Chapter Text
Fortunately, Sam and Eileen had been happy to take Claire for the night. In fact, they’d found Castiel’s concerns somewhat mystifying, it seemed.
“You think I’m going to take a pass on a slumber party just because you two aren’t going to have the place to yourselves?” Eileen asked as Sam bounced Claire in his arms. She turned to Claire and signed, “We’re going to have so much fun!”
“You know,” Sam said, “if the two of you want us to take her again next week so you can have the night to yourself, I don’t think Auntie Eileen would complain.”
Dean raised an eyebrow. “Going for extra practice? We might just take you up on that.”
Castiel found himself bristling at that, and he wasn’t sure why. Dean wasn’t speaking for him. He hadn’t given a definitive yes, just as he hadn’t with Lisa. The answer to both probably would be yes, but he was leaving room for discussion between them. So what was wrong? The possibility of another evening without Claire?
“Why can’t Claire come to the art party?” Ben demanded.
“Claire’s too little, buddy,” Dean said. “She’d get bored pretty quickly.”
Castiel wasn’t so sure that was a given. She loved looking at all the trees and things when they took walks at the park. She might appreciate the Banes’s work. The problem, he thought, was that she was likely to try to grab onto pieces of the sculptures, some of which were quite fragile.
The show, as it turned out, was definitely something Ben enjoyed. He chatted up the Banes twins, demanding to know how they were twins since they didn’t look exactly alike. Fortunately, they seemed charmed rather than annoyed by a question they’d probably heard far too often in their lives. Alicia, in particular, seemed to take to him, talking at length about the twigs and branches she’d gathered for one of her pieces.
“We’re in trouble now,” Dean said. “He’s not going to settle for coloring after this.”
“Perhaps he’ll be showing his art here someday,” Castiel said. He rather liked the idea of potentially nurturing this pup into a grown artist someday.
Assuming you’d be there to see it.
He shook his head to clear the thought away. Things were going well. No need to borrow trouble.
Dean hadn’t been to Lisa’s house in months, as she preferred to drop Ben off directly after picking him up from school on his Fridays. It was a nice little ranch with a backyard, where she had a bouncy house set up for the kids.
Being surrounded by all these four- and five-year-olds was enough to make Dean grateful that the schools where he sometimes subbed tended to have older kids. There was still chaos, but the pitch was slightly lower. Ben seemed to be having a good time, though, and he should be good and worn out by the time he went to bed.
Cas was rocking Claire gently in her baby seat. She very obviously wanted to get out and play with the kids, but she also seemed fine with watching them and babbling.
“It’s not too much for her, looks like,” Lisa said with a smile, offering Claire a finger to grab at.
“It’s probably not that different from the daycare,” Cas replied. “They have older kids, after all. Possibly even some of the same ones, though I don’t know any of the children outside her age group.”
Dean thought that was less likely, though perhaps some folks from this town did commute to Lawrence. It wasn’t that far, after all.
Clearly, some of the other parents had taken notice of the fact that Dean had arrived with a fellow Omega. Most didn’t make anything of it. Most save one blonde Omega woman, who waited until he’d gone to grab a beer for himself and a soda for Cas, who was still nursing Claire at least once or twice a day.
“So, you got yourself an Omega,” she said, reaching for and opening a wine cooler. “First a Beta and now an Omega. Couldn’t catch yourself an Alpha?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dean said firmly. “Also, it’s none of your business.”
“I’m just saying.” She shrugged. “Might not be setting the best example for your son.”
“Again, none of your business, Karen, so back off.” Dean let a hint of a growl out with that. Not that it was easy for one Omega to intimidate another, and not that he was about to start something with one of Lisa’s guests. But if she didn’t back off soon, something inside him was going to snap.
“The name’s Becky,” she said, tossing her hair over her shoulder and clearly not understanding him. “And anything that affects Lisa is my business. She’s my friend.”
“I’m glad she’s got friends looking out for her,” Dean said, sincerely. Then he shifted back to being annoyed. “Clearly she’s not worried about it, so I suggest you back. The fuck. Off.”
Becky pulled back as if she’d been slapped, then turned and stalked back over to a squirrelly bearded man, who looked very unlikely to be an Alpha. So, projecting, he guessed. The man glared at Dean, who just went back to Cas and handed him his soda.
“What was that all about?” Cas asked.
“Nosy neighbor,” Dean said with a shrug. He sought out Ben in the bouncy house, surrounded by a bunch of pups too young to know or care about secondary genders. He let his free hand drift to the small of Cas’s back and focused on the warmed leather scent of him, letting that ground him. He wasn’t about to let some Karen named Becky start him questioning something that felt so right. It couldn’t be bad for Ben, or Emma for that matter, to see their parents in loving relationships, even if not with each other.
Castiel should have expected that some of Lisa’s friends might be less open-minded than she. While Dean had downplayed that little interaction, his scent had gone fiery hot, a sure sign he was angry. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes, any of the versions Dean had introduced him to, to deduce what the problem had been.
Several of the parental pairs here were traditional Alpha-Omega pairings. A few were Beta-Beta. Interestingly, the nosy blonde Omega seemed to be with someone who was either a Beta or a very atypical Alpha. Either way, that made the whole thing even more odd, and if anything, even more disconcerting.
Claire seemed to pick up on his discomfort and started to fuss a bit. He rocked her seat gently and made soothing noises at her. The various parenting books were conflicted over the extent to which pups could scent their parents’ emotional shifts and whether that had any relationship to how they would eventually present. The one thing they did agree on, though, was that they definitely could sense their parents’ emotional states and would respond to them, so best to keep them reined in.
Dean’s hand was warm against the small of Castiel’s back. Reassuring. Grounding.
“What did Lisa have to say?” Dean asked.
Ah, now there was the place it would make more sense for Castiel to feel jealous. Their relationship was still cordial. If Dean were going to go back to one of his children’s mothers, surely it would be Lisa. Had he had any concerns in that area, though, they had been laid well and truly to rest.
“She was happy to see we’d brought Claire,” he replied. “Had nothing but good things to say about you, don’t worry.”
Concerned things, to be sure. It was almost like the sort of talk he’d expected to have with Sam. Except Sam knew how they’d met. Knew that Castiel probably knew more about what Dean had been through than even Sam did. Knew that Castiel had stood with Dean against both John and Alastair when they’d tried to take him away. Castiel didn’t know how much Lisa knew about what Dean had gone through when John had essentially sold Dean off to Alastair, what kind of hell that Alpha had put him through. But clearly, she knew something.
”Let me be blunt. Dean clearly dotes on you both. He’s had a rough go of it. I’m not going to say ‘don’t hurt him’ because we always hurt the ones we love, whether we mean to or not. Just, whatever happens, please be gentle with him.”
“That sounds like her,” Dean said. “She’s a good friend and a good mom to Ben.”
The warmth in Dean’s scent was calming. Reassuring. He spoke of her almost the same way he spoke about Joanna. Not quite as brotherly, to be sure. But there was something reassuring about it, as there had been, oddly enough, with the friction that clearly existed between Dean and Lydia. Because despite that, they still managed to deal with each other.
That might, however, be down to the pups. Of course, Dean would maintain cordial relationships with the mothers of his pups. He might “dote on” Claire, as Lisa had said, but Dean was a labor and delivery nurse. He loved babies generally. And however much he loved Claire, she wasn’t his. When this ended, Castiel was far less certain they’d be able to maintain that sort of relationship.