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“Daddy.”
Sam looks up at Ainsley’s voice- he’s grading some papers, red pen in hand, but he sets both the paper he’d been looking over and the pen down as his ten year old daughter looked at him intently.
“What’s up, sweetheart?” he asks, and his eldest cocks her head slightly, red curls spilling over her shoulders in a fashion so similar to her mother he has to bite back a smile.
“Is Mommy your best friend?” she asks, and Sam has to blink because- out of all the things to come out of Ainsley’s mouth, he somehow hadn’t been prepared for that.
“Well- yeah, honey,” he answers, and pats the spot on the couch next to him for Ainsley to sit, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Yeah, she is my best friend.”
“Has she always been your best friend?” she asks, head tilted back against his bicep and hazel eyes peering up at him. Sam can’t suppress the amused snort at that.
“You know, when your mommy and I met for the first time, we didn’t get along very well,” he says, choosing the tame version to tell his ten year old. Ainsley listens raptly, attention fully on him. “In fact, I think she hated me a little bit.”
Ainsley gasps, scandalized. “But Daddy- how did you guys fall in love then? If she hated you?”
Sam smooths the worry line that forms between Ainsley’s brows with a tender thumb.
“It took a long, long time,” he answered, and Ainsley blinked up at him. “And some bad stuff happened, but…eventually, we figured out that we just had to trust each other. Because that’s kind of the most important part about a best friend- that you trust them.”
Ainsley nods sagely.
“I trust Bella with everything,” she tells him, referring to her own best friend that she’d met in first grade when the blonde had plopped down into the desk next to her, told her she liked her hair, and asked if she liked unicorns. Sam grins, and kisses her forehead.
“And eventually, your mom and I realized that we had more in common than we thought, and we started spending more and more time together,” he continued, stroking Ainsley’s unruly hair from her eyes. “And soon enough, I realized she was kind of one of my favorite people- I was always thinking about when I’d get to talk to her next, see her next, spend even a little bit of time with her. That’s when I realized that not only had she slowly become my best friend, but also that I loved her.”
Ainsley sighed happily.
“I hope I fall in love with my best friend,” she says wistfully, and then a new voice floats up from behind the couch.
“Telling stories, Samuel?” Rowena teases, and rounds the couch- she’s got Fiona up on her hip, the four year old clearly on the cusp of a nap, curled in close to her mother’s chest.
Sam smiled at the sight of her- she’s got a splotch of paint on her cheek leftover from a morning in the sunroom with Blair, and her hair’s still in two braids, slightly frizzy from the summer heat. There are more lines on her face now, a silver hair or two spun through the crimson- when Fiona had been born, she’d gone through the complex process of restarting the aging process on herself that she’d halted centuries ago. She had no desire to outlive her daughters, to outlive Sam- this was her life, her family, and she didn’t need immortality any longer.
“Your favorite one,” he replies, and impossibly, the smile she gives him grows even softer. Rowena winks at Ainsley, pulling a grin from their eldest.
“I’m going to lay Fee down for a bit, see if she’ll nap before we head to Dean and Castiel’s,” she tells him, and Sam nods. “Need me for anything?”
He shakes his head, and she bent over the back of the couch to kiss him upside down.
“I’m going to shower once she’s down then,” she replies, and Sam nods, their noses brushing. “Blair’s reading in the sunroom while our paintings dry, check on her in a bit for me, please?”
“Of course. Go relax a bit, Ro. We’re good down here,” he reassures her, and Rowena’s nose crinkles fondly. She kisses him once more before she heads up the stairs, Fiona snuffling sleepily against her neck. Ainsley snuggles in closer, her head on Sam’s chest, and he curls his arm around her to hold her close.
“I’m glad you and Mommy became best friends,” she says, and sighs happily. Sam hides his grin in her hair.
“Me too, kiddo. Best thing that ever happened to me.”