IT WASN'T UNUSUAL for John Castiel and James Constantine Novak to come home to the heavily warded house they shared with their husband to the sight of a golden retriever lounging on the living room couch. As accustomed as the twins had become to the oddities and eccentricities of a household with a very powerful natural witch, this was fairly mild and a lot less awkward than walking in on a naked honey-blonde woman sprawled out somewhere for a nap. Being Sam's familiar with the intelligence comparable to any human (as well as the fastidiousness of someone who damn well knew what germs were and how they worked), Bones was never subjected to the sort of restrictions that other humans had for their animal companions about furniture, and while she had assured them that she was equally comfortable in either form after all these years, there were just some times that called for the kind of sprawling flop that only a dog could manage.
The surprise, therefore, came not from seeing a dog on the couch, but from seeing the pair of tiger cubs that she was curled around.
"Sam?" Jimmy called out, being careful not to actually shout.
"Kitchen!" Sam called back, making the twins relax. Their husband was here and he sounded calm, so this probably wasn't something to worry about. Stil….
"Tiger cubs?" Cas asked. Jimmy glanced at his brother and noticed that he hadn't looked away from the cubs at all. In fact, he seemed to look rather tense, the way he usually did when something had to do with—
"Technically they're nephilim!" Sam answered on the end of a sigh. "It's a long story and I'm not too clear on some bits of it, but the shortest answer is that they're my kids from a diagonally-oriented dimension and I'm babysitting until their actual parents can get the materials together to make the portal and come get them."
—Angels. Damn it… Cas always got quiet and unhappy whenever Angels were involved. He and Jimmy both had spiritual markers indicating they were under divine protection on multiple fronts so there wasn't really a risk of them being killed anymore, at least not since they'd married Sam and dedicated themselves to Hades and Artemis, but more often than not whenever they encountered Angels while out on the job they tended to be judgemental dicks. If they didn't look down on humans as barely sentient hairless apes, they absolutely looked down on Cas (and Jimmy by extension) for having deliberately left the Host to be a human.
"They're too strong," Cas murmured, still staring at the cubs. His eyes held the same narrow squint they got when he was concentrating on the flow of energy somewhere, the one Sam said Jimmy got when we was focusing intently on researching. "The power of a nephilum at birth is meant to be double that of the Angel parent, but these two feel almost on par with an Archangel. Each."
"Well, that answers the question of how they got here, if only an Archangel is powerful enough to cross dimensions with impunity," Jimmy muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face. He remembered that from one of the nights Loki had come by to hang out and "let down his hair", relaxing his guard enough to be Gabriel again behind Sam's incredibly strong and thorough wards. The runaway Archangel turned pagan god was surprisingly open about all things Angelic and Heavenly when he felt safe and had a direct line to Sam's best friend Jessica Moore's baking. Jimmy had taken to writing down the stories he told, and while he had offered to send copies to Bobby Singer for the Greater Supernatural Library and Archives that he had built up inside the old Men of Letters siege bunker, his adoptive father had declined.
"Don't rightly trust this place being secure since old Henry let slip that all the Men of Letters buildings have the same locks," he'd said by way of explanation. "Don't sit right with me."
If there was one thing Jimmy had learned about in the course of hunting, it was that if a hunter of Bobby's age said something didn't sit right, then there was definitely something wrong. Age and intuition had that effect, after all. For that matter, even if it was for different reasons, if Cas said something was wrong, then he was usually right… though Jimmy wasn't sure what he meant about the tiger nephilim being "too strong" besides the obvious of "strong enough to jump universes without help."
As if reading his mind - which, twin and sharing a soul, he could be - Cas added quietly, "The Angel Castiel was a mere footsoldier before he Fell, for all he was a garrison commander. Whoever the angelic parent of these two is, they would have to be at least the rank of a Seraph."
"Oh," Jimmy mumbled, trying not to grimace. If the nephilim cubs were the kids of some other version of their Sam, but their Grace was too strong to belong to some other version of the Angel Castiel, then which Angel had that Sam been with? And why?
"Whatever it is you're thinking," Sam said as he stepped out of the kitchen, "you should probably also know that their Grace is an exact resonance match with the Grace in my staff, which neatly answers the question of who their Angel parent is."
Jimmy exchanged a glance with Cas and they both nodded. Sam's staff had been made by Persephone and imbued with the Grace of the Angel Castiel as retrieved by Gabriel and then handed over at Cas's directive when he refused its return. If the Grace matched, and Sam had the skill and sensitivity to know, then these cubs were Castiel's as well as Sam's. How and why that particular Angel became a Seraph, much less met up with that iteration of Sam, and what events conspired to have their nephilim be born as tiger cubs were still questions that Jimmy was now rather more hesitant to ask. Fortunately, there were other questions beginning to present themselves.
"How long do you think it'll take them to, er… do whatever it is they need to do over there?" he asked instead, eyeing the sleeping cubs cuddled up in the curl of Bones's body. "Are we gonna need to feed them? What do tiger cubs even need to eat at… whatever age they are?"
"I called Dean to pick up a pack of chicken breasts and some beef ribs," Sam said by way of an answer. "When they wake up, I'll see about asking them if they need it cooked or not. The trip pretty much exhausted them and they couldn't really tell me a lot, but the mental image the one with thicker stripes on his head sent me looked a lot like your descriptions of that bunker in Lebanon, so it's probably going to be whatever dimensional crossing spell the Men of Letters of that world might have had unless the me and Castiel of that universe are on good terms with an Archangel."
"Not likely," Cas admitted reluctantly. "Maybe Gabriel, but for the cubs to even exist there's a chance that the other Archangels are dead. Frankly, I'm surprised none of them have shown up--"
"Raphael still can't get past the wards when he's in smite-happy mode," Sam interrupted dryly. "And he did try. Then Chuck called my cell phone while I was arguing with him and asked me to hand the phone over to him, and whatever he said was enough to make Raphael back off, even if he clearly didn't like it. So hopefully the next powerful Angel to coming knocking will be the cubs' parents here to take them home."
"That's going to be an interesting conversation," Jimmy noted. A bit belatedly, he remembered that they were still standing in the living room holding their bags, and quickly moved to be the first to kiss Sam hello. "Mmm… hi."
"Hi," Sam chuckled back, rubbing the tip of his nose against Jimmy's before turning to accept a kiss from Cas as well. "Welcome home. Go stow your gear and wash up."
Summary: When the Novak brothers get called in to help out a fellow hunter with a multi-ghost problem in an apple orchard, they were expecting to encounter some potential resistance to their methods. They got less than they expected, and for a surprising reason.
Tags/Warnings: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hunter Jimmy Novak, Human Castiel, Hunter Castiel, Castiel and Jimmy Novak are Twins, Retired Hunter Dean Winchester, Witch Sam Winchester, Mentions of Dead Bodies
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WHY ARE WE picking apples from a previously haunted orchard?" the hunter, some guy called Pete, asked furtively as he glanced over his shoulder from where he was standing and nominally keeping watch. In the tree a few feet away, John Castiel Novak scoffed quietly under his breath but declined to answer, no doubt too preoccupied with the aforementioned task of apple picking.
"We aren't picking apples," his brother, James Constantine Novak, said with as much patience as he could muster after nearly a week dealing with the guy. "Cas is picking apples for us to take back to our contact who can lay down some remote protections and grounds cleansing to ensure nothing nasty crops up further down the line. I am spotting him to make sure he doesn't fall out of each tree he climbs up to get the apples and keeping an eye out for anyone who might come looking to see what we're doing out here on private property in the middle of the night."
And I have no idea what you're doing here except potentially distracting me from hearing someone coming or catching my brother if he falls, he carefully didn't add out loud. The hunt was essentially over and Pete claimed he wasn't a greenhorn, which Jimmy was inclined to believe since he'd had the sense to call in back-up on this case to begin with when he'd realized there was more than one ghost and more than one body buried under the apple trees. He had even been willing to listen and accept a suggestion for taking care of the ghosts that didn't involve burning down part of the orchard, though he had made a disparaging remark about the carefully placed rune stone "net" being "too close to witchcraft for comfort" which was why Jimmy was being circumspect about collecting the apples for Sam to work his sympathetic resonance magic on. Granted, Sam had told the twins that he could do the spell just as well with a leaf from each of the afflicted trees, but Cas had seen an opportunity to get three metaphorical birds with one bunch of apples and Jimmy hadn't been able to think of a good reason to say no.
Besides the whole stealing apples from a private orchard in the middle of the night thing, anyway.
"Your contact the same person who gave you that, uh, rune stone trick for ghost-catching?" Pete asked carefully.
His tone was odd, softer than it had been when he'd first derided the rune stones, and Jimmy risked taking his eyes off Cas to get a look at the other hunter's face. "Why d'you ask?"
"'Cause it worked," Pete answered promptly, surprising Jimmy. "Moreover, it looked like it was more gentle on the ghosts than the usual salt'n'burn tends to be, even though they're dead and all. If it ain't witchcraft--"
"It is," Cas said shortly, dropping down from the tree to stand just in front of Jimmy, one hand casually holding one of his throwing knives at the ready. Just in case, Jimmy knew, and hoped it wouldn't be necessary. "It's not demon-dealing witchcraft - our contact is actually more anti-demon than some hunters we've come across a time or twelve - but he is a witch."
"That gonna be a problem for you?" Jimmy asked, not making a move to step up around Cas - he knew why his brother was putting himself between Jimmy and the potential threat of a hunter with an itchy trigger finger even if he hated it - but pulling Pete's attention to him would give Cas a better chance at getting him with his knife if that gun Pete was holding moved in their direction--
"Guess that depends on whether or not your contact might know a jackass ex-hunter with a pie addiction who owes me twenty bucks," came the steady answer as the corner of Pete's mouth twitched up. "And who I owe my skin to a couple times over from way back. Heard rumors about Dean Winchester faking his death to get out of the life after his paranoid old man finally bit it and settling down somewhere to shack up with a natural witch..."
"You have no idea how much I wanna see his face when he hears that," Jimmy said after a moment. "Both of them. For the record, he just lives next door to our contact, since the witch in question--"
"--Is our husband," Cas broke in smoothly, lifting his left hand a bit higher and wiggling the ring finger where the pure silver engraved wedding ring rested on his finger, a perfect match to the ones worn by Sam and Jimmy.
Pete whistled. "Wow. Can't fault you for being protective and suspicious, I guess. How many more apples you reckon you need?"
"Just a couple from that last tree near the gate," Cas said after a moment to count the ones he had in the bag already.
"Then if you two don't mind telling Dean to unbury my number and give me a call sometime, I'll take my leave," Pete said, tipping an invisible hat in their direction. "Love to hear what he ends up thinking of ghost apple pie...."
"So. Detour through Sioux Falls to see Jody?" Jimmy murmured to Cas as they watched Pete leave.
"Eeyup."
After all, there was no such thing as "too careful" to a hunter with a witch for a husband.
Summary: Family game night is hard enough to arrange when your family all lives in one place and has stable employment that keeps them in town on a regular schedule. The Smith/Wesson/Novak/Moore family makes it work anyway.
Tags/Warnings: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Human Castiel, Hunter Castiel, Hunter Jimmy Novak, Retired Hunter Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester Is Called Dean Smith, Witch Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester Is Called Sam Wesson, Married Jamstiel, Family Game Night
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IT WAS ALL well and good to try and establish a kind of "family game night" among the combined Smith/Wesson/Novak/Moore households to encourage the extended family to get together regularly and just relax for some family friendly fun. Scheduling such a thing was much more of a challenge, however, what with the Novak brothers, John Castiel and James Constantine, being hunters of the supernatural and thus having a rather unpredictable schedule for when they would even be in town, much less available for a game night. Meanwhile, Sam Novak neé Wesson (or Winchester, depending on whom you talked to) and Dean Smith (or Winchester if you talking to those same people as before) were brothers, even if the city of Palo Alto either didn't know that or pretended not to know it for very important reasons, and lived next door to each other up in the mountains along with Sam's familiar, with a frequently combined commute in to town for their respective jobs. And on the other hand, Jessica and Max Moore and their two children, Samantha and Tylene, lived in an apartment above Jess's bakery on the complete opposite end of town, which meant that it took planning for Sam and Jess to get their respective "sides of the family" together beyond a quick howdy-do during their breaks at work.
Dropping Sammi and Tylie off with Sam and Bones (or "Miss Hannah" in her human form) for "godfather time" so that Jess and Max could have a date night did not count.
Nevertheless, once a month the six adults, two kids, and one magically well-preserved golden retriever gathered together in the Moores' apartment (away from the hub of Sam's incredibly strong and intricate wards to prevent him from accidentally cheating by reading everyone's intentions) for a game. This brought them to the next and, some might argue, much more difficult challenge to surmount, because any game they picked had to follow certain criteria to be fun for everyone involved.
Number one: it had to be age-appropriate for Sammi and Tylie, meaning no Cards Against Humanity, Apples to Apples, or any drinking games.
Number two: the game had to be for multiple players, which cut out all the two-person games like checkers, chess, Mahjong, Backgammon, and Go. The point had been raised by Sammi that it wasn't as fun if everyone wasn't all playing together, and no one could really argue.
Number three: no games that involved breaking into teams, because neither Sam and Dean nor the Novak twins could be trusted to team up with anyone but each other, and they got… competitive. Pictionary had been banned on account of this rule, as had Risk and Shogun.
And finally, number four: no game could last longer than four hours, because Sammi and Tylie had bedtimes and four out of the six adults usually had work the next morning. This had nearly gotten Uno banned as well when a game had lasted the entire four hours with four people tied for smallest hand and nobody holding less than five cards or wanting to stop until someone actually won. (They had set a two-turn limit and then the person with the least cards was declared winner.)
Tonight, Sammi had a new game she wanted everyone to play, a gift from her maternal grandparents for her birthday. Jess, being the only one of the group with living parents who were worth the title, had duly passed along the list of rules for games among their family, and her parents had risen to the challenge of finding more and more interesting games that could be played by eight to nine people (depending on if Bones was feeling bipedal or not) without being too complicated for the kids or too boring for the adults. Tonight's offering was a game called "Pandemic".
"It's a cooperative game," Jess explained as Max set up the board with Tylie's help and Sammi shuffled the cards. "We all get different roles with different options for moves, but the object of the game is that we all have to work together to beat back the spread of these four different plagues, and because of the limited number of cards and the rule against turning over the deck, we have a built-in time limit besides just our usual four-hour cap. In the end, either we all win or we all lose."
"Grim," Jimmy said with a crooked little grin. "Sounds like fun."
"Saving the world and humanity from a devastating threat without actually risking our health?" Cas added with raised eyebrows. "Nice change of pace for us."
"That's the idea," Max said with a grin he shared with his wife. "Low stakes world-saving and healthy communication and cooperation across the board."
"Okay, time for everyone to choose your role!" Sammi directed them, holding out the stack of cards. "These are the choices and what each one does…."
