Sam struggled out of bed, wiping his eyes and running his hands through his long hair. Yawning, he squinted after turning the light on. The clock at his bedside read 5am. He'd gone to bed just three hours before. Groaning, he stretched his long limbs and padded out of his room to find what had woken him up.

Dean snorted awake, sprawled across the memory foam mattress of his bed. Lifting his head from where he'd face-planted into his pillow a few short hours before, he reached above his headboard for the knife. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, waking his body faster than his brain could keep up. He was halfway to his door before he realized that the noise that woke him up wasn't an intruder. Skidding to a halt, he took a few deep breaths to calm himself down. He grabbed his robe from its hook on the wall and went into the hallway to investigate.

Sam turned the corner in the hallway and almost ran into his brother. "You too?" he asked, scratching at his scruffy cheek and still yawning.

Dean rolled his eyes at the tower of unkempt hair erupting from his brother's head. "Can you please just…" he scoffed in frustration and pointed at the offending coif. "Can you manage that stuff a little better?" Shaking his head, he continued down the hall, Sam following close behind. "Shit'd scare a vampire," he muttered under his breath.

"What?" Sam asked, eyes narrowing.

"Nothin'" Dean replied, innocently. "You hear that?" he nodded his head in the direction of the kitchen.

Sam nodded. "Probably just Kevin getting a snack."

"Yeah, probably." The brothers exchanged a meaningful glance.

Dean took the knife out of his robe's pocket and waggled it silently, eyebrow raised. Sam nodded back and removed his gun from the back waistband of his pyjama bottoms. They each took up a position on either side of the kitchen door. At Sam's nod, Dean silently turned the knob and opened the door and they rushed in to confront whatever might be making the loud noises that had woken them from their much-deserved slumber.

The slam of the door on its hinges was followed by a several crashes and the light tinkling sound of broken glass.

Charlie smiled awkwardly from amid the clattering pots around her feet. "What's up, bitches?" she asked with a stiff wave.

"Charlie?" Sam asked incredulously. "What are you doing here?"

Dean put the knife down on the kitchen counter and grabbed Charlie into a hug. "I thought you were holed up with some 'insanely hot chick' playing Warcraft and doing things I don't want to think about you doing, no offense." He smiled down at her.

"Well, I was," Charlie smiled back. "I mean, she was no Bella Donna, but she could really…" Noticing the simultaneously titillated and nauseated looks on the boys' faces, she decided not to complete the sentence. "But then I decided to take Sam up on his offer."

"My offer?"

"Yeah, to look at the archives. Become a 'Woman of Letters'. Look into all this monster stuff that you guys do."

Dean raised his eyebrows, mildly surprised. "You really want to do that?"

"Well… yeah," Charlie shrugged. "I mean, sure, I'm more comfortable when the monsters are in video games or on a table top, but…" she looked from one man to the other. "I've gotta protect my boys, don't I?"

"Is that why you broke into our secret bunker and woke us up in the middle of the night?" Sam laughed. "Hey, come to think of it… how did you break into our secret bunker?"

Charlie sized him up with a look. "I could tell you, but you wouldn't understand it, so how about I just say 'magic computery stuff' and you accept that that's close enough."

Dean and Sam both opened their mouths to protest, looked at each other, and then shrugged. She had a point.

"Now, since you're both up anyways, who wants pancakes?"

…

Kevin wandered into the kitchen at around 7:30, confused by the sounds of laughter coming out of it. Sam and Dean were nice enough guys, he supposed, but they weren't exactly known for laughing it up. Plus, unless something had changed significantly during their last job, neither one of them had a voice that high-pitched.

"Hey guys, what's – " he stopped short in the door frame, staring at the redhead sitting at the table between the brothers. "Hello," he continued cautiously, walking slowly toward the counter where the knife block was kept. Is this what witches looked like today? That would explain why Sam and Dean looked so relaxed and happy. Maybe she'd drugged their food? What was it they were always talking about? Some kind of bags? Where would she hide that kind of thing? What would she do to him? Why didn't the tablet say anything about witches?

"Kevin!" Dean stood up and slapped him a bit too hard on the back, making him stumble slightly. "Charlie, this is Kevin. He used to be in advanced placement, and now he reads the Word of God." Dean ignored the glare that Kevin shot at him and guided the younger man to sit at the table. "Kevin, this is Charlie." He grabbed the remaining stack of pancakes and put it in front of the prophet, adding a fork and some maple syrup to the place setting. "She used to be a hacker and a LARPer, and now she's going to be a Woman of Letters."

Kevin grinned wryly. "You freak out when you found out about monsters?" he asked, looking at her shyly.

Charlie returned his wry grin. "Hells yeah." She pointed a thumb at each brother, "And these two really didn't help me process it at all." She waved off the protesting noises the two started to make. "Well, you didn't!"

"I know! Right?" Kevin exclaimed, feeling a certain amount of justice being done. He dug into his breakfast with gusto. "They're all like, 'Man up, already!' and I was just trying to keep my shit together."

Dean snorted. If that was him trying to keep his shit together, he didn't want to see what would happen when he lost his shit completely.

"Exactly!" Charlie agreed enthusiastically. "One minute, I'm racking up cash in an offshore account and then BAM! Dick Roman's some monster from hell and I'm going in undercover to screw him." She shook her head.

Kevin shook his head in return. "I can't even."

"I have also lost my ability to even," Charlie agreed.

Sam cut in, "But—"

"Hush Sam," Charlie interrupted before he even got started. "We're bonding here."

…..

"So, why are you really here?" Kevin asked quietly a few hours later when the brothers had gone down to the shooting range and he and Charlie were ensconced in the library.

"What do you mean?" Charlie asked nonchalantly, paging through a manuscript about something called a Canocephalus, a man with the head of a dog. The pictures were like particularly bad photoshop, but with paint.

Kevin looked at her through mildly squinting eyes, trying to judge just how much he should say. "You just happen to show up, today of all days? And you want to read ancient books about monsters?" He shook his head slowly. "I'm not that dumb."

Charlie bit her lip and looked back at him. She glanced around the bunker to make sure that they were really alone and then leaned across the table to whisper. "How much do you know?"

Kevin glanced around too and then whispered back, "Adeste Fideles."

"Gaudium Mundo,"Charlie replied.

They shared a knowing smile and nodded. It was important to know who your fellow conspirators were.

….

"Pleeeeeease?" Charlie begged, looking up at Dean with her puppy dog eyes.

Rolling his eyes, he burst out with "Fine!" and grabbed his coat. Sam gave in with just a sigh and grabbed Charlie's list of requests from her.

"Thank you!" she called after their retreating figures. She waited for the loud thunking noise that would indicate that the bunker's main door had closed and then she hurried back to the living room. "They're gone!"

"How long have we got?" Kevin asked, already dragging boxes out from his room.

"Maybe two hours, tops," Charlie replied as she grabbed her car keys to get the stuff out of her trunk. "He here yet?"

"I haven't seen him," Kevin answered with a worried frown.

"Well then pray, already! We haven't got much time."

Kevin opened his mouth to protest but she was already running up the stairs. How exactly did one pray to an angel? "Um…" he cleared his throat. "H-hey, um Cas?" he started. "Castiel, I mean?" Man, this was awkward. "It's, uh, it's Kevin Tran?" He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and stuffed the other in his pocket. Shit. Should he be kneeling for this? "Uh, they've, um, left?" Looking around, he didn't see any sign of the celestial being. How did Dean do this all the time? He felt ridiculous. Suddenly, there was a rush of air from behind him.

"Do you think this will be satisfactory?" Cas asked, standing next to a 20ft spruce tree that was covered in fairy lights and tinsel.

Kevin gaped.

"Don't just stand there holding your wood, Cas," Charlie called down from the top of the stairs. "Help a girl out, will ya?"

Instantly, he was at the top of the stairs relieving her of the bags and boxes that were loading her down. "It is good to see you again, Charlie," he intoned.

"You too, assbutt," she smiled at him.

"How did you - ?"

"Please, like those boys can keep secrets from me?" She swooped down on the boxes that Kevin had dragged into the room. "This is some great stuff you've got in here!" she cheered. "Is this a Dalek?"

Kevin shrugged and smiled. "I kind of used to collect geeky decorations and stuff… before." His smile faded as he thought about how his life had been before the Winchesters and the tablets and Crowley. "My mom," his voiced cracked a bit and he cleared his throat. "My mom had them all packed up in boxes, and Cas brought them here for me."

Charlie opened her arms wide and gave Kevin a sisterly hug. She whispered in his ear, "I miss my mom too." Clearing her own throat, she released him. "Alright, enough melancholy. We've got a Christmas to put on!"

….

"… three stores, man!" Dean ranted as they opened the bunker door. "Three!" He grumbled under his breath for a moment.

Sam couldn't help but agree with him. "What the hell is a… a…" he trailed off as his eyes took in what was in front of him.

"The hell is wrong with you, man?" Dean asked, finally looking up from the plastic packaging in his hands. "Whoa."

Looking down at the bunker below them the brothers were confronted with an explosion of Christmas. The enormous tree was in the centre of the room, now fully decorated from top to bottom with not just lights and tinsel but proper baubles and handmade angels and paper snowflakes until you could barely see the boughs of the tree. Beneath it were presents wrapped in shiny, colourful paper and curly ribbons. The walls were festooned with bows and more tinsel and the entire bunker smelled like nutmeg and turkey.

"How…?" Sam asked, mouth agape.

"When…?" Dean asked, gobsmacked.

Charlie and Kevin stood at the bottom of the stairs, one arm around the other's waist and the other hand holding out some eggnog to the brothers.

"Cas," Charlie answered.

"While you were out on that bogus supply run," Kevin replied.

Cas entered the room with a large turkey on a platter to add to the already groaning table full of food.

"Cas…" Dean whispered, eyes tearing up.

"You did all this?" Sam asked, voice a little husky.

"Merry Christmas, Sam," Cas nodded at him. "Merry Christmas, Dean," his lip twitched into a grin. "Are you hungry? I made pie."