Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The house adjusts by degrees.
 
Castiel notices it in declarative little things: a muslin folded over the arm of the sofa; bottles inverted in the drying rack, narrow throats catching late light; the stroller collapsed by the door like a folded wing. The camera above the porch blinks its red eye each time someone passes. A shallow basket on the hall table becomes ‘Emma’s basket’ by common law: pacifiers go there, socks already too small, the tiny bear ear hat Sam insists is practical. (It is not. Castiel lets him keep the word anyway.)
 
Emma sets the clock. She is the hour hand; everyone else scrambles to keep the minutes.
 
She is awake more now. She studies faces with grave attention; she discovers her hands and regards them like newly charted continents. When Dean talks, her eyes turn towards his voice as though it has a string tied to them. Castiel pretends not to see that happen, and then sees it every time.
 
Dean tries. He is everywhere, which is to say: he is exactly where he says he will be. At three in the morning, he appears with a bottle and hair like static, spilling powder, swearing softly, glancing over his shoulder to see if Castiel is awake. (He is.) Castiel shows him again: water first, level scoop, swirl, not shake, so the bubbles don’t turn Emma’s belly against her. Dean follows the steps as if they’re a map he intends to learn by heart.
 
He hums off-key and sways too fast. Castiel touches his forearm. ‘Slower.’ Dean slows.
 
Sometimes it works. Sometimes Emma gathers her face into a storm and Castiel takes her, adjusts the angle, finds the rhythm. Dean watches and learns; there is no sulk in him, only the furious, hopeful concentration of a man building a muscle he wants to keep.
 
Emma laughs for the first time in the third week. Dean is on the floor, cross-eyed and puff-cheeked; she considers him solemnly and then bursts — a small, complete sound that knocks air from Castiel’s lungs. 
 
Sam cheers from the doorway. John looks down too quickly to hide the way the noise lands in him. Dean beams like the ceiling just lifted an inch and made room for them all.
 
For a breath, Castiel lets himself think: this is the shape a family could take. Then, he reminds himself not to be so easily fooled.

Rain turns the sidewalk the colour of steel on the morning Castiel insists on going out alone. They need formula and independence has to be rehearsed, or it rusts. He straps Emma close, lifts his collar, and walks to the corner shop.
 
Damp cardboard and cheap coffee scent the air inside. He finds the right tin, pays, steps back into the drizzle — and sees the cruiser.
 
Azazel leans against the door, arms folded, a smile canted too wide. ‘Well, if it isn’t my favourite stray.’ His gaze drops to the bag in Castiel’s hand. ‘Running errands for the Winchesters now? Must be nice, having a pet to fetch and carry.’
 
Castiel keeps walking.
 
Azazel falls into step, easy as a shadow. ‘Funny thing, though. I give it a month — maybe two. Dean Winchester’s got wandering bones. Men like that don’t sit still for diapers and two AM feeds. Then where will you be?’
 
Castiel’s grip on the bag tightens. He does not look at him. He does not break stride.
 
‘Careful,’ Azazel adds, voice close to his ear. ‘Lucky breaks don’t last.’
 
The house glows warm through the rain ahead. Castiel quickens his pace. He doesn’t look back.
 
Dean opens the door with Emma strapped to his chest, triumphant and wrecked. ‘She only screamed for twenty minutes,’ he announces. ‘World record.’
 
Castiel nods once. He does not mention the cruiser. Shame holds his tongue closed: at being cornered, at staying silent, at how neatly Azazel’s sentence keyed into the fear that already lives inside him.

The days find rituals and then hold to them. 
 
Dean wipes the fallboard of Mary’s piano with his sleeve before he sits, as if that makes him worthier of the keys. Sometimes he doesn’t play at all, just rests his fingers there like a man steadying himself. Sam buys the same brand of coffee twice in a row and calls it a system. John learns the weight of Emma asleep against his chest and pretends surprise each time, as if the body does not remember what the mouth won’t say.
 
When Emma wakes angry, Dean paces the hall with her while Castiel stands in the doorway and corrects his hold with two fingers and a nod. When she wakes curious, Castiel carries her into the living room and sets her where she can see the ceiling fan. She stares, delighted, as if the universe invented circles for her alone.
 
‘She’s a fan girl,’ Dean says, entirely serious. Sam groans into his sleeve.
 
‘That,’ Castiel tells him, ‘is offensive.’ 
 
(He is almost certain Dean makes the same joke tomorrow on purpose, just to see the way Castiel’s mouth betrays him.)

Emma’s neck grows steadier. Her fists uncurl into hands. She swats at the toy bee Sam ties to the stroller handle and looks personally affronted when it does not obey. She learns to blow spit bubbles and then, for a week, does it constantly, proud of her mastery of air. Dean narrates these triumphs like he is calling a game.
 
‘She rolled!’ he crows one afternoon, breathless. ‘Almost. Okay, she wriggled aggressively, and gravity helped, but we’re counting it.’
 
Castiel inspects the child, who lies on her side, hiccupping at her own brilliance. ‘It was decisive wriggling,’ he allows, and Dean looks insufferably pleased with himself.
 
John pretends to ignore the milestones, then appears with a package shaped like the sky. ‘It was on sale,’ he declares — a bald-faced lie.
 
It is a mobile: stars and a nib that catch in the late light. Dean botches the first attempt to hang it; Sam litigates the hook into the right place. Emma stares at the rotating shapes as if she has discovered the mechanism by which the world continues turning.
 
At night, the lullaby threads the rooms. Sometimes Dean’s voice carries it, sometimes Castiel’s, and sometimes — rare and unguarded — John hums the left hand under his breath, and then turns to a cough to cover it.

Castiel forgets, once, to lock the guest room door. He remembers only after he and Emma — already exhausted from a long day of mobile-staring (Emma) and glance-and-look-away scrutiny (Castiel) — have been snugly tucked into bed for some time. 

For a moment, the old impulse stirs — the one that says check, lock, make sure, again. Then he hears Dean in the kitchen, the low murmur of a cabinet closing, the steady rhythm of a house still awake.
 
He leaves it unlocked. The house does not fall down.
 
He sleeps.

Month two edges into three. The city’s trees throw out tender green; the camera over the door winks through pollen dust like a lighthouse with hay fever. 
 
Emma finds new volume. She hates stillness, and is offended by hunger. She loves the ceiling fan and Dean’s terrible dinosaur impression, which mostly consists of saying ‘rawr’ in a voice like a door hinge. Sam claims her first consonant is ‘S’. Dean hears ‘Da’ every time she attempts a vowel. Castiel asserts this is all babble and refuses to adjudicate. 
 
The second time Azazel finds him, it is on a bus bench with Emma asleep in the stroller, and Castiel timing the next feed. He does not see the cruiser at first; he hears the shoe leather; the unhurried authority of footsteps that believe the pavement belongs to them.
 
‘Afternoon,’ Azazel drawls, as though greeting a neighbour. ‘Doing the single-dad thing today?’
 
‘I am an omega with a child,’ Castiel says. ‘That is not a trick.’
 
‘Maybe not.’ Azazel tips his head towards the stroller. ‘Pretty girl. Shame paperwork’s so messy around her type.’ 
 
Castiel rests a hand on the stroller’s handle. He does not fiddle with the tear in the foam. ‘The paperwork is in order.’
 
‘For now,’ Azazel says, almost regretful, like a man commenting on weather that is not his fault. ‘The thing about Winchesters, though — they blow in, and they blow out. Leaves a lot of dust for other folks to eat.’
 
He moves on then. He always moves on — small violences wrapped in a neighbourly tone, nothing that sticks to a form. 
 
Castiel breathes out the long way. Emma snuffles and returns to sleep. He goes home and says nothing, because silence feels safer, even as it chafes.

Dean asks him that night, ‘Everything okay?’ in a voice that has started to learn the differences between Castiel’s kinds of quiet.
 
Castiel says, ‘Yes,’ because to say more would require offering up both truth and fear, and he is not yet willing to give Dean both at once.

Dean brings up paperwork again over bowls of pasta that have stuck to the pot and been salvaged with more sauce than is decent.
 
‘We should fix it properly,’ he says, casual, cautious. ‘Not just the registered alpha piece. The rest of it.’
 
‘It is not broken,’ Castiel replies. ‘It is sufficient.’
 
‘Sufficient isn’t safe,’ Dean counters, and there is a steadiness to the sentence that makes Castiel look up. ‘Let me put my name where it belongs.’
 
Castiel swallows. The old reflex (No) comes up first; the newer, quieter instinct (Maybe) sits behind it like a second heartbeat.
 
‘This is not about you claiming us,’ he says. ‘This is about the court claiming you.’
 
‘Good,’ Dean says. ‘Let them. Let the whole damn city know that I’m hers. And that I’m here.’

Later, when Emma is asleep, and the house has fallen into its night noises, Dean tries for the other half of the equation.
 
‘Be my mate,’ he says, the words too simple for it to be a trick. ‘Not for the court — for real. For Emma. For us.’
 
‘I cannot answer that tonight,’ Castiel says, and then finds himself adding, ‘or tomorrow,’ because honesty is a habit he would like to keep.
 
Dean nods, disappointment visible and accepted, as though he has decided to wear it until it fits.
 
They do not settle it. They do something else instead: they plan a trip to the courthouse.

It is nothing dramatic, in the end. A plastic-plant waiting room and a ticket number that clicks up on a tired digital board, a clerk with a badge that says NAOMI and a mouth that has seen everything twice. Forms with lines that do not leave enough space for the truth.
 
‘Petition to amend,’ Naomi reads off the form, flipping through. ‘Adding the alpha to the birth certificate. You the alpha?’ She looks at Dean without raising her gaze.
 
‘I am,’ Dean says, beaming. 
 
‘And you’re the omega?’ she asks Castiel, who nods warily, remembering his last encounter with a courthouse clerk, but this one seems entirely indifferent to the entire process. ‘Very well. You both need to sign at the bottom. Identification?’
 
They present everything. Dean’s hands are steady; Castiel’s are not, though he does not let the tremor travel.
 
Naomi stamps and initialises, then slides the pen back. ‘All set; you’ll get your copies in four to six weeks. Next!’
 
And that’s it. No bells. No thunder. No choir. Dean walks out into the ordinary sunshine and breathes like he has been underwater too long. Castiel feels relief march through him in small, stubborn stages, as though his body refuses to accept safety all at once, in case it is a trick.
 
On the way home, Dean buys Emma a ridiculous knitted hat shaped like a strawberry. ‘It was on sale,’ he lies. Castiel lets him have the line.
 
That night, when Emma wakes angry, Dean is there first. He gets the temperature right, the swirl right, the pace right. He does not look to the doorway to see if Castiel is watching. 
 
Castiel is. He stands there with his arms folded, then realises he has put them down without noticing.

 Month five bites. Teeth announce themselves; nights stretch long with new hurts. 
 
Dean learns to clear gel into tiny gums with a steady finger. Castiel learns the exact hiss noise that sometimes tricks Emma into believing the world is kind. Sam tapes foam onto every table corner and still manages to bang his shin twice a day. John pretends to grumble about the baby gate, then steps over it with surprising grace.
 
Emma crawls like a soldier committed to a cause. She is quick and absurdly pleased with herself; the house becomes a maze of improvised borders. She finds the piano bench and slaps it, triumphant. Dean slips her onto his knee and lets her pound the lower octaves until she squeals.
 
‘Genius,’ he announces. 
 
‘Prodigy,’ Castiel teases, surprising even himself.
 
‘Noise,’ John says, voice dry and fond all at once.

Azazel’s third appearance is not a conversation; it is a stop. Castiel is driving the Winchesters’ beloved Impala — a privilege of the highest degree — with Emma in the back, Dean at home fixing a loose cupboard door. 
 
The lights flare in the rearview; Castiel’s spine goes rigid on instinct.
 
‘Broken taillight,’ Azazel says at the window, though there isn’t one. He leans in, breath friendly, eyes not. ‘Everything all right with the little one?’
 
‘Yes,’ Castiel says.
 
‘Car seat properly installed?’ Azazel asks. ‘You know how fiddly those can be.’
 
‘I do,’ Castiel says.
 
‘Care to let me have a look?’ Azazel says, and it is not a question.
 
Castiel gets out. His hands do not shake in the moment of unbuckling the straps because muscles trained by fear go steady when a child needs them to. 
 
Azazel ‘inspects’ the seat, finds nothing wrong, then closes the door with a paternal pat.
 
‘Drive safe, now,’ he tells Castiel, as though he has done them a kindness. 
 
Castiel sits behind the wheel and breathes deeply until the tremor passes his knuckles and leaves them.
 
He does not tell Dean. Not because he does not trust him — because he does, increasingly so — but because he knows what Dean would do with the information. There is a season for fire, and Castiel is not ready to hand the house a match.

They mark small holidays because humans need markers, even when the calendar has been unkind: 
 
A summer evening spent on the stoop with cheap ice-pops that stain every tongue blue. 
 
A September day when Emma stands braced against the sofa and shrieks, triumphant, at her own knees. 
 
A morning when Sam returns from the farmer’s market with sunflowers and no explanation. Castiel puts them in a jar and does not call it ‘tenderness’ out loud. 
 
Dean keeps asking without insisting. He rephrases the same desire like a man turning a chord to see where it resolves. 
 
‘Let me put my name where it belongs,’ becomes, 
 
‘I’m not leaving,’ becomes, 
 
‘When you’re ready, I’ll still be here,’ becomes, 
 
‘Say ‘no’ as many times as you need — I’ll keep asking.’
 
It should grate. It does not. It becomes a metronome: proof of time kept.
 
John softens in ways that arrive like sightings. He stops to watch the ceiling fan with Emma, solemn as a naturalist observing weather. He learns to let her fall asleep on him and not move, even when his back complains. He returns from the hardware store with corner brackets and fixes the bookcases to the wall without announcing he is doing it. In the evening, he sits with his maps and, sometimes, folds them closed before the others have gone to bed.
 
One night, Castiel wakes and finds the lamp in the guest room on low. Dean is asleep on the floor beside the crib, one hand threaded through the bars like a guardrail, palm turned up as if holding something invisible. Emma’s breath lifts and falls in the small, steady way that could stop a heart for being so ordinary.
 
Castiel doesn’t move from his spot on the bed, but he feels something inside him tip towards ‘yes’ — a small degree, a noticeable one.
 
He closes his eyes again. He sleeps.

By autumn’s edge, Emma has three teeth and a command of the house’s acoustics. She says ‘ba’ with academic seriousness. She says ‘mmm’ when confronted with mashed banana as though considering a thesis. She says ‘da’ and Dean pretends not to cry in the kitchen. Loudly.
 
Azazel parks two houses down for an hour one Tuesday and reads his phone. He doesn’t look up once. It’s a message, nonetheless. Sam takes pictures through the curtain and drafts an email to a lawyer he knows from a pro bono clinic. ‘Just in case,’ he says, too breezy to be casual. John sits on the stoop and cleans his nails with a pocketknife and does not wave.
 
Castiel hates that this is how safety looks now: watchfulness, documentation, the discipline of not rising to bait. He hopes that Emma will never remember this vigilance, and also that she must not ever have to.
 
He begins to leave her with Dean for longer loops of time — a walk to the library, an hour with Sam while Castiel sits alone on a bench and remembers how to inhabit a body that is not all task. Each return is a test he does not announce. Each time, Emma is where he left her, and Dean looks up from whatever he is mending — a drawer slide, a loose piano leg — and says, ‘Hey,’ as if the word is an address and a promise both.

The first birthday arrives like a soft drum. They do not invite anyone; the house is full as it is.
 
Sam bakes a lopsided cake that tastes of sugar and effort. Dean spends twenty minutes tying a string of paper stars that refuse to behave like stars. John returns suspiciously late from an errand and brings a soft-backed book about trucks with wheels that spin. 
 
‘Educational,’ he says, and Emma chews it and declares it perfect. 
 
They light one candle. 
 
Emma stares at the flame, considers fear, then curiosity, then delight at the way fire behaves. Castiel sits close enough to intercept. Dean keeps his hand just behind hers. Sam narrates the physics of combustion in a voice like a bedtime story until John tells him to pack it in and sing.
 
They sing.
 
After, when Emma is smudged with icing and triumphant with being alive for an exact year, Dean clears his throat.
 
‘Cas,’ he says. He does not stand. He does not kneel. He remains exactly where he has been for months: beside Castiel. ‘I said I’d keep asking.’
 
Castiel holds his gaze. He is tired — the good kind and the old kind — and aware of Azazel like weather pressure at the temple, and aware of this house like a pulse he trusts.
 
Dean does not rush the silence. ‘I’m not leaving,’ he says — the same words, heavier now, with proof. ‘I’ll be here tomorrow and the day after, and the day after that. Put me where you want me — paper, or door, or halfway down the hall at three in the morning. Be my mate when you can — or don’t. But, I am her father. I am your partner in the business of her. I am-’ He stops before the word that would make the room tilt. He lets the smaller truth stand up on its own legs. ‘I am here.’
 
Castiel feels the yes rise like the tide. Not the ritual word — not yet — but the posture of it. He nods once. Then, he lifts Emma and places her in Dean’s arms to help her touch the paper stars that would not behave, and that is permission enough for tonight.

Later, after the kitchen is a battlefield of crumbs and small victories, after John has pretended not to hum the lullaby under his breath, after Sam has fallen asleep on the floor next to the torn wrapping paper because he always sleeps where he stops, Castiel stands in the doorway to the guest room and watches Dean settle Emma into her crib.
 
‘Tomorrow,’ Castiel says quietly, an echo he has learned can be a kind of promise without being a trap.
 
Dean looks up, the easy, unguarded grin of a man who has made a home of patience. ‘Tomorrow,’ he agrees, as if the word is a path he can see.
 
He turns the fan on low. It circles, slow and steady, a small machine affirming that motion can be gentle. 
 
In the hush, the house keeps its new rhythm: the faint hum of the fridge, the click of the hallway light, Emma’s soft breath, the memory of the tune Mary taught the wood long ago.
 
New music. Strange, familiar.
 
The night takes it and carries it forward. Azazel’s shadow sits where shadows sit. The maps are folded on the table. The door is locked by choice and not fear. The basket on the hall keeps its small, important things.
 
Tomorrow will come, full of forms and feeds and the next necessary fight, but for now, in this house that has adjusted by degrees, three words are enough to hold the day in place:
 
Not yet. Not never.
 
Here.