Turns out when Sam gets his mind stuck on something- and this time it was polishing up a very cute Christmas-style dinner- somehow, it always goes in his favour. The gravy wasn't clumped up, and nor was the turkey too dry. Dean assumed someone who'd been cooking for twenty years and had a normal family they spent the holidays with might have balked at a few of their choices of sides, but to the three of them sitting alone in the bunker's echoing main room, it was one of the most grounding sights they'd come across. It was December 24th. There wasn't blood and guts decorating the walls; there were lights and fake greens. And there wasn't just another case to be finishing up, there was food to dig into. Cas came to stand beside him in the doorway, silently running his own gaze along the length of the table, much like Dean had been doing; and when he looked over, he saw undisguised content covering Cas' face.

"C'mon." His hand brushed Cas' sleeve as he beckoned him to follow. Sam glanced at them as they approached the table. The little smirk he got from his younger brother was almost foreign. He'd been caught putting a lot of effort into something, but instead of steeling himself against one of Dean's usual quips, he just looked… happy- happy to be finished with it, he guessed. "This looks awesome," he said aloud, unable to hide his own giddiness at doing something that really resembled Christmas this time.

"Yeah, well, the kitchen isn't doing so good," Sam said with a little smile. Dean waved him off while sitting down.

This was a real holiday- not that they hadn't spent some of their birthdays relaxing, in the past. But those days often came and went. This night, however, seemed like it was one that would be hard to forget. He wasn't wrong. The orange lighting, though soft, was far brighter than the sparse lamps they flicked on around the bunker. The mixed aromas as he told stupid, old stories in between eating were far more inviting than the usual grease, and tired atmosphere, of the diners they stopped in at. And nobody could help from smiling for long.

Cas repeated the fact that he didn't need to eat. Apparently the angel only planned on snacking on stuff after the brothers were pretty much done, but when he took a peek into the bowls with chips in them, he saw that their contents had dwindled away.

They'd all stopped touching their plates a while ago by the time Dean had gotten to some story about Sam nodding off in the Impala as kids, and jolting awake every time his cheeks touched the frosted windows. Usually they tried to work in the south during the winter, but one of their dad's friends had gotten into a fix up in Michigan, and Sam in that puffy jacket with round pink cheeks, angrily walking back with him from the grocery store-

Sam groaned. "Dean."

"Hey, it was cute," he tossed back with a grin. He'd snuck a few sips out of Cas' dizzying eggnog before the cup ended up shuffling over to the side closest to Sam. Cas never got on his case about drinking quite as much as Sam, but sometimes he would clean up the beers before Dean was entirely done, or remind Dean about the movie he'd suggested before he drank himself to death, leaning over piles of research. The rest of the eggnog and rum would be sitting conveniently in the kitchen, but he knew he probably shouldn't grab anything like that. Not to mention that the atmosphere was so comforting and alien right now that it felt fragile- that leaving the table for just a minute might alter the one thing he hoped wouldn't end anytime soon.

"I'm pretty sure it was cuter when you gave Meryl Webber that dark blue jacket." Sam smirked at Cas, who- for whatever reason- seemed glued to Dean instead. "You were so mad when it came back smelling like her perfume. But we all knew you wouldn't wear it because you just didn't want to drown out the smell."

"Dude, you were like, eleven. You're remembering it wrong." He took another forkful of the berry-mix pie on his plate, if only to have something to do with his hands while looking down. The knife he'd used to cut it out with had "accidentally" slipped and allotted him a whole quarter of the pie in one go, but with everything else he'd gorged on tonight, his stomach was almost repulsed by the thought of eating more. It was practically a new experience for him. He pushed the plate away with a little groan and leaned back in his chair to put his feet up on the table's surface, careful not to get them too close to anyone or anything else.

Sam was noticeably choking down his own bile. "That's disgusting." It was fair. The pile had been suitably ravaged; cut here and there, crust chunks embedded in the filling at odd angles, bits scattered all over the plate like it'd exploded.

"It looks about the same to me," Cas said, taking a moment to seriously inspect it.

Dean pointed in affirmation to Cas. "It's all going to the same place."

"Good. You'd better eat it, because I am not touching that."

His eyes rolled in response. He could probably finish it later tonight, if the conversation kept up long enough. Or not. The ache in his gut was growing more by the minute, beginning the familiar process of an evening-long reminder that sometimes he enjoyed food a bit too much. "I'll wash 'em. You've done enough tonight."

Sam smiled. "I'll take that."

Cas caught his gaze and then looked down to the remainder of the pie on Dean's plate. It was the last of the berry pie; someone had gotten into it yesterday and Sam had finished off the tiny piece Dean left him with. "Is it good?" Cas asked him.

"Really good."

Sam watched, absolutely mortified, while Cas picked up his fork for the first time that night and used it to dig out some of the pie's flesh. Though he vaguely remembered Cas saying food never tasted the same as an angel, he balanced the creamy bottom, the crust, and the filling like a practiced connoisseur and seemed to enjoy what he tasted. The plate was quickly pulled into Cas' area of the table, and he worked on scraping it up by each bit. Sam continued looking on, both horrified and fascinated. His little brother had been grossed out by his methods of ravaging a piece of pie, and in contrast, Cas' slow and deliberate manner of eating was far more formal. But the pure fact that Cas was eating after Dean seemed to make it the most enrapturing thing yet.

Dean was also a little surprised, but he tried not to let it show. Germs probably didn't mean anything to an angel. "I told you it was good," he told no one in particular. Sam shot him a glance with a raised brow, even though it looked like he might have an idea of what was going on. Dean certainly didn't. He just shrugged and leaned back a bit more, watching the Christmas tree's light play off of Cas' eyes.

A/N:

Looks like FFnet has been sending out a bunch of tweets throughout the last few days, trying to deal with some recent bugs on the site. If the remaining chapters don't all upload tonight, count on them tomorrow! ^-^ Forever Young will return next week.