Title: Twelve Days
Pairing: Dean/Castiel pre-slash
Rating: 15 - violence, language, death
Genre: Adventure, Mystery, Drama, Pre-slash
Wordcount: 3,133
Warnings: Blood, mention of rape of minors, death, violence, mysogyny.
Summary: The Twelve Days of Christmas are usually a happy time. Unfortunately, in the life of a Hunter, even the Festive Period has it's own perils. A small town in Massachusettes feels the brunt of this particular case, a case that has even the Angels confused.

Notes: Thanks to my BETA, Krysta - keeping my writing sane XD

Twelve Days

Chapter 01

Partridges and Pears

Christmas Day – Present Day

Snow fell gently from bloated clouds; clouds that looked too heavy by any rights for something so fluffy to be occurring. The car park of the dingy motel they'd ended up in was near empty; a couple of boxy old Fords and a Dodge slouched under a thin layer of snow at the far end of the lot. His baby stood proud, despite the cold, barely six feet from the window, her midnight paintwork was almost completely hidden by the flakes piling up all over her.

'Rhode Island, huh?' They were getting snow for Christmas for once. By sheer stroke of luck, good or bad, Dean wasn't entirely sure; their latest hunt had taken them far enough north that the weather resulted in flaky white stuff, on today of all days. And of course, they'd be just far enough in-land too, for it to be real snow, the kind that stuck.

At least Sammy was enjoying it, which made it ok in Dean's book. Even if he didn't enjoy it much himself.

The motel, of course, was decorated to the nines for the season. Even the rooms, going by the state their current room was in, were decorated. It had an almost pathetic feel to it, as if the owners of the motel were desperate for everyone else to join in the good cheer; like they felt that stringing ninety-nine cent tinsel from the ceilings and erecting two-foot tall, horrifically decorated trees on the breakfast tables was the best way to go about it.

And yet...

This was the first Christmas since Castiel had dragged his ass out of hell and put him back together. The first Christmas since the last one he and Sammy had shared, when he'd known deep inside himself that he was going to die and there was nothing Sammy could do about it, try as he might. The first Christmas since he had actually swapped stupid gas-station presents with his sasquatch of a kid brother.

It had the feeling of a marker about it. A marker of what, he didn't know, and probably wouldn't figure out any time soon. Knowing his life? It would probably mark something downright crap.

Dean closed his eyes briefly, locking the world out for a moment. He concentrated on the feel of his weight resting on his arm next to the window, forearm braced up the wall. He allowed himself to feel the balance on his left hip, on his left knee as he leaned against the cheap wallpaper, right foot tucked around his left ankle. He shifted slightly, feeling the weight of the mug of eggnog in his left hand, held almost loosely at chest level. He ignored the visual and revelled in the physical.

He let himself breathe, taking in the scents of eggnog, beer, pine, cinnamon, clean laundry and store-bought-and-heated Christmas pudding. The slight tang of mint from the candy-canes Castiel had given them in his attempt to join in brought him back to awareness. 'We do not have specific days to celebrate our Father's Glory,' had been Cas' stiff explanation when they'd found out he had no idea what Christmas was.

He opened his eyes with a slight huff and gave the snowy view a steady glare.

"Dean?"

Not moving, he grunted a wordless acknowledgement and quaffed a mouthful of his lukewarm eggnog. Suddenly, he was feeling even more out of sorts.

"Hey, Dean, get your ass over here."

Dean grunted again, but pushed off the wall and turned, padding back into the room. Sam was lounging on one of the two chairs provided, well, lounging as best he could, fitting his giant frame into a chair that was almost snug for Dean, and Castiel was perched on the edge of one of the beds. His bed, Dean noticed obliquely.

"Alright, alright. Geeze..." Dean dropped into the other seat and gave Sam and Cas his patented shit-eating grin. "So, have I missed anything good?"

Sam rolled his eyes and Cas just gave him that lopsided confused look he did so well. It almost annoyed him, but Dean rallied when Sam pulled out a couple of neatly wrapped presents.

"Sweet. This is getting to be a habit."

The larger of the two gifts was placed before him, the smaller offered to a surprised angel. With a smirk, Dean snatched his duffle from beneath the breakfast table and pulled out his own badly wrapped gifts. Apparently astonishing both other occupants of the room, he also gave Cas a gift. What could he say? The guy was fixing to be a regular in their fucked up lives. As often as Castiel annoyed him, Dean found he, ah, liked him well enough. Almost like he'd grown fond of the frustrating not-guardian angel.

Or something... He didn't want to talk about it.

Castiel looked nothing short of shell-shocked by the gifts, if you could read his minimal expressions anyway and Dean felt he'd been getting pretty good at that. A very faint tinge of pink had coloured Cas' cheeks and the tips of his ears. If it were anyone else, Dean would have pegged it as embarrassment. But Castiel didn't do embarrassed. Right?

"I did not bring presents for you..." The angel said in a tone of voice that screamed uncomfortable. His expression stated something along the lines of 'I hadn't expected to be included' and Dean coughed gruffly. "No problem, Cas, don't worry on it."

"Seriously, Castiel, don't worry about it. There's always next year, right?" Sam gave Cas one of his own patented grins, this time of the reassuring sort, the one that normally had girls falling all over him. Not that Sam ever took notice. Castiel remained looking uncomfortable, but he no longer protested the gifts. Now they could finally, happily, break into the things.

Small piles of rumpled paper signalled a happily spent fifteen minutes. Dean was both in turns amused and annoyed by the dashboard calendar of half naked car-mag models, but the de-icer for his baby also went down very well. He kinda scoffed at the earmuffs, but relented when he remembered the snowy landscape outside. Maybe, just for a while, he could put up with the piss-taking from Sam and wear the damn things when they left the motel for any length of time. At least they weren't fluffy... or pink.

Sam appeared to love the dusty old book he'd found for him on strange European folklore. It had apparently been written by someone he guessed had no idea of what was really out there. And amazingly, the gloves actually fit Sam's giant hands and the scarf wasn't too short.

Castiel quite obviously didn't know what to do with himself. Sam's gift turned out to be one of those silly newfangled electronic Sudoku things. It had a little pen shaped tool and a touch-screen and everything. Dean flicked through the calendar nonchalantly, as Sammy patiently explained to Castiel what the game was and how it worked, and then how to work the whole shebang on the pocket battery-operated device.

After a few minutes of fiddling with the Sudoku thing, Castiel finally opened Dean's gift. Dean pointedly watched the TV screen, refusing to admit even to himself that he was interested in Cas' reaction. After all, it wasn't anything all that great. Just a little something he'd picked up a few hunt's ago, that he'd thought Cas might like. Wasn't even that expensive really, something like a handful of dollars was all. He was pretty sure it was actually a damned Christmas decoration.

"Dean."

Somehow Castiel's voice sounded even more gravelly than usual. Dean grunted and turned reluctant eyes on the angel, successfully managing to ignore the look on Sam's face.

He was pinned by blue eyes, but forced himself not to shift or show any signs whatsoever of his discomfort. After a moment he realised Cas was smiling at him. Now that was rare, Castiel wasn't good at emotion, worse, in fact, than Dean. So it was rare as all hell to see a smile on his lips. But there it was, lighting up his features. It was all Dean could do not to squirm.

"You like it, then?" He managed after a too long pause.

"I do, Dean. Thank you, very much."

And Dean glanced down in time to see the almost protective way Castiel cradled the roughly hewn, almost badly painted wooden angel.

Castiel didn't stick around much longer after the gift-giving was over, but promised them he would return and Dean and Sam continued their Christmas with beer and TV. Other than the strangeness of earlier, it went pretty much like the previous Christmas, just without an imminent death hanging over them. Sam even managed to keep his questions to himself.

All things considered, Dean felt he preferred this Christmas.

They decided, on a whim, to actually eat a Christmas-ish meal that evening, at a restaurant down the road. They walked, at Sam's insistence, leaving the Impala to freeze under her thickening layer of snow. Dean wore the ear-muffs. In recompense, and because he was feeling light again, Dean threw a snowball at the back of Sam's head.

All out war happened rather quickly after that. Snowballs thrown in volleys, snow shoved down backs of shirts, tucked into hoods and pockets. In one case, down the back of Sam's pants and the two of them pushing each other into the middling snow drifts beside the road.

In the middle of the battle, Castiel appeared looking like he wanted to talk to them both, but a snowball meant for Sam hit him on the side of the head. Looking perplexed, he simply stood there. Dean and Sam, hiding behind a tree and a car, respectively, stared in shocked silence for roughly thirty seconds before bursting into laughter.

Snow dripping from his chin, Castiel blinked, throwing Dean a very confused, wide-eyed look. Before they could say anything, the angel was gone again and a snowball hit Dean full in the face. He spluttered and retaliated, forgetting his questions over Cas' appearance.

It was two rather chilled and slightly bedraggled looking, but very happy sounding young men that entered the restaurant twenty minutes later. Trying to catch his breath after the bout of hearty laughter, Sam requested a table and Dean trailed after him when the matronly waitress showed them the way.

In the scale of places he might enjoy a meal, one being that skeevy joint where he'd eaten the worst burger ever known to man, and ten being his Mom's home cooking (which he did actually still remember), this restaurant was pretty damn nice. A bit kitsch, perhaps (and he refused to admit to Sammy, ever, that he even knew that word) but still, pretty up-market for them. Smelled good too, which promised a good meal. Dean smirked to himself, happily, pulling the muffs off.

The waitress smiled saucily at them both as they sat, "You two boy's out to enjoy a romantic Christmas dinner?"

Dean, in the middle of draping his jacket over the back of his seat, choked. He was too busy trying to regain his breath to respond, but Sam managed for the both of them.

"Brothers! We're brothers, Miss... Beverly. We're on a road-trip, seeing the country." There was a pause as Sam cleared his throat and Beverly tutted lightly.

"We saw this place when we arrived, thought it would be a nice place to have a Christmas dinner." It sounded like Sammy was pulling off all the charm he could manage, given the amusement ringing through his tone.

Dean finally looked up, having regained his breath after his minor coughing fit and gave Beverly a winning smile of his own, "You wouldn't believe how often we get that, though. Seriously," he added quickly.

The woman smiled at them both, a touch indulgently, "I'm sorry boys – you just looked so happy there." She sauntered off again, leaving both Winchesters staring at her back.

Dean had to fight not to drop his forehead to the table. "Kinda getting sick of the gay-couple thing now, Sammy."

"Sam." Dean gave his brother a dirty look for the automatic correction. "And can I help it if we look so good together?" Sam's eyebrows were up as he pulled what he probably thought of as a leer.

Dean's dirty look turned into a smirk at that comment and he grabbed the menu. "So what should we order, honey? Nothing too fattening for you, obviously. Don't wanna ruin that girlish figure of yours."

Sam snorted, "Asshole."

"Bitch."

"Jerk."

Cas rang halfway through the turkey dinner. Dean fumbled the phone and fork for a moment, before finally getting it sorted and grunted in lieu of a greeting.

"Dean?"

"Cas, hey man, s'up?"

"Are you and Sam no longer... fighting?"

Dean snorted inelegantly. He mentally added "snowball fights" to his list of things to teach the socially inept nerdy angel. "We're eating in that posh looking restaurant down the road from the motel."

"I...do not know which one that is, Dean."

Right. "Posh looking" wasn't a description Castiel could work with. So he gave him the actual name of the place instead. A moment later, Castiel was walking towards them from the direction of the bathrooms. He'd gotten better at appearing in inconspicuous places, rather than right in front of people. It had only taken a dozen or so conversations from both Dean and Sam and more than one freaked out civilian before Cas got the idea.

Sam looked up as Dean put his phone away, looking right at Castiel as he strode purposefully toward them. None of the wait-staff bothered him. After all, only a current customer could come striding out of the bathrooms, right? "You think he's upset you hit him?"

Dean shrugged, "Nah, although..."

The look on Castiel's face did give him momentary pause. Had he upset him by laughing his head off at Cas' shocked expression? For some reason the very idea of that made something clench in his chest. He forced the feeling away, though.

"Dean. Sam." Castiel stopped at their table giving them a look that started off serious and slowly began to morph into something else as the brothers looked at him. After a slightly uncomfortable pause, Sam coughed and offered a chair. "Join us?"

Castiel shook his head slightly. "No thank you, Sam. I am not staying."

Again, Dean felt something unidentifiable happen in his chest. He forced it back once more and instead concentrated on what Castiel was pulling from the pocket of his trench coat.

"I brought gifts. I wanted to give them to you before I continued my search."

Sam looked as shocked as Dean felt; They both went to speak at once, and both topped short a second later, both as they realised what they were doing and as Castiel held his hands out, something concealed in each. "I did not wrap them. I hope that will not be a problem?"

"No. No problem, Cas," Dean said slowly as he took what was being offered. Sam followed with a happy smile, "Thanks, Castiel. You really didn't have to."

Castiel simply tilted his head slightly, in that familiar look of his and Dean could have sworn there was a ghost of a real smile there as he replied, "It is tradition, yes?"

And he was gone again. Thankfully, no-one had been looking their way, so no-one saw the angel disappear into thin air.

Dean looked down at the thing in his hand. It turned out to be a stone pendant. What stone though, he wasn't sure. It was green, almost like quartz. Probably jade. It was carved intricately, three spirals carved out of a disc. The leather thong was secured through the tail of one of the spirals. He'd have to look it up, as there was no way Castiel would give him something that didn't have some sort of symbolism to it.

"Wow, Dean, nice."

He looked up to see Sam peering at the pendant. He held it up so his brother could see it, "Recognise it?"

"New Zealand Greenstone. Maori. Don't know what it symbolises though."

"New Zealand?" He couldn't keep the incredulity from his tone. Castiel had popped all the way to New Zealand for a Christmas gift? Dean snorted, lifting the pendent and sliding the thong around his neck. Well. He didn't feel quite so naked anymore, at least.

"What'd he give you?"

Sam held up what looked like a copper peg. Dean blinked. A bookmark; copper and made up almost entirely from Celtic knots, swirls and spirals. More symbolism; purity, power and strength from the looks of it. Dean smirked slightly. "Nice. He's not so bad at this gifting thing."

"Pretty good at it, really," Sam agreed, sliding the bookmark into his breast pocket.

They went back to their meal, and Dean put thoughts of their gifts entirely out of his head when the home-made pear pie arrived with a sugar-dusting Jesus face on it.

Sam was snoring. Dean counted it a blessing. When all things were considered, it meant he could tell his brother was still alive and still there. After years of sharing a room with the kid, he'd gotten past the noise and learned how to sleep through it, though he didn't sleep much anymore, really.

When they'd returned, Dean had taken a moment to look up the design of the pendant. Turned out it was a Maori symbol. The Tri Koru; a fern leaf, representing a number of things, including peace and tranquillity, as well as "a loving relationship within a family".

Dean really wasn't much given to introspection, but he'd spent most of the evening before they finally turned in, quiet and thinking. Of course, he didn't really come to any conclusions, other than Castiel sort of made things hard to think about. And made his chest hurt sometimes – which he was putting down to the red meat he consumed. But not within earshot of Sam, who would take that as an excuse to force feed him rabbit food.

When he finally did crawl into bed, he lay there holding the pendent up to the hazy orange light coming in through the thin curtain, studying it. He twisted it gently on its axis, watching the way the light bounced and glistened on the smooth surface. He'd decided he liked the weight of it around his neck, against his chest. He liked the fact that Castiel had been the one to give it to him.

Dean held the little slice of jade tightly in his hand as he rolled over and closed his eyes. Before he drifted off, he wondered if Castiel was doing the same thing with his little wooden angel.

TBC: Our Boy's discover something untoward happening in a small Massachusettes town and decide to investigate.