nov 5 is anniversary dinner at the winchester household but it's like..no one talks about it. everyone gets together but they pretend like it's because it's just. you know. a regular coincidence! we're just hanging out! we didn't even look at the calendar! they're all laughing too loud and forcing jokes and being overly casual about it.
dean gets real quiet when there's a break in conversation or when he's alone. cas gets this look in his eyes like he's not where he is. if they can't bear to be separated on the day, well. no one has to know. or even if they do, no one mentions it. so they eat one handed and they hold hands under the table until their knuckles are turning white and they're just standing pressed together when they're supposed to be doing the dishes and they DON'T talk because they still can't figure out how to sometimes and today is definitely the day that is sometimes. and if they get hugged extra tight when everyone leaves, well. they don't mention it. they're grateful but they don't talk about it.
the first year, it's almost a wake in the house. well, there was no house then, but there was the bunker, and it was home. but yes. it was almost a wake, disguised as a celebration. they'd all crowded around the map table, sitting in chairs and on the surface and trading stupid stories and playing boardgames and throwing scrabble tiles at each other because that's not a fucking word, dean and then even when they'd tired of the act, they just sort of sat together and drank and said nothing like it was agreed upon beforehand that they weren't gonna let dean and cas be alone and dean had been so grateful he didn't know what to do with it. it was like this grief wasn't supposed to be there, you know? but it was. it was. and there was no ignoring it. but you couldn't let it drown you so you did what you could.
the year after that is more of the same, though the house had emptied before midnight . and yes there was a house by then. and a porch swing and deck chairs and kitchen windows and her gardens and retirement, even though dean didn't think he'd ever get used to the taste of that word in his mouth. dean woke up that year with a pit in his stomach and he'd panicked because cas wasn't there, cas wasn't touching him, cas was gone , gone, gone, but then he'd blinked his eyes open to see that cas had just curled away from him in the night, was still here, sleeping, soft and open mouthed, and dean could touch him without straightening the bend in his elbow and he did and he tugged until they were pressed together again and he'd closed his eyes and sighed. cas went somewhere far away during the day, and dean thought he was going to suffocate in the house because he didn't know how to bring him back, to make him aware of the ground under his feet. but then his family was there, filing into the house somewhere around noon, in groups of twos and threes. they brought food and wine and movies and they pulled at the arms of the men who'd turned hollow-eyed until something like light slipped back into them.
it's the third year now, and the dishes are drying on the rack and the house is emptied of its guests and the quiet is just a little bit more bearable than it was the year before but somehow that feels like enough, because dean's not drowning and neither is cas, even if the water pulls at their legs, and that's a damn win in his book. dean checks the locks on the doors and the windows of his house and brings cas an afghan, drapes it over his shoulders, pulls him close until he's lying back against dean's chest on the couch. and they turn on the tv and it's the kind of shitty programming that comes on when it's after halloween and not yet christmas and it's pushing 2 am on the oven clock, but it's good white noise, and sometimes cas laughs and dean feels it against his chest, in his bones, and he thinks that's all it's about anyway. that laugh's kind of the point of everything. so he sighs and hooks his chin on Cas' shoulder and doesn't say how scared he is, sometimes, even now, or how he doesn't want to close his eyes tonight, because he's not sure what he'll wake up to tomorrow and doesn't say that there's something stinging the back of his eye even if there's no reason for it. instead he just slips his fingers through Cas' and buries his nose in cas ' hair and breathes. and well, isn't that a miracle.
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