Chapter Text
After Sam died, Dean took his baby brother's advice. He went to Lisa and Ben. When she opened that door, Dean could barely hold back the grief that had burrowed deep beneath his skin and into the recesses of his heart. She smiled warmly, if a little confusedly, at him, but Dean couldn’t bring himself to return it. Lisa looked at him a moment before wrapping her arms around his shoulders and laying his head down on her shoulder. Dean clung to her and wished, for a moment, that he hadn’t come; that he hadn’t brought this earth shattering loss right to her doorstep. But, he couldn’t find the strength to pull away as she ushered him inside explaining that Ben was at a friend’s house for the weekend.
Dean spent that first night buried in a bottle of Jack. He couldn’t find the words to begin to explain.
“Dean, you don’t have to talk about it, but I....” Lisa started but cut herself off. Dean looked imploringly at her as if asking her to go ahead and finish her thought. “Where’s Sam, Dean?”
At Sam’s name, Dean’s breath hitched and his gaze dropped to the floor. Lisa didn’t need any more information then. She knew he was gone. She hadn’t known the man well, but she had known Dean once, and she knew, without a doubt, that Sam had been everything to him. She’d never seen anyone look so proud just to be in someone’s presence as Dean had when he’d introduced his “little” brother to her. He was hurting beyond anything she could comprehend, but she had been close enough to it when she thought she had lost Ben.
Lisa rose from the couch and grabbed the scotch from the cabinet. It wasn’t exactly healthy, but it was what she could do. In time, she would get the full story, but for this one night, she let him drink in silence and sat at his side. At the end of it, they lay curled on top of her sheets, his head on her shoulder, and her hand running languidly through his hair. He hadn’t shed a tear yet. That would come later, too. Tonight, she just held him.
They spent the months after that piecing together a life they could share. This life looked different than anything Dean had ever known for himself. It was even different than that before life. The one he vaguely remembered as being soft and happy and filled with the smell of lemon verbena and cherry pies. No, this life wasn’t quite like that, in that this one was more real. It held everything from tickle fights that ended in happy tears to real fights that ended in frustrated ones, and all of it butting up against the raw grief that tinged everything for him now, but that just made it all the more precious to him.
What surprised Dean the most was Ben. He’d already known that he loved Lisa, and that Ben was a hell of a kid, but Ben was feisty with a barbed tongue and a quick whit that reminded him so much of Sammy it hurt sometimes, but he was his own person, too and it took longer for Dean to see that. He didn’t really like school, for many of the same reasons Dean hadn’t but he had a lot more friends. Ben was also the warmest and most accepting kid Dean had ever met. Immediately after Dean moved in with them, even before he and Lisa were sharing a room, Ben accepted Dean's presence as if he'd been waiting on the man to come home to them. Really, it was home even from the start, or as much of one as Dean had ever allowed himself. They were a family, and surely they had all suffered enough.
He got the call at six fifteen on a too warm night in June. Lisa was running late coming home from the grocery store, but Dean hadn’t even had time to worry that something had gone wrong. His phone buzzed on the side table interrupting Dr. Sexy’s hypothesis on-screen. Dean glanced down at it, but didn’t recognize the number. He was about to silence it when he remembered that Lisa’s mom had just changed numbers and did not appreciate being ignored. The area code was right at least; the same as their own. Dean sighed heavily to himself before pulling the phone off the charger and bringing it to his ear.
“Yullo?” He answered as he fumbled with the remote to pause his show.
“Is this Dean Campbell?” A woman asked calmly over the line.
“Uh, who’s asking?”
“My name’s Laticia. I work at Tipton Hospital in Cicero. I’m calling on behalf of a Lisa Braeden.”
The world froze. Dean’s heart stopped beating in his chest and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get any air into his lungs. The world around him seemed to crackle with it’s desire to move again whent the voice spoke again, but Dean didn’t understand a word of it.
“What?” He asked sharply
“Mr. Campbell, Ms. Braeden was in a car accident and you’re the next of kin listed. Are you able to come to the hospital?”
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I gotta get Ben. Just… Is she in a room yet?” Dean got up as he asked heading for the stairs to get Ben who was happily playing video games in his room.
“I’m afraid that she’s in emergency surgery. We can explain more when you arrive.”
Dean froze again that same tight band wrapping around his chest, but he found the words to agree before hanging up. He needed to get a grip on himself beore he went up there to Ben. “Get a grip, Winchester.” He admonished himself quietly, but he heard the stair squeak and looked up to see a smirking Ben three steps above him playing some game on his phone.
“Talking to yourself again, Dean? You know that’s the first sign of crazy, right?” When Dean didn’t respond, Ben finally looked up. His brown immediately came down in confusion, the same look Lisa got when she couldn’t figure out the crossword on Sundays. Damnit! Dean didn’t want to be the one to… No. She was hurt, but not dead. It would be fine.
Dean closed the distance between them making Ben look even more concerned. He put an arm around the kid and led him back upstairs. “Ben, I don’t want you to freak out, alright, but your mom was in an accident and we need to get to the hospital. So, go upstairs, grab you coat and your wallet, then meet me in the front hall to put your shoes on.”
“What? What happened? Is she alright?”
Dean plastered on as much of a smile as he could muster and just continued to tug Ben along to his room. “I dont know, kiddo, we’ve gotta get there to find out. Come on.” He helped Ben find a hoodie and rushed him down the stairs. The ride to the hospital was filled with a million questions from Ben that Dean just didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t know what happened or what she was having surgery on. They just needed to get to the hospital.
When they arrived at the hospital, the nurse directed them to the surgical floor where the same attendant who had called them was manning the desk.
“Lisa Braeden.” Dean said before they had even gotten to the desk.
“That was fast.” She said as she began clicking away at her computer. “Let me pull up her intake.” What seemed like an eternity later, she seemed to have found the right screen.
“Okay, so she was hit on the driver’s side by an oncoming car. She suffered multiple lacerations, an apparent broken femur,and a head wound. They have her in with our neurosurgeon trying to stop the bleeding. If you’ll have a seat, we’ll let you know as soon as we have an update.” She assured them quietly.
Dean nudged ben over to one of the uncomfortable benches but didnt’ sit down himself, choosing instead to pace, but a few cycles in, and there was a hand on his arm. He looked up to see Ben crying, and his heart crumbled in his chest.
“Dean, I’m scared.” Ben whispered. Dean visibly sagged before taking the seat next to the boy and put an arm around him. Before he could find anything to say, he found himself with a lap full of eleven-year-old. Ben buried his face in Dean’s neck and gripped his collar fiercely, and there they sat, just like that for nearly three hours.
Lisa’s sister, Kim showed up about an hour in and took up silent vigil wth the small family. When the nurse came out in her blue-green scrubs, the surgical mask hanging down from her neck, Kim went to greet her while Dean pulled Ben closer to him. The small-ish woman gave Kim a grim look and shook her head before talking in low tones, but she didn’t have to explain anything. Dean already knew. Lisa was gone.
The days immediately following Lisa's death are still a blur to Dean. He remembers Ben, crawling in bed with him every single night. He remembers everyone telling him how sorry they were, and asking how he was handling it. He remembers having no response. He remembers that he didn't speak, not once, until Kim approached him, and asked if he thought maybe Ben would be better off living with her.
Dean found his voice, then, and he'd shouted himself hoarse. Kim had backed off and signed the papers. That's when Dean realized he hadn't been to work in nearly a month, and Ben's school attendance was less than stellar. Dean was drowning in his own grief, just like his dad had done, and Dean was not going to turn into his father, so, he packed them up and moved in with Bobby.
It was not he most comfortable arrangement in the beginning. Dean didn’t want Ben going through the hundred of books on the occult that Bobby owned, but he couldnt’ very well keep him away from the totems, and sigils that passed as decorations at Bobby’s place. More than once, he found himself shouting at one or both of them for even bringing up the subject. Finally, Bobby had enough.
“And what do you expect him to do when you’re not there to protect him, boy?”
“He shouldn’t have to worry about this crap, Bobby.”
“Well he is!” Bobby shouted.
“What?”
“The boy is terrified that something’s gonna come and get you next.”
“And telling him about everything that possibly could, that’s your solution?”
“If he knows what it is, and he knows how to kill it, it don’t scare him near as much. Something, I’d think you could relate to.”
“He doesn’t need to know how to kill it, Bobby. He’s not gonna hunt, period.”
“Just because he’s not out looking for it doesn’t mean it’s not gonna come knocking. You should know that better’n anyone.”
So, they began teaching Ben the basics, only what he needed to know to defend himself and the his home. Ben pushed for the right to hunt.
“You were hunting when you were my age!”
“Which is why you’re not!”
Finally, they came to the agreement that Ben would graduate both High School and college or trade school before he ever attempted hunting, and they moved on. Things settled pretty well. Dean worked on cars for Bobby and converted the attic space into a nice bedroom for Ben, and they got the place cleaned up enough the kid could even invite friends over. They settled into a different sort of routine with a different family of three, but there was happiness to be found there too.
Ben’s twelfth birthday had been a blast. They’d had the party at the park, because Bobby was not about to let two dozen hyperactive pre-teens jump all over the precariously placed junkers no matter how soft Dean said he was getting in his old age. The man had just about melted when Ben had introduced to everyone as his Grandpa. The two of them were out getting dinner, just the two of them while Dean worked on some paperwork for the shop.
Dean had rescued some kid’s jacket from the tables under the awning they’d rented and was expecting the knock at the door. He grabbed the bright purple monstrosity and pulled the open with a smile plastered on his face for Mrs. Lincoln (“Call me Shelly”), a forty-something divorcee whose own smile was always a touch predatory. However, Shelly Lincoln was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Castiel stood on the porch half carrying, half dragging the limp form of a teenage boy. The kid was tall and skinny with shaggy brown hair, but Dean couldn’t see much more of him. It hurt to look at him though. His resemblance to a teenaged Sammy was breathtaking.
“Cas, what the fuck, man?” Dean asked harshly.
“May we come in?” Cas asked while he adjusted the weight of the kid in his arms.
Dean blinked but stepped back to let them in. Cas pushed past him directly into the living area where he laid the boy on the sofa where Dean finally got a good look at the kid, and his breath caught in his throat, because that kid, he didn’t just bear a passing resemblance to Sammy. He looked exactly like him.
Dean whirled back around to face Cas, fury in his eyes, but pain in his voice.
“You’d better start explaining what the actual fuck is going on here, Cas. I haven’t seen you in over a year and you show up here with this kid. Where’d he come from?”
Cas took a steadying breath, something Dean didn’t realize the angel needed, before speaking. “He is your brother, Dean.” And a part of Dean had known that but the rest of him refused to believe it.
“Bullshit.”
“It’s the truth.”
“My brother is dead.” Dean seethes. How dare he come here with some phony look-a-like and say something like that
“Your brother was dead.”
“Even if I wanted to believe you, man. Sammy was damn near thirty, and you what shrunk him?”
“Not quite. Your correct in that this body did not originally belong to your brother. I was able to retrieve his soul and Adam’s from the cage, but their bodies needed to remain in order to trap Michael and Lucifer.”
“So where’s Adam then?”
“He wanted to be with his mother.”
Dean didn’t quite know how to respond to that, so he went back to the situation at hand. “So where’d you get a teenaged Sammy look-a-like?” His head yanked back in the direction of the unconscious boy.
Before Cas could answer there was another knock at the door and Dean stormed over to yank it open. “What?” He barked
Shelly Lincoln’s flirtatious smirk slipped away to be replaced by shock. “I...uh, Andi’s Jacket?” It came out as more of a question and Dean just shoved the thing at her before shutting the door.
“That was rather rude, don’t you think?”
“Who’s the kid, Cas?” Dean stalked back into the sitting room with the angel on his heel.
“I’ve already told you it’s Sam.”
“How?”
“I knew once I had rescued your brother’s sould that he would need a body.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
Cas leveled a pointed glare at him and Dean’s hands went up as if to cede the floor. Cas’ blue eyes bore into his for a moment, ensuring that he could explain.
“I created this body for him.”
“And you thought he’d wanna relive puberty?”
Cas’ glare intensified and Dean raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“Creating a new body isn’t a trivial task. He had to grow, his soul were being integrated slowly so that he would be whole once more, but the process was interrupted. My brother, Raphael was not pleased with my resurrection, or the change in my status. Tensions grew to all-out war. I didn’t have much time. His soul is present in the body, but it will take time to become one.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means that his body is whole, if not as far along as I would have liked, and his soul is intact.”
“Then why is he unconscious?”
“Because his mind is working to make sense of the memories he has.”
“So what, he'll be the same Sammy but stuck as a teenager?”
“Not quite. He will have his memories, but anything that occurred after his physical age will seem... distant. There will be less of a connection to those things. And he is physically the age he appears, so he will likely behave in much the same way he did when he was this age the first time.”
“Jesus Christ, Cas, can’t you fix him?” Dean demanded looking between Sam and Cas like he didn’t know where his focus should be. At some point he had drifted closer to the couch and found himself crouching over the boy, his hand resting on Sam’s clammy arm.
Cas deflated at these words, and Dean felt his heart drop into his stomach. “I’m sorry Dean. I thought I was helping. I…” Cas looked away.
And great now Dean was the biggest ass. Cas had literally saved Dean’s brothers from the cage, and Dean was mad because, what? Sammy might have to let his voice drop again. Fuck that. Dean found himself pulling the distraught angel into his arms like he would have for Lisa, or Ben, or even Sammy, once upon a time.
“You did help, Cas. You saved them. You saved Sammy.” Dean didn’t know angels could cry.
Cas had grabbed Sam and run, going to where he knew Dean was and seeking shelter. Sam did eventually wake up, and his memories were all sorts of jumbled. He knew Dean, of course, even if he was confused by his age, and he recognized Bobby’s house. He knew Cas, but couldn’t really place where from only that he was family.
When Bobby and Ben came home, Ben was sent to look over Sam as he slept again in Dean’s room while the adults talked about the raging war in heaven and how exactly Sam had ended up the age he was.
Raphael had assembled an army both willing and able to fight for him, but Castiel had numbers on his side and as they fought, Castiel was rebuilding Sam. Sam’s body grew much like an embryo wrapped in the protection of Heaven. However, merging both body and soul was a difficult process that Castiel could not do in one fell swoop. As the body grew, the soul merged with it regenerating the memories of Sam’s life. However, before the regrowth could be completed, Raphael took his followers and fled heaven. After the casualties his side had suffered, this left the host weak and fragmented. All of them were virtually powerless having only the faintest of healing abliltes and the comfort of angel radio. He was able to merge Sam’s soul completely, but the body was left somewhere around fourteen. Sam remembered his life, but much of it would remain just out of focus.
Sam healed up, and his mind seemed to stay intact. Cas and Sam moved in with Bobby, Dean, and Ben. They enrolled Sam in school and Cas was able to work his lingering mojo into clearing up a few things with Dean and Sam, and making things legal. He wasn’t able to erase the world’s memories of the mass-murderers Sam and Dean Winchester, but he did alter the perceived image of them, and he was able to create new identities for himself, Dean and Sam. He gave himself a degree in theology and began giving an occasional guest lecture at the local community colleges, but most of the time, he stayed home with Sam and Ben.
So, Dean, as the sole breadwinner of the family (He'd opened his own garage on the other side of town), found himself away from home more and more often. He and Cas became a team, planning their meals, activities, bills, house repairs, and all the little details of day to day life. Then, more and more, Dean found himself enjoying his time with Cas, until he had an epiphany. Those moments, sitting up late bullshitting and drinking way too much coffee until Cas shoved a cup of hot tea in his hands and ordered him to bed, was the part of his day he looked forward to the most. Those stolen moments alone with Cas were the best parts of his day right up there with making dinner with Sammy and watching both of his kids playing video games in their room together.
Dean didn't fall in love with Cas the same way he’d fallen in love with Lisa. It was slow and steady. He didn't just want to spend time with the other man; he couldn't imagine his life away from him.
Finally, after months of pining, Dean found himself staring at Cas who was laughing at something Sammy had said, and Dean’s heart caught in his throat as the angel leaned into Dean’s space and drug a hand along his arm. Dean couldn’t stop himself anymore, he closed the space between them with a hand on the back of Cas’ neck crushing their mouths together. And, God, it had been years since Dean had kissed another man, and never had stubble felt so good as Cas let out a surprised gasp before his eyes slammed shut and he deepened the kiss.
They were interrupted by a loud whoop from Sam, a laugh from Ben, and a gruff “About damn time,” from Bobby.
“Wait, does this mean I get two dads, now?” Ben asked suddenly.
Dean let out a loud guffaw. “Uh… I guess, kiddo.”
“Cool, does Cas get a dad name?”
“A what?” Dean asked
“Well, you’re dad, so what do I call Cas?”
Castiel’s brow wrinkled. “You can still call me by my name.”
“Nah you deserve your own moniker” Sam butted in smiling mischeviously.
“Ben, I don’t want you to feel pressured to-”
“No Sam’s right. If I get two dads they both need dad names.”
“What about Poppa?” Bobby said quietly. Everyone turned to look at him.
“Poppa?” Dean asked curiously.
Bobby, honest to god, blushed. “It’s...uh what Karen and I figured on… when we were thinking on it.”
Ben’s face split into a wide grin. “I like it, but uh, maybe shorten it to Pop?” He looked hesitantly at Cas.
“I would be honored.” Cas replied reaching across the table to lay a gentle hand on Ben’s arm.
Shortly after that, Dean, Cas, Sam and Ben moved into their own place closer to town, and Bobby became the eccentric grandfather to their strange little family.
Six months, almost to the day, after the wedding, Dean and Cas were babysitting for some friends of Bobby’s. (Their house was much more childproof.) Jake and Katie were siblings. Jake was only a year old and Katie only five. This was not the first the couple had found themselves babysitting for other hunters. They didn’t approve of raising your kids in the life but they couldn’t turn down being a safe haven for them. Unfortunately, their worst fears came true when the children’s parents were killed by the poltergeist they were hunting. Dean took care of the spirit and the pair adopted the kids.
Cas was a mostly stay-at-home dad until Jake started pre-school, and he discovered a love for reading; constantly immersing himself in a world of humanity and loving every second of it. He got a ‘second’ degree in literature and began teaching that instead. (He got less strange looks for his views on the symbolism of ancient literature than his ‘beliefs’ about ancient deities.)
Dean ran his garage and gained several friends in his employees. He and two of the men under him went out for beers every other Tuesday, and he became especially close to one such employee.
Charlie was a good man. He’d run his own garage for nearly forty years before retiring with his wife, Martha. After her death, he wanted back in the business and Dean gave him the job on the spot. The old man was kind and took to Dean’s kids and even Bobby quickly. It was like having a grandfather for the first time in his life, and Dean didn’t mind adding to his own ragtag family.
Sammy was reliving high school including but not limited to honor roll, soccer, and a best friend named Tammy. He was unabashedly proud of his role in the school play and even tried band for one semester. (The trumpet was just not his thing but that may have had more to do with the cute saxophonist in the second row.)
Ben played football on the JV team and had all the girls fawning over him by the end of his first year there. He got in more trouble than he knew how to get out of but at least he got it honestly. Dean wondered how the boy wasn’t his but then he remembered a certain bendy brunette with her own love of rock music and a glint of mischief in her eyes, and he’d smile sadly at his boy.
Katie was a bright little girl who loved to read, just like her poppa. Of course that could have something to do with the fact that she had been read to every night since first meeting Castiel. She bonded with Sam especially after she started school.
Jake was the youngest and he loved every second of it. He idolized his big brothers and his Daddy and Poppa were just about the best thing ever. Katie was the prettiest and smartest big sister a boy could ask for and you couldn’t have found a happier five year old alive.
Domestic Life suited the Winchesters well, very well. It was never gonna last.