Fic: The Shattered One (11/?)
See the masterpost for disclaimer, summary, and previous parts.
A/N: Just to share a bit of a progress report with you guys… I have completed this fic. The writing phase is done. Now it’s just down to proof-reading and posting. And this thing logged in at 88,000+ words. So it sort of turned semi-epic on me. And since this whole fic started as an experiment/attempt to write a non-squicky mpreg fic, I have to think if you haven’t been squicked out by now, then you won’t be *fingers crossed* :) Now on to the fic… enjoy!
***************
When Dean finally regained consciousness, he had no idea how long he’d been out cold. He was flat on his back, blinking up at the cabin’s ceiling and trying to figure out just what the hell had happened to him. He felt like he’d been hit by a truck, then bounced against the undercarriage a few times for good measure. There was an aching wrongness throbbing hollowly inside him. Something was missing, something Dean wouldn’t even be able to name, but he knew with the whole of his existence that it was gone. It kind of felt like the hole in him when Sam had been at Stanford, ignoring Dean’s calls. But worse, because this felt unfixable… he couldn’t go to Palo Alto and get this back.
Dean tried to move and his own cracked groan surprised him. It shattered an eerily-absolute silence hanging over the room. Dean rolled his head to the right to check the light coming through the window in order to try and judge the hour, but his breath caught at what he saw.
The curtains were charred, eaten up as if by fire until they were half their old length. The windows themselves were busted out. The walls were coated in soot. The metal folding chair was warped, sitting there grotesque and deformed and blackened around the edges. The smell of incineration was in the air, making Dean’s lungs itch.
Dean turned his head to the left. Castiel was lying beside him, back turned to him and torso angled toward the bed, so all Dean saw was a stretch of bare back and a head of wet black hair.
He watched long enough to see that Castiel was breathing, then he shifted closer. “Cas?” Dean whispered hoarsely. He cleared his throat and reached up to touch Castiel’s back. The skin wasn’t scalding hot, thank god.
The touch didn’t cause Castiel to so much as stir.
Dean hauled himself up onto his elbow. He leaned toward Castiel, trying to catch a glimpse of his face. “Cas…?” Castiel’s arms were folded near his chest, pressing into the singed mattress. He was unconscious.
Dean wrapped his hand around Castiel’s shoulder and tugged the angel toward him, meaning to turn the angel on his back.
A sound, like sweaty thighs peeling off a hot leather seat in summer, followed Castiel’s body moving. When Castiel was drawn away from the mattress, his arms unfurling limply, Dean’s eyes went wide. In the spot where Castiel had just been was a baby. For a second Dean just stared. The newborn was lying prone, arms opened wide and legs straight from being pressed tight to Castiel’s chest. When Castiel’s weight was moved away, the little thing flinched. Legs tucked and kicked, small arms waved jerkily, then its little chest began to move with its first breaths.
As Castiel turned onto his back, head lolling, the baby began to cry.
Dean sat up immediately, hit with a sharp flight reflex.
The baby - a boy - wailed its way into life.
Dean glanced a little frantically at Castiel. The angel showed no signs of waking anytime soon. His chest had faded back to an angry, sunburned red. To match, the baby on the bed next to Cas looked abnormally flushed.
Hesitantly, Dean reached across Castiel and laid his hand over the baby’s stomach. It was high-fever hot. That couldn’t be good.
Dean got stiffly off the bed, went around to the other side, and bent down to carefully gather up the baby. He couldn’t believe how tiny he was, how little he weighed in his arms. His cries lessened at being handled. “You don’t seem like enough to cause such a big deal,” Dean said. The baby resorted to whimpering. “Come on… let’s see if we can cool you off a little.”
He took the baby to the kitchen sink, wet a washcloth, and did to him what he’d done to Cas earlier. He touched the cool cloth to overheated skin. The baby seemed to like it. Even his whimpers stopped, and Dean was so intent on his task that when he looked up into the child’s face and was met with blue eyes, he startled. “Huh… hey, look at that,” Dean chuckled nervously, “you’ve got Cas’s eyes.”
The baby regarded him intently, little face lined with concentration like Dean was a great puzzle he had to figure out. “Yeah, you got that from him, too,” Dean quipped.
Joking and focusing on his task seemed to help forestall freaking out.
When he felt better about the temperature of the baby’s skin, Dean tossed aside the washcloth and lifted the baby up. At a loss for what else to do with it, he tucked it against his bare chest. The baby cooed and nestled closer. Dean swallowed at the weird feelings that kicked up.
He went back to the main room and checked on Castiel again, wondered how long it would take before the angel regained consciousness, then fished the ruins of his shirt off the floor and bundled the baby up in it. The cot by the far wall was mil-spec and had held up better than the curtains. Dean laid the baby down there then stepped back.
It was starting to creep up on him just what he was dealing with.
He fished his phone out of his pocket. Having been on his person at the time, it seemed to have been afforded the same protection from being roasted that Dean himself had… though the faceplate was a spider web of cracks. At least it worked when Dean flipped it open. He found a text message from Sam waiting. It was simple.
????
Dean had a hell of a time answering. It was more than he could even begin to cover in a text. In the end, he hit send after typing
its a boy
He didn’t know what else to say. He covered his mouth with a hand, staring in some kind of delay-onset horror at the consequences of saving Castiel’s life lying wrapped up in his torn shirt.
Fuck… now what the hell was he supposed to do?
He wandered over to the dresser and leaned back against it. From there, it was no trouble to see both Castiel on the bed and the baby on the cot.
He’d just take a minute and think about what to do.
***************
Dean was still perched there when the glare of headlights swept in through the broken windows of the cabin. Dean was pushing off the dresser and moving toward the door in a heartbeat.
He’d never been more happy to see Sam in his life.
Sam came toward the cabin with a bag in hand, but as he neared his pace slowed. He looked wary. Dean did not blame him.
“Hey,” Dean greeted, “where have you been?”
Sam sidled around Dean in the doorway into the cabin. “Whoa,” he faltered when he saw the charred state of the room, but he recovered quickly. He held up the spare bag. “I thought… I was close to town anyway, and then your text… I, uh… I got some things.” His eyes skittered around the room. “Uh… where is… it?”
Dean moved out of the line of sight of ‘it’ and gestured helplessly toward the cot by the wall.
Sam went still at first, then he put the bag down and approached the baby.
While Dean scooped up the bag to see what Sam had picked up (secretly hoping his formerly-psychic brother would have the foresight to bring him in a new shirt), Sam stood over the cot staring down at the baby. He looked dumbfounded… and really, what does someone say in a situation like this? Congratulations?
“He has Cas’s eyes,” Sam said numbly.
“Yeah, he does.” Dean found the bag full of bottles, formula, diapers, onesies... basically everything Dean had hoped he would never have to deal with. He’d rather tangle with a wendigo than a dirty diaper.
Seemed like he wasn’t going to have a choice, though.
“Has Cas seen him yet?” Sam asked.
“He hasn’t woken up since…” Dean wasn’t even sure how to describe what they’d done. Just the memory of it gave him the creeps.
Sam looked Dean’s way. “Are you okay?”
“Honestly? Not really. I feel…” broken, shattered, cracked, robbed, “I don’t even know how to explain what Cas did...” Dean massaged his chest, thankful to find everything intact; he was a little surprised, given the ruinous feeling of being melted alive he remembered distinctly. Dean shook it off. “But you know, whatever, I’ll be fine. Cas is alive… that’s what matters.”
“Sure, of course…” Sam nodded. Then his eyes went back to the baby, like he couldn’t stop himself from checking to make sure it was actually there. “What, uh… what are we going to do with him?”
“You think I have the first clue? This is way out of our league.” Dean suddenly felt overwhelmed by the bag of baby things and shoved it aside. “Shit, Sam… we can’t take care of a baby. We’re in the middle of an apocalypse here!” Which might have been something he should have thought about before, but all he’d had on his mind at the time was making sure Castiel didn’t die.
Sam looked just as flummoxed as Dean.
Which was the exact moment Castiel chose to start coming around. He entered the conversation with a wrecked groan. Dean was at the bed in a second. He took a seat on the edge next to Castiel, who was shifting and fidgeting. “Heya, Cas. Nice of you to join us.”
Castiel pried his eyes open and peered up blearily at Dean. He blinked. “Dean?”
“Yours truly.” Dean reached out and carefully touched the center of Castiel’s chest. It was warm, but no more than he’d expect from someone running a regular fever. Which was a vast improvement over molten lava.
Castiel startled slightly at the touch, glanced down at Dean’s hand, then mused aloud, “I’m not dead.”
“Not today… though that was a close call.” Dean pulled his hand away. “Try not to do that in the future.”
“I’ll do my best.” Castiel winced.
“How do you feel?”
“Diminished.”
Maybe that was how Dean should say he felt, too.
“But pleasantly surprised to still be alive.”
As if taking it easy was not in an angel’s dictionary, Castiel began to struggle into a sitting position. Dean helped him, hauling him up and propping him against the headboard. Castiel looked dizzy a moment, holding onto Dean with one hand (Dean suspected Castiel didn’t even realized he was doing it) as he waited for the world to stop spinning.
When it did, Castiel looked up and caught sight of Sam in the room. A look in the younger Winchester’s direction led Castiel’s gaze to the moving bundle on the cot by Sam’s legs.
Castiel went completely still. If Dean had been bugging out about suddenly having a baby, Castiel looked absolutely freaked out seven ways from Sunday.
Sam frowned at Castiel’s expression and looked toward Dean for guidance. Dean jerked his head toward Cas. Sam got the message. He bent down and picked up the baby. It began to fuss while Sam carried it over to the bed.
The closer Sam came with the baby, the further back Castiel pressed into the bed.
Sam reached them and sat balanced on the opposite side of the bed, baby cradled in his arms. “Hey, Cas… want to meet your son?”
If he had the strength to do it, Dean thought the angel would have scrambled out of the bed completely. As it was, he was leaning away from the baby like it might turn into the Thing and attack him. And Dean thought he wasn’t dealing with the baby thing well… Castiel looked like he wanted nothing to do with it.
“Cas?” In completely uncharted territory or not, Dean hadn’t expected the angel to reject the infant.
“I’m not comfortable with that,” Castiel stated plainly, giving the baby a hairy eyeball.
“Yeah, we can see that…” Dean frowned. “Look, it’s okay, I’m kind of weirded out, too.”
“Do you want to hold him?” Sam offered hopefully, beginning to hold out the baby.
Castiel drew back sharply. “No.”
Sam looked like Castiel had kicked his puppy. He tucked the baby back into the crook of his elbow. “Did you bond with him at all while he was in you?” Sam asked in a wounded voice, and from anyone else that would probably sound douchey, but Sam made it such an innocent question that not even Dean could fault him. And he kind of wondered what Castiel’s answer would be.
Castiel gave Sam a sharp look and visibly bristled. “That was the intrusion within my grace that would eventually lead to my death. My feelings toward it could hardly be classified as affection.”
The baby abruptly started crying.
Castiel flinched. He sent an imploring look Dean’s way. “Make it stop doing that.”
“He’s probably just hungry. Sam, give him to me. I’ll hold him while you fix a bottle.”
Sam passed the baby over Castiel into Dean’s arms. While Sam went and dug through the bag of baby stuff, Dean settled on the bed closer to Castiel. The angel tensed but didn’t move away… Dean didn’t think he would. Castiel had some freaky affinity for being all up in Dean’s personal space. Dean figured Castiel would let the baby come closer if Dean was holding it.
“Look, Cas… I get it. I do. I’m freaked out, too, believe me. You weren’t looking to get saddled with a kid; and let’s face it, neither was I. But fate’s kicked us in the nads yet again. He’s here now. What would you suggest we do with him?”
Castiel glanced uneasily at the newborn Dean was holding. He looked uncertain. At least he wasn’t openly hostile. Dean would take what he could get.
“So, uh… does that soul thing, whatever you did…” Dean still had no way to describe what Castiel had done to him, “does that make him… you know, does that mean he’s my son?”
Castiel’s attention on the baby shifted, turned more analytical, and it actually softened his approach to the infant. “He is more me than you… I took as little of your soul as I could to complete the separation. But there are undeniably pieces of you in him.” Castiel paused a moment. “If you wish to call him your son, it wouldn’t be inaccurate.”
“Well, I can’t exactly call him my angel-human grace-soul baby.” Dean joked, then he looked back down at the baby. “So… mostly you, huh?”
“I had to sacrifice much more of my grace than would have been ideal… you could not spare enough of your soul to compensate for the contribution of another angel.”
“So you picked up the slack,” Dean mused. “Sorry I wasn’t much help.”
“You were the difference between life and death,” Castiel countered.
“Yeah, for you and this little guy both,” Dean shifted the baby in his arms as he started to cry again.
Castiel looked consternated that the saving of his life also meant the creation of the child’s. “This is not an opportune time to be responsible for caring for an infant. We have to stop Lucifer.”
“I haven’t forgotten. We’ll make it work.” Honestly, he had no fucking clue how they’d do that, but Winchesters were good at making due with what little they had in a shitty situation.
Besides, as resistant as Castiel was to the baby’s mere presence, the last thing Dean wanted to do was seem to agree with him about the kid actually being hugely inconvenient. He didn’t think Castiel would smite a baby… but then, angel. Dean knew enough to know that angels didn’t think the way humans did about anything, and the wrongness of killing a baby could be yet another thing where they disagreed on right and wrong.
Castiel looked about to argue the point, anyway.
“He’s family, Cas,” Dean snapped. “We don’t give up on family.”
The angel wisely said nothing.
“Here,” Sam offered a bottle of formula to Dean.
“Okay… let’s see if I remember how to do this, it’s been a while since I bottle fed Sam. Actually, no, never mind, that was just last week.”
Sam snorted. “Jerk.”
“Bitch.” Dean arranged the baby to rest in the crook of one arm. He stuck the bottle nipple in the baby’s open mouth and wiggled it against his tongue. The baby clamped his mouth down, seemed surprised at the first taste of milk, then began to suck in earnest. The silence while he suckled was truly golden.
“Thank god he’s not a finicky eater. Got something from me, at least,” Dean muttered.
Sam edged in closer for a better view, probably melting inside like the big girl he was.
Castiel made no move to participate, but he watched out of the corner of his eye the entire time.
Next
A/N: Just to share a bit of a progress report with you guys… I have completed this fic. The writing phase is done. Now it’s just down to proof-reading and posting. And this thing logged in at 88,000+ words. So it sort of turned semi-epic on me. And since this whole fic started as an experiment/attempt to write a non-squicky mpreg fic, I have to think if you haven’t been squicked out by now, then you won’t be *fingers crossed* :) Now on to the fic… enjoy!
***************
When Dean finally regained consciousness, he had no idea how long he’d been out cold. He was flat on his back, blinking up at the cabin’s ceiling and trying to figure out just what the hell had happened to him. He felt like he’d been hit by a truck, then bounced against the undercarriage a few times for good measure. There was an aching wrongness throbbing hollowly inside him. Something was missing, something Dean wouldn’t even be able to name, but he knew with the whole of his existence that it was gone. It kind of felt like the hole in him when Sam had been at Stanford, ignoring Dean’s calls. But worse, because this felt unfixable… he couldn’t go to Palo Alto and get this back.
Dean tried to move and his own cracked groan surprised him. It shattered an eerily-absolute silence hanging over the room. Dean rolled his head to the right to check the light coming through the window in order to try and judge the hour, but his breath caught at what he saw.
The curtains were charred, eaten up as if by fire until they were half their old length. The windows themselves were busted out. The walls were coated in soot. The metal folding chair was warped, sitting there grotesque and deformed and blackened around the edges. The smell of incineration was in the air, making Dean’s lungs itch.
Dean turned his head to the left. Castiel was lying beside him, back turned to him and torso angled toward the bed, so all Dean saw was a stretch of bare back and a head of wet black hair.
He watched long enough to see that Castiel was breathing, then he shifted closer. “Cas?” Dean whispered hoarsely. He cleared his throat and reached up to touch Castiel’s back. The skin wasn’t scalding hot, thank god.
The touch didn’t cause Castiel to so much as stir.
Dean hauled himself up onto his elbow. He leaned toward Castiel, trying to catch a glimpse of his face. “Cas…?” Castiel’s arms were folded near his chest, pressing into the singed mattress. He was unconscious.
Dean wrapped his hand around Castiel’s shoulder and tugged the angel toward him, meaning to turn the angel on his back.
A sound, like sweaty thighs peeling off a hot leather seat in summer, followed Castiel’s body moving. When Castiel was drawn away from the mattress, his arms unfurling limply, Dean’s eyes went wide. In the spot where Castiel had just been was a baby. For a second Dean just stared. The newborn was lying prone, arms opened wide and legs straight from being pressed tight to Castiel’s chest. When Castiel’s weight was moved away, the little thing flinched. Legs tucked and kicked, small arms waved jerkily, then its little chest began to move with its first breaths.
As Castiel turned onto his back, head lolling, the baby began to cry.
Dean sat up immediately, hit with a sharp flight reflex.
The baby - a boy - wailed its way into life.
Dean glanced a little frantically at Castiel. The angel showed no signs of waking anytime soon. His chest had faded back to an angry, sunburned red. To match, the baby on the bed next to Cas looked abnormally flushed.
Hesitantly, Dean reached across Castiel and laid his hand over the baby’s stomach. It was high-fever hot. That couldn’t be good.
Dean got stiffly off the bed, went around to the other side, and bent down to carefully gather up the baby. He couldn’t believe how tiny he was, how little he weighed in his arms. His cries lessened at being handled. “You don’t seem like enough to cause such a big deal,” Dean said. The baby resorted to whimpering. “Come on… let’s see if we can cool you off a little.”
He took the baby to the kitchen sink, wet a washcloth, and did to him what he’d done to Cas earlier. He touched the cool cloth to overheated skin. The baby seemed to like it. Even his whimpers stopped, and Dean was so intent on his task that when he looked up into the child’s face and was met with blue eyes, he startled. “Huh… hey, look at that,” Dean chuckled nervously, “you’ve got Cas’s eyes.”
The baby regarded him intently, little face lined with concentration like Dean was a great puzzle he had to figure out. “Yeah, you got that from him, too,” Dean quipped.
Joking and focusing on his task seemed to help forestall freaking out.
When he felt better about the temperature of the baby’s skin, Dean tossed aside the washcloth and lifted the baby up. At a loss for what else to do with it, he tucked it against his bare chest. The baby cooed and nestled closer. Dean swallowed at the weird feelings that kicked up.
He went back to the main room and checked on Castiel again, wondered how long it would take before the angel regained consciousness, then fished the ruins of his shirt off the floor and bundled the baby up in it. The cot by the far wall was mil-spec and had held up better than the curtains. Dean laid the baby down there then stepped back.
It was starting to creep up on him just what he was dealing with.
He fished his phone out of his pocket. Having been on his person at the time, it seemed to have been afforded the same protection from being roasted that Dean himself had… though the faceplate was a spider web of cracks. At least it worked when Dean flipped it open. He found a text message from Sam waiting. It was simple.
????
Dean had a hell of a time answering. It was more than he could even begin to cover in a text. In the end, he hit send after typing
its a boy
He didn’t know what else to say. He covered his mouth with a hand, staring in some kind of delay-onset horror at the consequences of saving Castiel’s life lying wrapped up in his torn shirt.
Fuck… now what the hell was he supposed to do?
He wandered over to the dresser and leaned back against it. From there, it was no trouble to see both Castiel on the bed and the baby on the cot.
He’d just take a minute and think about what to do.
***************
Dean was still perched there when the glare of headlights swept in through the broken windows of the cabin. Dean was pushing off the dresser and moving toward the door in a heartbeat.
He’d never been more happy to see Sam in his life.
Sam came toward the cabin with a bag in hand, but as he neared his pace slowed. He looked wary. Dean did not blame him.
“Hey,” Dean greeted, “where have you been?”
Sam sidled around Dean in the doorway into the cabin. “Whoa,” he faltered when he saw the charred state of the room, but he recovered quickly. He held up the spare bag. “I thought… I was close to town anyway, and then your text… I, uh… I got some things.” His eyes skittered around the room. “Uh… where is… it?”
Dean moved out of the line of sight of ‘it’ and gestured helplessly toward the cot by the wall.
Sam went still at first, then he put the bag down and approached the baby.
While Dean scooped up the bag to see what Sam had picked up (secretly hoping his formerly-psychic brother would have the foresight to bring him in a new shirt), Sam stood over the cot staring down at the baby. He looked dumbfounded… and really, what does someone say in a situation like this? Congratulations?
“He has Cas’s eyes,” Sam said numbly.
“Yeah, he does.” Dean found the bag full of bottles, formula, diapers, onesies... basically everything Dean had hoped he would never have to deal with. He’d rather tangle with a wendigo than a dirty diaper.
Seemed like he wasn’t going to have a choice, though.
“Has Cas seen him yet?” Sam asked.
“He hasn’t woken up since…” Dean wasn’t even sure how to describe what they’d done. Just the memory of it gave him the creeps.
Sam looked Dean’s way. “Are you okay?”
“Honestly? Not really. I feel…” broken, shattered, cracked, robbed, “I don’t even know how to explain what Cas did...” Dean massaged his chest, thankful to find everything intact; he was a little surprised, given the ruinous feeling of being melted alive he remembered distinctly. Dean shook it off. “But you know, whatever, I’ll be fine. Cas is alive… that’s what matters.”
“Sure, of course…” Sam nodded. Then his eyes went back to the baby, like he couldn’t stop himself from checking to make sure it was actually there. “What, uh… what are we going to do with him?”
“You think I have the first clue? This is way out of our league.” Dean suddenly felt overwhelmed by the bag of baby things and shoved it aside. “Shit, Sam… we can’t take care of a baby. We’re in the middle of an apocalypse here!” Which might have been something he should have thought about before, but all he’d had on his mind at the time was making sure Castiel didn’t die.
Sam looked just as flummoxed as Dean.
Which was the exact moment Castiel chose to start coming around. He entered the conversation with a wrecked groan. Dean was at the bed in a second. He took a seat on the edge next to Castiel, who was shifting and fidgeting. “Heya, Cas. Nice of you to join us.”
Castiel pried his eyes open and peered up blearily at Dean. He blinked. “Dean?”
“Yours truly.” Dean reached out and carefully touched the center of Castiel’s chest. It was warm, but no more than he’d expect from someone running a regular fever. Which was a vast improvement over molten lava.
Castiel startled slightly at the touch, glanced down at Dean’s hand, then mused aloud, “I’m not dead.”
“Not today… though that was a close call.” Dean pulled his hand away. “Try not to do that in the future.”
“I’ll do my best.” Castiel winced.
“How do you feel?”
“Diminished.”
Maybe that was how Dean should say he felt, too.
“But pleasantly surprised to still be alive.”
As if taking it easy was not in an angel’s dictionary, Castiel began to struggle into a sitting position. Dean helped him, hauling him up and propping him against the headboard. Castiel looked dizzy a moment, holding onto Dean with one hand (Dean suspected Castiel didn’t even realized he was doing it) as he waited for the world to stop spinning.
When it did, Castiel looked up and caught sight of Sam in the room. A look in the younger Winchester’s direction led Castiel’s gaze to the moving bundle on the cot by Sam’s legs.
Castiel went completely still. If Dean had been bugging out about suddenly having a baby, Castiel looked absolutely freaked out seven ways from Sunday.
Sam frowned at Castiel’s expression and looked toward Dean for guidance. Dean jerked his head toward Cas. Sam got the message. He bent down and picked up the baby. It began to fuss while Sam carried it over to the bed.
The closer Sam came with the baby, the further back Castiel pressed into the bed.
Sam reached them and sat balanced on the opposite side of the bed, baby cradled in his arms. “Hey, Cas… want to meet your son?”
If he had the strength to do it, Dean thought the angel would have scrambled out of the bed completely. As it was, he was leaning away from the baby like it might turn into the Thing and attack him. And Dean thought he wasn’t dealing with the baby thing well… Castiel looked like he wanted nothing to do with it.
“Cas?” In completely uncharted territory or not, Dean hadn’t expected the angel to reject the infant.
“I’m not comfortable with that,” Castiel stated plainly, giving the baby a hairy eyeball.
“Yeah, we can see that…” Dean frowned. “Look, it’s okay, I’m kind of weirded out, too.”
“Do you want to hold him?” Sam offered hopefully, beginning to hold out the baby.
Castiel drew back sharply. “No.”
Sam looked like Castiel had kicked his puppy. He tucked the baby back into the crook of his elbow. “Did you bond with him at all while he was in you?” Sam asked in a wounded voice, and from anyone else that would probably sound douchey, but Sam made it such an innocent question that not even Dean could fault him. And he kind of wondered what Castiel’s answer would be.
Castiel gave Sam a sharp look and visibly bristled. “That was the intrusion within my grace that would eventually lead to my death. My feelings toward it could hardly be classified as affection.”
The baby abruptly started crying.
Castiel flinched. He sent an imploring look Dean’s way. “Make it stop doing that.”
“He’s probably just hungry. Sam, give him to me. I’ll hold him while you fix a bottle.”
Sam passed the baby over Castiel into Dean’s arms. While Sam went and dug through the bag of baby stuff, Dean settled on the bed closer to Castiel. The angel tensed but didn’t move away… Dean didn’t think he would. Castiel had some freaky affinity for being all up in Dean’s personal space. Dean figured Castiel would let the baby come closer if Dean was holding it.
“Look, Cas… I get it. I do. I’m freaked out, too, believe me. You weren’t looking to get saddled with a kid; and let’s face it, neither was I. But fate’s kicked us in the nads yet again. He’s here now. What would you suggest we do with him?”
Castiel glanced uneasily at the newborn Dean was holding. He looked uncertain. At least he wasn’t openly hostile. Dean would take what he could get.
“So, uh… does that soul thing, whatever you did…” Dean still had no way to describe what Castiel had done to him, “does that make him… you know, does that mean he’s my son?”
Castiel’s attention on the baby shifted, turned more analytical, and it actually softened his approach to the infant. “He is more me than you… I took as little of your soul as I could to complete the separation. But there are undeniably pieces of you in him.” Castiel paused a moment. “If you wish to call him your son, it wouldn’t be inaccurate.”
“Well, I can’t exactly call him my angel-human grace-soul baby.” Dean joked, then he looked back down at the baby. “So… mostly you, huh?”
“I had to sacrifice much more of my grace than would have been ideal… you could not spare enough of your soul to compensate for the contribution of another angel.”
“So you picked up the slack,” Dean mused. “Sorry I wasn’t much help.”
“You were the difference between life and death,” Castiel countered.
“Yeah, for you and this little guy both,” Dean shifted the baby in his arms as he started to cry again.
Castiel looked consternated that the saving of his life also meant the creation of the child’s. “This is not an opportune time to be responsible for caring for an infant. We have to stop Lucifer.”
“I haven’t forgotten. We’ll make it work.” Honestly, he had no fucking clue how they’d do that, but Winchesters were good at making due with what little they had in a shitty situation.
Besides, as resistant as Castiel was to the baby’s mere presence, the last thing Dean wanted to do was seem to agree with him about the kid actually being hugely inconvenient. He didn’t think Castiel would smite a baby… but then, angel. Dean knew enough to know that angels didn’t think the way humans did about anything, and the wrongness of killing a baby could be yet another thing where they disagreed on right and wrong.
Castiel looked about to argue the point, anyway.
“He’s family, Cas,” Dean snapped. “We don’t give up on family.”
The angel wisely said nothing.
“Here,” Sam offered a bottle of formula to Dean.
“Okay… let’s see if I remember how to do this, it’s been a while since I bottle fed Sam. Actually, no, never mind, that was just last week.”
Sam snorted. “Jerk.”
“Bitch.” Dean arranged the baby to rest in the crook of one arm. He stuck the bottle nipple in the baby’s open mouth and wiggled it against his tongue. The baby clamped his mouth down, seemed surprised at the first taste of milk, then began to suck in earnest. The silence while he suckled was truly golden.
“Thank god he’s not a finicky eater. Got something from me, at least,” Dean muttered.
Sam edged in closer for a better view, probably melting inside like the big girl he was.
Castiel made no move to participate, but he watched out of the corner of his eye the entire time.
Next