an: written on tumblr for domesticlifeofghosts, who wanted fic of Emma and Claire being awkward stepsisters.

pairing: Dean/Cas

warnings: language, homophobic slurs

- o -

Jesus, the school should just have a parking spot labeled, "Reserved for the Novak-Winchesters," because Dean's getting sick of having to cruise around the parking lot looking for a spot every time he gets a call from the principal about Emma.

It's like the kid doesn't know the meaning of "under the radar," although to be fair secretly he wouldn't have it any other way. Things had been downright uncomfortable those first few months after Seattle, her staying carefully quiet in the backseat and trying to play Invisible Girl like if Dean didn't notice she was there he wouldn't send her away, and shit, it still stings to remember that time, but what's done is done, and Em's a smart-ass now, has a sassy answer for everything, especially if it means making Cas hide a smile behind his hand or Claire choke on her morning Multi-Grain Cheerios. It's been suggested that Claire start wearing a bib at mealtimes because Emma always seems to make her spit something out, but Claire refuses to do it unless Emma wears a bib too (which would make Dean' s freaking day, seriously). But Emma's dug up what she calls a fashion sense from somewhere and refuses, so Dean's just settled for buying the cheap plastic Dollar Tree tablecloths that guffaw in the face of spit-out milk. The ugly patterns remind him of all the god-awful motels he and Sam have stayed in over the years, so maybe he doesn't mind them quite as much as he pretends, but half the fun is complaining when Emma makes a comment about her gym teacher's plum-snugglers and spaghetti noodles splurt out of Claire's nose and end up spattered across half the table.

(It's also kind of worth it to see Cas look down in bemusement at the noodle clinging to his tie.)

But anyway. The school's round-bellied resource officer strides out of the office building and gets into his patrol car where it's parked right in front of the front office. Dean sighs in relief as it pulls away, first because he has somewhere to park now and second because the cop leaving means Emma didn't break any laws this time, which is never a given. Thank God Sammy finally got his law degree.

He parks Baby and climbs out, swiping his hands down his stained jeans. He hadn't bothered to change other than to pull a jacket on over his t-shirt when he left the garage; he and Principal Chan are on pretty informal terms by now, have been since Emma and Claire started high school two years back.

"All right," he says as he pulls open the office door, already deciding that Emma's losing stereo privileges for two weeks this time instead of one. "What'd she do this time?"

The secretary, Ms. Costanza, who usually has a rueful smile ready for him, looks worried as she stands from her desk, which is Dean's first clue something's up. Second is Principal Chan leaning out of her office with a bag of ice in her hand saying, "Please come in, Mr. Winchester."

And Dean frowns at the bag of ice as he follows Chan, 'cuz if it was a fight and Emma let someone get the better of her maybe it's time to start sparring with his kids more frequently, 'cuz there's civilian and then there's wuss, and no kid of his is gonna get beat up by some snot-nosed— Holy shit, it's not Emma sitting in the Guilty Student Chair.

"Claire?" he blurts out.

She looks back at him, eyes red-rimmed and miserable above the bag of ice she's got clutched over her nose. Her face is white and panicked; he's half afraid she's going to pass out, remembers how Sammy hyperventilated that one time he got sent to the principal's office, terrified that he'd blown his chances at going to college, and Claire's like Sammy that way, has Princeton posters plastered on her bedroom walls and freaks out when she gets B's, and before Dean knows it he's crouching in front of her, saying, "Hey. Hey, sweetheart, it's okay, deep breath, all right?"

Claire takes a shuddering breath and pulls the ice carefully from her nose and holy shit had whoever punched her had one hell of a right swing.

He spins on Chan as she sits behind her desk. "The fuck happened to my kid?"

Chan's used to Dean's language, sighs. "As far as we can understand, she got into a fight during lunch. But—" Her eyes go to Claire, her voice gentle. "Claire isn't seeing fit to tell me anything else."

"Id won'd happed agaid," is all Claire says, nasal and muffled around her bag of ice. Dean plops down in the chair next to her, pulls it close to get an arm around her shoulders, 'cuz he remembers that look from Sammy, too, the inches-from-tears-I-just- wanna-go-home look.

"All right," he says. "All right, I'm taking you home." He turns a finger on Chan as they get up to leave. "But you. My kid gets hurt on school property one more time, there'll be hell to pay."

"I'm familiar with the threat," Chan says dryly, though her expression is still concerned as she watches Claire. "Don't forget to sign her out with Ms. Constanza."

Dean ignores her, because seriously, she's lucky Cas wasn't the one to come here and find Claire like this because there's hell-to-pay and then there's heavenly wrath, and Cas is still scarily good at the latter. He shoves through the door, arm still around Claire. She switches hands for the bags as he signs her out, and he notices what he didn't before: one of her knuckles is split, the skin red and angry.

Huh.

Claire catches him looking at it and quickly switches hands again. But the damage is done, and Dean's not sure whether to feel proud or even angrier: his kid got in a fight. Well, not his kid, technically, but as good as, especially since he's the one who taught her how to throw a punch in the first place, but shit. What the heck could Claire be getting into fights about? What could possibly make her risk the Princeton dream?

Also, where the hell was Emma? He's got half a mind to pull her out of class early so he can demand where the hell she was while her sister was getting the snot beaten out of her by some punk.

They get in the Impala, Claire putting the ice in her lap long enough to buckle her seatbelt, and Dean watches her, hands on the wheel, tries to figure out what to say. If he should say anything, or if maybe this is one of those teenager things Jody Mills warned him about that he should just let be. He's really tempted to let Cas deal with it, considers digging out his phone and handing it to Claire so she can call him, 'cuz Cas is just better at talking to both of the girls, or maybe it's not so much that he's good at talking to them as he is good at listening, but Jesus. Dean tightens his hands on the steering wheel. "…we gonna talk about this, Claire?"

She glances over at him. It's still weird, sometimes, having Cas's eyes look over at him out of her face, and today she looks like Cas did in those weeks after the asylum, scared and broken and sad.

But her voice is firm when she says thickly, "Dope," and pats his hand. Consolingly, like he's the little kid and she's the parent, and fuck, sometimes it hurts how mature she is, hurts to know that he and Cas are the reason why. Hurts, too, that she never seems to blame them.

"I never said sorry to you, you know," he says as he starts the car. Easier to say it when his eyes are on the road, when he doesn't have to look at her. "I mean… You never asked for any of this, and even if things had been—normal, it's still no walk in the park, getting, y'know. Saddled with a pair of gays for dads."

He makes his voice joking, says it like it's a joke. But it still twinges. He and Cas had known when they moved here with Sam that things weren't going to be easy. Two dudes playing house together in South Dakota? It was the north, but it sure as hell wasn't Massachusetts. They'd known it wouldn't be easy for them, but he'd never thought how it would be for Claire and Emma. Hadn't thought about how kids can be mean, can be stupid, can punish the child for the sins of the father and all that jazz, and shit.

"Dean, you're dot," Claire begins thickly, but Dean shakes his head. "All I'm saying is, I know it must not be easy for you. Dealing with that. So. Thanks."

Claire doesn't say anything, just sniffles against the bag of ice, and Dean keeps his eyes on the road, hands her one of the only slightly oil-smeared rags he's still got hanging out of his pocket. She mumbles, "Dhanks," and he reaches over, ruffles her hair. Smiles when she leans into his hand because, seriously. His fucking kids, man.

- o -

Except his fucking kids is exactly the right way to describe them, because dinner's at six every night, yeah, they've gotten domestic like that; Cas does the cooking and Dean does the dishes, except the nights he manages to make it part of Emma's punishment for something or other, but it's six-fifteen and Emma's still not home from school, and he's not sure whether to be ticked or worried out of his mind because where the hell is his kid.

And he calls Sam, and he calls Jody, and he calls Emma's friend's mom Shelly who has no clue who he is and none of them have seen Emma, except then there's the sound of a key in the back door, and he's on his feet in an instant, snapping the phone closed.

Emma looks up from trying to ease the door shut behind her, and above her black jacket her face is caked with concealer two shades too dark and Dean didn't spend thirty-odd years getting the shit kicked out of him by various monsters not to recognize a bruise when he saw one.

Things click together.

"All right," he says, loud enough to be heard in the dining room. "Family meeting in the living room. Now."

And once they're all settled there, Dean with his feet planted in front of the fireplace scowling, Cas perched on the arm of the loveseat looking solemnly disappointed and Emma hunched in the armchair glaring at her boots and Claire with her knees drawn up to her chin on the sofa, nose blaring purple in the lamplight, Dean's quite happy to hand the reins over to Cas, because shit, he's been dealing with this all day, and on top of that he totally gave Cas at least the second best blowjob of his life last night, so Cas kind of (really) owes him.

"It appears," says Cas in his slow, reproachful way that makes the girls squirm and Dean smirk darkly now that he's not on the receiving end of it, for once, "that the two of you felt compelled to hurt each other."

He pauses, eyeing each of them in turn. Claire hangs her head; Emma bristles.

"What I do not understand is what could have driven the two of you to feel that treating each other in this way was permissible. Is there, perhaps, a siren in the vicinity that Dean and I do not know about?"

Emma's the first to talk. "I said some shit," she tells the floor. "Claire punched me for it. 's no big deal, we're fine now. Can I go now?"

"No," Dean says immediately. "What'd you say?"

Emma steals a glance at Claire from beneath her hanging hair that's so quick Dean would've missed it if he wasn't watching her so closely. It's not so different from how Claire looked earlier that day, scared and panicked.

"You don't wanna know, okay," she mutters.

"Emma—"

"I said we're fine, okay?" she snaps, and Dean does, too.

"Fine, huh?" he says. "Yeah, cuz Claire's nose looks real fine, Emma!"

Emma whirls on him. "You know, I'm getting sick of being the black sheep of this family! It's always Emma, why can't you be like Claire this; Emma, what'd you do now that that—well, sorry I'm not an angel vessel, Dad. Sorry you didn't just pop me on a bus when you had the chance!"

She stops, panting hard. Then,

"Fags," she says. "My friends called you fags, and I laughed and went along with it. And I feel like shit for it, okay, but they're my friends and I'm not like you, Claire, I can't go out and bat my big blue eyes and magically make people want to eat lunch with me. Fuck you."

"Fug you," Claire bursts out, her words still messed-up by her nose. "I'b your friend, Ebba. Or I would be if you didn'd keep being sugch a bigch ad school and predending like you don't dow be."

Emma doesn't say anything. Just glares back at Claire, and maybe they would stand like that forever, glaring at each other, if Cas didn't say in his most gravelly voice, "Enough," and step between them.

"Dean," he says, and Dean snaps out of it, steps forward.

"Hey," he says, points a hand at Emma. "C'mon. You and me."

- o -

When the screen door's bounced shut behind them, he digs his keys out of his pocket and tosses them to Emma. Jerks his head toward the Impala in the driveway, starts down the porch steps. "Let's go for a drive."

She looks at the keys in her hand, not moving from the top step. "This doesn't make up for anything," she says balefully.

Dean lifts a brow. "Really?"

Emma takes one step, then two. "Well." She opens the driver's side door. "Maybe a little." She waits until they're both in the car, buckled in, with the engine purring around them, to say, "I still think you should trade her in for a Yaris."

Dean slaps a hand over his heart. "Em, it's stuff like that that makes me wonder if you're really Sam's spawn."

She stiffens, and immediately Dean realizes his big mouth fucked up again. "Thanks, Dad. I really love when you make jokes about how I'm not your kid."

Dean opens his mouth—

"No, shut up," she says. "I understand, like, you didn't want to procreate with a monster. I get it. But it would be really nice if you could stop rubbing it in my face."

And it's official. Dean sucks.

"Shit," he hears himself say. "Shit. Emma. I'm sorry. I didn't… Just. Shit. You're my kid, okay?"

She tosses her head, gives a thin laugh. "No shit, Sherlock."

"No, I mean—" He shakes his head. "You know how happy it makes me when people look at you and say, "Damn, Dean, she's just like you"? And I feel so proud of you, like that's my kid. And then other times people are like, "I can't believe she's your kid, Dean," because they can't see me in you and that makes me even prouder because you're fifty times better than I ever was. You've turned out so good, Em."

Emma's got her hands on the steering wheel, looking straight ahead. "But I'm not what you wanted."

"That doesn't mean you're not what I want now." Dean leans forward, ducks his head into her line of sight until she has to look at him. "Hey. You think I wanted Cas when I first met him?"

"Didn't you?"

"Fuck no. He was a dick with wings."

She smiles for the first time since he caught her trying to sneak inside, bruise dark on her cheek. "Sounds kinky."

Dean groans. "That's it, you're never Skyping with Becky again."

Emma smiles a secretive smirk and reverses out of the driveway, and as they argue whether to go get milkshakes or gelati, Dean makes a mental note to check the parental controls on the internet at home. But not before he glances over at her, elbow hanging out the window in the night wind, and says, "We good?"

"For now," Emma says. She's got her window open, too, hair whipping around her face.

"Good, 'cuz you're grounded for a week."

"What?!"

"You just ran that stop sign back there. In my baby."

"Dad! It's like deserted out here, there was no one else at the intersection—"

"Keep arguing and it'll be two."

"Ugh!" Emma lets out a growl of frustration and retaliates by turning the radio up full-volume to some Top 40 crap station. When Dean growls back and reaches out to change it, she slaps his hand away and shouts over Justin Bieber and the wind, "SHOTGUN SHUTS HIS CAKEHOLE!"

And shit, Dean can't help but laugh.

- o -

[epilogue]

He feels a little less like laughing when he gets around to checking those parental control filters at home and finds out that actually most of the freaky-deak Archive of Our Own visits have been from Claire's computer, not just Emma's, which just goes to show, it really is always the quiet ones.

He clicks on one of the links, just to see what they've been up to, and blanches.

"YOU'RE BOTH GROUNDED," he shouts.

"STOP INVADING OUR PRIVACY YOU COMMUNIST," Emma yells back from upstairs.

There's the lower murmur of Claire saying something, and then an explosion of laughter. A message pops up on the laptop screen that Dean does not have the administrator privileges to control the parental filters on this network.

"Damn it, girls," Dean mutters.

"It's nice to see them enjoying themselves," Cas observes from his armchair.

"Ugh," says Dean with a shudder, pushing away from the desk and flopping onto Cas in the armchair instead. His legs dangle over the side; Cas pushes a hand into his hair. "Seriously, what's the appeal of that stuff?"

"Would you rather they be out there having sex instead of reading about it?" Cas says.

"On second thought," says Dean, "never mind."