Archive of Our Own

Finals week looms ever closer, and as the thirteenth through the seventeenth of December grows nearer, Dean realizes that he’s forgotten something.

Christmas.

Growing up, he and Sam had celebrated Christmas in much the same way as they’d celebrated Thanksgiving: with one of those cracker and cheese platters you could get at the grocery store for five bucks and a couple of roast turkey and mashed potatoes TV dinners. The exchange of presents was limited to whatever they could afford, beg, scavenge, or steal from conveniently unlocked houses, which meant that they never got precisely what they wanted, but they always got something from each other, and really, what’s more important? What you want, or what you already have?

Things have changed, though. He has a steady job, Sam works during the summer, and, together, they have enough to put themselves through college, keep a small apartment, and afford textbooks. They aren’t rich, but they’re…okay. Which means Dean has enough money for presents. Sam’s never an issue – buy him a book on seventeenth century law and the thirtieth anniversary edition of the Star Wars movies and he’s happy as a pig in mud – but this is the first year that Dean has someone besides his brother to buy stuff for. He has Bobby and Ellen (always a good idea to stay on the good side of your bosses), and he has Jo, Ellen’s daughter (he just has to make sure the gift doesn’t seem romantic at all, he doesn’t want to give the wrong impression), and he has Sam, on top of all of that, and…

And he could get Castiel something. He could. That’s not…too forward, is it? Some students give their favorite professors gifts, don’t they?

Maybe he’s reaching, just a little bit, but this is something he…wants. Not something he has to do, but something that’s just…nice.

It helps that he also wants to get to know Castiel a little better, but that doesn’t have to be the whole point of this sudden surge of altruism.

He brings it up with Sam a few days before finals, because Sam is the conscientious one, the one who always knows exactly what to get people, whereas Dean is more the type to just buy someone a six-pack of PBR and a gift card to their favorite store and call it a day. This, though, this thing with Castiel…he wants it to mean something.

God, he’s turning into a walking chick flick.

“I need to buy somebody a present,” he says, and Sam looks up from his laptop, pencil stuck, eraser first, in his mouth. He chews absently for a minute, and then spits out a small chunk of eraser and a chip of yellow paint. Dean grimaces. “That is the worst habit, dude.”

“Worse than biting your nails?”

Dean shrugs defensively. “I stopped.”

“Whatever. What’s this about a present?”

“I said ‘I need to buy someone a present.’”

Sam sighs, blowing his hair away from his eyes. He sets the chewed-up pencil down on the desk; it rolls a short ways, but stops just before it tumbles off the edge. Sam carefully picks it up, and sets it down again further up the desk. Neat freak. As he does so, he glances over Dean’s shoulder, as if expecting to see the mysterious “someone” he’s planning on giving a gift to.

“So go and buy a present,” Sam says, and Dean rolls his eyes.

“Gee, Sam, why didn’t I think of that? Oh! Maybe it’s because I don’t know what to get him.”

Sam’s brows furrow in amusement. “Him?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, why don’t you ask him?”

Dean reaches up to scrub his hand over his eyes. His words come out slightly muffled. “I want it to be a surprise.”

“Are we talking about Bobby? Because you know he’ll be happy if you just get him a new wrench.”

“Not Bobby,” Dean mutters. “Someone else.”

Sam pushes away from the desk, obviously intrigued now. Dean tries to catch a glimpse of whatever he was doing on his laptop, but he only sees one thing – the advising website – before Sam closes the lid. Weird.

“How well do you know this mystery man?”

Dean blows a breath out through his teeth. “Not well. Sort of just met him.”

“Do I have to give you the talk?”

“Don’t you dare, Sam.”

“Seriously, though, how long has it been? Like, a year?”

“Six months.”

“Still, that’s a long time for you. What gives?”

“You’re the one who’s assuming this is something that it isn’t.”

“What is it, then, Dean?”

Dean turns his back on Sam, flopping down onto their couch and sprawling out as much as he can. He doesn’t even bother to kick off his shoes, and he can feel, rather than see, Sam frowning at the back of his head. Whatever. Let him bitch at Dean for putting his shoes up on the furniture. Dean has bigger things to worry about.

Like what to get Castiel for Christmas.

“Are you going to help me or not?” he demands, and Sam makes a soft, frustrated noise.

“Fine. Tell me what you know about him.”

“He’s…older.”

“How much older?”

“A couple years. Not by much. And he’s…” Think, Dean. “…a psychology major.”

A shadow falls across him as Sam moves from the desk to the easy chair across from Dean, dropping down with a soft grunt. “That makes things a bit easier. What is he interested in doing? Criminal psych? Abnormal psych?”

“Uh…whatever it is that counselors do?”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Okay, look, Dean, you already know more about this guy than I do. If he’s into psychology, then get him something psychology-related. Get him something to put on his desk…I don’t know, a paperweight shaped like a brain or something.”

“But…”

“Dean, I can’t buy your friends presents for you.”

Dean closes his mouth, glowering. Sam glares at him for a second, and then breaks out into a wide, unabashed grin.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “You’ve still got a week or two to figure it out.”

A week or two. Right. Dean can come up with an idea in less time than that, right?

~

The day before his Psych final, Dean realizes that his reasoning is flawed.

For the past several days, he’s been staying up late every night, not only studying, but also trying to think of a suitable gift for Castiel. Sam’s suggestion of a paperweight shaped like a brain had seemed perfect, especially considering Castiel’s job, but typing “brain paperweight” into Amazon.com had resulted in the Johns Hopkins Patient’s Guide to Brain Cancer and a hummingbird feeder shaped sort of like a teardrop, and Google directed him to some website called “Etsy,” which Dean, who isn’t as internet savvy as Sam, had been wary of. But it had been while he was trying to find something else suitable on Amazon – maybe a really nice tie clip? Or was that too intimate considering how long they’d known each other? – that Dean had realized the flaw in his plan.

What if Castiel didn’t celebrate Christmas?

And, just like that, it had felt like everything was ruined, and now he’s sitting in his living room, trying to convince himself that he isn’t a massive tool.

“You’re really getting yourself worked up over this, aren’t you?” Sam notes.

“Fuck you.”

“I’m just saying! Look, whoever this guy is, if he’s as into you as you’re into him, he won’t care.”

“I’m not into him!”

Sam raises his hands in defense. “Okay, okay. Look, why don’t you just tell him it’s a holiday present? Don’t mention Christmas or Hanukkah or anything, just give him the present and say ‘happy holidays.’”

Dean takes a deep breath, and then another. “Okay. That could work.”

“You’re over thinking this whole thing. Have you found a present yet?”

“I think so. Maybe. It’s stupid, though.”

“So give him a stupid gift. He’ll probably think it’s funny. And then you two can fall in love and adopt a cat together, and you can stop freaking me out every time you panic over this guy.”

Dean scowls at his brother. “Have I mentioned what an asshole you are, lately?”

Sam smiles. “Only every other day.”

“Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

Dean leans his head back against the arm of the couch, closing his eyes. Something is nagging at him. Something about Sam, about the past few weeks. About how he’s been acting. Not weird, probably not the way Dean’s been acting (he’s only too aware of how deeply Castiel’s gotten under his skin, how dangerous that is, but he’s always been the type to act first and think later), but a little bit…off.

“What about you?” he asks. With his eyes closed he can’t see Sam’s reaction, but he can hear the shifting of denim against the easy chair, implying that Sam is feeling restless. Uneasy, or just energetic? Dean tries to remember if Sam’s drunk more than one Red Bull today.

“What about me, what?”

“Are you playing Santa this year?”

“I’ve gotten you a present, if that’s what you mean.”

“I mean for other people. Anyone new in your life, Sammy?”

“Don’t call me Sammy, and no, no one.”

Dean grins, but doesn’t open his eyes. He knows Sam’s “lying voice” when he hears it. “C’mon, Sam, tell the truth. You eyeing someone?”

“Even if I were, which I’m not, what difference would it make to you?”

“Well, I’d have to make sure she’s not gonna run out on you like Jessica did.”

“Yeah,” Sam mutters, and then, and Dean isn’t sure he hears it, maybe he’s just imagining it, but, after a moment, he thinks he hears Sam say, “She.”

As though it’s that part, not the “eyeing someone” part, that’s wrong.

Huh, Dean thinks. Okay, that’s… Weird? Unexpected? Because the implication there is that, whoever it is Sam’s thinking about, they aren’t female, and Dean’s only ever known his brother to like women. He’s always been bi, and Sam’s always been straight – that’s just the way things are.

Except, apparently they aren’t.

“Dean?” There’s something in Sam’s voice, some note of discomfort that has Dean turning his head and opening his eyes. Sam’s expression is neutral, but he’s leaning forward, hands clasped in his lap, hunched over. Anxious. “What’re you thinking?”

And Dean who has never wanted anything but the best for his little brother, who wants Sam to be comfortable with himself, who wants Sam to be happy, says, “Thinking about how much food we’ll need to buy, for how many people. Think we should get a ham instead of a turkey?”

Sam blinks, and presses his lips together into a fine, pale line. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and Dean is nearly holding his breath. What if Sam resents the fact that he’s trying to say that it’s okay? He’s not a little kid anymore, after all – he doesn’t need Dean’s approval for everything. He doesn’t need anyone’s approval, but still Dean wants to let him know that it’s nothing to be worried about, and nothing to be ashamed of. Sam is still Sam.

Damnit, he thinks. I should have told him this shit when he was like, twelve. But they’d had other things to worry about when they were kids, like broken bottles and getting enough to eat, and remembering to go to school (something that Dean had eventually given up on). Heart-to-heart talks about their respective sexualities hadn’t really made the top ten list. Hadn’t even made the top five.

Sam takes a deep breath. “Just two people,” he says. Something has eased in the set of his shoulders, and Dean takes heart from that. “But…thanks.”

“No problem.” Dean bites his lip. “That wasn’t a moment, was it?”

Sam smiles. When he speaks he sounds lighter. Freer. “Nope. Not a moment.”

“Well, good, you know how I feel about…”

“Chick flick moments, I know.”

Dean reaches down and pulls his sock off, then balls it up and tosses it at Sam’s face. His brother makes a horrified noise and bats ineffectually at the air while Dean laughs.

“Now give me back my sock.”

“You just threw it at my face!”

“So?”

“So, it’s mine, now.”

“My foot’s cold!”

“Should’ve thought of that before you threw the sock at me, asshole.”

“Sam!”

~

Finals week. For a few days, Dean puts Sam’s mysterious non-boyfriend and his own seemingly hopeless infatuation with Castiel out of his mind, just long enough that he can focus on tests rather than what a clusterfuck his life has become. Sam tells him he’s overreacting, which is true, on one level, but Sam doesn’t know what it’s like to try and keep a secret as big as a crush on an academic advisor from your little brother, who just so happens to be too intelligent for his own good, sometimes. Not to mention the fact that Dean occasionally gets the feeling that Sam already knows - he keeps giving Dean these sidelong looks, wearing an expression that Dean can’t really puzzle out. Is it worry? Disapproval? It’s not like Dean’s done anything, other than bought a really stupid gift and made a few questionable choices regarding how he spends his free time.

Still, on Monday he goes in to take his Psych finally and somehow, miraculously, he doesn’t think about gifts, or advisors, or whether or not Sam knows for the entire two hours that he’s sitting in the testing center. He’s too busy trying to remember the difference between SSRIs and SNRIs, and he comes out of the testing center feeling a thousand times better than he has for the past week or so.

“Worrying about shit is tiring,” he tells Sam, who rolls his eyes and asks him what he thinks he got on the test.

Dean’s not sure how he did on the test, but he is sure, now, that he can walk into Castiel’s office and give him his lame-ass gift without giving himself away. He’s just a student giving a holiday gift to his advisor. His advisor who’s helped him a lot. Yeah.

Tuesday is the final for his English class, which consists entirely of writing, rather than taking a Scantron, and Dean, who sucks at writing on his best days and completely blows at it on his worst, leaves the classroom with a sore wrist and cramping fingers and meets Sam for lunch in the student center. He buys himself a slice of pizza while Sam studies for his Latin final at six.

“I’m gonna blow this.” Sam groans, and rests his head against his open textbook. Dean eats his slice of pizza and snorts, because Sam does this all the time. Even before Dean was there to watch him actually study, he’d see Sam come home, stressed, utterly certain that he would fail the final and get an F in the class…and then, a week later, he’d check his grades and he’d see As and Bs, not the bad grades he’d been so certain he would get.

“You’ll do fine,” Dean says through a mouthful of cheese. Sam stares at him like he’s just murdered a baby in cold blood. Dean, in response, starts to chew with his mouth open.

“Urgh,” Sam says. “You’re disgusting.”

“And yet you’re still watching me eat.”

“It’s like watching a three-car accident, I can’t look away.”

Dean laughs. “Seriously, you’re gonna do fine. You always do this.”

“I do?”

“Yep. And you always get good grades.”

“But maybe this is the one time I don’t.”

Dean rolls his eyes, then folds his pizza crust in half and shoves it into his mouth. He pats Sam on the shoulder as he stands, ignoring his brother’s disgusted, slightly pained look. Sam will do fine. He always does.

Dean, on the other hand, might crash and burn. He doesn’t have a final today, but he does have a present sitting in his backpack. Unwrapped, because of the whole “what if Castiel doesn’t celebrate Christmas” thing, but Dean had sprung for the fanciest bow he could find, all gold and silver and with little curly ribbon bits that hang off the sides and generally make even Dean’s simple present look expensive.

He steps outside, and takes a deep breath. The cold air burns his lungs, makes him feel invigorated after the stuffy too-many-people-plus-pizza smell of the student center. The present feels like it weighs a thousand pounds in his backpack.

What if he doesn’t like it? some insidious part of his brain asks, and Dean, who already has enough to worry about, thanks, shoves it down, and buries it underneath the mantra of everyone likes getting presents, it’s the thought that counts. Something he remembers telling Sam, when he was still too young to understand why Santa had brought him a Ken doll instead of the LEGOs he’d asked for: Santa was a busy guy, and the fact that he’d come at all was awesome. It was the thought that counted.

(And then, when Sam was eight, their father had shouted at them both, There’s no such thing as goddamn Santa Claus, and Sam had told him later that he’d known since he was six.)

Dean walks up the hill towards the administration building, lost in thought. Christmas has never been the happiest time of the year in the Winchester household, but he has a few good memories. Like when he was fifteen, and Sam had just turned eleven, their father had bought them both pocketknives, and he’d showed them how to hold them properly, how to defend themselves if they were ever in trouble. Dean carried his to this day – Sam had pawned his off when he was seventeen. Sometimes, Dean thinks that his brother only remembers the bad parts of their childhood: the booze, the shouting, the thrown bottles, the lonely Christmases and the turkey-less Thanksgivings. But Dean remembers that they had gotten something, even if it was only a small thing, for every single birthday. He remembers their father taking them to the playground in Lawrence when Sam was only three, and watching them play together in the sandbox. He remembers the year when he broke his arm, and their father had sat next to him in the hospital, head held in his hands. How he’d bought Sam a teddy bear to hold while Dean wasn’t in any shape to dole out hugs.

Yeah, there were bad times, and yeah, Dean’s probably got a warped sense of what a father’s supposed to be like. But the good parts stand out all the more for it.

The administration building is warm when he steps inside, and Dean has to pull of his gloves and shrug his jacket down over his shoulders before he feels comfortable venturing further into the building. He doesn’t want to show up at Castiel’s doorstep (so to speak) all sweaty and disheveled looking. He takes a quick detour into the nearest bathroom (it’s as fancy as the rest of the building, with fake gold taps and real towels instead of paper ones) to comb his fingers through his hair. It’s too short to make much of a difference, but damnit, he’s trying. He straightens out his shirt, washes his hands so they don’t smell like cheap pizza, and then, for a minute, just looks at himself in the mirror.

“You can do this,” he says softly. “The worst that can happen is he says he doesn’t want it, and at least then you’ll know for sure he isn’t…he won’t be interested.” He closes his eyes. “You can do this,” he repeats.

“I’m sure you can, young man.”

Dean freezes. Oh God, he thinks, and opens his eyes. Standing behind him, reflected in the mirror and looking kindly but slightly impatient, is an older Black man, his hair short and his beard beginning to go grey in patches. Dean stares at the reflection for a long moment, then turns around and laughs, nervously.

“Sorry,” he says quickly. “Didn’t know anyone was, uh, in here.”

“It happens.” The man smiles at him. He’s got a nametag pinned to his shirt – a fancy one all done up in gold, the letters etched instead of pasted one. Joshua, it says. Dean doesn’t know him. “Whatever it is you’re planning on doing, I’m sure it’ll turn out just fine. You just need to trust yourself.”

Dean sidesteps, heading for the door. He feels, weirdly, a little bit better. “Uh, thanks. Sir.”

“Any time, son.”

Dean escapes while he still can, the guy – Joshua, he’s assuming – watching him as he goes. Out in the hallway, Dean breathes a sigh of relief. He feels a little bit better, yeah, but something about that guy was just intense. Like standing next to a wild tiger or something, and you know the only reason it hasn’t mauled you yet is because, inexplicably, it likes you.

Dean runs his fingers back through his hair, more out of nervous habit than any attempt to get it to lay flat. “Jesus,” he says, and then, squaring his shoulders, he heads down the hallway, towards the stairs that will take him to the basement.

It’s warmer in the basement, if not quite as fancy, and Dean ends up pulling his jacket off and tying it around his waist by the time he reaches the bottom of the stairs. The rainbow colored advising signs might be gone (probably forcibly removed by someone who doesn’t approve of a sense of humor in academia), but Gabriel has retaliated by stringing up what can only be describe as “a fuck-ton” of multicolored lights around his cubicle. Walking past it is like walking through a rave – he catches a glimpse of Gabriel, huddled over his desk, fiddling with something on his face, but Dean can’t tell what it is, and he doesn’t want to stop. If he stops, he’s afraid that he’ll just turn around and never give the present to Castiel at all.

He pushes on, past more decorated cubicles (although most of them in a slightly more tasteful vein than Gabriel’s) until he reaches Castiel’s, which is…distressingly free of holiday cheer. No lights, no small decorations, no nothing. Sitting inside the cubicle is Castiel, and across from him is a woman, her hair dark, wavy. Something smells like peppermint – Dean has the idea that it’s her. Her legs are crossed, and he can’t see her face, but he’s picturing a dark, sloe-eyed gaze, a small mouth, and high cheekbones.

He hates her on sight.

Jesus Christ, man, pull it together. She’s probably a student, too.

Except then Castiel leans forward, and touches her arm.

It’s not a lingering touch, but it’s more intimate that anything Dean’s ever seen the guy do – granted, Dean’s only known him for a couple of weeks, but he likes to think that he’s gotten to know Castiel a little better, between his impromptu visits and the emails they’ve been sending back and forth (which consist mostly of Dean playing dumb about which classes he wants to take, now and in the future, and Castiel patiently explaining to him the gist of each one that Dean lists). They’re not best buddies, but Dean knows that Castiel doesn’t really touch people. He’s reserved, quiet, and it takes a lot to make him smile (though not a lot to amuse him).

So who the fuck is this woman?

Castiel looks up, then, and sees Dean standing there outside his cubicle. His expression is carefully neutral as he glances back at the woman.

“I will call you,” Dean hears, firm but lacking anything that might indicate their relationship – no warmth, but his voice isn’t exactly ice cold, either. The woman brushes her hair back behind her ear.

“I don’t get the big deal. You and I…”

“Meg,” Castiel says. “I have a student who wishes to speak with me. I will call you, and we shall continue this discussion at a later date.”

“I just want…”

“An explanation is not necessary. I have explained this. Now please, allow me to attend to my student.”

The woman – Meg – nods slightly, and then stands. When she turns around, Dean sees that he was mostly right. Dark eyes. Delicately arched brows. Naturally red lips and round cheeks.

“Sorry about that,” she says as she brushes past him. Dean doesn’t say anything in return, because he’s worried that whatever will come out of his mouth will be laced with venom, regardless of what the words actually are. Instead, Dean just stares after her until she vanishes around a corner, hoping that his expression is politely disinterested rather than confused and hostile.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says, and Dean snaps his attention back to his advisor, stepping into the cubicle and shifting uneasily from foot to foot. He doesn’t dare sit down. He might be tempted to stay longer than he’s actually welcome. “I apologize. I hope that your finals have been too difficult?”

Dean shrugs. “I mean…it’s challenging, yeah, but now that they’re here I don’t get what the big deal is. Whatever I get is whatever I get, and it’s not like I’ll be able to change it, right?”

The corners of Castiel’s eyes crinkle in an almost-smile. He’s not wearing his glasses “Few are able to accept their final grades with such equanimity.”

“Yeah, well.” Dean glances down at his boots. There’s a bit of mud caked to the toe of his right one. He glares at it.

“Was there something you wished to discuss with me?”

Dean blinks, and then slides his backpack off his shoulder, lowering it to the ground and bending to unzip it. As he speaks, he doesn’t look up. “Actually…finals are done soon, so I won’t be seeing you for a couple weeks, and I just wanted to say…thanks. For everything.”

“You’re welcome, Dean.” God, Castiel’s probably staring at him. All earnest blue eyes, and the rest of his expression so unreadable as to almost be alien…

Dean swallows, and pulls his gift out of his backpack, holding it out like it’s a bomb that might go off any second. “So, uh, happy holidays. Castiel.”

Slowly, Castiel reaches out and takes the gift, the monster bow drooping slightly where it had been smashed against the inside of Dean’s backpack. It still looks pretty, though.

“A desk calendar?” Castiel sounds puzzled, and Dean clears his throat.

“Yeah. Three hundred sixty-five days of Freud. You mentioned writing a thing for a psychology journal, and I just…” Dean stops while he’s ahead – Castiel doesn’t need the blow-by-blow explanation as to how and why Dean bought the stupid calendar, the fucking thing’s right there for him to look at. Instead, he cautiously glances up, wondering what he’ll see. A carefully neutral expression? Distaste? One of Castiel’s rare smiles?

Or…none of the above. Castiel doesn’t look disapproving, or neutral, or happy. He looks…confused.

That’s probably not a good sign.

“The theories of Sigmund Freud have been considered out of date for quite some time,” Castiel says. Dean’s stomach drops down to…oh, somewhere around his groin. He doesn’t like it. You knew it was a lame gift and you got it anyways. He hadn’t known what else to get. That’s not really an excuse.

“Oh,” Dean says, faintly.

“In fact, several have been proven not only inaccurate, but outright wrong.”

“That’s, uh.” Mortifying. “I didn’t know that.”

“Now you do.” Castiel looks sort of pleased with himself. Is it because he’s imparted a new scrap of knowledge to a previously uninformed student, or because he’s successfully headed off Dean’s (admittedly not exactly aggressive or obvious) advances at the pass? The world may never know, Dean thinks vaguely.

“That’s all I wanted to do.” Dean quickly bends and zips up his backpack again, then hauls it over his shoulder and quickly takes a step back. He tries hard not to glance up. “So…have a good break, sir.”

“Dean,” he hears, but he’s already turning around and making his escape.

~

Finals finish on Friday, but both Dean and Sam are done by the time Thursday night rolls around. Dean has to wait in the student center while Sam runs off and does something mysterious (he refuses to talk about it – Dean assumes that it’s Sam’s secret boyfriend and then loses interest). He keeps thinking about what Castiel had said, trying to figure out what he could have done to…he’s not sure. He’s certain there isn’t a gift in the world that would have made Castiel kiss him out of sheer, ecstatic joy, but Dean would have accepted a “thank you,” or even a “that was very thoughtful of you, Dean.” Instead he got a miniature lecture on Freud, and a handful of bad feelings.

When Sam comes back from wherever he ran off to, he looks both worried and happy.

“What’s up with you?” Dean asks, but Sam just shakes his head and smiles. “Fine, be cryptic. Freak.”

“What crawled up your ass and died?”

“Your face,” Dean says, immediately and without thinking, and Sam makes a soft, disgusted sound.

“Fine, dude. Be an asshole.”

They drive home in tense silence. Dean doesn’t ask where Sam went, or who he was meeting, or why he came back so late the other day, and Sam doesn’t ask Dean why his hands are clenched so tight on the steering wheel that his knuckles are turning white, or what happened with the “Psych major” and the present. It’s probably not healthy, but it works for them, and Dean falls asleep that night feeling like everything he touches eventually gets messed up.

It’s the sixteenth of December, and Christmas is a little more than a week away.