Dean glances around the apartment. "I can think of about twenty different places, but since I'm trying to get ten bucks out of you, there's no way I'm helping." He stands. "I'm going to see the Christmas cookies." He turns and heads off to the kitchen.

"Hey Dean." Keith says cheerfully from next to the sink, Lance looks over his shoulder at him and smiles.

"Dean, glad your up on your feet, can I get you anything?" he asks turning off the water and wiping his hands on his apron.

Dean shakes his head. "No, but Cas did remind me of something. Be careful about any random little secret passages you find, okay? Tell me, and I'll put down a salt line or something." Not that he hadn't already torn up some floorboards and put salt underneath them, then expertly put them back down. Because that would be ridiculous. Cough cough.

"Um, alright, anything else?" Lance asks as he starts to multi-task, they had just finished the batter and now he needed to roll it out so they could cut shapes in it. He spread some flour out on the table.

Dean stares longingly at all the cookie cutters, but doesn't want to ask. "No. Just… No Bloody Mary either."

"What?" Lance pauses to look at him not understanding the reference.

"You know, when you stand in the dark and say Bloody Mary into the mirror three times. And it supposedly summons her ghost and everything. I've only been one place where it actually works, but that was a huge mess, and better safe than sorry."

"Ok." Lance gets back to work and Keith comes to stand next to him Lance smiles at his presence next to him. Keith leans down next to him with his elbows on the table.

"Hi." Keith whispers to him and Lance smiles wider.

"Hi." Lance says back not whispering to him as he rolls out the dough the rest of the way. "Dean, you wanna cut some?" Lance looks up at him

Dean's eyes widened in shock. "Really?" He'd been starting to think they really didn't want him there, and that maybe he should go search the house for passages and lay down some more salt lines, since it was stupid that he hadn't done it before. Damn, he was slipping.

"Uh, yeah." Lance points to the many cookie cutters on the counter.

Dean smiles and starts going through them excitedly. He hasn't really decorated cookies since he was maybe three, even though he'd always tried for Sammy. Cardboard and markers was about the best they could do all but a couple times, but it was still something. He pauses at the little star shaped cookie cutter. It was Sammy's favorite. He sneezed into his elbow, glad for the excuse to hide his face, sure that any emotions he felt were written all over it.

"Ooo a star." Keith points to it, "Can I do a reindeer Lancey?" Lance spins to look at him. His eyes widened as he looked at Keith.

"Did you just call me Lancey?" he asks his voice cracking as he asks.

Dean smiles, trying to focus on the fact that it was funny and not that Keith sounded just like Sammy asking to make stars. "Pretty sure he did, man." Lance shoots Dean a glare.

"Dude, he's not even gonna remember much of anything he says after he's better, he gets like this when he gets a paper cut." Lance says. "Well not this bad, but it's like this every time he's sick or hurt, he doesn't even know what he's saying." Lance explains bringing some more cookie cutters over to the table and hands a reindeer one to Keith.

Dean stares at him for a second, surprised Lance isn't going to make use of this excellent opportunity for blackmail. "You're not even gonna film him being weird or something? The couple times I was high on whatever pain meds Dad finally decided to buy off the street, he took so many videos, then threatened to send them to the girls I thought were hot if I didn't-" he pauses. "I'm doing it again, aren't I?"

"Kind of," Lance said, "but the reason I don't do it is because-" Lance pauses, why doesn't he do it. "Uh, I guess I don't because I know he wouldn't like it." Lance shrugs helping Keith cut out his third reindeer and put it on the cookie sheet.

Dean thoughtfully starts cutting out stars. He's never met someone as considerate as that. Even he and Sam would take every opportunity to mess with each other like that, especially when they knew the other person wouldn't like it, but he needs to stop thinking about Sammy while he makes stars, or he might just start crying, and wouldn't that just be the perfect ending to a perfect mess?

"Shit." Keith mutters, he just cut two shapes on top of each other, "Shit shit shit, LANCE!" Keith cried out, "How do I fix this?" he whined throwing his head back frustrated with his lack of motor skill.

For a second, in his mind's eye, Dean saw Sammy holding out his busted toy train that Dean had stolen for him for Christmas, asking how to fix it, tears of frustration on his face. That, more than anything, is what makes him reach over to help Keith. "Just re-smoosh the dough and try again." he says calmly, helping him lump the screwed up shapes together and smooth them back out again to give it another try.

"Thank you." Keith says cutting into it again, "Hey, Dee, what shape are you making?" Keith asks looking over to his shapes.

Yeah, can't keep himself from crying anymore. He keeps his head down, not wanting anyone to see. "Stars, buddy. Just stars." Lance looks between the two of them, Dean has a single tear running down his cheek and Keith looks like a happy five year old.

"I like stars," Keith says, "Lancey I need a new shape, this one is boring now." Keith holds out the one he had just been using. Lance switches it for a candy cane shape.

Another tear slides down Dean's face, but he focuses on the cookies, trying to pretend everything's fine. It's like dealing with a little kid. And he's had lots of practice. "Your cookies look great, Ace." If there was one thing he will always do, it's call kid nicknames. It always seems to make them happy. It did, Keith smiled.

"I think this pan is ready." Lance takes it and puts it in the pre heated oven and replaces it with an empty one. "Cas!" Lance calls out, "You wanna help make cookies?"

Cas's head pops through the door. "I already made cookies. A long time ago." Then he sees what Dean and Lance are doing. "Oh, you mean make them here. Okay." He comes over at sits down, immediately grabbing the angel shape.

"Hey, that's you." Keith says barely connecting a few dots.

Cas nods. "It was."

Dean reaches out and ruffles Keith's hair. "Good job, buddy. You're real smart." Keith smiles big and then yawns.

"Lancey, I'm tired, how long till he cookies are gonna be done?" Keith leans into Lance and he goes stiff for a moment at the strange and sudden contact.

"Uh, fifteen minutes maybe." Lance says helping him sit back up in his chair, "Just be patent."

"If you want, I can tell you a story." Dean says. That used to be one of Sammy's favorite things to do.

"Yeah." both Cas and Keith say excitedly at the same time.

Dean tries to think of a good one. He doesn't honestly know tons of little kid stories, since he and Sammy and just taken whatever happened to them that was serious and made it sound happier. That was just going to have to do. He'd twist something that happened to him into something happy.

"This kid named… David and his daddy… James and his kid brother… Scotty moved into a new town. It was a little place, and all the people were really nice." That much was true. Sort of. "One day, David was driving down the street when he saw a girl sitting all by herself on a park bench in the rain. Her name was Jamie. He gave her a ride home, since she looked cold, and let her keep his jacket. Since she was pretty, he asked her to be his girlfriend. His daddy told him not to, but he liked her so much that he did it anyway. They were so happy."

Dean pauses. Maybe he shouldn't have gone with this one. "Do you guys want me to keep going?" he asked. Maybe they were bored. It was more of a grown up story, after all.

"Sure." Keith said helping fill the next cookie sheet after Lance re-rolled out the dough.

Dean took a deep breath. Anything for them, even if it hurt. "But it didn't stay that way. David's daddy told him that he wanted to move again. David was upset, because he didn't want to leave Jamie. He told his daddy that he was eighteen years old and could do whatever he wanted, and he wasn't going anywhere. His daddy was surprised, because he couldn't remember when David's birthday was. He wasn't a very good daddy. It was David's birthday that day. He tried to threaten David into staying, but David was a good poker player, and tried to make it sound like what his daddy was saying didn't matter. Finally, his daddy said they'd just talk about it more in the morning."

Dean glanced at the oven, wondering when the cookies would be done. Nope. Not even close. "David snuck out to talk to Jamie, but she wasn't at her house. Her mommy told David that Jamie was dead, and she was a ghost now. David didn't believe her, so he went to the cemetery to check, but his daddy had got there first, and he sent Jamie back to heaven." Shit, how was he supposed to make this happy? "David was upset, but...um… he realized that when he died, he'd get to go to heaven and be with her forever, instead of just for a little bit here on Earth. So, in the end, it was best for everyone. Maybe it wasn't perfect right then, but it would be… later on. And so David and Jamie will live happily ever after in heaven someday. The end." Shit, had he botched that, but at least he used his brain and left out the fight. And the blood. And the other stuff.

"I liked it, I hope David gets to be happy before he has to go to heaven." Keith says, Lance and Cas are both silent, knowing exactly what Dean did, taking his own story and changing it slightly. The oven beeped and Lance took the cookies out and put them on some cooling rakes. He put the next pan in and re-rolled the last of the dough only enough for like maybe three cookies, four if they really tried.

Dean did his best to smile at Keith. At least he'd liked it, even if Dean had royally screwed it up, just like he always did when he tried to do something nice. "I hope he does too, Ace. Now, what kind of cookie do you want to be your last one?" He glances down at the star, then holds it out. "You can use this one, if you want to." Don't think about Sammy, don't think about Sammy…

"Ok." Keith takes it and cuts out one more star, they each cut out their last cookie. Lance got out the frosting and set it on the table.

"Who wants to start frosting?" Lance asked with a smile on his face, he patted Dean on the shoulder in an attempt to comfort him as he passed.

Dean gave him a tight smile that said 'thanks for trying' and handed some frosting to Keith. "Here, buddy. Make em look real cool." Keith took the red frosting that was offered and then tried to dump the whole thing on the cookie Lance sat in front of him.

"Keith no." Lance took it from him and got frosting on his hand. "Now look what you did." Lance says teasingly holding his hand in front of Keith's face. Keith leans forward and licks some of the frosting off his hand.

"Yummie." Keith smiles. Lance doesn't move, that was super cute and it was turning him on super bad. Keith did it again and Lance bit his lip. He glanced at Dean with a 'what the hell do I do?' look.

Dean looked at him over the mound of green frosting on his own cookies that nobody'd thought to stop him from making and said, "Dude, just take your hand away and go wash it if you're not in the mood right now." He raised an eyebrow. "Or, y'know, too in the mood."

Cas, who was busy decorating his angel cookies in incredible detail, with different hair color and skin tones and even eyes, didn't pay any attention.

"Oh, right." Lance looked back to Keith who was licking up his ring finger. "Uh." Lance didn't move. "Keith." he said softly. Keith stopped and looked at him.

"Hmm?" he hums in response.

"Just, frost your cookie please." Lance says, Keith nods and goes back to his cookie, Lance is a blushing mess as he walks over to the sink and washes off his hands.

Cas sits back from the table triumphantly. "Look, I made everybody!" he says happily, gesturing to Lance to come over and look. As soon as everyone was paying attention, he started pointing at the different, highly detailed angels. "That's Michael, and Raphael, and Balthazar, and Samandriel, and Gadreel, and me, and Ezekiel, and…" he pauses for a second at the last one, that was a little apart from all the others. "And that's Gabriel."

"They look great, Cas. You're really good at this." Lance says, patting Cas's shoulder.

"I just hope they appreciate it." Cas glances up at the ceiling. Then he looks back to the little Gabriel cookie. "And that he even notices."

Dean smiles quietly. Man, family's complicated for everyone. "If they don't, then they're not worth it."

Keith leaned over to look at the cookies even more closely. "I really like them. They're pretty. Is that your family?"

Cas nods.

"Wow." Keith breathes. "Heaven must be so beautiful."

"It is." Cas says longingly.

"I'm so happy for David and Jamie, getting to live together up there forever someday."

Dean can't decide whether he feels touched or like he's been punched. He usually tries not to think about that eternity. When the story happened, he didn't believe in heaven, so he just assumed Jamie was lost to him forever. Now that he's been forced to believe through undeniable proof, he isn't sure how he feels about all this anymore. He has a choice to make when that day finally comes, about who he will spend eternity with in heaven - other than Sammy - after they're all dead. Jamie? Or Lisa and Ben? He physically cannot make that decision.

So he just goes back to putting way too much frosting and sprinkles on his cookies. Except for one.

This star he frosts very carefully, putting on just as much as Sammy liked. He places star sprinkles neatly along the edges, ignoring the few lonely tears that join them. In the middle, with white frosting as pure as his brother was when he was young, he carefully creates two words in his childish handwriting.

Sammy Winchester

well, there's that for you guys, I hope you liked that, I cried a little while we wrote this chapter, I don't know about Dean, but we both love writing for you guys, let us know what you loved and what you can't wait to see!

lot's of love! -Sam