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In retrospect, John thinks that the Novak house ought to have a warning label nailed to the front door. Something along the lines of ‘You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... the Outer Limits!’ He walks through the door and presto. Time warp. Not the Rocky Horror kind (thank God, ‘cause the idea of Tim Curry slinking through here in fishnets is just plain wrong) but more like that episode of Star Trek where they step into the Guardian of Forever and travel back to the nineteen-thirties.
It’s the first time John has set foot in their house since he’s moved his family to Barker Avenue, which is pretty stupid considering how much time Dean spends there with E.T. It’s bright. It’s odd. It’s kind of space age and kind of fifties at the same time. You know what? It’s perfect for the Novaks. At least until the mother ship swings by to pick them up and take them home to the rebel base on Hoth to report on what they’ve learned.
Grace is smiling at him as she lets him in, dressed in vivid apple green with white gloves and pearls that make her look like she just stepped out of some retro Sears catalogue. She coos at Sam, who’s looking around with wide eyes over his father’s shoulder, and John catches sight of the reason for his visit on the carpet.
Castiel is in the living room in front of the old-style black and white television, wrapped up in setting a herd of wildebeest (where the hell do you even get plastic wildebeest?) to go with the zebras, giraffes and various other animals spread out across the carpet in herds while David Attenborough drones on about the habits of the African lion. And then Dean pops out from behind the couch with his G.I. Joe in hand and starts doing his best Great White Hunter impression by shooting at the hippos.
“There are no G.I. Joes on the Serengeti,” Castiel tells Dean in his most serious you’re-not-playing-in-a-logical-manner voice and John has to shake his head when Dean comes back with the best argument his five-year-old brain can come up with. It’s like watching Spock and Kirk in short-pants.
“He’s a dessert comm-an-do.” Dean sounds out the word carefully as another gazelle goes down in a blast of machine-gun fire and John wonders if the Saturday morning cartoons are such a good idea (he’s already banned Gumby – that shit is just too weird).
“Desert, kiddo,” John chuckles. “He’s a desert commando.”
Dean instantly perks up. “Daddy!” The boy is up off the floor and running at him and John hunkers down to lift him up with his free arm, mindful of Sam and thankful that Castiel’s not really an extra-terrestrial mind-reader because the level of emotion this one happy greeting invokes is embarrassing in the extreme and should never be verbalised in public. Grace claps her hands primly and Castiel turns to her with a slight frown on his face.
“Come along, angel, you know the rules. No televised education when we have guests.”
Castiel tilts his head at her and John can see the wheels turning. “Dean is a guest.”
“Adult guests,” Grace amends calmly.
“But it’s about lions –” Finally, some sign of normal childhood behaviour from the boy, John thinks gratefully (seriously, the kid’s gotta be a plant, part of some Cylon plot to take over the Earth as we know it, right? He can hear ‘Danger, John Winchester’ echoing in the back of his mind) and who cares if it’s not Fraggle Rock that the kid’s engrossed in like any other child his age?
“Ah ah!” Grace chides him sweetly. “Turn it off. We have company.”
“Yes, Mother,” Castiel surrenders and obediently reaches out to flip off the appliance.
Grace nods approvingly, blonde hair bobbing. "Very good, now come into the kitchen. I baked chocolate goodnight cookies.”
“Chocolate goodnight cookies?” John echoes, a little confused by the proclamation. He’s heard of gingerbread, peanut butter, oatmeal and sugar cookies but chocolate goodnights are a new one on him.
“Of course,” Donna Stone says cheerfully and glides into the kitchen with John trailing behind her in bewilderment to sweep a plate up off the counter and hold it under John’s nose. Damn, they really smell amazing. “Dean has one every afternoon before he goes home.”
“Uh huh,” Dean agrees and snatches two, pushing one against John’s lips until he opens his mouth to take a bite. “Mrs Novak says the secret is love.” Then Dean crunches into his own cookie and mumbles a ‘thankyou’ around the mouthful so that crumbs fall everywhere. Okay, so maybe John needs to work on Dean’s manners a bit. It’s like watching the Cookie Monster go to town and all that’s missing is an enthusiastic ‘Om nom nom nom!’ John has to put him down to make sure Dean doesn’t gobble up his cookie as well. Sam is already attacking that anyway.
“Gabriel? Would you like a cookie?” Grace offers and the boy is practically jumping all over his mother, claiming three before running back to the table that he’s got set-up like Frankenstein’s laboratory.
“Darling, what have I told you about playing with your chemistry set at the dinner table?” Grace says in that chipper tone that John still can’t quite stop shaking his head at. He’s getting better, he swears, but he keeps wondering when Marion Cunningham is going to show up to swap recipes and housekeeping tips.
“No mixing after five o’clock,” Gabriel recites dutifully. “But Mother, I made superglue!” And he brandishes a banana that’s stuck firmly to a pencil, a piece of scrunched-up paper and half an apple like a sword.
“Now, Gabriel, you know what happened on the last occasion that you played with adhesives,” Grace reminds him kindly.
“Michael had to use a doughnut,” Gabriel chirps proudly and John bites back a snicker at the image of the oldest and stiffest (honestly, there should be a minimum legal age for having a stick shoved up your ass) of the Novak children relying on such a device, glaring at Gabriel all the while.
“A toroidal cushion, dear,” Grace corrects him and John starts laughing in earnest. The never-ending war between Michael and Gabriel is one that the younger brother is winning by virtue of enthusiasm and creativity. Grace almost frowns at John. Almost. “Now, John, it was not amusing. Michael was quite embarrassed.”
John shrugs apologetically but he can’t feel sorry for it. It feels too damn good to laugh after months of nothing but funerals and insurance claims and traumatized children. It’s startling to realize he had almost forgotten this – the sensation of it bubbling up in his chest and spilling over. Has it really been so long?
Holy crap, no wonder Dean is staring at him like he’s just witnessed Mork’s egg-ship squashing his old man flat with a jubilant cry of ‘Na-Nu Na-Nu!’ (and who knew a sense of humour could come back from the dead, huh?). Then Dean is wrapping his arms around John’s thigh and grinning up at his Dad and John makes a silly face that has Dean giggling against his jeans.
“So, you learned that in school?” John asks Gabriel (no way, the kid only just finished first grade, for Christ’s sake) and the boy shakes his head quickly, brown eyes alight with enthusiasm.
“Nope! The Learning Channel. I saw a show –“
“’Nope’ is not a proper word, Gabriel,” Grace intercedes and seriously, does this woman overdose on Disney on a daily basis? What else accounts for the sing-song delivery? John half-expects her to break out in ‘Whistle While You Work’.
“But I heard it at school,” Gabriel replies, a mischievous look on his young face. “You said I had to pay attention at school.”
“I instructed you to pay attention to the teachers, not imitate the colloquialisms of your peers,” Grace tells him with a smile straight out of a toothpaste commercial and Gabriel just huffs and nods and it occurs to John that if his own parents had talked to him like that at the same age he’d have stared at them blankly. Bunsen Honeydew Junior just takes it all in stride and starts cleaning up the colourful mess of vials and tubes spread across the table.
“Castiel, Ananaurah, Michael!” Grace calls out. “Cookies!”
Gabriel somehow ends up with two more cookies to add to his stash once the stampede is over and Dean has claimed another one as well. Only Castiel and Michael comport themselves with any dignity, which in itself is damn weird to watch.
“Don’t spoil your dinner, kiddo,” John warns Dean and ruffles his hair.
“So John, have you had a chance to obtain Dean’s school things yet?” Grace asks and Dean seems to deflate before John’s eyes, his cookie forgotten.
“Uh... no,” John replies, frowning at the way Dean is suddenly taking shelter behind his leg. “Kindergarten’s still about a month away. I figure I’ve got some time.”
“We wish to attend snufflegarten,” Castiel announces gravely, as if he’s delivering the Gettysburg Address, and John takes a moment to try to absorb what he’s just heard. A few seconds later he’s still unenlightened and Castiel is watching him, waiting for an answer of some description. Even Grace is staring at her youngest son in perplexity.
“Snufflegarten?” John echoes in confusion, eyebrows beetling.
“It’s an educational institution attended by Aloysius Snuffleupagus,” Grace chimes in helpfully, like that explains everything. Maybe it would in the merry old land of Oz but John lives in the real world and he’s pretty sure ‘snufflegarten’ isn’t listed in the phone book.
John blinks at her. “Right,” he deadpans. “Thanks, Grace. That really fills in the blanks.” And she just smiles as if to say ‘yes, it does, doesn’t it?’
“Darling, what are you talking about?” Grace prompts Castiel.
“Mister Winchester, we wish to attend snufflegarten,” Castiel repeats solemnly, as if that is the end of the matter and why didn’t John agree the first time he said it?
“We?” John prompts him.
“Ananaurah and I are going with Dean,” Castiel replies evenly and it will never be normal to hear adult grammar coming out of this rug-rat’s mouth. It’s like the kid’s possessed or something. The scary thing is that John’s used to it. He expects the boy to weird him out. ‘The power of Christ compels you,’ his subconscious taunts him.
“Grace, could you...?” He glances at Sam and she lifts the fourteen-month-old out of John’s arms and jiggles him gently. “Dean, sit down here for a second. Start from the beginning, Castiel,” John suggests as he gets down on Grace’s kitchen floor with the children (he spends more time on all-fours than he does upright now that Sam’s decided that dust-bunnies are a nummy-treat) and Ananaurah scoots closer to her brother, peeking over his shoulder.
“Dean said we could,” the redhead pipes up and yeah, it figures that his kid is the mastermind behind this scheme, whatever the hell it is. John glances at Dean, who fidgets and won’t look at him.
“Dean? Come on, sport, get over here,” John says, patting his lap and after a moment’s hesitation, Dean does what he’s told as Grace quietly hustles her children out of the room. “Why do you want to go to snufflegarten, kiddo?” John asks quietly and Dean ducks his head, letting his fringe fall into his eyes like it’s going to shield him from the question. It makes him look adorably like Cousin It from the Addams Family.
“’Cause it’s on TV,” Dean mumbles, curling in on himself. “I wouldn’t have to go away.”
John frowns as something begins to click. “Go away?”
“Mommy went away,” Dean says, his voice dropping to a whisper. “You said she can’t come back. I don’t want to go away. I want to stay with you and Sammy.”
Oh crap... “Look at me, Dean.” Anxious green eyes lift to meet John’s gaze. Dean looks so miserable, so scared that kindergarten means disappearing like Mary, that it breaks John’s heart. “Dean, I’m not sending you away. School is just a place to spend some time each day to learn things – like how to read and write. Remember how Mommy used to read you bedtime stories? She learned that at school and she came home to her parents every day, just like you’ll come home to me and Sam.”
“Every day? I can come home every day?” Dean is starting to look a little more hopeful and John curses himself for not thinking to explain exactly what was going to happen at kindergarten.
“Every day, kiddo,” John promises. “I’ll come and get you every day, just like Mrs Novak goes to pick up Michael and Gabriel every day. Just like she’s going to bring Castiel and Ananaurah home every afternoon.”
“I get to spend the day with Cas?” Dean perks up and John grins ruefully at his boy, thinking it should have been obvious that Castiel’s presence would be the final factor that tipped the scales. The two are inseparable.
“You might not be in the same class,” John hastens to tell him, “but you’ll see him at recess and lunch and when it’s time to go home. You’ll get to make lots of other friends too.”
“Don’t need more,” Dean says firmly, shaking his head. “Cas is cool.”
“I guess so,” John chuckles, gives Dean a big smacking kiss on the top of his head and starts tickling him. Dean squirms and laughs at the top of his voice until Castiel pushes open the kitchen door, watching with his head canted at an angle as if he’s not sure how to categorize what he’s seeing. John looks at Dean and murmurs ‘On three?’ in his ear. Dean nods excitedly and they count it out together. John lets Dean go on ‘two’ and he’s sprinting as fast as his short legs will carry him, grabbing at Castiel’s sleeve and dragging him along with him.
“Three!” Dean yells out. “Run, Cas!”
“Why?” Castiel asks as John surges through the door and sweeps his favourite Martian up under one arm. The blue-eyed kid squawks in surprise at suddenly finding himself carried and it’s only a matter of seconds before John catches up to Dean and throws him over his shoulder one-handed.
“Me next! Me next!” Gabriel is chanting. “Get Mike! Get Mike!”
“It’s Michael!” the oldest Novak boy huffs, glowering at his arch nemesis.
Grace raises her voice just enough to herd everyone into the backyard and sits on the porch stairs with Sam while John and the kids chase each other around.
Mary would have liked the Novaks, John thinks when he finally sits down and takes Sam back. She was good with strange stuff. In fact, that might be why Dean gets on so well with Castiel. Dean always did take after his mother.
Dean, Ananaurah and Gabriel are still going bananas (Castiel is watching like he’s studying gorilla society or something, running only when necessary to avoid being tagged) and it’ll be a while before they tire themselves out if history is anything to go by.
“You’re doing very well with them,” Grace speaks up and gives him a reassuring smile. “I think your Mary would be very proud of all of you.”
“Thanks.” John really hopes so. It’s been hard to find a new definition of normal and he’s still not sure he’s there yet. Dean periodically has episodes where he’ll clam up for a day or two but they’re becoming fewer as time goes on and Sam... John wonders if he even remembers his mother’s rendition of ‘Hey Jude’.
John definitely needs to watch more Sesame Street. He might have picked up on Dean’s fear of kindergarten earlier if he’d paid more attention to the Muppets (and there’s a sentence he never thought he’d... well, think). Somewhere, Mary’s probably laughing her head off that he’s trading Battlestar Galactica for Big Bird. Not that her taste was any better. John never understood how The Love Boat held Mary’s interest (and he absolutely did not watch last night’s episode and get misty, damn it).
It’s not perfect but it’s getting better and one day it’ll be okay.
One day.