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 "Thanksgiving at Bobby's" and "Darkness Rising," but can be read as standalone. This story will be updated every day until December 25th (or possibly 26th if I come up with an epilogue.

Notes: Cas and Sam centric, slash and pre-slash. Plenty of Dean too, mostly in a humorous capacity. Please enjoy.

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December 9

Sam hummed along with the Christmas music playing through the Gerbers' stereo system as he stuffed handfuls of clothes into the washing machine. He knew he was a little toneless, unused to most of the songs on the many CDs covered in snow and Christmas trees and stars that he'd found stacked neatly on top of the entertainment center in the basement. He liked them, though; they were softer than the songs that blared through shopping malls and diners, and he hadn't heard "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" once—which was unfortunately about the right fit for most of the places the Winchesters visited.

The song was instrumental, but Sam thought maybe he just recognized the song as "O' Little Town of Bethlehem." A few more notes fell between his lips and he paused, shoving clothes into the front-loading dryer—another top-of-the-line amenity Cas had described for him on their first day. A smile tugged at the tall hunter's lips. He had felt like he was buying a house, letting himself be convinced by the earnest look on the angel's face that this was the perfect place for them.

Thoughts of their resident angel had Sam walking over to the deep sink that stuck out of the wall next to the water heater, currently occupied by a tan trench coat hanging over the plastic edge. Sam raised one sleeve out of the soapy water it had been soaking in, frowning at the dark brown patch that remained on the cuff. Castiel's suit jacket and button-down were balled up and waiting on top of the dryer, marred by the same sticky stain.

Sam sighed. He had made pancakes for breakfast that morning, trying to keep his brother pacified by reminding him of the perks of Suburbia. And that part had worked out just fine, with Dean grinning and shoveling a disturbing number of pancakes down his gullet. Sam had enjoyed setting a place for Cas, too, and the Gerbers had a whole assortment of things, from real maple syrup to strawberry syrup and lemon butter. Even powdered sugar for children—or adults still stuck in the mindset of children.

Unfortunately, partway through his second helping, Dean decided Cas wasn't enjoying his pancakes properly and had reached over with the pitcher of syrup, pouring it generously over the angel's plate. Castiel had stuck his hand out to try and fend the hunter off, which Sam would have told him was a bad idea if he hadn't been at the stove making another batch. Dean never lost at food chicken, because he didn't care if he dropped food on a plate or a lap or a tabletop, and he would eat anything whether it had been licked, dropped, or partly chewed—Sam had no proof of the last, but he had long privately suspected. The syrup had gotten on the cuff of the angel's trench coat, the sleeve of the suit jacket, and even the white button down, and with an embargo on angel powers, Castiel couldn't just wave them away like usual. Then Dean had beaten a hasty retreat, offering to follow up with the records girl he had talked with on the phone and leaving Sam to clean up. Typical Dean.

Castiel was currently changing into some of Harold Gerber's things while Sam started a load of laundry and tried to figure out how he was going to break it to Cas that his things were dry clean only, and would have to be taken and left somewhere overnight.

"Sam."

The tall hunter turned at the sound of his name. Castiel stood uncomfortably in the doorway, tugging at the cuff of one of his sleeves, and Sam could understand why. Harold was not a bad match for Cas in height, but the man was simply so much heavier than the angel that Castiel was swimming in the girth of his clothes.

It didn't help that Cas had tried to copy the style of his own clothes as closely as possible. The pants bagged around his waist even with a black belt he had cinched at the tightest possible hole, leaving a tail of extra belt hanging out. The button-down looked almost right, but Sam could see the bunches where all the excess material had to be tucked in. All in all, Cas looked a little like he was getting ready to shoot for one of those before-and-after weight-loss advertisements, where the models wore their old clothes and then yanked the pants away from their waists to show off their new look. The angel was staring at Sam, though, waiting for him to say something.

"Umm," Sam began unsurely, trying to gather his thoughts. Castiel frowned sharply.

"It is not right," the angel snapped when nothing else was immediately forthcoming. He looked down at himself and the clothes with obvious displeasure.

"No," Sam protested immediately, taking a few steps toward the angel. "It's just…"

Sam wasn't sure exactly what he was going to say, but the steps had brought him close enough to notice that the starchy tag of the oversized shirt was sticking out from the collar. It was almost without thinking that Sam moved closer, reaching a hand over Cas's shoulder and tucking the little white flag down. It was then that he turned his face to the angel and realized how close he was to the other man.

Castiel was looking up at him curiously, and Sam swallowed hard at the dark eyes scant inches from his. His fingers still rested at the back of Cas's neck. Somewhere in the background the Christmas track turned over and the tinkling sound of bells filtered through the house. And Sam was still holding a shirt in one hand that he had intended to shove in the washer, the sleeve trailing down onto the linoleum floor, but he didn't let go.

"The tag…" he breathed. Some kind of rational thought was trying to get through, tell him that this moment had gone on too long, but instead there was just the bells.

He'd looked up everything he could find about bells and their power to ward off evil. Bells had long been tied with the spiritual—at one time church bells had even been rung out in the harvest season because it was thought they had the power to bring bounty.

Castiel reached his hand up to rest over Sam's, possibly to figure out what a tag was. His fingers were warm and soft as they explored what Sam had gripped. The shirt slipped to the floor from Sam's other hand, and he leaned in slightly. The ringing was still there, signifying luck and blessing unions as it had done at the end of weddings for years.

He slid his hand to the edge of Cas's shoulder, rested it there. He could feel the angel's breaths from this close, see the steady heartbeat in his neck, and he wondered again about wings. The tinkling of the bells was soft, and the next memory was entirely his own, from a lifetime ago, reading in a children's book: Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.

Sam knew so much better now, knew too much about angels to believe such a childish thing, but suddenly he wanted to kiss Castiel—while the ringing was still there, while the angel was still there, before this moment was gone.

And then suddenly it was his phone that was ringing. Sam jumped, startled as the chimes blared out insistently, vibrating from his pocket. Sam scrambled back a few steps, slipping a little on the shirt he had dropped on the floor. He reached down, scooping it up with one hand and scrambling to get his phone open with the other.

"Yes. I'm here," he said breathlessly into the receiver, tearing his eyes away from Castiel's. The angel still had his hand up, and a confused expression marred his features. Sam suddenly realized that he hadn't looked at the caller ID before answering. "I mean, it's Sam," he tacked on hastily, hoping he hadn't just burned a lead.

"Yeah, I know." It was his brother's voice that huffed through the plastic, annoyed. "I dialed your phone, moron—and in case all that domestic life has cooked your brain completely, it's me, Dean."

"Right," Sam said shortly, because who else would be such a dick. Sam felt his breath catch a moment when Cas's hand brushed against his, but when he looked up he realized that the angel was just taking the shirt he had picked up, placing it into the machine with the rest of the dirty clothes. Sam nodded in quick thanks, feeling like an idiot because of so much more than how he had answered the phone.

"Frosty the Snowman" was now in the background, and Sam watched as Castiel loaded the rest of the clothes into the washer. His heart was still beating too fast, but he pushed the feeling away, forcing himself to concentrate on Dean, who was apparently winding down some kind of soliloquy about how doing research on old stuff sucked ass.

"I mean the woman sounded so hot on the phone, Sam," Dean whined. "And her name was Marilyn. Isn't there, like, some kind of rule that chicks named Marilyn have to be hot?"

Sam made a noncommittal noise in his throat, which he hoped Dean interpreted as that's so stupid it's not worth addressing. Sam turned away from the angel loading the washer and cradled the phone as his brother went on. It was such a familiar pattern, this back-and-forth with Dean; it felt like the moments before had been a dream, gone already.

"I mean, she was like fifty, dude!" Dean's voice was filled with a tone that said this piece of information ought to have significance to Sam.

Sam just bit his lip. Generationally, given the trends in baby names, he would actually expect Marilyn to be popular about the time the current forty-to-sixty crowd was born. He turned back to see Castiel waiting patiently by the now full washing machine.

Sam smiled at him and mouthed thank you while trying to remember if warm-cold or cold-cold was better for the environment. Dean bit out a few more choice words, and Sam sighed, fiddling with the dials.

"So were you able to get past Marilyn and find out anything for real, or are you about to limp home with cougar scratches on your back?"

"Ha!" Dean huffed out. "You wish." The phone crackled a little and Sam turned to Cas, holding up a finger in the universal sign for just a minute—though Cas would probably have continued to stand there without any prompting.

"I'll have you know," his brother was bragging, "I got your information on the nun—and a batch of homemade cookies, because apparently I remind Marilyn of her son. And these cookies are gonna be awesome, Sam, because this old lady looks like Mrs. Fields—except she's black…" Dean trailed off for a moment. "Does that make her Aunt Jemima?"

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. "No. That makes you racist," he warned. "Now about the nun?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I found a ledger—kept by some tight-ass accountant back in the day—and get this, Sam. The bells didn't just go missing: they went missing with a nun, who was thought to have stolen them. Guess those things are valuable or something?"

"As holy relics, their value would have been more than just money," Sam confirmed. He switched the phone to the other side and beckoned for Castiel to follow him out of the laundry room. The washer cycle had started, and he didn't want to have to compete with the machine to hear.

"Whatever." Back in the living room, Sam could now hear the background noise of the street behind his brother's voice. "But get this," Dean continued, "the nun who went missing, her name was Mary-Margaret Constance."

"Seriously?" Sam couldn't help but blink at that.

"I know, right?" his brother returned. "That's like naming your dog Spot, or believing that a stripper's name is actually Candi with an I."

Sam winced a little at the comparison of nuns and strippers.

"She could have had very pious parents?" he hazarded, though he sounded more like he was trying to convince himself.

"Right—except she only joined the church one year before disappearing, and I couldn't find any records of a Mary-Margaret Constance before that." Sam rubbed his forehead.

"I'm not surprised she's thought to have stolen the bells," he said slowly. "But if that's the case, why were they found under the church?"

"And why is she popping around in the dreams of the Lord's prophets for some show-and-tell," Dean added. Sam heard the distinct sound of a car door closing and could imagine Dean settling himself in the Impala. "Well, anyway, there's just one more thing. In the months leading up to the bells disappearing, four nuns died."

Sam rubbed one hand against his pant leg. "Died? In an unusual way?"

He could almost hear Dean shaking his head, as he grunted. "No idea. The only reason it was even listed is because it cost money to bury them."

"Could be something," Sam mused. "But then again, medicine and disease in the early 1900s…could also be nothing."

"You wanted to go on this fucking goose chase," Dean reminded his brother. Sam heard the engine of the Impala start up. "I'm heading back," his brother finished.

The next words came out on impulse, as Sam glanced over his shoulder to where Cas was standing in Harold's things. "Cas and I are gonna borrow the Gerbers' car and do some shopping."

"Bring back pie," Dean instructed. "And something other than that rabbit food you eat." Then his brother hung up. Sam pushed his thumb over the end call button and let his hand drop, shoving the phone back into his pocket and turning to Castiel.

"We are going somewhere, Sam?" the angel asked, frowning down at himself.

"Well…" the tall hunter began, "we're gonna take your clothes—your coat and stuff, to a place where they can clean them without ruining them, but I thought…" Sam felt suddenly awkward. His throat was too dry, and red was trying to creep up his neck. "I just thought maybe you…we could get some different clothes to wear."

Castiel's dark eyes bore into Sam as though searching for something, and Sam dug his hands into the pockets of his pants.

"I mean, we've got some extra cash, thanks to your setting us up with accommodations, and I thought we could…" Sam trailed off, laughing awkwardly and pulling his hands from his pockets. "You know what, actually—why don't I just run your stuff to the dry cleaner's. It will be as good as new tomorrow—I promise."

Sam took a few darting steps past Castiel toward the kitchen, where the keys to the Gerbers' minivan lay in a dish on the counter. The angel's hand on his elbow stopped him. The grip was gentle but at the same time firm, and Sam had a feeling he wouldn't have been able to shrug it off even if he'd wanted to try.

"I would like that, Sam." Cas's voice was low, and Sam met his eyes hesitantly—but there was no uncertainty in the angel's expression. A smile stretched across Sam's face and he relaxed in the angel's grip.

"Yeah," he agreed. "I'd like that, too."

"Winter Wonderland"played in the background with the sleigh bells ringing.

.x.

Of the human realities that came with inhabiting a vessel, the one Castiel had not grown accustomed to, even after all this time, was the concept of his reflection. Breath and heartbeat, the rhythms of the body that kept the vessel alive, he barely noticed now; touch had become something he not only accepted but initiated, and had come to understand the temptation of. Mirrors still caught him off guard. Castiel had never given much thought to the visual component of his true nature, except to note that it was too bright for the eyes of man, which had never been intended to look upon grace in its purest form. But the angel was sure that whatever he looked like, it was not the strange man in the dressing-room mirror with blue eyes and ruffled black hair, struggling to pull on a sweater.

Castiel had not liked the dry cleaner's. He had been at first suspicious and then uncomfortable when Sam explained that he would not be able to have his own clothes for a full day, and he had watched with narrowed eyes as Sam handed his clothes over the sales counter on a few hangers borrowed from Harold Gerber's closet. He did not like the woman who received them, who clicked her tongue at Sam as if blaming him for forcing her to perform this service, and who would not stop staring at him, standing beside Sam in Harold Gerber's ill-fitting white shirt and the suit pants that ballooned around his knees. He had a sense that he looked idiotic, whatever Sam said—and by the time Sam finished paying the woman who insisted on being deliberately vague about when his clothes could be picked up, Castiel had decided that his best option was to return to the house and stand in Harold Gerber's closet until such time as his own things were restored to him. He was slightly irritated when Sam turned the Gerbers' minivan in the other direction.

The department store was housed inside a large slab of yellow concrete and marked by a red bull's-eye. Inside it was a maze of long aisles and racks of apparel, and everywhere there were great numbers of people, wielding their large red shopping carts as barricades to block the lanes. Sam had led him back through the store to a section designated by oversized pictures of men, all of them performing a variety of activities that Castiel was sure were not allowed in the store. Sam stepped aside to let a mother with a bawling child in her cart roll by, and then took hold of Castiel's arm and tugged him down one of the aisles, stopping next to a rack of knit sweatshirts.

"Okay. So this is the men's section," Sam explained, offering him a smile that Castiel thought was probably meant to be encouraging. "Let's look around and see if we can find anything that looks…you know, something you want to wear. I checked the tags on your shirt and pants before we took them to the dry cleaner's, so at least we already know your size."

Castiel let his gaze travel slowly across the sea of clothes before returning to Sam, his eyes narrowed slightly in reluctance. "Can we buy a black suit, Sam?" he asked.

Sam's small wince was answer enough.

Castiel was not particularly interested in wearing any of the clothes laid out for display, but he let Sam lead him from rack to rack all the same, taking as a guide the tall hunter's assumptions about what he might accept. The pants Sam offered were not dissimilar to what he was used to wearing, though most of them were of a thicker material; the other items, turtlenecks and button-downs and plain cotton shirts, were all long-sleeved, and Castiel suspected that Sam had forgotten he was incapable of getting cold. The colors were meaningless to him, so he chose a variety of them, a red turtleneck and a dark blue sweater and button-downs in white and green—but after the second time Sam steered him away from something orange, he stopped reaching for things in that shade, and began wondering if there was universally acknowledged to be something wrong with that color.

It didn't take Castiel long to decide he disliked the dressing room stage of clothes shopping, not least because while he understood the mechanics of dressing and undressing himself by now, he was not able to do it very quickly. Which was why even though Sam had picked out a number of things for himself as well, similar turtlenecks and a few sweaters with a heavy weave pattern, the door of the neighboring fitting room had long since clicked open and Sam's soft steps moved out into the area in front of the mirrors while Castiel was still pushing his arms through his sleeves and watching a black-haired, sharp-featured man do the same, both of them careful to get the tag in the back this time. Sam had done his best not to laugh, but Castiel did not like to feel he was making a child's mistakes.

He was negotiating the sweater over his head when there was a soft knock on the door.

"Cas? You still doing okay?"

Castiel pushed his head through the hole in the top of the sweater and pulled it down to his waist, staring suddenly into the unfamiliar blue eyes in the mirror. His reflection's hair was mussed again; Castiel lifted a hand to the tousled strands, but found he wasn't sure how it was supposed to look, and only brushed the short strands away from his face.

Another knock, slightly louder this time. "Cas?"

"I am still here, Sam," Castiel replied, painstakingly unrolling the folds at the bottom of the sweater. There was a pause from beyond the door, as if Sam had opened his mouth but then hesitated before speaking.

"Do you need help with anything?" he asked finally, his voice tentative.

Castiel considered the man in the mirror—the dark blue sweater above light brown pants, his disordered hair and uncertain eyes, and the hands resting stiffly at his sides. Though the fit was much better, he felt no less foolish in these clothes than he had in Harold Gerber's oversized things now piled in the corner of the dressing room, or the red snowman sweater he had worn ice skating a few days before, when Sam had laughed and confirmed his intuition of how ridiculous he had looked all along. Castiel had no ability to judge whether he looked equally ridiculous in the suit and trench coat he had always worn. But in his mind those clothes had always been as much a part of the vessel he inhabited as his pale skin, and without them he barely recognized himself. He wondered if Sam would feel the same.

"Cas?" Sam tried again, more uncertain than before.

Castiel adjusted the sleeves of the sweater until they fell straight across his wrists. Then he turned and opened the door of the dressing room, startling the figure who had been waiting just outside it.

"Cas!" Sam took a step back as Castiel suddenly stepped into the open doorway, his feet stumbling a little as he tried to give the angel space to exit the dressing room. For a moment he simply looked surprised, though Castiel couldn't decide whether that was related to his outfit or his abrupt departure from the small alcove—but within moments his expression shifted into a smile, and Sam reached out to smooth a wrinkle from the collar of the sweater, his hand lingering briefly on the angel's shoulder. "Hey. That looks good, Cas. Do you like it?"

Castiel glanced down at himself, sweater and tan pants and the toes of his black socks, which looked strange out of his shoes. Then he looked up at Sam again, a wary frown touching his lips. "These are still wrong," he hazarded, his voice trailing up just enough to turn the statement into a question. "I look…stupid."

Castiel had learned to be suspicious when Sam's denial was too quick, or too vehement; more often than not, it meant Sam was lying to spare his feelings. But his doubts about the sweater faded a little when Sam just shook his head softly, a genuine smile pulling his dimples out onto his cheeks.

"You don't look stupid, Cas," Sam assured him. The other man seemed to study him for a minute, and then Sam's smile widened just enough to show his teeth as he reached out and combed his fingers through Castiel's hair, pushing the strands up out of his face again. "You look really nice. It's a good look for you."

Castiel returned his stare silently for a moment, considering. Then his gaze shifted as he took in for the first time what Sam was wearing—a turtleneck with a crimson vest pulled over it, the solid color broken here and there by embroidered holly leaves. Castiel looked up into hazel eyes again. "You look nice as well, Sam," he said. Sam pushed his hands into his pockets as he smiled.

"Thanks, Cas."

It was on their way toward the front of the store, the cart laden with pants and long-sleeved shirts and a package of black socks with red and green ornaments on them, which Sam had hesitated an instant before grabbing, that one last thing caught the tall hunter's attention, and he stopped abruptly, settling one hand on the cart to keep Castiel from pushing it on. "Hey, Cas," Sam started, reaching out to pick up a package enclosed in plastic. "Do you need any pajamas?"

Castiel glanced at the display; the sign above the shelf advertised packaged sleepwear tops and bottoms, and from what he could see all the shirts were black, with flannel pants of red or dark green checkers tucked inside the packages. What gave him pause were the colorful cartoon characters pressed into the centers of the shirts, their lines standing out starkly against the black cotton. He narrowed his eyes at a blue and white bird with a long neck, which he remembered from a particularly frustrating debate with Dean over an early morning cartoon. The angel turned back to Sam with a small frown.

"Those are for children," he said flatly. Sam blinked a little, one hand rising to rub the back of his neck.

"Not…really. I mean, they're in adult sizes." He glanced down at the plastic package in his hand, regarding the image of a gray and white rabbit with too long legs as if seeing it for the first time. "Oh—you mean the cartoon thing. Yeah. They're not for kids, it's just…pajamas are a little different. You never really wear them out of the house." Castiel just stared at the rabbit, skeptical, and after another moment Sam laughed, the sound little more than a breath as he set the package down and picked up another, this one containing red checkered pants and featuring a yellow bird with spines of feathers around its head. "I'm not going to make you get one if you don't want to, Cas. They're just…a nice thing to wear sometimes, when you're at home."

Castiel looked down at the shopping cart. His eyes traced the overlapping sleeves of turtlenecks, sweaters and button-down shirts, the package of socks sticking out from under a pair of tan slacks, the light blue hat with snowflakes that Sam had set on his head for a moment before smiling at him. He caught the edge of Sam's red vest trapped at the bottom of the pile and remembered, suddenly, how different Sam had looked wearing it, like a man who had never washed blood the same color from his hands. His reflection had looked different, too, and for the first time he considered that it might not be an undesirable thing. Then he turned back to Sam and squinted, reaching out with two fingers to brush the edge of the plastic pajama set.

"Which one should I have?" he asked.

Sam's lips twitched up in a smile before he glanced down at the display table. "Um…well, I'm getting Woodstock, so…" He touched one package and then grabbed a different one, holding a set of green plaid and an unidentifiable white shape up next to his own red. "How about Snoopy? He's a dog," Sam added, offering him the package.

Castiel doubted that very much. But he took the package anyway, and set it in the cart next to all the other things he wasn't sure of—because Sam seemed to be sure of them, and that was probably enough.