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 11

"Dean—man, you can't be serious."

Sam fixed his brother with a puppy-dog expression he had been perfecting since he was a baby. Luckily, Dean had been working on his resistance for almost as long.

"You know what? It's simple," Dean said, shaking his head and flicking the collar of his leather jacket up. "In fact, I'll put it in equation form for you two." He looked pointedly at the pair that sat across from him on the rickety wooden picnic bench, doing their best to look scandalized. "Bell plus poltergeist equals really bad news—plus us, equals no more bells. Problem solved."

"But Dean…" Sam protested. He shifted and the bench creaked beneath them. They were at the Viele Lake Park, which was located between a rec center, a high school, and a massive hill covered in decorated residences, where the Gerbers' roof would peek out maybe from the very top. With all the lawn ornaments and Christmas lights on timers that lit up throughout the night, Dean thought the Gerbers' residence was probably visible from space.

Sam and Cas had left early that morning to walk around the lake that sat in the middle of the park—and Dean had given them the benefit of the doubt and assumed it was bell-related, because if not then he was going to have a serious talk with Sam, and maybe try to hire some woman to pick him up in a bar and get his head back on straight. Dean knew how dry spells could make a man desperate, but really, no one should be that desperate. Dean fixed a glare on Castiel across the picnic table while Sam worried his lip, tinkering with the phone in his hands.

When he had come down, the pair had been strolling—strolling, there was no other word for it—on the path, greeting housewives and dogs and moving aside for runners in spandex costumes that Dean would have appreciated if they had been Joanies and not Johns. And Sam had been laughing, and Cas had the worst goo-goo eyes Dean had ever seen on a man, which made Dean wonder just what his brother had done to the previously mindless puppet.

And he would have given them the what-for—had shoved the rest of the cold Pop Tart into his mouth as he got out of the car in preparation, stopping only long enough to crumple up the silver plastic wrapping and toss it toward the trash can. But then the pair had been saved by the bell, literally.

The piece of plastic flew out from the lip of the trash can back into Dean's chest, accompanied by the most dulled and pathetic buzz from the bell in his pocket he had felt yet, like even the resonating bell understood how lackluster and underperforming a poltergeist had to be to throw trash at him. Dean had yanked the trash from the front of his jacket, throwing it more forcefully into the black bin and glancing around, expecting the usual hide-and-seek. Except that it hadn't taken more than a second to spot the bell—and the problem. Sam and Cas weren't nearly as much help as he hoped.

"Look, I just googled the guy, Dean," Sam said, holding the screen of his phone out to reveal a picture of a man who looked to be in his mid-to-late thirties, holding a pair of orange kittens with red bows tied around their necks. If Dean squinted, the picture sort of resembled the man standing near the entrance to the rec center where the hunter had parked.

"Ron Paulson is like a local hero—he runs the Volunteer Christmas Corps. They organize food drives for local families and arrange for children's choirs to sing at old folks' homes—and this year he donated half of his salary to an animal rescue." Sam did his best to imitate the expression of the poor rescued kittens as he shook the phone at Dean. His brother raised his eyebrows.

"And…?" he asked, drawing the word out. Sam bit his lip.

"And we can't just steal from him, Dean. He's like…well he's a really good person." The angel was nodding along with Sam like a bobble-head doll, his expression firm.

"Well, he's got a bell, and I don't really think he's going to put it down, so…" Dean looked over his shoulder, fixing Sam with a significant look when he turned back.

The picnic table they sat at was in a open area of grass about a hundred feet from the entrance of the rec center, which was decked out with a number of wreaths and garlands, and the thin wires that were probably lights around the roof, and if Dean strained his ears he could just hear the clunk-a-clunk-a-clunka of a bell which was being rung by an almost unrecognizable Ron Paulson in a Santa suit, with a volunteer badge clipped on the edge of his coat and a red kettle hanging from a tripod with a grate for coins in the top.

"I don't know how the hell he's standing there ringing that demon bell without the earth reaching up and sucking him down in some freak accident anyway," Dean muttered. "Trust me, we'll be doing him a favor by taking it."

Sam winced, but Castiel perked up suddenly. "I believe I can answer that," the angel offered helpfully, which only made Dean scowl. He wasn't aware he had been asking any questions. "This Ron Paulson, is a man with very strong beliefs, committed to the charity work he is carrying out. Those kinds of beliefs rival the power of prayer, and might be able to suppress the energy of the bell for some time."

Sam's expression turned hopeful. "So maybe we don't need to get the bell right away?" he asked. Dean slammed his hand against the wood before he lost the attention of the other side of the table again.

"No, Sam—because we are not going to break into Ron Paulson's house and get arrested." He shrugged his shoulders, sitting up straighter. "We're gonna take care of this right now. We just need to go up there, distract him, take it, and run."

Sam looked horrified. "We're going to mug a volunteer Santa?" The look on his brother's face was priceless. Dean just shrugged.

"Tomato, tomahto…" he said. Castiel had on an expression that said he hadn't followed the conversation as usual, but that he was planning on taking Sam's side anyway—and when had that started? Dean tried to put his finger on it, but then let it go. They had more important things to do right now—like steal a bell.

"Couldn't we just offer to buy it from him?" Sam wanted know. He took one more glance at the article in praise of Saint Ron before putting his phone away.

"No way," Dean said, "because if he says no, and then we steal it anyway, he'll have a description to give to the police, and between your height and my good looks we are anything but nondescript. And Cas, he just looks like a criminal." The angel gave Dean a slightly affronted look, glancing down at his suit and trench coat. The hunter just dug his hands in his pockets. He stood by that. No matter what kind of dopey hats his brother put on the guy, Cas was always just one creepy look away from skulking everywhere they went. An uncomfortable part of him called up the image of the angel and his brother hand in hand by the lake, but he shook it away.

"So I'll wait for the coast to be clear," Dean pushed on with a plan, not waiting for any more whining from Sam. If Dean let him, he knew his brother could go on all day like that. "Then I'll try to come up from behind him. One good clock—" Dean clicked his tongue and pantomimed a punch. "Then you grab the bell and we run like hell for the Impala."

"We can't hurt this guy," Sam protested. His eyes were wide, and he rubbed his hands against his pant legs. "He's like a manifestation of the Christmas spirit…

The girly argument made Dean want to gag and yank the ridiculous red scarf off his brother, and never go back to the Gerbers' holiday cheer trap—but his brother did have a point about one thing.

"That's true—we don't want the police investigating an assault, after all…" He trailed off, staring at Sam for a moment before his eyes drifted over to Castiel and it hit him. "Which is why we'll have Cas put the Vulcan neck pinch on him," Dean crowed. "Then I grab the bell, and as soon as I'm clear you can start yelling for help, Sam—tell some bystander he collapsed."

"I do not know this Vulcan neck pinch," Castiel said flatly, looking less than pleased.

"I know that. I just mean, put a whammy on him, you know—like you did with Bobby when we first met. Or use pressure points—whatever. You must know enough yoga voodoo to take him down even without angel mojo." Dean made a jabbing motion with his fingers; Castiel looked totally scandalized.

"You wish me to render this pious man unconscious?" Cas didn't look like he was getting ready to agree, and Dean knew he had to pull out the big guns. He turned back to Sam.

"Well, I guess we're back to mugging, huh?" he told his brother, with a helpless shrug. Sam's expression tightened, and then he sighed, turning to Castiel.

"It's really better than the man getting hurt," Sam said in a low, apologetic voice, but Dean wasn't sorry, because the previously reluctant angel was turning his head, listening and being won over, just as Dean knew he would be.

"Give me that scarf, Sammy," Dean said, reaching over to pull it off his brother's neck without waiting for an answer. As official bell thief, he would still need a disguise, after all.

.x.

Sam fingered the hastily scrawled note in his pocket. He hadn't had any paper on him except the coffee receipt from that morning, luckily paid for in cash and untraceable, so he sucked on the end of his pen, scrawled a few words, and then wrapped the paper around a couple hundreds—all the money he had in his wallet.

Dean's plan had gone off without a hitch, and Sam had watched in horror as Castiel walked slowly over to the man and reached up a pair of fingers. And then Ron Paulson had crumpled to the ground. And Dean—looking like the Hamburgler with Sam's red scarf wound round and round his nose and mouth and Cas's blue hat covering his hair—ran over madly, grabbing the bell from the man's limp hand and shoving it down his shirt. Then he had grabbed the angel's arm and they made a run for it.

It hadn't taken much for Sam to get people's attention—the general consensus seemed to be that anything bad happening to a Christmas volunteer was a tragedy, and the tall hunter felt terribly guilty as a woman with a baby stroller screeched over, calling for someone to get an EMT from the rec center. Sam approached the edge of the crowd cautiously, and then with a silent apology to Ron Paulson and the spirit of Christmas, he shoved the note and the money into the red kettle and walked hastily toward the other end of the park, where the getaway vehicle would be waiting for him.

And Sam had a feeling that if anything bad happened to them on the way home, it wasn't going to be the bell—it was going to karma, because a hastily written I'm so sorry, hopefully this will cover the cost of the bell and a little bit of money wasn't nearly enough to balance out mugging a charity Santa. Sam rolled his eyes skyward, and he wasn't sure if he was asking for forgiveness or just clemency.