A/N: Originally posted on AO3 in December as a Christmas-ish fic. There isn't really a Christmas theme, though, so it doesn't really matter when you read it. Established relationship Destiel & Human!Castiel! :)
Dean and Castiel woke up around eight o'clock on a freezing December morning. Dean was lying on his back, and Cas was curled up next to him, one arm draped across Dean's chest. A thick blanket covered them both, keeping them warm. Dean woke up first, only ten minutes before Cas.
When Cas did wake up, he looked up at Dean to see that he was awake. "Hey," he said drowsily.
Dean brought the arm he had around Castiel's shoulders up to run his fingers through his boyfriend's hair. "Hey."
They remained just like that for a solid minute. "How about I make some coffee?" Dean offered.
"Okay."
So, that's how Dean found himself standing in the kitchen, waiting for coffee to be made, and Castiel found himself in the bathroom, washing up a bit before he went to join Dean.
Dean grabbed two white mugs from the cabinet above the coffee maker for himself and Cas; when Sam showed up soon after, he grabbed another one. Sam slumped down into one of the chairs at the breakfast table, still not fully awake. He had his laptop with him, so he opened it up, and began to read some news sites.
"Morning," Dean greeted.
"Morning," Sam returned.
"Tired?"
"Very."
Dean chuckled. "Me too."
The coffee was finished, and Dean poured the finished product into two of the three mugs, handing one to Sam as he sat down across from him. Sam thanked his brother, before returning to his not-so-interesting reading. He made it a habit to check the news periodically throughout the day, in case something came up and they needed to go on a hunt.
Castiel appeared a couple of minutes later, and immediately walked over to get his coffee.
"Morning, Cas," said Sam.
"Hello, Sam," Cas replied.
Cas took his now-full cup of coffee over to the table, and sat down in the chair next to Dean. The two of them shared a short, chaste kiss. Cas took a sip of his coffee.
"Huh," Sam suddenly said.
"What?" Dean asked, thinking Sam might have found a case for them.
"I was just checking the weather, and, apparently, it snowed last night. Like, half a foot," Sam told him and Cas.
"What? Really?"
"Yeah," Sam replied. Dean was beginning to look like an excited child who just found out that school was cancelled. Sure, he'd seen snow many times before; but he had been too busy to enjoy it every time.
Cas looked over at Dean, who had a huge grin on his face. "I don't understand. Isn't snow just a form of precipitation that collects on the ground?"
Dean chuckled. "Well, yeah, but it's a lot of fun to play in. You can build snowmen, have snowball fights..."
Sam stared at Dean incredulously. "What are you, a child?"
"Maybe," Dean retorted.
"Well, why don't you go outside and play in the snow, and maybe if you're good, Santa will bring you something for Christmas!" Sam said, his tone thick with sarcasm.
"Shut up."
Sam laughed.
Dean turned to Cas, who was taking a sip of coffee. "Come on, Cas, let's go build a snowman."
Castiel looked over at Dean, then back at his mug of coffee, as if contemplating whether to follow Dean or finish his coffee. After thinking about it for several seconds, Cas put his coffee down on the breakfast table, and stood up. "Alright."
Cas followed Dean to the coat closet, which Dean began to dig through to find warm clothing.
"What is a snowman, Dean?" Cas asked.
"You'll find out," Dean answered. He pulled out two heavy winter coats, two pairs of gloves, two beanies, and two scarves. He handed one of each to Castiel, and they both bundled up.
After putting everything else on, Cas held the scarf in his hand, and stared at it. "What do I do with this?"
Dean, who was about to tie his own scarf, chuckled lightly. "Here, I'll show you." Dean took the scarf from Castiel's hand, and wrapped it around his neck. He tied a loose knot in the front. "There." Dean smiled.
After Dean put his hands back down to his sides, Cas quickly reached up and grabbed the untied ends of Dean's scarf, and pulled him down into a deep kiss. Dean, who was caught off guard, froze for a second before reciprocating and placing his hands on Castiel's waist. They kissed for a moment until they heard faint footsteps and someone clearing their throat. They reluctantly broke apart to see Sam looking at them.
Sam rolled his eyes. "Have fun, you two." He continued down the hallway to the library to find something to read.
"Come on," Dean said, grabbing Castiel's hand and starting up the stairs to the door.
As Dean opened the front door of the bunker, he saw that Sam was definitely correct; there was several inches of snow piled on the ground outside. It wasn't snowing anymore, but there was still a lot of it hanging around from the previous night.
Dean laughed excitedly as he walked out. "This is awesome!"
Behind him, Castiel removed one of the gloves from his hand, crouched down, and dug his fingers into the snow. Upon noticing this, Dean asked him what he was doing, and warned him that the snow was cold.
"I've never felt snow before, Dean," Castiel answered.
"Oh," Dean responded. "What do you think of it, then?"
"It feels strange," Castiel replied. "It is cold. Very cold."
"Yeah, that's why I gave you gloves. So, do you wanna build a snowman, or what?"
"I don't know how to build a snowman, Dean. I don't even know what a snowman is."
"Alright, well, I'll show you," Dean said. "First of all, you gotta gather a lot of snow and shape it into a sort-of ball. Like this." Dean crouched down, and dragged a large amount of snow into a good-sized semi-round shape. Cas narrowed his eyes as he watched every move Dean was making. "Then, you roll it around a little bit. That'll round out the edges and make it a little bit bigger." Dean did just that, and kept rolling the ball of snow around until it was large enough to make a nice base.
"Now, we need to make two more of those, but smaller. Wanna try?" he offered. Castiel nodded, then began to replicate Dean's previous movements. Dean watched him, smiling. Cas finished balling up the snow, and rolled the slightly smaller sphere to sit next to Dean's. Dean walked over, made sure the ball was nice and solid, then picked it up and placed it on top of the one he made only a couple of minutes prior.
Dean grinned at their work so far. He told Castiel to make one more smaller ball while he went to collect a couple of sticks and a few pebbles from the ground. The sticks were easy to find, but it took him a bit longer to find enough pebbles for a face. When he returned, Cas had already finished the head, and placed it on top of the other two parts of the snowman.
"Alright. Now, we add arms," Dean stuck one stick in each side of the midsection, "eyes," he placed two pebbles on the head, "a nose," one pebble in the middle of the head—he didn't have a carrot handy, so he improvised with a pebble—"and a mouth," he placed the rest of the pebbles on the face in a curve, in a similar fashion to a smile.
"There!" Dean said, stepping back to view the finished product. Castiel stood beside him, studying the odd thing in front of them.
"I don't understand. That doesn't look anything like a man," Cas pointed out.
Dean laughed. Cas stared at him, confused, as he doubled over. Standing up again, Dean clapped a hand to Castiel's shoulder. "You know, I don't get it either. But, that's what a snowman looks like."
After a few moments in silence, looking at the finished snowman, Dean spoke up again. "You wanna go for a walk?"
"Why?" Cas asked.
"Dunno. Just 'cause."
"Won't Sam worry?"
Dean thought about that for a moment. "We won't be gone long. Besides, I have my phone; he can call me if he worries that much."
Cas shrugged. "Alright."
Dean slid his hand into Castiel's as they started to walk away from the bunker, and entwined their fingers. They walked slowly, taking in their surroundings. It was quiet enough that the crackle of snow beneath their boots was a prominent sound. They were out in the middle of nowhere, really, so there was no need for there to be any more sound. Every time either one of them exhaled, a small cloud of fog escaped and floated in front of them for a second or two.
Castiel was really enjoying the sights all around him. As an angel, he had seen snow before, but he had never been surrounded by it as he was now. He hadn't really gotten the chance to enjoy the beauty of it. He saw snow piled on top of the branches of pine trees, with the occasional little bit falling to the ground due to the weight of it on top of the weak branch.
Dean and Cas were walking through the empty park that Sam liked to jog through in the mornings sometimes. Sam had shown it to them on a warm day several months ago, in the middle of the summer. Since then, Dean and Cas would go there to relax. They went there so often now that whenever they had a conflict, which was luckily not too often, they would find the other person sitting on the solitary bench that sat alongside the trail.
Dean brushed the snow off of the bench before taking a seat. Castiel sat down next to him. Cas kept looking around him, and Dean noticed this. "You okay?"
"I'm fine. I'm just... enjoying the view," Cas answered.
Dean smiled, and wrapped an arm around Castiel's shoulders. Cas laid his head on Dean's shoulder. Dean placed a gentle kiss on the top of Castiel's beanie-covered head. They sat just like that for several minutes, not saying a single word, just looking at the snow surrounding them.
Eventually, Dean noticed a few flakes fall from the sky, which turned into a few more. Suddenly, it was snowing again.
Castiel watched the snowflakes descend to the ground. He smiled. "I never realized how beautiful snow was."
Dean looked down at Cas. "Yeah?"
Cas adjusted himself so he could look back at Dean, meeting his green-eyed gaze. He placed a hand on Dean's cheek. "But, it's nowhere near as beautiful as you."
Dean was sure that he would be blushing profusely if his cheeks weren't already so red from the cold weather. Cas leaned up and met Dean's lips with his own. The kiss lingered, although it remained soft and loving. As they pulled apart, they gazed into each other's eyes.
They may have said 'I love you' to each other somewhat often, but the way they looked at each other was solid proof of just how much they loved each other. Sam sometimes commented on how it looked like they stared into the other's soul. Anyone passing by could tell—just by their shared gazes and the pure adoration on their faces—how much Dean and Castiel loved each other. Even then, it would probably be an underestimation; only the pair of them knew exactly how they felt for the other.
"We should probably get back," Dean suggested. Cas nodded, and they both got up, linking hands once more as they walked back to the bunker. Sadly, it stopped snowing when they were about halfway there.
To their surprise, when they returned, Sam was outside, attempting to shovel snow from the path in front of the door. He was facing the door, so he didn't see Dean and Cas approaching. Dean also noticed how their snowman, which was nowhere near the pathway, was now a lump of snow, sticks, and pebbles.
"Bitch, what did you do to our snowman?" Dean said, announcing his and Castiel's presence to Sam.
Sam briefly looked behind him, then giggled like a mischievous little girl. Dean rolled his eyes, and bent over to make a snowball. He threw it at Sam's back.
Sam quickly spun around to see Dean with a huge grin on his face. Then, he returned the gesture—by grabbing his own snowball, and throwing it at Dean's face.
Dean wiped the snow off slowly, then shot daggers at Sam with his eyes as Sam full-on laughed. "Oh, it is so on."
What followed was nearly twenty minutes of a snowball battle. It began with Dean and Sam throwing snowballs at each other. Eventually, Sam threw a snowball at Cas, who ended up joining in and siding with Dean to try and defeat Sam. Several minutes later, Kevin walked out of the bunker to see if Sam needed any help with shoveling snow. He ended up joining Sam's team.
After a while, they declared a truce after determining that Dean and Cas were both freezing their asses off (having been outside for much longer than Sam or Kevin), and Sam realized that he'd have to re-shovel the snow from the pathway.
Dean and Cas turned to go inside, while Kevin remained outside to help Sam fix the pathway. When Cas was inside, and Dean was in the doorway, Dean turned around to look at Sam. "Why are you even shoveling the snow there? It's not like we get visitors."
Sam thought about it for a second. "Shut up."
Dean chuckled, and shut the front door behind him as he went inside.
Dean and Castiel began to take off the extra layers of clothing they had worn outside, and put them back in the coat closet where they found them. Dean suggested they make hot cocoa, before realizing that Cas had never actually had hot cocoa before—he'd only had coffee.
"Oh, man, you'll love this stuff," he told Cas. They went into the kitchen, and while the milk was heating up in the microwave, Dean dug out the hot cocoa mix he bought a couple of weeks ago from the cabinet. He immediately became excited upon noticing that it was the kind with mini marshmallows mixed in. He placed the tin on the counter, and waited for the milk to finish heating up. Cas was rubbing his own nose. Dean looked at him strangely.
"My nose is cold," Cas explained. Dean walked over to him, wrapped his arms around his waist, and gingerly kissed the tip of his nose. Suddenly, the microwave beeped. Dean threw together two mugs of hot cocoa, and handed one to Castiel. Cas took a sip, and Dean could tell from his expression that Cas had found a new favorite beverage.
"Wanna go watch TV or something?" Dean suggested. Cas nodded, and they walked into the entertainment room they had set up in the bunker a while ago. They'd added a few things every once in a while—including a couple of gaming consoles per Kevin's request. They set their mugs on the coffee table, and sat down on the couch. Dean flipped on the television, and it immediately turned on to that one show that Castiel seemed to like. Dean didn't even know the name of it. He did know that since Cas now knew it was on, there was no way he was going to change the channel without a fight. So, he just put the remote down, and let Cas watch his show.
Cas snuggled up to Dean's side, and Dean noticed he was shivering. "You cold?"
Cas nodded.
"Hang on." Dean got up to go grab a fleece blanket from one of the hall closets. When he returned, he wrapped the huge blanket around himself and Castiel, causing Cas to snuggle up next to him again. Dean's arm was wrapped around his shoulders again, just like on the bench at the park, and Castiel's head was laying on Dean's shoulder. Dean placed his head on top of Castiel's (after gently kissing the top, of course).
Dean wasn't sure how long they had been watching TV, but it had probably been at least an hour. Castiel had fallen asleep, head now resting on Dean's lap. They had gotten up fairly early that morning in comparison to most mornings, so he let Cas sleep as he flipped the channel on the television to something he liked. He had to admit, Castiel sleeping was one of the most adorable things he had ever seen. He looked so peaceful. Dean carded his fingers through his boyfriend's hair as he napped.
He had only been awake for a couple of hours, but Dean already knew that day was going down as one of his best days ever.