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The wind gusts with a low almost menacing hum, rattling at the windows. Dean pauses with the crinkle of brown paper caught between his thumb and forefinger, transfixed by the lettering on the USB flash drive he got for Sam. It hits him again with the same insistent force as the sound of the wind: it's been five years since he and Sam swapped gifts.
The last time was before Dean died and went to Hell. Dean's first year back, with the distance between them ever-widening, they got take-out Chinese food and watched the game but didn't do gifts, and they drank beer with too much of the wrong kind of silence. The next year was at Bobby's with too many ghosts of the kind they couldn't fight, the photograph Bobby burned, Jo and Ellen's faces curling away into ash, the house dark and quiet. Cas zapping away on some kind of angel business, expression seeming permanently stricken.
After that…Dean doesn't like to think of the Christmas he spent in Cicero, and the year after was worse in another way, with a stranger sitting across from him who looked like his brother and sort of almost was his brother, but also was a breathing, living negative space of where his Sam was supposed to be.
Dean shrugs hard, shakes off the winter chill, and turns his attention back to wrapping the gifts he picked up for Sam. He folds the pieces of brown paper bag neatly with sharp creases around the items then gathers up the parcels and heads downstairs. The warm air from Bobby's study reaches out to meet him, fire burning on the hearth.
"Hey," Sam says, looking up from his laptop. He's lying on the couch under the window, a couple of packages on the table in front of him. He's got bottles of cold medicine and boxes of tissue spread out around him, but he's grinning wide, looking more comfortable in his own skin than he has in a long time. Sam's face still looks a little drawn, the shadows under his eyes too dark, but he seems to be doing a lot better, although from experience Dean knows it takes a while to bounce back from pneumonia. "Wow." Sam closes the laptop as Dean puts the gifts on the table. "This is quite a haul."
"Damn straight." Dean sits next to his brother on the couch, forcing Sam to pull in his too-long legs. "Sparing no expense this year."
"So that it goes on record," Sam says, taking the first package Dean hands him, "this was your idea. The presents. The tree…" Sam glances over at the Ponderosa pine that looms from the corner, carefully placed in the bucket of dirt Dean set up for it. The room smells of it, along with the sweet smokiness of the fire. "Which, naturally, you almost get yourself killed to get…"
"I wanted a real tree! Not one of those scrawny-ass things you get from a nursery. Now shut up and open your presents." Dean smacks Sam on the back of the head more gently than he might usually do it.
Sam makes a big thing about rubbing the back of his head and scowls, but he's not fooling anyone, the way the corners of his mouth twitch. He opens his gifts: the flash drive and a small folding hunter knife with an iron blade.
Over in the kitchen, Bobby's telling Cas the best way to make chili, while Cas sits with his injured ankle propped up on another kitchen chair. Apparently Cas has said something to piss Bobby off because Bobby's waving his spoon, lecturing him on what would an angel know about making chili anyway, and how there's no such thing as too much chili powder. Castiel listens as attentively as if he were at a cooking class.
Dean's glance lingers on Castiel's profile, the shape of his nose, the curve of his mouth, the stray piece of dark hair falling over his forehead. He flushes, thinking about their time alone in the cabin, but then he shuts off that line of thought. He turns away towards the tree instead. The scent of chili joins the pine and fireplace smells.
The whole thing seems surreal for a minute, as if Dean's not even really there, until Sam jabs Dean in the ribs with his elbow, and his surroundings snap back into sharpness.
"Thank you," Sam says. "These are great. Especially the flash drive." He looks so goddamned earnest, and something tugs in Dean's chest, because Sam always wanted normal, wanted the tree and presents. "So. Open yours."
Dean rips the paper off with much less care and ceremony than Sam did. There's a large bag of peanut M&Ms and a blues mix-tape, the playlist in Sam's handwriting.
"When did you have time to do this?" Dean's fingers tighten around the cassette.
"The music kind of helped calm me." The fingers of Sam's hand twitch into a fist on his knee, and then release. "I put it together a while back following a bad attack. Figured I could give it to you as a present. I used Bobby's equipment here to transfer it from mp3 files on my laptop to a cassette because you're such a stickler for analog."
Sam starts coughing, and Dean pats him on the back until it passes.
"This…." Dean turns the cassette over in his hands, two ideas jostling around in his brain, one that Sam went to all this trouble for him, and two how Sam had more than one bad attack, and still had them. "Thank you, Sam. This is awesome."
All four of them sit around Bobby's kitchen table eating chili and drinking beer. Bobby isn't wearing his trucker cap, and has put on his newest flannel shirt. Sam leans back in his chair, laughing so hard his eyes water as Bobby tells one of his stories.
Castiel's posture grows progressively less impeccable, lines of his face gentling. Since he got back from Purgatory, he's carried himself a little differently already, but still with some of the old imposing formality inherent in his stance. Dean's seen him vulnerable, exposed to a degree that's sometimes frightening, or sometimes it's simply the warmth of his body fitting against Dean's in a way that's unexpected and yet seems to have been inevitable all along.
Without even glancing over at Dean, Castiel's hand finds Dean's under the table, brushes against it, and is gone. Dean thinks about what happened in the cabin again, Castiel's fingers tracing up his spine, their tongues sliding together, and a flush starts in his neck that has nothing to do with the chili's spices or the beer.
They finish eating, and Bobby puts his fist to his mouth and coughs.
"Got somethin' for you boys." He scrapes his chair back, gets up, and starts walking towards the study. "Well, don't just sit there, idjits."
"Right, Bobby." Sam gets to his feet. "We…uh, we've got something for you too." He shoots a glance at Castiel.
Unfolding himself from his chair like he's been drinking beer and eating chili his whole existence, Cas limps past Bobby, headed for the spot where they hid Bobby's gift earlier.
Once they're gathered in the study, Bobby goes behind his desk and opens a drawer. He pulls out something wrapped in a soft white rag and puts it down on top of a book as Cas brings the brown paper bag holding Bobby's gift over. Castiel hesitates as if he's unsure where to stand, then hands the package to Sam.
"Here. It's from all three of us." Sam steps forward, puts the bag on the desk and steps back, almost like a shy kid giving a present to a favorite teacher.
Bobby pulls the large bottle filled with amber-colored liquid out of the bag. "Top shelf, huh." He holds up the bottle of bourbon, hefts its weight in his hands, then looks up at the three of them as they stand in a row in front of his desk. He doesn't say anything for a long moment. Finally Bobby swats at the air almost dismissively, but his eyes brighten and his expression softens. "Awww. This is nice. You spent too much."
"Forget it," Dean says, shrugging.
The wind and the crackling of the fire fills the quiet for a moment before Bobby puts the bourbon aside and starts unfolding the rag as if something breakable lies inside. There's a tangle of leather cords and pieces of metal so old there's no shine left lying against the white cloth.
Bobby picks up one of the cords, letting the slim, flat metal object on the end spin until it gives off a dull gleam from the firelight. He hands it to Sam.
"Protection charm," Bobby says, voice low and with a note of defensiveness in it, as if he's daring them to make one smart-ass remark, to mock. But they wouldn't; not with this. He picks up a second charm and offers it to Dean.
They each put them on. Dean's settles about where his amulet used to sit. The charm isn't as heavy, but has enough weight that he's aware of it.
When Bobby lifts a third charm and holds it out to Castiel, Castiel's head goes up, eyes widening in surprise. The charm sways a little in the draft before Cas holds his hand out and Bobby drops it into his palm, the leather cord falling after.
"Dunno if it'll work on you or not. I know you've got super-strength and all," Bobby says, "but your angelic mojo ain't what it was and I thought, well, couldn't hurt to try." He shrugs and makes a big thing about folding the rag and putting it away, back in the drawer.
"Thank you, Bobby Singer," Castiel says, ducking his head to hang the charm around his neck.
"Yeah, thanks Bobby. For everything," Sam adds, turning his charm over in his fingers.
"Ditto," Dean chimes in, feeling like it's completely inadequate.
But Bobby catches his gaze, holds it a moment, and Dean knows he gets it.
"When the ground gets softer, I want to plant this puppy outside." Dean crouches and puts his hand on the soil inside the bucket. It's cool and damp and soft. "Root system still looks healthy. I think I can do it."
"I've always liked gardens." Cas stares at the tree, head tilted slightly to the side with a little crease between his eyes, studying the branches. "I'll help you plant it."
As Dean gets to his feet, Cas pinches some needles from the nearest branch between his thumb and forefinger, then inhales the scent. The darkness outside is thick, but the wind's gone quiet and the snow's not as heavy.
The memory of the cold at the core of his body after he fell through the ice, the blackness folding in around him, touches the edge of Dean's mind, but it's gone quickly. The fuzzy socks Cas got for him are on his feet, and Bobby's study is warm and quiet. Sam and Bobby are off finishing the kitchen clean-up. It's getting late.
Cas seems more unearthly standing next to the pine branches. Knowing he could lift the whole thing up with one hand helps Dean with that impression. Having the pine in Bobby's study is a little like how Cas sometimes makes a room seem – smaller and yet more than it was before.
"How's your ankle?" Dean steps closer to him.
Cas turns, and the corners of his eyes crinkle into a smile as he glances over at Dean. "Healing faster than I'd expected."
Dean reaches out and grabs Castiel's hand, drawing it up towards his face. He inhales the sweet-sharp scent of the pine lingering on Castiel's fingers as Castiel takes another step closer, another, until he fits his mouth over Dean's, a soft brush at first before they both grow more insistent. Dean tastes traces of chili powder on Castiel's tongue, spicy and warm, as Cas traces his hand up the line of Dean's back, over his t-shirt, an echo of the way he touched Dean at the cabin.
They pull apart as footfalls sound in the hallway and a few minutes later, Sam and Bobby join them with glasses of eggnog.
Bobby heads off to sleep first, yawning and complaining about his back.
Sitting next to Cas on the couch under the window, Dean winds up dozing off even though he didn't intend to. When he wakes up, there's a warm weight against him. Castiel's asleep with his head on Dean's chest, arm curved across Dean's middle.
There's a muffled sound of amusement from the doorway, and Dean looks up to see Sam watching them with a grin on his face. Sam makes a wildly exaggerated mimed awwwwwww, enjoying all this way too much. Dean flips up his middle finger but that only makes Sam break out into silent laughter. Then Sam yawns, lifts his hand with a goodnight signal, and Dean does the same.
It's good to see Sam laughing, see his eyes less haunted. See him being Sam.
Dean listens to Sam's heavy steps creaking on the wooden stairs as he heads up to bed. The fire's settled down to embers; Dean watches the deep red-gold for a few moments. It makes him think of Hell, and he closes his eyes, recalls how the firelight in the cabin flickered as he woke, cocooned in warmth, and feeling safe.
In the faint light Cas looks more deeply relaxed and at peace than Dean's ever seen him, his injured ankle propped up on the table. The leather cord of the protection charm lies against the skin of his neck as if Cas has always worn it, and the full weight of him at rest against Dean still feels new; yet it doesn't seem surprising at all, as if this is part of how things should be.
The thought sends a flicker of alarm through Dean's chest – they're all under one roof, no one's seriously injured, no one's lost, but that's for now and anything could and does always happen.
But for now…
He closes his eyes, one hand pressed to Castiel's lower back against the skin where his shirt's worked free. With the rise and fall of Castiel's breathing under his palm, Dean goes back to sleep.