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It’s been two years since the opening of Dean’s bakery. He has a regular client base, a few local awards hanging on his wall, and a level of contentment he never thought he’d see in his life. He’s immensely grateful for all of the opportunities that have been afforded to him.
But something nags at him as he stares down at his flour-coated hands rolling fresh dough. In fact, he doesn’t notice how absorbed he is in the thought until Cas walks through the door and it strikes him that he’s finished preparing the pastries for the next day, placed them on their designated overnight racks, and washed his hands clean without even realizing his evening tasks are complete. He’d been on autopilot.
“I know that look. What’s on your mind, honeypie?” Cas asks, drawing Dean into his arms after a quick peck on the lips. He’d taken to calling him that after their honey apple pie had won first place in the county fair.
Dean leans in and rests an ear on Cas’s shoulder, his nose tucked into the curve of his neck. He sighs softly, feeling some of the weight of his mind siphoned away by the hands around his waist. Reluctant to leave the embrace, he pulls his head back to face his boyfriend.
“So, you know how my pie recipe was my mom’s? Well, she also used to make the BEST chocolate chip cookies. But she didn’t write that recipe down, and no matter what I try, I can’t recreate it. I’ve tried using different kinds of sugar and vanilla. I’ve tried adjusting the temperature and the cook times. I’ve tried adding a little bit less flour and a little more butter—”
“Dean,” Cas interrupts, “your cookies are fantastic.”
All previous traces of moping disappear. With a devilish twinkle in his eye, Dean runs his hands along Cas’s spine—relishing the resultant shiver—and squeezes the flesh right above his waistline. “Are you just saying that so I’ll shut up and take you upstairs?”
Cas attempts a scowl, but it’s clear that there’s no power behind it. “Of course not. I’m saying that because it’s true...” Turning mischievous, he bites his lower lip and tugs Dean in by the hips. When the move elicits a groan of pleasure, it’s Cas’s turn to smirk. “...and I want you to take me upstairs.”
Two days later, Dean flips the bakery sign to Sorry, We’re Closed and watches through the window as large snowflakes bathe every outdoor surface in clouds of ice. He takes a seat in one of the booths and waits for Cas and Jack to show up, trying not to worry about them driving in the oncoming stormy weather. The wind howls like a banshee, tumbling furiously between tree limbs and around cars, over rooftops and through gutters, bullying the snow into flurries.
Finally, the puttering sound of Cas’s truck reaches Dean before he can make out the dim headlights diffused by snowfall. Cas runs from the driver’s side to the passenger door and hurries to extract the kindergartner from his seat, ushering him toward the shopfront. Dean smiles brightly at them as they fight their way inside, angling in to kiss Cas on his cold pink nose and shutting the door behind them. Poor Jack is so bundled up in his puffy white coat that he resembles a tiny marshmallow, and moves about as well as one.
“Keepin’ toasty there, Stay Puft?” Dean teases as he helps Jack with his outer layers.
Jack, bless his heart, tilts his head and squints in confusion—a spitting image of Cas that warms Dean into his soul. Shrugging out of his jacket sleeves, Jack turns his face toward his uncle. “What’s a staypuff?” he asks, the S sounds whistling a bit through the gaps where the tooth fairy has already claimed some baby teeth.
“Oh, that’s the bad guy from…” Cas snaps his fingers a few times, trying to recall. “Ghostbusters!” He looks pleased as punch for remembering yet another pop culture reference and Dean can’t help but grin at the enthusiasm. To be fair, it’s been about a year since they watched it together, so he’s granted the small victory.
Cas takes Jack’s winter wear from Dean’s hands and hangs it beside his own on the coat rack by the entry.
“C’mon, you two. Let’s get you warmed up,” Dean says as he leads the way toward the kitchen where he’s prepared mugs of cocoa powder and turned on the electric kettle. Ever since his first not-date with Cas, hot cocoa had become a tradition on chilly movie nights and tonight is no exception. Dean hopes they don’t lose power. The meteorologist had forecast quite the blizzard ahead of them, which can already be heard picking up steam beyond the shuttered kitchen windows.
He fills a thermos for Jack (who has a tendency to make a mess when he gets excited) and two mugs with steamed milk. “It’s still hot. Don’t drink it yet. Just hold it,” Dean warns after stirring in the cocoa packet and attaching the top securely to Jack’s drink.
The boy dances from one foot to the other impatiently until he’s able to take the container into his grabby hands.
Cas raises an eyebrow at his nephew’s eagerness. “Jack, what do you say…”
“Thank you!” he practically shouts as he rockets away toward the staircase so he can get dibs on movie selection, even though Dean and Cas always let him pick.
Hands now warmed from the kettle, Dean brushes the pads of his thumbs over the frown of fond exasperation at the corners of Cas’s mouth. “Careful, babe. You might get stuck that way.”
With his chin cradled, Cas lifts his hands to overlap Dean’s fingers and presses into the touch, closing those gorgeous blue eyes that remind Dean of a cloudless summer sky. Unable to resist the opportunity, Dean pulls his lover’s face forward and plants a soft kiss onto even softer lips.
The frown slants upward as Cas smiles. “Would you still do this if I were stuck that way?”
Dean bumps his nose against Cas’s with a playful laugh. “I would kiss your grumpy face every day for the rest of our lives if you’d let me.” Realizing how much that sounds like a proposal, Dean’s face goes as pink as Cas’s nose had been when he’d entered the shop.
Gracefully, Cas lets it slide with a simple, “That would make me very happy,” and another quick peck on the lips before breaking away from Dean to grab their mugs.
When they reach the top of the stairs, Jack is sitting smack in the middle of the couch with his legs criss-crossed, holding the remote in both hands and thumbing the rocker switch to shift between two options on the screen as if he can’t make up his mind. Sure enough, he can be heard mumbling to himself, “What to choose… What to choose…” while he alternately displays the title cards for Up and Frozen.
Dean plops down on Jack’s left and accepts his mug from Cas’s outstretched hand, their fingers brushing with a tender look shared as Dean relaxes against the couch. He kicks one ankle atop the opposite knee and takes a tentative sip. “Hey, bud. Need some help deciding?” Jack nods. “How about Frozen? The weather’s gearin’ up to be fit for an ice queen.”
“You sure you don’t want to watch Up, Dean? I know you’re particularly fond of the intro.” Cas sits on the far side of the couch and sets his cocoa on the side table, lip twitching with restrained amusement as Dean shoots him a glare above Jack’s head. Way to crucify a guy for having feelings he’d never fess up to.
“Hey! I forgot to take my allergy pill that day, remember? And Nougat was all up in my face.” So what if he’d basically used the cat as a Kleenex during Ellie’s death scene? Cas just snorts, taking the defensiveness as confirmation, and Dean gives meaning to the term ‘throw pillow’ by tossing one at his boyfriend’s head.
Jack glances out the window at the blustering darkness. It’s impossible to see more than a few feet past the quartered panes. “Will Nougat be okay?”
Dean sobers. Jack is probably worried that their pet is stuck out in the storm. He ruffles the kid’s hair. “Don’t worry, Jack Attack. Gabe’s watchin’ him. He’ll keep him inside, right Cas?” Dean knows the answer, but figures Jack may need the reassurance from Cas’s nod of agreement as well.
Soon, the three of them settle in enough to start the movie. Jack eventually gets so into the show, hyped up on sugar, that he fidgets until he can’t stay on the couch any longer and flops belly-first onto the rug where he bends his legs at the knees and gently kicks the carpet to expend his endless reserve of childhood energy. Dean uses the emptier couch to his advantage and drags Cas closer, resting against the cushions as he trails his fingers down the cotton sleeves wrapped around Cas’s biceps. Cas just smiles and snuggles in with a gratified hum when Dean tugs a blanket over them both.
By the time the credits roll, Jack has passed out on the floor, cuddled up with a plushie he’d brought. Dean removes his fingers from where they’ve been carding through Cas’s dark tangles and sits up to turn off the television. Cas kisses his cheek and stretches before bending—inadvertently showing off the finer points of his runner’s body, much to Dean’s appreciation—to gather Jack into his arms, stuffed animal and all.
Following right behind them, Dean reaches out to help Cas open the door to the guest room and pull back the covers to lay Jack on the mattress. This room is even colder than the living room, so Dean opens a drawer and retrieves an extra blanket. He watches Cas kiss Jack’s temple, then tucks the quilt around the boy and brushes a lock of blonde hair away from his eyes. “Night, Jack.”
They close the door with a quiet click and pad down the hall to Dean’s room.
“Man, it’s freezing,” Dean gripes. He digs through his dresser for warm pajamas. It’s simply too cold for anything other than extra layers, a fact he laments all the more when he watches Cas step out of his jeans and into sweatpants of his own. Shivering, he crawls under the comforter and sheets, yanking everything over his head, and waits for Cas to join him in the burrow. After several seconds of silence, Dean calls out, “Are you a frozen stalactite out there?”
No response.
“...Cas?” Dean’s voice wavers, confused. The moment he gets his nose past the edge of the covers to peek at where Cas had just been standing, he’s pounced on from the other side of the bed. He yelps, thankfully not loud enough to wake Jack down the hall, as he’s pinned by powerful limbs and tickled mercilessly.
Thrashing as much as possible beneath the blankets (which is to say, not much at all) does nothing to slow the assault from Cas, who’s stronger than he looks. “Cas—haha—you son of a—ha—stooop it—hahaha—you’re gonna wake Ja—ack,” Dean laughs around the words as his body spasms out of his control. Only once he’s crying and red in the face does Cas relent.
“Stalagmite.”
Dean wheezes as he recovers. “...What?”
“Stalactites form on cave ceilings. If I were stuck to the floor, I would’ve been a stalagmite.”
“Oh, my god.” Dean makes a show of rolling his eyes and smacking the back of his head against the pillow, now askew from all his flailing. “Come here, you nerd.”
Cas takes the name calling as an endearment and slides in beside Dean, triumphant. “You love me.”
“You know.”
“Was that a reverse Han Solo?” Cas had gotten much better at catching Dean’s Star Wars references. They’d rewatched the original trilogy a handful of times already. “Guess that makes me the princess.”
“You are pretty bossy,” Dean agrees.
“Nerf herder.” Cas launches an arm at Dean’s ribs for more tickling at the dig, but Dean catches his wrist mid-flight and holds it.
“Don’t get excited,” Dean quotes back, pulling the hand to his lips and feathering kisses onto each individual knuckle. As if he weren’t doing the very things he knows cause excitement.
Adjusting the cant of his body, Cas slides his other arm around Dean’s neck and palms at the space where the short brown hairs start, guiding him forward like a flower to the sun. Their mouths drink each other in, a prophylactic against the oppressive harshness of winter.
Whether minutes or hours later, Dean is awoken by a small hand patting his face and the sound of sniffling. He and Cas had fallen asleep face-to-face in a jumble of limbs and body-heated fabric, but at some point, they had shifted so that Dean was on his stomach, head turned toward the door.
A whispered voice from the nearby darkness asks, “Can I sleep in your bed? I’m scared.”
At first, Dean’s sleep-addled brain transports him back in time to a motel room on the other side of the country, to a night where his baby brother had been spooked by the sounds of police breaking into an adjacent room, probably in a drug bust. “Sure, Sammy,” he slurs, drunk on dreams.
“Deaaaannn, it’s Jack, silly.”
“Oh, right,” he mutters, smacking his lips together to get his mouth working, if not his mind. It’s too late—early?—to form coherent thoughts, such as how he should’ve trimmed the tree outside the guest room so that it doesn’t scratch at the window with its bare branches and scare a sleeping child. But something he knows more instinctually, on a subconscious level, is that he loves this kid as much as he loves his uncle and never wants Jack to feel afraid. “Yeah, sure. Get up here.”
Only love could drive Dean to lift the comforter, letting in the frigid air of the bedroom. Only love could convince Dean to allow bony knees to knock the breath out of him as Jack clambers across his torso and nestles in the center of the bed, narrowly avoiding elbowing him in the crotch. Dean has never been happier to have a king-sized mattress.
Something unintelligible grumbles from Cas’s mouth as he rolls over, draping an arm around his two bed companions. Dean reaches over and completes the circuit, creating a cuddle bubble for Jack to feel safe, and the three of them quickly drift back into a peaceful slumber.
When Dean wakes again, he is alone in the big bed, sprawled out flat like a cartoon character hit with an ACME anvil. The other side of the mattress is cold and empty. Frowning at the time on his phone, he realizes that Cas probably had to drive Jack to school and resigns himself to a lonely morning of tidying the house, tackling some chores, and (first and foremost) coffee.
He debates how much longer he can reasonably linger in bed when an angry stomach rumble makes up his mind for him. Gathering a blanket around his shoulders like a cape, he traipses out of his room to start the coffee machine.
At the foot of the stairs, he notices he’s not alone after all.
Piled up against the shop windows and door is a mountain of snow, effectively blocking anyone from leaving any time soon. There’s no way school hasn’t been cancelled.
From the kitchen, Dean hears the sounds of some sort of food being prepared and his mouth waters in anticipation of breakfast. But as he rounds the corner, he’s both surprised and enamored by what he sees.
On a stepstool, Jack uses a wooden spoon as long as his arm to mix lumps of dough. The flour dusting his once navy blue shirt resembles an impressionist painting of smoke over deep water.
Ingredients and baking tools are strewn all across the counter tops. A carton of eggs. A bowl with a whisk. A baking sheet. A roll of wax paper. Measuring spoons.
“Is this good?” Jack asks Cas, who has his back turned while he pre-heats one of the ovens.
Neither of them recognize that Dean is standing there, stealthy as a quilted Batman.
With a flutter of his robe, coffee cup clutched in one hand and bedhead unperturbed, Cas moves to inspect the job Jack has done so far. “Yep. Nice work. What do we need to do next?”
Jack starts to sound out the next step in the recipe displayed on Cas’s phone. He struggles to pronounce the word ‘chocolate,’ so Cas helps him read the rest.
Leaning against the doorframe, Dean smiles, remembering when he used to do the same for Sam. It’s funny how the kid who couldn’t even say ‘yellow’ correctly grew up to be a lit geek with a law degree. Makes him wonder what great things Jack will do with his life.
As Jack dumps the measured scoop of semi-sweet morsels into the batter, Cas happens to raise his eyes to find Dean soaking up their endearing family bonding moment.
“Mornin’, sunshine. Need any help?”
It’s like the clouds part when those eyes smile. Cas abandons his flowery yellow mug and reaches for the carafe. “The only thing I need you to do…”
Black ambrosia fills Dean’s favorite mug—a birthday present from Cas last year, covered in Zepp song quotes. Dean winks at Jack who sneaks a handful of chocolate into his mouth while Cas is distracted.
“...is drink this and wait for us in the living room. You spend enough time slaving over these ovens,” Cas replies, handing over the lifegiving beverage and shooing Dean from the kitchen.
Pouting at being sent away, Dean relocates to the second-floor. He stretches out in the window seat with his caffeinated bribe, sipping in thoughtful consideration of the calm winter scenery. Directly ahead of the shop, across the road, is nothing but woodlands. Since the bakery is located at the very edge of downtown, Dean is relatively secluded from the other businesses. He’ll be the last one dug out by the snow plows, but he also gets to enjoy a view of nature on three of four sides. The minor inconvenience is a worthy trade-off for peace.
As the last dregs of his coffee are emptied onto his tongue, music starts to play from the wireless speaker on the side table. Cas must have connected to it with his phone. What Dean assumes are flutes and xylophones play a plucky holiday melody to which Cas’s voice comes warbling up the stairs in accompaniment.
“Oh, the weather outside is frightful. But the food is so delightful. Since we’ve no place to go…” Cas reaches the top of the stairs and casts a pointed look back at Jack, hot on his heels.
“Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!” Jack chimes in.
They walk into the room, Cas carrying a plate of fresh and gooey chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk, and Jack carrying the other two glasses. Another stanza of the song goes by while Cas sets the goodies on the coffee table, but in the next moment, he’s marching over to take Dean by the hand, lifting him from his seat and into a slow-dancing pose.
Moving their bodies to the song at Cas’s lead, Dean giggles as Cas sings with giddy vibrato into his ear, “When we finally kiss goodnight, how I’ll hate going out in the storm. But if you really hold me tight, all the way home I’ll be warm.”
Cas is out of tune and hamming it up in front of Jack, but Dean grins like a lunatic while being pranced around the table by his dance partner. He watches the joy radiating from this man in his arms and knows he’ll never find another love like this as long as he lives. And that he’s never letting go.
At the end of the song, Dean grabs Cas by the collar of his robe and kisses him quickly but deeply. Not so much as to be obscene, but long enough for Jack to make a comment about cooties and hold up two cookies to shield his eyes. Laughing, Dean breaks away.
“These look great, Jack. Thank you for this breakfast of champions.”
When Dean tastes his first bite, the warm dough and melty chocolate coalescing in his mouth, he’s hit with the sudden nostalgia of sitting in a too-tall wooden dining chair, barely reaching the kitchen table, and being served the BEST chocolate chip cookies he’s ever had. These cookies the three of them are enjoying now are so damn close to what he remembers as a kid that he could cry. And it probably came from some stupid internet recipe that Cas searched up in all of half a minute. But it doesn’t matter.
The cookies back then—just like the cookies in his hands now—didn’t taste amazing because of some epic combination of ingredients. There was no sorcery involved in the baking process. It was the tenderness inside the oven mitts. The smile behind the cookie sheet. The smooch on the cheek after the milk was poured and set beside the tray.
It was the love that made the memories.