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“I swear to God, I swear to Satan, I swear to the friggin’ Blessed Virgin!”
The string of profanities that followed this holy swearing made Castiel Novak blush and reach over to cover Claire’s ears. His daughter shot him an irritated look.
“Oh my god, Dad. I’m not four. I’ve heard the word ‘cunt’ before.” She raised a plucked eyebrow at him, pulled her book out of her backpack, and dropped it on the counter. Castiel recognized the bold typeface from the spine as one of the latest Amazon Prime deliveries to the house. Books might be an admirable habit, but she was reading him out of house and home. Just this morning, she had breezed into the living room and asked if another package had arrived.
“You don’t have to say it just because you’ve heard it before,” he murmured to no one in particular.
Dean’s Diner wasn’t the only restaurant in town -- in fact, Benny’s Pancake World actually had pretty good breakfast -- but it was the only one where you were guaranteed service without a smile. The owner, Dean Winchester, didn’t believe in pandering or patronizing. He believed in cooking up delicious food, plopping it onto a plate, and slinging it onto your table. Problem was he was so good at it that people kept coming in spite of the surliness.
Hell, Castiel himself had been coming to Dean’s for nearly twelve years, and he had heard outbursts like the one currently bellowing from the kitchen for every one of them. Claire had probably learned all the swear words here before the kids on the public school bus could teach them to her.
“Parent of the year here,” Castiel muttered, again, to no one. Claire might be beside him, but she had disappeared into the pages of her book, eyes alert, mouth slightly open.
“Everybody get out!” Dean’s voice roared from the kitchen. No one moved. “I can hear, you morons. I don’t hear chairs scraping. I said get out!”
Now he emerged through the door into the main dining area, eyes snapping sparks.
“We’re closed. Everything’s broken. Some idiot must have cut the line to my kitchen in the construction next door. So unless you’re planning on eating my words, get out!”
His explanation finally sparked the mass exodus he had requested, people gathering their things and heading out the door. Castiel heard the mutterings of “I’m never coming back here” but knew it was a hollow threat. They’d keep coming back as long as Dean could make the world’s best bananas foster French toast.
“Not you two,” Dean growled when he spotted Castiel standing up, touching Claire’s shoulder for her attention.
Castiel shook his head and glanced out the glass window at the scurrying people. “You probably gave some of your customers a heart attack. Controlling your temper might not be a bad idea.”
Dean shrugged. “Less people for me to worry about.” He turned his attention to Claire, and his face opened, warmth and cheer blossoming on his features. Any judgment Castiel felt over the shouting faded in the light of that affection towards his little girl. “Today’s a big day, right?”
Claire nodded. “Kind of. It’s just meet and greet day. I’ll meet the teachers, the Student Council. Get to set up my locker. Stuff like that.”
Her casual tone couldn’t hide her nerves, and Castiel wished she was the kind of girl who talked about her emotions. Instead she hid under a tough girl exterior even he couldn’t always crack.
“It’s still your first day at a fancy ass new private school.” Dean reached behind him for two cracked, mismatched mugs and filled them both to the brim with steaming coffee. Claire accepted hers and immediately began to load it up with cream and sugar. Castiel swallowed a hot, black sip, a first taste that touched his soul. He smiled gratefully at Dean and resisted telling him it was actually his third cup this morning.
“Yeah. I guess it is.” Claire smiled shyly. “It would be even better if I was having Dean’s for breakfast, though.”
“You are.” Dean leaned elbows first on the counter in front of her. “What d’ya want?”
Castiel watched Dean’s green eyes twinkle, and realization dawned on him. “Dean Winchester, are you crazy?”
“What?” Claire turned an irritated look at Castiel, a look she had only recently discovered, a look that said ‘Gosh, Dad, you’re the most embarrassing human being I have ever met.’
“There’s no gas leak,” Cas continued pointedly. “His kitchen is fine. He is soft and squishy on the inside, and he wanted to spoil you.”
“Like I said.” Dean smiled a winning grin. “Today’s a big day.”
Claire ordered chocolate chip pancakes, sausage, bacon, and a Western omelet, and though he disapproved of this whole shenanigan on moral grounds, Cas requested a stack of the bananas foster French toast. Dean shuffled into the kitchen and set to work, cutting his Led Zeppelin up to levels that would be unacceptable if the diner was actually open, and Claire slipped back into her novel.
Today she went to her meet and greet at Truman Academy, a college prep school with such deep roots and pride in its own prestige that even the crest on Claire’s new uniform made him nervous. But she was smart, way smarter than he knew what to do with. Her public school teachers had actually given her the darn application. He suspected that not only reflected her intelligence but her attitude. She could be difficult, to put it politely. Even still, he worried about sending her somewhere new.
When Dean brought out the food, Castiel knew his French toast was delicious, but it tasted like styrofoam. He chewed mechanically and watched the clock on the wall.
“Slow down, champ,” Dean said knowingly. “She’ll be fine. She knows how to tie her own shoes and everything.”
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Claire swallowed down thick, acidic spit and pressed her lips together. Today her goal was to look cool, but if all she managed was surly, that was alright too. What mattered most was that no one could ever know that she hadn’t slept in three nights because she was so keyed up.
Her whole life she had known she wanted to go to Harvard, not night school like her dad or prison GED classes like her mom. She wanted to make it to the top. Getting into Truman had been a step in that process, a critical part of it, but in these halls, surrounded by marble and historical plaques, she felt like an imposter.
When they separated her and her dad into separate greeting sessions, she resisted the urge to grab his hand and bring him with her. His quiet, solid strength made her feel bold.
But her session was fine in spite of her fears. To her immediate left, a bright-eyed redheaded boy took notes on the speaker, seemingly unaware that they would be getting the handbook, and another girl faded so pale that her freckles looked like chicken pox.
“Don’t worry,” Claire whispered over to her. “You got in when 63% of applicants didn’t. You’re already a badass.”
That earned her a return smile. As the session ended, she felt a hand on her shoulder and turned, expecting to see her dad. Instead a tall, handsome man towered over her. His tweed jacket and reading glasses were a far cry from his usual flannel, but she smiled.
“Hey Sam… uh, Mr. Winchester.” She glanced around to make sure none of the other students heard her snafu. She didn’t want to be marked as different or a teacher’s pet before the year even started. “Are you doing an orientation session?”
He looked amused but answered her in kind, matching her formal tone.. “No. Just helping greet around campus. Returning students began to arrive while you were in your morning session.”
Now her face fell, her nerves swooping back in like razor-teethed butterflies in her stomach. “Oh. Right.”
He softened immediately, looking again like the friendly face he had originally intended to be. “You’ve got this, Claire. You’re probably smarter than most people here, and you’ve worked your butt off to get here.”
“Not smarter than you,” she pointed out needlessly.
“Well no. Not yet. Earn a Ph.D. in English Literature, Language, and Lore and then we’ll play Jeopardy.” He flashed her a grin and then glanced around. The other new students had cleared out, eager to get to their lockers or their parents. “Come on. Lead me to your dad, and then you can get started on putting up pictures of Justin Bieber in your locker.”
She squinted at him, trying to figure out if he was serious about the dated pop culture reference or not. His poker face revealed nothing, but she erred on the side of him being lame.
“You’re such an old skeezer,” she murmured. But the skip in her step as they headed toward the freshmen hallway could not be faked. She knew there was only one reason Sam would have waited outside the orientation session, and that reason had also cooked her all her favorite breakfast foods in a private diner this morning. For someone too chicken to ask out her dad, Dean Winchester had all the makings of an overprotective parent.
Once she had sent Sam over to chat with Dad, she settled in to work on her locker: #86. The lockers on either side of her were still unoccupied. She dropped her messenger bag onto the floor and moved the required books into her locker before starting to pull out magnets and photographs. Her don’t-screw-with-me exterior would be one thing, but her locker would be another. She couldn’t face a whole new world alone.
First she pulled out the faded photograph of her mother, one of the only ones she had, from before she had been born. Meg Masters looked normal, happy. Nothing like the drug addict who had robbed a liquor store at gunpoint and then died in prison. The big smile on her face didn’t look like the smile of someone who would abandon a kid without looking back. Claire used the photographs of her mother as motivation, as a reminder that she had places she wanted to go and quicksand behind her, in her very gene pool, to prevent that. She had to work hard.
The other photographs were better, less intense, just a bunch of happy moments. One picture had she and Dad two Halloweens ago when he had insisted on dressing up with her. She had been Velma from Scooby Doo, hair tucked under a bobbed wig, and he had insisted on being Fred, wearing one of her scarves as an ascot. Another picture, a selfie of she and her best friend, Alex, throwing up the shaka, went right in the center.
When she finished, she admired her handiwork. It would be a perfect daily reminder of what mattered most.
“Hey.” The redhead from the orientation session approached and pointed to Locker #85. “Looks like we’re neighbors.”
“Looks like it.”
“I’m James Smith.” He held out his hand for a handshake, like he was a state senator, not a fourteen-year-old boy, and she tried not to laugh at the dorkiness. “I’m new.”
“Well I didn’t think you were attending the orientation session just for the fun of it.” She smiled anyway, the earnestness in his face cutting through her sarcasm. “I’m Claire.”
“Claire? I met your dad.”
“Excuse me?”
“Castiel, I think.” James offered her father’s name as if it were some sort of explanation and then pointed back the direction he had come. “He was watching the table where we picked up our locker numbers. He introduced himself when he saw that I had the locker next to yours.”
Sure enough she could see her dad standing beside the table, trying and failing to look subtle. Everything from the stiff set of his broad shoulders to the flat neutrality of his facial expression stuck out. As another girl picked up a folder, Claire saw her dad actually lean over to read the number on it. She was surprised he hadn’t put up a damn flyer: Wanted: an owner for Locker #87. Must be a clean cut, well-read teetotaler. Contact Castiel Novak for further detail and background check. She groaned.
“Oh my god. I’m going to kill him.”
“Aw, I think it’s kinda cool.” James started loading books into his locker. She noticed he had graphic novels in his bag, great ones like Maus and Persepolis. “My parents are over there sucking up to the headmaster and pretending this place is lucky to have me. Like I’m not going to have a nervous breakdown halfway through the first semester.”
Claire knew the polite thing to do was offer some sort of platitude, but she was distracted by her dad’s obtrusive snooping, now made even more obvious by Sam Winchester trying to subtly coax him away from the table.
“Think it’s going to be hard?”
“They call the freshmen year Hell.” James’ eyes were wide in his face. She chuckled.
“Well then strap up your balls and get ready to face down the demons.”
As his shocked face turned judgmental, she frowned. Maybe her dad embarrassing her was the least of her problems. At least no one looked scared of him.
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Castiel rubbed his shoulder with his left hand, drove with his right. They had spent the rest of the day in a whirlwind of sessions. He had attended “Financial Aid FAQs” and “Fostering Your Student’s Independence” while Claire had attended “College Planning for Freshmen” and “School Culture Begins with You.” His head ached with buzzwords and tough love parenting tips, and he didn’t even want to think about the spreadsheets he needed to go over for work tonight.
“We need to go by Dean’s. He will want to hear about your day, and I could use a cup of coffee.”
Claire, half-asleep in the passenger seat, shot him a sleepy sideways look. “I’ll make you a pot at home. I’ve got things to do to get ready for school, but then we can stay up all night watching movies if you want.”
“We can’t. Tomorrow’s the first Sunday of the month.”
“Oh right.” Claire rolled her eyes. “We have to be up early.”
“Speaking of which,” Castiel said, cutting down the radio, “you need to add your bookshelf to the list.”
“Will do.” She dropped her head back against the window and closed her eyes. “Now home, Jeeves.”
Castiel guided the car the last two miles home and into their driveway. Their house greeted them, porch furniture askew and lawn overgrown, like an old friend. He parked the car and looked over at Claire, asleep. Halfway through reaching to wake her up, he stalled, his hand falling back to his side. She lay against her folded hands, face scrunched up, knees tucked on the seat. The corner of his mouth flipped up. She had always fallen asleep this way as a young kid. Only then, her thumb would have been in her mouth.
He swallowed around the sudden tightness in his throat.
On the other side of the car, he opened the door and touched her arm. She startled, eyes fluttering open wide and then softening when she saw him. That sleepy smile made her six years old again.
“Want me to carry you?” He knew he risked The Look by asking such a silly question, but sometimes his heart tripped ahead of his brain, and his heart still loved her the same way he had loved her when she was small enough to carry on one forearm. It was the funniest quirk of parenthood -- how love could never catch up to time -- but he recognized its importance; that was what made love endless, what ensured he would run out of time first.
But Claire didn’t throw him the look. Instead she nodded, and her denim blue eyes twinkled when she teased him in a high-pitched play voice.
“Take me for a piggyback ride, Daddy!”
He turned, and she jumped onto his back, wrapped her arms around his neck and his whole being around her little finger.
It was only hours later, when she was asleep in her room for the night and he was up to his elbows in spreadsheets for work, that he realized the first day at Truman had gone well. He breathed out a long sigh of relief and took an equally long sip of his sixth cup of coffee for the day.
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Claire woke up to terrible thudding and the jangling ringing of her cell phone. The simultaneous cacophony jarred her out of a particularly satisfying dream about winning the Nobel Peace Prize. She made a groggy crawl across the bed to pick up the phone from the nightstand. She squinted at the screen and didn’t recognize the number.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she groaned. “Telemarketer on a Sunday morning.”
She rolled back over only to realize the terrible thumping was knocking on the back door. Trying out her own brand of profanity, she pulled on cat pajama bottoms and an oversized hoodie. She stumbled the fifteen steps out of her room to the back door. She jerked it open. Dean stood there, a toolbox in one hand and two giant paper bags in the other. A grease stain blossoming on one of them suggested breakfast food.
“Hey Dean.” She yawned.
Dean frowned. “You’re not supposed to open the door without asking who it is. I could have been an axe murderer.”
“Do axe murderers actually use an axe or is it a generic term?”
Dean ignored her question and dropped everything on the table. “You know it makes no friggin’ sense that your bedroom is downstairs next to the door and Cas’s is upstairs, right?”
“He’s the brains, and I’m the brawn,” Claire teased.
She opened one of the bags, and her mouth watered. It was a Sunday morning jackpot: fresh, still-warm glazed donuts, breakfast sandwiches wrapped in colorful paper, and a Styrofoam container she suspected contained hashbrowns. A family of five could have eaten until they were stuffed on the contents of one bag, so she curiously opened the other: lunch food -- cold cut Italian subs and chips.
“You brought two meals?”
“Yup.”
“You’re such a good provider.” She grinned. “Now before I wake Dad up, can I tell you about my first day?”
“You could tell me about it, but Sam already called last night and told me you’re impressive and articulate and the coolest damn freshman in the place.” Dean walked over to the counter and started the coffee maker. She tried to imagine Sam, sophisticated and intelligent, saying those words and nearly laughed.
“He did not.”
“Well, maybe not exactly like that, but it was implied,” Dean said. “I practically raised two damn great kids.”
Claire bristled. Sometimes when she was younger, and her dad had to work late, she had done her homework at a table in Dean’s, eating a plate of fries and telling him about her day. Without Dean, her dad wouldn’t have had an easy time of it, but she didn’t like the suggestion that he couldn’t have done it. She had faint, fuzzy memories of her dad in the early years; she remembered walking into the kitchen, her bunny dragging the floor along behind her, and seeing him asleep on the table. In her memory, his face had been sad in his sleep, but she had never seen that in his waking hours. He had always given her his best.
“You’ve always helped Dad out.” She heard the edge in her voice, and Dean turned from the counter. “But you didn’t raise me.”
For a moment, he stared at her with a lifted eyebrow, but then she watched his face change as he read right through her. He glanced over at the cheesy posed family photo on the wall, her toothless smile offset by her crooked pigtails.
“You’re right,” Dean said. His voice rolled low, unusually serious. “You have the kind of dad who would do anything for you. When he moved here, after… well, when he moved here, he made that pretty clear.”
“Yeah.” She softened.
“Then he started bringing this cute little kid into the diner, and she started asking me favors, and the next thing you know, the Novaks have conned me into feeding them twice a day, tutoring five days a week, and fixing everything around their house once a month. I’m pretty sure all those years of homework help are the reason Sam is a teacher at a top private school and the reason you’re a student there too.” By the end, he cracked a big old cocky smile. “That’s all I meant. I’m not taking credit for anything else.”
“You can take some credit.” Claire grabbed a donut out of the bag and took a huge bite. She talked around it. “I’d have starved without you.”
“I fed you before we moved here.” The mild voice from the kitchen door made both of them turn. Her dad had come down still in his sweatpants and a plain white tee shirt with a mysterious stain on the front. Bleary-eyed, scruffy, he looked like exactly what he was: a man who had worked on crunching numbers all night. She watched Dean toss him a wrapped sandwich and pour a cup of coffee for him.
“Morning, sunshine. You look like hell.”
“Hello to you too, Dean.” He turned to look at her. “Morning, Claire.”
“What time did you go to bed, Dad?”
“Don’t parent me.” He smiled indulgently. “Did you add the bookshelf to the list?”
“No.”
“Put it on the list.”
She turned to Dean. “The big bookshelf in my room has developed a dangerous tilt. It might crash on the bed and kill me any time. It’s even more dangerous than my bedroom being near the door.”
“I’ll fix it.”
Claire sat down with her breakfast and watched the pageant being enacted. Like every other first Sunday of the month, Dean pulled the list off the magnet on the fridge. This month, the list was a little longer than usual, a mix of both Novaks’ tidy penmanship, and then the ritual really got rolling. Dean argued that he had limited time in the day, and it would be better spent changing the oil in the Jeep than trying to determine what caused the faint, high-pitched squeak from the refrigerator. Castiel explained that dirty oil didn’t bother him, but if the fridge continued to tweet like a canary randomly, he might go crazy. Claire listened to the whole exchange for a few minutes before slipping upstairs to the bathroom with a change of clothes. There were two parts of this monthly routine; Dean came over to fix things, and her grandparents came to pick her up for a day with them.
The first time had been awful. Two years ago, Craig and Lily Masters had called out of the blue, wanting to know their granddaughter. Claire had heard snippets of the conversation, little barbs that had to hurt Dad:
“Yes… Your daughter was already on her dangerous path when I met her…”
“I’m not responsible for keeping Claire from you. You always could have called. You never reached out.”
“Meg left us. I didn’t leave her.”
Claire had thrown a preteen-sized fit over the idea, crying, yelling at him for making her pretend to be family with people she had never known. The first time they had come over for dinner here at the house, she had been too terrified and angry to imagine eating, both emotions churning up her insides in equal measure. But then they had arrived, and they weren’t these mythical, intimidating figures. They were old, small and stooped, bent by grief to half of what they once were. Lily had greeted Claire with a trembling smile at the door, her hands shaking like leaves when she hesitantly reached out for a handshake, and Craig had called her “little lady” and gotten choked up when he saw a baby picture of her on the wall.
In her mind, Claire had draped them in the mantle of villains, but in reality, they were just two people whose daughter had gifted them impossible situations for so many years that they lost control.
Now she called them Grandma and Grandpa, a transition that had taken her nearly six months, and she looked forward to their once a month arrival in the driveway to pick her up. Her dad’s relationship with them, with the arrangement, had many more strands. From where she stood, everyone had mistaken their anger and disappointment in Meg Masters for blame and dislike of one another.
Claire finished her shower, slipped on some comfortable clothes, and made it downstairs just in time for the polite knock on the front door.
Her grandparents greeted her with hugs and kisses, all warmth and ebullience, but they declined her invitation to come inside. She stepped back in alone to hug her dad goodbye.
“I’ll make sure we get back nice and early. I know the first real day of school tomorrow is a huge deal.”
“Yes. It is.” His sternness melted into a half-smile. “Have fun today.”
“I will. Bye, Dean!”
She raced out the door, leaving Dean on the floor fiddling with the wiring of the refrigerator and Dad in a chair calling out helpful suggestions. She wondered if they knew they looked like a modern version of “My Two Dads.”
She wondered if they knew how glad that made her.
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“Do you want to get married someday?”
Castiel lost the question unintentionally. He had been sitting on the couch, watching Dean fiddle with the wiring on the back of the television, and the thought floated up from the back of his mind. For years, Dean had been the hammer-carrying, fix-it man around this house, and Castiel had never asked him if he wanted to be that man for someone else, someone whose list was labeled “Honey Do” and whose gratitude amounted to something more romantic than a bigger tip on the next cup of coffee. As long as Castiel could remember, Dean hadn’t seriously, sincerely dated. Yet he had not intended to ask the question aloud. Once it had begun floating, it had drifted out of his control, into the air between them.
Dean snapped upright. “What?”
“You heard me. Do you want to get married someday?” Castiel actually heard Dean swallow and then realized his mistake. He flushed, the red heat burning along his cheeks. “Not us. I meant you. Singular. Do you want to get married to someone someday?”
They stared at each other for a few flickering seconds.
“You can’t just go around proposing to people in the middle of the living room. You’re supposed to go on a couple dates, do that sexy eye thing, maybe take a test run weekend out of town where you learn some new naughty things about each other…” Dean cocked an eyebrow.
“I wasn’t proposing.”
“I suppose if you’re desperate though…”
Castiel knew from experience that there was no easy way to escape from Dean’s teasing, but teasing back usually helped.
“Or if you’re desperate.”
“I’m never desperate.” Dean’s eyes sparkled ten different shades of green, even from across the room. He held up a wiring panel, tangled wires still connected to the television itself. “C’mhere and hold this.”
Castiel obediently crossed the room and took hold of the panel while Dean got out wire clippers. The conversation had a perfect opportunity to die down, a natural opening for switching, and yet a response bubbled up and drifted out once again.
“I am sometimes.”
Dean clipped a wire and twisted the stripper attachment along its edge. His hand faltered. “You are?”
“Sometimes.” Castiel tried to shrug it off, but truth has a way of clinging. He held the panel and carefully avoided looking up. Even still, he felt Dean’s eyes on him, coaxing out honesty. “I’ll admit I never should have married Meg. We were young, and she was wild and exciting, and by the time we found out about Claire, I should have known there was no future. Meg’s addiction was out of control. But even still, I never thought I’d do this alone.”
“I get that.”
Castiel opened his mouth to say more, but instead, he thought about yesterday’s impromptu celebratory breakfast. His mind flicked back through the timeline, turning pages in the photo album. Claire was twelve, headed to her first school dance, and desperate to stop by the diner to show Dean her dress. Claire was ten, dragging Dean into school for Career Day, even though every other kid in the class brought a parent. But then the timeline blurred, shifted before his eyes, and Castiel remembered having the flu last year and Dean bringing dinner over in the evenings, tossing it in the fridge and checking on them. He remembered offering to help paint Dean’s a couple years ago; they had spent the whole weekend working in there, and by the end, Castiel knew all the words to Bob Seger’s greatest hits.
He remembered a flipbook-series of time together, thick, nervous moments where something between them had blossomed up and nearly crossed a line. Right now, he lifted his eyes, saw Dean still watching him, and his heart kicked up, told him to look away. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbling. He wondered if Dean watched the same montage in his head, remembered all the ways he had found needs and filled them, in a hundred little tiny ways and in a hundred more big ones.
“You never have to do it alone, Cas. We’re family.” That word wrapped itself around Castiel’s heart, burrowed into holes and turned them into homes.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Dean waited a few more seconds before looking away. He tossed his wire cutters in the toolbox. “Now hand me that panel. I want to get this damn thing fixed so we can have lunch. Maybe if you eat something, you won’t feel the need to propose to me again.”
“You’re doing the to-do list, you made lunch, and you love my kid. You might drive me to propose again.”
“I’ll risk it.”
Castiel didn’t know what to call the fuzzy-footed feeling padding along his skin as Dean clicked the panel back into place. The TV flickered on, another broken thing fixed.