Day: December 7, 2016

lights so bright (5/25)

~ kototyph ~ Leave a comment

SPN – Dean/Castiel – PG – Shut Up ‘verse, AU, Christmas Fluff, Advent Ficlet Collection

5. Decorating the tree

[AO3]

“I’m going to need a bigger ladder,” Dean says.

He’d be flat on the floor if the hearth wasn’t there, so instead he’s sprawled across the fireplace’s eight foot shelf, one foot on the floor and his head brushing Castiel’s thigh. Castiel is sitting back on his hands and staring at the tree, their tree; he radiates quiet delight the way the tiny lights gleam in the otherwise dark room.

“Or a big fucking hook,” Dean continues, because he doesn’t want to ruin the mood or anything here but looking at a job half-done is giving him hives. He’d run out of rungs about five feet shy of the top, and the final string of light waits forlornly draped over the paint tray.

“Shhh,” Castiel stays, laying a hand on his chest. “Just look.”

Dean closes his eyes instead, stretching a little against ache in his back. They’d finally gotten the tree up around ten, which probably makes it near midnight now. They’d had to drag the unspeakably heavy assembly to a series of successively higher-ceilinged rooms when it became clear just how massive this thing was going to be, and ended up east wing hall. It’s a good room for this, or it will be: the long windows reflect the lights like bright constellations in the black, seamless sky-sea outside.

“Dean,” Castiel chides, and when he opens his eyes Castiel’s fingers drift up his collar to his chin.

“Big ass ladder,” Dean says unrepentantly. “Or you’re going to need wings.”

“I’ll take wings,” Castiel says, and tilts Dean’s head back to kiss him, just warmth and breath.

“Seriously, how the hell are we going to get up there?” Dean mumbles against his lips, lifting a hand to his face. Castiel turns to kiss his palm, then back to his mouth with more intent. Dean is all about that, and is sliding his hand behind Castiel’s head and to urge him further down when the ready lips against his pull abruptly away.

“No,” Castiel says, squinting into the darkness. “Don’t even think about it.”

Dean stares at him, nonplussed. “What?”

“No,” Castiel repeats with more venom. “Don’t you dare.”

Dean cranes his neck up and sees, in the shadows under the tree, Nabokov posed with all possible feline innocence just outside the first ring of boughs.

“Absolutely not,” Castiel tells her, pointing towards the door.

From above their heads comes a long, mournful yowl. Dean’s head moves back in tandem with Castiel’s to see Rosie’s black and cream face peering down at them from just where the lights stop.

“Nnnroooow,” she complains.

“Ah, shit,” Dean says. “I’m going to need a bigger ladder tonight.”

OHHHHHHHH MY GOD

lights so bright (4/25)

~ kototyph ~ Leave a comment

SPN – Dean/Castiel – PG – Shut Up ‘verse, AU, Christmas Fluff, Advent Ficlet Collection

4. Shopping for and/or wrapping presents

[AO3]

Lisa and Ben pick them up in the very small hours of the morning, when misting sleet blows like a fog over the house and Castiel can barely get his eyes open enough to be maneuvered into his coat.

“Stop , I can do it,” he says the third time in a row he’s unable to find and link his own zipper, and Dean raises his hands and leaves him to it while he goes to answer the door.

Lisa’s puffy coat and fur-trimmed hood are zipped and buttoned to the utmost, leaving just the tired squint of her eyes visible. Ben is excited to the point of perpetual frenetic motion, launching himself at Dean with a running tally of everything he’s going to do and see in New York and then yanking off his boots so he can go tell Castiel the same thing.

“Why did I agree to this?” she says with a bleary look at Dean. “Why, Dean. Why.”

Dean smiles sympathetically and hands her a granola bar. “Hell if I know. You brought the Yukon?”

“No, I brought the Camaro ,” she says, sarcasm somewhat tempered by a huge yawn. “The ice is bad. We nearly slid into the ocean twice on the way here.”

“It should be easier once we get on the highway,” Dean says, just as Ben drags Castiel into the foyer carrying two thermoses of coffee and his coat still undone. “Thank God,” Lisa says when he produces a third thermos from a pocket, grabbing for it. “Dean, you’re driving.”

She passes out in the front seat while Castiel and Ben continue their conversation under the rumble of the engine, Ben high and excited, Castiel gravely attentive. Dean tunes in to one of the two stations going all-out on Christmas around the bay area, just in time to get Johnny Mathis saying “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas….” and concentrates on the drive. As predicted, it does get easier as they get away from the coast. The sleet is just rain by the time they hit Hartford, and a watery, blue-grey dawn spills into the sky as Dean skims across the 678 bridge into Queens.

Bobby is up and has more coffee ready, and Ellen comes bearing McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches when she pulls in behind them a few minutes later. Jo and Ben enthuse over pocket monsters while they all wait for Jody and her new partner, a Minnesotan transplant who Jody’s told them is nearly as excited as Ben to see the Lord and Taylor Christmas window. Castiel seems easier around them, maybe because Ben is there to break the ice and Ellen immediately turns to Lisa, eyebrow raised over her coffee cup, and says, “So. The dentist?”

Lisa puts her face in her arms and the whole table bursts out laughing, and then the doorbell rings and they’re off.

The plan, as proposed by Ellen over Thanksgiving, is to spend the morning in the Queens Center to get the serious shopping out of the way, go back to the house to grab lunch, then head into the city to hit as many of the holiday landmarks and Christmas markets of Manhattan as possible. The timing part of the plan falls apart before they even get down to Elmhurst; Ellen floors it through a light Dean and Jody get caught at and then they can’t find parking spaces within three city blocks of each other, Ben dutifully holding Dean’s phone up like a Ham radio while Ellen swears then apologizes multiple times, Lisa keeping tabs on Jody through her own phone. Dean gives up on the lower levels and circles up, up, up to the top of the parking garage.

“Let’s meet up at Macy’s?” Jody suggests, lost somewhere in the lots below them.

Except that she never specified a floor, Ellen somehow heard J.C. Penny’s, and they never quite manage to meet up in the middle— too many people, too loud and frenzied. They do find Jody and her partner Donna mostly by chance, and together pry Annie kicking and screaming out of a nearby Hollister. Dean keeps Ben from running off in the direction of the Lego Store with both hands and the promise of a cinnabun, then almost loses his husband to the first bookstore they come across.

“I’ll just be—” Castiel shouts over the noise, pointing at the Barnes and Noble and adjoining cafe, like it isn’t also bursting at the seams with families and strollers and, yikes, live music.

“No hiding, we shop like men,” Dean tells him sternly, and pulls him back into the fray.

They eventually end up in the Barnes and Noble anyway— and the Lego Store, and Hollister, Macy’s and J.C. Penny’s and everything in between. The two cops in the group are diverted by a fancy candy store and Lisa steers Annie into a Victoria’s Secret down on the first level, leaving Dean, Castiel and Ben take the higher ground at the L.L. Bean, where Ben takes a deep breath and relays verbatim everything on Lisa’s Christmas list. It’s mostly warm sweaters and good socks, which clearly baffles her son. It isn’t until the girls in blue have rejoined them and Castiel has been co-opted to go check out electronics with his mom that Ben delivers Castiel’s list, which is mostly good books and warm socks. By the expression on his face, Ben has given up understanding the adults in his life.

“Jeez, kid, I hope they’re paying you a commission,” Dean says wryly.

Ben’s not done. “An’ you have to make sure it’s the fifth edition, not the other ones. The fifth one’s got better graphs. Can I have a cinnabun yet?”

“Would you look at that,” Dean says, spotting the sign two floors below them. “I think it’s cinnamon roll time.” And if Dean delivers him to Lisa with an incredibly sticky face and white frosting all up his sleeves, Ben’s more than earned it.

Eventually, like wreckage following the currents, they all wash up in the sitting space between the Cinnabon and an Applebee’s. Surprisingly, Bobby is sitting in one of the massage chairs just outside, two bags and a big gift-wrapped box next to him. “I have no idea where those two are,” he says about Ellen and Jo. “Lost me three steps into this hell. Merry fudging Christmas.”

While Lisa and Jody lean over their phones to try to make contact, Dean polishes off a McMuffin he found in his pocket and lets Castiel buy him more coffee from the Starbucks kiosk. Dean also finds out that Donna is even more irrepressibly bubbly than his first impression suggested, and that the Mall of America would kick Queen Center’s ass. “It’s got a roller coaster inside, ya know,” she says brightly. “And an aquarium! You can pet the stingrays! Nothing like that here.”

“What the heck!” Lisa says, pointing suddenly, and Dean looks up and sees Jo and Ellen pointing back and laughing at them from a table inside of the Applebee’s.

That’s lunch sorted, though they and all the bags have to cram into a booth meant for six. Dean manfully takes the inside seat, which has the delightfully claustrophobic side benefit of forcing Castiel to sit almost in his lap. It also means he only has his left hand to eat with, but he complains enough that Castiel rolls his eyes and starts feeding him French fries by hand, so Dean’s still going to count that in the win category.

None of them, not even Jo— who can and does give New York cabbies a run for their money— wants to drive into Manhattan on a December weekend. The whole crowd drops their stuff at Bobby’s and walks down to the Flushing station to take the 7 line instead, popping out on Fifth Avenue and immediately hitting a human wall around the best of the department store windows.

“It’ll be better once the sun sets, anyway,” Lisa says, ruffling Ben’s hair. “Let’s go see the tree, honey.”

As they walk back past the famous public library, Ben running on ahead and Bobby trudging behind, Castiel’s cold fingers finds his sleeve; then his wrist; then his hand, and thread themselves between his own fingers.

“Forgot your gloves again?” Dean asks archly, tucking their hands deep into his pocket.

Castiel is looking up at the decorations on the storefronts they pass, lights and wreaths and curling trumpets. “I thought I’d put them in this coat. I truly did.”

Dean smiles, squeezing his hand. “Sounds like you need more gloves.” There were three pairs in the shopping bags in Bobby’s living room.

Castiel smiles at a display of toy trains, tracks spiralling up and around a castle made of candy canes. “I suppose it does.”

lights so bright (3/25)

~ kototyph ~ Leave a comment

SPN – Dean/Castiel – PG – Shut Up ‘verse, AU, Christmas Fluff, Advent Ficlet Collection

3. Getting the Christmas tree

[AO3]

“Holy shit, no,” Dean says from end of the hallway. “No. Hell no. Put it back.”

Castiel, red-faced with the effort of supporting the tree— no, the tree top, just the upper half of the apparently enormous fake fucking Christmas tree, easily twelve feet tall and significantly wider than the door it just exited— looks back at the attic steps, and then at Dean. “I don’t know if I can,” he admits.

Dean helps him lay it along the wall when it doesn’t quite clear the ceiling, and then pulls him back towards the bedroom and into the ensuite. Dean had still been blissfully half-asleep, only barely curious as to where Castiel had wandered off to this early on a Saturday morning, when the sound of a human being and a hundred pounds of ancestral mock fir falling out of the attic had brought him bolt upright and scared out of his mind. Castiel immediately yelling, “I’m fine! Ow,” had not helped.

“What if we leave it at just this piece?” Castiel asks, leaning against the sink while Dean carefully dabs at his bleeding elbow. “Ow. We could prop it up, somehow.”

“The base is too narrow. That thing is supposed to slot into a pole or something,” Dean says. He swabs one more time, and then grabs the bandaid box from the sink. “We could stick it in the ground, but short of that, I can’t think of anything would make it stable enough. And do you really want to have to haul it all the way downstairs, and then all the way back up again?”

“I suppose not,” Castiel allows grudgingly, and Dean rewards him by smoothing on the biggest bandage in the box. “Is that really necessary?”

“Absolutely,” Dean says, checking the edges. “There’s a farm on the drive in from Boston. Why don’t we stop by one night next week and pick up a tree?”

“I think I’d prefer an artificial tree,” Castiel says, and pulls his arm away to rub at the bandage himself. “It seems cruel to cut one down, just for this. And it’s less work to maintain, correct?”

“I mean, they both fall under ‘some assembly required,’” Dean says, reaching past him to pop open the medicine cabinet. “Maybe we shouldn’t get one this year. At least, not a big one. Obviously there’s plenty of room, just not in the rooms we’ve finished. I can probably get a mini-tree with the lights already on for thirty bucks.”

Castiel’s face doesn’t fall, exactly. He just looks suddenly and strangely agreeable, like he didn’t really expect to get what he wanted. Like he’s used to it. “Ah. That makes sense.”

Dean tries to backpeddle. “Are you sure? We can try to clear out some space in the den, rearrange the furniture. Or wait until the floor’s finished in the library? That’s only a few more weeks.”

“No, you’re right.” Castiel smiles faintly and pushes away from the sink, moving past Dean and into the bedroom. “We’ll need something more manageable. We’re still working on so many things.”

Dean can’t really argue with that, but he wants to. “Cas, we can make it work. What about the greenhouse room? There’s nothing in there yet, and it’s out of the way of the worst of it.”

But Castiel just gives him a confused look over his shoulder. “The winter garden? Half of it is dead.”

What Dean really wants to know is how he ended up living in a house with a winter garden, even a half-dead one. He’ll settle for buying out the whole holiday section at Walmart, if that’s what Castiel actually wants. “Look, Cas—”

“Dean,” Castiel says with some exasperation, and as Dean follows him into the bedroom he turns away to start making the bed. “I have something in mind I think will work.”

“Oh. You do?” It’s not that Dean doesn’t trust him, it’s just that he knows the only two furnishings in the whole house Castiel had purchased himself are the terrible couch and the equally terrible cookie jar shaped like a bumblebee.

“I do,” Castiel confirms. “Are you going to help me with this?”

“I would, but I was going to use it again,” Dean says, and despite Castiel protesting that it’s ten, Dean, they have things to do, he flops facedown onto the rumpled bedding and stays there. Because their bed has the same gravitation pull as some black holes, before Dean falls asleep again he’s been joined by both cats, coffee, the book Castiel’s reading about how bad finance is, the backup book explaining how good finance is, and Castiel himself.

“Thought you had things to do,” Dean mumbles, reaching for him.

“As it happens, I can do a few of them from here,” Castiel says, and appropriates his shoulder as a bookrest.

A day later, Castiel brings home a Norfolk pine in a pot covered in red foil and positions it carefully next to the growing card collection on the kitchen counter. It comes with a few tiny plastic ornaments strung here and there, and a perfunctory gold star tied to the top. It looks so much like Charlie Brown’s miserable twig of a tree Dean could cry.

“There,” Castiel says, staring down at it. “That looks festive.”

“Goddamn it,” Dean sighs, and Castiel turns to glare at him. “No, no, it’s great. We should keep it there, and, uh.”

“And?”

“And you need to help me move auntie’s tree downstairs,” Dean says, because that thing is making him depressed just looking at it. “Let’s go.”

It doesn’t turn out to be as simple as that, of course. The top half of the tree, which they still haven’t moved from the upstairs hallway, is actually the top third— because, surprise, the tree comes in five pieces. Five of them, each one bulkier and heavier than the last. When the two of them finally wrestle the pieces out of the attic and down the stairs behind the kitchen (there was no way they’d make it down the spiraling staircase), the tree fits together like some kind of three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle from hell built entirely out of stabbing plastic pine needles and spite. Dean had put on Christmas music to try and lend the exercise some holiday spirit, but thinks what he’s actually doing is giving himself carol-triggered PTSD, “It’s a Marshmallow World in the Winter” blaring cheerily while the tree does its best to kill them.

“I hate your aunt,” he grunts, trying to force two metal joints together near the trunk of the monster tree while holding the top two tiers steady with one arm. “I hate her so much, fuck, what the fuck is this bullshit.”

“Yes, so did most people,” Castiel tells him, lending his bodyweight to the process. “Is this helping?”

The joints pop out and the tree, Dean, and Castiel go down in a heap.

“No,” Dean pants. “It was not.” He tries to roll over, finds himself mostly pinned by the base, and just gives in. “I’m… I’m going to lay here for a second.”

“Seconded,” Castiel says, buried in branches next to him.

Castiel’s books (x) (x)
It’s a Marshmallow World
Don’t use Norfolk pines for your Christmas tree. It’s just not what nature intended.

lights so bright (2/25)

~ kototyph ~ Leave a comment

SPN – Dean/Castiel – PG – Shut Up ‘verse, AU, Christmas Fluff, Advent Ficlet Collection

2. Getting out the decorations

[AO3]

The first inkling Dean has that Castiel didn’t enjoy his Friday night commute is the single shoe in the middle of the hallway leading from the mudroom, all but afloat in a puddle of rainwater.

“Oh,” Dean says, closing the door to the garage. “Oh, no. Cas?”

Although they carpool more often than not, especially in the evenings Dean sometimes has events and client calls that pull him away from the office and out of range for Castiel to get a ride home. The man got around perfectly well before Dean and the Impala rode into his life, as he often likes to remind him, but there are some days the T, a long bus ride, and an extended walk just aren’t the best option. Dean checks his phone, but there’s no missed call, even though he’d mentioned the forecast and offered to skip his last call. Stubborn ass.

It’s past nine and dark as pitch outside, rain and tiny hailstones breaking against the windows as Dean collects the shoe and continues down the hall. He finds the other shoe, leather saturated to the point of shapelessness, up against the baseboards in the kitchen like it was kicked off with vigor. He follows the trail of wet into the smaller butcher’s pantry and to pants, a shirt, an undershirt, and two socks draped over the huge copper sinks. The tie droops from a faucet; the trenchcoat, sodden and dripping sullenly, is on a big metal hook Dean sincerely hopes was reserved for cookware.

Damp footprints cross the floor back into the kitchen, and there’s a canister of hot cocoa mix out, an empty mug and saucepan waiting. There wouldn’t have been any milk to make it, Dean knows, because he has a replacement gallon for the one he finished that morning in the grocery bag on his hip.

“Aw, sweetheart,” Dean sighs, and sets it on the counter.

He goes upstairs with two mugs steaming in his hands, anticipating a surly welcome from either the upstairs office or from under several layers of bedding in the master suite. The office is empty, though, and the bedroom vacant except for Nabokov and Rosie’s calico sprawl across the sheets. The cats blink sleepily at him as he settles the mugs on the already-crowded bedside table, and Rosie accepts the stroke he gives her with a yawn and flexing paws. She’s the last kitten standing, the rest of them safely rehoused with friends before Halloween, and she’s a bit of a spoiled brat.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen my husband?” he asks her, tickling her chin. “About six feet, soaking wet, probably calling me all kinds of names?”

Nabokov gets laboriously to her feet and steps all over her daughter on her way to the lap Dean’s just made. Dean stands back up before she gets there, but scoops her into his arms and letting her knead him with her sharp little claws while he makes another slow circuit of the upstairs rooms. “Cas?”

No Cas in the bathroom, second through fifth bedrooms, other bathrooms, dumbwaiter, laundry chutes, sitting room, or the weird and dusty passage behind the sitting room that’s open to the formal dining room on the first floor. No Cas in the dining room. No Cas in the breakfast room. No Cas in the den, the library, the parlor, the billards room, the gun room, or the drafty hall where the cow-roasting fireplace lives.

Back upstairs in the master bedroom, Dean sets Nabokov back in the sheets and, after a second, crouches to check under the bed.

“Right, that’s fucking ridiculous,” he mutters, letting the bedskirt drop back down. “Cas!”

Dean’s in the broad hallway that connects the smaller bedrooms to the sitting room and main suite when he feels it, a subtle draft of colder air. He slowly turns in place, looking up and down, and sees Rosie crouched next to the door to what Dean thinks is a linen closet. She meows piteously when she sees him looking, reaching under the door to scratch at the floor inside.

When Dean opens it, he sees exactly the same dusty towels and haphazard collection of bedding he expected, but he also sees a crack in the corner that proves to be the edge of another door, painted the same color as the wall. He gives it a long, wary look, then a tentative push, and it eases open to reveal a set of ascending stairs.

“Huh,” he says.

Rosie immediately makes a run for it, and Dean grabs her before she gets to the first tread. “Hold up. If I see a lamppost or a dude with goat legs, you and I are locking this door and barricading it shut,” he tells her as she wiggles in protest, and braves the first few steps. “Cas?”

Theoretically, Dean is aware that his crazy house has attics, probably a couple, and big ones at that. Too much space under its steep gables and dramatic rooflines to think otherwise. Somehow, though, he was picturing something a little less finished, a little more full of pink insulation and exposed support beams. What he sees instead is smooth wood and acutely angled walls, windows in odd places, plaster ceilings flaking off in patches where the damp has seeped in and softened them. Dim yellow bulbs on long chains illuminate a jumble of old furniture, even more badly aged than the stuff they’ve been trying to clean out downstairs, and more goddamned cardboard boxes. The swaying bulbs light the way to the northern corner, where Castiel sits cross-legged on the floor and elbow deep in a wooden chest, yellowed newspaper fountaining out around him and the floor in a spreading heap. He’s wearing a towel around his shoulders, and a Yankees sweatshirt of Dean’s that never leaves the house for fear of mob violence.

“It’s like this place never ends,” Dean says, gazing around him in amazement.

Castiel lifts his head with an impatient look. “There you are,” he says, waving him over. “Come here, I found Aunt Amara’s Christmas things.” He immediately refocuses on the chest.

And there’s Dean’s surly welcome. He spends long enough just standing there grinning at Cas that the man looks up again, and straightens with a scowl.

“What?” he asks peevishly.

“Hold on a sec,” Dean says, and goes to get the cocoa.

“It’s barely warm,” Castiel comments when Dean gets back, but he cradles it in both hands and sips while pointing out the various treasures he’s uncovered— wreaths so brittle they dissolve in a firm grip, old, enormous bows made of stiff organza and real silk, glass ornaments with fabric rosettes gone dull with time. Rosie insinuates herself into the process, and the two of them work to keep her away from ancient tinsel and shiny metal ornament hooks while they continue to excavate.

There’s a hundred strings of electric lights with funny tulip-shaped bulbs and crumbling insulation that make Dean say, “Not unless you want to burn the house down with us in it,” when Castiel picks them up. That leads to Castiel asking when he’s going to get them new ones, then, which leads to Castiel shifting from bare foot to bare foot on the cold garage cement while Dean pops the trunk to reveal an admittedly over the top number of bags full of classic white Christmas lights. That in turn demands more cocoa. The night ends very agreeably on the awful corduroy couch, Castiel forgiving him for being right about the weather and wedging himself between Dean’s legs, the better to trap him when he starts to fall asleep.

“We need a tree,” Dean mumbles, more than halfway there himself. “To put the ornaments on.”

“There’s a tree in the attic, too,” Castiel says on a yawn. “An artificial one. It’s quite large, from what I remember.”

“Mmhm,” Dean says, head dropping back against the armrest.

“Of course, I was a child at the time,” Castiel murmurs. His thumb brushes Dean’s collarbone, his throat. “I’m sure it’s smaller in reality.”

lights so bright (1/25)

~ kototyph ~ Leave a comment

SPN – Dean/Castiel – PG – Shut Up ‘verse, AU, Christmas Fluff, Advent Ficlet Collection

1. Christmas cards

[AO3]

The first one arrives right on Thursday, when the winter rain is pelting the car at damn near a thirty-degree angle and Dean feels like he might lose an arm in the short time it takes him to roll down the window, grab for the mailbox latch, and hastily shovel the jumble of junk mail into the car with them.

“Where the hell do they even come from?” he asks, trying to shield his face from the stinging drops while he cranks the Impala’s window shut as fast as he can. “I swear I didn’t bring all this with me, and somehow I have a hard time picturing you shopping at— is that Toys-R-Us?”

“I find catalogs quite interesting,” Castiel says, already sorting through pile with a jeweler’s eye. “Even that one. Besides, I’m still looking for your gift.”

Dean already has a half-dozen things squirreled away in various places around the house— mostly stupid stuff, like a mug that made Cas smile at the gas station and a set of nice notebooks. He wonders a little guiltily if this is something they should have talked about.

“Was I not supposed to tell you that?” Castiel asks, with a flyer for something called a kringle tucked under his chin.

“Nah.” Dean smiles at him as he takes his foot off the break and starts to coast down the driveway. “It’s all good. Whatever you want to get me, even if it’s from Toys-R-Us.”

“I think that’s unlikely,” Castiel says dryly. “But I assure you, it will be perfect.” He frowns at the junk mail in his lap like he’ll know what to blame if it isn’t.

Dean puts his eyes back on the road but lays an arm across the seat, hand conveniently at just the right height to ruffle Castiel’s hair. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” Castiel says firmly, tipping his head into Dean’s palm.

What little accumulation they had from November’s flurries has succumbed to the numbing rain, along with most of the courtyard’s still-wild landscaping. Despite the paint and siding work Dean has done since summer, the house looms with the grey, foreboding air of something out of a gothic novel as they turn into the courtyard. Bare branches sway in gusts from the ocean, and skeletal ivies cling to the wood and creep over windowsills.

“We really need to get some lights up once the weather breaks,” Dean says, looking at the roof as the garage door grinds slowly upwards.

“Lights?”

“Christmas lights. Something for the trees, too— any hardware stores in that pile?”

Castiel examines the spill of glossy paper across the seat and his legs, some of it falling into the footwell as they pull up in the dark stall. “Probably.”

“Save ‘em for me, then. How do you feel about inflatable snowmen?”

“Hateful,” Castiel says with a dour look, and Dean laughs as he cuts the engine.

The mail gets dumped next to Wednesday’s equally large stack, on top of Sunday’s scattered papers— more ad copy than news, the inversion getting more pronounced the closer they get to the holidays. Given a lazy morning, Dean tends to spend hours pulling the Times and Globe apart to check the placement of campaigns the company works on— a habit that leaves sections strewn over flat surfaces all over the rooms downstairs and does not endear him to the other reader in the house.

“Split pea?” Castiel asks hopefully as they cross the kitchen together, Dean carrying Castiel’s bulging briefcase, his own sleek messenger bag slung over Cas’ shoulder. “Do we have the… peas? And things?”

There are definitely dried peas in one of the pantries, and probably a ham hock around here somewhere. “Maybe. You think you can wait a couple hours to eat?” Dean says, already detouring to check.

“Yes,” Castiel says immediately, brightening. Dean holds out the briefcase and he takes it, disappearing into the hallway towards the stairs. Nabokov appears like a fat furry genie to thread her claws into the calf of Dean’s slacks while he’s trying to untie his shoes, and there’s a brief detour to feed her. Kibble dispensed, Dean heads for the butler’s pantry, which is bigger than some bedrooms he’s had over the years and smells persistently like ancient cinnamon. He grabs an apron on his way in.

Half an hour or so later, while he’s waiting for the soup to thicken, Dean wanders over to the table and starts to pick through the mess. It’s things and places he’s never heard of, the Smithsonian and Edmund’s Scientifics, art supplies and homegoods and a Great Courses class listing that could double as a phone book. Down at the bottom is a fairly sizable Cabela’s mag, complete with Santa flyfishing on the cover, and slotted between the pages is a white envelope.

“Here we go,” Dean says, tugging it out. He’s so tired of just credit offers and these damn catalogs, and the card looks hand-addressed.

The sender is J. Mills, the postmark from New York two days ago. The paper feels cheap but that’s Jody all over, the kind of woman who has so many people on her list she buys a 50-pack at Walgreens and just signs her name below the generic greeting inside. Dean knows, he’s seen her do it.

She also has a tendency to pick the most eye-searing cards she can find, something Dean forgets until he rips the envelope open with a finger and is almost blinded by hot pink reindeer. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters. He flips it open in self-defense and glitter flakes off in droves.

SANTA’S SLEIGH IS COMING YOUR WAY! Rudolph and friends shout at him. Merry Christmas to my two favorite newlyweds, Jody adds. Don’t tell my niece.

“Well, then,” Dean drawls, holding the card and its glittery woodland creatures at arm’s length. “I guess it’s finally the season.”

He props it up on the otherwise bare counter next to the refrigerator, because what few magnets they have are holding up the township recycling schedule and a notice from Dr. Fitzgerald that the cat is due for teeth-cleaning. It looks kind of lonely, sitting there by itself, but Dean knows he can probably count on a few people at work and some clients to send more. Not family, probably; Bobby doesn’t believe in polite gestures like greeting cards, and Sam wouldn’t know one if it bit him on the ass.

“Dean?” Castiel’s head appears in the doorway. He’s changed into sweatpants and a loose tee shirt. “Do you need help?”

Dean points at the waiting pile of carrots and onions next to the cutting board on the kitchen island. “All yours.”

The soup is good, and reheats well over the next two or three miserably rainy days. Castiel doesn’t say anything about the card, though Dean still winces every time it catches his eye, and over the next week he’s able to add few more— a homemade card from Charlie, an overtly Christian monograph from Missouri, and a couple of mass-printed and virtually identical season’s greetings from companies around town.

He’s propping up a card from Benny’s mom when he sees something else lying alongside the small collection. It’s one of those photo slips with text across the bottom, a portrait of a family Dean doesn’t recognize, though all four of them have dark hair and blue eyes. His suspicions are confirmed when he leans over and reads, Wishing you all God’s blessings this Christmas and New Year. — The Miltons.

“My brother,” Castiel says when Dean points it out. They’re cooking together again, this time Dean’s fallback fill ‘er up meal of spaghetti and meatballs. Castiel is in charge of arranging frozen dinner rolls on a baking sheet to keep him away from the sauce, and leaves them next to the stove to come look. “The oldest. He has two daughters, though Hannah is the only one we keep in regular contact with. She’s the taller girl, there.”

“Cute,” Dean comments, and Castiel raises an eyebrow at him— probably because the card sitting right next to it is from Anna and pointedly addressed to Castiel only. Yeah, Dean’s not touching that one with a thirty nine and a half foot pole.

The stack of catalogs on the den’s map table is reaching dangerously unstable heights by the end of the week, and Dean imposes what Castiel informs him is an untenable, tyrannical standard of an inch or less of junk on what’s still their main eating surface, even though they now have stools in the kitchen and tables in the dining and breakfast rooms. Castiel is sorting idly from the floor while Dean works via laptop, his head close to Dean’s elbow, when something sticking out of an untouched pile catches his eye.

“What’s this?” he asks, reaching past Castiel to snag it and hold it out so they can both see.

It seems to be a postcard, the front of it a shiny photograph of a flamingo with a forked branch tied to its head and a clown nose on its beak. The back reads, Little bro! Little sis told me you got Elvis-married. Would have renewed my license if you told me— still have the fringed jacket from Reno. Let’s catch up soon.

“Guessing this is not the same brother,” Dean says as Castiel stares at it. They’ve been married three months and he knows there are four siblings out there he hasn’t met, but that’s about it.

“No,” Castiel says slowly. “This is likely from Gabriel.”

“And he… likes flamingos?”

“The last I heard, he was the lead singer in a Jimmy Buffet tribute band in Pensacola.”

Dean blinks. “Pensacola?”

“We may need to leave temporarily,” Castiel continues, tilting his head to look back at him. “Just until he forgets where we live. Are you still paying for your apartment?”

“The lease expired last month,” Dean says, trying to gauge Castiel’s sincerity. “He’s not… he can’t be that bad. Really?”

Castiel looks vaguely apologetic, and completely serious. “I think I’ll go go pack a bag for us,” he says. “Just in case.”

~ kototyph ~ Leave a comment

jetpack-jenny:

manwithoutborders:

aleatoryw:

kaasknot:

havoke:

do you ever think about how perfectly steve, bucky, and sam typify the 3 big wars america’s fought in over the past century?

steve is the soldier who fought in world war 2. he’s the tail end of the glory and honor of war. his reasons for fighting are clear cut, moral, as far as he can tell. but the weapons used are too deadly, too fatal for glory and honor, really. there’s the attempt to treat enemy combatants with respect, with honor, all while killing them quick than has ever been possible before. there’s the unease of the shift from the old style of fighting to the new. there’s the tiredness that only comes from a second global war in only two decades. there’s the closure that comes from unprecedented total destruction. the thought of “maybe now we can go home. maybe now we can build lives like our parents, those of us that are left.”

bucky is the soldier who fought in vietnam. he’s the one that couldn’t dodge the draft, that couldn’t evade the fight no matter how hard he tried. he’s the one who followed the orders he had to, and rebelled against all the others. his uniform was askew, more civvies than not. he didn’t look a soldier, and he didn’t fight like one either. he didn’t know why he was fighting, who he was fighting. he saw too many innocents die by the hands of his comrades, of himself. he felt agent orange burn his lungs, saw orphans crying in the streets. he came home, the rat-a-tat of machine guns echoing in his ears, always. he disembarked a plane, and was spat on by anti-war protesters. he couldn’t even be angry– he agreed with them. he participated in the winter soldier investigations, confessed what he’d been forced to do, and that almost abated the weight on his shoulders. almost.

sam is the soldier who fought in afghanistan. the modern soldier, with just as much shit as the rest of them. the difference is, where steve was greeted with celebrations and bucky was greeted with vitriol, sam is overlooked, forgotten. he suffers in silence, expected to endure without protest. sam copes, but not all vets are able to do the same. afghan war vets are the ones who take their own lives in droves, the unacknowledged, unknown aftershocks from an invasion founded on half-formed ambitions from men in suits who’d never have to bear the real burden. sam is the modern day vet, unknown, unseen, unthanked.

No wonder they’re all Captain America

So is Nat the Cold War? People don’t see a soldier when they look at her, because she really isn’t, just like the cold war was never really a “war”. Nat is the spy on the run, the power never fully unleashed, the constant sense of fear that there is no backing down, no running– there are no vets of the cold war, but there are always the living casualties.

nailed it

@fireyhotsupertalia