Sleepover

Genre: kid!fic, future!fic, drama
Ship/Characters: Dean/Castiel, Mary Novak Winchester, OFC
Summary: When their daughter's friend hears a strange noise during their sleepover, it prompts a surprising response in the Winchester household.

Sleepover

"Night, Papa!"

"Goodnight, Mr. Cas!"

Castiel bit back a laugh as he watched his daughter, Mary, and her friend. The girls snuggled down into their sleeping bags with badly muted giggles.

"Mary, I understand that you two are excited tonight, but you do need to get some rest."

"Okay, Papa. We promise." The two pre-teens looked up at him just a little too innocently. He thanked his lucky stars that Mary seemed to have not picked up Dean's ability to lie straight-faced. At least not yet.

He shook his head as he closed the rec room door behind him.

Mary and her best friend, Abby, waited until the sound of Cas' footsteps had faded before they wriggled out of the bags and started the sleepover in earnest. A couple of hours later, they were finally winding down. Mary was curled up on the couch doing her nails, while Abby flipped through the Netflix menu looking for something good to watch.

"Huh," Abby said suddenly.

Mary looked up briefly. "Find something good?" She returned her attention to the nail polish when she didn't see anything exciting on the menu.

"You guys don't have a dog, right?"

"No. Why?"

Abby tilted her head, motioning for quiet. After a few seconds, she shrugged. "Thought I heard something moving around outside."

Mary quickly capped her nail polish and stood up, fanning her hands as she walked over to the window.

"What are you doing?" Abby asked.

She peered out the window into the dark. "Gotta tell my dads," she answered.

"What? Why?"

"They always need to check out any weird noises. It's a thing."

"We'll get in so much trouble, Mary. It's the middle of the night. Plus, it was probably nothing. My imagination, or y'know, a raccoon."

Mary shook her head, squinting at the shadows in the yard. "They won't be mad. Trust me. Papa may have thought we'd get some sleep, but Daddy knows better. Honestly, he'd be disappointed if we were asl-"

She jumped back from the window with a yelp.

Abby sprang to her feet. "What is it?"

Mary motioned Abby back, as she stepped away from the window. At the same time, the door flew open and Mary's dad loomed, scanning the room, one hand hidden behind his back.

"What happened?"

Mary ran to him and tucked herself against his side. "Daddy, there's something outside. Abby heard it. And then I saw something moving."

Abby waited for Mr. Dean to laugh or scoff or roll his eyes. Her parents had drilled into her that there were noises at night, and you couldn't jump at every little thing. But he just tucked whatever he'd been holding behind his back into his waistband and directed the girls to follow him. Abby looked at the slight unevenness under his shirt as he led them down the hallway, but couldn't figure out what it was. If this were a movie, she'd think it was a gun, but that was ridiculous. Dean Winchester was the high school wrestling coach, not some super-vigilante/spy dude.

"Hey, Cas!" he yelled, and in a second, Mary's other dad was meeting them at the door to the basement, bed-head sticking every which way. He looked at the three of them with concern.

"Think we've got company."

In an instant, the sleep PTA president disappeared and someone Abby had never seen before took his place. "Mary, take your friend to the basement," he directed. "I'll be there in a moment."

Abby was dying to ask questions, but Mary just shushed her and started down the stairs. Abby followed slowly, trying to hear as much of what Mary's dads were saying as possible, but she could only catch a few words.

" ... something followed ... from that last hunt ... where ... Sammy ..."

Mary turned at the bottom of the stairs and glared up at Abby, who hurried down.

"What is up with your dads?" she hissed.

Mary was chewing on her lower lip. She shrugged nervously. "My dads ... well, my family ..." She stopped when they heard footsteps on the stairs.

Cas smiled at the girls. "Please, Abby, make yourself comfortable. I just need to make a call." He dialed his cell phone as Mary settled in on the couch.

Abby looked around the basement, noticing for the first time that there were no windows, no other doors than the one at the top of the stairs. She sat next to Mary and grabbed the blanket off the back of the couch, wrapping it around herself, trying to warm the chill she suddenly felt. Mary scooted over and bumped her shoulder.

"It'll be okay. My dads are the best."

"The best at what?"

Mary looked at Abby with wide eyes. "Just trust me."

At the other end of the room, Cas was speaking quietly into his phone. "Sorry to call so late, Sam. We wanted to alert you ... " He glanced at the two girls on the couch and took a deep breath. "You may have brought an unintended memento back from your last trip ... No, no need to come over yet. Dean just thought you might want to check things out on your end. ... He's outside right now ... Understood ... Give our love to Eileen and the kids. My apologies again for waking all of you."

He pocketed his phone and grabbed a bag of chips out of a cabinet set into the wall. He handed the bag to Mary. "I understand that 'munchies' are an important part of sleepovers." Abby blinked when he actually used finger quotes.

Mary opened the bag and tilted it toward Abby. "Just go with it," she mouthed.

Abby took a chip. "Um, Mr. Cas, what is happening?"

"It's probably nothing, Abby. But better safe than sorry, isn't that the saying?"

A sharp crack from outside made them all jump. "Papa?" Mary's voice wobbled.

Cas perched on the arm of the couch, wrapping his arm around Mary's shoulder, but he kept his eyes trained on the stairs. Abby reached out from under the blanket and grabbed Mary's hand.

No one spoke. After a few minutes, they heard steps moving across the floor above them. Cas stood and moved toward the stairs, standing rigid until they heard Dean's voice as he jogs down the steps.

"All clear!"

And just like that, they were the wrestling coach and the middle-school PTA president again. And they were yawning and herding the girls back to the rec room with promises to talk about it in the morning. But when Abby slipped out a few minutes later to use the bathroom, she saw them in the kitchen, Cas gently securing a bandage across Dean's shoulder, leaning down to rest his forehead against his husband's, Dean brushing his fingers across Cas' cheek. She hurried past before they could see her.

When she got back to the rec room, she burrowed into her sleeping bag and looked at Mary. "What did your dads do before they had you?"

Mary raised an eyebrow and smirked. "They saved the world."

~the end~