Work Text:
The problem with moving Christina into the spare bedroom was that there was no furniture or decorations, the lightbulbs still hadn't been replaced, the ceiling was a mess of effective but messy-looking patch up work from replacing the wires, and the walls were still the same ugly grayish color they'd been when Dean put in the drywall.
Getting the furniture was a work in progress—after some begging and pleading, Bobby had agreed to get some and bring it over—and Sam was already working on the lightbulbs, which meant the next step in making it ready for living in was the ceiling and walls.
That was why Dean and Cas were standing in the middle of the hardware store, having an argument about paint colors.
“Okay, look, all I'm saying is, most people are gonna see pink as a girly color, and blue as a boyish one,” he explained for the third time. “I mean I'm not saying we're normal, cause we're pretty damn far from that, but you know what color any normal people would paint her room? Pink.”
“I don't understand why you're arguing with me about this,” Cas said patiently.
“Because,” Dean said, his voice rising almost to a shout, “as much as blue is a way better color in general, normal parents—hell, probably her parents too!--would paint her room pink!”
“You are fighting with yourself,” Cas told him. “I didn't suggest either of those colors. I suggested yellow.”
“Yeah, well, that color yellow sucked,” Dean snapped back, annoyed. “I didn't ask for your help, anyways.”
Cas stared at him.
“What?” he demanded.
“Dean, you specifically asked that I come give my opinion on a color,” Cas sighed.
“I never said that!” Dean roared. “I asked you to help me get paint!”
“No, you asked me to help you choose paint,” Cas corrected him, still giving him that look. “They are not the same thing at all. Now, do you want my help, or not?”
“I don't need your help!” Dean grumbled. “I can pick a color of paint by myself!”
Cas shook his head and leaned against the shelves, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “If you say so. Tell me when you've decided.”
Dean turned his back and glared at the rows of paint colors, thinking that as determined as he was to give Christina a normal childhood, pink was still the most obnoxious fucking color you could possibly paint a room. “You know what, screw it,” he said finally. “Let's get blue.”
“Whatever you say, Dean,” Cas agreed.
It was another ten minutes of debate over a color before they settled on three shades of blue: one for the walls, one for the ceiling, and one for the doors. Thoroughly sick of this painting job already, Dean stormed over to the counter and handed over the color swatches. The mildly amused employee took them and mixed the paint, then took his card to charge him before he could finally walk out of the hardware store with what he came for.
--
“You guys took forever,” Sam said as they came in the door.
“Shut up, Sammy,” Dean snapped, glowering. “We had to pick a color, there was a lot of discussion.
Sam rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say, Dean,” he agreed sarcastically, and laughed as the two of them tramped up the stars with their buckets of paint in hand.
“Okay,” Dean said, looking around. All the painting stuff they had from fixing up the house was already in the room—the plastic spread across the floor, the paintbrushes, the paint roller and the plastic container that came with it to pour paint into. “So, uh, how about, you can dump the lighter color, the one for the walls—which one is that? This one?” He looked around, grabbed the screwdriver sitting next to the paintbrush, and used it to pry open the lid of the paint can. “Yeah, pour this into the, uh, the plastic thing.”
Cas nodded and pushed his sleeves up before grabbing the paint can and emptying half of it into the container. “I believe I can handle doing the walls,” he said.
“I can get the stuff around the windows and doors with the brush,” Dean suggested, grabbing it in place of the screwdriver. “Let's get to work.”
--
It took about twenty minutes for the task of painting the room to get really boring, at least as far as Dean was concerned.
He glanced over his shoulder at Cas, who was facing the other way and entirely focused on making sure every square inch of the wall was evenly covered in paint. Grinning, Dean dipped the brush he was using at the edges of the windows into the paint again and crept closer to Cas, holding the bristles back with his fingers.
“Hey, Cas,” he said, and waited until Cas had just started to turn before swiping his hand over the paintbrush to flick drops of paint at Cas.
“Dean,” Cas said calmly, closing his eyes, “you are being extremely childish.”
Dean tried to stop laughing, but there were flecks of light blue paint in Cas's dark hair and across one side of his face, and it was too funny for Dean to bite his tongue. “Your hair matches your eyes,” he said, giving Cas a shit-eating grin, and laughed even harder at the exasperated look he got in response.
“Are you guys causing trouble up here?” Sam asked from behind them, and Dean turned to see his brother leaning against the door, watching them and holding a squirming Christina in his arms.
“Nope,” Dean said, still grinning as he set down the brush.
“Yes, he is,” Cas said, running his fingers through his hair in a vain attempt to get the paint out. It actually just made it worse, and even Sam had to laugh at the blue streaks in his hair.
“Dean, I don't think you're allowed to have a kid if you have the emotional maturity of a five-year-old,” Sam said, and stepped back so Dean couldn't take the little blonde girl from him. “Go paint,” he ordered, shaking his head, and with a dramatic sigh Dean turned and went back to work.
--
It took three days just to paint the damn room—it might not have been the biggest room in the house, after all, but it wasn't the smallest either. Not to mention painting the ceiling was hard work, and would have been even if the ceiling wasn't sort of a mess. Even when they'd finished that, it still took another day to get the room ready for habitation. The lightswitch and sockets needed covered, a rug needed to be bought and laid out, curtains needed hanging, and most of all the furniture needed to be dragged upstairs and arranged and put together.
In the end, it was a blue room with white trim and a hardwood floor covered by a blue rug. There were shelves in one corner and a crib in the opposite one; a dresser/changing table next to the closet; and a plan for where to put decorations and toys and books once there were any to put anywhere.
“That's a room fit for a princess,” Sam announced, looking at it.
“Damn right it is,” Dean agreed, and then thought about that. “Or an angel,” he added, and glanced at Cas, who shook his head, smiling faintly.
“What do you think, Chrissy?” he asked Christina, who was clinging to his shirt. She giggled and pawed at his shirt, turning her head one way and the other to look at everyone in the room. “I think she likes it,” Cas announced, and Dean grinned at him.
“I hope she does,” he said quietly, looking at the room and feeling pretty damn proud of the work he'd done in here. It wasn't just a room fit for a princess or an angel.
It was, he liked to think, a room fit for a Winchester, too.