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

8+9. Catching cold and gifting early

[AO3]

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Castiel’s neighborhood, if a loose sprawl of coastal mansions can even be called that, is of course too highbrow to have teenagers cruising around with plows strapped to their shitty trucks, looking for quick cash.

“There’s a company,” Castiel says, looking confused when Dean asks how the long driveway gets cleared. “Everyone uses them. I’ll see if they’re available tomorrow.”

They are, at a rate that makes Dean laugh before asking, “Wait, are you serious?” He asks that question a few more times, then hangs up, does some searching online and in the yellow pages, and ends up calling them back and taking the smugly noted late reservation fee with gritted teeth.

The company comes in the early blue dawn, while the snow is still falling, and scrapes half the gravel off the road surface and into the rounded drifts the sickle of the plow makes. They leave the courtyard untouched and Dean fuming from the top step when he comes to check on the job.

“This explains everything about the condition of that drive, you know,” he says to Castiel, who’s fully dressed and hovering anxiously behind him. Dean, who prides himself on being a realist, is still in his bathrobe.

“We’ll take the bus,” Castiel says, pushing past him. “There’s a 6:45 and a 7:30, you can still make the second and not be late.”

“I know you can telework, I’ve seen you do it,” Dean says in counterpoint, but Castiel is already stepping through the crumbly snow blown up against the door in the night and wading out into the courtyard.  Fresh flakes scour across the dune-like surface and he hunches, pulling his lapels closed with one hand.

“Where’s your scarf? Where’s my scarf?” Dean wants to know, hands cupped around his mouth, but then the wind reaches him in a rush of powder and he hurriedly closes the door.

He checks in with the crew while he gets dressed— Benny, whose kids got a half-day, and Victor, cozily ensconced in New Milton. Charlie isn’t answering her cell, but the away message on her work address is a frowny face surrounded by unicode snowflakes; if she had enough time to put that up, she’s probably okay. He adds a headset to his flannel-lined jeans, heavy boots, and the bulky black parka the Queens crew had gotten him when he first moved to Massachusetts. It still looks new because it’s not exactly stylish, but it has a hood and it’s rated to negative twenty five degrees. He heads outside to begin clearing the front walk and a car-wide path from the garage to the gate.

A little after seven thirty and a dismal three feet from the garage door, Dean sees a figure approaching from the road and stops to catch his breath, slumped over his brand-new shovel. The orange Home Depot sticker is still on the handle.

The snow is tapering off a bit as the sun gets higher, but they’ve still got about two feet at the lowest points and Castiel’s pants are caked to the thigh. When he gets close enough, Dean can see he has snowflakes on his eyelashes and a hangdog expression.

“There’s no bus service to the Rockport line until further notice,” he relays grudgingly. “Which the local news neglected to mention.”

“Pretty sure they make an app for that,” Dean says, and smiles widely in the face of Castiel’s obvious disgust.

“Do we have another shovel?” he asks, looking at Dean’s minimal progress.

Dean shakes his head. “You’ll just have to stay inside and be warm. Tragedy!”

Castiel starts to turn away, then leans over the shovel to give Dean a chilly kiss. “I’ll be in the office,” he says, keeping his face close and a hand on Dean’s sleeve. “Will you be out there long?”

“Probably,” Dean admits, leaning in for another. His mouth is warm but the tip of his nose is like ice, and it makes Dean laugh softly and kiss that too.

“Stop that,” Castiel says, frowning a little when Dean draws back to see his face. “We could switch in a few minutes?”

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Dean says. “Get inside, you’re freezing.”

“I’m fine,” Castiel insists, but sneaks one more kiss under Dean’s hood and then pulls away to walk up the narrow strip of cleared flagstone Dean’s made for him.  He disappears into the house, and Dean turns back to the snow with a sigh.

The shoveling wasn’t exactly thrilling before Dean knew Cas was inside waiting for him, but it gets significantly less fun after that. It isn’t warm enough for the snow to be wet and heavy, but there’s still a lot of it and it still has weight. The frigid air numbs his face and hands and his back aches fiercely before he’s halfway across the courtyard. He listens to music until Benny calls, and they have a long discussion on how deployment on the Pierson holiday jewelry campaign is working. They try to patch Victor in and drop the call two times before it sticks.

“Sure is nice to be a condo owner,” Victor says when Dean has to stop and pant into the headset for a while, straightening up with a groan for sore muscles. “How much does that pile of shingles cost to heat?”

“Fuck you,” Dean says, heartfelt, and both of them laugh meanly.

The plow service has made a ridge of hard-packed snow up to Dean’s waist across the mouth of the gate, and the edges have solidified into ice since that morning. He has to break it into chunks and toss it off to the side, one heavy piece at a time, until Benny says, “Not that I’m not enjoying the heavy breathin’, Dean, but it’s lunchtime and I gotta get les cabris out the door.”

“Yeah, and the Chew’s about to start,” Victor adds. “Today’s special guest is— Sandra Lee? Oh, come on.”

“Have fun with that,” Dean grunts, a little grumpy from the snow in his boots and resulting wet socks. He hangs up while Victor is still emoting at his television and Benny’s girls are protesting school. He doesn’t want to have to come back out here until tomorrow, so he makes himself trudge all the way down the drive to the road, clearing up the more egregious mistakes the snow removal company made on the way, before coming to the road and breaking down the ridge the municipal plow left too.

His phone rings again on way back, and Dean has to pull a glove off to answer. “Hello?”

“Where are you?” Castiel asks. “I can’t see you from the house anymore.”

“Aw, were you watching?” Dean teases, resting the shovel on his shoulder. “Just finishing up out here.” And not a moment too soon— he’s exhausted and a little lightheaded, like no breakfast and a couple hours of hard labor is bad or something. “Listen, do we have any canned soup?”

His loving husband promises him the finest of Campbell’s tomato and more, though the grilled cheese takes a bit longer after the remnants of Castiel’s first attempt set off the smoke alarm. Dean is pulling his boots off in the mudroom when he hears it, and tracks a bunch of melting snow into the kitchen just in time to see Castiel submerge the smoking pan and all its contents in the sink.

“Go sit,” Castiel says firmly, never one to be deterred by small setbacks. Then he gets a better look at Dean and says, “Go change. ”

“I’m fine,” Dean says automatically, even though now that the parka’s off the house is still twenty degrees too cold to be comfortable and his legs seem to have been replaced by blocks of ice. “I’ll be fine,” he amends under Castiel’s withering stare.

“Your lips are blue,” Castiel retorts, and abandons the steaming sink to push Dean up the stairs.

This is how Dean gets a fantasy fulfilled he didn’t even know he had: Castiel making snide remarks about exactly what kind of telework Dean is capable of while he gently strips him and pushes him into the bathroom, installing him in the grand old tub Dean has never used. The porcelain is cold and Dean yelps a little as his back hits it, but Castiel turns the water hot enough to scald his toes and stays with him until it reaches his shoulders, monitoring the temperature with narrow-eyed diligence. The cuffs and front of his shirt go translucent where the water soaks in.

“Wash my hair?” Dean tries as he slowly uncurls from his pillbug position at the end of the tub, though he’s feeling less frisky and more sleepy as he warms up.

“Perhaps after you’ve eaten,” Castiel says, and brings him a tray of blazing hot soup and charred but edible sandwiches. The tray is tarnished, intricately molded silver, the dishcloth laid across it one of the Mickey Mouse ones Sam had sent him from Disneyland.

“You don’t have to stay,” Dean tells him as Castiel balances it across the foot of the tub, already grabbing for the spoon. “I can probably manage from here.”

“Yes, I do,” Castiel says. “Inias and Naomi are the only ones in the building downtown, and with no one else to bother they’ve been reviewing our future earnings projections. I’ve been running simulations for them all morning, and I refuse to run another if I can possibly avoid it.”

“Oh, yeah, talk accounting to me,” Dean says around half a gooey sandwich, and Castiel steals the other half in retaliation.

Friday morning, there’s a tall, wrapped box on the stoop with a velvet bow Dean recognizes from the attic draped across it. Castiel lets him walk right into it, and stays poker-faced as Dean shoots him questioning looks and slowly tears off the paper.

Inside is a monster snowblower, four feet wide with heated hand grips and an electric start. “Oh my God, it’s fucking gorgeous,” Dean says, petting its bright yellow side, and does not stop saying it until Castiel threatens to walk to the bus stop again if they don’t leave soon— Dean’s cue to turn and kiss him breathless.

Before he pulls the Impala out into the snow, Dean has the presence of mind to fish around under the seats and grab an unwrapped boxed set of hat, gloves and scarf. They aren’t particularly expensive but they are very warm and specific shade of blue, and Castiel pulls everything on with gratifying eagerness.

“The next step is elastic in your sleeves, Ralphie,” Dean says as he shifts gears.

“I don’t understand that reference,” Castiel says, face buried in the scarf up to his nose.