, taking out the Christmas tree and about six feet of popcorn strings on the way down. Jesus, Sam sure knows how to pick ‘em, Dean thinks, dodging another swing.
On the other side of the map table, Cas is fighting two fey at once, ducking under their glittering shortspears, moving with a lithe, feline grace that looks just as angelic as it did when it was powered by grace. He’s empty-handed, no angel blade in sight, but he pivots expertly away from a spear thrust, hits the elf hard on the elbow and shoulder to send them careening past, and glances up across the map table to lock eyes with Dean, such a sharp, dangerous grin on his face that Dean almost forgets himself and gets impaled. He parries the swing at the last possible second and lets himself grin back at Cas for an instant, exhilarated, before the whirl of combat carries him away again.
God, he thinks, he’d almost missed this, the feel of adrenaline blitzing through his veins, the chance to watch Cas in action, all deftness and speed and controlled ferocity. Not that he wouldn’t have preferred an uninterrupted Christmas with his family, if given the choice, but still—silver linings.
And then one of the fey spears Cas through the side and suddenly it’s not so fun anymore.
“No! Cas!” Dean yells, and he dodges another blow and launches himself over the map table, vaulting across it in a way that’s definitely going to hurt tomorrow. The elf that stabbed Cas looks up just in time to take a scimitar hilt to the temple; they drop like a sack of potatoes and Dean drops only slightly more gracefully to his knees next to Cas.
“It’s fine,” Cas is panting, his words belied by the paleness of his face. “Dean, it’s shallow, it’s fine.”
Dean tries to listen, he really does, but his hands are trembling and Cas’s blood is soaking through the fabric of the Zeppelin tee and Cas is human, he’s human now and he—
“Dean.” Cas presses one hand over the wound, wraps the other around Dean’s wrist, squeezes. “I’ll be alright. Help me up.”
Somehow Dean forces down the panic crowding the base of his throat; somehow he pulls Cas to his feet, keeps one hand on his elbow to support him while he turns back to face the fray. There’s three elf-creatures arrayed in front of him now—one that he was just fighting, another who has a literal flaming sword in its weird green hands, and a tall one with waving antennae and fingertips that are starting to glow in a way that cannot possibly bode well for Dean.
He tightens his grip on the scimitar, reassured by the fact that Cas seems able to stand on his own two feet. He wants to spare a glance around him to check on the others, but the fey are advancing toward him and there’s no time. He’ll cut through this entire room if he has to, before he lets any of them lay another hand on Cas—
“Alright, ENOUGH!”
The voice is Sam’s. Dean turns in bewilderment and sees that his completely insane little brother has clambered onto the map table and is now towering over everyone, the felted antlers wobbling dangerously over his head as he fixes a glower at the assorted woodland creatures.
“This,” Sam bellows, “is our home! What the hell do you people want?”
There’s a prolonged silence, and then the antlered fey that Eileen kicked off the balcony says, in a low, rustling voice like wind through bracken, “We received a fey distress call from this location—we know you are holding one of our own here.”
“No, we aren’t,” Sam snaps. “We wouldn't. You’re mistaken.”
“You—”
“He’s—ah, he's telling the truth,” says the antennaed fey in front of Dean, their voice high and lilting. The tendrils around their face sway slightly towards Sam, as if reacting to the sound of his voice; the motion makes Dean think inexplicably of reeds in a river.
There’s another, considerably more awkward silence.
“Forgive us,” says the antlered fey finally. They clear their throat and continue, stiffly, “When fresh-cut pine is placed at this particular angle to the sun’s solstitial position, it acts as a beacon for our kind—typically this indicates a call for aid if emanating from an enclosed location.”
Eileen, from the balcony, signs something at Cas; since she’s vigorously mouthing the words as well, Dean can tell that it’s I fucking told you so. Cas, edging up to stand beside Dean, has the grace to look chagrined.
“This location bears touches of the woodland, though,” says the antennaed fey.
“Oh, that was probably—uh, Mrs. Butters,” Dean says.
“Who?”
“Ah...short elderly lady, stylish hats, carried a handbag? The Men of Letters captured her before we inherited the Bunker, we didn’t know she was stuck here until a couple months ago.”
“Oh,” says Antennae, their face clearing, “you’re speaking of She-of-the-Rainwater-Brook-under-Oak-Leaves-in-the-Summerlight-of-Noon,” and they turn around and burble something indecipherable to the other fey, all of whom relax immediately.
“We had heard that she’d been freed from her prison by humans,” says Antlers curiously. “We did not realize it was you.”
Eileen descends the stairs, brushing popcorn crumbs and silvery oak leaves out of her hair. “Well, next time you should probably ask before you kick the door down.”
Antlers bows slightly to her, and Dean notes their wince of pain with some satisfaction. Bruised ribs seem like a fair trade for toppling a fully-decorated Christmas tree. “Most of our experiences dealing with humans have been...fraught. Our deepest apologies for the...ah, the mess. We will repair your door.” They click their fingers and several of the elves go bounding up the stairs toward the wreck of the door.
“May I?” says Antennae, stepping forward with a hand lifted. Dean tenses immediately, the scimitar point floating up, but they only extend their glowy fingertips toward Cas, while humming a snippet of some sort of odd, indescribable melody.
Cas makes a small, pleased sound and straightens up. Dean chances a look and sees that the blood is gone—and the rip in the shirt, too, which is a nice bonus, because...honestly, it looks really good on Cas, and on some other evening when they’re not being besieged by armed woodland fairies he would like to see how good it looks coming off of Cas.
“Thank you,” says Cas.
“Of course,” Antennae hums. They cock their head, peering at Cas with their odd silvery-gold eyes. “You are...strange. The way you carry yourself, the grace...I have not seen like to you before. Human, but not only human, I think.”
Cas drops his eyes. “I’m—” he says, and hesitates.
Dean reaches out and takes Cas’s hand. “He’s with me,” he says, as an answer.
“Ah,” says the fey. “Exclusively?” They tilt their head to the other side, antennae flaring with interest. “It has been a while since I had a mate at the summer court...would you be interested?”
“I’m quite happy here, thank you,” says Cas firmly.
Antennae dips their head in acquiescence, backing up slightly. “If you should change your mind,” they say, “and wish to accompany me as a mate, even for a season, my court offers dances by moonlight and the wild uproar of the woods at high noon. You would love the Hunt’s sweet music, and the torrent of our wings on the night air, the goblets of rivermist and blood..."
“Okay, I think it’s time for everyone who doesn’t live here to head out!” says Dean more loudly than is, strictly speaking, necessary.
*
“You were good at that,” Dean says quietly to Sam, after the last of the fey leaves, the door good as new in their wake. Eileen and Cas are up on the landing, double-checking that all the warding is intact, Jack looking intently over their shoulders.
“Good at what?”
Dean shrugs. “That whole...thing. Commanding the room. Defusing the situation.”
“Oh,” Sam says, and looks a little embarrassed, and then a little pleased. He pulls the antler headband off and fiddles with it.
“And I saw how you were with the other hunters, too,” Dean adds. “You’re a good leader, Sam. They trust you. And they should.”
Sam looks pained for a moment, and Dean knows—can see it on Sam’s face, clear as day—that Sam’s remembering deaths he feels responsible for, the people he’s led into battle who hadn’t walked out again. But then he nods to Dean, smiles a little anyway. “Thanks. That—that means a lot, coming from you.”
Dean rubs the back of his neck. “You ever—think about spending more of your time coordinating? Assigning cases, checking up on people, helping out with the lore. Instead of—I dunno, being out in the field all the time.”
Sam’s eyebrows shoot halfway up his gigantic forehead. “Are you talking about—retiring?”
“I don’t know,” says Dean. He looks up at the landing, where Cas is smiling fondly at Jack as the kid slowly signs out a question to Eileen. “Maybe. Maybe just—something like it. Where we’re not out of the life, but—we also have a life, you know?”
Sam follows Dean’s gaze upward and a soft expression tugs at the corner of his mouth.
“I mean—we don’t need to talk about it tonight,” says Dean. “It’s Christmas. But—maybe afterward.”
“Yeah,” says Sam. He smiles at Dean. “Yeah, afterward—let’s talk about it.”
*
After presents and washing all the dishes and finishing their pie and tidying up the war room—which didn’t take very long as the elves, in addition to reuniting the door with its hinges, had also magicked the tree and popcorn strings and even Jack’s gingerbread abomination back into a passable semblance of intactness—they eventually end up in the rec room with a pot of cocoa and the last of the craft beers.
“Are we watching Die Hard?” Jack says, his mouth full of candy from the sampler box, which had been received with much delight for the contents, as well as praise for Cas’s second—Eileen-supervised and highly improved—wrapping attempt.
“Obviously,” says Dean, fiddling with the DVD player.
He flops back onto the couch next to Cas as the opening credits start, and this is—
—this is nice.
With every day that passes since they averted the last world-shattering apocalypse—with every day since they beat Chuck, got Cas back, saved the world—Dean thinks he can feel a little more of the tension he carries around in his chest loosening. There’s a lot of years of accumulated tension to get through, granted, but this—
—this, his family safe and warm and well-fed in the same room as him. Sam and Eileen making googly eyes at each other on the other end of the couch. Jack adding marshmallows to his cocoa with the precision of a forklift operator. Cas a warm presence beside him, their thighs pressed together, hands tangled under the blanket, Cas’s soft laugh when Dean quotes a line with just the right accent—
—this, yeah, he could fight for this, do the daily work of untangling his tension and anger and grief, unravel his demons in their dark and spiteful corners, for a chance at keeping this.
Dean’s seen this movie about a million times, which is his excuse for drowsing through the latter half of it. Jack’s already conked out in the armchair, his fifth cup of cocoa tipping perilously in his lap.
“Where’re Sam and Eileen?” he yawns at one point, noticing that their half of the couch is now empty.
“They went to take their cups to the kitchen,” smiles Cas. “That was quite some time ago, so I expect they won’t be making a reappearance.”
Probably making out in the hallway like high schoolers, Dean thinks, smirking to himself. He’d walked in on them earlier, right after the presents while Jack and Cas were washing up in the kitchen—Sam kissing Eileen against the library wall with his giant hands tangled in her hair. Sam had turned beet-red but Eileen had just winked at Dean. Ha. And he’d thought there was no way he could like her more than he did already.
“Well, more room for me,” he yawns, and stretches out nearly horizontal, pillowing his head against Cas’s besweatered shoulder. There’s something he wants to ask, he remembers. He tries to push off the fog of impending sleep.
“Cas,” he mumbles.
“Hmm?” Cas has one hand in Dean’s hair, fingers aimlessly threading through the strands. It’s nice. Comforting in a way that makes Dean’s eyes sting a little, because apparently he’s turning into a huge crybaby in his old age.
“Did you...did you mean it?”
“Generally, yes,” says Cas. “Which thing are you asking about, specifically?”
“About...about being happy here.”
Cas hums a little. He tugs one of Dean’s hands up to his face, kisses the knuckle of Dean’s thumb. “Yes. I meant it.”
Dean buries his face in Cas’s shoulder, inhales the warmth of him. “You...you sure, though? Because...I know being human doesn’t compare, it can’t compare, with being an angel. All that moonlight dancing and wild torrent of the night air shit, we don’t...the Bunker doesn’t exactly have any of that. I don’t have any of that.”
“Dean,” says Cas. His voice rumbles in his chest, reverberates up through Dean’s jaw. “I’m happy when I’m with you.”
Maybe it’s just that simple, Dean thinks. Maybe it’s just a matter of learning to believe it.
“I’m happy when I’m with you, too,” he croaks.
He hears the soft puff of breath as Cas smiles. “I know. I can tell.”
“I love you.”
“I know.”
“Stop Han Solo-ing me, dammit.”
Cas laughs, low. He twists around so that he can press his lips to Dean’s forehead. “I love you too.”
“Merry Christmas, Cas.”
“Merry Christmas, Dean.”