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"My Sammy," Lailah says firmly, pointing her spoon at Sam's face, almost taking out an eye. Dean makes a face, like she'd just confessed to liking Lady Gaga, but he doesn't contradict her.
"Look, short stuff," Dean says, once again trying not to make that face. "I get that my brother is like, your hero now, but could you at least pretend that I'm still your friend? Please?" He tries to take the spoon from her, but Lailah isn't having any of it.
"My Sammy!" She shrieks, enthusiastically pounding the spoon against Dean's hand when he tries to take it. Mashed potato goes everywhere, and Sam smirks.
"You're enjoying this, you bastard." Dean says, without heat.
"Yeah, I really, really am." Sam admits. Johnny is gorging himself on potatoes and gravy, and for once Sam doesn't have to worry about his son choking on his food because it's mashed potatoes. "Also, I'd like to say -- she doesn't actually like me better than you."
Lailah's chant of 'my Sammy, my Sammy, my Sammy' continues in the background, scarily similar to the theme song for one of those awful kiddie TV shows that Sam won’t ever admit to watching. Even if Johnny loves watching Dora the Explorer more than he loves peanut butter.
"I think I hate you," Dean muses, finally prying the spoon away from Lailah's sticky, gravy-soaked hand. It gets tossed in the sink along with the plate and sippy cup, and then Dean surveys the scene as if he's going to triage the damage done from two toddlers at suppertime.
"Yeah, well," Sam says without ever actually finishing the thought. He wants to tell Dean that Lailah adores him, that she dotes on him, that her current infatuation with Sam is probably not going to last out the week, but Dean isn't going to listen to him if he tries. After all, it's not like it's the first time Sam's tried, and every time he get to the part where Dean is basically Lailah's other dad, Dean gets a pinched look on his face and changes the subject. Sam wants to just tell Dean, point blank, to own up to his love child because he and Cas fucking live together, they've been living together for years, and their dysfunctional relationship is going to get messier than an actual divorce if the two of them don't actually start acting like parents, instead of college roommates who are incidentally raising a child together.
The worst part is, Sam's pretty sure that Dean thinks they're roommates who are incidentally raising a child together. His brother, Sam decides, is a moron, 144 IQ notwithstanding.
"Come on, Short Stuff," Dean says, swinging Lailah into his arms and heading towards the bathroom. "Let's get you into new clothes!"
"I wanna wear my princess dress!" Lailah yells, directly into Dean's ear. Dean winces, but agrees with a shrug. "With the sparkles! And then we can have a fashion show! My Sammy, my Sammy, are you going to see my dress?"
"Johnny and I will be right here," Sam says, a little bit smug because unlike Lailah, Johnny is almost immaculately clean. He may have gravy smeared on his forehead, but there isn't anything on his clothing that the bib didn't catch, and Johnny is smiling messily up at him as if Sam just hung the moon and covered it in cheese whiz.
"My Johnny!" Lailah yells from Dean's shoulder, as he carries her into her bedroom. "Johnny, I'm gonna be a princess, come see!"
Johnny turns his face to Sam, a pleading look in his eyes. "Peas, Daddy?" he asks, which Sam knows is not a plea for more peas.
"Go to it, big man," Sam says, freeing his kid from the high chair (the bane of Johnny's existence, and the only reason that Sam has managed to survive feeding him meals that aren't crackers) and letting him run, wobbly-legged, after Dean.
Johnny squeals in joy when he sees the sparkly purple dress, and Sam desperately hopes that he's going to grow out of that particular phase before high school. "I'll clean up," he calls, ignoring Dean's presumably bitchy reply as he starts clearing the table.
Dean's apartment has never been clean, per se, but it's more clutter than any actual mess. Toys are scattered all over the place though, taking up most of the room on the shelves, counters, floor, and couch, and Sam has to navigate the veritable minefield of G.I. Joe figurines, transformers decorated with daisies, and a horrible purple octopus that looks kind of like the tentacle monsters Sam killed on his own when he was sixteen.
He can sort of see Dean and the kids out of the corner of his eye, in Lailah's bedroom -- the room that is ostensibly also Castiel's. The futon frame that used to be in Lailah's room got taken to the dump two years ago, though, Sam remembers having to drive it, and neither Dean nor Cas are making excuses about where Cas sleeps now. The giant king-sized bed in Dean's room is obviously the only other place to sleep, but Sam politely pretends not to know that, because Dean will start acting like a prissy little bitch like he always does when Sam brings up his sleeping arrangements.
("It's the stupidest fucking thing," Sam had told Jessica, months earlier. "It's not like we don't already know they sleep together--"
"He's just a very private person," Jess told him, soothingly, and Sam had made a frustrated noise and tried not to pull out his hair (It was starting to go a little thin, not that he was worried or anything).
"It's like he thinks this shit is normal!" Sam had almost-but-not-quite yelled, and Jess had raised an eyebrow, scathingly, as if to say, "To a man who was raised in cheap motel rooms, hustling pool or pulling credit card scams to pay for his demon-hunting career, that shit probably is normal.")
Sam has to concede the point. Dean's emotional constipation is probably the least fucked up problem that they've ever actually had to deal with, and if Sam can deal with -- with -- law school, if he survived the interviews and the papers and the stress and -- and --
Yeah. Whatever. He can pretend that Castiel's just some dude living with his brother.
(Except they're fucking raising a kid together, and really, Sam thinks, they should at least sign some papers or something so Lailah doesn't go into social services if something happens to Cas. Because that would wreck her, really it would, and Sam hates to think of something like that happening, not while Cas and Dean are out every other weekend leaving Lailah with Jess so that they can save the world from freaking vampires.)
"Daddy!" Johnny yells, and Sam turns from where he's trying to cram dishes into Dean's tiny, awkward dishwasher to send a hate-filled glare at his older brother.
"My Johnny is a princess, just like me!" Lailah announces, waving a plastic sparkly fairy wand and smacking Sam in the knee. "You can be a princess too if you want!"
Johnny is wearing a pair of pink plastic kitten heels and a yellow poofy dress that makes him look like a fat, demented daffodil. He is also wearing a cowboy hat, which is only a small consolation.
"You look lovely," Sam says, flatly, patting Lailah on the head as she tries to hug his leg. "Like an angel, sweetheart."
Lailah blushes with the praise, and Dean holds up his hands in a What could I do, I'm helpless beneath her blue-eyed gaze and you know it, Sammy, expression of pain.
"I hate you," Sam tells his brother. Even the tiara Dean is sporting doesn't make up for his son wearing heels. Dean makes a pained, emotionally wounded face, and then Sam stops glaring and says, "What-- Wait, are you wearing glitter," and the look in Dean's eyes is resigned and a little bit indulgent. He has no shame. Lailah has her second dad wrapped around her fucking pinkie.
"You are a sad, pathetic man," Sam says, and tries to pretend he has dignity when Lailah informs him that he's going to be a princess too.
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