Chapter Text
(three months.)
On the day Theresa had first met Dean Winchester, she’d known within ten minutes that she’d love this boy like a son for as long as she had the chance.
It was her Pete that met him first, of course. Pete who gave the kid a chance to show off his skills with a car and who convinced Theresa to take a chance on someone who had just rolled through town and decided to make it a permanent pitstop. And Pete’d told her, “Just something about this one, babylove. Think he needs a family just like we did once upon a time.”
She’d worried, of course. Worried that the chips on Dean’s shoulders were deeper than he let them see. Worried that he’d disappear one day as men cut from his same cloth tended to do. And then she worried for him, worried about him getting enough to eat, getting enough sleep. Worried about him fixing up that old haunted house all on his own with no one to help him fill the halls.
It was that same worry that took her to that boy’s doorstep not that long ago, armed with a concern she hoped was motherly and a pie she’d made just for that occasion. Theresa wasn’t surprised, necessarily, to learn that her boys had been cooping up in preparation for a little one. More than anything she’d just been surprised they didn’t tell her.
“Point is,” she says to Pete, on a warm day in early August that would have been otherwise unnoteworthy if Dean Winchester hadn’t stumbled into their lives, “Two years ago I looked at that boy and knew I’d mother him more than I had any right or reason to. Now today he’s got me holdin’ his baby and introducin’ us as the kids’ grandparents.”
“You can’t be surprised,” Pete tells her, and she knows he means it wholeheartedly because even he can’t look up from where little Jack’s got his hand wrapped tightly around Pete’s finger.
Theresa sighs, and Jack gives her a damn good gummy smile. “No,” she agrees. “I’m not that surprised at all.”
They’d introduced the baby to Theresa and Pete as Jack Kline Singer, a beautiful boy with blue eyes and tufts of light brown hair, and Theresa thinks as she keeps looking at him that she’s never seen a prettier baby. Jack seems to know it, too—seems to revel in the attention in a way only babies can, hamming it up with his big eyes and gummy smile. His whole family is wrapped around his finger.
“It’s a unique situation,” Dean explains, standing sheepishly next to Cas and looking like he’s about three seconds from taking the baby out of Theresa’s arms. “I mean, we’re all raising him. Kid’s gonna grow up with three dads.”
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that,” Theresa tells him, and the tense line of Dean’s shoulders drops just a little bit. “He’s a sweetie, boys. You sure he’s only three months? Kid’s sturdy as hell.”
Next to Dean, Cas and Sam share a look.
Something they all do a lot. They’ve got secrets Ther and Pete don’t know about, and it ain’t something she likes but it’s something she lives with, especially if it keeps them safe. It’s why she and Pete didn’t bat an eye when the boys came to them sometime last year and said they were going by Singer instead of Winchester from now on.
The fact of the matter is there are always going to be things Theresa doesn’t understand, but there will also always be love for this family that wormed their way into her heart and to her, love is a hell of a lot more powerful than knowledge.
“Can I take him?” asks Claire, appearing at Theresa’s elbow and peering imploringly at her baby brother. Jack’s eyes light up when he catches sight of her, too. Theresa hopes they don’t ever lose that.
“A’course,” Theresa says, relinquishing Jack to her and laughing when Pete signs a put-out-upon sigh at letting him go. Her man, she thinks fondly. Always a sucker for a baby.
“Those were Grandma Theresa and Grandpa Pete,” Claire tells Jack as he settles into her arms. He’s a baby and he shouldn’t be capable of it, but he looks like he’s hanging onto every word. “Not to be confused with Grandpa Bobby. Remember Grandpa Bobby, Jack?”
Theresa turns back to Dean, tucked against Cas’s side with their arms slung comfortably around each other. “Cute kids,” she comments, eyes glinting. “Just wait ‘til Jack’s a bit older and starts annoying the shit outta Claire.”
“I’ve warned her,” Dean says, at the same time that Sam says, “He won’t annoy her.”
They all grin.
It’s a nice morning. Dean takes to the grill, prepping veggie burgers for lunch while Cas excuses himself inside to make a salad. Theresa and Pete sit at the table with Sam, all of them watching but not speaking as Claire takes the little one over to the coop.
“And these, Jack, these are our chickens,” says Claire, crouching down with Jack on her hip. “Dad let me name them, which I’m sure he regrets now, because that one is Pancake and that one is Waffle. That’ll be funnier when you’re older.”
The damnedest thing—Theresa swears she sees baby Jack nodding seriously.
“And this is Dad’s garden,” Claire continues. “One day he’s gonna make you pick weeds. Or maybe he won’t, because you’re the baby brother and I hear they get away with everything.”
“Hey,” Sam complains, affronted, while Dean starts laughing heartily next to him. “Just for that, you’re getting extra chores this week.”
Claire rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Jack’s gonna know sarcasm before he knows how to walk,” Pete notes.
“Growing up in this family?” says Dean, but he’s smiling from ear to ear the way he does every time he thinks about them. “Poor kid doesn’t stand a chance.”
(six months.)
Jack grows faster than a normal baby.
It’s something they’d thought might happen. Something they even tried to prepare for. But the truth of the matter was nothing could have made it easier for Sam to watch Jack grow and grow and grow in front of his eyes as though time meant nothing at all.
On his six month birthday he looks closer to a year, and all the baby books under their roof all tell them that his behavior is typical of twelve-month-olds, too. It’s a place of pride in all of their hearts, but they all worry, too. They wish they had a way to tell Jack he doesn’t need to grow up so fast.
It’s Dean’s turn to bathe Jack today, a job that was once something they all grumbled about until it became clear they won’t be doing this for as long as they expected and thus became a job they all coveted. It’s why Sam hovers in the doorway of the bathroom, laughing at the scene in front of him and trying to commit it to memory.
“Jack,” Dean grumbles, when Jack smacks his hand into the water and splashes Dean’s already wet shirt and swim trunks. Jack’s peals of laughter echo against the bathroom tiles. “Ha, ha, you’re very funny, kid.”
Jack grins and giggles and squirms in Dean’s arms, far too pleased with himself. Unable to help it, Sam lets out a laugh of his own.
“Next time it’s you sitting in tepid water in the tub with the baby,” Dean warns, but there’s no heat in his voice because they all know Dean would happily do it if Sam ever thought he didn’t want to.
“And next time you’ll be right here laughing at me, too,” Sam snarks back.
He feels Cas’s hand on his arm before he sees him, and a few months ago it might’ve startled him but Sam thinks now that they’ve all grown accustomed to living in each other’s spaces so much that he’d be more surprised by the absence of it. He scoots out of the way so Cas can join them in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet seat with Jack’s towel in his hands.
“Are you making devil horns out of our son’s hair instead of washing it?” Cas sighs.
Dean chortles defensively, saying, “It’s cute! Look at him!”
“It is kind of cute, Cas,” agrees Sam. He pulls his phone out and snaps a picture.
“Where’s Claire?” Dean asks.
Together, Sam and Cas reply, “Kitchen.” Last Sam checked, she was putting the finishing touches on the cake she’d made to celebrate Jack’s six month birthday.
“Care!” Jack repeats dutifully. His first—and favorite—word. They’d all cried, the first time he’d said it, pausing for a second before realizing he was repeating Claire’s name, and despite all their previous arguments that their names would be Jack’s first word there wasn’t a single one of them that envied the title going to Claire.
“That’s right, baby,” Cas murmurs. He brushes Jack’s wet hair off of his forehead. “Ready to get out of the bath?”
“Yeah, he’s good,” says Dean, lifting Jack with both arms out of the water while he stays sat. Jack’s legs kick up and down in excitement as Cas wraps the kid’s favorite dinosaur towel around him and puts the hood up. Cas kisses Jack’s forehead before passing him off to Sam, who happily takes him and handles the job of properly drying him off while Cas helps Dean up out of the bathtub as well. “I’m gonna shower and wash all this soap off. Don’t eat that cake without me.”
“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Cas promises, kissing the corner of his mouth.
“Look at how freaking cute he is,” says Sam, when Cas joins him in the hallway and closes the door to the bathroom behind him. It’s only a second before the shower starts up. Jack squirms in Sam’s arms, content in his little towel with the dinosaur hood that’s still just a little too big for him. The rim of the hood and the fabric teeth nearly cover his eyes. “He still needs to grow into it a little, but he will.”
“Da,” Jack says, tugging on Sam’s hair.
Cas sticks his tongue out at Jack to make him giggle. “Hi, Jack. Hi, baby. He is very cute, isn’t he?”
They might be biased, being his dads and all, Sam thinks. But he’s also pretty sure Jack’s the cutest fucking baby that’s ever existed.
Downstairs, they’ve put up a few decorations for their small celebration, while Claire had insisted on making the cake. There’s no reason to celebrate a half-birthday, really, except for that Jack is hurrying through ages like he’s trying to catch up to Claire and not a single person under this roof can stand the thought of the kid getting anything but all the birthdays he can, so.
They all put on paper birthday hats, to Jack’s delight—even Dean when he comes back down and joins them. Claire had made a paper crown for Jack, too, though it only lasted for a minute before Jack took it off himself and threw it to the ground.
“He’s big on throwing things these days,” Sam tells Claire, so she doesn’t feel bad, but she’s laughing and taking pictures of the whole thing.
“He’s gonna be one hell of a baseball player with that arm,” Dean says proudly. Cas elbows him in the gut, and sound fills every corner of the house when Dean pulls him in and dips him into a kiss, drawing twin cries of disgust from Sam and Claire and a shriek of joy from Jack who demands to be dipped and kissed all over the face, too.
When Sam and Dean sing Happy Birthday offkey, Claire carries the cake and places it in front of Jack’s highchair. Jack eyes the cake with a critical eye before Claire digs into a piece and lets him try it—his eyes flash gold when he tastes it, the way they’ve started to any time Jack feels an emotion he doesn’t quite know how to express yet.
And Sam thinks to himself, he’s had some pretty good birthdays over the year but none of his could ever top this.
(one year.)
It’s a rough night.
They’ve had a string of them lately, so it seems. Jack reached his official first birthday a week or so ago, but his body is roughly the size of a two or three year old and his attitude has grown to match. Cas has lost count of the number of lightbulbs he’s had to clean up this month alone, because any time Jack has a tantrum a lightbulb explodes and he’s having at least one mega-watt tantrum every day.
Claire still isn’t home from where she’d stormed out of the house after getting in an argument with Cas—he’s worried, of course, but Dean promises she’s been texting him. They know she’s safe. She’d missed Jack’s most recent fit, though, being out of the house. Missed the way Jack grew inconsolable after dinner no matter what any of his dads tried until he reached a level of stress that shattered the window in the dining room.
No one had known what to do. How could they? So Cas had just… taken Jack into his arms and carried him upstairs, still crying, and they’d sat in Jack’s room on the ground until he tired himself out and fell asleep on Cas’s shoulder.
“Sammy’s cleaning up the glass,” says Dean from the doorway. There’s worry lines on his forehead. “You didn’t get hit, right?”
“No,” Cas promises. He goes back to smoothing the hairs on Jack’s head in repetitive motions. “We’re okay.”
Dean nods. He’s backlit by the light in the hall, so Cas can’t quite make out the expression on his face, though he’s fairly sure he already knows what Dean is thinking. One of the benefits of rebuilding someone from atoms up with your own two hands, Cas supposes.
“He’ll get his powers under control,”
“I know,” Dean says, voice sharp. He sighs and slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the floor, too. Cas watches quietly as Dean scrubs a hand over his face. When he speaks again, it’s softer as he says, “Sorry. I know. It’s not his fault. It’s just…”
“Hard,” finishes Cas. He understands—he’s tired in a way he hasn’t been since those first few nights after Jack was born when no one was sleeping. Tired in a way he hasn’t been since the first year of being Claire’s father.
Dean shrugs. “Scary?” he offers. Cas huffs out a laugh. “Don’t get me wrong. Being a dad is the greatest fucking joy of my life. I know I was a shithead when Jack and Kelly first came around, but now? I can’t imagine anything other than being his dad. Easy as being Claire’s dad. But hell, Cas. No one’s ever raised a kid like Jack before. I just wish we knew what to expect.”
In Cas’s arms, Jack starts to fuss again, until Cas shifts their position and Jack can dig his little nose into the crook of Cas’s neck again.
“I wish I had answers for you,” Cas murmurs. “For all of us. We’re all so stressed…”
Dean gives him a crooked grin, and Cas’s too-human heart still skips a beat the way it always does when that smile is directed at him. “We’re raising a toddler and a teenager, baby. I’d be more concerned if we weren’t stressed.”
Cas tips his head back against the wall and smiles. “We’ll figure it out, won’t we?”
“Always do,” vows Dean. Cas can feel his love radiating. “Just making it up as we go.”
(two years.)
Claire’s graduating freaking high school.
Like. Seriously. What the fuck.
The whole thing feels more surreal than she cares to think about on a normal day, and today is totally not a normal day. The amount of people who showed up to celebrate her is seriously freaky—like, do they know they’re at a high school? Voluntarily?
Still, it’s… nice. Her whole family showing up. They take up an entire row of chairs which should be embarrassing but honestly just makes Claire’s heart feel like it’s gonna explode or something. There’s her dads, obviously, and Jack, and Sam and his new girlfriend Eileen, who Claire is a tiny bit in love with if she’s being honest. And Grandpa Bobby and Theresa and Pete but also freaking Kevin Tran who she jokingly calls a cousin now, and his mom who Claire is admittedly also a tiny bit in love with, and Dean’s new best friend Charlie who, yes, Claire is also in love with, she’s only human and she’s, like, so freaking gay, and it’s just…
It's a lot of love. She kind of doesn’t know what to do with it.
“Nervous?” asks a voice behind her, and for a second Claire forgets about her family altogether as she turns around. The polyester blue of their graduation caps and gowns don’t do anyone any favors, but it doesn’t matter. Kaia is unfairly beautiful, and she smiles at Claire like there’s nowhere else she’d rather be right now.
“Not anymore,” Claire says. She takes Kaia’s hand and squeezes.
“They’re gonna love it,” Kaia promises her, and the knot in Claire’s stomach starts to lessen at last.
Claire lets out the breath she’d been holding. “I am gonna miss sitting next to you in the lineup, though,” Claire admits, and Kaia rolls her eyes even though she’s blushing, too. “Never realized how far away ‘S’ is from ‘N’ in the alphabet before.”
“You’ll live,” Kaia tells her.
“If you give me a kiss first, I will,” Claire agrees. Principal Qian is calling for the graduating class’s attention behind them—they’re gonna be so late—but Claire doesn’t care. Kaia yanks on their intertwined hands and pulls Claire in for a quick but perfect kiss.
“That’s to get you through the ceremony,” Kaia says, before she stretches up on her toes again to kiss Claire one last time. “And that’s for being brave.”
“Goddamn,” Claire says, dazed. “I should change my last name more often.”
Kaia throws her head back and laughs and laughs and laughs. And there’s a joke there, one Claire almost wants to make, except it isn’t a joke and it’s more like a promise because she’s pretty sure Kaia is her entire future and so a part of her wants to ask Kaia for her last name, but she doesn’t. She won’t, yet, even if she’s sure Kaia feels the same. Today, instead, she’ll kiss Kaia’s hand before they separate, finding their chairs in the auditorium as the ceremony begins. Today she’ll wink at Kaia when she turns back in her chair to find Claire. They’ll have time, Claire thinks. Plenty of it.
It's when the graduates’ names start being called that reality truly starts to sink in. Claire turns around and finds her family again in the crowd, all of them dressed up for the occasion like this is something worth dressing up for. Even Jack got a new outfit for the occasion, after hitting another growth spurt this week that put him into clothes made for seven-year-olds. She catches his eye across the rows of people and wiggles her fingers at him, laughing when he lights up. Jack wiggles his fingers back—except, when he wiggles his fingers, the lights in the auditorium start to flicker at the same time.
Cas catches them, of course. He holds Jack’s hands still for a moment and gives Claire one of his best dad glares, but next to him Dean shoots her a thumbs up and Claire can’t help but laugh again. She turns back in her seat before her family causes any more trouble and tries to pay attention.
She screams herself hoarse when Kaia’s name is called. Cheers as loud as possible as her girlfriend walks across the stage and shakes Principal Qian’s hand. In the crowd, Claire’s family yells just as loud for Kaia as they will for Claire.
And it should be her next, really. Their graduating class isn’t huge, so Novak would have followed Nieves if Claire hadn’t arranged for something else. But the thing is, her dads are wearing rings now. Calling it official. And Claire still owes them a wedding gift.
When it’s finally her turn, Principal Qian calls out, “Claire Novak Singer.”
Claire walks the stage with her head held high.
She thinks about Jimmy and Amelia, when she takes the empty diploma case. Wonders if they’re watching her graduate from up in heaven as she shakes Qian’s hand. And she thinks about how she’ll always love them, her parents, and how it’s possible to still love them and love where she came from while also embracing where she comes from now.
She’s a Singer, through and through. It’s about damn time she owned it.
(three years.)
On his way inside from work, Dean trips over his kids’ shoes again.
“Motherf—” he hisses, before nudging them out of the way like he always does and continuing on inside. Five years, now, he’s been tripping over Claire’s shoes on his way in. Five years of begging her to just put them away. And three years of her being a terrible influence on Jack, enabling him to do the same. He warns Cas, in the kitchen, “I’m gonna throw these out in the snow if they don’t learn to put them away.”
“You always say that,” Cas says mildly. He doesn’t look up from his crossword, though his glasses are slipping too low down his nose. Dean bends down and kisses his eyebrow before pushing the glasses back up for him. “Thank you. How was work?”
“Same old, same old,” Dean grunts, shrugging his jacket off. “Swear it’s only gotten busier since Pete announced he’s retiring.”
Cas hums. “You’re going to have to hire someone new.”
Dean shudders at the thought.
“Sam is picking up pizza for dinner,” Cas tells him. He finally looks up when Dean slides into the stool next to him at the counter, smiling as Dean leans in to give him a real kiss. Practiced, familiar. Easy. One they’ve spent four years sharing. “Hello, Dean.”
“Hey, handsome,” Dean says, and he puts his hand on the back of Cas’s neck to reel him in again. “The kids?”
“Claire’s picking up Jack from soccer,” Cas murmurs against Dean’s lips. Dean hums, pleased by the revelation, and he shudders when Cas’s fingers rake up his sides.
It’s rare they get moments like this, these days. The house is always full. Full of their kids, full of family, full of friends. There’s noise in every corner, mess in every hall, love and laughter decorating every wall, and Dean loves it. He loves his loud family and their never-ending rotating door of guests, he loves cooking for a crowd and making up the spare room for guests and waking up to someone burning eggs in his kitchen because they’re too distracted by laughing with someone else.
He wouldn’t trade any of it. Not a damn thing.
He just… won’t complain when he gets a spare second of quiet in his house with his husband, is all.
It’s a small victory whenever he gets Cas to abandon his puzzles, so Dean resists the urge to cheer when Cas caves and puts down his pencil so he can stand and settle himself between Dean’s legs. Slotted together like this, they can press chest to chest. Cas’s nose bumps against Dean’s. Their hearts beat in tandem.
“This is nice,” Cas comments. The sneaky bastard slips a hand under the hem of Dean’s shirt, fingers running along Dean’s back muscles. “I could get used to this.”
Dean laughs, a huff of air shared in the small space between their mouths. “You’d hate living like this,” Dean says, calling him out. “You cried tears of relief when you found out Claire wanted to go to college close to home so she could stay here. You wouldn’t even know what to do with the silence.”
“I have some ideas what we could do with the silence,” mutters Cas, petulant and bitchy and Dean’s favorite person in the entire world. He still hasn’t gotten used to it—how much humanity suits Cas. How well he wears being in love and being happy.
“I bet you do,” Dean snorts.
“You’re a bad influence on me,” Cas tells him matter-of-factly. “You corrupted me, Dean Winchester.”
“You love it.”
Cas grins.
They kiss for a little while longer, in the kitchen uninterrupted for as long as the moment lasts. Kisses that alternate between lazy and heated and kisses that never fail to send a shiver down Dean’s spine. It’s one of the greatest things Dean’s ever known, holding Cas in his arms like this. He was a man who saved the world, once—a man who welded weapons like they were extensions of his body. For a long time that’s all Dean thought he’d get to be. But time grew kinder to him. It gave him Cas and Claire, and Sam back, and Jack, and every other person who has ever walked through the doors of this house that he made into a home. Time let him say goodbye to Dean Winchester, Hunter. It let him change his name and his title, it let him find purpose outside of what his dad and Heaven and Hell always thought he had to be.
He gets to be Dean Singer, now. Husband. Father. Human. And it’s the best damned feeling in the world.
“I love you, you know?” Dean says, because it’s been five years and he wears a ring on his finger but there’s still not a day that goes by that he’s not thankful he can say it at all. He cradles Cas’s face in his hands and looks at him, looks at the laughter lines by his eyes and the glasses pushing back his graying hair and his chapped mouth and perfect face and he remembers how goddamn lucky he is. “I love you, Cas.”
Cas smiles. Beautiful as he always is. “I love you, Dean,” he says back. Like a promise he’ll keep forever. “Come on. Our kids will be home soon, let’s be ready for them.”
“Okay,” Dean murmurs. He steals another kiss while he still has Cas within reach. “It’s still snowing. They’ll probably be cold when they get in.”
“Set the table,” says Cas, still smiling. Dean will love him forever. “I’ll start the fire.”