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He stops by the bakery before heading off to meet Dean and a nest of vampires in Arkansas. Kaylee has the back door propped open to let the air in, and for a moment, he stands outside, just listening to her humming as she works.
"Be careful," she tells him when he says goodbye, same as always. But today her voice wavers just a bit in a way she usually never lets it.
"What's wrong?" Cas asks, brushing flour from her cheek.
She shakes her head and turns back to her dough, shoulders high and tense as she kneads.
He steps up behind her and brushes his fingers down her neck, along her arms until she stills. "Kaylee?" She takes a deep breath and relaxes back against him, letting him wrap an arm around her waist, and he presses his nose into the warmth of her neck.
"I gotta tell you something," she whispers.
"Okay."
"But I didn't want to tell you like this, with you running out the door to get ripped apart by ghosts."
"I have never been ripped apart by ghosts. Demons, once or twice, but never ghosts. And this time it's vampires, anyway."
"That ain't funny," she says.
He mumbles a "sorry" into her shoulder and waits for her to talk, but she only picks at the dough sticking to her fingers.
"Go fight vampires," she says finally. "I gotta get these done by three."
"It can wait." He means the vampires or the buns or both or whatever is it that's stopping her from saying whatever she wants to say because now it's gone beyond the usual concern about a hunt or playful surprises, and he's starting to worry.
He steps back to dig his phone out of his pocket. Kaylee turns around to watch him as he texts Dean: staying here. call Sam. be careful. He doesn't wait for a response because Dean gets that sometimes other things come first for Cas, the same way Cas understands that Dean will go it alone if he has to, even if he shouldn't.
"What are you doing?"
"Dean can handle it on his own," he says as he slips his phone back into his pocket. "Now you don't have to worry about me getting ripped apart by ghosts or demons or vampires."
She frowns and looks away. "Don't be stupid. Dean can't take on vamps alone."
"Dean's fine. But you're... I don't know. What's going on? Did something happen?"
"No! I mean, yes. But...oh, this is not how I wanted to do this." She shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath. "You ever thought about being a daddy?"
It's strange, in that moment, how all his thoughts crash together. Like some part of his brain has pieced all the words together and is already barreling forward with a hundred other questions, and the rest of him is tripping over himself, struggling to catch up, and all he can manage in response is, "What?"
She opens her eyes and peers up at him, bottom lip between her teeth. "Cas, I'm pregnant."
"You're... How?"
She raises her eyebrows at him. "Sweetie, you've demonstrated a pretty thorough knowledge of how. Many hows. A few hows I didn't even know--"
"No! No, that's not..." He laughs and presses his palm to her stomach. Once, he would have been able to feel the soul beginning to form there, but now there is just soft, warm flesh beneath his hand. It is no less miraculous. "I mean, I didn't know I could."
"You got the parts, dontcha?" she says, a small smile starting to tug at her features.
And he does, apparently. A human body capable of producing human life, even if he has millennia in his consciousness and languages long dead on the tip of his tongue. He has a mortal life twined with others. He has Kaylee and Sam and Dean. He has no divine purpose, no wings to take him away, and no regrets. And now he has this.
She slips her arms around his neck. "This is okay, right? I know we ain't exactly planned it, but I thought maybe..."
And it seems every step that has brought him here has been full of maybes and the unplanned, so he nods, unable to speak.
"Yeah?" She finally grins at him, that full-on Kaylee grin that dimples her cheeks, eyes bright and tongue caught between her teeth.
He grins back and kisses her, backing her into the table she was working on in his enthusiasm. "Yeah," he croaks. "This is... yeah."
"Oh, don't cry, you big baby," she says, her own laughter tinged with tears. She wipes his face with her apron, smearing his face with flour in the process, which only makes her laugh more.
"It's fine. Leave it," he says when she tries to brush it away with the backs of her hands. And when he picks her up and sets her on the table and she sits in the dough, she only laughs into his mouth and pushes sticky fingers into his hair.