A/N: This is the next story in a mild AU/canon divergence series called The Other Guardian 'verse. There is a more detailed note about it on my profile, but in brief: after Dean is raised from Hell by Castiel, an entire year passes before the Lilith rises and the seals start to break. During that time, Castiel is assigned to watch over the Winchesters, and finds himself growing closer and closer to Sam.

This story follows "Home for the Holidays," and also refers heavily to "A Change in the Weather." As it's basically the culmination of the Other Guardian 'verse, though, it does make references to other stories in that 'verse, too. I've been looking forward to this story for a while; please enjoy.

Notes: A two-shot story, rotating POV. Castiel/Sam slash. Kisses.

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Twilight

The Devil's Thumb Ranch looked even better under a coating of new snow, Sam decided, looking out across the white-frosted wooden buildings as the Impala crunched down the final curve in the icy mountain road and rolled into the parking lot. The sunset was just starting out the rear windshield, and the mountains above the lodge were streaked with brilliant pink light that picked out every detail of the snow-covered trees and made the welcoming yellow windows of the lodge seem to glow even brighter than he remembered. Or maybe it was the season that had really upped its charm—the gutters of the main lodge were hung with luminous strings of icicle lights, encased in real icicles where the Rocky Mountain weather had apparently melted the snow on the roof and then frozen it again. The whole place seemed to be shining, hazy and warm beyond the foggy passenger window. Sam reached into the back seat and yanked his backpack into his lap, and then paused with his fingers crooked on the door handle, shooting a smile at the figure in the driver's seat.

"Thanks for the ride, Dean."

Dean snorted and turned up the heat, drumming his new leather gloves against the rim of the steering wheel. "I should've dropped your ass in Tabernash. I forgot how far this place was from the highway." Sam rolled his eyes, too tired of being in the car with his brother to call Dean on his bullshit; Dean leaned forward and peered up at the lodge through the scatter of ice crystals the windshield wipers had missed and made a face halfway between disgust and disbelief. "I don't know, Sammy. I know it's free, but…we just got out of yuppie hell. You sure you want to spend New Year's Eve in yuppie purgatory?"

"At least twice as much as I want to spend it puking up bad whiskey in an icebox port-a-potty," Sam countered, brushing his hair back so he could tug a ski hat down over his ears. "Which is what you're going to be doing if you actually go back to that skeevy dive bar we drove past thirty minutes ago. Seriously, Dean—reconsider. Your stomach lining will thank you in the morning."

Dean shrugged, apparently not at all fazed by the thought of losing that semiprecious part of his anatomy. "Hey—new year, new stomach lining. Besides, I need a night off from your sappy ass. If chucking up blue and red highballs is the price of that, well…it's been a while since I puked purple."

Sam hoped his brother didn't actually have experience with how colored cocktails mixed in a toilet bowl, but with Dean, there was never any telling. Honestly, time had taught him he was happiest knowing as little as possible about what went into and subsequently came out of Dean's stomach on any given night out. Firmly ensconced in gloves, hat, and winter scarf, he swung the car door open and stepped out into the late afternoon chill, hefting his backpack up onto the shoulder of his heavy brown coat and looking up at the snow-encrusted lodge once more.

Pretty much the second the ordeal with Archosias was over, he and Dean had come to a rare unanimous decision that they were on vacation until at least after New Year's, with the definite possibility of an extension. They had hung around the Gerbers' house a few days after Christmas, just to make sure there wasn't going to be any delayed-action fallout from all the trouble with the bells, before finally packing up their meager belongings on the twenty-eighth, almost a full month after they'd first arrived on Briarwood Drive. Dean had been so happy to get away from so-called suburgatory Sam was honestly shocked he wasn't turning cartwheels down the Gerbers' icy driveway as he packed the car.

Sam himself had been a little less than thrilled to be saying a permanent goodbye to the couch and the Christmas tree, and all the memories scattered through the house like precious scenes in snowglobes. So he'd been both surprised and unexpectedly pleased when he slipped carrying the Gerbers' mail into the house on the last afternoon and went down hard, scattering letters and magazines all over himself and the glacial front steps—not pleased with the spill, per se, or with Dean hyena-cackling at him from the deck over the garage, but with the waxy postcard that landed on his chest, a courtesy reminder that Mr. and Mrs. Gerber had a standing reservation for a suite at the Devil's Thumb Ranch on New Year's Eve, which they definitely weren't going to make this year. Dean hadn't shown the slightest interest in going, but narrow hallways and tiny, angry fellow lodgers aside, Sam couldn't help the little leap in his heartbeat at the memory of the lodge where he and Cas had first shared a soda, where Cas had first said goodnight to him, where Cas had stopped him from falling that very first time. He couldn't imagine passing up the chance to go back—not at New Year's, when everything was about to start over again. When there was a tiny sliver of a possibility of one last chance to get everything he wanted before the clock struck midnight.

Dean hadn't exactly been thrilled. Needless to say, Sam was pretty sure if he hadn't almost died recently he would have been hitchhiking to Tabernash.

"Hey! You're letting the heat out."

The irate voice brought Sam back to the sunset and the December chill shuddering in his lungs, and he stamped his feet, bending down to look into the car with one hand on the door. Dean raised his eyebrows, jerking a thumb toward the open road to the west.

"Last chance, Sammy. Tag along with your awesome big brother and find some modestly hot girl to ring in the new year with?"

Sam's lips quirked up at the corners. "Modestly?"

Dean shrugged. "The hottest one's mine, obviously."

Sam shook his head, not quite sure if he was smiling because his brother was kind of funny even when he was an asshole or because he still hadn't found the right stretch of interstate to explain to his brother that he really wasn't interested in any girls, no matter how modest. Maybe Dean was right—maybe all they needed was a little time apart. Maybe by the time his brother screeched back in to pick him up, he'd have figured out exactly how to say I'm head over heels for your guardian angel and it's not going away. Sam patted the icy top of the car.

"I'll pass. Thanks anyway, Dean. Besides," he added, trying to keep his voice even, "Cas said he might stop by."

Sam thought that was probably what Castiel had said, at least. The angel had stopped in a few times since Christmas, but never long enough for Sam to teach him more than the bare bones of how to use his new phone, and Cas was at least two or three sessions from mastering texting. His last message was a garble of symbols a cryptographer couldn't have untangled. Sam was pretty sure there was a yes in there somewhere, though. Something warm and light pressed out against his ribs at the thought of being at the lodge with Cas again—just Cas this time—though he tried not to let it show on his face. Luckily, Dean's thoughts didn't seem to be riding the same railroad as his.

"Cas? Ugh—fantastic. Like I haven't had enough of that sad sack to last me a lifetime." Sam rolled his eyes again and slammed the door, and Dean let the Impala drift forward a few inches, though he rolled down the window before Sam could turn for the lodge. "Take it easy, Sammy. Don't do anything I wouldn't do," he added, through a grin that was all teeth.

Sam had never in his entire life come close to violating that mandate. Now, he wasn't so sure. He opted not to make any promises he couldn't keep. "Drive safe, okay?"

"Whatever, Grandma," Dean hollered as he cranked up the Metallica. Then he sped out of the parking lot and screamed up the icy road, carving around snowy curves with a dexterity that proved once again he'd been born with a steering wheel in his hands and couldn't crash if he tried. At least there had been a seedy hotel right next to the seedy bar, so Dean would have no reason to get behind the wheel half-torpedoed by rainbow cocktails. Sam watched him until the Impala disappeared over the crest of the hill; then he resettled his backpack strap over his shoulder and hurried inside before the cold could get into his bones.

Checked in and standing in the doorway of the Gerbers' reserved suite, Sam had to admit that his brother had been right, back in March, when he'd complained about staying in the bunkhouse—the rooms at the main lodge were more than a few steps up the accommodations ladder. There were no marauding flies, no cramped bathroom with toilet and sink precariously coexisting, no low-hanging log just waiting to ambush him at an inopportune moment; instead, the gleaming bathroom offered a full Jacuzzi, and the polished wood furniture displayed a host of amenities, from flat-screen TV and complimentary coffee maker to an iPod docking station. In the next-to-walk-in closet hung two of the fluffy white robes Dean had been so excited about last time, and a gas fire like the one in the Gerbers' living room crackled in a hearth of gray river flagstones. But the thing that caught Sam's attention and held it for good was the massive king-sized bed in a heavy wooden frame underneath the panoramic windows, which looked out across the fields of snow toward the smaller, private cabins, pinpricks of light shimmering in the closing darkness. Sam toed off his shoes and then sat down on the edge of the mattress, smoothing his hand across the soft red quilt.

Even though it meant he'd spent about three-quarters of Christmas Day unconscious, he hadn't been able to resist drifting off with his head on Castiel's shoulder and the angel wrapped around him, one gentle hand wandering through his hair as Cas's heart beat a whispered lullaby against the shell of his ear. He had kept his gaze on the Christmas tree, glittering over Castiel's shoulder, and when his eyes finally slipped closed he had imagined that the golden glow against his eyelids was nothing as commonplace as incandescent lights nestled in evergreen boughs—it was the glow of Castiel's wings, swept around him as soft and unstoppable as a snowstorm, all that warmth and grace and love easing everything that had been wrong inside of him for so long. He didn't have to remember his dreams to know they had been beautiful.

Sam had never slept more peacefully than he had that night, buried in Castiel's arms. He wanted to spend every night like that for the rest of his life. He wanted that kind of night again here, now. And maybe, if Castiel had meant everything he said that night in the halo of the Christmas tree, with his wings on fire against Sam's skin, if he had meant what Sam prayed he meant, underneath it all—maybe Sam wanted just a little bit more.

The welcome papers on the rugged pine desk fluttered in a sudden breeze, and Sam's heart shivered in his chest as he recognized the rustle of those beautiful wings that had his fingerprints on them. He lifted his head and smiled up into serious blue eyes.

"Hey, Cas."

Just a little bit more. Or maybe just a little more than that.

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One chapter to go. Thanks for reading.