ratherastory | Among Your Friends and Kindred

Title: Among Your Friends and Kindred
Summary: Fusion 'verse. It's Christmas day, and nothing bad happens at all. No, really.
Characters: Dean, Sam, Cas, Bobby, OFC, Perry
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4,590
Disclaimer: They're still not mine. I am determined to give them a happier ending than the show, and maybe that will entice them to come live with me.
Warnings: Swearing, that's about it.
Neurotic Author's Note #1: I thought I'd give the boys a good day, no strings attached. What better day than Christmas, right? I don't think the boys have ever had a really good Christmas on the show... So this is set shortly after God Bless Us, Every One.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: Uh, a good day doesn't mean I can't give into my kink for Sam with respiratory issues, right? Right. Totally. *cough*
Neurotic Author's Note #3: As usual with most of my Christmas-themed Fusion stories, this title is taken from a Christmas carol, God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen.

"Sam! For the love of —it's cold out there, don't go opening the damned door. I said I would do it!"

Dean's up and limping toward the door like his life depends on it, but Sam has the advantage of having all his limbs functioning properly and gets there before him, the stubborn jackass. By the time Dean gets there, Perry trotting at his heels, Sam has thrown open the door to reveal Bobby standing there, two large bags in either hand and a small overnight bag at his feet.

"Hey, Bobby," Sam grins from ear to ear, even though the words come out more like the half-strangled croak of a bullfrog dying of throat cancer. "Merry Christmas!" Bobby's smile fades immediately.

"Jesus, boy, you sound like someone's been at your vocal cords with sandpaper. Dean," he gives Dean a friendly nod over Sam's shoulder, then shoves his bags at Sam, who takes them without protest. "Merry Christmas. There's beer and bourbon in them bags, so don't drop 'em."

Dean bends carefully at the waist to pick up Bobby's overnight bag, stretching his bad leg to the side a bit so he can reach all the way down. "Merry Christmas to you too, old man. Don't mind Sam. He sounds like he's about to die, but he swears up and down it doesn't actually hurt to talk. It's all crap he's got sitting in his lungs, because he won't listen to me and stay in bed."

Sam is already moving away from the door, but he stops in order to cough into his elbow. "I feel fine," he protests between a cough and a nasty-sounding wheeze. "I'm better, Amanda said so."

"Sure you feel fine. Tell me that again when you don't sound like you've been gargling broken glass and can say three sentences in a row without coughing, numb-nuts. Amanda said you were improving, not that you were better. "

Sam rolls his eyes and coughs some more, and apparently decides to put an end to the debate by disappearing back into the kitchen. Figures. There's no winning an argument with someone who won't actually engage in an argument with you. Not even Cas could convince him that staying in bed was a much better plan than trying to cook Christmas dinner for five people, and Cas is really hard to argue with. At least, Dean consoles himself, the kitchen is the warmest room in the house, which means Sam won't get chilled and make himself worse.

"Can I get you a drink?" he asks Bobby instead. "We've got a couple of bottles of the good stuff just waiting to be drunk, and I've got beer in the fridge. Hey, Cas," he sticks his head into the living room where he left Cas tidying up a little after last night when he and Dean stayed up far too late playing Scrabble of all things. The game would probably have gone by a lot faster if Dean hadn't been solely trying to play the dirtiest words he could come up with. "You need anything? Another beer?"

Cas shakes his head and motions to his own bottle, still half-full and sitting on a coaster on the coffee table. There are days when Dean still has a lot of trouble believing that he lives in a house where coasters are the norm rather than the exception, but Sam made a face at him when he left his bottle on the table once in the summer and it made an ugly white ring on the surface of the wood. So, like the awesome older brother that he was, he bought Sam a whole stack of Western-themed coasters to protect his precious furniture, and Sam had ducked his head and grinned like Dean had just offered him the whole moon. And that, Dean figures, is reason enough to live in a house where everyone uses coasters as a matter of course.

"I'll start with a beer," Bobby says from behind him, and Dean nods.

"You got it. Perry, stay," he tells the dog. No use having her follow him to the kitchen and back and maybe get in Sam's way while he's obsessing about getting the food right. Sam loves the dog, it's true, but he gets a little weird about doing things a certain way, and Dean knows for a fact he's been stressed out about making this meal just right. Thanksgiving was sort of a trial run for all of them, and it went well, but he knows that Sam really went all out for this, which is why he's bordering on freaking out instead of letting himself rest and get better the way he's supposed to. It's a small enough thing, though, that Dean figures it'll be okay. One or two days of worrying about a turkey is fine, especially since it likely means that Sam is going to be tired enough to take it easy afterward, once everyone has gone home.

Sam is at the stove when he gets to the kitchen, all but bent double in another fit of coughing. It's not nearly as bad as it was when he first got sick after wandering out into the snow during the Christmas party, but it still sounds terrible, wet and hacking and like he's not getting enough air into his lungs. It makes Dean's chest ache in sympathy just to hear him.

"You take your antibiotics?" he asks.

Sam nods, still trying to get the fit under control. Finally he sucks in a thin breath, doesn't cough on the exhale, and Dean is able to breathe a little easier.

"Inhaler?" he prompts, and that gets him a glare from his little brother, but at least Sam pulls the little fuchsia disk from his pants pocket and shoves one end into his mouth to take a hit. He holds his breath, and when he finally lets go again the wheezing has eased up a lot.

Right. Crisis averted, which means Dean can get back to the very important task of fetching beer for everyone. He opens the fridge door, stands in front of the heavily-laden shelves while Sam fusses with something that smells heavenly on the stove. Probably the stuffing, Dean thinks with a smile, knowing that Sam spent a good few days testing out different recipes for the stuffing to see which one worked best with the turkey and, more importantly, which one Dean and Cas liked best. They'd ended up sampling about six different kinds of stuffing and deciding on one that had, of all improbable things, grapes in it.

"You're wasting electricity," Sam says without turning around. "Pick a beer already."

"Nag, nag, nag," Dean says automatically, pulling a six-pack out of the fridge and helping himself to three of the bottles. He puts them on the table and shoves the rest back in the fridge. "You don't hear me telling you how to run your kitchen, so let me be in charge of the beer, o abstemious one."

"Big word, Dean. Did you learn that from your word of the day calendar?"

"Fuck you, Sam. I do not need a university degree to have a good vocabulary, all right?"

Sam does turn at that, grinning, and coughs painfully into a clenched fist. He opens his mouth —no doubt to say something else insulting about Dean's vocabulary— but nothing comes out except a hoarse squeak, and he dissolves into a fresh coughing fit. Dean rolls his eyes and grabs a glass to fill with water at the sink.

"Stop talking, you're going to hurt yourself. Jesus, Sam."

Sam sheepishly takes the glass from him, drains it, flashes him a small smile and rubs a quick circle on his chest with his fist —I'm sorry in ASL, because it's one of the few signs they both know.

Fucking kid, it's like he knows all the ways to get right under Dean's skin and just stay there. It's not like Dean got his feelings hurt like a little girl because Sam talked shit about his education: they've been having this little fight for going on twenty years now, how much of a nerdy geek boy Sam is and how much of an uneducated boor Dean is, and it's not like they both don't know that none of it is true. Sam likes to get his geek on about a lot of stuff, but there's more to him than that, and Dean might never have cared about school but he's always read. After years on the road with nothing but crappy TV in crappy motels, there wasn't much to do outside of train and do research, and so Dean read. He read when Dad was gone and Sam was doing homework, he read when Dad was drilling Sam in all the basics of hunting, he read when he was sick, he read when he was sidelined with injuries, and sometimes he read deep into the night when the story got too good to put down. Sam knows all this, and he knows Dean isn't stupid —he was always the first to defend him when others implied or outright said he was— and sometimes he forgets that Dean has known him as long as he's been alive and that he knows Sam knows better, and then Sam feels guilty and apologizes, like Dean is fragile or something.

He ruffles Sam's hair. "Yeah, I'll bet you're sorry, bitch. Sorry your lungs are too fucked up for you to keep up with my witty banter. Your stuffing is going to burn," he adds, pointing to the stove. "Since you insist on making yourself worse by cooking and trying to drown our poor, innocent turkey, I'm going to leave you to it. Cas and Bobby are out there without any alcohol, and if I leave them for too long I figure at least one of them is going to die of awkwardness. You good?"

Sam nods, already stirring the pot of stuffing on the stove again. "It's called brining," he says, apparently out of the blue, but Dean knows exactly what he's objecting to.

"Dude, you stuffed the turkey into a giant vat of salty water. What did it ever do to you to deserve that sort of treatment?"

He doesn't wait for Sam's answer, just limps back into the living room, hands one beer to Bobby, who's taken a seat in one of the armchairs closest to the radiator and is watching Cas fuss with the Christmas decorations he and Sam spent the better part of a day putting up two weeks ago, including a tree that's taller than Sam. Cas is wearing a red and green woollen sweater that they got for him when it was obvious he'd be staying for at least part of the winter over a pair of brown corduroy pants and one of the white shirts he still likes so much. At least he's stopped insisting on wearing only three-piece suits similar to the one Jimmy Novak was wearing when he first allowed himself to be possessed. In fact, for a guy who was on death's door only four months ago, he's looking pretty good all in all.

For all that he's said he has to get back to all his big important things in Heaven, Cas hasn't shown any sign at all that he's planning to leave anytime soon, not that Dean's complaining. He's lost enough friends to last him several lifetimes, and having Cas nearly die on him that last time scared the living hell out of him, not that he'll admit that to anyone other than Sam. So if Cas wants to stay here where he's safe, comparatively speaking, then that's just fine by Dean. He likes it better when his family sticks close, anyway, where he can keep an eye on them.

"Seriously, Cas, more mistletoe?"

"Sam tells me it's traditional," Cas says, the picture of seriousness, and Dean can't find it in himself to tell him to knock it off, already. Cas and Sam have both been way too eager about Christmas, and because he hasn't seen Sam this eager about anything in years Dean is inclined to be indulgent about this. Besides, Sam's been sick, Cas nearly died, and it wouldn't kill any of them to have something nice happen for a change.

"Any one of you gets caught under that thing, I ain't stickin' around to watch," Bobby grumbles, but he takes a pull from his beer and doesn't actually move from his seat. Dean grins.

"What, you don't want to watch me plant one on Cas? Bobby, you disappoint me, I thought you were more open-minded than that. Hey, maybe if you're lucky you can time it right with Mrs. O'Keefe when she gets here," he adds, just to watch Bobby's face turn a funky shade of red.

As if on cue, the doorbell rings. Dean moves to go answer, only to be waved back to his seat by Cas. "You should stay seated, you've been working overtime all week," he says. "You will inflame your hip again if you persist."

Dean doesn't bother protesting, especially when he sees Bobby shoot him a look that's simultaneously worried and annoyed. He can only imagine the amount of well-intentioned advice and admonitions he'll be subjected to if he decides to get up to answer the door. Cas leaves his now-empty beer on a coaster on the coffee table —Sam would be so happy if he weren't busy trying to outdo Martha Stewart in the kitchen— and goes to answer the door. A moment later Dean hears Mrs. O'Keefe's cheerful tones in the front entrance.

"Hello, Cas, Merry Christmas! You're looking very smart in that sweater."

"Thank you, Janet. And Merry Christmas to you too." Cas sounds a little formal, the way he always does when he's trying to remember the basics of human interaction, but he's the only one apart from Bobby who calls Mrs. O'Keefe by her first name. "May I take your coat? You should put that down on this chair, so it doesn't fall. What is it?"

Dean looks over at Bobby, feeling a smile spread over his features. "Listen to that, would you? Our boy is all grown up."

Bobby just rolls his eyes and a moment later Cas leads Mrs. O'Keefe into the living room and shows her to a spot on the sofa before heading to the kitchen, bearing a foil-wrapped parcel in both hands. Dean is more than willing to bet it's a cake, since Mrs. O'Keefe insisted on bringing dessert. He hopes it's chocolate. He loves chocolate, and he knows for a fact that Sam has already made three types of pie, which is way more than any of them can reasonably be expected to eat, except maybe Cas.

Mrs. O'Keefe doesn't sit right away, but comes right over to Dean and bends down to give him a hug. "Merry Christmas, sweetie. Now, why isn't your leg up? I know just how many hours you've been working this week, and you'll do a number on your hip if you're not careful."

"Merry Christmas, and I'm fine, don't worry about —yeah, I don't know why I bother," Dean complains good-naturedly when she pulls over the ottoman. He lifts his leg a little gingerly, breathes a soft sigh of relief when propping it up takes away the last of the pressure on his hip. "I don't suppose I can convince you to stop fussing, Mrs. O?"

She pats his knee gently. "Not in this lifetime. Bobby, it's good to see you again too."

To Dean's surprise, he sees that Bobby's actually gotten to his feet and doffed his cap. "Likewise. Merry Christmas, Janet. You want me to fetch you a drink from the kitchen? Stay put, boy," he says before Dean can so much as think of moving.

"Not going anywhere," Dean raises both hands in mock-surrender, his beer sloshing in the bottle. "I know better than to argue with Mrs. O."

"And it only took two years for you to learn," she clucks her tongue at him. "Now, where's Sam? Don't worry, Bobby, I'll fetch my own drink. I'll bet you anything that boy is running himself ragged in the kitchen. I'll go lend a hand while I'm at it."

Dean isn't inclined to argue, especially when he can still hear Sam coughing up a lung in the kitchen. He's surrounded by stubborn people, is the problem. People who won't listen to reason at all. "Good luck getting him to let you anywhere near his precious cooking. He spent all of yesterday waterboarding our perfectly good turkey. I shudder to think what he's doing to the rest of the food."

"It's called brining, sweetie. It'll make the turkey taste better, don't pretend you don't know what it means when I know perfectly well that you do." Mrs. O'Keefe says, patting him on the shoulder on her way to the kitchen. "And you shouldn't tease your brother when he's stressed, you'll just make him worse, you know that."

"Sorry." But Dean gives her the most unrepentant look he can muster, and she laughs and cuffs him lightly behind the head.

"Scoundrel."

Bobby picks up his beer and settles back in his chair as soon as she's gone. Perry gets up just long enough to lie down directly at Dean's feet, and a contented silence falls over the room. Cas comes back a minute or so later, picks up his second beer bottle and pops the cap using nothing but his bare hands, the show-off. They've moved most of the furniture to accommodate a large fold-out table by the front window, over which Sam has spread a table cloth decorated with a cheerful-looking print of holly and ivy —in the spirit of the season, no doubt. He even found red and green candles and bright green napkins on sale, and Dean didn't have the heart to tell him no on this one small thing. Even if they're constantly teetering on the edge of being broke, it's not like they can't allow themselves a two dollar set of fancy napkins every now and then, especially if it makes Sam happy. Cas is setting the cutlery on the table along with a bunch of wooden boards and those little circles made of cork that keep the table from getting scorched —Dean doesn't know what they're called and figures that the day he does know what they're called he'll throw in the towel.

"Need a hand, Cas?"

"No, I am perfectly capable of setting the table on my own. Stay seated."

Still surrounded by stubborn people. There's no point in trying, Bobby will just gang up with Cas on him and glare until he sits back down anyway. Besides, Dean acknowledges privately to himself, his legs is actually kind of sore, after spending all of the pre-Christmas rush on his feet, dealing with harried customers. The overtime was great, so he's not complaining, but it kind of did a number on his hip, and his back isn't thanking him for the extra exertion either. Retail is a young man's game. Or at least a non-crippled man's game. He nurses his beer, twirls the bottle between his fingers, glances over his shoulder at the kitchen door. It's been awfully quiet in there for the past few minutes. Quiet doesn't necessarily mean good. He takes one last sip of his beer, pushes himself to his feet.

"Just going to the kitchen. Check on Sammy, see if the turkey's properly dead yet."

When he gets to the kitchen, though, Perry once again on his heels, he finds Mrs. O'Keefe at the stove and Sam sitting hunched over a mug filled with steaming liquid. Sam offers up a sheepish smile, then puts the mug down abruptly in order to keep from scalding himself when he starts coughing again.

"Well, I'm glad someone figured out a way to make you take it easy, at least," Dean limps over to him, wraps his hand neatly around Sam's forehead, checking for fever. "Yeah, that's what I thought. What's in the mug?"

"Tea, lemon, honey," Sam says hoarsely. "I'm fine, really."

"Uh-huh. Fever says you're not fine."

That's not strictly true. Sam's doing better than he has in days, and even if he's feverish he's still lucid enough to be worried about his food and his kitchen and to form complete sentences. Overall, as awful as it is that Sam got himself sick enough to be bedridden for days, Dean's counting this one a win. He thinks having Cas around to talk to Sam, keep him company, doing whatever it is off-duty angels do, probably helped a lot in keeping Sam tethered to the here and now, this time. Yet another reason he's reluctant to let Cas go.

"That's what I said," Mrs. O'Keefe is pouring gravy from a pot into a gravy boat (and when the hell did Sam ever manage to get a gravy boat? Dean doesn't ever remember either of them buying something like that). "Sam, sweetie, drink your tea, it'll make your throat feel better."

"I thought you said your throat wasn't sore?"

"It's not," Sam croaks.

"Yeah, that's convincing."

"I should check on the turkey." Sam tries to get up, sits back down abruptly as he succumbs to a fit of coughing that makes his face turn a really horrifying shade of purple. Dean puts out a hand, rubs circles on his back.

"No checking on the turkey, the turkey is fine, I promise. Well, the turkey in the oven is fine. The other turkey in the room is currently courting a relapse of pneumonia. Sit, drink the nasty healthy concoction that Mrs. O was nice enough to brew for you, and think about all the ways in which your having pneumonia makes life suck for everybody, okay?"

He picks up the mug from the table —it actually smells kind of nice, like maybe Mrs. O'Keefe put cloves in there too— and shoves it back into Sam's hands, crowding himself a little into Sam's personal space to prop him up a bit. Sam's breathing too hard to drink, but he cradles the cup against his chest and just sort of leans against Dean's stomach, eyes closing. He's kept going on nothing but adrenaline and pig-headedness, but now that he's lost his momentum it's obvious what little energy he had is draining out of him faster than water from a bathtub.

"Okay, wheezy," Dean pets his hair. "You going to come back to the living room with me now? Your dinner's fine, I'm sure Cas won't mind finishing up for you. We'll get you a blanket and you'll take another hit off that really girly-looking inhaler."

Sam shakes his head blearily. "I should—"

"Come back to the living room and sit," Dean interrupts. "Don't be a little b— don't be unreasonable," he amends, sparing Mrs. O'Keefe a contrite look. "Everything's under control."

Sam just huffs impatiently. "I wanted it to be nice."

"Hey," Dean leans over to talk softly enough so just Sam can hear him. At least, he hopes so. "It is nice. You haven't ruined anything, it's great, okay? I know how your stupid head works, I know you've managed to convince yourself you've messed it all up, but it's fine. It doesn't have to be perfect for it to be good, okay? Now come on," he rubs Sam's arm, raises his voice a little. "We're going to get you settled and you're going to stay put until the food is served, okay?"

"Don't think that doesn't go double for you, young man," Mrs. O'Keefe wags the wooden spoon with which she was giving the stuffing a final stir. "If you think any of us are letting you waltz around on that leg of yours, you are sorely mistaken."

Dean gives her a mock-salute. "Wouldn't dream of it, ma'am. C'mon, Sammy, before they all gang up on us."

He tugs on Sam's sleeve until Sam gets to his feet and follows him back into the living room. Cas is still fussing with the table, arranging pine cones artistically between the spaces where the serving dishes will go —and, seriously, when did Dean's life become a weird echo of Better Homes and Gardens?— but he gives Dean a nod and heads back into the kitchen to help Mrs. O'Keefe with bringing out the food.

In a few minutes there 's a roast turkey on the table —even better-tasting than the first one Sam ever tried at Thanksgiving— along with peas and baby carrots and mashed potatoes and gravy and that really awesome stuffing with grapes, and squash soup with coriander, followed by Mrs. O'Keefe's cake and all the different pies Sam spent days baking with Cas. Cas serves himself with more stuffing than should reasonably be allowed and Dean bitches at him for it in a friendly fashionuntil Mrs. O'Keefe smacks his wrist lightly with the back of her spoon, and Bobby insists on carving the whole turkey himself because none of the others know how to do it right. Sam takes one small glass of white wine along with the rest of them, just this once as an exception to all the rules, and when he's taken a sip after the toasts he makes a face and coughs and laughs right along with Dean when he accuses his little brother of becoming a lightweight. They don't open presents. Of a common accord they all decided not to get presents but spend the money on food and booze, which are way more enjoyable anyway, but tomorrow afternoon, long after Bobby has left, Dean will find a cheque folded and tucked away inside the wallet that he always leaves on the entrance table.

The evening stretches on and Dean puts on 'Die Hard' for himself and Sam —it's totally the best Christmas movie ever and it's tradition, you don't mess with tradition— while Mrs. O'Keefe spanks both Bobby and Cas spectacularly in a game of gin rummy. Sam falls asleep with his head in Dean's lap, Dean's hand resting on his shoulder, and eventually Bobby escorts Mrs. O'Keefe back to her front door, for politeness' sake. Dean puts away the DVD and quietly helps Cas to clear the rest of the table, leaving Sam asleep under a blanket, curled awkwardly on the sofa that's still a little too short for him.

When Bobby gets back Cas helps him to pull out the sofa bed for the night, and at Dean's insistence takes Dean's bed, while Dean shepherds a still half-asleep Sam to his own bed and watches while he takes his antibiotics as well as all his other meds for the night. He pulls the covers over Sam before sliding in beside him and letting Sam wrap an arm snugly around his ribcage and pulling as close as he can manage. Perry jumps up onto the bed and settles at their feet, muzzle on her paws. Dean allows himself a small smile as he shifts a little in order to get comfortable, wedged between his brother and his dog, and Sam stirs a little.

"Okay?" Sam asks, and Dean nods.

"Better than okay. Best Christmas ever, Sammy."

Sam nods against him, presses his nose into his t-shirt until Dean wonders just how the hell he can breathe like that.

"Good. I'm glad."

Among Your Friends and Kindred

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