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Anna dropping off her kid without warning was annoying, but no longer a surprise. Gabriel held out his arms. “Heya, kiddo! Come give your uncle a hug?”
“Okay!” Alfie ran over to fling himself into Gabriel’s arms. “Mom said to tell you she’s sorry, but she only found out Ruby was coming to town an hour ago, and you know how much Ruby hates me so she had to do something with me and that means you.”
Gabriel held back the eyeroll. Ruby hated Anna’s entire family, and the feeling was 100% mutual. Anna was hardly a model citizen, but until Ruby came along, she’d at least taken her job as a mother seriously. Gabriel was almost to the point where he was ready to tell Anna he wasn’t giving Alfie back when she showed up after Ruby skipped town again. “Well, it’s good to see you. How long have you been sitting out here?”
“About ten minutes?” Alfie shrugged. “It was okay, I had my phone, I could play games, and it’s a nice morning.”
“What happened to the key Dean gave you last time?”
Alfie’s face scrunched up, and then he pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket. “I forgot about it. Whoops, sorry.”
“S’okay, kiddo, come on in.” Gabriel led Alfie in and got him seated at the table. “You hungry? I was just getting ready to make breakfast.” He would not put it past Anna to drop the kid off without feeding him breakfast, thanks to the demon tempting her into ruining her life.
Dean just rolled his eyes when he saw Alfie sitting at the table and pulled out his phone to call Sam. Alfie shot Gabriel a worried look. “What’s wrong? Am I messing up plans?”
“No, kiddo, you’re not. Your mom might be, but I don’t see why you can’t come shopping with us and Claire and Jack, so no plans ruined.” Gabriel ruffled Alfie’s hair. “Wanna come bike shopping with us?”
“Okay.” Alfie’s lack of enthusiasm hurt Gabriel, until he realized why Alfie wouldn’t be excited. There’s no fun in going bike shopping if you’re not going to get to pick one out for yourself, not at his age, and Anna would never let Alfie keep a bike. She’d sell it off for money that would probably get spent on partying with Ruby. That hurt Gabriel, too, but in a completely different way – and he had a solution, now.
Dean came back in with a huge grin. “Plans are still on. Sam wanted to know why I bothered calling, Alfie might as well be their cousin and no reason we can’t just consider him invited any time we’re doing family stuff.”
“See? Told you, no plans ruined, just made better,” Gabriel said.
Ash came out to meet them at the bike shop. “Hi, guys! Claire, Jack, you guys be sure to tell your dads happy anniversary for me, okay?” He looked curiously at Alfie. “Who’s this?”
“This is Alfie! He’s our cousin now. He’s never had a bike, so we have to find him a really good one, okay, Mr. Miles?” Jack said. “We’ll teach him how to ride it!”
“Well, cool, welcome to the cool kids’ club of bike ownership, then.” Ash held out a fist to Alfie for a bump. Alfie hesitated, until Gabriel nodded to go for it. “Claire, got a couple picked out for you I thought you might like, go have a look. Jack, buddy, I got no idea, you change your mind so much, so why don’t you take your cousin and show him what to look for?”
“Alfie.” Alfie and Jack paused, looking back at Gabriel. “Pick one out. You can keep it at our house, your mom doesn’t have to ever know it exists, and every kid should have a bike. If she does find out, I bet Sam can come up with some binding legal arguments why she can’t mess with it anyway.”
Dean snorted. “Don’t need Sammy for that one. We’re buying it, it’s at our house, it’s a gift for Alfie, not for Anna, if she messes with it that’s theft or vandalism. And if she thinks we won’t press charges because she’s family, well… ask her what happened to John Winchester.” Dean had taken his own father to court over that one. Despite the constant moving around and crazy lifestyle, Sam had managed to work some odd jobs, pick up some money, that he sent to Bobby Singer to put aside so he’d have money when he left for college. John found out about it and drained the account to buy more guns.
Alfie ran off behind Jack, considerably more excited now. Ash grinned, watching Jack teaching Alfie everything he knew about bicycles. “Always knew you guys were softies. Surprised it took you this long to end up with your own kid.”
“Shut up,” Dean grumbled without heat. “Honestly? Me too. Unfortunately there’s a shortage of random kids lying around these days, can’t just go grab one off the streets somewhere.”
“No, but you guys are great candidates for adoption, no money problems, Gabriel’s nearly always home, stable relationship with solid support around you… so why haven’t you gone for it?”
“Dean here is scared that if he adopts a kid, he might end up in a position where he’d have to choose between them and Sam,” Gabe deadpanned. “Seriously, though… because I’m scared. Anna was always the responsible one when we were kids, so if she can’t manage to hold it together to look after her kid, what hope is there for me?”
“Well, you have Dean,” Ash said. “You try to slack off and ignore your kid, he’ll knock the sense right back into you.”
Gabe kept quiet the rest of the time they watched the kids picking out their new bikes. Once the bikes were selected, Ash promised to put some tweaks on them while Dean and Sam took the kids to lunch. “What do you guys want?” Dean asked.
“Burgers!” “Nougat!” “Food.” “Candy!”
Dean rolled his eyes and smacked Gabriel. “Jack, your dad would kill us, so burgers it is. Let’s go.” Claire did a quick victory dance before following them to the diner.
Once their orders were placed, the kids took off to play with the pinball machine, leaving Dean and Gabe to talk. “You seriously afraid to have a kid because you don’t think you’d be responsible enough?” Dean asked.
“Yeah. I know some couples do fine with having the responsible parent and the fun parent, but I don’t want you put in that position. Your dad did that to you too much from too early on with Sam. If we’re gonna have a kid, I want to pull my share of the load, but I don’t know if I can. It’s one thing, being the uncle, where eventually I can hand them back to Sam and Cas, or Anna, and not have to worry about them for a while. Being a dad? I don’t know.”
“Look, man, we know it’s coming unless Anna wisens up quickly. Ruby’s got her hooks in her, how long until Anna screws up bad enough that CPS comes calling? You know I hate the thought of calling them, after the years I spent terrified that someone was gonna take Sammy away from me, but it’s getting to the point where I really think it’s in Alfie’s best interests.”
Gabe sighed heavily. “Yeah… really, we know it’s coming, at this point the only reason I haven’t done it is because if we take Alfie, will we completely lose Anna? She’s my sister, I can’t stand that thought. But… Anna chose this. If even Sam can’t get through to her, then it’s probably for the best to think about Alfie.”
“So… talk to Anna? See if she’ll do the right thing, get us added as people who can make the calls on him without us having to get the government involved, so that if she cleans up her act it’ll be easier to let her take him back?”
Gabriel nodded. “And once this has gotten me to realize I can do this, we can maybe look into one that’s more permanent.”