Powdery snow drifted down onto the clearing in the wood, small flakes taking their time to join the several inches already covering the grass and giving little white hats to the chopped wood in the log pile outside the house. Anything that hadn't migrated was hibernating, and the path behind through the trees was cold and quiet and marked with one set of tire tracks.
The cabin windows threw a warm glow onto the dusk-lit snow outside. Through the glass, he could see Sam, nearly as tall as the deep green pine he was wrestling into a tree-stand. The chimney gently puffed the smell of wood smoke into the air.
Dean's breath came out in little white puffs. Standing next to the car, his ears stung with the cold. He felt as though he'd just walked into a room and forgotten what he'd come for, and then he looked down and remembered – he had gone on a beer run. It seemed a bit like a vague dream, but a case of Smithwick's rested in his arms nonetheless. He made boot-prints in the garden path on his way to the door.
"Hey, Dean, you made it back just in time. I got the tree up and Gabe's up in the attic getting the rest of the decorations. I'm told Cas has never had hot chocolate. I can't believe you never made your famous recipe for him." Sam rambled, arms full of silvery tinsel. "I did my best, but I probably should have just waited for you."
Four steaming mugs sat on the counter that separated the living room from the small galley kitchen.
"Well don't just stand there." Sam laughed.
Hazily, Dean realized he was dripping melted snow on the mat. Once divested of his winter clothes, he took a sip out of the mug – black with the word KANSAS in an almost illegibly blocky font on the side.
"You did fine." Dean said. He reached into the kitchen cabinet and, when Sam's back was turned, he added a little more nutmeg and gave the cups each a quick stir.
Cas emerged from a room in the back, and as if it had only been created in his mind in that moment, Dean suddenly remembered it was their room. He was momentarily stunned at his clothes – loose jeans and a long striped sweater, but then he remembered, of course, Cas had hung up his trenchcoat ages ago.
"You took too long." Cas scolded quietly. "I worried that you were stuck in the snow. That car isn't made for this kind of weather." He stood close, which wasn't totally unusual, but Dean almost stumbled backwards when Cas rested his head on Dean's shoulder.
No, wait. That was normal. He always did that.
Dean twined his fingers with Cas' in a dreamy way that was almost automatic.
"I keep telling you, Dean," Sam said adjusting the drape of the little white lightbulbs, "You gotta get a pickup if we're going to live out here. I mean, at least put some snow tires on or something."
Dean nodded mutely.
"Hey, did you win the fight with the tree?" Gabriel said, strolling in still in his pajamas and a bathrobe, a cardboard box under each arm. He set the boxes on the coffee table and slipped a hand around Sam's waist.
Sam had to bend a little to plant a light peck on the top of his head.
"What did you find up there?" Dean asked, crossing the room and passing Gabriel a mug of his own. He glanced back at Cas, who was still frittering about in the kitchen.
"You mean other than Narnia?" Gabriel joked. "A bunch of stuff, some of it looks a little old – did someone actually give you guys a chupacabra Christmas ornament? Seems in bad taste, doesn't it?"
Sam laughed. "I think it's kinda cute, in a creepy way. Where do you think we should put it?" He asked Dean.
Dean frowned. "Who was it?"
"Who was what?"
"Who gave it to us?"
"Oh… I don't… Does it matter?"
"Yeah, it does." His voice turned hard. "Something like that, you'd think we'd remember who gave it to us. It's kind of a weird gift, isn't it? Since when do hunters pass out Christmas ornaments?"
"It's fine if you don't want to put it up."
"Something's not right." He said.
Gabriel's face flashed, some strange expression passing through. Only Dean noticed it before it faded.
Cas stepped out of the kitchen. "I found the marshmallows." He had a bag of fat white marshmallows in one hand, and long bamboo skewers in the other. He rested them on the coffee table and skewered one. Dean watched him roll up his sleeves and bend over the fire long enough to blacken the outside of his marshmallow.
"Is this right?" He asked Gabriel.
"Don't say anything." Sam cut him off. "Some people like it like that." He defended his preference.
"Yeah, weirdos." Dean teased, popping one of the marshmallows from the bag into his hot chocolate and taking a long sip.
Cas took a bite. "I don't know. It's not bad." With a mouth full of burnt candy, he leaned in and let his lips brush the corner of Dean's mouth, giving Dean little tingles around that side of his face.
"Yeah, well let me roast one for you properly so you can compare." Dean demanded, earning a scoff from Sam.
A low hum came from Cas as he hung little glass icicles on the tips of branches, some Christmas song Dean didn't really know well beyond what he'd heard in hotel lobbies and shopping malls after Thanksgiving. He thought it was a little bit of a travesty that Cas knew Christmas songs better than him. It was about time he had a real Christmas. Maybe he'd get Cas to teach him the words.
The fire was warm, and as Dean turned the marshmallow he would use to prove to Cas that it was better this way, he found himself staring into it, a little mesmerized. In the flames, he thought he saw something – the shape of a monkey with tufts of hair at its chest and hips, a pair of doors, a golden knob with a spike on one end. They faded, but what was left in his mind was the image of a clock that went to thirteen.
Thirteen.
He blinked and looked around.
"No." he whispered.
Cas looked at him quizzically, but before anyone could stop him, he stood up and made for the door. He ran out into the winter night stocking footed, and found it not cold in the least. He didn't stop until he got to the end, where he had parked the car, and there was a silver wall just beyond it, a dome that stretched up and above him as far as he could see. His hands balled into fists.
He got in the car, threw it into reverse, and hit the gas. The car cut straight through the silver barrier like it was made of sugar-glass and it shattered.
The trees and the house dissolved into glittering powder. The car around him followed just the same. The world fell away and through the strange remains, Dean fell too.
He sat up in bed and put his hand to the wall to steady himself. Cold sweat stuck the shirts to his chest. He sucked a few heavy breaths. His posters were on the wall, his blankets were on his legs, and his shoes were in the corner… he was safe in the bunker, in the room he was coming to call home. He took a moment to realize that he had fallen asleep in his jeans and jacket, but stranger things had happened.
He tipped back down, not sure he wanted to climb out of bed yet. His eyes fell closed, and he tried to sort the images – they weren't dreamlike at all, more like memories, so real he kept searching the details in his mind, looking for the things that were wrong, that would make him feel safe.
The door opened, his bedroom door, with an aged creak.
"Did you want some coffee?"
"Cas? What are you doing here?" Dean said without thinking. He looked Cas up and down, realized he was wearing a sleepy smile and Dean's own pajamas. He had a steaming mug in each hand.
"I'm sorry." Cas looked down. "I didn't know, I thought you'd…" His face sank, like Dean had delivered a painful blow.
"Hey, hey, wait." Dean said. "Yeah, I'll take a coffee. I guess I should get up. Man I had the weirdest dream. We were in a maze, or something…" It was already fading.
"Strange." Cas handed him a black mug. The almost illegibly blocky letters on one side spelled KANSAS. Dean frowned at the mug.
"Hey, is Sam up?" He asked, pushing himself out of the bed and slipping on his shoes.
"I don't know." Cas returned. "Why don't you just stay here a little longer?" His face was inquisitive, but Dean knew him too well, there was iron beneath, seemingly uncalled for by the situation.
"Well, did you see him around when you went for the coffee?" Dean asked.
"No. What does it matter? You don't need to start your day yet, do you?" Cas set his cup down on Dean's bedside table. He sat on the bed and pulled his bare feet up into a cross-legged pose.
"What do you mean? We've got stuff to do."
"We don't need him." Cas growled, anger pulling creases into his brow. "You don't need him. You can just stay with me."
Dean looked at the mug again, then back to Cas. "What are you talking about? Are you feeling alright?" Dean shook his head.
"I'm feeling fine, now come away from there, sit with me." Cas' voice was thick with irritation, urgency.
He started to take a swig of the coffee as he opened the door.
On the other side was another world – a world of junk, castaway pieces of furniture and scrap and tossed away objects, piled high in all directions. It was as if someone had plucked his room from the bunker and placed it smack in the center of the world's biggest garbage dump.
He spat the coffee.
"What the hell is this." He demanded.
"I told you. Don't bother with that." Cas responded, then softened his tone again. "Just stay in here. It's better in here, don't you think?"
"What are you talking about?"
"What's out there that you need?"
Dean paused. "I was looking for something. I don't… Something important. I was running out of time."
"It was just a dream, Dean."
"No. No. I was really-" He stared at the mug.
"Come and sit down."
"Sam."
"What?"
"It was Sammy. I have to save Sam!" He threw the mug across the room.
When the black ceramic hit the wall, it shattered. Cas gave Dean a beleaguered sigh, and turned to glitter dust. Paint stripped itself off the walls, which started themselves to crumble. He was left standing in room-shaped pit at the center of a vast expanse of broken things.
"Come on!" Cas—the real Cas—shouted from a ledge at the top of the destroyed wall. "We have to hurry, there's not much time!"
"Best get a move on, Squirrel." Crowley said from behind Cas.
Dean stepped up onto the strange replica of his desk and Cas wrapped his hand around Dean's forearm. Dean grabbed back and held on tight as he climbed up.
"What happened to you?" Cas asked.
"Distractions, it was all just distractions." Dean locked on to Cas' eyes, then cast a wary glance at the room below. "I… think it's over. Just don't go bringing me any hot beverages." He remembered the fire, and the marshmallows, and his heart hurt.
Cas couldn't make head nor tail of that, but it wasn't the time to look for explanations.
"If you'll look to your left," Crowley said in the style of a tour guide, "You'll see the Gabriel's castle." He added onto the end: "I sure hope you two know what you're doing."
"Yeah, me too." Dean said, eyeing the spires and parapets that started just at the end of the trash field. Almost there, he thought.