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“You sure you don’t wanna come, Dean?”
Sam lingers over the war room table, glancing up at Dean expectantly while adjusting his shirtsleeves. He's dressed all sharp, crisp white button-down pawned from their monkey suits contrasting under a smart black waistcoat that Dean has no earthly idea where he found or why he owns. The whole getup is tastefully formal and surprisingly not as unnatural on Sam's redwood form as one might expect. He even bothered to comb his hair.
“Nah, man, you know that stuff’s not my scene,” Dean replies, kicking his boots up onto the table, still clumped with drying mud and melting snow slush, to emphasize just how much of an uncouth heathen he is.
He hadn’t really thought it was Sam’s scene, either, but he supposes Sam probably did crap like this all the time in college to keep himself entertained and appease his soon-to-be fancy lawyer friends. He always figured there would be more keg stands and fewer champagne towers, though; maybe Sam has only recently become a stuffy socialite.
See, Sam's going to a New Year’s Eve party. Some catered-but-not-too-expensive, boxed-wine-and-champagne-coolers, unbutton-the-top-two-buttons, thin-and-indiscernible-line-between-casual-and-formal type of party. Eileen invited him—Dean, being the smart one, understands she asked him as a date sort of situation. Sam, of course, insists that it’s just a big bunch of friends getting together as a group, and of course she wants you to come, Dean, there’s a tray of weird little hors d'oeuvres with your name on it, Dean, come celebrate a holiday out and about like a normal person for once in your life, Dean, it’ll be fun. Dean, being the smart one, learned a long time ago that if his little brother’s idea of “fun” and his own were a Venn diagram, the circles would be on separate continents.
Sam frowns at him, something between irritated and worried, and repeats a sentiment he’s been parroting variations of for the last hour and a half. “I just don’t want you to have to ring in the New Year all by yourself. Maybe I'll cancel. Eileen will understand.”
Dean rolls his eyes with the force of his whole body, tipping his chair in the process. He'd do it harder if he weren’t risking the very real possibility of falling on his ass. “Seriously, Sammy, I'm fine. It’s not even that big of a holiday. I'll be doing the same thing I do every year, with or without you: getting shitfaced with Ryan Seacrest and passing out on the couch at one in the morning. I don't need a babysitter.”
“Dean—“ Sam tries again to protest, but Dean interrupts with finality.
“Go to your wine-o club. Kiss a girl. Live a little.” Dean shoos him with a wave of his already half-empty beer bottle.
Sam hedges and sighs, but stuffs his wallet in his pocket like he might actually head out the door sometime this century. “If you’re sure.”
“I'm sure,” Dean insists, and tosses him Baby’s keys to make sure Sam gets the message. He aims for his head just in case. “And get laid, would you? It’ll do wonders toward your New Year’s resolution to be less of a tightass.”
This time, Sam’s the one to roll his eyes. “Jerk. I’ll try to be back before you’re drooling on the couch.”
“I won't wait up, bitch,” Dean says with a wicked grin. Sam slams the door extra hard on purpose, and Dean chuckles to himself.
Silence descends on the bunker then, and it’s comfortable if a little melancholy. It's not so much that Dean minds spending the barely-a-holiday alone, per se—it’s more that he sees this empty air rolling in on the horizon, and can easily and reasonably picture many more nights identical to this one in the near future. But it’s not really a problem—he’ll take a million of these lonely nights over their current shitfest any day of the week. And he’s happy for Sam. Sam deserves this; Eileen is a great girl, and if a stuffy party with bad music and cheap booze is his idea of a good time, more power to him. At least one of them has a life.
That’s really the thing, though—it's seeming lately like everyone except Dean has a life. Mary is off in some exclusive hideout with the Brits, no doubt suffering through the most uppity office party humankind has ever witnessed; but at least she’s out with people and making that choice for herself because it’s what she wants. It was rough at first, but she and Dean are doing their best with each other, and far be it for Dean to stand in her way—he’s done a lot worse for a lot less. If Dean were selfish, maybe he would’ve held on to his anger longer than he had. As is evident by the pin-drop quiet blanketing his home, he never really learned how to be selfish.
And Cas— Well. He’s tracking down the spawn of Satan while Dean sits on his ass and sips a lukewarm beer, so he doesn’t really have a leg to stand on there. It’s not like he’d get it, anyway—Dean is sure if he tried to explain the concept of Dick Clark to him, he’d just bitch about the Roman calendar or something and leave again. At least Dean can pretend to himself that Cas might’ve wanted to be here if it wasn’t for the task at hand and save himself the rejection. Plus, this way, he can drink way more and worry way less—he tries not to get too hammered around Cas these days. Loose lips sink ships, and all that.
2017 is already looking like it’s going to be a banner one for Dean’s social life.
With a heaving sigh, he knocks back the rest of his beer in a quick few gulps and kicks off from the table. He wills himself to leave his shitty mood in the war room as he shuffles into the library, magnetically drawn to the old gramophone setup by the doorway. After they’d well and truly moved in, Dean had splurged for a more modern setup for his room—he certainly wouldn’t stand for his precious Zeppelins being thrashed by a needle from the Stone Age—but he still uses this one from time to time for the old shellacs he found in the archives. It just seems right.
After a few minutes of deliberation, something crackly and endearingly tinny begins to hum out through the bunker, silence relievingly lifted. Dean cranks it to unreasonable volumes—as is his right, as current sole occupant of the space—and wanders off to get his entertainment for the evening in order.
Dean sets the TV up in the kitchen.
It's one of those ancient wooden box TVs with the giant antenna that he hasn’t seen outside of a motel room in thirty years—he picked it up at a thrift store planted right on the edge of city limits. One of the dials is a little hinky, gets stuck every once in a while, but it was analog enough that Sam could work a spell to pick up fifty channels from inside their super secret clubhouse. More than they ever got as kids on the road. Dean’s still getting used to the concept.
It’s just like the one Cas watched while Lucifer possessed him; that is, if Dean is to believe anything Crowley says. Crowley also said that Cas liked watching it in the kitchen. Cas never mentioned anything about that time—Dean tries to not let it get to him, and instead focuses on the fact that if Cas could be anywhere in the universe, he would choose the bunker’s kitchen. That's pretty goddamn great, if you ask Dean.
Dean once told Cas that the heart of every home is the kitchen. It was casual, just in passing, but one of those things Dean meant more seriously than he’d ever show in emphasis. It's something his mom said when he was very small, and he always knew she was right. After that day, whenever Cas was unoccupied—whenever Cas was home—Dean would find him sitting in the kitchen. Just sitting. Dean tries not to let this get to him, either, in a different way.
As it would happen, Dean also spends more time in the kitchen than in any other room of the bunker. It’s one of those “chicken or egg” things. He’ll never admit to thinking about it long enough to draw any conclusions.
With a little fiddling, the TV blares to life, mixing well with the big band jazz floating around the bunker halls. It’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, per tradition, the future-moving lives of New York City broadcast in various states of delay for all the schmucks of the rest of the world, forced to experience the fanfare of it all vicariously through camera lenses. Dean turns it up, loud enough to hear over the music, and if that isn’t a war to be raged tonight. He twists open another beer and settles in, hovering around the countertops with the intent to maybe cook something, if he can convince himself it’s worth it for one. Ryan Seacrest blathers away next to some talk-show-pretty blonde girl, undoubtedly his co-host for the evening, and Dean doesn’t bother to stop himself from staring. At either of them. A party for one has its perks.
This is one of those things, maybe, that he’d poke at Sam about if it were the other way around—“Kiss a girl. Live a little.” Dean could go out and find some fun, some trouble to match; Lebanon doesn’t typically carry that brand of talk-show-pretty, but there are certainly enough box blondes within city limits to keep him occupied for a single holiday evening. Ring in the year with a girl on his arm and a foaming draft in his hand to fill out the fun quota. Maybe let her off the hook a little early and change jackets, change bars, see if he can’t still bat his eyelashes all the way to a bathroom stall and fill out the trouble quota, too. Not that his knees can realistically handle that kind of trouble anymore, but with nobody to answer to but Count Basie and his own brain, he gets to pretend for a minute that all he could’ve hoped for at twenty-two—just to have fun and trouble for one night in equal measure and not die trying or live to regret it—is even what he wants these days. He’s only fooling himself, but that’s between him and the empty kitchen.
He huffs out a breath of a laugh and shakes his head, fingers tapping out jazz fills along the neck of his bottle—he’s a hypocrite and he knows it. “Live a little.” He’s died, well and truly, more than once. Over and again, he’s been given back that life and a surplus of chances to live it, and all he does is push his little brother out the door after it instead. He talks a big game but that’s all it is: just talk. Sam knows—everyone knows—he’s all just talk. Everyone is well aware that he’s never going to be the one kissing a girl and living a little.
Or, well. Yeah.
He’s done plenty of kissing girls. Some even while he was living a little. If he were to really— That’s not— There’s someone he’d rather—
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
“Kiss a boy, live a little,” he mumbles to himself, out loud, and quickly washes back the words with a swig of beer—just to try it, just to prove to himself he won’t get struck by lightning simply for saying it. House all to himself, and this is his big rebellion: openly staring at Seacrest and admitting out loud to his occasional preference for…trouble.
Christ. He does have issues, doesn’t he?
This is why he doesn’t like when the bunker is empty—being alone with his thoughts doesn’t tend to bode well for him or his favorite hobby of ignoring things until they either go away or become unavoidable problems.
Thankfully, the world is, while maybe not smiling down upon him, at least offering some semblance of a pitiful grimace—his phone rings just as he settles on a recipe interesting enough to keep him busy, Jimi Hendrix ringtone blaring barely loudly enough to be heard over the cacophony of noise Dean’s concocted for himself. Glancing at the name on the screen, his lips quirk up and he answers.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hi, sweetheart,” Mary says through the receiver, not shouting but definitely raising her voice—wherever she is, there’s a steady stream of music and loud chattering, only mildly muffled by whatever door or corner she’s presumably put between herself and the festivities. “I’m just calling to say happy New Year’s Eve. Wish I could be with you boys tonight.”
Dean grins. “Brits that bad, huh? I tried to warn you. Tea and crumpets make for terrible party food.”
She snorts, though Dean’s not totally sure if it’s at what he said or whatever’s going on around her—he can definitely hear someone shouting over the crowd in what sounds to be an earsplitting Cockney accent.
“If only. Everything smells like gin and cigars.” If eye-rolls are audible, Dean is sure he hears one. “Ketch is a sleepy drunk, if you can believe that.”
“That does surprise me,” he muses absently, flipping on the old electric stove. “I’ll have to use that against him someday.”
In the background, someone starts singing a wildly off-key rendition of Auld Lang Syne. Mary’s nearly shouting to be heard over it when she asks, “How are the festivities going over there? Sam dancing on the table yet?”
Dean chews his lip around a smile, trying not to seem too pitiful with a forced light tone. “Nah, he’s out at some party that probably rivals yours for lameness.”
“Oh, I’ll have to check in with him, too—if he’s sober enough to hold a conversation,” she jokes easily, seemingly putting no weight on Dean’s confession. That is, of course, until she adds, “So just you and Cas tonight, then? How much does he know about New Year’s traditions?”
Dean freezes in place, beer nearly slipping from his hand in an aborted move toward his mouth. Her words are innocent enough—if you discard their meaning entirely, that is—but there’s a leading lilt to them that he recognizes as probing; maybe a little teasing, even, though there’s nothing sour in it, at least not that he can hear, so his knee-jerk flood of panic flags, not altogether, but significantly; as though she’s merely asking after the latest casual gossip, and not reading Dean and his brain and his very private, very messy feelings like the front page fucking news. They may not have known Mary for very long, but what she lacks in lived experience, she makes up for in hunter instincts and what could only be called mother’s intuition. It’s damn annoying sometimes, but hell if it doesn’t make Dean feel a little bit better about the whole thing, like she really is trying, like she really does care enough to take notice. Even if it is the shit he’d rather nobody took notice of. The fact she feels comfortable enough to rib him about it more than makes up for the embarrassment of being subjected to her top-shelf observational skills.
Or maybe Dean’s just not as subtle as he thinks he is. Whatever.
When he realizes he’s been quiet for a second too long, he clears his throat—totally inconspicuously, he might add—and pushes on as normal. “Nah, well, he’s, uh, still on the hunt for Rosemary’s Baby. And—” another cough, because it’s cold and dry and not awkward at all—“um, probably zilch.”
“Wait, so you’re all by yourself?” she asks, voice tinged with concern, totally skipping over Dean’s incredibly smooth attempt at a response.
He lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and it comes out as a ruffled sigh, grateful for the topic change but already apprehensive about the pity he’s been valiantly attempting to avoid all night. “I promise I won’t open the door for strangers, Mom.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” she scolds warmly, followed by a thinly-veiled sad sigh. “I’m sorry you’re alone and that your family are a bunch of jackasses.”
“You’re fine, Mom. It’s all really fine, I promise. Me and the TV are having a grand old time.” He raises his beer to the old wooden beast for emphasis and only feels a little stupid about it being pointless while Mary can’t see.
There’s a pause on the other end, where Mary is undoubtedly unsure how to respond with anything other than sympathy they both know Dean won’t respond well to—he certainly is his mother’s son—but thankfully, a loud crash followed by spirited yelling crackles through the receiver, the welcome distraction freeing them both from the burden of trying to find a painless way out of this conversation. She sighs again, more fondly exasperated this time. “I should probably get back. I love you. Text me at midnight!”
“I will,” Dean replies. “Love you, too.”
The line goes dead, and for all the noise flooding the bunker halls, Dean feels the quiet sink into his skull like molasses. He sighs again, ignores the sharp pang of longing under his ribs with practiced finality, and turns the TV up. Him and pixelated Seacrest against the world—what a way to start the year.
He keeps busy for a while, humming around the kitchen pleasantly buzzed and getting hungry as the meal for one he’s preparing for himself starts to take shape—the room smells pretty damn good, if he does say so himself, and combined with the alcohol in his system, the loud music and the louder TV battling for auditory dominance, Dean’s senses are blissfully stuffed to the gills. It’s not something he usually lets himself do, even during downtime these last few years in the safety of the bunker—with someone always home, injured or unhappy or otherwise in need of an attentive eye, Dean’s developed a keen sense of spatial placement, and his whole life has added up to a pretty steel-solid awareness of his surroundings. But he’s admittedly been easing up a little lately, with their fortress so locked down, their recent host of adversaries not really holding much of a candle to God Himself; and his family is good, and hopefully mostly happy, and above all, currently occupied elsewhere; and if he’s gonna be left solely to his own devices on the last day of one of the craziest goddamn years of their lives, he’s gonna relax a little. Sue him.
So yeah, he’s relaxed, and doesn’t even have to be embarrassed about knowing enough of the words to sing along under his breath to the stupid pop act they’ve got performing on Dick Clark. He can’t really hear much of anything outside the kitchen save for the battling jazz bleeding from the library, and if his hips are moving to that while his lips keep up with the TV and his hands hover around the pan on the stove, it’s a lot to keep track of and it’s fine because he can. It’s distracting but it’s easy, natural because it’s so all-consuming, and he doesn’t give his brain enough space to stop and think about any of it too hard and get guilty like he knows he will if he does. He knows himself well enough by now to ward off his own thoughts for a couple hours.
Which means he doesn’t hear it or see it coming—he feels it, before he even consciously registers it, he can feel it; starting on the surface, racing up his spine, across the back of his neck and prickling into his shoulders; it settles into his skin almost immediately, seeping into his muscles, his bones, goosebumps breaking out across his forearms, leaving the fine hairs standing up on end; his stomach tenses and he leans into his toes, and only now does his mind catch up with his physical reactions, and he can feel it—eyes. Being watched. Back to the doorway, his sense of space tells him there’s someone there even when his ears don’t, and his whole body lights up like errant sparks in dry brush. He freezes only for a millisecond, not enough to be noticed, never enough to be taken by surprise, and then he spins on the balls of his feet and his gun is in his hand before he even thinks to reach for it, dead aim at the heart of—
“I didn’t think you were still angry,” Cas says.
He’s the picture of casual innocence, but his slight lean on the doorframe and the poorly-masked amusement playing around his eyes betray the fact that he’s a snarky asshole who gets his jollies by startling the shit out of people.
“Jesus Christ, Cas,” Dean bites, deflating instantly and nearly dropping his gun in an effort to get it pointed anywhere else. “You could friggin’ warn a guy.”
“You seemed occupied,” Cas replies, eyebrows quirked and eyes still crunched at the corners like they usually are when he’s trying not to smile. Asshole.
Dean kind of forgets to respond for a minute, taking in Cas and his slightly ruffled hair and his trenchcoat speckled with melting snow—he looks the same as he ever has, always looks the same except better, he keeps looking better every time Dean sees him and it’s really starting to piss him off—until he remembers Cas is staring right back at him, still with that stupid goddamn ghost of a smile on his stupid goddamn lips. The adrenaline crashes into Dean like a freight train on steroids, which is really the only reason Dean flushes red as a fucking tomato. That and maybe the embarrassment of being caught acting like an idiot while he thought he was alone. Nothing else.
He kicks back into gear, clears his throat and clatters the gun down on the counter. “What are you doing here, man? I thought you were in Memphis.”
“I was, this morning,” Cas says, pushing off from the doorframe and into the room. He squints a little at the TV, Blonde Lady staring googly-eyed at Seacrest while he blathers on about nothing, and Dean fights the itch in his hands to turn it off. “But I thought I’d circle back—I wanted to be with everyone for the holiday. This is customary, yes?”
He’s looking at Dean, now, still squinting and Dean is honestly getting worse instead of better every single day at telling whether Cas is fucking with him. But he looks sincere enough, and it’s not like they’ve ever really done holidays before, so Dean trips over a smart, “Yeah, yeah, I mean— Yeah, I guess it is, uh, customary, to, um, be with— Yeah.”
Dean digs his fingernails into the palm of his hand, willing something to ground him from the floaty feeling in his sternum, because what a genius answer that was. Really smooth, Winchester, really excellent. This, right here? This is why he doesn’t drink more than one beer around Cas anymore, and also why he doesn’t love being surprised out of his skin by the guy he’s ass over teacups for. He wasn’t mentally prepared for this.
It doesn’t help that the guy he’s ass over teacups for drove seven hundred miles just to be with him for the holiday. Because it’s fucking customary. He definitely wasn’t mentally prepared for that.
But for all his blubbering, Cas seems satisfied with his answer and returns his attention to the TV, now employing the full-on head tilt and studying the aerial shots of drunk New Yorkers with a seriousness that makes Dean smile like an idiot. He turns back to the stove in an effort to hide it, hoping to whatever is still out there and at least moderately reliable that he sobers quick and keeps his head, because otherwise it’s gonna be a long damn night.
“What are you watching?” Cas asks after a minute, seemingly failing to determine what he’s been looking at.
“That,” Dean says, finally flipping off the heat and wheeling around with a new sense of false control, “is the number one time-honored New Year’s Eve tradition in America, Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. It’s a TV special they put on every year and broadcast to, like, the whole country, I think.”
“And this is how you celebrate the end of the calendar year?” Cas asks as he sits, glancing hesitantly between Dean and the screen, currently taken up by a couple of guys with shit haircuts in leopard-print fur coats.
“It’s— I know it’s not our usual speed,” Dean tries, “but, I mean, I don’t know. We’ve just always done it. New Year’s is, like, the only holiday that doesn’t really need any prep—no decorating, no presents, no pressure to deliver. And they seriously play this thing all over the country, so Sam and I could always turn it on, no matter where we were, no matter how shitty the motel was. It’s the only thing we could ever consistently celebrate, even when we weren’t celebrating—you just turn it on and forget about it, and bam, it’s a holiday. I don’t know. I know it’s dumb, y’know, I just—“
“It’s not,” Cas cuts him off then, and Dean looks up from plating his food to see Cas with that same almost-smile, hidden mostly in his eyes, directed right at him in full force. “It’s tradition.”
“That doesn’t make it not dumb,” Dean mutters, setting a plate in front of Cas and sitting across from him with his own. He turns the TV down a little now that they’re both situated right next to
it, but he doesn’t turn it off—against his better judgment, maybe, but something in Cas’s face stops him. Always does.
“There’s nothing dumb about tradition, Dean,” he says so earnestly, so sincerely that Dean needs to look back down at his plate. “Humans have been forming and reforming traditions since the dawn of creation. Many of the oldest New Year’s traditions are still honored today.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Well, take this Times Square celebration, for instance,” Cas begins, resting his chin on his knuckles lightly and watching the screen, flicking his eyes to Dean as he talks in a way that definitely isn’t distracting at all. “The specific tradition of the ball drop for the new year began in the early nineteen hundreds, but the notion of a ball dropping to signal the passage of time was first introduced in eighteen thirty-three, to aid captains of passing ships in setting their navigational equipment. I think it’s sort of poetic—the first time-ball was used to navigate vast oceans, and now, the biggest and most famous is used to navigate the year. So to speak.”
He shrugs like he hasn’t just rocked Dean’s whole world in a couple of sentences, and pushes some of the food on his plate around with his fork—they both know he doesn’t eat, but Dean always serves him equal portions anyway, and Cas always hovers around it like he’s constantly just this side of trying it if for no other reason than to appease Dean.
Everything Cas does is monumental, and he doesn’t even seem to notice. It pisses Dean off almost more than his ever-improving looks do—that’s what this feeling is. Pissed off. Nothing else.
Cas keeps on—“Or, you know, the Chinese New Year. The intricacies have morphed over time, but the general idea is the same as it was during the Shang Dynasty. The Chinese were also the first culture to ring in the New Year with fireworks, after the invention of gunpowder in the tenth century, and, of course, these days the practice has become commonplace all over the world. Resolutions, too—I remember the ancient Babylonians were, perhaps, the first people ever to ritualize the concept for the turn of the new year, some four thousand-odd years ago; they were still pagan at that time, so the incentive was, if they didn’t keep their promises of paying off debts and returning borrowed tools, they’d fall out of favor with the gods. And you and I both know how motivating that sentiment can be.”
Dean snorts loud and off-guard, covering his mouth with his hand to hide the wide grin getting wider. It’s so odd, even now—eating dinner across from a goddamn capital-A Angel, who, yeah, has been around long enough to say things like “I remember” before “the ancient Babylonians,” and they both, man and angel alike, can actually joke from real experience about being out of favor with pagan gods, and it’s funny because it’s true. It’s odd, Dean knows it’s odd, but it’s not for the concepts themselves—living the life he has, it’s almost more difficult to imagine a world where divine beings don’t plague their every day—it’s the familiarity in this, the laughing at it, the camaraderie. The angel smiling down at his plate of food he doesn’t need to eat but accepts anyway, smiling because his stupid joke made Dean laugh instead of roll his eyes, Dean kicking his shin under the table. He could blow the whole place to the ground if he felt like it, probably, but he doesn’t—he feels like sitting at Dean’s kitchen table and nerding out about ancient history and making him laugh, just because he wants to. That’s the oddity of it all.
Cas sobers and looks up at Dean, then, a strange look in his eye—a twinkle of mischief, almost, if Cas is capable of such a thing. (He pretends not to be; Dean knows he is.) There’s something else, too, and Dean can’t quite place it, but it makes that floaty feeling in his sternum turn solid and fragment like a bullet casing up into his chest, down into his stomach, twirling around and sending warmth wherever it goes. Dean swallows hard as Cas reaches out and plucks his beer bottle right from his hand, looking at it between his long, slender fingers as if it’s some ancient artifact of the old world.
“Those traditions aren’t really the most common focuses of the holiday anymore, though,” he says slowly, thoughtfully, “but I suppose it’s difficult to call general celebratory fanfare a tradition, let alone pin down any sort of origin. Imbibing copious amounts of alcohol has only been truly socially codified as a necessary part of the holiday mostly in the last few centuries; however, under the reign of Hatshepsut, the ancient Egyptians held what was dubbed a ‘festival of drunkenness’ during the first month of the year.”
Unsure where Cas is going with this, Dean just chuckles along and pitches in. “Sounds like my kind of party.”
Cas merely hums an affirmative and continues, “It wasn’t all that unlike a modern-day bout of holiday observance: using relatively simple, archaic premises as excuses to act impulsively in excess. In honor of mankind’s salvation by Ra against Sekhmet, a war goddess who had planned to kill all of humanity and instead drank herself into unconsciousness, the people would follow suit and drink lots of beer, listen to lots of music, and have lots of sex.”
If Dean had been drinking, he would’ve choked—as it stands, Cas is the one raising the bottle to his lips, sipping Dean’s beer, throat working around a swallow, and he’s— He’s staring at Dean, burning two holes through Dean’s face with his eyes, those fucking eyes, and Dean distantly realizes the food on his fork has fallen into his lap. His brain is all white noise and Cas, Cas, Cas, who licks a stray drop from his bottom lip and sets the bottle back in front of Dean, and he’s just staring. He drank from Dean’s bottle—unnecessarily, because the fucker doesn’t get thirsty, doesn’t even like the taste of beer—and then he licked his stupid goddamn lips, the same lips that formed the word sex and Dean’s never seen them make that shape before, never heard that word said like that in Cas’s stupid goddamn rock-salt voice, like it means something, like it means anything at all to him, and now he’s staring. And Dean is staring back, because Dean is an idiot and an easy fucking target.
There’s amusement in his face, Dean realizes as his vision stops tunneling, that twinkle still sparkling and dancing over his features—he’s fucking with him, of course he is, getting Dean to sputter like he does anytime Cas is too blunt. Because he thinks it’s funny, because he’s learned how to use his aloof nature to his own social advantage, and that’s great, it’s friggin’ awesome, or it would be if he understood. If he had one single clue where the line is supposed to be, what’s funny-blunt and what’s awkward-blunt and what’s you-just-don’t-say-shit-like-that-to-your-guy-friends-especially-one-who-is-in-love-with-you-blunt.
Dean coughs out a laugh far too late, reclaims his beer and knocks the whole thing back in a three big gulps—screw not getting too drunk around Cas. This shit is above his paygrade.
If Dean wasn’t totally done noticing Cas’s facial expressions, he might take note of the fact that the grin Cas is supposed to have split isn’t present, and he’s still got that weird, heavy goddamn intense twinkle thing happening, darker after Dean swallowed down that beer, and it might make Dean a little antsy, maybe even to the point where he says the first shit that comes to mind just to keep the conversation moving. Good thing he’s acting absolutely casual and not doing any of that.
“Is that where the New Year’s kiss thing comes from?” Dean asks his plate. He valiantly considers shoving his whole hand in his mouth.
Cas is quiet for a minute, enough that Dean almost considers looking up again, but the tense bubble of air around them seems to pop just then and Cas’s voice is a little softer when he answers, “That one is difficult to pinpoint, exactly. It would be more useful to ask, who gave the first kiss? And the answer is probably Adam, but nobody really knows because it didn’t really matter at the time—I certainly wasn’t around then, or at least wasn’t paying attention. We were taught to ignore that sort of thing for its triviality, for its intrinsic humanity. Historians, too, have trouble discerning where the tradition started—it’s like trying to figure out who drank the first drop of water, who felt the first relief of breeze over their skin on a hot day. Some things can’t be quantified—educated guesses made, yes, perhaps some of them very accurately, and there’s probably someone out there who knows; but with something so inherent as a kiss of joy, the trading of love and luck to battle out fear of changing seasons and failing crops, time and time endless on the horizon and wholly unfathomable by those people of old; and all they have is each other, and they don’t know for how long, so they kiss to mark the setting of the sun, to celebrate living through another harsh winter, to say ‘thank you for staying’ and ‘thank you for staying again,’ to merely note the passage of their days together…”
He trails off, looking at the TV but eyes bouncing around it, seeing through it—Dean’s mouth is dry and his beer is empty and his heart is pinging and rattling like a jar full of change. The jazz trickling in from the library has stopped.
After a minute, Cas sucks in a breath, coming up for air from wherever he was. “The short answer is probably, in a sense. If it wasn’t the Egyptians, then it was the Romans or the Scots, but it doesn’t really matter all that much—drinking on cheerful holidays breeds joy, and joy loves company. Sharing celebratory kisses between allies, friends, and lovers alike is typical during times of overwhelming emotion in many cultures—it’s really just a human thing to do. The turning of it from natural to traditional was bound to happen eventually. People need to ritualize love because it scares them, and love lacking guarantee scares them more; fear begets superstition, and superstition begets tradition. Thus, the New Year’s midnight kiss for luck was born. Probably. You’re out of beer.”
He stands swiftly and sweeps over to the fridge, and Dean feels rooted to the spot until Cas breaks through his reverie by clinking another bottle firmly down on the table, peeling the cap off between his forefinger and thumb in one of those nonchalant displays of strength that makes Dean’s legs all wobbly.
Drink—he needs a drink. Drinking will help.
He downs half the beer in one go, and when he finally feels his tongue loosen enough to form words, he pushes out a stilted, “Thanks, Cas.”
Expecting one of his signature “For what?”s, Dean is taken aback—only mildly, thanks, beer—when he simply says, “You’re welcome, Dean,” and starts picking up the empty bottles.
Oh, yeah. For the beer.
Yeah. That, too.
Dean puts the conversation out of his mind; puts on a new record and turns it up even louder than before, hopefully to drown out how loud his fucking brain is being now. Cas does the dishes without being asked, which isn’t exactly new but certainly isn’t regular—what with him never being around, not that Dean is even feeling all that bitter about it right now, not now that he is here, especially tonight of all nights—and it’s doing absolutely zero good toward Dean’s dire situation of being reminded repeatedly how head-spinningly in love he is with the guy. Like, it’s really getting serious—not that it wasn’t already, but they don’t get a lot of time just the two of them these days, which is partially bad circumstance and partially because Dean’s been hell-bent on keeping at least ten feet and two people between them at all times. He doesn’t trust himself, lately, to not screw things up. Sam is finally mostly okay for maybe the first time in his entire life, and Mary is still just barely finding her feet, and there’s trouble rolling in like thick fog bearing titles of Lucifer and Lucifer Jr., and Dean is desperately trying to hold on to the handful of good he has right now; the very last thing he needs is to misstep with his best friend in the world and make things weird. He kind of hates himself a little bit for not being able to enjoy what they have now, especially since they get to enjoy anything so sparsely—maybe he does know how to be selfish, after all.
Because Cas doesn’t get it. He’s a smart guy, and a great friend, and nice enough to everyone, and obviously he would let Dean off easy—but he doesn’t get it, the way that Dean would never be the same after that rejection; the way that their relationship would irreversibly change for the worse, and it wouldn’t even really be his fault, because he doesn’t get it. He can’t—he isn’t wired to get it. It’s not in his purview, and that’s not fair to him; to do that to him and not be able to explain why, because Cas needs friends, too, and he doesn’t deserve to lose them through no fault of his own. Dean’s gone and fallen in love with probably the one guy in all of existence that is completely and totally unable to reciprocate, no matter what happens or what Dean does—and of course it’s that big, scary, eat-you-for-breakfast kind of love that doesn’t go away and doesn’t let up with time, because hell if he hasn’t tried, hasn’t wished it would just dissipate like all his other little flings and whims have in the past; but it stays, and it stays, and it stays, and he fights with Cas and with his own heart and then fights with Cas some more, tries to drive that wedge in deeper, put some distance between them, and he hates it all, he hates himself for all of it, and that goddamn love, it stays. And for some godforsaken reason, Cas stays, too. And, fuck, it’s not helping, but—
But hell if Dean doesn’t want him to keep on staying. Maybe he does know how to be selfish.
Cas is fiddling with the TV antenna when Dean comes back—midnight looms, and Dean is determined to see the night through without sinking into his own messy feelings and getting stuck like a quicksand trap. And he really doesn’t want to have to drink himself through it, either, because he admittedly wants to be sober enough to remember the nice night he and Cas have had, even if his own bullshit is tinting it. Whatever. He’s lucky just to not be by himself and he knows it, let alone getting to ring in the year with his best friend in the world—if he happens to also be in love with him, well, that’s just extra, then. It’s just gotta be extra.
“Where’s Sam?” Cas asks, for the first time all night, as Dean steps down into the kitchen.
Dean’s eyebrows twitch. “At a party with Eileen. Probably drunk off his ass by now.”
Cas nods, but his forehead creases in confusion. “And Mary?”
“…Office party with the Brits,” Dean replies, drawing it out hesitantly. “Cas, you— Did you not notice they weren’t here?”
Cas looks sheepish, and if Dean thinks he sees a tinge of pink in his cheeks, he’s sure he’s imagining it. “Well, I— This bunker is very large, and I— I don’t know, I figured—”
“You didn’t even think to wonder where they were until now,” Dean interrupts with a startled laugh. “Jeez, I must make for some pretty damn entertaining company. How you’d manage that?”
His flush deepens—definitely not Dean’s imagination. “You can be…distracting.”
Whatever retort Dean might’ve been cooking up dies in his throat, and he turns back to the TV because the color of Cas’s cheeks is making Dean a little lightheaded. He aims for teasing, but lands somewhere around breathless when he replies, “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Quietly, so quietly Dean almost doesn’t hear it despite being less than a foot off his right shoulder, Cas mutters, “It is one.”
They watch Seacrest interview some artist neither of them recognize in a sort of awkward silence for a few minutes, until Dean gets restless and breaks through it with the first thing he can think to ask: “So, Cas, what’s your resolution gonna be?”
Cas looks mildly surprised at the choice of question. “I…don’t think I have one.”
“Oh, well, Cas, you gotta have one. It’s tradition,” he emphasizes, and cheers internally when that small smile returns to Cas’s face. “Come on. Just make somethin’ up.”
“What’s the point if it’s not truthful?” Cas asks, not unkindly but openly curious. “I thought even the current tradition of resolutions involved some amount of intent to accomplish the set goal.”
Dean twists the top off another beer—not to drink, really, just to give his hands something to hold onto. “Well, yeah, that’s what everyone says, and some of ‘em probably think they mean it, but nobody ever holds out long enough for it to matter.”
“Nobody, ever? That statistic sounds implausibly low.” His eyebrows quirk. “Also, uncharacteristically cynical.”
“Nobody I’ve ever met; I certainly never keep mine,” Dean says with a shrug. “And you should know by now that the holidays make me a cynical bastard, Cas.”
In his periphery, Dean sees Cas’s head dip down to his feet, another of those little smiles crinkling at the side of his face. When he doesn’t say anything, Dean points an assessing look his way and suspiciously asks, “What?”
To his shoes, Cas answers, “They don’t. You actually become much more pleasant around the autumn and winter holidays. You just…say they make you cynical, because it’s easier for you, I think, than trying to dissect the conflicting host of emotions you carry. You have a habit of that.”
He’s looking at Dean, now, suddenly, and Dean is looking right back, against his better judgement, maybe, and all the air is snatched from his lungs and once again his throat closes around whatever words might’ve been making their way up. His eyes aren’t so blue in this light, Dean notices, the yellow of the underground kitchen drops washing them out to a foggy, nautical grayish. It’s calmer than his usual sunlight-fueled electric, softer in ways he’s become more accustomed to in recent years. He looks older. What a thing that is.
“You didn’t answer the question,” Dean mutters, still staring. He can’t really find it in himself to stop.
Cas doesn’t waver except for those eyes, which dart around Dean’s face, down to the neck of his shirt and some spot on his right shoulder before back again, seemingly finding his answer lying between collarbone and throat. “I’d like to stay.”
These words sink sharp into Dean’s chest, cutting through the frozen moment with searing warmth, a red-hot poker setting camp between his lungs. “You mean, like…”
“I’d like to be around more, as much as possible,” he elaborates, needing nothing more than Dean’s handful of dumb syllables to go off of. “Home, with you. And Sam. I’ve been out a lot, on the road. I’d… I’d like to be here, whenever I’m able.”
It’s this that breaks Dean’s hold on his eyes, blinking at the TV and swallowing hard. A knee-jerk guilt snakes up into his chest—“Cas, you- you’ve been busy, man. We all have. And I know all the crap with Heaven is important to you. You don’t need to feel bad, and you definitely don’t need to placate me. You should be where you wanna be.”
“I want to be here,” Cas says instantly, emphatic and earnest; a verbal shaking of Dean’s shoulders, gaze pressing into his profile. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be. You must know that. Ever since the fall, I’ve been trying to cling to a place I haven’t really belonged in, not for a long time; I feel, perhaps, that I’ve never truly landed—it’s not a pleasant sensation, aimlessness. And I know I’ve been distracting myself with these missions, anything I can do to be useful, to be worthy. And I won’t stop working at it, at everything that needs doing, but I… I want to come home, Dean. Or at least just be here, as much as you’ll allow.”
“‘Allow’?” Dean sputters, so startled he forgets to keep looking away and gapes at Cas’s face, and it’s open and apprehensive and just this side of challenging, like he thinks he’s taking a chance. Like he could even kind of think Dean would ever not want him around, all the goddamn time, saving the world be damned. “Jesus, Cas. Of course you can stay. You don’t have to ask—you belong here, man. Hell, I feel like I’m always trying to keep you here against your will. But if you want—”
“I do.” His marine-layer eyes are big and round, glimmering with a hope so honest it makes Dean want to shut himself away, punish himself for ever making him feel like he isn’t welcome, isn’t wanted just as much as he’s needed.
“Then do,” Dean says, and it’s like repentance, like confession on his knees at the altar; punching out a prayer and heaving up his whole heart with it, tender and dripping between his hands. “We— I want you here. Anytime. All the time.”
And it’s not everything, damn late and nowhere near enough—but it’s something. A start. Amends, rectification, whatever—Cas’s standards are evidently low enough to have a pleased grin splitting his face at the meager offering, and it’s bright like staring into the sun so Dean sniffs and turns back to what is proving to be quite the escape: Ryan Seacrest saves the day, again. Or something. It’s hard to articulate much when he can still feel Cas’s twisty little smile pointed his way, glowing a million watts in his periphery, warming his cheeks.
“Hell of a resolution,” Dean grumbles, with feigned annoyance he doesn’t feel and can’t quite commit to.
Cas huffs out a soft little breath that only someone who knows him might call a laugh, and finally redirects his overwhelming attention to the TV. It’s true, though—hell of a resolution from someone who puts so much weight on the tradition of the thing, probably moreso than any human alive. To stay. To want to stay. To want Dean to know he wants to stay, in a place he calls his home. Their home. Resolving to come home.
“One I plan on keeping,” Cas says.
Everything Cas does is monumental. It pisses Dean off because it makes him fall that much more in love with the guy. That’s what this feeling is. Love, unmoored.
They don’t have long to wait, now, and they study the giddy, freezing pixelated crowd on the screen in front of them. They’re wrapped in a kind of familiar silence grown and practiced from years of companionable midnight hours on sleepy roads; warmth seeps into Dean’s arm from where it’s pressing up against Cas’s bicep, blooming and spreading, wishful dandelion fluff. It cuts to what will be the last commercial break of the year—they don’t move. Dean stares hard at the ad for some overly-complicated mop, entire mind honed on the single point of contact between them; Cas is probably actually enthralled by the damn thing. Must be, because he doesn’t speak, either, does nothing to fill the gap that anyone else would itch at—and it’s not like he’s caught on the touch of their arms, because he wouldn’t be. He doesn’t get it, not like Dean. He can’t.
Yeah.
The commercial ends, flickering back to red-cold faces and too-white teeth, and Dean can feel the quickly-passing time ticking down on him like a tense hail—he remembers his first New Year's Eve alone. Sam had flown the coop to California a handful of months prior, and Dean’s wound was still stinging but not quite as fresh, not quite as bloody; with Sam gone, John didn’t feel the need to put the whole holiday show on just for the two of them, screwed off to some hunt or some bar or some other something somewhere—Dean hadn’t cared. He’d found it really, really damn hard to care about pretty much anything, at the time. He accepted his newfound freedom—lonesome, solitary, fucking desolation—with plastic brazen apathy and had gotten wasted in some inner-city neon nightclub his dad would’ve rather spooned his own eyes out than step foot inside of, full of people too drunk to notice how he stuck out like a sore thumb covered in horseshit. Made out with a handsy brunette right through the turn of the year, too, rough and pretty in that square-ish sort of way and a little older, not too much but enough that he’d noticed. She’d even had these great blue eyes.
Funny how things change, how much and how little.
He’s gotten older, too. So many new and old years running through his veins now, supplanting themselves in little grays around his temples and peppering his stubble; in the crinkles at the corners of his eyes, mouth, forehead, frown lines lighter than they were supposed to be and laugh lines like little miracles; in the creak of his knee and the slow focus of his tired eyes; in the home he’s made. The family. The warmth and life now distal to the dark death of their day-to-day, prominent and sole-focused in a way it never used to be. The love—the love he feels and shows and is shown. It’s still not enough, but maybe it never will be. Maybe that’s the point of real, honest love: to never get your fill and never run out, to go on without end.
But what the hell does Dean know about love, anyway. Whatever.
(Maybe more than he believes. More than most. More than he’d ever know how to admit.)
I’d like to kiss him, Dean thinks, as he watches the last seconds on the last minute of the year disappear, apropos of nothing and everything at once. It’s a little thought, one of those ones he has here and there, while watching a movie together or teaching him how to use a washing machine or just thinking of him in the quiet of night, still and soft. Not like the ones that stab into his heart and twist—he gets those, too, nearly just as frequently—but sweet and easy to look at, wrap up, put away. Easy if twinging. It always has to hurt some, good that it does; that’s how Dean knows it’s really love.
And Dean thinks about kissing and he thinks about love, and how very little one truly needs the other to exist and to thrive; and he thinks about the year to come, laid out before them but not yet beaten on, a year that surely will bring all types of new pain and destruction, but somehow he just can’t seem to picture all that in this moment; and he thinks about what Cas said, about time endless and unfathomable, kisses the truest landmarks with which to count the days gone by, to say—Thank you for staying. Again and again. I don’t know why you do, but I hope you keep doing it.
He’d like to kiss Cas, but he won’t. This is his resolution.
So he settles for looking over at him, maybe to watch the way his eyes twinkle brighter than the fireworks show with that tiny, invisible smile that Dean has learned how to see only by watching for it so many times over—only to find him already staring right back. It robs Dean of all breath and all thought, the way Cas looks at him, mostly because it’s the same as it’s been for so long, now; charged like galvanic lightning but steady as the oldest mountains, holding fast, a tidal wave constantly yet to crash. Dean used to wonder if it meant something, followed by hoping it meant something, followed by resigned acceptance paired with that ever-present awe that it’s just him—that’s what he is, under all the pretenses of physical being. Unreal. Immeasurable. Holy.
He’s got these great blue eyes.
—if a clock strikes midnight when nobody is watching, has it really turned a new day? Have the last dregs of a year really been burnt out, with seeds of a fresh one already sprouting up from the ash and the cinders? Has the time truly passed, marching on with its rattly tin drum beat ever toward what lies infinitely beyond it? What is the counting of arbitrary numbers on a man-made clock for, if neither man nor beast feels anything of time—
Cas kisses him.
God, and it’s nothing at all, too. Dry and soft, his lips are chapped; Dean’s are probably just the same. Fuck, like he knows. Like he’s got any goddamn clue. It’s nothing at all, and it shatters everything, everything, everything is in tiny little pieces now and Dean has no fucking idea. It’s all upside-down and wrong only for how totally right it is, how stupid perfect it is and Dean just doesn’t even know anything anymore. It’s everything that has ever been or ever needed to be; it’s nothing at all, and then it’s gone.
Just as quickly as he leaned in—not even so much as stepping into Dean’s space, this one time when it would mean anything—he’s away again, not quite gone but certainly getting there. Fully the deer in Dean’s headlights, Cas’s eyes lock on the linoleum floor, and, much firmer than he looks, he mutters something incredibly terrible like: “It’s tradition.”
Right.
Yeah.
Dean has missed a step. Hell, he’s missed the entire flight, crumpled and bloody at the bottom—because of course. It’s tradition. It’s fucking customary. Cas doesn’t, doesn’t, completely and totally Does Not Get It. It’s that trading of luck between allies and friends, that breath of air without the ocean before it—fuck. Dean is so screwed. He’s ruined it, this thing with Cas he cares so deeply for, with the stupid goddamn middle school feelings he thought he could live with, thought he could carry around forever as a ten-ton weight in his chest and it would all just be fine and good as long as he didn’t do or say anything about anything. And here he is, doing and saying nothing, and yet still watching it all—Cas, Cas, Cas—retreat and crumble in front of him. Because he can’t just— He can’t just. He can’t only. He can’t have without wanting. Because he’s selfish.
But.
But it’s Cas. It’s Cas. Cas, who knows everything about anything that’s ever been, but doesn’t know Dean wants him around. Cas, who felt he had to ask to stay in his own home. Cas, who asked to stay because it’s what he wants. Cas, who knows what it’s like to want, too. And maybe he— God. Maybe there’s something to that.
Maybe.
Fuck, maybe. A maybe like that is hope bottled and wrapped in shiny cellophane—Dean isn’t strong enough to resist it. It’s terrifying like no monster or god he’s ever faced, and he wants it. He’s fallen down the entire staircase, rolling and tumbling down the cliffside, tailspinning out of control because he hates, hates, hates how selfish he is, how scared he is, how fucking in love he is and always will be; he hates himself for all of it, and still, he hopes. He wants and hates and hopes and loves, can’t ever stop any of it—he’s tried. Oh, how he’s tried. He’s getting pretty damn tired of trying to stop. Maybe—maybe—he should try for something else.
Cas is halfway out the door, hunched and dragging like it hurts him to be walking away, and it’s not really a sight Dean recognizes; it’s not anything close to the way people usually look when they leave him—and, shit, isn’t that something. Shit.
Everything Cas does is monumental. Everything.
“What happened to staying?”
It’s not what Dean means to say. He fully means to have an adult conversation with the guy, call for him to stop and sit him down and soothe the situation back into some vague semblance of normalcy, whatever that’s supposed to look like for the two of them. But it just— Sue him, alright? God forbid a guy goes into a little bit of shock after his best friend-slash-love of his entire miserable, screwed-up life decides to kiss him. He can’t help but say it, because it’s the very first thing on his mind—stay. I want you to stay. I want you to know that I want you to stay.
Cas stops. Thank you for staying.
He turns back to Dean. Again and again.
A flicker of confusion passes over his face, eyebrows twitching together—just for a minute, though, like all he needs is one single moment to process and reroute—before that indiscernible twinkle settles back in, that secret smile that has always felt a little bit like it’s just for Dean and Dean only. I don’t know why you do, but I hope you keep doing it.
“You want me to.” Cas doesn’t say it like a question, but it is, in a way.
“Yes.” And it’s like taking that soft, bleeding heart of his between his hands and dropping it right at Cas’s feet—but it’s okay and it’s worth it, because that’s where it belongs.
Somehow, against all odds and by providence divine, this handful of meager words is enough. Somehow, Dean proves time and time again to be enough for Cas. He doesn’t feel like enough, and he probably never will—but, hey, that’s what love is.
Underneath it all—the rushing of his ears, the pounding of his heart, the instinctual apprehension curling in his toes, all these things that already know something he doesn’t—Dean can feel the heat radiating off of Cas’s body as he steps into his space, closely, fully, this time; the toes of his cheap, scuffed loafers nudge Dean’s worn leather boots, a clumsy reflection of the way their noses brush; Dean pulls in a soft breath just as Cas’s own whisps out, melting together in the shrinking space between them, perfectly synced, existence in tandem. They are alive, equally, in this moment. Dean is done waiting.
It had to happen like this.
He’s gone over it before, in his head—what he’d do, what he’d say, how he’d react; a million selfish, childish little fantasies indulging the part of him he only digs up under the cover of solitary moments. Heat of an argument, or after one of their many near misses, or in some sweeping confession that would give Shakespeare a run for his money, probably. Such stuff as dreams are made on, and all that.
But it had to happen like this. Dean knows it as sure as he knows anything, sealed deep in his bones. It had to sneak up on him, soft and vulnerable and unsuspecting like a rabbit in the thicket—in the kitchen. Bathing in the warm glow of the kitchen, in the lingering smell of cooked food and artificial pine of the air freshener tree they haven’t taken down yet, in the space between far-off crackling melodic crooning and TV static. In the beating heart of this little motley home they’ve made for themselves, crowded up against the counter like an embrace and not a cage, a strong hand that isn’t his own resting between the sharp edge of the tile and the small of his back, bleeding heat. It had to happen like this, and Dean wouldn’t have it any other way.
He’s never been great at keeping his resolutions.
—time and time endless on the horizon and wholly unfathomable by those people of old; and all they have is each other, and they don’t know for how long, so they kiss to mark the setting of the sun, to celebrate living through another harsh winter, to say “thank you for staying” and “thank you for staying again,” to merely note the passage of their days together—
He kisses Cas.
And it’s like kissing the sun, Dean thinks as the last shreds of his higher-functioning brain fade to black, like all the trillions of cosmic watts slipping between his lips, swallowing down solar fire; like holding a hurricane under his hands, roaring rain tapping out the entangled beats of their hearts, swirls of lightning buzzing on his fingertips and shocking up his spine. It’s kissing all the wonders of the universe wrapped in a ratty old trenchcoat, and it’s like coming home; they breathe relief into each other's mouths—finally, finally, finally—and it’s not just coming home but already being there; like living and working and being in a place, in a warm old kitchen, maybe, and looking up one day to realize: you’ve been home. You are home. They have homes in each other.
Dean weaves his fingers through the unruly nest of Cas’s hair, pulling him closer, closer, kissing him deeper, deeper—I want you here. Anytime. All the time.
Cas answers with a rumble like the slightest hint of the thunder he is, pressing flush against him from shin to forehead—There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
And he understands, maybe, those people of old—this is it. The be-all, end-all of life and everything thereafter. That harsh, sharp future rearing its ugly head doesn’t seem so daunting, with something so good right in the center of the present. Kissing the old year out, kissing the new year in; for luck, for love, for joy and pain and the raw expression of it all. It’s a human thing to do.
Dean breaks away, just barely, unable to leave Cas’s orbit, even for breathing—another human thing to do, unfortunately. But he takes this moment, this tiny pause in the churning of time, to use his breath for a welcoming, a ringing in of this year to come and the many to follow; not closing the door on what they had before, he and Cas, but simply opening the next one and walking through; together. Together, together, marking the passage of each and every dreary day and bright one, together.
“Happy New Year, Cas.”
Cas’s great blue eyes flutter open and swallow Dean whole, as they always do; the sides of his face quirk up, same as ever, that smile Dean knows belongs only to him, now. God, he looks fantastic.
“Happy New Year, Dean.”
What a thing that is.
They kiss, again. Again and again. Ring a couple gongs, too, not that it’s any of anybody’s business. There are a handful of Dick Clark jokes that Dean will deny making if asked. He forgets to text Mary, but she texts him anyway; he won’t answer till near noon, but she’ll be hungover enough to not be bothered by it. Sam will stay at Eileen’s for three days straight, and then she’ll stay at the bunker for another week. Cas will stay as long as he can, and when he can’t, they’ll kiss to say goodbye and then again to say hello when he comes back, which he’ll also keep doing. Dean will continue on, like he does, and so will time. Time will continue on and on and on. The sun will set and rise and set again, and it’ll make Dean think of Cas, but so will the moon, and the rain, and the snow, and TV static, and every song he ever hears, and every New Year's Eve until the end of time. They’ll all keep getting older, and it will be wonderful.
Until then, though, they kiss.
-fin-