fic: We can make origami with the kids for a while
Oh fuck my LIFE. Here is a slice of ridiculous schmoopy plotless kidfic and WHAT HAVE I BECOME.
We can make origami with the kids for a while
PG J2, 3384 words. Warning: YOUR TEETH MAY ROT.
Thanks to rhythmsextion for the motivation to make this adorable dream a reality. Title from The Features' The Idea of Growing Old
In which Chad has kids and they need babysitting.
*
Of all his friends, Jared would have bet good money on Chad not being the first to have kids. To be honest, he would have bet good money on Chad never having kids at all. Six years ago, if you told Jared to picture Chad “the M stands for GODDAMN” Murray in his natural element, the mental image would have been pretty low on diaper changes and bedtime stories. Beer bongs, yes - bedtimes, no.
So colour them all surprised when Chad and Kenzie finally tied the knot and got right down to the baby-making business, popping out a pair of ridiculously adorable babies ten months later. Chad made Jared Godfather, which was pretty fucking weird, and then high-fived him over the font mid-Christening, which really kinda wasn’t.
For the last five years, godfathering duties mainly involved picking really awesome presents to send the twins every birthday, or Christmas, or just ‘cause and then arguing with Jensen about it for a few minutes-and-or-hours until they reached some kind of gift-giving compromise (Wii Too PLUS educational video games! Sneakers with flashing lights and wheels in the heels PLUS a dozen pairs of new socks!) But then Chad got the green light on his own personal Vancouver-based, cheesy sci-fi cult TV show and moved his whole family up with him - after calling Jared and Jensen up to crow that he was “gonna steal all your old crazy fans” - and that moved the godfathering status all the way up to ‘emergency babysitter’, and here they are.
“This is my number,” Chad says, handing Jared a piece of paper. “And here’s Kenzie’s,” he adds, handing him another. “And here’s the restaurant. And if you can’t get through to any of those, this is our neighbour, he’s a cool guy, says ‘eh’ a lot, you can trust him.”
“We can trust him because he says ‘eh’ a lot?” Jensen murmurs from the side, but Chad is too busy explaining his offspring’s eating habits in detail to pay attention.
“They’re both pickyass eaters,” he’s saying, waving Ziploc bags of sandwiches in Jared’s face, “but we’re trying to ease them out of it so fix ‘em dinner by yourself first, sandwiches are a last resort. You hear that, guys?” he calls behind him. “Mommy’s sandwiches are for when you’re on the verge of starvation. If you can feel your stomach acid eating up your insides, that’s when you break open Mommy’s sandwiches. Hell, eat each other before you eat Mommy’s sandwiches, okay? At least you’ve never tried human flesh before.
“I’m only kidding,” he adds, glancing back at Jared, “don’t let them cannibalise each other.”
“I’ll try not to,” Jared says.
Chad nods gravely and drops the sandwiches back into his giant bag of kid-stuff. “If they ever start getting out of hand, just remind them that you’ll be reporting back to Kenzie. She’s the best bad-cop ever. Sometimes I just have to like, drop what I’m doing and give her a parenting high-five.”
“Yeah,” Jared says. He chances a sidelong glance at Jensen, who grins back at him and wiggles his eyebrows in a very unsexy kind of way. Jensen, Jared decides, can be the bad-cop. Jared will provide the high-fives.
“Okay,” Chad says. He lets out a breath and looks back over his shoulder. “Hey, kids, move your asses. Come say hi to your big gay uncles.”
Jared takes a defensive step-back at the pitter-pattering of tiny feet, because he’s never really gotten over that evil gnome nightmare he had when he was a kid, and then two little heads pop out from around their Daddy’s legs. It’s been about eighteen months since Jared and Jensen last made it down to L.A to say hi to the Murray family, and if anything the twins now look even more like miniature Chads than they did back then. Except, like, in a good way.
“Hi,” says Jared, with an awkward little wave, once it becomes clear Jensen isn’t going to make the first human-to-child contact.
There’s a pause, with two pairs of adorably squinty eyes staring up at him. Then,
“Holy shit,” says Luke, “you’re tall.”
Jared gapes. Next to him, Jensen coughs in that weird way he does when he’s trying not to laugh manically at something.
“You shouldn’t say that!” exclaims Connie, punching Luke in the arm. It’s a pretty girly punch, but whatever, she’s five, Jared can let her off.
“But he is tall,” Luke shouts back. He goes for a fistful of her fluffy, Chad-like hair, but the hair’s father moves too damn fast for five-year-olds, tugging them both apart. Apparently parenting enhances reflexes.
“Luke,” Chad says, pulling his serious face. “Remember what happens when you swear?”
“Mommy’s spidey sense tingles,” Luke mutters.
“Exactly,” Chad says. “So keep that potty-mouth de-pottied, okay? Now show me some love.” He extends a fist, waiting expectantly until Luke and then Connie bump their own fists against his knuckles. Chad grins and ruffles their hair.
“Okay,” he says, steering his kids forwards towards Jared and Jensen and taking a step back in one smooth move. “I am gettin’ laid tonight or dying trying, so I’ll see you babysitting losers at nine am tomorrow.” He thrusts the bag of kidstuff into Jared’s arms and doesn’t quite make a run for it, but it’s a pretty close thing.
“Be there or be square,” Luke calls after his dad’s hastily retreating back.
There’s a moment of silence, the four of them standing together in the hallway while Jared contemplates his best friend’s sex life - and also the fact that there are two small children in his care for the next sixteen hours - and Connie sticks a finger up her nose. Luke kicks her shoe for no apparent reason. Then Jensen clears his throat and claps his hands together. The kids stare up at him expectantly.
“Okay,” Jensen says. “So. I, uh. We - have dogs?”
It does the trick. Connie claps her hands over her mouth and then runs off down the hall, making the kind of high-pitched noise Jared hasn’t heard since they quit doing conventions, and Luke follows close behind her, yelling “I’m gonna beat you, Connie, I’m gonna beat you!” at the top of his lungs.
Jared stares after them, and then turns to stare at Jensen. “You,” he says, eventually, “are awesome.”
Jensen waves a hand, in an aw shucks it was nothin’ kind of way. “Every kid has a dogdar,” he says, by way of explanation.
“You’re awesome,” Jared repeats. He dumps the giant kidstuff bag down on the carpet and kisses Jensen on the tip of the nose, just because he can. A secret, will-not-admit-under-torture part of him is still so in love with the way Jensen’s nose scrunches up under contact.
When he pulls back, Jensen’s grinning up at him, nose scrunched. It’s a moment. They’re totally having a moment.
In the distance, the dogs start barking.
“We should probably see to that,” Jensen says. “Before the kids start trying to ride the dogs like tiny little ponies.”
“Man,” Jared says. “That would be so cool. I mean,” he adds, at Jensen’s look, “so very, very uncool and we should go stop it from happening. Yeah.”
Jensen seems satisfied by the hasty back-pedalling, grabbing Jared by the hand and pulling him down the hall towards the sound of excited dog-barking and equally excited child-shrieking coming from the kitchen. But in secret, Jared’s kind of rooting for tiny dog-ponies anyway.
There were no tiny dog-poines. There was, however, a whole lot of delighted dog-to-child meet’n’greets, closely followed by some delighted trying-to-feed-my-brother-to-a-dog. Connie’s technique is honestly impressive, but Jensen puts a stop to it with some ninja reflexes that would make Chad proud and sure as hell makes Jared’s belly flutter with a little bit of speedy-boyfriend pride.
“You are getting high-fived so hard later,” he murmurs in Jensen’s ear, as he gathers up an armful of balls and squeaky toys and shepherds children and dogs out into the garden.
Two hour later, Harley and Sadie have passed out in a patch of sunlight, all fetched out, and Luke and Connie are running after each other in lieu of dogs to chase. Jared collapsed next to Jensen on the patio steps about twenty minutes ago and he’s sat there still, elbows propped on his knees and mouth hanging open.
“I swear I was never that energetic,” he says. “How are tiny people that energetic?”
“I think they’re condensed,” Jensen says. “By alien technology.”
“Amen, brother.” Jared raises his bottle of beer in a babysitting salute and Jensen obligingly knocks his own against it with a clink. So Jared elbows him in the side and Jensen returns that too, head ducked down like elbowing your boyfriend is some kind of secret pleasure. There are crinkles all around his eyes and grey hairs behind his ears. It makes Jared feel young and fluttery and stupidly girly enough to chase dogs for two hours again.
He has to drain his beer in order to reassert his masculinity, if nothing else, and when he lowers the bottle, Luke has somehow materialised right in front of them
“I have never drunk beer,” Luke announces, “but I ate a spider last week.”
Jensen coughs. “Yeah?” he says. “And uh - how did that go?”
“It was crunchy,” Luke says. He nods gravely and then, apparently satisfied that he’s imparted all the wisdom he needs to, he runs away again.
There is nothing anyone can say to ever follow that up, so they watch in silence as Luke catches back up with his sister and they - for reasons known only unto God and each other - begin to spin around in little circles.
“Kids are fucking amazing,” Jared says, eventually.
“Careful,” Jensen murmurs. He grins at Jared’s questioning glance and adds, “Kenzie’s spidey sense might tingle.”
“Baby, you know you’d protect me.”
“Maybe,” Jensen says. “I guess.”
Luke topples over onto the lawn mid-spin, shrieking with dizzy laughter until Connie sits on his head. Jensen drains his own bottle of beer and rests his hand on Jared’s knee.
Jared had spent the whole week insisting that he’d order the kids takeout Chinese and meatfeast pizza, just for shits and giggles and the horrified expression on Jensen’s face, but once Connie starts to make noises about being hungry - and Jensen catches her sending Luke on a stealth raid for Mommy’s anti-cannibalism sandwiches - Jared sneaks into the kitchen and opens up a bag of pasta.
He’s crushing canned tomatoes with the back of his fork, when he feels an arm wrap around his hips, hand splaying easily over his stomach.
“Oh god, I’m being molested,” Jared says, squashing a tomato. “And in my own kitchen, too.”
“Is nothing sacred?” Jensen sighs. He clicks his tongue sympathetically, chin nudging against Jared’s shoulder. “I notice this isn’t pizza.”
“Affirmative.” Jared grinds some pepper into the pan and then stretches across the counter for the chopped basil, feeling Jensen sway with him. It’s a good feeling. “So, your breath is gonna reek tonight. I think it’s close to my body weight in garlic in here. Maybe just Harley’s.”
“Sometimes I worry you’ll take the garlic press to bed and leave me here in the kitchen.”
Jared scrapes the basil leaves off the chopping board and into the pan with a satisfied hum. “I warned you when I married you that nothing could ever take the place of garlic in my heart.”
Jensen jabs him in the side with what feels like the end a wooden spoon, then presses his face into the back of Jared’s neck. “Oh, we’re married now, are we?”
“You were drunk,” Jared says. “Kept weepin’ about your lost youth. It was a beautiful ceremony.”
“I’ve been living vicariously through you since I hit thirty, it’s true,” Jensen says.
Jared twists around, nudging their faces together. He’s still holding the chopping board, Jensen’s wooden spoon is poking into his ribs, and Jensen’s nose scrunches up at the contact, in that way it always does. Jared slides his free hand down the small of Jensen’s back, just breathing it all in.
And then Connie bursts through the kitchen door, screaming, “Uncle Jared! Uncle Jensen! Luke licked his finger and he wiped it on my face!”
“Holy sh - ibble,” Jared says, dropping the chopping board.
“Shibble isn’t a word,” Connie wails. “You made it up and Luke got finger cooties on me and then I kicked him and he pulled my hair.”
Luke follows her into the kitchen, looking pretty Zen about the whole affair. “You were gonna kiss,” he announces, pointing at Jared with one hand and Jensen with the other. It’s some serious déjà vu to Chad’s drunken attempts at matchmaking.
“Finger cooties,” Connie cries. She wraps her arms around Jared’s legs and buries her face in between his thighs.
“Do boys get cooties when they kiss other boys?” Luke asks.
Jensen breathes out slowly and lowers his wooden spoon. “Actually,” he says, “when boys kiss their cooties unite and form a protective forcefield. But girls don’t get that forcefield until they’re at least ten years older, so you should apologise to your sister.”
Luke crosses his arms and says, with all the dignity he can muster, “She sat on my head.”
“You ate a spider,” Connie says, from her place in Jared’s thighs. “You have cootie spider spit.”
It seems to touch a nerve. “You look like a CATERPILLAR,” Luke shouts, stamping a foot. Connie lets out a wail, burrowing even deeper into the safety of Jared’s legs.
“Hey,” Jared says. “Hey.” He rests his hand on the top of Connie’s fluffy, blonde head. “Luke, you don’t have spider spit, and Connie, if you did look like a caterpillar, it would be the prettiest caterpillar in the world. But if you’re still worried, it just so happens that we have the cure for cootie spider spit and caterpillar-faces cooking in this pan here.”
Jensen raises an eyebrow at him. Luke does the same. But Connie pulls her head out of his legs, sniffing deeply as she blinks up at him, so Jared counts it a minor victory, even if she does wipe her runny nose on his jeans.
“Seriously,” he says. “This pasta sauce is magic.”
Luke frowns at him, and then at the sauce, apparently mulling over his options. “What does it do?” he says, eventually.
Jared is all ready and drawing in a breath to spin some yarn about x-ray vision and psychic powers and possibly the power of flight, when Jensen cuts in with a smooth, “You won’t know until you eat it, will you,” which is apparently a compelling argument to five-year-olds. They climb into their seats at the dinner table, argument forgotten in the face of magical pasta sauce.
“You’re awesome,” Jared whispers to Jensen as he grabs dishes out of the cupboard. Jensen shakes his head and rolls his eyes, but he looks pleased anyway. Then Jared turns back to the kids and loudly adds, “It might involve x-ray vision,” just ‘cause.
After dinner, with the anti-cannibalism sandwiches successfully untouched, Luke fixes them with a beady eye and says, “I wanna watch Gilmore Girls.”
Jensen spits out a mouthful of water, which would be awesome under any other circumstances, but as it is Jared is too busy staring down at the kid to savour the experience. “Uh,” he says. “You watch that?”
“Mommy likes it when her and Daddy have a fight,” Connie explains. “She watches it when Daddy’s on and laughs until she’s not mad anymore. You were in it too,” she adds, eyeing Jared speculatively.
“Yeah,” Jared says. “I know.”
“And you were in that show about the doctors and you caught bad guys too, with, um medicine,” Luke says. “Like, bad guy shots.”
“There was a lady with pretty hair,” Connie adds. She frowns up at Jared. “Why didn’t you marry her?”
“Why did the show stop?” Luke asks.
Jensen, recovered from his water-spitting incident, grins brightly across at Jared, in a reverse Schadenfreude-y kind of way. “He didn’t marry her because I wouldn’t let him,” he explains, with a gleeful look in his eye. “We had to work on our boy kiss forcefield. Which is why the show stopped, too. Jared took the whole summer off to strengthen the forcefield.”
“Oh.” Connie nods in understanding. “You’re a horndog.”
“Oh god,” Jared says, dropping his head into his hands.
Jensen coughs loudly, suppressing his manic laughter, and then clears his throat, and then claps his hands together. “So,” he says, “how about that Gilmore Girls?”
And that is how they find themselves a few hours later, watching Rory and Lorelai Gilmore mouth at high speeds, with the TV on mute and the twins fast asleep on their end of the couch. Jared and Jensen are squashed up together on the other end, with Jared’s arm around Jensen’s shoulder and Jensen’s head resting on Jared’s shoulder.
“Man, that Dean Forester,” Jensen says. “What a catch.”
“I would date him in one hot second,” says Jared.
“Now that I would like to watch.”
“You horndog,” Jared whispers. Jensen snorts with laughter and then claps a hand over his mouth, twisting to glance at the kids. Jared turns too and is pleased to see that Luke’s got a foot practically up Connie’s nose. He figures if that doesn’t wake them up, nothing will.
He’s watching their chests rise and fall and feeling Jensen relax back down against him and this is it, Jared thinks. This.
“Let’s have one,” he says. “A kid, I mean. Or maybe two. It might be cruel to just have one of them, you know? Like, I couldn’t have left Sadie all alone without bringing Harley into the family. I had to get her a friend.”
“Did you just compare child-rearing to pet ownership?” Jensen mumbles.
“A little bit.”
Jensen huffs out a breath of laughter and pats Jared on the thigh. “C’mon,” he says, sitting up. “We should get them to bed.”
“Yeah,” Jared says. “Okay.”
It takes approximately half an hour to hustle sleepy five-year-olds off of the couch and into the bathroom to brush their teeth and then into their PJs and bed. They’re both asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillows, maybe a little before.
For a moment, Jared just stands there, in the middle of the darkened room. He isn’t sure what he’s waiting for.
Then he feels Jensen hook a finger into his belt loop and draw him backwards out of the room, whispering, “Come on, you breathe like a caveman, could wake ‘em up.”
“I’ll cave your man,” Jared whispers back, because some things are just hardwired.
“Sure you will.” They pass the threshold and Jensen tugs the door almost closed, but still a little ajar - enough for the hall light to leak in and for distressed voices to leak out. Jensen would be a great dad. Jared’s sure of it.
“I mean it, you know,” Jared says.
“I know,” says Jensen.
“I want us to have kids.” He takes Jensen’s hand, pulling them further away from the door because he doesn’t want to wake the twins up and Jared knows he would be a great dad as well. He doesn’t let go, because he’s a great boyfriend too. “I want to have a whole load of kids. At least three, so they can grow up in the same kind of families we did, and I want to get married and drive practical, family cars and maybe move into a bigger house and make magic pasta sauce for the rest of my life. With you. All of it with you, yeah?”
Jensen links their fingers together, like they’re fourteen and on their first date, not standing in the dark in the middle of the hall of a house they’ve shared for not far off a decade now, with Jared’s heart beating hard enough that he might as well be fourteen after all.
And then Jensen says, “Yeah,” and he ducks his head and laughs, like he can’t believe Jared even had to ask. “Yeah, okay.”
They stand there for a little while, just holding hands and listening to the kids breathe and feeling the world grow around them.
*
We can make origami with the kids for a while
PG J2, 3384 words. Warning: YOUR TEETH MAY ROT.
Thanks to rhythmsextion for the motivation to make this adorable dream a reality. Title from The Features' The Idea of Growing Old
In which Chad has kids and they need babysitting.
*
Of all his friends, Jared would have bet good money on Chad not being the first to have kids. To be honest, he would have bet good money on Chad never having kids at all. Six years ago, if you told Jared to picture Chad “the M stands for GODDAMN” Murray in his natural element, the mental image would have been pretty low on diaper changes and bedtime stories. Beer bongs, yes - bedtimes, no.
So colour them all surprised when Chad and Kenzie finally tied the knot and got right down to the baby-making business, popping out a pair of ridiculously adorable babies ten months later. Chad made Jared Godfather, which was pretty fucking weird, and then high-fived him over the font mid-Christening, which really kinda wasn’t.
For the last five years, godfathering duties mainly involved picking really awesome presents to send the twins every birthday, or Christmas, or just ‘cause and then arguing with Jensen about it for a few minutes-and-or-hours until they reached some kind of gift-giving compromise (Wii Too PLUS educational video games! Sneakers with flashing lights and wheels in the heels PLUS a dozen pairs of new socks!) But then Chad got the green light on his own personal Vancouver-based, cheesy sci-fi cult TV show and moved his whole family up with him - after calling Jared and Jensen up to crow that he was “gonna steal all your old crazy fans” - and that moved the godfathering status all the way up to ‘emergency babysitter’, and here they are.
“This is my number,” Chad says, handing Jared a piece of paper. “And here’s Kenzie’s,” he adds, handing him another. “And here’s the restaurant. And if you can’t get through to any of those, this is our neighbour, he’s a cool guy, says ‘eh’ a lot, you can trust him.”
“We can trust him because he says ‘eh’ a lot?” Jensen murmurs from the side, but Chad is too busy explaining his offspring’s eating habits in detail to pay attention.
“They’re both pickyass eaters,” he’s saying, waving Ziploc bags of sandwiches in Jared’s face, “but we’re trying to ease them out of it so fix ‘em dinner by yourself first, sandwiches are a last resort. You hear that, guys?” he calls behind him. “Mommy’s sandwiches are for when you’re on the verge of starvation. If you can feel your stomach acid eating up your insides, that’s when you break open Mommy’s sandwiches. Hell, eat each other before you eat Mommy’s sandwiches, okay? At least you’ve never tried human flesh before.
“I’m only kidding,” he adds, glancing back at Jared, “don’t let them cannibalise each other.”
“I’ll try not to,” Jared says.
Chad nods gravely and drops the sandwiches back into his giant bag of kid-stuff. “If they ever start getting out of hand, just remind them that you’ll be reporting back to Kenzie. She’s the best bad-cop ever. Sometimes I just have to like, drop what I’m doing and give her a parenting high-five.”
“Yeah,” Jared says. He chances a sidelong glance at Jensen, who grins back at him and wiggles his eyebrows in a very unsexy kind of way. Jensen, Jared decides, can be the bad-cop. Jared will provide the high-fives.
“Okay,” Chad says. He lets out a breath and looks back over his shoulder. “Hey, kids, move your asses. Come say hi to your big gay uncles.”
Jared takes a defensive step-back at the pitter-pattering of tiny feet, because he’s never really gotten over that evil gnome nightmare he had when he was a kid, and then two little heads pop out from around their Daddy’s legs. It’s been about eighteen months since Jared and Jensen last made it down to L.A to say hi to the Murray family, and if anything the twins now look even more like miniature Chads than they did back then. Except, like, in a good way.
“Hi,” says Jared, with an awkward little wave, once it becomes clear Jensen isn’t going to make the first human-to-child contact.
There’s a pause, with two pairs of adorably squinty eyes staring up at him. Then,
“Holy shit,” says Luke, “you’re tall.”
Jared gapes. Next to him, Jensen coughs in that weird way he does when he’s trying not to laugh manically at something.
“You shouldn’t say that!” exclaims Connie, punching Luke in the arm. It’s a pretty girly punch, but whatever, she’s five, Jared can let her off.
“But he is tall,” Luke shouts back. He goes for a fistful of her fluffy, Chad-like hair, but the hair’s father moves too damn fast for five-year-olds, tugging them both apart. Apparently parenting enhances reflexes.
“Luke,” Chad says, pulling his serious face. “Remember what happens when you swear?”
“Mommy’s spidey sense tingles,” Luke mutters.
“Exactly,” Chad says. “So keep that potty-mouth de-pottied, okay? Now show me some love.” He extends a fist, waiting expectantly until Luke and then Connie bump their own fists against his knuckles. Chad grins and ruffles their hair.
“Okay,” he says, steering his kids forwards towards Jared and Jensen and taking a step back in one smooth move. “I am gettin’ laid tonight or dying trying, so I’ll see you babysitting losers at nine am tomorrow.” He thrusts the bag of kidstuff into Jared’s arms and doesn’t quite make a run for it, but it’s a pretty close thing.
“Be there or be square,” Luke calls after his dad’s hastily retreating back.
There’s a moment of silence, the four of them standing together in the hallway while Jared contemplates his best friend’s sex life - and also the fact that there are two small children in his care for the next sixteen hours - and Connie sticks a finger up her nose. Luke kicks her shoe for no apparent reason. Then Jensen clears his throat and claps his hands together. The kids stare up at him expectantly.
“Okay,” Jensen says. “So. I, uh. We - have dogs?”
It does the trick. Connie claps her hands over her mouth and then runs off down the hall, making the kind of high-pitched noise Jared hasn’t heard since they quit doing conventions, and Luke follows close behind her, yelling “I’m gonna beat you, Connie, I’m gonna beat you!” at the top of his lungs.
Jared stares after them, and then turns to stare at Jensen. “You,” he says, eventually, “are awesome.”
Jensen waves a hand, in an aw shucks it was nothin’ kind of way. “Every kid has a dogdar,” he says, by way of explanation.
“You’re awesome,” Jared repeats. He dumps the giant kidstuff bag down on the carpet and kisses Jensen on the tip of the nose, just because he can. A secret, will-not-admit-under-torture part of him is still so in love with the way Jensen’s nose scrunches up under contact.
When he pulls back, Jensen’s grinning up at him, nose scrunched. It’s a moment. They’re totally having a moment.
In the distance, the dogs start barking.
“We should probably see to that,” Jensen says. “Before the kids start trying to ride the dogs like tiny little ponies.”
“Man,” Jared says. “That would be so cool. I mean,” he adds, at Jensen’s look, “so very, very uncool and we should go stop it from happening. Yeah.”
Jensen seems satisfied by the hasty back-pedalling, grabbing Jared by the hand and pulling him down the hall towards the sound of excited dog-barking and equally excited child-shrieking coming from the kitchen. But in secret, Jared’s kind of rooting for tiny dog-ponies anyway.
There were no tiny dog-poines. There was, however, a whole lot of delighted dog-to-child meet’n’greets, closely followed by some delighted trying-to-feed-my-brother-to-a-dog. Connie’s technique is honestly impressive, but Jensen puts a stop to it with some ninja reflexes that would make Chad proud and sure as hell makes Jared’s belly flutter with a little bit of speedy-boyfriend pride.
“You are getting high-fived so hard later,” he murmurs in Jensen’s ear, as he gathers up an armful of balls and squeaky toys and shepherds children and dogs out into the garden.
Two hour later, Harley and Sadie have passed out in a patch of sunlight, all fetched out, and Luke and Connie are running after each other in lieu of dogs to chase. Jared collapsed next to Jensen on the patio steps about twenty minutes ago and he’s sat there still, elbows propped on his knees and mouth hanging open.
“I swear I was never that energetic,” he says. “How are tiny people that energetic?”
“I think they’re condensed,” Jensen says. “By alien technology.”
“Amen, brother.” Jared raises his bottle of beer in a babysitting salute and Jensen obligingly knocks his own against it with a clink. So Jared elbows him in the side and Jensen returns that too, head ducked down like elbowing your boyfriend is some kind of secret pleasure. There are crinkles all around his eyes and grey hairs behind his ears. It makes Jared feel young and fluttery and stupidly girly enough to chase dogs for two hours again.
He has to drain his beer in order to reassert his masculinity, if nothing else, and when he lowers the bottle, Luke has somehow materialised right in front of them
“I have never drunk beer,” Luke announces, “but I ate a spider last week.”
Jensen coughs. “Yeah?” he says. “And uh - how did that go?”
“It was crunchy,” Luke says. He nods gravely and then, apparently satisfied that he’s imparted all the wisdom he needs to, he runs away again.
There is nothing anyone can say to ever follow that up, so they watch in silence as Luke catches back up with his sister and they - for reasons known only unto God and each other - begin to spin around in little circles.
“Kids are fucking amazing,” Jared says, eventually.
“Careful,” Jensen murmurs. He grins at Jared’s questioning glance and adds, “Kenzie’s spidey sense might tingle.”
“Baby, you know you’d protect me.”
“Maybe,” Jensen says. “I guess.”
Luke topples over onto the lawn mid-spin, shrieking with dizzy laughter until Connie sits on his head. Jensen drains his own bottle of beer and rests his hand on Jared’s knee.
Jared had spent the whole week insisting that he’d order the kids takeout Chinese and meatfeast pizza, just for shits and giggles and the horrified expression on Jensen’s face, but once Connie starts to make noises about being hungry - and Jensen catches her sending Luke on a stealth raid for Mommy’s anti-cannibalism sandwiches - Jared sneaks into the kitchen and opens up a bag of pasta.
He’s crushing canned tomatoes with the back of his fork, when he feels an arm wrap around his hips, hand splaying easily over his stomach.
“Oh god, I’m being molested,” Jared says, squashing a tomato. “And in my own kitchen, too.”
“Is nothing sacred?” Jensen sighs. He clicks his tongue sympathetically, chin nudging against Jared’s shoulder. “I notice this isn’t pizza.”
“Affirmative.” Jared grinds some pepper into the pan and then stretches across the counter for the chopped basil, feeling Jensen sway with him. It’s a good feeling. “So, your breath is gonna reek tonight. I think it’s close to my body weight in garlic in here. Maybe just Harley’s.”
“Sometimes I worry you’ll take the garlic press to bed and leave me here in the kitchen.”
Jared scrapes the basil leaves off the chopping board and into the pan with a satisfied hum. “I warned you when I married you that nothing could ever take the place of garlic in my heart.”
Jensen jabs him in the side with what feels like the end a wooden spoon, then presses his face into the back of Jared’s neck. “Oh, we’re married now, are we?”
“You were drunk,” Jared says. “Kept weepin’ about your lost youth. It was a beautiful ceremony.”
“I’ve been living vicariously through you since I hit thirty, it’s true,” Jensen says.
Jared twists around, nudging their faces together. He’s still holding the chopping board, Jensen’s wooden spoon is poking into his ribs, and Jensen’s nose scrunches up at the contact, in that way it always does. Jared slides his free hand down the small of Jensen’s back, just breathing it all in.
And then Connie bursts through the kitchen door, screaming, “Uncle Jared! Uncle Jensen! Luke licked his finger and he wiped it on my face!”
“Holy sh - ibble,” Jared says, dropping the chopping board.
“Shibble isn’t a word,” Connie wails. “You made it up and Luke got finger cooties on me and then I kicked him and he pulled my hair.”
Luke follows her into the kitchen, looking pretty Zen about the whole affair. “You were gonna kiss,” he announces, pointing at Jared with one hand and Jensen with the other. It’s some serious déjà vu to Chad’s drunken attempts at matchmaking.
“Finger cooties,” Connie cries. She wraps her arms around Jared’s legs and buries her face in between his thighs.
“Do boys get cooties when they kiss other boys?” Luke asks.
Jensen breathes out slowly and lowers his wooden spoon. “Actually,” he says, “when boys kiss their cooties unite and form a protective forcefield. But girls don’t get that forcefield until they’re at least ten years older, so you should apologise to your sister.”
Luke crosses his arms and says, with all the dignity he can muster, “She sat on my head.”
“You ate a spider,” Connie says, from her place in Jared’s thighs. “You have cootie spider spit.”
It seems to touch a nerve. “You look like a CATERPILLAR,” Luke shouts, stamping a foot. Connie lets out a wail, burrowing even deeper into the safety of Jared’s legs.
“Hey,” Jared says. “Hey.” He rests his hand on the top of Connie’s fluffy, blonde head. “Luke, you don’t have spider spit, and Connie, if you did look like a caterpillar, it would be the prettiest caterpillar in the world. But if you’re still worried, it just so happens that we have the cure for cootie spider spit and caterpillar-faces cooking in this pan here.”
Jensen raises an eyebrow at him. Luke does the same. But Connie pulls her head out of his legs, sniffing deeply as she blinks up at him, so Jared counts it a minor victory, even if she does wipe her runny nose on his jeans.
“Seriously,” he says. “This pasta sauce is magic.”
Luke frowns at him, and then at the sauce, apparently mulling over his options. “What does it do?” he says, eventually.
Jared is all ready and drawing in a breath to spin some yarn about x-ray vision and psychic powers and possibly the power of flight, when Jensen cuts in with a smooth, “You won’t know until you eat it, will you,” which is apparently a compelling argument to five-year-olds. They climb into their seats at the dinner table, argument forgotten in the face of magical pasta sauce.
“You’re awesome,” Jared whispers to Jensen as he grabs dishes out of the cupboard. Jensen shakes his head and rolls his eyes, but he looks pleased anyway. Then Jared turns back to the kids and loudly adds, “It might involve x-ray vision,” just ‘cause.
After dinner, with the anti-cannibalism sandwiches successfully untouched, Luke fixes them with a beady eye and says, “I wanna watch Gilmore Girls.”
Jensen spits out a mouthful of water, which would be awesome under any other circumstances, but as it is Jared is too busy staring down at the kid to savour the experience. “Uh,” he says. “You watch that?”
“Mommy likes it when her and Daddy have a fight,” Connie explains. “She watches it when Daddy’s on and laughs until she’s not mad anymore. You were in it too,” she adds, eyeing Jared speculatively.
“Yeah,” Jared says. “I know.”
“And you were in that show about the doctors and you caught bad guys too, with, um medicine,” Luke says. “Like, bad guy shots.”
“There was a lady with pretty hair,” Connie adds. She frowns up at Jared. “Why didn’t you marry her?”
“Why did the show stop?” Luke asks.
Jensen, recovered from his water-spitting incident, grins brightly across at Jared, in a reverse Schadenfreude-y kind of way. “He didn’t marry her because I wouldn’t let him,” he explains, with a gleeful look in his eye. “We had to work on our boy kiss forcefield. Which is why the show stopped, too. Jared took the whole summer off to strengthen the forcefield.”
“Oh.” Connie nods in understanding. “You’re a horndog.”
“Oh god,” Jared says, dropping his head into his hands.
Jensen coughs loudly, suppressing his manic laughter, and then clears his throat, and then claps his hands together. “So,” he says, “how about that Gilmore Girls?”
And that is how they find themselves a few hours later, watching Rory and Lorelai Gilmore mouth at high speeds, with the TV on mute and the twins fast asleep on their end of the couch. Jared and Jensen are squashed up together on the other end, with Jared’s arm around Jensen’s shoulder and Jensen’s head resting on Jared’s shoulder.
“Man, that Dean Forester,” Jensen says. “What a catch.”
“I would date him in one hot second,” says Jared.
“Now that I would like to watch.”
“You horndog,” Jared whispers. Jensen snorts with laughter and then claps a hand over his mouth, twisting to glance at the kids. Jared turns too and is pleased to see that Luke’s got a foot practically up Connie’s nose. He figures if that doesn’t wake them up, nothing will.
He’s watching their chests rise and fall and feeling Jensen relax back down against him and this is it, Jared thinks. This.
“Let’s have one,” he says. “A kid, I mean. Or maybe two. It might be cruel to just have one of them, you know? Like, I couldn’t have left Sadie all alone without bringing Harley into the family. I had to get her a friend.”
“Did you just compare child-rearing to pet ownership?” Jensen mumbles.
“A little bit.”
Jensen huffs out a breath of laughter and pats Jared on the thigh. “C’mon,” he says, sitting up. “We should get them to bed.”
“Yeah,” Jared says. “Okay.”
It takes approximately half an hour to hustle sleepy five-year-olds off of the couch and into the bathroom to brush their teeth and then into their PJs and bed. They’re both asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillows, maybe a little before.
For a moment, Jared just stands there, in the middle of the darkened room. He isn’t sure what he’s waiting for.
Then he feels Jensen hook a finger into his belt loop and draw him backwards out of the room, whispering, “Come on, you breathe like a caveman, could wake ‘em up.”
“I’ll cave your man,” Jared whispers back, because some things are just hardwired.
“Sure you will.” They pass the threshold and Jensen tugs the door almost closed, but still a little ajar - enough for the hall light to leak in and for distressed voices to leak out. Jensen would be a great dad. Jared’s sure of it.
“I mean it, you know,” Jared says.
“I know,” says Jensen.
“I want us to have kids.” He takes Jensen’s hand, pulling them further away from the door because he doesn’t want to wake the twins up and Jared knows he would be a great dad as well. He doesn’t let go, because he’s a great boyfriend too. “I want to have a whole load of kids. At least three, so they can grow up in the same kind of families we did, and I want to get married and drive practical, family cars and maybe move into a bigger house and make magic pasta sauce for the rest of my life. With you. All of it with you, yeah?”
Jensen links their fingers together, like they’re fourteen and on their first date, not standing in the dark in the middle of the hall of a house they’ve shared for not far off a decade now, with Jared’s heart beating hard enough that he might as well be fourteen after all.
And then Jensen says, “Yeah,” and he ducks his head and laughs, like he can’t believe Jared even had to ask. “Yeah, okay.”
They stand there for a little while, just holding hands and listening to the kids breathe and feeling the world grow around them.
*