Welcome to the ADVENT FIC EXTRAAAVEGANZA! The twelve days of Christmas, fic style. (I'm hoping to go till Christmas day, but, work is what it is – so I may not be able to make it)

Some will be fluffy, some will be smutty, and some will be downright filthy. Snippets, one shots, PWP's, and short segments that build into a story.

Merry Christmas

It's not jumping the shark if you never come back down. (And it's not JR in the shower, if you never come back out).

It's been a trying year, and by the time Christmas rolls around, Dean doesn't feel much like celebrating.

He's lying, face down, on a bed at Bobby's latest safe house. A house so safe that it has no electricity, hot water, internet or even floorboards in several of the upstairs rooms. He has two bottles of whisky under the bed, and a box of cheese crackers on the nightstand. And he isn't moving for anything less than a house fire. If anyone comes near him with Christmas cheer, he's going to shoot them, kick them in the nuts, then shoot them again, and go back to bed.

Not that either Sam, or Bobby, really feel like celebrating.

Sam's still operating with Lucifer vision 24/7, and Bobby hasn't ever really been a Christmas kind of guy. He probably missed his wife, the family they could have had, the life he had had until it had been ripped away.

Dean knew that feeling well.

So he's determined to sleep through the blessed day, when he hears the shower start up in the en suite, and all kinds of 'DANGER WILL ROBINSON' signals start running up his spine and down his gun arm.

Not now with this shit. Shifter in the shower, Werewolf under the sink, leviathan in the soap dish – whatever it was it was not going to be standing when he left that bathroom.

Dean rolled off of the bed, nabbed his gun from the side table, and crept towards the bathroom door, nudging it open and aiming at the shower curtain, which was pulled across, obscuring the shadow of a figure standing under the running water.

Dean is kind of at a loss – shoot the thing and he might kill someone, or piss off something, that's powerful but ultimately benign.

Should he cough?

Dean kicks the side of the tub. "Hey?"

The curtain pulls back a little, and Castiel's dripping wet head peeks over the top.

Dean stares at him.

Castiel stares back.

A gobbet of suds runs out of his hair, and down his face.

"Did I wake you?"

"Huh?" Is all Dean's mouth and brain are capable of offering.

"Sorry. I was just...lake scented." Castiel's nose wrinkles. "Sam has nice soap."

Dean can actually feel his brain trying to catch up.

"How is there hot water?" Is the first question to leave his mouth.

Castiel rolls his eyes.

"It's a Christmas miracle."

Dean makes a very unmanly whimpery noise. It's just too weird. He needs to sit down, and have a snooze.

"You were dead."

"No I wasn't."

"Yes. You were." Dean insists.

"Maybe you had a bad dream?" Castiel suggests, with his very-bad-lying-face on, he holds out a hand, offering him a loofa. "Do my back for me?"

Dean takes the loofa numbly.

"You were dead." He says again.

"It's a miracle Dean." Castiel says, pulling the curtain back and stepping aside so that Dean can hop into the tub. "Just be happy."

Dean remembers something after he climbs into the tub, just as Castiel squirts some red, cinnamon scented shampoo into his hair.

"What about Sam?"

"Mmmm?" Castiel says, tongue poking from his mouth as he reaches up to lather Dean's hair.

"Where's his miracle?"

"He won't remember Hell anymore. And everything that's broken in him...everything he's lost, will be restored to him. He's your brother again, as he was before your father died."

Dean feels like someone's gripping his heart, and even though he trusts them, it's still a little scary.

"And..."

"Bobby's wife is making pie in the kitchen." Castiel murmurs.

Dean can't think of anything to say to that, only thinks that the feeling of having his heart held by someone else is getting stronger and stronger with each passing second, and if it didn't feel so good, he'd be kind of terrified.

Because...Castiel is back, and...everything's ok. And he can't quite believe it, but he doesn't have to, because it's true.

Castiel continues with his task, murmuring,

"Close your eyes...I don't want to make them all teary."