Chapter Text
“Happy Eight-Month Homecoming, kiddo,” Dean said to Jack, raising his beer in salute. “Just in time for your first case, too!”
Jack smiled and tapped his water glass against Dean’s bottle. “Thank you!”
The four Winchesters sat around the kitchen table, a large pepperoni pizza in front of them. They had just come back from Jack’s first family hunt, a simple salt-and-burn that had put to rest the spirit of an angry clown. Jack had charitably given Sam the lit match, but Sam had insisted that Jack do it. And he did so happily; the ghost squeaked its red nose irritably as it faded away to nothing.
“You are now a man,” Sam added to the conversation in a ridiculously deep voice.
“Burning a corpse seems to be a Winchester rite of passage,” Cas whispered in explanation.
Jack laughed merrily, causing the rest of his little family to laugh with him. He and Sam sat next to each other, twin green jackets still smudged with dirt. Across from them, Dean and Cas held hands under the table and smiled lighter than they ever had.
Jack had worked ceaselessly on trusting Sam, at first allowing him to be closer, then stopping the eagle-eyed watch over every move he made. On his own time, Jack learned that he was safe. Sam made sure that he never made a sudden move around Jack, but he no longer tried to hide his height; he learned not to tower over Jack or come up behind him too quietly. The kid still had the occasional bad days, but they were more for memories than Sam’s accidental oafishness. Dean was proud of both of them. The two had developed a strong bond once they learned to work with each other.
Dean was proud of himself, too. He’d called Jody Mills and updated her, and promised to bring everyone over for Thanksgiving in November. Jody had given him the number of a therapist that worked with hunters, war vets, angels, and even archangels (apparently Gabriel had stopped by once or twice). It had taken a few weeks for Dean to get the courage, but he gathered himself up and made appointments for all four of them. Now, Dean went twice a month to a hunter therapy group with some other hunters in Lebanon, and had made a few friends. Sam came once a month, and Cas dropped in every so often. Jack preferred to talk to Dean or Cas, but he too was adjusting to their new lifestyle.
Life in the Bunker included things Dean never thought he could have. Now, Dean woke up to Cas’s messy hair and a comforting arm around his waist, anchoring him to the blessed present. He made hamburgers and salad (blech) for his family and pinned Jack’s drawings to the refrigerator.
One day, he built a corkboard that he’d found on Pinterest (not that he’d tell anyone) and put it up in the library. Taped on it with spare Band-Aids were all the pictures he used to keep hidden in his drawer; Mary in all her lioness-like glory, Sam in his baby-faced youth, the first Jack smiling around a mouthful of nougat, Charlie holding up her computer, Kevin with his AP congratulatory certificate, Bobby throwing a book at the camera, Ellen and Jo smiling happily from behind the Roadhouse bar, and Garth’s family baring fangs in mock growls. There were new photos, too, of Jack and Cas playing an intense Scrabble game, Sam’s terrible attempt at a cartwheel, and Dean laughing over the newspaper comics.
One photo that wasn’t in the library was framed and hung on the wall of Dean-and-Cas’s room: Cas and Dean, standing close together with the beach in the background. Cas was saying something to Dean in the picture, which he was grinning wildly at. Two days after Sam snapped the photo, Cas had come up to Dean uncertainly, hands in his pockets.
“I know we’re not normal,” he’d said, “but I wanted to participate in a ‘normal’ human custom, if you wanted to.”
“Sure, what?” Dean had looked up from the hood of the Impala to find Cas holding out a shiny grey ring, a hopeful smile on his face.
“It’s iron,” Cas had rushed to explain. “So you can punch ghosts, because I know you love punching things—”
Dean had cut him off with a kiss. It was the first time they had ever been that close, and Dean couldn’t figure out why he’d waited so long. Cas had happily returned it, and thus a new step in their relationship was born. Dean was pretty glad that Cas had learned much from the pizza man all those years ago.
They’d settled into a comfortable duality. Sam and Jack had easily gotten used to seeing the two of them holding hands on cases and walking into the kitchen together in the mornings. Dean knew now that this was what his life was meant to be, surrounded by a warm glow that could only mean love.
“To the family,” Sam said, tapping his own beer against the others’ drinks. “All of ‘em.”
The righteous man, his little brother, an angel, and a Nephilim sat at the table, trading stories, jokes, and laughter far into the blessed night.
(Ending Notes: I know it was sort of short, but I felt like this is the ending that I needed. The Supernatural storyline has been fifteen years of wonderful and also disappointing moments in their history, and I decided that we needed a sort-of-AU/canon-compliant-until-divergent fic to fix some of it. Hope you enjoyed it! Let me know your thoughts, that would be very much appreciated! ♡♡♡)