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Dean spends the drive to Washington silent. Mary watches the trees go by and says nothing. Sam only reaches for the radio dial the once before he glances at Dean and pulls out headphones instead. Just the wind, the rumble of the road, and Dean tap-tap-tapping the wheel while his thoughts circle the drain.
When they crunch up the driveway to see Cas’s shitty truck parked haphazardly, the relief is immediate. Ten hours of worry evaporate, just like that. Back to basics. Back to worrying about how this kid is gonna end the world.
Dean’s still flipping a coin about whether to knock or bust out some paper clips for the lock when the door swings open. Cas. Must have been standing around waiting for them. And Cas smiles. Not a small, half thing, but a full on beam, which throws Dean off kilter.
“Dean. We were waiting. Come with me.”
Dean can feel the looks being exchanged behind his back, and he wants to pump some brakes so everyone stays in place so he can play out the vague outline of an argument he’s got going. But Cas doesn’t waste any time, has already turned, is already walking down a hall, and Dean has to jog to catch up with him.
“Hey. Hey! Cas!”
He grabs at Cas’s arm, and Cas dutifully stops in his tracks to look at him.
“What?”
“What? You do remember how you left, right?”
Cas has the decency to look contrite.
“I’m sorry. If it had been any less urgent, I wouldn’t have done that. As it was, it was necessary.”
Right. Necessary.
“Cas - look. Nothing has changed. We still have a chance to make this kid human. To prevent who knows what kind of destruction.”
“I understand that you think that. But there’s something I’d like to show you.”
Cas keeps walking, and Dean has no choice but to hustle after him towards a bedroom. For a brief moment, he thinks they’ve missed it, it’s too late, he’s about to walk in and see a cradle full of antichrist. But it’s Kelly’s room. She’s on her bed, and she looks very tired and still very pregnant. He gives her an awkward smile, and she regards him carefully. Dean’s pretty sure he can talk everybody in this room into un-magic-ing the baby in maybe ten minutes flat, but he knows that doesn’t happen if he opens with how Kelly’s kid is inherently prone towards cataclysmic levels of destruction. So he gives her what’s supposed to be a half smile but feels like a full grimace, and he waits for her to say something. She sighs.
“I don’t know you like I know Castiel. But Castiel trusts you, and I trust him. And we both want Jack to be safe.”
There’s his opening. He’s ready to start his spiel, but before he can get a word out Cas grabs his hand and squeezes. That’s distracting enough that Dean’s mouth snaps shut and he stops giving Kelly a carefully neutral glance and starts giving Cas a dude-what-the-hell stare. Cas pulls the both of them closer to the bed, and then Kelly nods at Cas.
Dean’s not a fan of this nonverbal communication thing they’ve got going on, especially when it involves Cas taking the same hand he grabbed and guiding it to Kelly’s stomach. He feels more than vaguely uncomfortable, is trying to figure out a non offensive way to yank his hand back without completely blowing his chance at convincing the two of them. But before he can say anything, Dean’s waving a fork around, telling a hunting story from his twenties. His mom’s across from him, snorting into her beer. Sam’s shaking his head and grinning. Cas is just plain grinning. Dean’s about to get to the good part, the really good part, when a baby monitor crackles to life.
“Boss is calling,” Dean says, going to stand, but Cas puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder and beats him to it.
“You stay. Enjoy the visit with everyone. It was wonderful to see you, Mary. Sam.”
He watches Cas retreat for a moment, feels more than hears the conversation around him bubble back to life. Then he blinks, and his mom has pulled him close into a hug. They just stand there for a minute, holding each other. When she pulls away, she plants a kiss on his cheek.
“Quite a life you’ve got here.”
Dean laughs.
“Don’t I know it.”
“Come visit soon, okay? You and your boys. I want to see my grandson.” And Dean nods and says of course and before he knows it, the scene’s shifted again. Dean’s standing in the middle of a child’s room. He can tell by the crib, the bright splashes of paint. There’s a bundle in his arms, fitfully throwing out an arm or a leg and fussing. Dean shushes them automatically, shifting so the baby is cradled to his chest.
“C’mon now,” he mumbles, “Nothing to cry about.”
He starts humming the first few bars of a slower Zeppelin song, the same one he would sing when Sam was a kid and had a nightmare. The fussing turns into a quiet gurgling. Dean turns to the door and Sam is leaning there, half amused, half something else. Dean keeps rocking the kid.
“You got something to say, say it quietly, cause I’m pretty sure I can get him back down soon.”
Sam obliges, going for a quiet huff instead of a full on guffaw.
“It’s not that. I’m just… I’m really happy for you. I can’t stop thinking about how incredible it is that we’re. You know. Safe. Happy. Every time you call I get an earful about mashed carrots or mashed banana on sale. And you’re enjoying it.”
Dean shifts, a little uncomfortable that Sam’s laying things out so directly, but mostly pleased.
“Hey, you haven’t seen how he gets when he’s hungry. Carrot or banana can be life or death.”
Sam looks doubtful, but doesn’t throw any banter back. He just smiles.
“I’m happy for you, man.”
Dean glances at the blanketed bundle he’s cradling to his chest. He has a lot to say about it, but instead he just grins at Sam before pressing a kiss to the baby’s downy forehead.
This time when he blinks, he’s sprawled out on a couch. Cas is sitting next to him, much more contained. Cas looks a little exasperated, and a lot fond.
“You can go to bed whenever you want, Dean. You’ve snored through the last 15 minutes of the movie.”
Dean has to work hard to suppress a yawn.
“Nah, I’m good. It’s important to take a night off to decompress or we’ll go nuts. I bet that’s in one of your parenting books.”
Cas makes a noncommittal noise. Dean shifts in his spot, moving enough that his leg is pressed against Cas’s.
“C’mon. Hit play.”
Cas looks unconvinced, but he dutifully unpauses whatever it is they’re watching. Dean watches the glow of the television flicker across Cas’s face for a whopping 30 seconds before he’s asleep again.
When he opens his eyes, he’s holding a couple of pushpins between his teeth and is trying to judge just how crooked the colorful HAPPY BIRTHDAY! banner above the doorway is. To his left, Jody is dumping a bag of chips into a bowl to put on the table with plates and drinks and cupcakes. He starts listening to her mid sentence.
“--and it was an adjustment for all of us, obviously. But we’re older, and it’s not something I ever wanted to do, just something that needed done. And honestly, I’m really enjoying a life with no more extracurricular stakeouts. But Claire’s so young. She really latched onto making it her purpose. She decided she was going to be a monster killer, and suddenly there are no more monsters and she’s spinning her wheels. You know, I thought I was going to have to spend ages convincing her to come up here with me. Getting a teenager to a toddler party, no easy feat. But when I told her about it, she grumbled ‘not like I have anything else to do.’ Which wasn’t reassuring.”
She pauses, purposefully injects some lightness in her tone, an oh-by-the-way-it’s-not-important-or-anything lilt.
“I thought while we’re here you and Cas could take a shot at talking to her.”
Dean sticks another pin in the T of HAPPY BIRTHDAY!, still not quite satisfied with how it’s sagging.
“Yeah. We’ll say something. I mean, hell. I don’t blame her. If I didn’t have a kid taking up all my time, I don’t know what I’d be doing either. But she’s young. Could pick up a hobby. Maybe all she needs is a drum kit in the garage and a boxing membership.”
Jody laughs.
“Yeah, maybe. As long as she doesn’t show up with a baby, I’ll do anything to get her out of her funk.”
Another pin, this time in the exclamation point.
“Hey. I’m practically middle aged. It’s kosher for me to show up with a baby. And I’m not even a single parent. We’re damn near nuclear. Could go on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens and everything.”
Jody pauses, then says “I don’t think that’s the parenting one,” while Dean busies himself with digging through a drawer for more pins.
“Speaking of nuclear. Where’s your better half?”
Dean, who’s more than earned his sainthood, doesn’t rise to the bait.
“He’s wrangling the kid into an outfit. Has been all morning. It’s impossible with him, I swear. It’s always…” He clears his throat, pitches his voice to a more Cas-like register.
“Jack wanted to play instead of getting ready, so we’re two hours late.”
And now he’s grumbling.
“And as soon as you call him on it, you got both sets of baby blues on you. You have no idea what it’s like to live with two of them.”
Jody seems to realize she’s lost control of the conversation and good naturedly mhms and huhs her way through the rest of Dean’s spiel, which is periodically interspersed with and don’t get me wrong, I love them to death. But--
It goes faster after that. Flashes of a life. A fridge door covered head to toe in clutter, which on closer inspection is made up of drawings, report cards, and photos where Dean and Cas stand side by side, hands resting on the shoulders of the beaming kid in front. There’s a healthy smattering of photos of Sam too, always beaming, always with his arm around a woman that Dean skims over too fast to really get a view of.
Dean at a movie theater, leaning on the counter to ask the cashier for one adult one kid for the new Star Wars, thanks. A father’s day card, made out to dad and dean in the painstaking scrawl of a seven year old. His mom with a kid’s backpack slung over one shoulder, saying of course she doesn’t mind watching him for the weekend. A voice behind him saying Dad? Before something 4 foot and blonde crashes into him and wraps their arms around him. Coffee in hand, Cas across the table, eyes furrowed, as he tries to work out the carpool situation for school play rehearsals. Cell phone squashed to his ear as he double checks the luggage in the trunk and yells Let’s get a move on before picking up the phone again to promise Sam they were making good time. And through it all, an overwhelming sense of peace. Contentment.
And then he’s back in Kelly’s cabin, on Kelly’s bed. Dean pulls his hand away like it’s been burned. He even looks at it, half expecting the skin to be seared red and angry, but it’s not. He stumbles off the bed. Kelly is looking at him expectantly. Cas is wearing the same soft, dreamy smile he’s had since Dean arrived.
“What the fuck was that.”
He feels a little crazy and a lot ashamed, which he feels is a normal reaction any time someone hijacks the thoughts in your brain.
“It’s the world Jack will bring about. Isn’t it wonderful?”
Dean can feel the blush that’s crept up his neck and to his face.
“So you saw that. What I saw.”
He’s never seen Cas smile so much in his life.
“Yes.”
He can’t do it. Cas is staring at him, all smiles, and Kelly is watching him, inscrutable look on her face, and they both fucking know everything that’s just run through his head. He walks straight out the bedroom door down the stairs back into the living room, ignoring the confused chatter behind him. He quits. This is - Sam’ll do it. Or Mary. One of them will be able to pull out the practiced argument they came armed with, there’s no reason it has to be him.
But things don’t shake out like that. As soon as he’s back downstairs, Sam is grabbing his arm and telling him there’s something in the yard, and Cas is trailing his way back down with a sheepish explanation, and Mary’s running upstairs to keep an eye on Kelly. No one says anything about the plan they arrived with, and before long there’s not only an ongoing apocalypse in the backyard to deal with, but the devil himself.
It doesn’t matter that Dean tries to push his way out of Sam’s grip to run Cas’s way. It doesn’t matter that he screams no. He can’t do anything but watch when Cas dies. He can’t do anything but collapse to the ground. He doesn’t know how long he stays there. He knows at some point Sam shows up and pulls Dean to his feet while his knees ache. He can guess that the mumbling Sam does as they walk to the car is equal parts consolation and information, but he has no idea what’s actually being said. His ears haven’t stopped ringing yet. He watches his fingers go white on the steering wheel, but ignores the resulting cramp in his hands. Eventually, he tunes into Sam offering to drive.
“No.”
Dean focuses, really focuses, on getting out of his own head for the next sixty seconds.
“Where are we going?”
Sam explains haltingly, making several futile attempts to catch Dean’s eye. He talks about an open mind. He talks about how power on that level can almost certainly open the rift again and bring mom back. Dean stops listening. He drives. All he hears is static. He numbly thinks about some stupid quote he picked up somewhere. The devil doesn’t come to you in horns, but as everything you’ve ever wanted. His pistol is cold against his hip.