SPN – Dean/Castiel – PG, Shut Up ‘verse, Christmas Fluff, Advent Ficlet Collection
16. Throwing / attending a Christmas party
[AO3]
The many different tables dragged into Conference Room 1950 and its adjacent offices are labeled according to expected contribution size and the availability of outlets: hot food, cold food, hot drinks, cold drinks, baked goods, and Winchester.
Dean grabs the printed page with his name on it and crumples it into a little ball, looking over his shoulder to make sure Castiel made it all the way from the elevators with half his body weight in pastry hooked on his wrists. “Looks like we offload here,” he says, and dumps his own bags on the festive red tablecloth. Someone’s put cottony fake snow in artful clumps at the far corners, and Dean pushes it off to make way for the first of many platters.
Like she was just waiting for them, Charlie is immediately at his side and pawing through the selection, cracking a tupperware container to sneak a cookie. “You’re late!” she informs them with her mouth full of crumbs, powdered sugar streaking her chin and green sweater. “
Mmm
my God, that’s good. The party started, like, fifteen minutes ago. It’s almost time for speeches.”
“Sounds like we’re right on time then,” Dean says, turning to help Castiel heft the rest of the containers and a cupcake carrier onto the table. “We’ll go get the rest from the car and skip ‘em.”
“There’s more?”
Dean shrugs. “Couple cakes, some other stuff. We were up late.”
Charlie’s eyes go round. “There’s
cake?”
“I made one of them,” Castiel says proudly. “It tastes very good.” Tastes very good, and looks like a pile of road apples. Dean lets him make the lie of omission, because he
is
getting better at it. The first few attempts of last night were… memorable.
“Can’t wait to try it!” Charlie says gleefully.
Which is when Bela Talbot comes around the corner and exclaims, “Dean Winchester?”
Dean is momentarily frozen in surprise, but feels almost like he should have expected this— old man Talbot’s getting on these days and doesn’t travel out of London that often, and his granddaughter has become something of a figurehead for him abroad. A Christmas party would be the perfect opportunity for her to press the flesh in the Boston offices. Yeah, he should have expected it. That doesn’t make it welcome.
“What a pleasant surprise,” she purrs, slinking up to join their group. She’s scintillating and jaw-droppingly gorgeous in a satiny dress and diamonds, slim heels so sharp they could kill a man. “How
are
you, darling?”
“Oh, fine. Always wonderful to see you,” Dean lies, because he’s not an idiot and the woman has her grandfather wrapped around her little finger. He accepts the light hug and very continental air kisses she presses on him with the same superficial warmth, and when they part they smile knowingly at each other. They were always too alike to be friends, though they’d managed other things.
She settles back with a slim glass of champagne held artfully between three fingers, her head tilted to the side and her eyes gleaming. Castiel has gone stiff and silent beside Dean, which means someone probably
told
him and Dean needs to find an ass to kick.
“You’re looking well,” she says, scanning him from head to heel in a fairly blatant assessment. “As always. Also, I’ve heard congratulations are in order,” and her eyes stray to Dean’s left. “I apologize for offering them so late, of course. I’d heard it was a… whirlwind courtship?”
Dean has a ready retort but suddenly Castiel is stepping up, hand coming to rest on Dean’s back. He has a faint, cool smile of his own to offer Bela, the kind of distant expression Dean’s never seen on his face before.
“It’s good to make your acquaintance,” he says, offering a hand. “Castiel Milton.”
“And yours,” Bela says sweetly. “Bela Talbot. I believe I know your sister as well.”
If that was meant to provoke a reaction from Castiel, he shows no sign of noticing. “As she’s in media relations, I find that quite probable,” he says. “Anna works closely with our department directors.”
Dean leans into Castiel’s hand and the push of it firms up, holding him steady as a rock. Dean starts smile for real, then, and Castiel glances sideways at him with a slightly raised eyebrow.
“You know, Bela, I am so sorry,” Dean says, not even looking at her. Castiel urges him minutely closer at the same time Dean angles his body into him, so that they move together, away from her. “We still need to grab some things from the car. We’ll see you after the speeches?”
“Oh, absolutely,” she coos, eyes narrowed a fraction. “We have so much to catch up on.
Do
come find me once you’ve had the chance for a few drinks?”
And on that painfully obvious jab, she turns and glides away.
“What a— gendered slur,” Charlie says, staring after her. “I mean, she smells incredible, but that is deeply uncool.”
“
Okay
, we’re just going to ignore that happened and— car?” Dean asks Castiel, a little desperately.
“Car,” Castiel agrees, and keeps his hand on Dean’s back the whole way down.
They miss most of the speeches, but come up when Naomi and some of the other department heads are waiting for Bela to finish talking about how her grandfather had founded the offices in the seventies and how proud he is it’s grown so much, and so on. Dean and Castiel finish drizzling reheated caramel over the croquembouche just in time for her to wrap it up with a very British, “Happy Christmas!” and then people move en mass into the conference room where the food is, and it turns out to be pretty easy to avoid her for the next few hours.
The party gets going in earnest. Castiel’s accounting crew forcibly remove him from Dean’s side to socialize with them for a while, and he drags all of them with him back to Dean for the white elephant gift exchange. Dean has a secret weapon this year: a portrait of John Quincy Adams’ face made entirely out of jelly beans. It’s six feet tall and almost as wide; he’d gotten it from kids in a girls and boys’ home they’d done pro-bono work for in Braintree. Castiel had seen it, because he’d needed help and two rolls of wrapping paper to cover it, and he settles into a back corner next to Dean with a conspiratorial smile.
Benny has made himself MC and is passing out numbers to be drawn randomly from a hat— “Remember, you can pick a new present to unwrap or steal someone else’s. The choice and the karmic consequences are up to you!”— and the ticket Dean gets is number thirty-six, Castiel nineteen. While they wait for their turns, Missouri picks a lumpy package that turns out to be a ceramic sad clown statue, Inias receives the gift of Yanni (the entire discography and poster), and Ambriel is the proud recipient of My Little Pony oven mitts.
The crowd around the Christmas tree is all but hiccuping with laughter by the time they get to the teens, and then number fourteen says, “I want to see what’s in the big flat one,” and Jelly Belly Adams gets stolen three times in the next five numbers.
“New rule, only two steals per item,” Benny yells above the noise, and gets shouted down by the media relations reps, Anna included, clutching the portrait like it’s a Rembrandt. “Fine! Keep it! But after this it’s only two! Number nineteen, you’re out of luck.”
There’s a funky umbrella unwrapped early by one of the Production nerds Dean’s kind of hoping Castiel will go for. Umbrellas are one of the things he’s always forgetting, and something that eye-searingly orange will be tough to leave places. Dean tries to communicate this through gesture and elaborate use of eyebrows, but Castiel seems to think he’s being directed towards the motley pack of unopened presents under the twee little company tree. He ponders the stack, then grabs a small garment box from the middle of the pile. Next to Dean, Balthazar chokes on his mulled wine.
“What did you do,” Dean says flatly out of the corner of his mouth, watching as Castiel turns the box over, looking for a seam to rip from.
“
Nothing,
thank you. I found a unique gift, exactly as specified in the invitation,” Balthazar says, dabbing at the wine on his tie. “I’d only thought we all might be a bit more intoxicated by the time someone found it.”
Castiel finishes pulling the striped paper off and slides a finger under the tape on the lid. Dean asks, “And why would that matter?”
“Because,” Balthazar starts, and then Castiel is opening the box. And crushing it closed.
Benny, who’d been looking over his shoulder, says,
“Pouyaille,
I thought we told all you to keep it wholesome, here.
”
“Balthazar!” Castiel says accusingly, ears already a bright red and the rest of his face succumbing quickly.
“What, why me?” Balthazar cries, and then everyone wants to know what’s in the box and Castiel won’t show them and finally Balthazar shouts, “It’s just underwear, you numpty, don’t be such a godawful prude!” and the partygoers draw their own conclusions.
By this time, Dean’s gone and gotten more eggnog and has a glass to pass to Castiel when he finally returns to their out-of-the-way corner by the coats. His face is still various shades of burgundy, and he’s carrying the garment box like it might be diseased.
“You gonna show me?” Dean asks under his breath, smiling sideways at him, and Castiel shakes his head violently.
“I do hope they’re the crotchless type,” Bela says, appearing like a sleekly evil genie from behind a stack of outerwear. She has another glass in her hand, this one filled with what looks like rye whiskey, neat, and she comes to stand particularly close to Dean.
It doesn’t phase him. There’s a slightly glassy look in her eye that Dean recognizes from the tumultuous few months they’d spent dating, on and off, and he knows better than to engage. “Hey, better pay attention. They’re going through numbers pretty quickly.”
“Ah, yes. My number is twenty-two,” she says, holding it up. “I only hope I’ll be as lucky as dear Castiel.”
When neither of them responds, she purses her lips in mock disappointment.
“Well, if you’re going to be like
that,”
she says, and spins on one deadly heel. Within a few steps she’s finished the whiskey, picked up another, and has joined a group of people who immediately make room for her, charming smile as perfectly in place as her makeup.
Seeing that, seeing her again… it makes Dean think of this same time last year, and the years before. He remembers spending the whole of December going from client party to client party and how easy it was to stay out at night, the drinking, the people. He’d consistently cratered the week after New Year’s— and if he’s honest, a few other times a year, because it wasn’t just a holiday problem— but even that was it’s own kind of tradition, a mild slap on the wrist from the universe that never lasted long enough to be a teaching moment.
He misses it a little, and he doesn’t. He’s been asking Benny and Victor to take more of the client-hosted stuff this year, but he’s been Talbot Boston’s creative rep for too long to give it up in one go. Like the soiree he’d attended last night— pretty standard fare: a hotel lobby and an open bar that had graciously refilled Dean’s seltzer for the two hours he’d spent there, wondering why what used to be simple was now a such a chore.
“Mr. Winchester, not dancing on the tables yet?” one of oldtimers had asked, the joke a thin veneer over judgement. Dean has a reputation and he knows it, knows what they expected. He’d still felt taken aback, being confronted so directly by the incongruity of who he was and who he’s trying to be.
Strangely, though, once his first reaction had worn off… it didn’t matter. He’d laughed, made a quip about settling down in his old age, and gone home barely ten minutes later to destroy his kitchen by teaching his husband how to make merengue. It was an ultimately fruitless but very enjoyable rest of his evening, and he did it without regret or a single second thought. It feels a little bit miraculous; he doesn’t care about any of it, least of all what Bela Talbot thinks. Bela only knows what he used to be. Bela doesn’t have Cas.
Dean doesn’t realize he’s been staring at her until Castiel touches his sleeve, and then he looks away as quickly as possible, meeting Castiel’s worried eyes.
“Is something the matter?” he asks quietly. He glances at Bela, effervescent and laughing, and looks back at Dean.
Shit. “I was just, you know. Thinking about how lucky I am to be here.”
Castiel’s eyes track back to Bela. “Yes, you are.”
“I mean—” Dean touches Castiel’s wrist, slides his fingers down to tangle with his. He doesn’t want there to be any misunderstanding here. “I’m not… I was just thinking how glad I am I’m not doing that anymore. I wasn’t—”
“Dean, I know,” Castiel says with emphasis, and then drops his eyes to the eggnog in Dean’s hand. “I know.”
And Dean understands what
he’s
trying to say. “This could be spiked,” Dean says weakly, because he feels like someone should.
“It’s not,” Castiel says with perfect surety, and Dean feels— a lot of things, right then. But mostly he feels weirdly soft and shy, like a candyfloss high school crush has just kissed him, like that time in the parking lot as the storm rolled in, when Sam said,
Maybe you’re married to someone who wants to be married to you!
“How about that,” Dean murmurs, looking down at their joined hands.
“Yes,” Castiel says, using them to steer Dean closer to him. He raises his chin a fraction, drops his eyes to Dean’s mouth—
— and a hideously bright flash goes off in their peripheral vision.
Both of them jump, and Dean turns to face Becky Rosen, office paparazza, slowly lowering a chunky, professional-grade camera from her face.
“Becky,” Dean says in what he thinks is a reasonable tone.
Becky tries a laugh, but starts inching backwards. “Hi Dean! It’s, um, it’s just for the holiday newsletter! You know. I thought it’d be great to get a picture of office celebrities in—”
“Celebrities?” Castiel asks with a kind of dull horror.
“Give me the camera, Becky,” Dean says, holding out a hand.
Becky clutches it protectively to her chest. “It’s just a photo!”
“
Give me the camera,”
Dean says, much less reasonably, and when she runs and tries to hide in the ladies room Charlie is the one who goes in and grabs her. Becky makes strident pleas in the name of the free press and anti-censorship while Dean goes through the camera and deletes every single candid with them in it (there are a distressing number of them), until he comes to one where Balthazar has just taken an unattractively large bite of smoked salmon.
“That’s one you should use,” Dean says, handing the camera back to her. “The
only
one. And if I see that thing again, whether it’s pointed at me or not, I’m confiscating it until spring.”
“Fascists!” Becky says tearfully, and scuttles off.
Dean, Charlie, and Castiel all take a moment to roll their eyes, and then rejoin the party only after loading up with uneven hunks of Castiel’s semi-failed cake.
1. Road apples
2. White elephant gift exchange
3. I am informed by exactly one (1) source that pouyaille = good grief in Cajun creole
4. Okay, so, I realize that an actual ad agency of this caliber MOST LIKELY would have a fancy party A) outside of their own damn building and B) where their employees didn’t have to bring their own food like goddamn; however C) my only real job has been with the government and everything is potluck with the government because TAXPAYERS, and therefore D) I can not be held responsible for my inaccuracies
kototyph 
