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“Ew, sewing is for girls.” The kids at school had never not found a reason to taunt Dean, but the denim patches on his jeans were too discolored for them not to realize they were a hand repair and not the latest fashion statement.
The thing is, Dean had thought the same. Dad never wanted him or Sammy to do anything remotely girly, always picking on Sammy for reading and preferring the indoors, telling them both to “man up, and quick.” He was trying. But even worse to the Winchesters than appearing feminine was wasting money, and they hadn’t had money for new jeans that winter. So sewing patches into torn knees and lengthening hems to accommodate growing boys it was.
After the teasing and the math problems that didn’t make sense and the being tripped in the hallways and the words that seemed to float off the page rather than get into his head. After all that, Dean had gone to pick up Sammy to find his new - anything from Goodwill was as good as new to them - coat with a hole right through the elbow.
“Aww, Sammy, what d'ya do this time?” He was tired and he still had dinner to make and Ms. Clark had said if he didn’t do his grammar homework then she couldn’t give him a C and she had looked so disappointed in him-
“Nothing, honest Dean! We were just playing tag at recess and I was ‘it’ and I reached out to get stupid Brian Adams, only he dodged right at the last second and I tripped and fell down, and when I got up I saw the hole.” He was moving, dodging invisible “its” while they were walking home, like he was reenacting the scene so Dean could get a better idea of what happened.
“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Dean reached to ruffle his hair, which Sammy shrugged off. “I’ll fix it when we get home. But you owe me one, ya hear?”
“Whatcha doing, sweetheart?” Lee called from around the bedroom doorway. “Getting a little surprise ready for me?”
Dean jumped from where he was sitting on the edge of the bed, back to the door. “Hey, babe! I didn’t know you’d be home so early!” His voice was doing that stupid nervous, high-pitched thing.
Lee narrowed his eyes. “Whatcha got there? C’mon, show me!” It wasn’t a request.
“Just fixin’ up this old tee shirt,” Dean mumbled. “Noticed it had a few holes in it and figured I should close ‘em before they get worse.” It was his favorite Led Zeppelin shirt, and he was determined to wear it as long as he could.
Lee snorted. “‘S that it? Playing housewife with an old pile of rags?” He snatched the bundle of fabric out of Dean’s hands. “Don’t I take good care of you? Keep food on the table, buy you nice things? You need a new shirt, just ask.”
“But, babe-”
Lee’s gaze was sharp as a knife. “It’s pathetic, Dean, don’t you realize? My boyfriend sewing his own clothes like the damn rats from Cinderella. You shouldn’t even be wearing shit like this anymore, it makes you look like a teenager. C’mon, it’s time for you to grow up a little, don’t you think.”
Dean mumbled in agreement and let Lee kiss him.
“Good. Now. I missed you all day. Aren’t you gonna welcome me home?”
Even though Dean’s alarm had gone off stupid early, Cas got up and got ready with him. He had some kind of fancy panel to go to during his lunch hour so he wanted to get a head start on the research for his next paper, Cas had explained the previous night, but Dean secretly thought it was so he could wake Dean with kisses and pleas to “just stay in bed a little longer, Dean, c’mon. It’s cozier when you’re here too.”
As tempting as it had been, Dean had to open Singer’s extra early for some rich hot-shot lawyer who insisted he worked 12-hour days and could only drop off his BMW in the morning, and he’d pay extra if they could take in his car at 7 am. But it meant he and Cas had brushed their teeth together and made faces at each other in the mirror, and Cas had stood in front of the coffee pot silently begging it to brew faster with an adorable look on his face, so Dean couldn’t complain too much.
He was also on “help Cas pick out a shirt” duty, a role he took very seriously in their relationship. Cas was nervous about the panel because some kind of bee ecologist would be there who had thought of a new pollination theory or some shit, and had asked Dean to make sure he looked presentable and confident. Dean knew precisely which button-down to recommend; a light blue that perfectly matched Cas’ eyes, with small fern leaves that almost looked like dots from far away. It made his boyfriend look hot if he did say so himself.
“Oh, I can’t wear that one, it has this hole on the left cuff from where my watch rubs into it,” Cas said mournfully. “I guess I’ll have to throw it away, it’s not really professional to have holes in your clothes. Hopefully, I can find another one like it.”
In the end, they had picked a green shirt with a slight pink stripe effect woven into the fabric, one Cas loved because it matched Dean’s eyes, a statement which led to a light makeout session and Dean racing out the door before he was late to meet the lawyer. It really was true that lawyers never let anything good happen.
“How was class?” Dean called from the stove. The temperature outside had dropped pretty quick and the new fall weather had screamed the need for grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner.
“Not bad, but I am tired of learning about the Central Limit Theorem for the 10th time. You’d think after our introductory quantitative methods course they’d assume we know basic statistics, but I guess not.” Cas came up behind him and kissed his shoulder.
“My boyfriend’s a smarty pants.” He felt himself grinning, but he didn’t care. He felt so lucky to be able to truly be with Cas now, and if that meant looking like the “lovesick heart eye emoji,” as Meg liked to put it, oh well.
“So is mine.” Cas squeezed him even tighter. “Speaking of pants, I was gonna take some clothes to Goodwill tomorrow morning. Want to join me and I’ll take you out for a lunch date at that Italian place we liked so much, with the cannoli?”
Dean stifled a laugh. Only Cas could change conversation topics like that. Dork. “You’re really spoiling me, huh?”
“You deserve to be spoiled, Dean,” he said, earnest as ever. Dean still wasn’t over how much Cas really seemed to believe those words.
Fighting back unexpected tears, Dean nodded and kissed him, and Cas held him even closer.
“Have you seen my blue button-down? The one with the leaves on it? I could have sworn it was in the donation pile!”
Dean peered around the bathroom door, suddenly nervous. What if Cas hadn’t actually wanted to keep the shirt? What if he was mad that Dean had gone through his things? What if he thought Dean was pathetic for taking up arts and crafts on his belongings?
“Well, um. I kinda fixed it for you? And hung it back in the closet.” His voice had gone up an octave, a tell-tale sign that he was nervous, and Cas tilted his head to one side in his normal owlish way. “I just figured. You were gonna get rid of it. Because it had that small hole in it? And the hole was where one of the leaves was, so I just kinda went over it with thread and from far back it looks just like the pattern. Like you can notice up close, but. I figured it might help?”
“Can I see?”
Dean gulped and handed it to him. Cas carefully, almost reverently, ran his hand over the left cuff and found where the hole used to be. The mending Dean had done featured embroidery designed to look like the pattern on the rest of the shirt, and had taken him an hour to practice and perfect. Not that he’d admit that to Cas.
“Dean,” he almost whispered. “It’s beautiful.”
Dean looked down at Cas’ bee socks. “Aw, I dunno ‘bout that. But I thought you could see if you want to hold on to it. And if you still wanna donate it, at least it’s ready for someone else to wear.” Cas was just looking at him, like he was a specimen under a microscope. Of course, Dean had managed to fuck this up too. “You don’t gotta keep it if you don’t want to. And. Sorry for going through your stuff. I just-” he cut himself off.
“What, sweetheart?” Cas had that soft tone, the one he used whenever he thought Dean was gonna break down and cry in front of him, which wasn’t too far off.
“I just wanted to fix it and do something nice for you. Didn’t mean to invade your privacy.” He hoped Cas wouldn’t be too mad at him. Or judge him too harshly for being so girly.
“It’s beautiful. I love it, and I love you. Thank you.” He was still talking in that same voice and it made Dean want to melt into Cas’ arms and never leave.
“So, you don’t mind? That I went through your stuff?”
Cas shook his head firmly, his eyes gleaming with the determination that normally only came out when he watched Jeopardy and the category was obscure animal facts. “I’d hardly call it ‘going through my stuff.’ It was in our donation pile. And I don’t mind if you go through my clothes, you’re welcome to anything in my closet.”
“Oh.”
“I do think it was incredibly thoughtful. Thank you, Dean, this means a lot. Where did you learn to embroider like this?”
Dean blushed. “I kinda taught myself, when we were kids. We didn’t have a lot of money for clothes and things so I would fix whatever I could. Still do sometimes. Don’t wanna be wasteful and all that.”
Cas nodded, hanging on his every word like he was the most important person in the world. “Of course. It’s an excellent skill to have, I wish I were as handy as you.”
He might have been the color of tomato soup by now. “Aw, Cas, c’mon.”
“I’m serious. Would you teach me? I used to crochet with Mom, or at least, she tried to teach me. Said it would be helpful for managing my anxiety. But it made me even more stressed when I couldn’t figure out how to do the stitches!” Cas laughed a bit, and Dean melted just a bit more. Cas would never not amaze him.
“You want to learn? You don’t think sewing or embroidery or shit is for girls?”
The laughter left Cas’ face. “No, of course not! No one should demean valuable skills by attributing them to a gender they view as inherently weaker. The view that fine arts like sewing and fiber crafts are for women is rife with misogyny.”
“Wow, Cas, I didn’t know you cared so much about it. I just. Didn’t want you to think less of me for having old clothes and having to fix them myself. It’s kind of pathetic, actually.” He bit out the last words, flinching slightly.
“It is no such thing! It’s clever and resilient and amazing, just like you.” That damn earnestness was back and made it impossible for Dean to doubt that Cas really did believe it. Maybe Dean would believe it too, someday.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Dean did end up teaching Cas the basics of sewing, but after a disaster of trying to hem a pair of pants and ending up with edges more jagged than those rocks inside of caves, they agreed to let Dean keep doing the mending work. Cas promised to provide plenty of encouragement, and the pair of pants was quickly abandoned - along with the ones they had been wearing.
When Colette and Cain hosted them for dinner, Cas made a comment to Colette about Dean’s work and instead of scoffing or dismissing it, Colette praised his embroidery on Cas’ shirt and offered to teach him to crochet in case it turned out better than Cas’ attempt. The night ended with a group lesson, even Cain taking part, and Colette encouraged both Dean and Cas to take home their hooks and yarn to practice. She even ushered Dean into the kitchen and offered to privately teach him knitting, since he had mentioned how much it meant to him when he was 10 and his neighbor knitted him a scarf.
Dean and Cas now had “craft time” a few nights a week, which Meg resisted mocking, probably because Balthazar had heard from Cas how embarrassed Dean got about it. Cas crocheted mishappen dishcloths - no matter what shape he tried to achieve, he always managed to get the complete opposite - and Dean had started teaching himself to knit from some books Colette had lent him. Dean had told Cas about the knit scarf and how it always felt so much warmer and safer than all the other ones he had ever owned, and Cas went out the next day and brought home a set of knitting needles ranging in size and a box of wool yarn. Dean loved him so much.
“Okay, open this one next!” Cas was so excited for Christmas, all dressed up in his reindeer pajamas and bees-wearing-Santa-hats socks, and Dean had been strong-armed (okay, cuddled) into wearing an ugly Christmas sweater with a snowman face on it.
(“The ad online said his carrot nose would stick out when you wore it!”
“I have my own carrot that will stick out just for you if you want.”)
“It’s all those dishcloths you made. With some extra yarn. I’ve already seen these, Cas, that kinda defeats the point of keeping our presents a secret.”
“Well, I still don’t know how to make you anything else. And then I thought about it and figured that you could use the extra yarn to sew them together and maybe make a blanket or a rug or something? I would have done it myself but we both know how well that would have gone. But that way we can have something that both of us made, together.”
Dean blinked back tears. “Cas. Thank you. Seriously.” He never thought he would get a boyfriend so supportive of his love of crafting, let alone something so considerate as this. Cas knew how much making and fixing things meant to him, how much he valued the crafts they had made over the past few months, and to see it in this gift was overwhelming. “Here. This one’s for you.”
Cas pulled out a light blue scarf with fern leaves embroidered in a beautiful green yarn. Dean had been amazed to learn that embroidered knitting was a thing and thought Cas would appreciate the tribute to their favorite one of Cas’ shirts.
“Oh, Dean. It’s exquisite.”
“You like it?”
“I love it! You’re so talented, the stitches are so even and you captured the leaves perfectly!” He was running his hands over the stitches and the leaves and the heart Dean had snuck in at one end. “I’ll wear it every day! This is the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever gotten.”
“Aw, Cas, it’s not like that. But I’m glad you like it.” Dean resisted the urge to turn away and deflect Cas’ too-nice comments.
Cas wrapped the scarf around his neck quickly, then settled back into his seat, sighing contentedly. “You’re right, handmade things do feel warmer. This feels like home.”
And that was it. They were home.