Work Text:
“Dad.”
Dean looks up from the car manual he’s reading. “Yes, Claire-Bear?”
Claire rolls her eyes. “ Dad. ”
Ah, yes, Dean thinks, how could I forget that you’re seventeen? “Yes, Claire ?” he tries.
“Emma wants your help.”
“And you can’t help her?”
“She says,” Claire adopts the air-quotes that Cas is so fond of, “Daddy has to help me with the cookies!”
“Oh, shit. The bake sale!” Dean springs off the couch before pointing at his eldest daughter. “No swearing.”
Claire rolls her eyes again.
Dean knew he was forgetting something. It felt too good to be true to get some alone time, seeing as Cas was staying late at the university for an event. Claire and Emma had done their homework, Jack had taken a bath and gone down without a fuss (he had entered the terrible threes a couple months ago and whoever said babies were hard never met a toddler), and Dean was going to rest .
Or not.
When he gets to the kitchen, Claire right behind him, Emma is sitting on one of the bar stools, her face pressed to the counter.
“Emma?” Dean tries, putting a hand on his middle child’s shoulder, “I’m here to help.”
Emma raises her head a miniscule amount. “You forgot. ”
Dean sighs. “Yes. I did. But we can make the cookies now, how about that?”
Emma fully lifts her head and stares at him balefully. “Can I eat one when we’re done?”
Dean briefly hears Cas’s voice in the back of his head-- she already had dessert, dear --and then dismisses it. “Sure. Will you help me get out the ingredients?”
In a way, Dean had always known that he was going to forget about Emma’s bake sale. Cas is the brains of their family operation, at least in terms of organizing both of their full-time jobs, Jack’s daycare schedule, Emma’s ballet after school, and Claire’s perpetual sullenness.
Emma helps Dean gather all the ingredients for snickerdoodles (the only cookie worth making, if you ask Dean) and then tugs on Claire’s arm.
“I want you to bake with us,” Emma says.
Dean looks at Claire above Emma’s head in a way that he hopes is beseeching. Part of him hates her moodiness, but the rest of him remembers the hell he raised as a teenager, and he knows he has no room to talk. Please? he mouths at her.
Claire sighs. “Fine.”
First up is creaming the butter. Emma carefully unwraps the sticks and dumps them into the mixer, and Dean helps her measure and level off the sugar. Claire’s on flour duty, adding baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.
With the mixer running, Dean goes to grab a couple of eggs from the fridge when he feels something tug on his pant leg.
He looks down to see Jack, his teddy bear clutched under one arm.
Of course the mixer woke him up.
Dean abandons the eggs and scoops Jack up in his arms. “Hey, kiddo,” Dean says, “I thought I put you in bed.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Jack complains in his three-year-old lisp.
“Were we too loud?” Dean starts to carry Jack back to his room when Jack shakes his head.
“I miss Papa.”
“Papa’s going to be here when you wake up,” Dean says.
“I want him now .” Jack pouts.
Dean resists the urge to sigh. Jack is three and a child of routine. He’s used to having a story read by Daddy and Papa, and getting hugs from his big sisters before bed.
(Clarie’s teenage angst extends to her fathers but not her baby brother. Go figure.)
“Papa’s coming back later,” Dean says, walking into Jack’s room, dimly lit by Jack’s beloved Princess and the Frog night light. “When he gets here, he’ll come in and give you a kiss, okay?”
Normally, if Cas is gone when Jack goes to bed, that’s Dean’s trump card. Jack will at least stay in bed, because he’s waiting for Cas. But not tonight, apparently, because Jack starts wailing. Dean is trying to console him when there’s a crash from the kitchen.
“Fuck,” Dean mutters, before remembering that he’s trying not to curse in front of his toddler. Jack had called Emma a “fucking baby” last month and Emma absolutely lost it.
Dean rushes back to the kitchen, Jack in tow, to find the floor completely covered with flour. Claire looks like she’s about to murder Emma.
“Dad!” Claire complains, “Emma knocked the bowl over!”
“It was an accident !” Emma shoots back.
“Girls!” Dean hates to raise his voice at his kids, and he winces. Apparently tonight’s just not his night. “I don’t care whose fault it is, but will someone-wait, no, Emma, you clean it up. Claire, you get the dry ingredients together again.” Dean shifts Jack to one hip and uses his other hand to stop the mixer--the butter and sugar have gotten adequately fluffy.
Dean looks down to Jack, his face partially pressed into Dean’s chest. Jack is no longer openly sobbing but still has tear streaks down his face. .
“Hey, buddy,” Dean says, smoothing back Jack’s hair, “Do you want to help Daddy crack some eggs?” If Jack’s not going to go back to sleep, Dean may as well distract him.
Jack lifts his head slightly and nods.
Dean pulls up a dining room chair up to the counter and has Jack stand on it so he can reach the bowl. By the time he’s got Jack settled, Emma’s (mostly) swept up the flour and Claire’s (mostly) stopped making snide comments to her sister.
Sometimes Dean wonders why he decided to have three kids.
Unlike his younger brother, Sam, whose wife Jess got pregnant (Dean jokingly told Sam at her baby shower that he wasn’t even sure that Sam knew how babies were made, which Sam did not appreciate), Dean and Cas adopted their kids, which meant they actively chose to have three of them.
(To be fair, neither of them anticipated what it would be like to have a toddler, a petulant eleven-year-old, and a moody high schooler all at the same time.)
Not that it’s all bad--while tonight everyone seems to be in rare form, Dean included, the Winchesters know how to have fun. There are movie nights (everyone likes Star Wars because c’mon, it’s just good parenting to show your kids the classics) and Claire, despite her grumpiness, loves to work with Cas in their garden, and they go to the park, or to get ice cream, and Dean always tries to save up vacation days at the auto shop so they can go on a week-long, cross-country road trip each summer.
Jack cracks the first egg and drops half the shell in the bowl, meaning Dean has to go fishing for it before it sinks into the creamed sugar and butter. The second egg goes the same way, so Dean takes over, then carries Jack to the sink to wash his hands.
He sits Jack on the counter and pumps soap into his hands. “Rub them together, okay?” Dean says, putting soap in his own hands. “And then we can get them wet.”
“Dad, can we turn the mixer back on?” Claire asks.
“Yeah, get the eggs mixed. And then add in the dry ingredients.”
“I will as long as someone doesn’t spill them on the floor again.”
“I said-” Emma starts, but Dean cuts her off.
“Girls. We’ve been over this already. Just please mix everything.” Dean turns his attention back to Jack, who has somehow managed to spill soap all down the front of his pajamas in the 0.2 seconds Dean’s attention was focused on Emma and Claire.
“This feels yucky!” Jack complains, looking at his pajamas in dismay, and Dean can already sense the tears coming.
What he wouldn’t give to have Cas here right now.
Before the waterworks start, Dean manages to get Jack out of his pajamas, and then, naturally, Jack’s pull-up diaper needs to be changed.
(Adopting a baby is no joke. They didn’t have to potty train Emma and Claire, so this has been...well, a lot of work.)
By the time Dean’s got his toddler in a fresh diaper and jammies, Jack is incredibly cranky.
“It’s past your bedtime, kiddo,” Dean says, starting to carry Jack to his bed again. “And if you go to sleep now, you’ll get to see Papa sooner.”
Cue tears.
Dean officially fully gives up and takes Jack back to the kitchen to check on Claire and Emma’s progress. Maybe Jack will tire himself out and fall asleep in Dean’s arms and he can put him to bed then.
Luckily, there’s no flour on the floor this time, but there is sugar and cinnamon all over the counter. Emma is hard at work rolling the snickerdoodle dough into balls, then into the cinnamon sugar before putting them on the pan. Meanwhile, Claire is attempting to wrangle some of the dirty dishes into the dishwasher.
She turns as soon as she hears Jack crying, and abandons the dishwasher. “Let me have him, Dad.”
Dean sighs. “It’s your funeral.” He picks up where Claire left off with the dishwasher, and is trying to remember if Cas said wooden spoons could go in it when he notices that Jack isn’t crying anymore. Instead, he’s got his tiny hands fisted in Claire’s shirt as she bounces him around the kitchen, his breathing slowing. Now, the only sound is Emma’s cookie scoop scraping against the mixing bowl and the ding of the oven indicating that it’s preheated.
Dean checks the time. Cas’ll be home in thirty minutes.
Emma gets the cookies in the oven, and then Dean surveys the carnage. One preoccupied teenager, one pouting toddler, one grumpy ten-year-old, and a complete mess stand before him.
Dean claps his hands together. “Let’s see what we can get cleaned up before Cas gets home, okay?”
Claire hefts Jack onto one hip so that she can pick up dishes and toss them into the sink, and, to Dean’s utter shock, Emma doesn’t complain about helping but instead grabs a rag and starts wiping the counters. Dean rolls up the sleeves of his flannel and gets to work at the sink.
Twenty minutes later, minus the racks of cooling cookies on the bar, it’s nearly impossible to tell that anything happened in the kitchen, and Dean has even coerced Emma into putting on her pajamas after she tried a cookie and declared them “perfect, Daddy.”
(It occurs to Dean that he didn’t really help make them, but he’ll take credit from his kids where he can get it.)
Keys jingle in the front door a handful of minutes later, and Jack, who has been quiet in Claire’s arms, perks up and starts fighting to get down. He skids down the front hallway, sliding in his sock-footed pajamas, and Dean scrambles after him.
“Jack, don’t run--” Dean starts, but stops when he sees Jack throw his arms around Cas’s legs.
“Papa! You’re home!”
“Yeah I am,” Cas says, bending down to Jack’s eye level. “And you’re supposed to be in bed.”
“I tried,” Dean adds, shrugging.
“Don’t worry.” Cas straightens up and leans over Jack’s head to kiss Dean. “Jack can be very convincing."
“Hey, Pops,” Claire says when Cas comes into the kitchen and sheds his suit jacket onto one of the barstools, “How was work?”
“It was good, Claire-Bear.”
“ Ugh .” Claire rolls her eyes just like she did at Dean earlier but lets Cas wrangle her into a one-armed hug.
“You,” Cas adds, “Have to go to bed soon, too. You can pull all-nighters when you get to college, okay?”
“Fine.” Claire grabs a snickerdoodle on the way out of the kitchen.
“Those are for Emma’s bake sale!” Dean says.
“You let her have one!”
“I know .” Dean sighs as Claire leaves.
“Rough night?” Cas asks, raising an eyebrow, and Dean frowns at his husband.
“Nope. Everything was totally under control.” Dean nods to reassure himself. “Definitely remembered to make the cookies.”
“ Dean . I left a note on the fridge this morning.”
“You did?” Dean turns around, and sure enough there’s a bright pink post-it note on top of the family calendar with EMMA’S BAKE SALE!!! written on it in Cas’s handwriting. “Ah. You did.”
“Clearly I should have told you about it after your coffee.” Cas smiles good-naturedly and then scoops Jack up. “Come on, Flapjack. Papa’ll tuck you in.”
Later, once all the kids are at least in bed (although there’s no guarantee that Emma isn’t reading under her covers and Claire’s not watching something on her phone), and Cas has showered, Dean finally gets a chance to lay down and take a deep breath.
Cas flops down next to him on their bed, his hair still damp. “Let me guess. Flour on the floor.”
Dean nods.
“Whose fault?”
“Claire blamed Emma, Emma denied it.”
“And then Jack--?”
“Eggshells in the batter, soap down the pajamas.” Dean sighs, rolling over into Cas. “Wish you were here tonight.”
“You did a great job. Everyone’s still alive.”
“Cas.” Dean raises his head to glare at his husband. “That’s not the threshold.”
“Well, the cookies were delicious at least.”
“Those are for the bake sale!”
Cas smirks. “Claire and Emma got to try one, why not me?”
“ I haven’t tried one,” Dean mutters.
“Maybe this’ll help.” Cas pulls him into a kiss, still tasting slightly of cinnamon, and Dean quickly forgets the near-fiasco that this night was.
Tomorrow morning, of course, Dean and Cas will get up late due to “just five more minutes” of lazy morning kisses, and Claire will have a homework crisis, and Jack will throw a tantrum that he can’t wear his tutu to daycare because the last time he did he got mud all over it, and Emma will almost leave the snickerdoodles at home, but for now, Dean lets himself sink into his husband’s embrace.
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Dean’s Special Snickerdoodles (courtesy of Mary Winchester)
Ingredients:
3 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 sticks softened butter
1 and ⅓ cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
For topping: ⅓ cup sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 375 F and line two cookie sheets with parchment.
- Whisk together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.
- In a mixer, beat butter and sugar until smooth and creamy. Add eggs and vanilla extract. Beat until combined.
- Slowly add dry ingredients to the mixer.
- Roll cookie dough into balls about 1 tablespoon in size. Then cover the dough balls in the cinnamon and sugar topping. Arrange two inches apart on baking sheets.
- Bake cookies for ten minutes. When you remove them from the oven, lightly flatten them with a spatula. Cool on pan for ten minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Enjoy!