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Some people would find what seemed to be a giant pot of simmering red liquid on a stove burner and deduce someone in the household was making soup. Dean thought it must be nice to have a life where such benign assumptions were common since he himself was jumping to no such conclusions.
The sound of footfall rapidly approaching the kitchen did not dampen his concerns.
"That's mine," Jack said, skidding into the room in his sock feet. He bumped Dean out of the way in the process of turning off the stove and slamming a lid down on the pan. He pasted on a smile. "Nothing to worry yourself with." He leaned back against the counter, the absolute picture of fake breeziness and heavy breathing.
Cas walked into the room just then. "Oh, it's you," he said upon seeing Dean.
"It's me," Dean said, stifling two intense desires: to interrogate everyone in the room and to kiss Cas hello. (The second craving had been happening more often lately. He was choosing to ignore it on the grounds of how terrible an idea it was.) He made himself start putting away the groceries.
When the perishables were safely in cold storage, he turned back around and assessed Jack and Cas's matching, vaguely guilty expressions.
"Everything's cool?" he said, pinning Cas with a look.
"We're fine," Cas said. He looked Dean dead in the eyes while saying it.
Dean had just enough experience raising children to know sometimes you had to let them lie...in order to catch them later and get revenge. "All right," he said, watching Jack slump slightly with relief. "Chili sound good for dinner?"
"Chili sounds great," Jack said.
"I'll start some in an hour or so," Dean said, exuding serenity.
"Great!" Jack was starting to edge toward a pair of salad tongs.
Dean did not comment. He wandered out, filing things away in his mind.
"Where is everyone?" he asked Sam a week later.
Sam stopped gutting a large pumpkin and looked up. "Cas and Jack went to Nebraska."
"Got a case?"
"Don't think so." Sam resumed his gourd lobotomy by putting his hand into the pumpkin's cavity and bringing up a wad of wet stringy viscera and white seeds big as teeth, which he then dumped unceremoniously into a bowl.
Dean was not squeamish and he still wanted to puke just a little. "Okay," he said instead of gagging. He thought for a minute. "What the hell's there to see in Nebraska anyway?"
"I think there was a Halloween store Jack wanted to go to."
"You didn't want to go with them?"
Sam glanced up, confused.
"Since you're so into Halloween this year," Dean continued.
"Carving one jack o'lantern is not exactly a rave endorsement." Sam shrugged with one shoulder. "I don't know. Jack's excited about it."
"Sure. I'm not bitter or anything that you're participating, since you never gave a crap that I like it." Dean smiled to soften the words.
Sam quirked a smile back to him. "Your mature understanding is as always appreciated."
"Fuck off."
"They're supposed to be back tonight," Sam said, smiling down into the pumpkin.
"Okay." Dean was building a case, and had no idea where this new information fit, and no idea why he of all people, Halloween's biggest fan, hadn't been invited on the road trip, but he'd figure it out eventually.
He was glad Cas and Jack would be home soon, though.
And thinking of them like that -- well. Well.
The sheer cinematic high attained from a midnight viewing of Hobgoblins 2: The Goblining was worth both the twenty minute drive and the burnt popcorn the theatre sold him for seven bucks, and Dean drifted down the bunker stairs still in a euphoric most badly made horror film contentment until he abruptly hit a wall of thumping music.
Come on, come on
We really got a good thing going
He fought his way through the deafening riffs and threw open the door to Jack's bedroom, whereupon an alien shrieked and dove to the floor.
Dean unplugged the cobbled-together stereo right inside the door and the vinyl record that'd been playing spun slowly to a stop on its turntable.
"Ah, you're back," Cas said, stepping into the room behind him and walking around to help the alien stand up. "Thought the movie would be longer."
Dean narrowed his eyes at both of them, long enough that the alien finally seemed familiar. He took a shallow breath and asked, "Is this what you've been hiding?"
Jack scratched at his bright red mullet wig. The giant red and blue grease paint zigzag lightning bolt across his face made him look both extraterrestrially young and, weirdly, exactly like himself.
"It's for Halloween," he said. "I'm going as Ziggy Stardust."
"I got it," Dean said. "Classic Bowie."
Jack fidgeted. Cas looked at Dean uncertainly.
Dean glanced at them, at the record on the turntable, and then at Jack again. Some pieces were falling into place.
"Did you think I'd be mad or something?" he asked, taking care to be unthreatening in every way.
Jack exhaled a shaky breath and walked past him to plug the stereo back in. "It's just. I didn't think you probably liked Bowie much."
"I don't not like Bowie."
Cas made a face.
"He's likely better than Britney Spears," Dean defended.
Cas rolled his eyes. Britney was his favorite.
"And okay, yeah," Dean said, turning to address Jack and his tentative expression. "I'm not that familiar with Bowie's body of work."
He suddenly thought of his father. He remembered John frowning once at a faded poster of Ziggy Stardust -- killer cheekbones, glamourous lipstick -- hanging behind a convenience store check out, thirty-some years ago. His dad'd punched a tape of Sabbath into the Impala on their way out of town and didn't say a word. Disgust, Dean thought. John Winchester wouldn't have listened to Bowie on a bet.
When Dean refocused, Jack's posture had changed; he'd seen something in Dean that let him stand taller.
Dean said, "You can listen to anything you want, okay? I mean, good thing Sam's at Eileen's 'cause he'd have hearing loss by now and it's just a miracle you and Cas don't, but you can like anything you wanna like. And you can be whoever you wanna be any day of the year." He took a beat. "Within reason. Don't go--" He waved a hand around. "We're gonna keep the major nephilim-powers under wraps as much as we can, yeah? Unless there's a battalion of demons on our asses or something."
Jack gave a bashful grin. "Right."
"Looks good," Dean said, clapping Jack lightly on the shoulder.
"Thanks, Dean."
Jack turned the music back on at a much lower volume. He went back to his vanity and sat down, picked up a narrow paintbrush and started applying what looked like little diamond chips around his eyes.
If you think we're gonna make it
You better hang on to yourself
Dean watched for a second and Cas watched him. He caught Cas's eye and tipped his head toward the door.
They wandered down the hallway to Dean's bedroom door.
Dean put his back against the wall. "You can tell me, you know."
Cas cocked his head Cas-style. "Tell you what."
"When I'm fucking up. With the kid." Dean looked down at his hands.
"You're not." Cas stepped closer. "You're not," he repeated, staring until Dean would look at him.
"It's just." Dean was not quite entirely inhabiting his own meat suit at the moment, he knew that, and he was trying to ground himself by the sound of the music down the hall and the feel of the cool tile against his back and the solid warmth of Cas standing so near the distance between them was negligible. Personal space, what personal space? He'd never needed space less. He wanted to be crowded in, poured into his legs and arms and stomach, his hands that felt stiff from not reaching for Cas.
"I have a family," Dean said, knowing there was too much surprise in his voice, hopeless cause that he was.
"You've always had a family," Cas said.
"Not like this." Dean's eyes were wet for some reason. "I borrowed one once."
And oh, he was flying above that, way up in the clouds over a suburban Indiana yard scattered with maple leaves.
Cas’s eyes were wet too. He moved even closer.
"That one wasn’t mine,” Dean said. “But this one.” His throat closed off and didn’t open again for a long minute. “This one, I hope I get to keep.”
When Cas kissed him, he did so gently – at first. Then Cas kissed him very ungently and Dean returned the favor, crashed to earth, into his body that was reeling Cas in like gravity might reverse again if he didn’t.
He pulled Cas into the bedroom and closed the door behind them.