#supernyatural

“Sammy. Sammy, watch this,” Dean laughed as he wriggled a leaf on the trail. The bright green caterpillar curled up into a fuzzy ball. “Quit it, that’s mean,” Sam said; he was already upset with Dean for taking the long trail to the lake instead of the path they normally took, but Dean had taken his comments on his stomach pudge to heart and set off on the winding path. “Relax. I’m not hurting it. Dude, reckon I could roll it in my hands?” He pulled the leaf containing the bug from the small plant on the ground and was about to roll it into his hand when a runner exercising on the path slowed to a stop beside them. “Please don’t do that,” the dark-haired man said, out of breath from his jog. “I’m not going to hurt it,” Dean replied at once, slightly annoyed at the nosy stranger. “I didn’t say you were. You should probably trust me. I know everything about the subject at hand.” “And so modest,” Dean lifted his eyebrows. “I guess I should probably –oops!” With that, Dean tipped the leaf over and the bug rolled into his hand, still in its protective ball shape. Dean lifted his hand in triumph and began to turn to tell the stranger where he could shove his confidence, when a sudden sharp and violent pain shot through his hand.

“Son of a bitch!” he shouted, dropping the bug in his shock. Sam bent over at the waist, laughing until he could hardly breathe. The stranger simply tilted his head, unimpressed. 

“I did tell you,” he shrugged, a smile playing about his lips. 

“Yeah! Thanks!” Dean shot back, clutching his hand and observing the red welt raising quickly and painfully. “Who the hell are you anyway, the Sage of Bastard Bugs?” 

“Castiel Novak,” the man said, inclining his head. “Curator of the insect exhibit at the zoo.” 

Dean flushed, but offered his non-swollen hand to Castiel to shake. To his surprise, the other man didn’t lift his hand to return the gesture. 

“It’s all good, the bug bit my other hand,” he said, and Castiel’s eyes twinkled mischievously. 

“I’m aware. I’m more concerned about the poison ivy you picked to get to the bug in the first place.” 

Dean walked into the apartment he shared with his college roommate and immediately blinked his eyes several times at the barrage of orange. Pumpkins littered every spare surface. A fat round one was plunked in the middle of their salvaged kitchen table, while approximately thirty medium sized ones adorned every table, corner, and spare space. A few dozen tiny teacup pumpkins were interspersed throughout the bookshelf and lined the kitchen counter. “Cas?” Dean called, bewildered.

“In here!” the familiar voice called from the bathroom.

Dean meandered around the small mountains of gourds until he came to their shared bathroom and peeked inside. Cas was sitting on the edge of the tub, knife in one hand and jack o’lantern in the other, and an enormous plastic bucket filled with seeds in front of him. Several hollowed out pumpkins sat in the floor around him, faces messily carved into various expressions. Cas positively reeked of pumpkin, and seeds and pumpkin slime were dripping down his clothes.

“I brought home a few pumpkins from the farmer’s market,” Cas supplied helpfully, and Dean nodded slowly.

“Yeah, yeah I noticed.”

“They’re for both of us,” Cas added.

“Wait, what am I supposed to do with all these pumpkins?”

Cas looked down at the carved vegetation, then back at Dean.

“I thought that was fairly obvious,” he replied dryly.

“Dude, there’s like seventy pumpkins in our house. You want to carve them all?”

Cas’s eyes turned downcast and he fidgeted, a nervous movement that Dean recognized as a precursor to a confession.

“You know I was raised quite religious, Dean. I was never allowed to celebrate Halloween, and never allowed to create jack o’lanterns. I wanted to see what I had missed.”

Aw, hell. Dean felt like the biggest asshole to ever walk the earth. His heart broke a bit at the sight of his best friend staring forlornly at the half-carved face in his hands, and he made a decision.

“Looks like we better get started then. You would choose to do this the day before Halloween,” Dean grinned, and Cas brightened.

“That’s why they were on sale!”

Dean grabbed a knife out of the kitchen and sat to work carving the farm’s worth of pumpkins scattered in their apartment. They made ghouls, cats, and faces of every kind, and didn’t finish until nearly three in the morning. The next day, Dean introduced Cas to the wonders of dressing up for Halloween, and though they were both far too old, Dean grabbed a cheap plastic pumpkin from the dollar store and took Cas out into their neighborhood for trick or treating, smiling at the look of glee on Cas’s face when he poured out his haul of candy at the end of the night.

“Well? What do you think of Satan’s holiday?” Dean asked later, massaging his stomach after his twentieth piece of candy.

“I think I’m doing this every year. Though a diet may be necessary afterward.”