Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In some twist of fate no one was really expecting, Dean actually feels approximately ready for December.

Emotionally, at least. Practically, they still haven’t settled on any actual semblance of a plan and he hasn’t got a damn clue about goddamn presents or his shifts or who's gonna be cooking a turkey (not for lack of talking about the plan), but it feels less like a sledgehammer this year. He’s felt it approaching in that ruinous, complicated way that it does every damn year, as Thanksgiving circles the drain and Black Friday somehow seems to take an entire six weeks to be done with and then, suddenly, everyone’s attention swiftly turns to Christmas , and the normal tight-weary-dread didn’t come. Given the choice, he’d still probably opt out altogether, but that’s never actually worked.

He’d expected the December addition of his now monthly download-and-serious-chat with his little brother to be a doozie, but he feels pretty level-headed as he walks across to their usual bench that overlooks John Winchester’s grave. Still, there’s plenty of December left to survive.

“Well.” Sam says, inclining a hand in hello and settling into a bit of a smirk. He’s not yet wearing any of his collection of Christmas sweaters, which is something to be thankful for. There’s a distinct bite in the air, like the weather got the memo about the upcoming festive season and decided to try and embrace it. The grass crunches under his feet as he walks. “Welcome to December.”

It kind of feels that these monthly unpicking of it all has been preparing him better, like he needs a year-long emotional advent calendar of preparation for the oncoming storm of December. Not that it has been a year. They had an introduction session to brother’s-couple’s-therapy in January and then Jack showed up and changed everything in all the best ways and it really wasn’t the time, and they picked it up again in the summer for six weeks of paid-for guided conversation before they graduated to being left to check-in about it on their own. Sam suggested the location. Both of them are supposed to bring things they want to talk about, either about the past or, more often, Dean rambling aimlessly about his parenting-guilt and his parenting-triumphs and about Jack while Sam smiles and looks all floppy-haired and proud of him. He’d done another six weeks on his own, too, which he hadn’t told Sam about until last month, although he’s not really sure why. Objectively, he can acknowledge that it’s no failing or surprise to have his own addiction traumas to work through, but he has this thing about not wanting to make Sam feel guilty about crap he can’t change. He’d trapped himself in it for years and smothered all of it in silence. He’d had no damn idea there was such peace in honesty.

“Oh, goody,” Dean comments, a sarcasm that he doesn’t really mean in his words.

“Are you guys any closer to working out Christmas?” Sam asks, arching an eyebrow up at him. The only actual thing he knows about Christmas is that they’re not doing it with Sam, because for the first time in a good few years they’re headed down to Jess’ parents; Robbie was apparently unimpressed about the idea of Christmas with the grandparents and no Jack, who he likes to incorporate in most of his pretend games even though Jack now has a tendency to crawl off and ruin the narrative. Dean kind of relates, because he’s not mad about the idea of missing some of the actual good parts about Christmas and, these days, that definitely includes Sam.

“Nope,” Dean says, popping the p and pocketing his hands. “As far as I can work out, he’s at an internal stalemate with himself, I’m —- well, waiting for him to talk to me, but. You know what Cas is like.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, tilting his head. “And how are you doing?”

“Why? Thinkin’ about taking cover for my annual meltdown.”

“Well, it’s the season,” Sam says, smiling a bit, and then he turns serious. “But, seriously Dean, I know December is… complicated.” Dean snorts and looks out over the graveyard. On the one hand, this newfound sensitivity his family have found about the festive season is better than everyone bullishly assuming he should be over it by now and pulling out the usual Scrooge jokes, but this year it feels like everyone’s yo-yoed into taking it too damn seriously. He’s had a lot of eyes on him, a lot of wariness and pointed questions about his welfare from a variety of different directions and it’s probably making him more likely to lose it than if they all just ignored it.

“I’m alright, Sam. This Cas stuff aside, everything’s fine. Good, even.”

“Well, I’m happy to babysit if you guys need some time to talk it out.”

“Quit trying to steal my son.”

“Tell him to stop getting so cute then,” Sam says.

“Never.” Dean says, burying his hands deeper into his pocket. “What’s your mother-in-law like?”

“You’ve met Jess’ parents.”

“Yeah, like twice,” Dean says, forehead creasing. “I’m —- well, adjusting to the concept.”

“How long have you been married, again?”

“Well, yeah, but Naomi was in denial about my existence for a large part of that, then we had a freaking pandemic, and Cas just —- ignored her for a lot of the intermediary time, so….”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam says, with a look that’s part way between sympathetic and understanding. “But I’m not sure my answer is going to help you. Andrea and Richard are great.”

“And they like you,” Dean deadpans.

“Yeah,” Sam says, “I mean, they had some opinion about it early on, but at this point…”

“They know about all of that?” Dean asks, genuinely thrown, because he comes from a world where you actively try to hide the majority of your personal life from your parents.

“Yeah,” Sam says, a crease appearing in his forehead as he looks out across the grass, gaze set on John Winchester’s grave. “Jess is pretty honest with her parents.”

“Wow,” Dean says, “What’s that like?”

Sam snorts and a smile breaks out on his face. Dean nudges him in a gesture that he hopes takes the edge off some of it.

“They knew from a couple of months in,” Sam says, “I mean, it was pretty raw and obvious back then, and that was fine —- they’re big on not judging people, the Moores, but when we found out about Robbie, well. That was different. It’s one thing for your only daughter to be accepting and compassionate enough to date someone with a rocky past, it’s another thing to have a baby with a junkie.”

“Thought you said they were great.” Dean says, darkly.

“Come on, Dean, can you blame them?” Sam asks, “You know what it was like. Would you really want that for Jack? Someone like me?”

“Don’t,” Dean begins, the word cloying in his throat. “That’s not who you are.”

“It’s a part of me.” Sam says, and then he swallows again. “ I couldn’t do it.”

Dean absolutely fucking couldn’t do it either, but it doesn’t feel helpful to say that. Cas feels so far from likely to get addicted to anything — work, at a push, but he’s kicked that to the curb big time these last few years — but it’s one of the few things he thinks could sink them. It would shred him. He couldn’t do it again.

“Well,” Dean says, “Jess doesn’t really know what it was like to live through it. I —— shit, that sounds harsh, I didn’t —-“

“No, no, you’re right,” Sam says, straightening up, rolling his big shoulders back and taking a steadying breath . “She doesn’t. But I don’t think anyone who did could’ve —- well, the point is, that she’s never going to find out what it’s like.”

“Damn fucking straight,” Dean says, and he nudges their arms together again. There’s not many things that they haven’t said to each other anymore and there’s something freeing about that. It was hard. That kind of honesty is brutal and complicated. They had one harrowing session where Dean was having a really hard Jack day, triggered by a care user at the hospital and then a nightmare, and he asked if Sam was ever scared that Robbie or Mary might one day grow up and take drugs, and Sam had broken down and fucking cried right in front of him, and they’d finished the session clutching at each other and making solemn promises that they would stop history repeating itself: that whatever happened, whatever fire or illness or car crash, that they would expend themselves on Robert and Mary and Jack. He’d felt raw for a week, but since then the fear feels like a more manageable shape, because he’s not the only one who knows how important it is. If something ever happened to him or Cas, Sam would be there.

“So, Naomi’s difficult,” Sam substitutes.

“She’s,” Dean begins, then makes a face. “I think she regrets a lot of the worst stuff she’s pulled, but she has a lot of opinions and seems to think Cas is some kind of disappointment, which is goddamn ludicrous given he’s —-” Dean gesture vaguely, which he hopes encapsulates brilliant, intelligent, successful, handsome, man with the biggest heart Dean’s ever met . Sam nods like he gets it. “But, the day Jack was born she opened a freakin’ bank account and put in enough money for his first two years at some Ivy League school and it seems like she’s trying, I guess. Still has a lot of damn opinions.”

“About you,”

“About me,” Dean nods, “About Cas, about the way we parent.”

“Oh, yeah, well Jess and her Mom have definitely had disagreements about that.”

“Really?”

“I think that’s pretty normal.” Sam says.

“ Normal,” Dean scoffs, “What’s that like?”

“From my observations, it involves a lot of micro-passive aggressions and eventually settling on unvoiced compromises.”

“Right,” Dean snorts, “Merry fucking Christmas.”

“Most families are slightly dysfunctional.”

“I don’t think we do so bad, all in all.” Dean says, side-eyeing him. Sam smiles, one of his real grown up adult smiles that seem to contain this self-assurance and inner peace that calms something deep in Dean’s soul. He’s not that angry kid searching for answers and ways to stop being in pain and, like this, it feels so damn obvious that he could never be that way ever again. Sam turned forty this year. It suits him.

“Guess when you hit rock bottom with it, it makes you work harder,” Sam says, and now he’s looking out at John Winchester’s grave. “Remember how precious it is.”

“I’d drink to that if this was that kind of party,” Dean says, “Look, if my shifts work out I’ll come join you, visitin’ on Christmas Eve.”

“Good,” Sam smiles, “How is work?”

“Yeah, all right,” Dean says, rolling his shoulders back. He’s just finished a rare eight hour shift — seven til three — but generally he’s pretty solidly on twelve or tens and this one was technically a favour. It feels less like the hospital is descending into the usual winter madness. In some ways, it feels like they finally caught up to the new rhythm of winter viruses. It’s busy, but not overflowing at the seams, and he finds it easier to switch gears now he’s got specific responsibilities at home. Jack with his bright, contagious laughs and his curiosity and his simple affection is so all eclipsing that , most of the time, the hospital falls away the second he walks back through his front door. That’s not always. There are bad days, when he can’t shake off the death and the piss and the disappointments, but they’re not as frequent as they used to be. He likes being a whole different person at home, falling into Dad-mode . He’s working a little less and he’s pretty much given up nights, which helps too. “It’s good, as far as winter goes. We’ve got a good team.”

Sam nods, then turns to look at him. He’s got his big eyes out, which means he’s probably about to ask him something serious.

“I don’t think I ever asked why Christmas is such a big deal.”

“Didn’t think you need to.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, slow and considered. “I get it, to an extent. That it’s —- a magnifying glass, and it’s bittersweet, but… from that first year, after, I never really got why it was such a thing.” Dean hums. “It felt like a punishment.”

“For who? Me or you.”

“Both, probably,” Sam says.

“Do you remember our Christmases, growing up?”

“Parts,” Sam says, “I remember you used to like it.”

Dean exhales and looks at his fathers grave. It’s strange that this has become a steadying place.

“No, Sammy, I used to try. I did all that … tryin’ to bring festive joy into a shitty, cold motel room, scrubbing together some sad Christmas dinner, pretending it was part of the plan that Dad wasn’t there,”

“Stealing the Christmas presents,” Sam adds in.

“And I dragged both of you through it, for years, because I thought it was better than no one trying and then —- then it all went to shit, and I didn’t know where either of you were and I —- only so long you can commit to something when you get nothing back, Sam, and I couldn’t give up on you, but I could sure as hell give up on pretending we were all gonna have a merry Christmas, when we weren’t. We didn’t. And being forced into dwelling on it every December and going through the motions like it doesn’t hurt and like none of that ever happened has always felt like the definition of salt on the wound.”

Sam doesn’t say anything for a long time, but his face is going on a bit of a journey: thoughtful, then sad, with the steely resolve that springs up.

“You tried harder than we deserved.”

“Man, I don’t even —- who knows what the hell anyone did or did not deserve, I just,” Dean says, rubbing his face with the rough palms of his hands, because he cannot agree that Sam didn’t deserve someone committed to bringing him festive feelings and he cannot agree that his father didn’t deserve having a kid that wanted to make things easier, but he also can’t agree that any of it was fair on him, because it sucked, and it sucked pervasively, for years. “Christmas is all about normal. Traditions, expectation, happy families. It doesn’t leave space for complicated and painful, but it ——- I’m okay, Sam. I’m indifferent to the whole damn thing, which is a step up, so I’m all good.”

“Well,” Sam says, and he smiles, “I wish you an indifferent Christmas.”

“And a neutral new year,” Dean flips back, and Sam smiles properly, and then they talk about Robbie and Mary and Jack until Sam has to head back.

On his way out of the graveyard, he touches his father’s headstone , just for a moment, and offers him a silent acknowledgement.

*

“Hey handsome,” Dean says, wrapping his knuckles against the coffee table and sitting down on the sofa, looking at where Cas is having a staring competition with their ten month old. He took in enough on his route into the house to note that the place has descended into an abject chaos: there’s toys freaking everywhere, there’s a half hung up load of laundry, there’s the distinct evidence of Jack’s messy attempt at lunch all over the kitchen table. Jack himself looks perfectly content, banging his blocks together and giggling to himself. He looks up and beams this big wide smile as Dean comes in and babbles something incoherent, holding a block aloft. “And hello, Jack.”

“He won’t sleep, Dean.” Cas says, a sort of frenzied note in his voice. He so rarely refers to Jack in the third person when he’s in the same room — actively dislikes it when people do it to them, actually , always twists the conversation round to include him like he’s an active participant — that it’d be evidence enough that he was having a Hard Parenting Day.

“I —- wait, he still hasn’t napped?”

“ No, this is what I’m saying. He won’t. He is refusing to nap, because why nap, when you could play blocks?” Jack makes a noise somewhat similar to ‘buh’ and points at his block. “And now he’s mocking me. You are mocking me, Jack Winchester.”

“Alright, well I know someone who needs a damn nap.”

“He won’t .”

“I meant you, sunshine. Come on buddy,” Dean says, scooping him up and setting him on his lap. Jack laughs and says ‘buh’ again. Dean buries his face in his wispy hair, breathing in that freaking perfect baby scent — although, babyhood is falling off him alarmingly, he can see the toddler features creeping in, and he’d kind of like to keep him this small and perfect forever, but instead he settles on a hug and talks into his skin. “Quit terrorising your father, bud.”

Jack babbles back at him.

“ Someone very much objects to not being held today and I haven’t —- whose idea was infants crawling? And —- the laundry, and —-”

“Cas, Sweetheart,” Dean says, lifting Jack up onto his knee, holding him so he’s nearly-almost-standing of his own accord. Jack smiles widely. He looks the exact opposite of tired, but the kid has a helluva poker face about that kind of thing. No nap at all is actually pretty damn impressive. “Fuck the laundry. Go take a minute, we’re all good, aren’t we, kiddo?”

“ Dean.” Cas says, raising his eyebrow in that way that means ‘language’, because apparently, developmentally, Dean’s language now actually matters.

“Screw the laundry.” Dean corrects, with his most innocent smile.

“That isn’t better.” Cas says, but he’s almost smiling, “I —- you’ve been at work and with Sam, Dean, you should—”

“I’m good,” Dean says, lifting Jack up so he’s dangling above him, kicking his legs in excitement. He hates that one day it’s gonna be harder to make the kid this happy than it is right now, but he’s been working on not dwelling on that and not catastrophizing about it. They won’t stop having moments like this, even if he’ll have to try harder.

“He needs to sleep,” Cas mutters, but he sounds defeated, and Jack giggles again as if punctuating the fact that he is so very very far from sleep. It’s too damn late for a nap now, anyway. The best strategy at this point has gotta be to distract him from sleep until somewhere close to bedtime and hope he doesn’t get too worked up and tired to sleep.

“You know what you should do? Draw a bath, open a bottle of wine and breathe. Trust me, I’m a medical professional. ”

“I, alright. If you’re serious.” Cas says, hesitating slightly as he stands up.

“As a heart attack” Dean says, “But, first,” Dean says, nodding to the place on the sofa next to him. Cas sits, his forehead creased in confusion and that perfect bewilderment and, man, Dean fucking loves the dorky, exhausted idiot. He twists to kiss him, briefly, Jack still on his knee and stays settled in his space.“Hello, handsome.”

“Hello, Dean,” Cas says, smiling a bit.

“Alright, now get gone and leave us in peace.”

“If —- ”

“ Cas,” Dean says, and Cas makes a final noise of assent and then heads to the stairs.

“Blocks, huh?” Dean says, setting Jack back down on his playmat and following him onto the floor, sitting at the foot of the sofa. “So, what are we building sweetheart?” Dean asks, as Jack determinedly crawls over to the largest pile of blocks and starts clacking them together and Dean lets it wash over himself that he’s really fucking happy.

He’s getting better at it.

He didn’t know that you really had to practice at it, or that there was more joy to be squeezed out of any given day than his life with Cas and knowing Sam is okay, but Jack has turned his life around all over again. It’s been healing, actually. He finds it oddly reassuring that Jack doesn’t look like him, or like Sam did when he was that age, with his bright blue eyes and expression of permanent wonder. Dean thinks he looks kind of more like Cas, actually — even though there’s no reason he should look like either of them — and he’s caught Jack picking up some of the Cas mannerisms. He’s got that crumpled look of disapproval that he doles out, his I’ve-just-woken-up-and-I’m-pissed-about-it look. Whenever he sees either of them it hits him somewhere deep in the core of him, this bubbling freaking delight, and he’s totally wrecked by how much he adores the pair of them.

He draws the line on blocks and general playtime when Jack starts to tip further into overexcited and manages to distract him a bit while he balances him on his hip as he makes marginally more progress on the laundry, then changes tact and sorts Jack out with some more food while trying to sort the kitchen. Cas’ phone is on the kitchen table, face up, with 1 missed call from Naomi Milton written across his home screen, which is a helpful additional jigsaw piece for filling in Cas’ mood. Jack drops a lot more food on the floor than he eats, which is the sort of thing that is charming on some days and a pain in the ass on other days, but right now it’s all just washing over him, half on parent-autopilot as he cleans and wipes and talks crap to his attentive audience of one.

Cas reappears as Dean’s finishing a second story at the tail end of the official bedtime routine. Jack’s basically already asleep, but Dean’s found that if he finished the book early there’s an outside chance that Jack will manage to rouse himself and kick off about being short-changed, and they could use the rest of the evening to be smooth sailing. He’s already fallen out of the sleeping schedule he almost had, waking up four times last night and refusing to settle, which probably also accounts for Cas’ short fuse. Dean fucking loves his Jack days, but they’re also damned hard.

“Thank you,” Cas says, standing in the doorway and watching him, looking softer and tired. He’s wrapped in his dressing gown.

“No problem, Cas.” Dean says, standing up and stretching. His own tiredness is beginning to hit him now. He got up twice with Jack last night, the latter time bleeding straight into his shift.

“I made dinner,”

“Awesome,” Dean breathes, following him back down the stairs and into the kitchen, baby monitor in hand. He rubs his face roughly as he sits down, rests his chin on his propped up elbows and watches Cas move around the kitchen and serve up their food.

“You know you could’ve called,” Dean says, after he’s accepted the glass of wine that Cas passes him alongside his bowl of pasta. He takes the opportunity to get a good look at his husband. They’ve both been tired since Jack was born, with this perpetual hazy new-parent mist that Cas said was not wholly unlike residency, with the crying and shit and piss and ungodly hours. He figured they’d be better prepared for it than most given their years of shifts under their belt, or maybe they just started from a place of having years of sleep-debt, but he has a newfound awe for how new parents can do anything at all beyond keeping the humans of all sizes alive and, sometimes, quiet. That’s ebbed and flowed with the sleep regressions and then somewhat doomed mission to get Jack into a routine, give they don’t have a routine nailed —- it has gotten better, actually, and now he’s basically not doing night shifts at all which has helped a lot — but Cas still had that perpetual freaking glow that seems to have been lighting him up since he stopped working at the hospital, right up until a few months ago. Now, it’s a little dimmed. There’s a strained edge to his smile. “If you needed back up.”

“Your catch ups with your brother are important,” Cas says, setting down next to his own plate.

“A lot of things that are important, Cas. Can’t think of any that are more important than you and my son.”

Cas’ expression softens and some of the fight drops out of his shoulders.

“I didn’t know I needed back up until it was evident that I lost today and then you were already with Sam .”

“Alright,” Dean says, scanning his face and reading between the lines. “Well, it’s the war that counts, not the battle.”

“Yes,” Cas says, pressing his fingers into his temple and sighing. “How was Sam?”

“Good,” Dean says, scanning his features. “Your mom called.”

“My mother called.” Cas affirms. “More than once.”

“She okay?”

“Yes,” Cas says, frowning again. “She wanted to discuss Christmas again. I am unclear how many times I can tell her we won’t have your shift schedule until Friday.”

“Well, in defence of Naomi, I really don’t think she cares if I am or am not on shift.” Dean says, which sounds a lot less neutral than Dean meant it to. Cas frowns. Dean squares his shoulders and barrels on. “What’s her latest counter offer?”

“Five days,”

“Better than nine.” Dean says, spearing a tube of pasta onto his fork.

“You don’t want her here.” Cas deadpans.

“She’s your Mom, Cas, ” Dean says, “If you want her to come —”

“Dean, we talked about this.”

“Things change, Cas. Look, I knew that —- Naomi’s been talkin’ about grandkids for a decade, she —- I’ve told you, I am okay with her coming for however long you do or don’t want her here.”

“I promised you we’d do Christmas on your terms this year.” Cas says, which is true, but Dean surrendered that notion a long time ago. Christmas never has worked out in his favour and he feels, finally, on a level with that.

“I don’t care.”

“I promised,”

“Look man, there comes a point when you’re not being considerate anymore, you’re using me as an excuse, and I don’t want a damn part of that. This is your decision, Cas, it’s your damn choice, and I’m gonna support you whatever, but this —— this has got nothing to do with me and my feelings about freakin’ December. I told you — ”

“This is not the first time you’ve told me you’re okay with something when you’re not.”

“Oh, you’re calling me out on not being transparent about my goddamn feeling? That’s hilarious. ”

“ Dean,” Cas says, sharp, as he stands up to get the salt, probably more for something to do with himself rather than out of any desire to season. He’s irritable and angry and Dean probably shouldn’t be accidentally starting a fight he doesn’t actually want to be in.

“You’ve been procrastinating this for months and we — Cas my issues are not so damn immovable that I can’t deal with them for five days, or nine days, if you need or want your mother here.”

“I don’t want her here.”

“Fine, but don’t blame that on me.” Dean snaps, just at the moment that Jack on the screen of the monitor rolls over, eyes blink open and starts to cry. Dean’s already halfway out of his seat when Cas snaps ‘ I’ll get it’ and Dean tries to make a counter offer and Cas cuts in that he’s not incompetent and stalks off up the stairs.

Dean roughly rubs a hand through his hair and exhales heavily. He didn’t mean for it to descend into a snapping match. Cas is a freaking immovable object when he’s irritated or hurting and right now he’s both, which means Dean should be cutting him all kinds of slack rather than pushing him. But, Christmas is still coming down the track, devastating and inconvenient, so they actually do need to talk about this.

He watches on the screen as Cas leans forward and scoops him out of the cot, hugs him to his chest and says some unknown, soft things into his ear. He watches them both on the monitor until he’s finished his pasta before he drags himself away to start on the rest of that laundry, feeling the exhaustion down to his bones and maybe December does suck as much as he thought it would.

He climbs into bed first, but Cas joins him twenty minutes or so after that. Despite it all, he rolls over into Dean’s side and he reaches out to hold him in the dark.

“Sorry,” Dean says, quietly. Jack is still in their room because they’ve been procrastinating the decision about when to move him into his room, so they’ve gotten good at these hushed conversations in the dark.

Cas hums and reaches out and touches his face.

“I should’ve —- this is the last damn thing I wanna fight about,” Dean says.

“I know that.”

“And look at it this way, Darlin’, it’s gotta be your turn to take over the season with your festive trauma, I’ve been hogging the spotlight for most of the decade.”

Cas makes a noise somewhere between a sob and laugh and buries his face into Dean’s chest.

“It isn’t fair, Dean.”

“Well,” Dean says, low, reaching out to squeeze his arm. “If there’s one thing I’m pretty certain of, is that cancer ain’t fair.”

“And yet it is a trump card. ”

“That’s up to you, man,” Dean says, and he wets his lip and tries to pick his words carefully. “I don’t think you owe your mom Christmas, but… it doesn’t look like you get a choice to pick a second time.”

“I don’t want to make this decision, at all.”

“I,” Dean begins, and he yawns, the rest of what was sure to be an inadequate response snuffed out by his exhaustion.

“You’re tired, Dean, sleep.”

“We need to talk about it,”

“Not tonight,” Cas says, in his firm doctor voice, and it’s hard to argue with that when he’s this tired and his limbs feel heavy and he’s pretty convinced that a cranky, overtired Jack is gonna wake them up in a couple of hours time. Instead, he mutters his dissent into Cas’ shoulder and gives into the heaviness of his eyes.

In the morning before his shift, he texts Sam to book him in to babysit, because they really need to goddamn talk whether Cas wants to or not.

Chapter Text

Contrary to the popular maxim, Cas doesn’t make a bad patient. He’s only seen him need medical care (that he couldn’t either get at home or deliver himself) twice, both times because he’d judged himself in need of some test or other. Dean had expected him to be a bit of a nightmare because it is generally true that Doctors are a pain in the ass when they have to switch sides of the bench, but Cas had been great. He’d never tried to take charge beyond what any patient should have, he listened and took onboard their medical opinions and treated all of them with respect and understanding.

Being a relative-of-a-patient is another thing entirely.

When it comes to that, Cas is a medical professional’s worst nightmare: he is opinionated, he is demanding about information and he does his own damn research. If they’d been anywhere near the actual hospital Naomi had been receiving medical treatment in, he’s sure he’d be one of those aggravating Doctor-relatives who walked straight in and read her medical chart rather than speaking to the human being. He gets it. He gets that it’s one of the hardest parts of the job, because it’s not that easy to turn off that part of your brain that’s set to diagnose and fix, which means Cas doesn’t get to outsource all of that to someone else. He already knows enough and has already seen enough over the course of decades to be able to paint the rest of the picture and then, obviously, he needed to know if he was filling in the blanks with catastrophizing or optimism. It’s the only attempt to grasp at control he has.

And Dean’s gotta give credit to Naomi’s Oncologist, because she’s been nothing but patient and gracious.

Naomi told them four months ago, at the point where she was always mid way through an aggressive round of chemo that no one believed would do anything but buy her time, because at that point she already had secondary Leukaemia and a track record for not telling anyone about her health problems. There’d been other treatments that she’d elected not to mention, as far as Dean could work out from the other half of the conversations he’s heard with Gabriel, the Oncologist and Naomi herself —- Castiel has been characteristically reluctant to talk about the details with Dean, which is getting to the point where it’s just annoying — but she’d bought them at the stage of the journey she was confident would be the last one. Cas insisted on a lengthy conversation with her doctor, spent an evening locked in their office pouring over her medical files, until he finally emerged with red eyes and a grim look and confirmed what was already forgone in Dean’s mind: terminal, six months left, give or take.

“ Breakfast, Jack,” Cas says, in that deep gravel of his, offering Jack a look that’s partially stern as he tries to get him to remotely concentrate on the meal he should be eating. Jack is far too busy kicking his legs in his hair chair to pay attention. Jack was almost exactly six months at the time they heard about Naomi’s diagnosis and Dean remembers being struck by how they bookended measuring life in months; how six months of Jack felt like half a lifetime, while six months to work out what the hell you felt about your mother felt like a blink. And, at some point, they’ll tip over into talking about weeks and days, the way they did when Jack was so fucking small that it still makes him feel dizzy, and when the entirety of their lives narrowed down into four-hourly-feeds and staring at him in shocked awe. “ Jack,” Cas says again, sitting down and brandishing a spoon of yoghurt. The kid prefers to feed himself because he’s already picked up the Winchester stubbornness, so he slams his mouth shut and flails one of his arms. Unexpectedly, he hits the spoon right out of Cas’ hands, and it flops heavily onto the high chair, splattering everywhere. For a moment it feels like it could go either way, and then Cas laughs, and Jack follows suit with that beautiful giggle. It’s a glorious sound on both accounts.

“How’s it going there, Cas?” Dean asks, swaying to brush his fingers over the top of Jack’s head, then duck down to kiss Cas on his temple.

“Excellent,” Cas says, deeply sarcastic, but he’s smiling as he wipes yoghurt off his tie. Jack chooses that moment to go back to eating his chopped up grapes with enthusiasm, which has Cas smile widening and crinkling around his eyes. “Thank you, Jack.”

Jack brandishes a piece of toast which Dean’s reliably taking to mean ‘no problem, daddy’.

“Morning, kiddo,” Dean says, claiming the cup of coffee Cas set out for him. It’s cold by this point, but he gave up caring about drinking or eating anything at it’s correct temperature months ago.

“I think you need changing before you go to daycare, Jack.” Cas says, assessing the mess he’s managed to make of himself. Jack offers a gummy smile back.

“Think you should gun for the full six outfit a day milestone again, Sweetheart.”

“Don’t encourage him.”

“You were so close last week, Bud. I’ve got faith in you.”

“ You can do the laundry if he does achieve such a milestone,” Cas says.

“Deal,” Dean says, “So, uh —- Sam says he can babysit tonight.” Cas’ expression thins out slightly, which is expected. The two attempts Dean has made to broach this conversation have gone badly (once in person last night, once via text which went terribly given Cas was replying between consultants and Dean was trying to hold down the Jack-fort; neither had been successful whatsoever) . “Come on, Darlin’, we’ve gotta talk about it.”

“ You are insisting that we have to talk about Christmas,” Cas deadpans, his gaze still fixed on their son. “This is a new development.”

“What can I say, Cas, character development.” Dean says, “And it’s in, like, three weeks and your Mom’s been asking since the stores started pushing Halloween candy.”

“I do not want Jack to ever be made to feel like I felt.” Cas says, and it’s the most honest comment he’s made about it so far. Dean feels it stick in the back of his throat, sympathy curdling in his gut. He nudges Cas under the table with his foot. Cas turns his gaze to face him, his eyes shining with something complicated: some mix of resolve, guilt and undefined grief. It’s raw and complicated and Dean really wishes he had the ability to take all of this away, because if Jack has been healing for Dean, for Cas it crystallised his own complicated feelings about his parents. He’d gone full mamma-bear and had nearly cut the lot of them out completely in those first two months. He'd been annoyed about them sending gifts, was legitimately angry at Naomi for starting that damn college fund, barely conceded to sending photos to the family WhatsApp and Dean hadn’t really been able to understand it. He’s never been team-Naomi. He’d have more than understood Cas distancing himself further at any point in the last decade, but he’d seemed content with their status quo of semi-infrequent phone calls and discussions of visits that never really transpired due to scheduling issues and Dean hadn’t accounted for anything changing. Cas had said something similar, then, with this fierce-something behind the back of his eyes as he said no one is going to judge my son as less than perfect, no matter how much they attempt to pay for the privilege. Dean didn’t have the guts at the time to point out that, for once, no judgments, strings or expectations had been attached to that gesture. She hadn’t even asked to visit at that point. All she seemed to want was slithers of information about her grandson, which Dean actually didn’t think was unreasonable.

“Cas,” Dean says, taking him in carefully. “I get it, I do. But —— he’s ten months old. He’s not gonna feel like that. He’s … Cas, he’s not going to remember her.”

Cas blinks and Dean instantly feels like the worst person on the damn planet. For all of this. This week he’s already managed to start a damn fight about Cas’ dying mother and now put that look on his face by relentlessly dragging the conversation back up, but he doesn’t know what else to goddamn do. Cas’ usual strategy of avoidance doesn’t actually work when they’re running on a clock.

Two months, more or less. They both know it doesn’t always work like that. They’ve both seen two months become ten months and two months become two days with that unknowable part of medicine that can’t take into account sheer chance, or the strength of a mother’s desire to see her kid’s next birthday, or how sensitive bodies are to someone getting too tired to keep fighting it if they’ve already reached some tentative peace with the hand they’ve been dealt. He might even have seen two months become a year, once or twice in a career of working with people who are sick and dying, but he’s pretty sure he’s never seen two months become years, plural. Not enough to be able to make any kind of dent on Jack’s sense of self.

“And that makes it okay?”

“No,” Dean says, “Since when does the world operate on things having to be okay?”

“You want me to invite her.”

“She invited herself already,” Dean says, “And my opinion about this is irrelevant, Cas. I already told you, man, this one’s all yours.”

“Your opinion is very loud for something that’s irrelevant.”

“Alright, fine, my opinion is that you’ve gotta fucking deal with it someway or other, but how is still your damn decision.”

“Thank you for the advice,” Cas says, his voice curt as he stands up. Jack is blinking between them with his eyes titled in curiosity, which is still better than a full on meltdown. Apparently, he’s getting used to them bickering.

“Cas,” Dean says.

“Have you finished your breakfast, Jack? Let’s get you changed,” Cas says, as he extracts Jack from his high chair (getting significantly more yoghurt on himself in the process, which means Jack isn’t the only one who needs to get changed: people tend to find medical professionals smeared in unknown fluids disconcerting).

“ Cas, I didn’t —- ”

“I don’t know how to deal, Dean, I haven’t actually done this before.” Cas hisses, quiet, with Jack on his hip, making a grab for Cas’ hair.

“If you’d pull your head out of the sand for five damn minutes you’d realise I’m trying to help you. ”

“We’ll talk about this later.”

“ This shit right here,” Dean says, “This is what I’m talking about, man. This bullshit avoidance. You’ve gotta —- ”

“You’re going to be late,” Cas says, “And stop swearing in front of your son.”

“We have to talk about this. You told your Mom you were gonna give her an answer on Friday.”

“I told her you got your shift schedule on Friday.”

“I’m pretty damn sure the other part was implicit.”

Cas sighs and pulls his expression in tighter, into that impassive mask that’s always driven him crazy. He’s expecting another pushback to rally against like he’s been getting for months, because Cas is a pro-compartmentaliser and Dean isn’t invited to his grief-party.

“What time is your brother babysitting?” Cas asks, which is as close to enthusiasm for the concept that Dean’s expecting. He can take that. For weeks, he’s been pretty sure that if they actually got to the part of having the conversation they’d be able to have a breakthrough.

“Seven,” Dean says. “He’s coming here. I’ll be back just after.”

“I’ll book somewhere for dinner,” Cas says, distractedly pulling Jack’s hand away from his hair. Dean raises an eyebrow at him, because he definitely wasn’t expecting that level of effort being put in. “If we have a babysitter, we might as well embrace date night.”

“Awesome,” Dean says, and he almost means it. It's a good enough indicator that they’re okay, underneath it all.

“We are running late, Dean.”

“Okay, yeah, yeah, go.” Dean says, nodding as Cas takes Jack upstairs and Dean gets what he’s anticipating to be the only five minutes of his day without someone directly needing something from him. He thumbs out a return text to Sam, drinks the rest of his cold coffee and cleans up as much of the breakfast debris that he can manage in the time it takes for Cas to turn Jack from an advert for high quality laundry detergent into a smiling, clean, almost-toddler.

“Have a good day, Cas,” Dean says, leaning forward to kiss the rough of his cheek. He gets a tight smile back, which is better than nothing, then sets about on the rest of wrestling with car seats, of daycare drop offs, vomit, and catheters and nightmare-relatives and attempting to heal pain.

*

There’s a new Italian place that’s walkable from their house that they’ve never been to because Dean works shifts and Cas works hard and they have a baby, which means that they never really do anything at all except work and laundry and talk idly about the days they used to have lives that didn’t revolve around diapers and debating whether Jack’s current behaviour is / isn’t a developmental milestone, or likely to result in no sleep, or in any way a cause for current concern. They have wrangled an evening off for a date night a handful of times in the last ten months, but it still feels slightly weird to be going anywhere without a pram, or a sling and the diaper bag containing supplies for sixteen different kinds of eventualities. He feels like he’s forgotten something.

Cas looks good, but then that’s not new information. His hair is longer than normal, mostly because he hasn’t had the time for a haircut. Sam had apparently arrived early enough for him to both shower and shave before their date night / opportunity to talk about harrowing things without an infant-audience or a dozen pressing household tasks. He’s put on one of his nicest button downs and wrapped this thick, soft scarf that Jess bought him one Christmas round his neck. Dean kind of feels underdressed and underprepared, given his shift had wound up running late and all he’d managed to do was splash water on his face and shrug on a mostly-clean pair of jeans before they had to leave again.

It’s a nice restaurant. The kind of place that’s made for date nights with low lighting and a festive menu that seems broadly undeterminable from the rest of the menu, except it’s more expensive and contains explicitly named cheeses. They should try and do this sometime for less depressing reasons.

“Are you intending for us to get straight into it, or can we at least wait for our appetisers?” Cas asks, in a wry version of his business-like Doctor-voice, after they’ve gotten past the how-was-your-days-dears and swapped medical horrors of the day and ordered and then settled into staring each other over the bread basket. It shouldn’t be awkward, but in a decade he’s yet to master the art of getting Cas to talk if he doesn’t want to. He’s got no idea what the appropriate way to bring up your husband's dying mother is.

“Man, I am all here for foreplay, it's straight-up distraction techniques I’m banning.”

“This is a new revelation about your commitment to foreplay,” Cas says, dry. Dean snorts and throws his serviette at him. Cas nearly-smiles and tilts his head.

“Look, Cas,” Dean starts, “Know it’s coming out as A-grade dickish, but I am trying to help.”

“I know that,” Cas says, “I think after ten years, it’s safe to say I’m able to read your intentions.”

“Alright,” Dean exhales, “Good.”

“I haven’t purposefully been avoiding this conversation, Dean, I just —— I don’t know what there is to say about it.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, softer, because he doesn’t know what the hell to say either. The older he gets the more things he realises he’s grotesquely unqualified for and this definitely counts. He’s pretty au-fait with Daddy-issues, but he doesn’t know a lot about mothers at all. “I, yeah —- I know, Cas.”

“She is my mother, she’s ill, she wishes to spend Christmas with us.” Cas says, his forehead creased. “ You seem to think she should.”

“Cas, I’m Switzerland.”

“You’re very committed to this false idea that this doesn't affect you.”

“That’s not what I said. I said this decision isn’t mine.”

“My understanding is that we are a team.”

“ We are a damn team, doesn't mean this isn’t your play.” Cas’ forehead creases. “Cas, if you decide to tell her no, because I have a fucktonne of baggage about Christmas and because you stick to a commitment you made before any of this was happening, and if it turns that as a result you never get to see your Mom again, you’re gonna resent me and I can’t un do that. I can’t --- I can’t be the reason. And I’m sorry if I’ve been vocal about that, but --- I am okay and even if I wasn’t okay, this is more important. I can deal later, we’ve got a whole damn lifetime to work that out, but you’re not getting this time back.”

“I know,” Cas says, with this complicated, difficult look on his face.

“I don’t want you left with regret.”

“You think I won’t regret inviting my mother to stay with us for five days?”

“I think you’ll regret it for five days,” Dean says, “There’s a chance you’ll regret not doing it forever.”

Cas breathes out slowly and blinks.

“Look, life ain’t a wish granting factory, and freakin’ Santa isn’t gonna magically take all of this away, so this —- this is going to suck, whichever which way you choose.”

“I wasn’t expecting Santa to intervene with my mother’s stage four lung cancer.” Cas says, and he’s smiling slightly.

“I’m not gonna judge you if you tell her to fuck off,” Dean says, “I just don’t buy it that that’s what you actually wanna do and …. I don’t want you to sleepwalk into that decision because she’s a pain in the ass and Christmas feels like the worst damn time to try and face up to it.”

Cas is quiet as he considers this. He swills his water round his glass.

“I am acutely aware that you didn’t get forewarning with either of your parents and that you probably think I am an abhorrent for not jumping at the opportunity for more time.” Cas says, an expression like it’s costing him to say that out loud. And he didn’t get a warning, exactly, but he did also kind of lose John Winchester slowly too. The end was abrupt and fucking brutal, but there’d have been years before that when he’d have said it wouldn’t be a surprise if he lost him to the bottle. He didn’t get a time or date, but he’d known how it was going to happen for a long time. Dean shakes his head and looks up to smile at the waiter as they bring over their first course — he went for the festive menu with the expensive cheese — before he looks back to Cas.

“Is that why you’ve been pushing me out?” Dean asks, drinking him in and Cas inclines in his head in a way that Dean’s taking to mean ‘partially’. “Cas, never. I --- Mom…. Well, I was four, so she never got to be anything but perfect, but my Dad…. It’s not like our relationship was in a great place for most of the last decade of his life and I,” He wets his lips and looks down at his cheese. “He gave me Sam back. He got clean because of that damn crash and.. more than anything else, that’s why I forgave him, why I don’t have it left in me to still be angry at him. I’ve got no idea what our relationship would be like if things were different, if more time would've made things better or worse. You’re not abhorrent, no damn way.”

“You’ve forgiven him,” Cas says, and that smacks of the great big underlying issue that they’ve never actually talked about in depth. He knew about several specific, shitty scenarios from pretty much day dot, but Cas has never spent much time talking about it. He preferred to just separate himself, holding this flimsy strand of connection but holding the rest of his life ransom. There’s probably a dozen good reasons that Cas has been so protective over Jack’s interactions with most of his family and Dean would never begrudge him from that, but there’s something deeper in it all.

“Most days of the week,” Dean says, and he wets his lips again. “For a lot of my life, if you’d looked at my life under a microscope, focused directly at me, Dad, Sam -- they would’ve been unredeemable. I’ve learned a lot about redemption.”

Cas looks down at his own plate of expensive cheese and frowns at it.

“She’ll expect us to have decorated.”

“Fine,” Dean says.

“She believes in Authoritarian parenting.”

“Well, that’s really not her freakin’ decision.”

“She will make derogatory comments about your profession, implying that you are in some way deficient despite being a high qualified medical professional who has displayed excellent in his field.”

“Not the first time someone’s looked down on me for being a nurse, Cas.”

“Fine,” Cas says, as he looks down at his food, “I will tell her she can come.”

“Okay, great,” Dean says, with relief light in his boned. “Merry fucking Christmas,” Dean says, holding his glass aloft.

“Unlikely, if my mother has anything to say about it. ” Cas says, as he clinks their glasses together.

*

He wakes up late the next day with a text from Cas confirming Naomi has booked her flights to visit. He’s got a half a day with officially no responsibilities, because when they worked out this schedule they both had a long debate and a discussion and determined that it was better for them both to have some squared away time whether they were neither on childcare or work, even if that meant marginally more stints in daycare. A lot of the time, he always feels slightly guilty about it, pulled in two different directions rather than properly able to relax into the time. Today, he’s picking up Jack from daycare at noon, which has granted him a slight lie-in and a few hours to kill. He drinks his coffee hot and then thinks about Cas’ face last night as they debated the rest of the Christmas minutia, with with slight aura of being overwhelmed and he decides it’s about time he pulled his damn weight, digs out the boxes of Christmas decorations they apparently own and sets about decorating.

Chapter Text

In the end, he’s either entirely lucky or been thoroughly screwed over by his shifts, depending on how you look at it.

It’s probably the best set of Christmas shifts he’s ever gotten. Due to a string of twelve on twelve off in the preceding week, he’s off for the majority of Naomi’s visit. He’s off all of the Christmas weekend, even if he’s on seven-seven on actual Christmas Day. In total, he gets five days off that overlaps with Cas’ own and they can, in theory, go to the traditional Harvelle holiday party and have Sam, Jess and the kids over before they head off to Jess’ parents. Cas takes this development with the kind of grim resignation that Dean usually associates with unpleasant medical problems and doesn’t so much as smile as they sit down and do the usual daycare tetris and Dean suggests they could have some proper family time in that wasteland between Christmas and New Year, after Naomi’s disappeared and they don’t have to face up to twenty twenty four yet. Dean gives up trying to generate any kind of enthusiasm as he texts around his back up childcare pick-ups for that particular awkward shift day (he honestly cannot convince of how this would’ve been feasible if Cas still worked any kind of shifts, although he sometimes spots couple swapping kids in the freaking hospital car parking lot and it makes Dean feel sympathy-exhaustion and another wave of gratitude that everything has worked out exactly how it has.) He watches Cas carefully as unloads the dishwasher, being starkly reminded of the Cas of two years ago who determinedly didn’t talk to him about his damn feelings, and feels an abstract fear about what the hell happens if Cas spirals and Dean still can’t get through to him, before he shoves it down in a box and goes to respond to Jack crying through the monitor.

*

Dean’s never thought much about religion, but he’s pretty fucking sure that hell must be pretty similar to a shopping mall in December with all the goddamn people bustling about, all determination and elbows as they barge past, with the same fucking Christmas tunes being churned out the speakers, with the aggressive festive lights and the general worshipping of capitalism that feels suffocatingly loud. He never truly appreciated the incredible sacrifice Cas made when he by-and-large sorted all the Christmas presents for the past two years. He’s a goddamn saint and the second Dean gets home he needs to kiss the man, because this is goddamn awful, and he had no idea how much bullshit Christmas admin he’d been ducking out for years.

He’s not even really having much success. He can’t believe he thought this would be easier than doing all of it online. He doesn’t like shopping malls when they’re quiet.

What do you buy your terminally ill mother-in-law who may or may not still think you’re the scum of the earth? He thumbs out to Sam from the bursting-at-the-seems coffee shop he ducked into when he couldn’t take it anymore. They’d offered him a ‘Christmas upgrade’ which apparently means cream and some sickly sweet syrup that he can smell thick in the air even though he turned them the hell down. There’s a kid having a tantrum about wanting to have his toys now Dean is exceptionally glad he dropped Jack off with Bobby before he attempted this endeavour, because he’s pretty sure that’s one of the only things that could make this worse. Negotiating a damn stroller and an almost-toddler round all these people.

Fancy bath shit? Sam texts back, which makes him snort into his coffee. His reply is almost instantaneous which says a lot about how his childcare day is going. They were originally going to join forces but Sam had given him a ‘no fucking way’ about the concept of going to the mall. He should’ve taken that for the warning sign it was, instead of committing to this idea that if he could figure this out he could in some way make it better.

Seriously?? Come on man, I need your help. Crap at buying women presents. You have more experience. Dean types back.

Idk Dean I’ve never actually had this exact problem, Sam replies, What did you buy Ellen last year?

He’s almost entirely sure that Cas took care of that and wrapped it up —- fucking saint that he is —- but he has the vaguest of memories about it.

Fancy bath shit, Dean replies.

Have you considered gloves?

You’re no goddamn help at all, Dean responds, draining the rest of his coffee and pocketing his phone, before heading back into the crazed madness, well aware that he’s pathetically trying to gesture himself out of this pit because that’s what they always do.

*

By the time he gets back to Bobby’s, Jack is a snit. He’s overtired and possibly teething and makes an angry babble in greeting and furiously crawls over to him.

“Hey kiddo,” Dean says, scooping him up. Jack wuffles into his neck, successfully smearing whatever sticky substance he had on his face that’s currently into his jacket. Dean rubs his back. “Alright, Bobby?”

“Mmhmm,” Bobby hums.

“You been good for Grandpa, Jack?” Dean asks, pulling him out of neck to take a look at him. Jack blinks his big blue eyes.

“Yup,” Bobby answers, even though there’s a minor trail of chaos throughout the place that indicates that is a total lie. This crawling thing is a damned riot. “Except for the part where he’s refused his nap.”

“Ah,” Dean says, arching an eyebrow at him. Jack makes an innocent babble and hides his face in Dean's shoulder again. “Yeah, he’s been doing that, haven’t you? Growth spurt, probably. Ah —- you want help with the clean up operation?”

“Nah, sit down y’idjit,” Bobby says, “You want caffeine?”

“Like a kid wants Santa to come,” Dean says, sitting down and allowing himself to be half eaten by Bobby’s leather sofa. It’s blessedly quiet after the mall. Bobby’s got one stubby little tree propped up near a stack of books that’s largely populated by ornaments made by his various collected grandkids and it’s refreshingly unchristmassy . Their own place is way too festive for Dean’s tastes, after he spent that day sifting through the boxes of stuff they gained over the years and doing his best to make the place pass the judgement Naomi is apparently expected to pour over them. He drew the line at tinsel on the door handles.

“Speaking of Christmas,” Bobby says, arching an eyebrow at him as he trudges back through the kitchen.

“Oh boy,”

“Ellen’s been asking about the damned holiday party.”

“Ah, yeah,” Dean says, as he accepts his coffee. “Well, it’s either four or zero, but Cas hasn’t been in a decision making place. He —— well,” Dean says, frowning. “He’s not in a festive place, period.”

“Mhmm.”

“I’ll try and pin him down.”

“You alright?” Bobby asks.

“Me and Cas? Why wouldn’t we be?”

“No idea,” Bobby says, dryly. “But you’re taking it upon yourself to go Christmas shopping.”

“ I Christmas shop.”

“Oh yeah,” Bobby agrees, his eyebrows making a distinct point about something or other. Apparently, it’s not a secret that Cas has been taking care of that for years. He doesn’t know how he feels about that.

“He won’t talk to me, ” Dean says, “But there’s nothing new there .”

“Mmhm, he’s got that stoic routine alright.”

“I don’t know,” Dean says, frowning at his coffee. Jack is now grabbing hold of his earlobe and tugging, because it doesn’t currently hurt so Dean isn’t gonna stop it. “It’s his mom, we’ve —— we’ve never really talked about that, and I don’t know a damn thing about mothers. Earned my stripes on Daddy issues, but I got very little to offer about Moms.”

Bobby hums and drinks his coffee. He’d be going to come for Christmas, but Dean had told him to save himself and get an invite elsewhere because he can’t imagine it’s gonna be any kind of fun. Cas had gotten all tight lipped when he found out he wasn’t coming, like he’s conceded that Naomi is coming but not that they should rearrange any of their plans accordingly.

“You really think it’s that different from Daddy issues?”

“No,” Dean says, darkly. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

*

He makes such a clatter getting back through the front door that he rouses Cas from whatever he was watching on the TV.

“You have bags,” Cas says, blinking at him as Dean wheels in the damned stroller and brings in the rest of the chaos with him. Jack’s asleep because he can’t resist the soporific power of driving in a car — survived even the transfer from car seat to stroller, which Dean’s concluded is the most effective method of getting everything from car to house in one trip, even though it means battling it with the damn folding stroller mechanism — which means he has a small slither of opportunity to park him in the passage and sort through everything. “You —— you’ve been shopping.”

Dean makes a noise of acknowledgement as he pulls back one of the kitchen chairs to lug a bag up onto it. Cas looks in one of the other bags and his eyes widen as he registers what exactly Dean’s been buying.

“You took Jack to a shopping mall?”

“No, Bobby’s,” Dean says.

“Ah,” Cas says, smiling slightly as he looks up at him with this obvious affection. “It’s good that I don’t need to recommend you a neurological exam this close before Christmas.”

Dean huffs a laugh.

“I’m still in two minds about that, Doc,” Dean says, leaning forward to kiss him briefly. “Fucking manic.”

“I’ll allow that because Jack is asleep.”

“Oh yeah, the language was the primary reason I left Jack with Bobby,” Dean says.

“This makes my day at the practice feel very relaxed,” Cas says, “You must be hungry.”

“Mmhm,” Dean agrees, glancing back at Jack. He’s still asleep. Dean wouldn’t be surprised if he slept through, at this point if he refused his nap. He ate something at Bobby’s.

“You eat, I’ll go put him to bed.”

“Allright,” Dean agrees, as Cas reaches out and touches his face briefly with this small smile that Dean’s taking to mean the effort was appreciated.

Cas seeks him out again, monitor in hand, and sits on the edge of their spare bedroom as Dean sorts things into piles. He made some damn progress, even if he didn’t exactly finish. He has most of the presents for the next generation, which is the important part. He’s pretty sure Sam isn’t going to throw a tantrum about injustice if Dean never gets round to buying him a present, but he doubts Robbie has grasped the concept of adult life admin and terminal illness exceptions. Cas picks up the awful round-faced doll that he’d bought for Mary, who seems to have a real commitment to the creepy things despite Sam and Jess’ efforts. When he’d asked what the rugrats wanted for Christmas, Sam had referred to these things with a real note of resignation.

“Have you considered that we will end up with all of this in three years?” Cas asks. Dean snorts and grimaces.

“Maybe she’ll lose it.” Dean says, “Or damage it beyond repair.”

“Perhaps an aggressive game of hospital?”

“I’ll work on it,” Dean says.

“Thank you, Dean,” Cas says, looking back up at him with a smile that makes Dean’s chest turnover. He feels more shitty about it than anything else, given Cas has taken on most of the burden of organising Christmas for years and it feels suddenly obvious that he shouldn’t receive gratitude for pulling his weight. He’s always thought that they make a pretty equal partnership, splitting down all the household crap whatever way made most sense with their shifts: they both cook and clean and do laundry and keep track of what they’re running out of. Dean usually ends up with more full days of parenting due the nature of his shifts, but Cas gets all the pickups, more bedtimes, more days that bleed straight from work to childcare. They tried to get it pretty equal. He didn’t really realise that he’d inadvertently ducked out of a whole raft of household duties by being grumpy about Christmas. Cas’ mom is dying. Of course he bought the damned Christmas presents.

“We’re getting the rest online,”

“Yes.”Cas agrees, with a slight smile. “I can wrap things tomorrow, if Jack ever naps.”

“Oh yeah, he didn’t.” Dean says, “Probably my bad. Long shot at Bobby’s, when he’s got grandpa to play with, but — Bobby says he ate pretty well and carrot sticks are back in, which is a win, and Sam —-” Dean trials off, as Cas’ light affectionate expression has disappeared. His fingers have still on the scarf Dean had eventually settled on for Naomi in a panic.

Dean’s throat suddenly feels thick and he feels abruptly stupid about the gesture and the attempt. He is completely unqualified to buy Cas’ mom her final goddamn Christmas present. He’s unqualified to buy her a present, period. He’d never tried to be qualified. He has made almost zero effort with Cas mom, ever. He made a solid attempt at pretending to be polite if she was actually in front of him, but he’s been overflowing with opinions about her from the off. He’s still been doing it to Sam and to Bobby, like he has any right to comment. Cas probably wanted to buy his own damn present. He hadn’t seemed inclined too, but if she’s coming then this Christmas should be about that and nothing to do with Dean and his pathetic attempts to help.

“For your mom, if you —— I kept the receipt.”

“It’s beautiful,” Cas says, his voice a deep gravel, and he looks deeply unhappy. His eyes are fixed sharply on the silk. He closes his fist over it, inhales sharply.

“Cas,” Dean says, knife in his throat.

“You must be tired,” Cas says, standing up abruptly. He picks up the monitor and draws his expression in, in a way that means Dean’s definitely done something wrong.

“ Cas.” Dean says.

“You’ve done enough Christmas martyrdom for one night, Dean,” Cas says, “And I haven’t seen you all week.”

They end up infront of Doctor Sexy. Cas relaxes in increments. He keeps looking back at the baby monitor and resolutely ignoring his phone, even though Dean can see texts rolling in from the Milton family group chat, but his shoulders steadily loosen as the show continues. At the end of the first episode, Cas surrenders any space between them and rests against his side and Dean settles with his fingers in his hair, fruitlessly trying to offer some kind of comfort.

“Like your hair this length,” Dean comments.

“Hm, it’s unintentional, I just haven’t had time.”

“Suits you,”

“My mother won’t like it,” Cas says, his voice tight, and Dean’s no longer sure if that means he’s going to do something about it or if he’s resolutely not going to do something about that and he doesn’t know what to feel about that. He’d kind of like to know what kind of battle they’re going into before they pick Naomi up at the airport.

On screen, Doctor Sexy and Nurse Handsome have restarted their on-off relationship, again, even though Dean’s relatively sure that if they haven’t been able to work it out for this many years there probably isn’t a great future in it.

He wants to dig into the Naomi thing again, but he’s not sure he’s brave enough. He is tired, too, and he’s back at the hospital again tomorrow.

“Ah, I remember sex.” Dean says, watching idly as they get it on in the on-call room, all pushing and passionately shoving at each other lets it’s a remotely private space.

“Hmm, I don’t,” Cas says, deadpan enough that Dean laughs and nudges him with his foot. Cas’ mouth crinkles up into a smile and Dean just fucking adores him, all the time, even if they spent more time on household management than anything else these days.

They watch in a comfortable silence for a while.

“We could.” Cas says, and it takes Dean a moment to realise that Cas is still on the subject of sex that they’re almost talking about. He’s right, too, because Jack is asleep and Dean’s not working until the glorious hour of nine in the morning and they’ve both actually already eaten. Their windows of opportunity are slim enough that Dean’s stopped noticing them and he should probably be more concerned about that than he is.

“What, now?”

“It’s an option,” Cas says. He sounds quite neutral about the idea, which is probably aligned with how Dean feels about the temporary death of their sex life. He didn’t know he could be so unbothered, but Jack is the most adorable cockblock they’ve ever had. There’s very little he’d change about their current set up and most of it would centre around the things that are going on outside their little bubble.

“That wasn’t a real complaint.”

“I’m aware,” Cas says. Dean watches the onscreen drama of a car crash start to unfold.

“Uh, feels like a lot of effort, this exact second. A lot of prep work.”

“I didn’t mean like that,” Cas says, wrinkling his eyebrows, looking put off enough about the suggestion that Dean laughs.

“And they say romance is dead.”

“It’s been a long day, Dean.”

“I know, hotstuff,” Dean says, as Cas quiets, close against his side. They’ve been doing this for ten freaking years now, which is the kind of thing that throws him for a loop because it feels both too short and too long all at once. The time before Cas feels like a lifetime ago, but apparently he still has the ability to feel it all deeper, more insistently, because this past year he’s felt a lot like he’s dug out most of his foundations and rebuilt them all in a way that’s more solid. That’s actually talking to Sam about everything that’s shaped them and it’s falling head-over-heels for Jack, but it’s also realising how much Cas saved him in the first place, it’s getting to see him parent, getting to both united in how wrecked they are by loving Jack Winchester.

He hits the remote as the episode dwindles to a close, shifting in his seat to kiss him properly. He keeps it brief, because there’s a lot of things that are higher on his list than sex right now.

“You alright?” Dean asks, pulling back. Cas has a hand over his cheek, warm and close.

“I’m fine, Dean.”

“Really?”

“Beyond the obvious, I am very happy,” Cas says and Dean does believe that, it’s just ‘the obvious’ feels like it’s a pretty huge deal that’s been packaged away, wrapped up and shoved under the damn Christmas tree to be a problem later. It feels the equivalent of leaving a goddamn land mine in their front room.

“It’s not Christmas martyrdom, I’m just,” Dean trails off, slightly lost. “I wanna help.”

“I appreciate you buying the Christmas presents,”

“Well, I’m overdue.”

“Dean, I know it costs you.”

“I’m fine, Cas. I’ve been trying to tell you,”

“You put up the decorations,” Cas says, something complicated playing around his mouth. “You hate Christmas decorations.”

“Yeah, well, I love you, asshole,” Dean says, “I can take the damn scarf back if you want, I just want to help.”

Cas pulls his hand away, distances himself, his eyebrows crinkling.

“And be involved,” Cas says, with a harshness in his voice that Dean wasn’t expecting.

“Well, we’re married, Sweetheart.”

“Yes, I noticed,” Cas says. “Please leave it alone, Dean.”

“Then goddamn talk to me,” Dean says.

“I’ll talk to you when I’m ready, Dean.”

“Fine. Great,” Dean says, flopping back onto the sofa and exhaling heavily. “Can’t wait.”

“Evidently,” Cas says, standing up to clear up their empty bottles of beer as an excuse to get out of the damn room.

Dean leaves the TV off and stares at the stupid Christmas tree he erected and directed. He tried, but he’s objective enough to know that Cas would’ve done a much better job. He’s been steadfastly driving through Christmas for years, so all of this is sure to be a goddamn disaster.

Chapter Text

“Can really tell who did the Christmas decorations this year,” Sam says, smirking at him over his beer in Dean’s kitchen. He can hear the distant sounds of the chaos that comes with children. Well, it’s mostly just Robbie, given Mary still generally prefers to let Robbie do the talking and communicates largely by the medium of pointing and gesturing and, while Jack has a helluva pair of lungs, they tend to mostly be used for crying. Right now, they’re three for three on good moods. There’s a mutual kind of adoration between Jack and Robbie which means they got the usual calls of glee when they arrived. Mary finds Jack generally intriguing and tends to watch the two of them, clutching one of her ghastly dolls, usually from the vantage position from someone’s lap. On this occasion, she’d clung onto Jessica, who’d accepted her fate of sitting in the living room with the kids, Castiel and Naomi Milton.

“Fuck you,” Dean says cheerfully, as he continues making up Jess and Naomi’s cups of tea. He dunks the teabag with the spoon again and looks up over him.

“Cas looked tense when she put in her order.”

“Mmm,” Dean agrees, because he is not wrong. Cas has mostly been operating on a silent litany of tight-frowns and almost audible displeasure. They’ve basically not spoken to each other, even to acknowledge the massive elephant in the room which is that Naomi is really not well. That all feels really goddamn obvious, but last he’d heard from Gabriel’s most recent visit, she’d been feeling well in herself even if she was inherently not well. The first thing Dean had noticed was that she looked shockingly frail. She’d gained a walking stick, which she’d been depending on a lot in the walk across the parking lot and he’d had to help her in and out of the car. Dean’s pretty damn certain that she’d have been judged not well enough to travel by any competent professional and that she’s probably here against medical advice. Or the very least, she’d’ve needed to make it clear she was staying with a qualified doctor and a NP for anyone to even accept that it was short of a kamikaze mission. Naomi wanted to be here enough that she’s taken some serious compromises with her health and he is really fucking sure they Cas knows that, just by looking at her. The fact that he’s locked all of that inside of his chest rather than acknowledging it is concerning. “Got this real thing about her being difficult.”

“Is she? Being difficult?”

“Nope, not particularly,” Dean says, because by Naomi’s terms she’s been positively angelic. She hadn’t commented on any of the things Cas said she’d pick at: there had been absolutely no digging at Dean’s car, Jack’s mismatch of toys or clothing, about Dean’s anything, about their split of parenting duties or the fact that Jack is still sleeping in their bedroom. She’d made one positive comment about the new arrangement of their living room which Cas seemed to take as an insult and after that she’d chosen to stay broadly silent. “Honestly, she’s been eerily polite since I picked her up from the airport last night. Zero comment on anything that hasn’t been entirely neutral.”

“But Cas is on edge.”

“Oh, he is the definition of tense,” Dean says, “Still frowning at all the points she’d normally reign down judgement, didn’t sleep last night, tossing and turning all night… he’s testy.”

“Testy.”

“Pissy. A pain in the ass. A real festive delight. Not that anyone can blame him from that. She doesn’t look good.”

“No,” Sam agrees, his mouth pulled into this thoughtful, sad expression. “Well, maybe I’ll give Cas a wide berth.”

“Hmmm, don’t worry, pretty sure that’s only going to be directed at either me or Naomi, if he gets past half pretending she’s not there.”

“And? I’ve witnessed enough of your domestics as it is,” Sam says, tapping his hands on the island and raising his eyebrows. Dean flips him off. “I’m still aiming for a less dramatic Christmas than last year.”

“Well, I’ve given up on that,” Dean says.

“ That bad, huh?”

“I am currently the only social lubricant in this, and it’s an all lube on deck kind of situation.”

“Wow,” Sam says, “That’s — that’s quite the visual, Dean.”

He’s glad Sam is here. Dean had suggested they cancel their pre-Christmas gathering, given it was the first full night that Naomi was going to be here and it seemed kind of unfair to subject her to the full kidsfest — especially now he’s seen her — but Cas had gotten all irritable and made some comment about not disappointing Robbie before he’d dodged the rest of the conversation. Dean hadn’t pushed it, given he’s not exactly been looking forward to hanging out with the pair of them and this afternoon of exchanging presents and enjoying pre-Christmas with his little brother had been one of the parts he was looking forward to.

“He hasn’t let her hold him. Jack.” Dean says, gaze set on the cup of tea that he’s probably over brewed by now. He’d kind of taken it in last night, but he’d written it off as a product of the time she’d landed. Jack should really have already been down for the night and it wasn’t necessarily a good opportunity to pass him round for baby-cuddles and re-introductions, but then he’d noted it again this morning. Dean got out of the shower and came down to a semi-normal scene of breakfast chaos and Cas had said ‘oh good, you’re here’ and he’d been handed a sticky, yoghurt covered baby so Cas could get himself sorted. Dean had accidentally caught Naomi’s eye from where she was sitting at the table, with this glint in her eye that meant Dean was pretty sure she’d noticed her being passed over too. And there’s a chance that Cas hadn’t wanted to impose on her while he was so fully breakfasted, but then Dean had watched him all day and it never happened.

“I —- maybe I’m reading into it too much.”

“Maybe,” Sam says.

Naomi has already met Jack once during a visit that, in retrospect, he thinks Naomi probably intended to tell Castiel about the cancer treatment she was receiving, because Dean’s sure that fits with the timeline of the last bout of treatment. She’d looked suddenly older, then, and Dean remembers this worried crease in Cas’ brow which meant he’d clearly noticed it too. They’d both set it aside without really talking about it. They’ve both seen it before. How one setback hits someone until the ageing process suddenly seems to catch up with them all at once, till someone slips from active and independent to not . There’d been a long gap between when they'd seen her last, so it wasn’t necessarily surprising that it had struck them as significant. Lately, he’s noticed that Bobby is less steady than he used to be in an uncomfortable realisation that stuck to the back of his throat in this uncomfortable pre-grief. Last time he’d seen Jo, she’d been talking about Ellen needing to ‘slow down’ in a way that had thrown him for a loop, because he still thinks of them both as tough-as-nails. They’re all getting older. Naomi is in her eighties. It wasn’t a surprise that Cas didn’t think too much of it, until suddenly he did.

Dean’s pretty sure she held Jack last time, but he has this gnawing feeling that he’s the one who passed him to her. He was only a couple of months old then and Dean was in a haze of sleep deprivation and freaking diapers and Jack was on the tail end of this bitch of a cold that meant he was grizzly and a general pain in the ass. They’d gotten pretty used to visitors who arrived and more or less held their arms straight out for baby cuddles, so he hadn’t really conceptualised it as a big deal. Now he’s worried that he inadvertently crossed one of Cas’ boundaries without him realising, along with stewing in the uncomfortable feeling that he’s not sure how he feels about Jack being used as some kind of emotional bargaining chip, if that is what Cas is doing. He gets Cas’ reticence on one level, but he doesn’t feel good about it and he’s got no goddamn idea how he’s supposed to bring that up in a way that’s sensitive and doesn’t make it seem like he’s throwing around accusations about their son. It is mostly Cas’ decision how much he wants his family involved in Jack’s life, especially at this point where he’s genuinely not going to remember. Naomi isn’t entitled to a relationship with her grandkid, but …

She travelled a long way for this.

“Maybe she doesn’t do babies,” Dean ventures, “Not like she’s asked, which FYI, I do not understand, given he’s goddamn perfect.”

“Agreed,” Sam says. Sam had waxed a lot of poetics about ‘this stage’ when he’d been having his own Jack-hugs. Dean thinks, in a lot of ways, Sam’s enjoyed being slightly further ahead in the parenting journey, meaning he’s gotten to play big-brother in a number of ways. It’s been good for them. “She could be being respectful,” Sam ventures.

“Yeah,” Dean hedges, because that does sound right, except for the part that Naomi has spent so little of her life attempting to be respectful of other people’s boundaries. Whatever game of silent chicken they’re playing with their emotional baggage, Dean does not understand it. “Not usually her style. What did you say about normal families? Micro-passive aggressions and unvoiced compromises? Turns out you had a point. Probably bad husbanding to hide out in here with you all night,” Dean mutters.

“Yeah, I thinks so,” Sam agrees.

“Well,” Dean says, wedging the beers and the juice box under the crook of his arm and picking up Naomi’s tea. Sam picks up the other cup of tea. “Once more unto the breach.”

It’s only mild-madness by the time they get back in with the drinks. Robbie has set up what looks like a game of animal hospital while Jack sits up and stares at him, with his blue eyes wide with wonder. He’s holding onto Jess’ leg to hold himself up even though he doesn’t really need to, babbling happily. There’s a strewn of destruction behind them, with the blocks and the god awful plastic monstrosity that makes noises when you hit different parts of it (a gift from Gabriel, because he apparently hates them) abandoned on the floor. Mary has abandoned Jess’ lap in favour of ‘reading’ one of Jack’s cloth books. Jess and Naomi are the ones actually having a conversation, which turns out to be around Jess’ teaching job and how Robbie’s doing at school (well, mostly, although he hates phonics finds the expectation that he sits still for so much of the day to be slightly unreasonable), although Dean notes that at least most of Naomi’s attention is fixed on Jack.

After Dean’s delivered the drinks, both Sam and Cas get roped into participating in the pretend game, sitting on the floor with the three of them. Mary climbs onto Cas’ lap and curls up against his side with her book and Dean just goddamn adores the lot of them. He can get behind Christmas if it involves watching these three beautiful, brilliant kids hanging out in his front room, innocent and so easily pleased, with Sam and Cas. Robbie’s gotten a little less full on lately, like he’s in better control of his emotions. Melt downs are increasingly rare, but with the hotbed of excitement and expectation of Christmas Dean wouldn’t rule it out. More and more, Dean can feel out all the subtle ways he is and isn’t like Sam was as a kid. There’s grief in that, because it echos some of the way Sam might’ve been if their childhood had panned out differently, but some of it feels like the parts he got from Jess and the things he’s gotten from Sam’s steady, patient parenting and the parts that are just Robbie. Robbie has never doubted that he’s safe and loved and Dean hopes that he never does: that he keeps on growing up, becoming more and more himself, more confident and sure of his identity. Mary has some of Sam’s old quiet self-sufficiency. Jess told them that they’d been talk of her having undeveloped social skills at daycare which they’d pushed back on, because she isn’t shy, not really, she’s just happy to do her own thing, at her own pace. They’d stopped talking about it after she’d developed a couple of key three-year-old friendships with relative ease.

Dean is glad that Jack has them. He probably won’t have siblings, but he will have cousins and he’s pretty damn sure that they’re going to look after him. That Robbie’s going to be cheerleading Jack through all of lives ups and downs and that Mary would kick the ass of anyone who ever dared to upset him. They’ve already decided that they’re going to send them to the same school. Beyond that, he get Jo’s brood, he get Benny’s daughter, he gets Charlie who declared herself the ‘cool aunt’ and demands regular photo updates and he gets Sam and Jess and Bobby and Ellen and a whole extended family that loves him.

He already has a lot more than they ever got and he’s only really just started.

“Oh, Gabriel is coming over on Christmas day,” Cas responds to some question or other from Jess, as he obediently holds the stuffed giraffe that Robbie passes him. “He had unvoiced plans on Christmas Eve, although I suspect they involved a woman.”

Dean looks to Naomi, because he doesn’t know how she feels about that, either. Gabriel had committed to ‘being around’ in the loosest sense to the final days of her visit, but he hadn’t exactly made a concentrated effort. Dean wasn’t surprised, give Gabriel tended to run away from most of the complicated family drama.

“Mystery woman, huh? Not like Gabriel to play it coy.” Sam says, holding his own bandaged-up teddy. “He hasn’t mentioned anything.”

“Probably trying to get out of her inviting her to the Harvelle Holiday party,” Dean says, “Can’t believe you’ve got out of it this year, Sam. Traitor.”

“Sorry,” Sam says, entirely unapologetically. “Got to get on the road down to Jess’ parents.”

“Dean,” Cas says, “Jo puts great effort into hosting and you spent the better half of the year talking about the mini pies, so you could pretend to be grateful.”

“Will when I’m there,” Dean mutters.

“That I’d like to see.” Sam says, smirking at him.

“ Uncle Cas, Uncle Dean, Dad, we’re supposed to be playing,” Robbie says, abruptly. “Stop talking.”

“Robbie,” Jess says, warningly. Dean’s not sure when Sam graduated from Daddy to Dad, but it makes him feel kind of wistful and nostalgic. The kids growing up.

“Please stop talking,” Robbie tries again, the please sounding more passive aggressive than appologetic. “I can’t hear to play.”

“Sorry kiddo,” Dean says, “But us grown ups also need to catch up, bud. You think we can do both?”

“ No,” Robbie says, “ We’re playing.”

“Robbie,” Cas says, seriously, looking him in the eye. “What if me, you and Jack go upstairs to carry on the game in peace and quiet, so that everyone else can carry on their conversation?” Robbie considers this for a few moments before he nods. “Mary, what would you like to do? Cas asks Mary. Mary sets down her book and considers him for a little while.

“Up,” Mary declares.

“Can we do a full sentence, Mary?” Sam says, arching an eyebrow at her. Mary looks at him with her big brown eyes and her blonde curls.

“Up, please.” Mary says, so damn precocious and brilliant that Dean can’t help but smirk into his beer.

“Close enough,” Sam says, with a head tilt and a resigned smile. After the little brigade has headed up the stairs, Sam offers a wry smile at their retreating backs. “I give it five minutes before he remembers there are presents to be opened.”

Dean smiles but he’s disquieted, because it feels a lot like Cas was looking for an escape route. He’s all for division of labour, but he’s not sure how long Cas can keep avoiding his mother in his own house, and he can feel Naomi’ taking it all in with her quiet resignation.

She looks smaller than when he last saw her, like the cancer has shrunk her, drawing out the wrinkles around her eyes, but she hasn’t lost any of that firm sharpness or the way she carries authority. She still manages to be imposing in the midst of her frailness. Dean’s never liked her, but she’s an impressive woman, by a lot of ways of measuring things. She has this ability to cut through bullshit to deliver some pretty impressive smackdowns that Dean would find admirable, in another person, which Dean’s pretty sure hasn’t gotten anywhere. She’s still sharp as a tack, even if she’s physically less able. She had a lauded career in neurosurgery before she gave up practising to become one of those renowned but tough lecturers, which is probably the trajectory she’d expected for Castiel before he’d decided he’d rather work-to-live than live-to-work. She’d only given that up in her seventies. She raised two ivy-league educated lawyers, two doctors and Gabriel, which she mostly did alone according to the scant offerings Cas has given about his father’s presence in his childhood. She’s formidable and Dean would’ve expected her to find it harder to be humbled by the frailty of the human condition, but she’s been surprisingly matter-of-fact about her odds. She’d accepted it with more grace that Dean would’ve expected and she’s responded to Cas’ cold-fish routine with a lot more understanding than Dean would’ve anticipated. She’s just taken it. She hasn’t pushed. She’s showing no evidence of having been offended by Cas running out of the room, or ability to avoid speaking about anything real. She looks entirely as if she'd expected it.

Bizarrely, Naomi has been a lot better behaved than Castiel.

Sam is right about the five minutes it takes until Robbie comes thundering back down the stairs, employing that remarkable ability of parental-deafness at the calls for him to ‘calm down’, with Mary in tow and Cas bringing up the rear. As pre-Christmasses go, it’s a really excellent day.

*

As it’s probably predictable, it all falls apart at the Christmas party.

It started pretty well, even though Dean was pretty sure the whole thing was collasally bad idea. He had tried to broach the conversation about whether Naomi was even well enough for it, but in the end he’d been shut down by Naomi, who’d talked across his concerns with a startling degree of reasonability about just needing somewhere to be able to sit and a relatively early night, which she assumed would be on the cards anyway because of Jack. As soon as they’d gotten them, Ellen had materialised with the best chair at the Roadhouse and set her up with a drink and had sat down and chatted to her while they’d done the initial round of hellos. After that, his family had taken it upon themselves to form a rotation system, so that Naomi always had one-or-two people to have conversation with, while Jack did the tour of winning over everyone’s hearts who hadn’t seen him for a few months and Cas got to speak to freaking Meg and Dean got a tight hug from Charlie and an update from Benny. After a while, Dean made his way back with Naomi with Jo and they sat and had a surprisingly comfortable conversation with Naomi about the difference in Dean’s role and shifts after finishing the AANPs, Jo’s chosen surgical specialism and Naomi’s opinion on how hospitals should be managed. It’s probably the most in-depth conversation he’s ever had with Naomi in his life and it’s shockingly not antagonistic. They don’t agree on a lot of it, but there’s a degree of respect in their disagreement. He gets his mini-pies and Cas gets to ignore his mother, which appears to be his primary aim in this whole fucking visit, and setting aside the damn christmas music and the freaking Christmas sweaters it’s all entirely tolerable until Gabriel shows up.

He’s there a fair few hours after they’ve arrived. In his defence, he shows up pretty solidly with the ‘not-parent’ group (and will presumably be looking to stay later than a ten month old’s bedtime), but Dean has pretty much felt Cas waiting for him to arrive to share some brotherly-solidarity.

“How’s it going?” Gabriel asks, making a beeline straight to them where Dean had just sought Cas out with the vague idea that he might make some doomed attempt to suggest that Cas go deliver his mother another drink. Gabriel’s question is clearly about Naomi, rather than a general enquiry about their wellbeing so Dean leaves enough space in the conversation for Cas to answer until it becomes clear that he’s not going to. He’s silent as stoic as he has been for goddamn months, which is really wearing thin.

“Not bad,” Dean says, answering for him as he glances back over to where Naomi is sitting with Bobby and Charlie on the other side of the room. It feels particularly strange to have her involved in the rest of their lives and Dean’s relatively sure that Cas is regretting the decision to come, because Dean’s pretty sure he doesn’t want Naomi to know his family and friends. She’s spent a lot of the time not trying to be involved in that side of his life, anyway, so it’s felt pretty easy to keep a separation between church and state. Cas had seemed visibly discomforted when Charlie had greeted them with a ‘great to meet you!’ to Naomi, then somehow ended up in a conversation with her for the better half an hour. Charlie looks thoroughly engaged in it, too. Dean supposes the medical background has a lot greater mileage than Dean would have assumed, because he can’t imagine what else they could be talking about.

“On her best behaviour?” Gabriel asks, glancing over at her. She is on her best behaviour, as far as Dean’s concerned, but agreeing with that feels like it would be antagonistic. “She looks…” he trails off, losing the end of the sentence to the general discomfort of talking about dying and ageing in plain terms. She looks like she’s dying. Slowly at this point, yeah, but this shitty, brutal disease is clearly robbing her of herself. She looks small in that chair.

“Yes,” Cas agrees, the word short, but there’s enough emotion packed behind it that it’s clear Cas is thinking the same thing. It’s the first verbal acknowledgement about that. He’s normally more direct after years of medical training, but it’s different when you’re talking about your mother.

“Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that,” Dean says, “Gabriel, what’s her set up like at home? You were there a few months back, right? Is she --- is she getting enough help? I --- tonight’s probably not the time, but. We probably need to talk about it.”

“There’s no point talking about it without her,” Gabriel says, his expression unusually serious. “She won’t accept anything not on her own terms,”

“I get that,” Dean says, “But, I think it’s time. Did she… has she made arrangements for the next part?”

“You mean a hospice,” Cas says, his voice stiff. Harsh.

“Cas,” Dean says, softer, “We’re… we’re not talking about months, until that. If she knows what she wants…”

“Our mother always knows what she wants,” Gabriel says.

“You’re right, this isn’t the time to talk about this.” Cas says, drawing into himself.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, “Lets, before she goes home, if we all sit down and ---”

“ Michael could deal with this. He’s closer. He’s also a doctor, he --”

“And he’s heartless and doesn’t give a damn about anything that doesn’t line his bank account,” Gabriel says, “Think you’ve got a point, Deano. Just let me know when. Schedule’s clear after Christmas.”

“I’ll leave the two of you to arrange that, ” Cas says, bristling, “I’m going to relocate my son.”

“He’s with Ellen,” Dean says, “Cas,” he begins again, but then Cas has disappeared into the party, pushing past people in his rush to get away..

“Okay then,” Gabriel says, raising his eyebrows in a distinctly big-brotherly fashion that irks something in him.

“He’s been like this for goddamn weeks, Gabe, so if you could stop playing Mr Avoidant and show the fuck up that would be great,” Dean snaps, then almost immediately regrets it because maybe it’s true but it’s probably not fair. It’s not his business, not his mother, not his grief, except he’s stuck in the passenger seat of this car crash trying to work out how the hell he’s supposed to help. He sucks in a deep breath and tries to steady himself. “Sorry. That was uncalled for.”

“Maybe not,” Gabriel says, exhaling heavily. “I should probably go and say hi.”

“Probably,” Dean snorts, massaging his temple and sighing. “I should go and follow Cas.”

“Probably,” Gabriel agrees. “She’s a complicated matriarch, our mother.”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, because he knows that. He gets that it’s complicated. He gets that Cas has half a dozen entirely different feelings about his mother on a good day and he doesn’t know what it’s like to try and detangle that with a goddamn time limit. “Allright,” He says, conjuring up the energy within himself to try and relocate Cas. He finds him out in the corridor, back against the wall, breathing heavily. “Cas,”

“I’m not in the mood, Dean.”

“Yeah, I picked up on that,” Dean says, pocketing his hands. “Look, Cas, we did the dramatic argument storming out of Ellen’s damn Christmas party last year and we’re not doing it again. It’s lazy to repeat the same damn plot for our Christmas meltdown, so will you just —— please, take a breath and talk to me.”

“Let’s just go home, Dean.” Cas says, his voice raw with something. They’ve definitely already put in enough of a shift that they can leave and it’s probably the best idea Cas has had in weeks. He’s entirely pro-leaving.

“Okay, fine,” Dean says, “We’ve just gotta extract Naomi and Jack and —”

“Yes, please let’s ensure my mother is comfortable —”

“What the hell do you want me to do here?” Dean says, “Spit in her face and leave her at the damn Christmas party?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I want.” Cas spits out, heat building in his voice.

“You want me to leave your mother here? At a goddamn roadhouse, when she can barely walk-- ”

“I want you to stop being on her side.”

“What?”

“This constant attending to her needs.”

“She’s sick.”

“I don’t want my nurse practitioner, I want my husband.”

“And I am a hundred percent here, Cas.”

“You’re on her side, you think… you hate her, Dean, and now you’re acting like none of her previous behaviour matters —”

“— I, okay,” Dean says, grabbing a handful of his arm and pulling him out of the corridor, through the door, spilling out onto the deck outside. The cold air smacks him round the face, wind whipping at his skin, and Cas looks like he’s about to cry. “I’m gonna need a little help here,” Dean says, squeezing his arms, holding him at arm’s length so he can’t look away or continue to duck away. “Please, Cas, talk to me.”

“I was twenty two, Dean,” Cas says, ringing his hands, “Samandriel made some opaque reference to my ex-boyfriend and she asked me to leave, she said that she expected a child of hers to adhere to a higher standard —- and it was Christmas, Dean, fucking Christmas and —-

whatever bigoted moronic views you held, I don’t understand — how, to your child,”

“Cas, hey,” Dean says, the empathy churning out of him in a big rush, holding tight onto his arms in some attempt to keep him grounded.

“I have been making excuses for her —- I have reasoned away her behaviour, I have absolved her, but you — you hate my mother, Dean, you tolerate her for my sake but you’re —- it cannot all be okay just because she’s dying. Her death doesn’t invalidate how she lived her life. You can’t —- you can’t expect me not to be angry at her just because she’s, because ——“

“Cas,”

“I’m too angry at her for her to die.” Cas says, and then the fight burns out his voice, and he drops his hands to his sides and Dean pulls him into a tight hug. Cas buries his face into his chest and starts to shake with these dry sobs that make Dean’s chest cave in. He rubs his back and holds him, til their breathing falls into the same rhythm, and he has no idea what to fucking do, how to help, what to say.

He only pulls away when they hear the door behind them. It’s dark but for the porch light, which is just enough to see the exact set expression on Naomi’s face. She’s grim but determined, stubbornly holding herself up with her walking stick. She bought Bobby too, who has a now-sleepy Jack in his arms.

“Castiel, you want to leave,” Naomi says, in a way that’s not really an instruction or a question. It’s more a statement, which begs the serious question about whether she heard any of that or if she intrinsically understands Cas, too, and has felt him projecting that from the otherside of the room. He wonders, again, how much Naomi understands about Castiel.

“Yes,” Cas says, pulling himself together and putting space between them. He looks back at Dean, something in his gaze asking desperately for help.

“I can do the goodbyes while you get Jack set up,” Dean says, gently.

“Don’t worry about it, y’idjits,” Bobby says, stepping forward to do the Jack handover and to clap both of them on the shoulder. “We’re all grown ups, think we can work it out without your pleasantries.”

“Send Ellen our love,”

“Roger that,” Bobby says, “And look after yourselves, you hear me? And I’ll be expecting some damn pictures of my grandson.”

“Bobby,” Naomi says, prim and steady. “Thank your family for their hospitality, for me.”

“Mhmm,” Bobby affirms with a grunt and a nod, before he proffers a hand and shakes her free hand. “Good to see you again. Merry Christmas.”

They drive home in silence.

Chapter Text

By the time they pull up in front of the house, Jack is crying up a storm.

“I’ll put him to bed,” Cas says, rescuing him from the car seat. He pauses just long enough to see that Dean has successfully helped Naomi out of the car and she’s got her stick firmly on the ground before he starts up to the front door with Jack cradled to his chest. They take it slower, Dean keeping behind Naomi to keep an eye on her. Neither of them speak until they’re back over the threshold of the kitchen.

“Dean,” Naomi says, defiantly stood on her feet even though she’s a little wobbly, with this tight grip on her walking stick. He’s not really expecting her to start a conversation and he goes entirely still, looking at her. “You make my son happy.”

“I try,” Dean says, in some attempt at flippancy that doesn’t really quite pay off. He pulls out a seat for her at the kitchen table and she goes mercifully willingly. He’s not in the mood to have it out with her not pushing her limits in the damn kitchen, because he’s sure that’s not going to help. She sits with dignity, not looking away from him. Her gaze is steely and determined.

“You do. I’ve seen it,” Naomi says, “He’s different, since he met you.”

“Uh, well — same,” Dean says.

“It’s not a secret that I disapproved.”

Dean arches an eyebrow and gets himself a beer from the fridge. He’d much rather follow Cas upstairs and try to actually finish that conversation, but there’s something in Naomi’s gaze that’s difficult to pull away from. There’s a remarkable determination. She’s committed to whatever conversation she wants them to have and given she’s spent most of the last decade treating him as a semi-distasteful part of the furniture, there’s a certain curiosity in hearing out what she wants to say. She’s been trying beyond what Dean thought her capable of. “I’ve always had high expectations for Castiel. I always knew he could achieve a great deal if he worked for it.”

“He has, you know,” Dean says, his own challenge in it. Naomi raises her own eyebrow back in a way that seems to offer some modicum of respect.

“He was a very inquisitive child. Sensitive. More sensitive than any of his brothers. He made deep connections. He asked deep questions from a very young age and latched onto them until they’d been answered satisfactorily. He was obedient, but he wanted an explanation, he wanted to know why. I always thought those qualities would make him a good doctor. Compassion, a scientific mind, an innate desire to make things better. That came early, too. He was exceptionally young when he started displaying selflessness. You can imagine that his father and brother’s viewed it as weakness, but I didn’t. It takes selflessness to achieve truly great things. You understand that.” Naomi continues, levelling her gaze at him. He has him hooked now and she knows it. She’s always been manipulative and she knows what she’s doing by bringing young Cas into the conversation because he is fascinated about the idea of tiny Castiel. More so than ever, now they have Jack. “He was always fiercely intelligent, too. He did much better academically than socially, but he always had friends. A select few that he committed himself too. I could never quite pin down what he saw in those individuals, because it was never about talent, or about their ambition, or common intellect. I have since come to understand it was about their hearts.”

“You know, in all that I’ve lost track of whether you’re trying to insult me or not, but that last bit certainly felt pointed.” Dean says, not taking her eyes off her.

“In all my expectations and calculations about how he should live his life, I think I forgot to want or expect him to be happy. That was my mistake, my error,” Naomi says, her forehead creased in an expression that’s entirely Cas-like. “ I never made decisions based on what I wanted to do, what I felt. I was taught to be obedient, to follow religion, to follow societal rules about what choices I should make, what success looks like and therefore how to live my life. I put that on Castiel, without consulting or listening to him.”

Dean doesn’t know what the hell to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything at all. He simply watches her.

Naomi breaks his gaze and looks down at her own hands. It’s just a moment of weakness but it makes her look old. How fragile and fleeting the rest of life is suddenly feels entirely apparent and then she looks back up again, that steely gaze back on her face.

“He was right. About you, about his career, this home.”

“Look, I’m not the person who needs to hear any of this,” Dean says.

“Castiel… he’s stubborn. He doesn’t want to listen to me.”

“Wonder where he gets that from,” Dean says, with an eye roll. “Look, I’ve lived with the guy for long enough to understand when someone’s trying to gesture something they’re trying to communicate, but —- sometimes you’ve just gotta nut up and talk about it.”

“That’s your advice .”

“Lady, I’m not giving you advice. Last thing on my agenda is colluding with you. Not a big secret that I don’t like you, either, but I’m not getting in your way. You do and say whatever you need to do. My priority is Cas, and he —-” He stalls himself at that, Cas’ ‘ “I want you to stop being on her side’ fresh in his mind, then makes a decision. “He wants to hear that.”

Naomi nods, curt, and looks off into the middle distance.

“Well, this has been fascinating, but I need to talk to Cas, so I’m gonna -- ”

“Dean,” Naomi says, interjects. She draws her shoulders up around herself, conjuring up this real sense of dignity that somehow covers the vulnerability in it. “It’s been a long day and I have expended myself more than usual, so I believe I will need assistance up the stairs.”

“Sure thing, ma’am,” Dean says, pulling out an easy smile and some of his practised nurse-charm as he steps forward to offer her a steadying arm. It wins him the barest flicker of a smile, before all of her attention is focused on getting out of the chair. She’s steadier when she’s up, but she’s still gripping onto his arm tightly as they head towards the stairs. She feels tiny, with most of her weight on his arm and it feels so wild and absurd that someone so small and fragile could inspire such big, burning emotions in Castiel.

Not for the first time, he wonders what it would’ve been like to watch John Winchester grow old and die slow. Whether he’d accepted the caring role he’s played for half of his damn life with any kind of grace or peace, or if every damn part of it would’ve made him angrier and more aware of all the ways he’d been let down. He doesn’t know. He’s never thought of the way he lost John to be easier than anything, but he’s not sure he’d have taken a countdown if it was offered to him. He’d never have time to prepare himself for it.

“I can understand why you excel in your work,” Naomi says, as they reach the top. It’s a startlingly sincere compliment and Dean doesn’t really know what to say to it. He feels directly uncomfortable about it with Cas’ words still hot in his ear -- I don’t want my nurse practitioner, I want my husband -- but he couldn’t’ve left her downstairs after she’d asked for help.

“Careful, Naomi, your rep as a hard ass is on the line.” Dean says, as they reach the top step and she steadies herself with the wall.

“I believe that has long since deteriorated.”

“No way,” Dean says, “You’re still plenty intimidating.” Naomi almost smiles again. “I’ll go get your stick, but… you need anything else?”

“No,” Naomi says. She doesn’t quite manage to work herself into a thank you, but she does offer a nod that Dean’s taking to mean gratitude. He brings her a glass of water along with her walking stick and hovers in the doorway, debating with himself for a moment before he commits to.

“In the morning, I’d like to hear more about baby Castiel.”

Naomi nods, once.

And then he walks across the corridor into their bedroom and stops short. It takes him a moment to process, because he’s seen Cas cry a handful of times in a decade and he’s never seen him cry like this, with these full on wracking sobs, sitting on the bed with Jack in his arms. Jack is blinking up at him, a hand tight in his hair and Cas has him gathered to his chest, weeping.

“Cas,” Dean says, something breaking in his chest and then he’s crossed over to the edge of the bed and has gathered both of them up in his arms. Cas makes this noise and then crumples onto his chest, Jack wedged between them, as Dean strokes over his back.

“ Dean,”

“Shush,” Dean says, his throat thick. He tangles his hands in the back of Cas' hair to pull him closer, so that he can feel the heat of him, the solid line of chest, his tears wetting his shoulder.

They stay like that for a long time.

Eventually, Jack starts to grow restless, wriggling, blinking up at him.

“Cas,” Dean says, gentle, “I’m gonna ---”

“Yes,” Cas says, and he lets his hold on Jack loosen, draws back and lets Dean extract himself and pick Jack up. He’d gotten as far as getting him into his pyjamas and Jack goes willingly enough into the crib without getting pissy, although Dean’s not convinced how long it will last with his usual routine being broken but he’ll be alright. Right now, Cas is his bigger priority.

Dean dims the light then moves back to bed. Cas’ grief looks less raw on his face now, but he looks like he’s emptied. He looks about as tired as he used to have to one of those awful twenty four shifts, where he’d be dead on his feet and too exhausted to actually sleep. The kind of tiredness that’s physical and existential, running deep down into his soul.

“Come back here,” Dean says, soft. He’s not actively crying anymore as he lets Dean pull him so they’re lying across the pillows on top of the sheets. They’re fully dressed still, but Dean gets to look him straight in the eye while Cas curls into his warmth.

“I didn’t really want you to leave my mother at the Christmas party,” Cas says. His voice is rough and low. He’s talking at that ‘Jack is trying to sleep in the room’ volume, but his words are split with tears anyway. Hearing him like that has Dean’s gut twisting in sympathy and this insatiable desire to pull him closer and make everything okay. He’s always been hopeless in the face of Cas being upset.

“Yeah,” Dean smiles slightly in the semi-darkness because that part really didn’t need to be clarified, fingers carding through his hair, “I know, Sweetheart.”

“I’m being petty,”

“No one, anywhere, would accuse you of that,” Dean says, “I --- look, Cas. I wanna make it really clear here that I’m --- I’m not on her side. I’m on your side. Yeah, okay, cancer is a shitty, persistent asshole of an illness and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, and she has my sympathy for that, but this is so not about her. I --- probably shouldn't've pushed, kept out of it, if you weren’t ready to see her…”

“No,” Cas says, “You were right. You are. You normally are.”

They’re quiet for a little while, as Cas’ breathing evens out more.

“So. Didn’t know you liked the fact that I hate your Mom.”

“Why would you?” Cass asks, frustrated, as he roughly wipes his face with the heel of his palms and looks up at the ceiling. “Given I have criticised and argued with you about it. I--- I don’t think I knew, Dean, but --- it meant that someone was still angry at her, so I didn’t have to be and she was still held to account.”

“I get that,” Dean says, gentle, because he really does. “I did that with you and Sam for a while.”

Cas has told him before, but he’s not sure he ever fully realised that they saved each other in the same ways before. That they needed their own, simple family unit because their own was painful and complicated and difficult.

“She is trying. I can see that,” Cas says, blinking, “She knows that I cannot just --- we can’t just take off short-notice to see her, unless I --- unless I came without you or Jack, which I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t leave him and you’re needed at the hospital, and she knows that I can’t ---- she came here.”

“She did.” Dean agrees.

“She doesn’t want to die yet, Dean. The last treatment --- it’s not recommended for someone of her age, it’s risky, but it was the one thing that would buy her the most time, she doesn’t --- she doesn’t want to die yet.” Cas says, “And I don’t understand what she wants from me. Forgiveness? She hasn’t --- we haven’t spoken about it for years, I understood she believed she’d atoned, by coming to our wedding and I can’t, I ---”

“Cas,” Dean says, gentle. “For the record, I am still furious at her.” Cas lets out a shaky laugh. He rubs his face again, trying to compose himself. “That doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to be angry about it, too.”

He swallows thickly.

“My father was controlling,” Cas says, “He was --- at best, manipulative. Emotionally abusive. I know it’s difficult to imagine my mother being influenced by anything, but --- she was trying to execute his will. Her life has not been easy, Dean, there was never anyone on her side. She was trying to protect us from his wrath, however it felt . ”

“That can all be true,” Dean says, “And you can still be angry at her for letting her down.”

Cas’ shoulder wracks with another dry sob. He shuts his eyes.

“Look, I didn’t think Naomi should come so she could have some magical Christmas and feel okay about everything that went down. You know I’m not about that shove everything bad down and pretend it doesn’t exist because it’s December-bullshit. This is not about her having peace, it’s about you. Forgiving your family… Cas, that’s rarely about then, it’s about how it’s hurting you . I --- I completely goddamn understand this… wanting to even the score, wanting to push her out, not let her near Jack, burn her damn Christmas presents. Honestly, I understand that and it’s not petty and it’s not unreasonable. Any point in the last decade if you’d wanted to punish her for it, cut her out, I’d have been completely with the damn program. But —- you’re right, I have lost two parents, the fast way and… forever is a long time, Cas.”

Cas looks up at him, with his sharp blue eyes, drinking him in.

“And if I had my Dad back for another day, I wouldn’t want to spend it yelling at him. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t end up doing that, because there is plenty I’m still pissed about, and I don’t think I’d wanna bury the hatchet and play some stepford happy families game that neither of us believed, either. I think I’d wanna ask my questions about how and why.”

“You think I should talk to her.” Cas deadpans, sounding so much like his mother had in the kitchen that Dean has to swallow back a smile.

“I mean, by all means yell at her, too, I just think this —- indirect way of trying to tell her you’re hurt isn’t actually helping anyone.”

“She spoke to you,” Cas says, eyeing him warily. “She was nice to you. I heard her.”

“Yeah, she pretty much spoke to me like a human being,” Dean says, “ Highly unsettling.”

Cas snorts and shuts his eyes again. Dean tugs him closer, skims his fingertips over his forehead.

“I reckon she’s gay.”

“ What?” Castiel asks, “Why?”

“Well, there’s a thin line between homophobia and repression, for a start, but —- she rocked that classic lesbian cut for at least five years, waxed this poetic to me in the kitchen about never doing what she wanted or what she felt, and she spoke to Charlie for about thirty minutes at that party. Gotta have something more in common than working in hospitals and I don’t think it’s the love of tabletop games.”

“You’re serious,”

“No damn idea. Made you smile, though.”

“You are ridiculous.” Cas breathes, and then chuckles and looks up at the ceiling. “You are certifiable.”

“And cute,”

“Yes,” Cas says. “Thank you, Dean. You —— I am sorry, for taking this out on you. You’ve been a rock, as ever.”

“Literally what I signed up for,” Dean says, “Don’t sweat it, Cas. Couldn’t be less mad at you if I tried. I just —— I really wanna help, Cas.”

“I know,” Cas says, “The fact that you have my best interests at heart is very clear to me.”

“I can be rude to your mom if you want.”

“No, you’re fine.” Cas says, smiling slightly.

“Got you thinking about those pantsuits now, haven’t I?”

“ Dean,” Cas says, his smile twisting wider, crinkling the corner of his eyes. Dean rolls onto his elbows to reach forward and kiss him.

“I love you.”

“Likewise,” Cas says.

“We can talk about it some more, if you want. That Christmas, any of the others. You don’t, much. We’ve skimmed over it, but. I’m happy to hear all of it, anything you need to get off your chest. Got pretty good at heavy conversations in therapy.”

“Yes,” Cas says, “I think I will. Not tonight —- I’m saturated.”

“And it’s Christmas,’ Dean says, nodding sagely. “The time of fluffy bunnies and peace to all men and all that bullcrap.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a church, but I think the bunnies are Easter,”

“Speaking of church,” Dean says, “Cas, you know we’re gonna have to get across the funeral anyway, so --- we can make it work for you to get across at the last minute. Whether that’s you bringing Jack, or me getting time off… no shift schedule is worth that and Missouri owes me, anyway, so just -- that’s not a blocker, okay?”

“Alright.”

“Any close female friends we should be looking out for at the funeral?”

“ Dean,” Casy says, his voice full of affectionate bemusement as he reaches forward and kisses him, hard. Dean hauls him closer, framing his face with his palms, and kissing him in a way that he hopes pushes some of the rest of it out of his head and bleeds in that feeling of love-safety-acceptance. Cas tips them both over, pinning Dean to the bed with his knees and --

-- and then Jack promptly starts to cry.

Cas exhales. He presses his forehead against Dean’s collarbone for a few moments before he extracts himself.

“In that dead land between Christmas and New Year,” Dean says, as he pulls himself up into sitting and stands up. “We’re moving him into his own room.”

“My mother will be pleased,” Cas says, mildly. “She has very strong opinions about babies in parent’s room after six months.”

“Well, how else would she conduct lurid affairs with your nanny?” Dean asks, plucking Jack out of the crib and smiling at him. In Jack’s defence, he usually gets a few hours of near-silence when he first gets to bed, rather than having the two of them conducting pretty serious conversations a couple of feet away. Regardless of how much he understands, he’s sure he’s been plenty unsettled by the base layer of tension in the house.

“If you make these jokes in front of Gabriel, there will be consequences.”

“Oh, you really shouldn’t’ve put that idea in my head,” Dean says, as he balances Jack looking out over his shoulder and rubs his back, trying to settle him again. “Look, I’ve got this if you wanna get set up downstairs, pick out something to watch. Anything you want.”

“Even ‘Its a Wonderful life?’” Cas asks, arching an eyebrow.

“I… alright.”

“Wow,” Cas says, “I must look terrible. A Christmas Carol?”

“Don’t push it, Sweetheart,” Dean says. “Could always finish up what we started downstairs.”

“My mother is staying with us.”

“Eh. She has limited mobility. I think we’d have time.”

“What was it you said the other day about romance being dead?” Cas asks, but he’s smiling as he reaches forward to kiss him and smooth a hand over Jack’s head.

“Didn’t hear a no,”

“Goodnight Jack,” Cas says, pointedly, as he heads for the stairs.

When he gets downstairs, Cas has made them both hot chocolates and has set up ‘Die Hard’ which might just be the best festive compromise they’ve ever reached.

Chapter Text

Dean wakes up first the next morning, jerking awake like he’s due to work a shift. He gets up because he feels strangely restless despite the fact that all three of them had an epically shitty night’s sleep and there’s no real reason to.

Cas stirs after Dean’s emerged from the bathroom. He mumbles something about getting up, blinking into the relatively gloom of their bedroom. The evidence of yesterday’s emotional turmoil is heavy around his eyes and he’s already rolling into the warmth of Dean’s side of the bed, chasing drowsy comfort, and there’s not a chance in hell that Dean’s letting him get up.

“Nope,’ Dean says, “You’re staying right there, Sweetheart.”

“Christmas,” Cas mumbles.

“Fake Christmas,” Dean corrects, “And fuck it. I’m bringing you coffee in bed.”

Cas makes a hum of something that sounds like distilled contentment and burrows deeper into Dean’s pillow.

“But ----” Cas says into the pillow.

“You’d be discharging yourself against medical advice.”

“And you say I’m the dork.” Cas says, his eyes half shut.

“Quit being stubborn,”

“Allright,” Cas mutters and hugs the pillow to his chest. Dean smiles as he checks on Jack, who's still conked out and making his usual literary of whuffles, then makes his way downstairs. He can hear movement in the guest bedroom where Naomi’s staying. He spends a few seconds frozen on the landing trying to make a decision, because he doesn’t really know what the hell to think or do about Naomi anymore. She is trying, beyond anything Dean ever thought she would. There was something damned brave about starting that conversation with Dean last night and she clearly does love Castiel, in that backward, twisted way of hers that means she also has this incredible power to hurt him. He’s momentarily caught up on the incredible pressure that parenthood is again, because holy shit, before his nursing instincts take over. He knocks on her door with a cheerful ‘housekeeping’ which he thinks is funny and she probably thinks confirms his status as neanderthal and offers to bring her coffee upstairs.

He doesn’t get quite as far as he’d wanted to before Cas emerges with a grizzly-Jack in hand. He’s currently pretty set on eating his own fist, eyes shining with the threat of a full meltdown which is about as expected. He’d been up half the night because sleep regressions are designed as a specific kind of torture to lull you into a false sense of improvement only to rip it all away again. He’s as tired as any of the rest of them.

“What’s up, Doc?”

“Good morning, Dean,” Cas says, “We have a hungry son.”

“Hungry, huh? All that crying works up an appetite, kid? Well good news is I’ve been prepping for that, Sunshine,” Dean says, nodding at the high chair where he’s already set out his normal breakfast. He’d intended to pluck him out of bed just in the nick of time, but clearly he’d timed it slightly off. Jack makes a noise of acknowledgement that Dean’s translating as some kind of grumpy-gratitude and allows Cas to put him in the chair with minimal fuss.

Dean pours the coffee from the just-finished pot and sets it at Cas’ place on the table.

“Next time, I’ll get to play delivery service and wrangle you a lie in.”

“What’s this concept that you speak of?” Cas smiles, this sleepy, warm thing. He’s propped his chin up on his elbows. “You have been busy.” Cas says, nodding at the turkey in the oven. Dean had gotten out all the vegetables too with some idea that he’d start some kind of veg prep while everyone else was occupied, but he always knew that was optimistic.

“Happy fake Christmas, Cas,” Dean says, “Just gotta deliver your Mom’s coffee.” He hesitates before he commits to the movement, taking him in. “Can spit in if you want,”

Cas smiles and shakes his head.

When he comes back, Cas is midway through his coffee, looking crumpled from sleep but almost peaceful. Mostly content. He looks a helluva lot better for his crying jag. Jack is cheerfully eating his way through his toast, occasionally taking a break to babble in Cas’ direction and he’s perfect, basically.

“Dean, sit a minute,” Cas says, “You’re right, as ever, about the glaringly irrelevant notion of Christmas.”

“Should’ve told me that before I battled out with the damn string lights.” Dean says, grabbing his own coffee and sitting down opposite him at his side of the table. Jack makes a cheerful noise of approval and brandishes the slice of toast he’s working on. They’ve managed a lot more of these breakfasts together than Dean ever thought they would. They’re generally rushed and a little stressful --- the theory about letting Jack set his own pace with food is one thing, but trying to speed him the hell up when they’ve got a daycare drop off and a commute and a shift starting is usually less wholesome than it sounds in the parenting books -- but they still manage it. Part of that is needing as many hands on deck as possible to make the whole thing actually work, but it’s still something.

“Dean,” Cas says, looking up at him with that look which always reverberates deep in Dean’s chest. “You’ve been trying to tell me how well you’ve been doing and I —- I didn’t really listen to you.”

“There’s been a lot going on,” Dean hedges, because he has been bothered by that at various points over the last few weeks but he really couldn’t give a damn right now. The image of Cas crying last night has made all of that feel disastrously unimportant.

“There has,” Cas says, inclining his head. “And despite that you are —- I’m very proud of you, Dean, and very grateful.”

“Awh man, you don’t need to do that,” Dean says, grimacing down at his coffee for a moment. “Been pretty much realising how much work all this festive joy is and I’ve been lumbering you with it. Even when you were off sick...”

“It costs me less.”

“Don’t mean it’s free,” Dean says.

“Dean,” Cas says, “We can talk about that later, but I want to --- apologise for persistently assuming your feelings about Christmas in these last few months, instead of actually listening to you. I think my own emotions were tied into that, but I don’t want to be the partner that doesn’t allow for you to change and grow. Last Christmas ---”

“--- was a hot mess,”

“In part,” Cas agrees, smiles, “Your parenting fears... I hope you’ve proved to yourself how capable you are. How naturally full of love you are. I think we’re doing very well, Dean.”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, knocking their feet together under the table and smiling at him. It’s Christmas Eve and he hasn’t really been bludgeoned by the usual December-angst yet and that’s all of this: Jack’s big, beautiful giggles and Cas with unknown substances smeared all over his damn shirt looking happily-tired, which makes it so damn hard to feel crippled by the past when there’s so much goddamn future and present to enjoy. He still gets scared, but it doesn’t feel like it has the power to consume him anymore. He’s been healing slowly, but it’s easier to see it framed by Decembers.

“How you and Sam have approached your relationship will always fill me with pride and envy,” Cas continues, looking down at his coffee.“My family --- well. We are not as good at the ruthless pursuit of forgiveness and support. Your commitment to communicating to each other is … it’s brave, Dean, and admirable. I have been proud of you for a long time, but seeing you with Jack, with your brother, your career, seeking balance… I never doubted that you are an exceptional man, Dean, but… I am very pleased that you are the father to my son.”

“Allright,” Dean says, his throat thick. “That’s a lot of sentiment to throw at a guy before he’s finished his coffee.”

“I suspect I’ve been a pain,”

“Nah,” Dean says, knocking their feet together again. “You haven’t. I do wanna talk about this bottling stuff up, at some point, cause… we gotta break that . I need you to talk to me earlier.”

“I know,”

“But I’m fucking crazy about you too,”

“Language, Dean,” Cas says, sending a pointed look in Jack’s direction.

“Get up and give me a damned hug, Cas,” Dean says, kicking back his chair and standing up to pull Cas in.

“I don’t want him saying ‘damned’ either,’ Cas says, but he’s smiling as he stands up and lets himself be gathered against Dean’s chest - Cas with one eye still on their son as he continues making a thorough mess of the kitchen - and Dean locks his arms around him and holds him there.

“Merry Christmas, Dean.” Cas says, all low and deep.

“You doing okay?”

“Better,” Cas says.

“Promise?”

“Yes,” Cas says, and he stays there until they hear Naomi on the stairs and he takes a step back to acknowledge her with a ‘good morning’ that’s pretty formal and polite but is a helluva lot less icy than anything they’ve had so far. Dean half makes to stand and help her but she’s making steady progress across the kitchen with her stick and she’s been good enough at asking for help when she needs it that Dean’s happy to accept her judgement in it.

“Good morning, Castiel. Dean.”

“Happy fake Christmas,” Dean says. Jack adds in his two cents with a ‘bluhbuh’ which doesn’t feel like it means anything in particular except that he wants to be part of the conversation. Breakfast carries on in that almost-pleasant, only slightly tense way where they’re all putting most of their efforts into focusing on Jack rather than conducting any kind of situation, until it becomes apparent that they have a diaper situation.

They have a silent conversation of eyebrow tilts and quirks of the mouth, until Dean stands up to inspect the damage. Peering down the back of his highchair is sufficient to get a sense of scale.

“Oh, boy buddy.”

“Bad?”

“ Well, I think we know why you’ve been a grumpy guts all damn night, huh?” Dean says, which wins him a bright laugh from Jack because he’s not the one who needs to engage in a full clean up operation. He catches Cas’ eye again, cocking his head and holding out his hand in front of him. He gets the barest hint of an eyeroll before Cas holds his out too, because they established their rock-paper-scissor system in week two. It’s probably dumb because they both know Dean defaults to throwing scissors, which means usually it comes down to either one of them deciding whether to throw the game or not. If Cas really can’t face it he’ll throw rock and if he’s willing to take one for the team he’ll throw paper and, once in a blue moon, Dean will switch it up to make sure he loses when Cas is being a self-sacrificial martyr who needs to stop. They’ve found it broadly an easier way of discussing their mental state without actually having a conversation and he’s going to opt for the throwing-the-game route this morning so Cas can eat his damned breakfast uninterrupted -- because he absolutely deserves a moment to breathe -- but he switches back to his default at the last moment. Cas has a look in his eyes that screams ‘please don’t leave me alone with my mother’.

Cas does a good job of feigning disappointment at his loss. Dean’s not sure to be impressed or horrified that that’s the better option.

“You get me, Jack,” Cas says as he sets down his coffee and makes to stand up.

“Actually, before that,” Dean says, dipping out of the room to retrieve one of the wrapped-up gifts he put under the tree, largely because he needed to clear them out of Naomi’s room rather than for any sense of grasping hold of tradition. Cas raises an eyebrow at him and takes hold of it, unwrapping it slowly and with undue reverence. He pauses and looks at it.

“You bought him a Christmas Sweater.” Cas says, smiling.

“Believe me, it’s more for you than him,” Dean says, failing to keep the smile off his own face at Cas’ warm expression, as he turns the damn Christmas Sweater over in his hands looking distinctly fond. Dean can admit that it’s cute, even if he thinks the whole damn institution of garish Christmas Sweaters is an abomination. It’s acceptable to have Santa on your clothing if you’re ten months old.

“My reformed Scrooge,” Cas says, reaching out and squeezing Dean’s shoulder because it’s the only thing he can reach with Jack in his arms. “Thank you, Dean.”

“Just don’t think we’re ever joining that matching Sweater brigade.”

“Good,” Naomi says, which is basically the first time she’s ventured her opinion on anything since she got here. “Awful, saccharine capitalised development.’

“Preach it, Naomi.”

“Dean, my bag under the tree. Could you bring that in?” Naomi asks. Castiel makes a noise at the back of his throat. It seems involuntary and pretty harsh and it almost crosses the boundary of passive aggression into being downright antagonistic (honestly, Dean’s kind of astounded by how good the Milton’s are at not arguing given he and Castiel have been butting heads since before they even really knew each other). Dean freezes, glancing between them. “Castiel,” Naomi says, her voice sharp, “I am trying.”

Castiel shuts his mouth, this severely irritated expression on his face, but they all know that she’s right.

“I’ll get it,” Dean says.

They’re silent when he gets back in. He hands her the bag of gifts and watches as she sifts through it to find a particular package, which she passes to Castiel in icy silence.

Castiel doesn’t say anything as he takes it and opens it. He pauses again, this time without a smile on his face.

It’s a big scale-back from the details of the bank account she’d set up for Jack on the day he was born, that Castiel had taken as a personal slight and is apparently still pissed about, if his expression is anything to go by. This looks like she’d have a good amount of change from twenty dollars, but it’s also disarmingly thoughtful. Matching leggings and a onesie with giraffes in Christmas hats.

“I understand his favourite toy is a giraffe,” Naomi says, somehow managing to sound haughty as she says it. Dean watches that settle over him. The fact that Naomi clearly went fact-hunting, because she must’ve got that information from Gabriel along with his current clothes size, and put actual thought into it is apparently not lost on Castiel, either. He’s very still.

“Thank you,” Cas says, something complicated and thick in his throat and some of the iciness defrosts after that.

*

Dean hits a wall about three PM, just after they’ve finished cleaning up from a only-slightly-tense Christmas dinner and dealt with their second diaper disaster of the day. He hasn’t really stopped after his string of shifts, but crashed headlong into Christmas because there wasn’t really any choice. Jack has been a freaking nightmare most nights this week and Cas hasn’t exactly been a peach and even though, as Christmasses go, it’s pretty slow and quiet, the exhaustion hits him suddenly. One minute they’re debating putting on a Christmas movie and the next Dean feels more like a zombie than a human being.

“Dean,” Cas says, gentle, plucking Jack out of his arms and raising an eyebrow at him.

“I’m not —— this isn’t some delayed Christmas breakdown.” Dean mutters back, even though Naomi is in the room and he doesn’t really want her involved in any of Dean’s emotional trauma.

“I can diagnose acute parenting exhaustion.” Cas says, hoisting Jack up. “Go get some sleep, Dean, you’ve got a twelve hour shift in the morning.”

“But,” Dean says, eyes daring to Naomi in a way that’s profoundly unsubtle.

“We’ll be fine,” Cas says and Dean has just enough left in him to nod and wander up the stairs.

He’s asleep almost as soon as he hits the pillow, falling into a heavy, deep sleep.

He snaps out of it a few hours later. It takes him a moment to realise that Cas is in the room, folding that load of laundry they washed but never dealt with into the drawer.

“Chores aren’t very Christmassy.” Dean says, sitting up on his elbows and watching him.

“We have a baby,” Cas says, “Laundry waits for no arbitrary tradition.”

“Huh, we really have gone all Freaky Friday on our Christmas Angst. Where’s Jack?”

“He’s with my mother,” Cas says. Dean waits him out. “I wasn’t intentionally— what did you call it? Evening the score by withholding him.”

“Cas, that wasn’t meant to be a calling you out thing.”

“Our son is not a bargaining chip,”

“No,” Dean says, “But you are allowed to protect him from whatever you think might harm him.”

“She won’t,” Cas says, “You’re right. He won’t remember her.”

“You okay?”

“No,” Cas says, a furrow in his brow.

“Did you talk?”

“Not about anything significant,” Cas says, “She told me a story about my first Christmas.”

“Sounds significant to me.” Dean says. Cas hums in response. “She’s proud of you, you know. She pretty much said that to me last night.”

Cas makes a noise of frustration at the back of the throat and falters folding his laundry. Dean gets up out of bed and wraps his arms around him, pulling him close.

“I felt so much better this morning.”

“These things take time, Cas.”

“One thing which is in short supply.” Cas says.

“It’s pretty much guaranteed that it’s not gonna feel like enough,” Dean says, “But, you gotta have a little patience with yourself.”

“Yes,” Cas says, drawing himself in, “Did you have a good nap?”

“Yeah,” Dean says, “Yeah, basically passed out.”

“You’ve been working very hard,” Cas says, “In all spheres.”

“We all have,” Dean says, “Come on, lie down a minute.”

“Jack —-”

“He’s with your Mom. Five minutes alone is basically a Christmas miracle, so just…” Dean trails off, as Cas abandons his laundry to sit on the edge of the bed.

“He looks very cute in his Giraffe onesie.”

“Yeah, I took a picture,” Dean says, digging out his phone and finding the photo (the whole thing is basically just one continual reel of Jack moments: smiles, laughs, asleep, looking like a grumpy sonuvabitch, him trying to stand, a whole room of chaos) and tilting the screen in his direction.

“Hmm, send me that,” Cas says. After he’s sent it, Dean watches as Cas pulls up his big family group chat — the one he basically ignores — and selects three photo, one he apparently took of Dean holding Jack during their Christmas dinner, that one of Jack in his Christmas giraffes and one of Jack on Naomi’s lap, beaming at her.

He types ‘Merry Christmas from the Winchesters’ and sends it. I

“We can’t leave my mother responsible for our baby for too long, it’s not fair, especially given she is seriously unwell.”

“Five minutes,” Dean says, “I’ll set a timer, and we’ll hear if he gets upset.”

“Okay,” Castiel agrees, shutting his eyes, “Five minutes.”

*

He finishes shift on Christmas Day to find Cas the only one still awake, whisky in his glass in front of the sofa. He looks red-eyed and tired with some new-era Disney movie on with the volume so low that Dean can’t hear it, looking like he’s watching the baby monitor more than the damn TV. There’s no real evidence that Gabriel has been there or that Naomi is still here because all of the evidence has been swept away and tidied up in a move that smacks a lot more of stress cleaning than a desire to keep on top of housework. Despite it all, he’s glad Cas didn’t spend the day actually alone looking after Jack, even if it was probably shitty and hard and a little sad for it to be the three of them in the shadow of what’s to come.

“Hey,” Dean says, quietly.

“Hello Dean,” Cas says, dragging his gaze away from the monitor and looking at him. He didn’t wake him up before he left in the morning, because they’d only just gotten Jack down again and he needed the sleep.

“You spoke to your Mom.” Dean substitutes.

“I spoke to my Mom,” Cas agrees. Dean sits down heavily next to him and takes up his hand.

“How was it?”

“Hard,” Cas says, blinks. His eyes are glassy with the threat of tears as he picks up his glass with his other hand. “She apologised, again.”

“That’s good.”

“Is it?” Cas asks, “I both do and do not want her to be plagued with regret.”

“Pretty sure this stuff comes in waves,” Dean says, “Usually too big of an emotion to fit into a body all at once.”

“It’s exhausting and inconvenient.” Cas says. “I wanted her to be like this for a long time.”

“It's good,” Dean says, soft. Cas looks at Jack on the monitor and sighs. “I got you something that might cheer you up,” Dean says.

“We celebrated Christmas yesterday,”

“Anniversary present,” Dean says, “Happy decade, Sweetheart.” Cas’ mouth breaks out into a smile. “Probably overselling it,” Dean says, as he disappears into the next room to retrieve his gift. He never got round to wrapping it up despite his intentions, but Cas doesn’t look like he cares as Dean passes him his photo frame. It’s a little naff and a lot sentimental and they haven’t normally done gifts, but ten years feels worth acknowledging. Ten years is a long time. They certainly look younger in the first picture he had printed, which Dean’s pretty sure is the first picture they actually ever had together. The second was from Christmas five years ago of them pinned down by Jo for a photo at that traditional Christmas party. Jack makes an appearance in the final one, looking impossibly small and young in Cas’ arms.

“You’re right,” Cas says, running a thumb over the top of the frame. “This has cheered me up.”

“Good,” Dean says, as Cas sets it down next to the monitor and slumps against his side and they chase the way the rest of Christmas twenty-twenty three exactly like that; together, tired, slightly sad and slightly sentimental.

*

The next day, Gabriel comes over and they have a five way conversation about hospices, before Gabriel drives Naomi back to the airport and the house suddenly feels gnawingly empty. Cas is all hard edges and grit as he insists they start taking the Christmas decorations down, which crumbles into silently crying into Jack’s other new Christmas sweater (hand knitted by Jo) while Jack naps.

Dean’s much better at taking decorations down than putting them, anyway.

The day after, they move Jack into his bedroom and reclaim their damn space while he has his afternoon nap and again, that night, after Jack’s gone down for the night. It’s been awhile, actually, between the Jack-duties and the shifts and Christmas commitments and Cas’ mom, and there’s a hazy, familiar kind of peace to being sprawled out on top the covers, facing Cas, with a pillow wedged under his elbows, as they have half a conversation but mostly just look each other and breathe. It’s pretty likely that either of them are about to fall asleep even though it’s still early evening , but they’re warm and comfortable and sated. He kind of feels like his soul is still. Their sex life had been so far down his priority last that he hadn’t really given it much thought, but it’s good to slip back into it.

“Hmm,” Dean hums, filling some of the easy quiet. Cas hasn’t spoken since he padded back from the bathroom and laid back down on his side. “Like being newly shacked up again.”

“When we were newly shacked up we both worked opposing shifts,” Cas smiles.

“Ah, but when they lined up…”

“From memory, when that happened we mostly watched TV together and slept.” Cas says and he’s so damn Cas that Dean reaches forward to kiss him again, palms cupping his cheeks. Cas smiles into his lips. “I have missed this.”

“Doesn’t suck,” Dean agrees.

“Factually inaccurate.” Cas says, with this small smile curling at the corner of his lips that Dean fucking adores.

“Smart ass.”

“You like my intelligence.”

“Difference between being smart and being a smart ass, Sunshine, but yeah, I like both.”

“I know you like both, Dean, you don’t need to remind me.”

Dean snorts and smiles and tugs the lovely warmth of him closer.

“I know there are advantages,” Cas says, and he’s looking out over the empty space in the room and Dean can feel the end of the sentence before he actually says it, that odd grief-like bittersweet feeling that comes with it all. He feels absurdly content and yet there’s something disquieting and sad about it.“But it’s…comforting. Waking up and just —— being able to see him.”

“And hear him,” Dean adds, picking up Cas’ hand and tracing over the back of his knuckles. “They don’t tell you how loud babies are when they’re asleep.”

“Yes,” Cas says. “Next year, he’s going to be toddling around and asking questions, I …. It’s going quickly, Dean.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, pressing his forehead into Cas’ shoulder blade. “It kind of breaks my heart too.”

When they were little, Sam used to crawl into his bed when he was having nightmares. He’d curl up to his side and whisper about the monsters and Dean would poke holes in the narratives with logic until he wasn’t scared anymore and Dean never told anyone that he found it grounding, too, having Sam close and breathing loudly as his lullabies in new motel rooms, blocking out the fear of being alone. And then in that harrowing week after John Winchester died, when he found Sam locked up in a shitty apartment trying to deal with withdrawal on his own and he was this shaky, broken fucking mess, and he was crying with the grief and the guilt and the withdrawal and he couldn’t sleep, and Dean kind of hated him but loved him so much he couldn’t breathe, and --- after he’d established that Sam didn’t need immediate medical attention and that he couldn’t get him into actual rehab where someone could actually fucking look after him properly until the next night --- he’d committed himself to the other half of Sam’s bed to watch over him and Sam had wound up crying into his shoulder, this big fucking giant of a man, sobbing into Dean’s shoulder like he was still five years old, and sometimes Dean’s not sure how he would have dealt with all of it if he hadn’t had Sam clutching him.

It had barely been a year later when, after one of those shitty shifts that gets you in the gut, Cas had decided to come over to Dean’s apartment rather than go home. They’d still been in that fresh, tentative part of their early relationship where they both knew they were into each other but weren’t quite sure how their lives might fit together yet. It had been a slow start, really, and they hadn’t really cuddled-cuddled until that point, but then Cas turned up just before midnight and he told Dean he’d had a bad day, and Dean nodded him into his apartment and he’d curled into his chest and Dean had this spinning, dizzying this is it moment.

And the week after they bought Jack home, Cas had been doing one of those two AM feeds in the chair by the bed and he’d been completely fucking fried because Jack was too tired to eat but too hungry to sleep and Dean said ‘ Cas, I’ll take him’ and then he was holding this tiny little perfect human to his chest, propped up in bed, breathing in that milky-baby-scent and he’d had it again. This is it. This is everything.

He’s kind of wistful over all of it, even though he’s so caught up --- so in love with this kid --- that he’s desperate to watch him learn who he is, develop opinions, to have him at five years old crawling into their bed to talk about the monsters under his bed.

“He’s just next door,” Cas says, more to himself than in answer to Dean, as he sighs and looks up at the ceiling, one hand still distractedly in Dean’s hair. “Did she love me this much?”

He doesn’t have to ask for clarity, even though neither of them have bought Naomi up all day. The question kind of breaks something in his heart and he’s so convicted that they’re not just going to brush over all of this, sweep it up under the rug and keep living over all the hard edges of pains and hurts, because he’s not having it. Not for Cas, who deserves so much better.

“Yes. Definitely .”

“Why are you so sure?”

“How could she not?” Dean asks, blinking up at him. “You’re you . You’re so fucking loveable it’s blinding. ”

Cas breathes out shakily and closes his eyes and lies away for a long time, looking at the space in the front room, and Dean really wishes there was an easier answer to any of this but time.

*

They don’t make it till midnight on New Year’s Day.

They kind of mean to and Cas even went as far as buying something fizzy to toast twenty twenty four, but after a long day they both got through half a glass of bubbly before they both concluded they were falling asleep on the sofa and just gave up and went the hell to bed.

Dean’s the one that gets out of bed the first time Jack wakes up crying, and he bundles him to his chest and rocks him, and starts telling him about meeting Castiel: about how he’d been so saturated with grief and pain that he hasn’t really noticed how obvious it was that Cas was into him, about bickering about patient care and that first Christmas. Jack is lulled back to sleep by the sound of his voice and Dean crawls back into bed next to a warm and just-barely-conscious Castiel who rouses enough to ask about Jack.

The next time Dean wakes, it’s three AM and he’s in bed alone. He waits for a solid ten minutes before he pulls himself up and pads across the landing to find out if Cas needs help. When he gets there, Jack is fast asleep, while Cas stands at the edge of his crib with those bright blue eyes.

“Hey,” Dean says, soft.

“Hello Dean,” Cas says. He swallows and doesn’t look away from Jack. “This is the year my mother dies.”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees. It settles like dust over them in the quiet sanctuary of Jack’s bedroom. There’s a litany of Jack memorabilia in here now, from photos to one of those framed handprints that he ‘made’ during daycare that Cas was too much of a softie to throw away, along with those hand drawn photos from Robbie. “You know what else happens this year? Jack turns one. He’s gonna talk.”

“He’s going to walk, which is more concerning,” Cas says.

“He’s gonna sleep through the night.”

“We’ll see,” Cas says.

“And we’re gonna meet Gabe’s new woman, the one he’s all cagey about.”

Cas lets out a breathy laugh.

“And you know what else is gonna happen in 2024?”

“No,” Cas breathes, reaching out and taking his hand. “Tell me.”

“I’m gonna love you a lot.”

“That’s good,” Castiel says. His voice is still slightly shaky.

“And we’re gonna grieve her, and you’re gonna get angry, and you’re gonna miss her. You’re going to heal people at your doctor's practice and you’re gonna change diapers and you’re gonna heal, slow, and we’re gonna go back to that Italian place and we’re definitely not gonna get enough sleep, starting from tonight, apparently.”

“I started that in med school.”

“You alright?”

“I think I’m experiencing a sleep regression.”

“Didn’t know they were contagious,” Dean says.

“I am very happy, Dean,” Cas says, “I know I’m….”

“S’okay, you don’t have to explain it,” Dean says, “Not news to me that you can be happy and sad and grieving and excited all at the same time. You’ll be okay, Cas.”

“I know that,” Cas says, and there’s a quiet determination in his voice. “I will forgive her. I want to.”

“That’s half the battle,” Dean says and holds him until Cas takes his hand and leads them both back to bed.

*

He meets Sam at the graveyard on New Years Day given Sam wound up not able to go on his normal Christmas Eve and it’s pretty much time for their monthly meet up anyway. It’s milder than it was at the beginning of December and there’s a lot more activity in the little boneyard than he’s seen before: an elderly man on his own, a couple of families, one with a young girl in a pink skirt skipping with these flowers in her hands, and a few others slower and more sombre. Their bench is still free, though, and Sam’s already there.

“Happy New Year, Sammy,” Dean says, sitting down next to him. “How was Christmas with the Moores?”

“An experience, as ever,” Sam smiles, the words crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “They really commit to Christmas. Always feel like I need a guidebook to understand all their traditions. Kids had fun.”

“Well, that’s the main thing,” Dean says. “Guess ours will be a little more like that this year, when Jack actually understands the concept.”

“Oh yeah,” Sam says, “Get ready for the hyperactivity starting mid-November. It’s a blast. How was it, in the end?”

“Yeah, okay,” Dean says, rolling the question round in his head. “Progress, I think.”

“That’s good,” Sam says. Over the other side of the graveyard, the little girl in the pink skirt kneels down in the dirt to set the flowers down. Her mother stands behind her.

“Look,” Dean says, as he looks back to his little brother. “That stuff I said, about why I hated Christmas.”

“About committing to something when you get nothing back,” Sam says.

“Yeah, that,” Dean says, with energy and a little heat in his voice, because it’s been in his head and gnawing at him for days. “I take it back. It’s bull. Has been for a long time, but it’s definitely bullshit now. I --- I’ve been that asshole not trying, reaping all the benefits of everyone else putin’ in the work, and I… I’ve got a lot of really good reasons to put effort into Christmas, Sam. I’m not saying it’s ever gonna be my favourite time of year, because I think it’s always gonna be complicated, but. There’s people who deserve my effort.”

“Cas and Jack,”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, because of course Cas-and-Jack. He’d hate it if Jack ended up joining the brigade of people walking on eggshells around him all goddamn December. He wants him to love it. He wants it to be fucking magical, like all those damn movies. He wants to redeem all of the hard parts of Cas’ difficult Christmas, feeling unaccepted and pushed out. He knows full well it doesn’t work like that, but in a lot of ways he’d like to blot away all of those memories with bright, shiny Christmases wrapped in a bow. He’s never found that to help all that much, but he’d do it if he thought it would. “But you too, Sam. Your whole clan, but you specifically. God, man, the point that you weren’t trying was so goddamn long ago that it’s ancient history and you were a kid, and it wasn’t your job. And it’s Bobby and Jo with her damn holiday party. It’s all of it. The whole nines.”

Sam smiles.

“ Not saying I’m not leaving space for it to be a mixed bag. Complicated and painful and this big push on the grief button. I think Cas’ll find the next one hard, but…”

“It’s a bit of a slow burner of a New Years Resolution,” Sam says.

“Taking drastic measures to out-last Jo and her alcohol-free resolution,” Dean says, “That woman’s too stubborn for her own good. You know last year she actually stuck out at the veggie thing for three months. Jo.”

“Well,” Sam says, smiling. He looks good, with that steady confidence and this clear comfort in his own skin. “I’m looking forward to seeing it, this resurrected Christmas spirit. I’ve missed it. It never really feels like Christmas without you, Dean. Probably why I’ve always been so insistent about it.”

“Didn’t exactly have Winchester Christmas traditions.” Dean hedges.

“Not then, maybe. There’s plenty of time for that.”

“Ah, fuck, I’ve unleashed a monster.”

“Now, where are these pictures of my nephew, because someone told me you bought him a Christmas Sweater?”

Dean laughs, pulls out his phone and digs out all the photos of Jack’s first Christmas and tells him all about it, from the awkwardness and the diaper disasters to Cas smiling at his Mom and Jack.