Chapter Text
There's a construction paper cutout of a jack-o-lantern taped up in the front window of Castiel’s house. The jack-o-lantern has a mustache. Clearly Jack’s handiwork.
It’s a Thursday night in October and Dean has swapped shifts with Jo so she can go to a concert this weekend, so Dean can swing by Cas’s house to see him and the kids for about an hour and still get home in time to cook dinner for Sam.
Sam has been tearing his hair out over midterms and gave Dean a death glare the one time Dean foolishly suggested he chill. So Dean is being an awesome older brother and making Sam’s favorite-that-he-won’t-admit-is-his-favorite tonight, cheesy potato soup.
It’s perfect soup weather, fall wind rattling the leaves that still cling to the trees in Cas’s front yard. Dean doesn’t knock—the front door is unlocked and he knows that’s for him. That Cas wants him to feel at home here.
The house is quiet when he first steps inside. Then, a shout from the dining room:
“No, it’s not!”
Claire sits at one end of the table, studying, or possibly, pretending to study. Jack is standing in his chair, hands on his hips, glaring at her.
Dean’s pretty sure he’s not supposed to be up there, but the advantage of not technically living here is that Dean doesn’t have to say anything about it. He and Jack have an uneasy truce in their contest to be Cas’s favorite person, and Dean prefers not to break it by enforcing rules if he doesn't have to.
Instead he asks, “What’s up?”
“She said trick-or-treating is for babies.”
Claire concentrates intently on her textbook.
“When was the last time you went trick-or-treating?” Dean asks her.
“I don’t know. A long time ago.”
“Two years ago,” Cas says from the doorway to the kitchen. “With your grandmother. I have photos.” To Jack, he adds, “What are chairs for?”
“Sitting.”
“That’s right.”
Jack climbs down, sits properly, and goes back to his homework. A few moments later, Claire shuts her book and stomps out of the room.
Dean hears a door slam and her feet on the basement steps.
“Is she okay?” Jack asks.
Cas is frowning in the direction she left, looking like he’s steeling himself to go down and talk to her. But this is the part Dean is good at.
“I got it,” he says. “Let’s just give her a minute first.” He registers that Cas is wearing an apron. With blue stripes. “What’s cooking?”
“Soup. It's a good day for soup. Can you stay for dinner?”
“Sorry,” Dean says, “promised Sam. I’m sure yours’ll be awesome, though.”
“It’s from a can,” Cas says, and on the long list of things Dean loves about him is that he never raises a fuss about Dean’s priorities with regard to Sam. Also that he insists on wearing an apron to heat up canned soup.
“It would be better if you cooked it,” Jack tells Dean. He has the manners to wait until Cas is back in the kitchen, at least, but he has no reservations about expressing his opinions on how Dean should spend his time.
“Some other time.”
“How about this weekend? We’re carving pumpkins.”
“I don’t know, man, I gotta work this weekend.”
Jack frowns at his spelling homework. Somehow it’s worse than Miracle’s puppy dog eyes.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Jack grins up at him and Dean knows he probably just got played by an eight-year-old, but right now he doesn’t particularly care.
“Wanna read my sentences?”
“I gotta go check on Claire. But I’ll read ‘em before I go. Deal?”
“Deal.” Jack sticks out his hand and Dean shakes.
“You should bring Miracle this weekend!” Jack calls after him.
“I’m not promising anything!” Dean shouts back.
If Claire had gone up to her room, Dean would know to give her space until she came back down. Downstairs is different. She doesn’t necessarily want to be alone, just away.
Dean gets that.
Claire is on the couch, playing Mario Karts. She looks up and groans.
“You’re pretty tall for a two-year-old.”
“Ha. Ha. Ha.”
“You good?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.”
Instead, she plugs him in a controller and he lets her kick his ass at Mario Karts for a while. Honestly, there’s not a whole lot of “letting” involved—Claire insists on racing at the highest difficulty settings.
“Are you guys doing anything for Halloween?” she asks, casual like she doesn’t really care, although he’s betting she does.
“Movie marathon. We used to watch scary movies every year when we were growing up. We’re gonna restart the tradition.”
“That sounds cool.”
“Very cool. Very R-rated.” He would actually invite Claire in a heartbeat, even though it’s supposed to be his and Sam’s time, but Cas would literally kill him. Also probably some of those movies really are not ideal for middle schoolers, even if he was that age when he first watched them.
“Ugh.” On the screen, her car chucks a bomb at Dean’s.
“Sam and I went trick-or-treating when we were your age, you know.”
“Good for you.” After a moment, she sighs and says, “Sometimes, when I’m with Cas and Jack I feel kinda like a third wheel? So I really don’t want to go trick-or-treating with them.”
“What did you do last year?”
“One of my friends at my old school had a party. Just a few people. Music, costumes, snacks… it was okay. But either they’re not doing it this year or they didn’t invite me. It’s whatever.”
“Anyone at your new school you could make plans with?”
“Oh, yeah, they’re going to the trunk-or-treat thing at the park.”
“You gonna go too?”
“Um, no. They planned a group costume. Without me.”
“Harsh. Want me to beat them up?”
“They’re thirteen-year-old girls, so, no. But I appreciate the offer. I think.”
Occasionally his Sammy experience doesn’t translate directly to Claire. But he’s learning.
“What do you want to do? For Halloween?”
“I thought it would be cool to sit on the porch and hand out candy to the kids. But apparently that’s not safe because I’d be by myself. So, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll have my own movie night. If I can get anything past the censor board.”
“There’s always Charlie Brown.”
She’s about to reply when something hits her car and she goes careening off the track. “Son of a bitch!”
“Hey, language.”
“Like you care. I’ve heard you swear.”
“One, no you haven’t. Two, when you’re twenty-nine, you can swear to your heart’s content. But for now, we play by Cas’s rules, even when the little dinosaur dude blue-shells you.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yes, sir.”
“Sweetheart, I am begging you not to call me ‘sir.’”
“Sir, I am begging you not to call me ‘sweetheart.’”
“Point taken.” He checks the clock. “Shit, I gotta go.”
Claire gapes at him. “Oooh, I’m telling Cas!”
“No, you’re not. Shut up.” He gets up and unplugs his controller.
She smirks at him. Then her expression softens.
“Did Jack tell you about this weekend?”
“Yeah, but I got work. I’ll try to stop by, though.”
“Whatever.” She shrugs, but he can see a little of the emotion behind it. Sam got good at hiding his feelings when they were kids, so Dean got better and better at looking for them.
He wants to be there for them, Claire and Jack both. The way so many people in their lives haven’t been, the way Cas is trying to be. He doesn’t know if that’s how you’re supposed to feel about your boyfriend’s kids. He doesn’t know if it’s separate or different from the way he feels about Cas.
He takes the steps two at a time back upstairs and Jack ambushes him in the hallway.
“I finished my sentences.”
“I gotta go—”
“We had a deal,” Jack reminds him, and thrusts the paper towards him. “D-E-A-L. We’re doing E-A words this week.”
Dean takes the paper. He notes that two of the sentences are about him, putting him tied with Cas, while Sam and Claire each only have one. Not that it’s a competition or anything.
“How come most E-A words make an ee sound or an eh sound but ‘heart’ makes an arrr?”
“I don’t know, you’ll have to ask your dad.”
Jack stares at him blankly, then turns and marches toward the kitchen. “I’ll ask Castiel instead.” Ah. Right.
He thinks of them as Cas’s kids, but technically, they’re Cas’s semi-orphaned niece and nephew, and he never knows when he’s gonna trip over that.
Cas sticks his head into the hallway. “You’re still here,” he observes, tone irritatingly neutral. “Could you tell Claire it’s dinnertime?”
Dean obliges by pulling open the door to the basement and shouting as loud as he can, “Claire! Dinner!”
“Alright!” she screams back.
Cas looks pained but fond.
Dean turns to go, and he makes it all the way to the door before he remembers.
“Forgot something,” he announces as he sweeps into the dining room, waits for Cas to put down the soup bowls, and pulls him in for a kiss.
“Gross,” says Claire as she slips into the room behind him.
“See you soon,” Dean tells Cas. It’s hard making promises sometimes; he tries to limit them to ones he’s sure he can keep.
He still manages to beat Sam home. He feeds Miracle, who’s raising a holy fuss about being alone all day. He puts the dog out back to bark at some squirrels and gets started on dinner.
Nobody, least of all Sam, needs to know that Dean’s signature cheesy potato soup comes from a mix. It’s still awesome, and there’s more to it than dumping it in a pan with some water and turning the stove on. It’s officially, technically, cheesy potato bacon soup, but because Dean is the best older brother, he has made the bacon optional for his mostly-vegetarian little brother. The bacon—cooked fresh, of course—is in little pieces in a dish on the table. Everybody wins.
“Dean? Thought you were working tonight.” Sam drops his bookbag on the couch and goes to let the dog in.
“Swapped with Jo. You hungry?”
“Yes. God, that smells good.”
“Eat up. Bacon if you want it.” Dean sets two steaming bowls on the table.
Sam does put a little bacon in his soup, but he also succumbs to Miracle’s puppy dog eyes and slips him a couple pieces under the table. Dean pretends not to notice.
“About next week,” Sam starts.
“Yeah! Movie night,” Dean says, though his enthusiasm is sort of less, now that he’s thinking about Claire in that big house all by herself.
It’s just a couple hours, he reminds himself. The rest of the time she’ll be with Cas and Jack.
And that’s not where he’d rather be. Right?
“I kind of got invited to a party,” Sam says. “I know we’ve been planning the movie thing, but we hadn’t talked about it lately and I didn’t know if maybe you would want to go to Cas’s, but if you still want to do movies I totally can, I just—”
“Dude. Breathe.”
Sam stops and looks down at his soup.
“Is a certain somebody going to be there?”
“Yeah, like, most of my friends.”
“I’m thinking specifically of a brunette about yay high with the initials E.L.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sam stuffs his hands in the pocket of his hoodie, where Dean knows he keeps his phone. A nervous habit, particularly when he’s got someone on his mind. “I don’t mean to bail on you. Really.”
“Go to your party,” Dean tells him. “I can go to Cas’s, I was just talking to them about it anyway. By which I mean telling them I can’t go. But I’ll clear it up later.”
“Were you over there today? You didn’t have to come back for me.”
“Does that mean you don’t want the rest of that?” Dean reaches for the bowl.
Sam bats his hand away. “You should go back over there.”
“Nah, I can just call. There’s dishes, and all.”
“I can do the dishes. Thank you for making dinner. Seriously. But go.”
“The dog needs to go for a W-A-L-K.”
“I will do that.”
“Okay.” He pauses, still trying to think of any reason why he shouldn’t go.
“Anything else?” asks Sam, who knows him too well.
“I guess not.”
“This is a good thing, Dean. You and Cas and the kids—it’s a good thing. And I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Shut up.”
He gets in the car and drives back to Cas’s before he can change his mind.
Claire is in the sitting room with a comic book and she jerks her head up when he opens the door. “You’re back! I mean. Hi.”
“Hey, kiddo.”
“Nope.”
“Alright.”
A little movement catches his eye and he goes into the hallway to find Jack.
“Hey, man. How was dinner?”
“Soupy. You came back.”
“Yes, I did. Is that okay?”
“You didn’t bring Miracle.”
“It’s not the weekend yet.”
Jack considers this. “Wanna play Disney trivia?”
“I wanted to talk to Cas.”
“He’s working. You can talk to him later. My bedtime is in less than two hours, so we should play Disney now.”
“Fair enough, but can I at least go say hi?”
Jack takes him by the hand and tugs him into the study where Cas sits, surrounded by books and papers.
“Dean’s back,” Jack announces, and Dean is amused to see a similar look on Cas’s face to Claire’s reaction—a little guarded, but a lot of joy if you know what to look for.
“Are you staying long?”
“Next couple hours are spoken for at least.”
“We’re going to play Disney,” Jack explains. “You can have him later.”
Dean raises his eyebrows at Cas as he’s dragged from the room by a Disney-obsessed third-grader.
Jack is always eager to commandeer Dean for his Disney trivia board game, because Cas is adorably clueless about a lot of pop culture and Claire has been on an anti-Disney kick for the past few months. It’s not Dean’s favorite stuff in the world, but Sam had a thing in preschool where he wanted to watch The Lion King every day until the library finally stopped letting them renew the tape so some other poor kid could borrow it. That was the big one, but there were plenty of others. The short of it is, Dean knows his mouse movies.
But he’s no match for Jack, who has Cas’s freakishly good memory and the advantage of having seen say more of these movies in the past decade whereas Dean saw The Little Mermaid in theaters the first time around.
Jack’s only weak point is Disney theme parks—he’s never been to one, though he’s asked Cas more than a few times. But he’s played the game so much at this point, he’s practically memorized half the cards. Dean’s grown-up friends would probably tell you he is unhealthily competitive, but the fun in this game is watching Jack delight in collecting the little brightly-colored tokens as he moves his game-piece around the board and schools Dean from 101 Dalmatians to Zootopia.
Jack recounts most of the game for Cas while being herded in the direction of bed. Dean listens as Cas tries valiantly to keep up, but has to be reminded which princess is which.
“Will you read to me? Or, if you’re tired, Dean can read to both of us.”
“Dean just played a whole board game with you, remember? I’ll read to you tomorrow. Now, it’s time for bed.”
Dean waits downstairs for Jack to be well and truly in bed. Claire sits on the floor, sketching one of the characters from her book in the margin of her science notes. She doesn’t look up when Cas comes into the room, but Dean figures what he’s about to say will get her attention.
“So, Claire mentioned she was interested in passing out candy on Halloween.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for her to—”
“Be out there by herself, right. But what if she weren’t? I mean—” he looks at Claire— “if I were here with you?”
“I thought you had your movie night.”
“Change of plans. So. What do you think?”
“I would be fine with that,” Cas says. “Claire?”
She shrugs, not meeting anyone’s eyes, intent on her drawing. “Okay.” After a moment, she looks up at Cas. “Can we get decorations?”
“We have Jack’s pumpkin,” he says, gesturing to the front window.
“I mean serious decorations. Like the house on the corner.”
“You want to get a giant inflatable skeleton?”
“Not exactly like that. Just, lights and stuff. We don’t have to get anything super tacky. You can help me pick.”
Dean manages to keep from snickering at the notion that Cas knows what is and isn’t tacky.
Cas says, “Alright. We can go to the store this weekend.”
He doesn’t press Dean about the weekend, and Claire, thankfully, follows his lead.
Later, once Claire has gone to bed, Dean sits with Cas in the study while Cas finishes grading. Dean is reading. Ish. It’s one of the nice things about hanging out here, that no one particularly cares if he reads Jack’s chapter books or Claire’s graphic novels or Cas’s history textbooks or if he makes sculptures out of office supplies.
So once he’s strung together enough paper clips to be very annoying to someone someday, he puts them back in the tin and goes to check on Cas, who seems to have dozed off in his chair.
Dean gets a granola bar out of the bottom drawer of the desk and balances it on Cas’s forehead, causing him to wake with a start. Cas takes the bar, unwraps it wordlessly, and eats it in three bites. He transfers a pile of papers from his lap to the desk, a filing system that only makes sense to him, as far as Dean can figure.
“All done for the night?” Dean asks, offering a hand to help him out of his chair.
“Yes. And now I have you all to myself.” Cas kisses him once, gently, then says, “I’m giving an exam in the morning, and I always sleep better when you’re here.”
Upstairs Cas’s room Dean borrows a pair of pajama pants and thinks, not for the first time, that he should start keeping clothes here. He wouldn’t even have a toothbrush here except Cas had found an extra one in a drawer one morning and wouldn’t kiss him until he brushed.
He loves Cas and he loves being here but it just feels… big.
Would he move in here entirely? Live in Cas’s big fancy house instead of the home he grew up in? And what happens to Sam? He’d probably say he was fine on his own regardless of whether he’s ready. Dean won’t put him in that position, even if it means continuing this balancing act.
This old house gets cold but it’s warm in bed with Cas beside him, half on top of Dean as he often likes to sleep.
“Claire apologized to Jack,” Cas tells him.
“That’s awesome. I didn’t tell her to do that, you know.”
“Something you said must have resonated with her, then. Thank you for handling it. I never know what to do when they fight.”
“You never fought with your siblings growing up?”
“They fought with each other. I was content to be overlooked.”
“Can’t believe anyone would overlook you.”
“Flirt.”
“Guilty,” Dean says, pressing his lips to Cas’s temple.
“Thank you also for agreeing to spend Halloween with Claire.”
“Cas. Castiel. Angel-honey-darling. Listen to me. It will be my absolute pleasure to sit on your front porch with Claire and give candy to kids and make sure nobody kidnaps her. Clear?”
Cas seals his mouth over Dean’s.
As Dean is catching his breath, Cas asks, “In the morning…?”
“I gotta head out early for work.”
“Okay.”
Dean wants to say more. Cas is the easiest and hardest person to talk to, because Dean can tell him anything, but he wants to say the right thing.
Luckily, sometimes Cas will poke him in the ribs and ask, “What are you thinking about?”
So it’s easy to answer, “How I love you.”
“Ah. How do you love me?”
“A lot.”
“You said ‘how,’ not ‘how much.’”
“Right.” Dean hauls him up for another kiss that leaves them both breathless.
“Point taken,” Cas says sleepily, pressing his face into the crook of Dean’s shoulder. “I may have some follow-up questions… at a later date…”
And he falls asleep there, warm and freakin’ heavy against Dean’s chest.
The alarm on Dean’s phone beeps before it’s even light out. Dean indulges himself in a brief fantasy of staying in Cas’s bed all day. Cas could take the kids to school and then blow off his test and come back to the house; his students would probably thank him for it. They could watch movies. Order pizza. Make out. Cas might even be in one of his very specific and rare moods where he wants to take off Dean’s clothes. Dean makes dinner for everyone when the kids get home.
Dean hauls himself out of bed, out of Cas’s warm arms, changes back into yesterday’s clothes and drives home to get ready for work.