By month seven, the workshop repaint war had escalated from a bad idea into a constitutional crisis.

It started, as most disasters in Dean Winchester’s life now did, with Sam saying something in a calm voice that should not have been trusted.

“The trim still looks smug.”

Dean, who had been carrying in a paper bag full of exactly one lemon tart, two salted crackers, a small container of cold noodles, and a bottle of sparkling water because pregnancy had turned food into a tactical operation, stopped dead in the workshop doorway.

Marco looked up from Bay Two and immediately muttered, “Oh no.”

Eli, halfway under a lifted truck, slid himself back out on the creeper with the expression of a man unwilling to miss history, even if it killed him.

Adrian was at the workbench sorting invoices and replacement parts in neat lines of suspicious domestic competence. He heard Sam’s tone and, traitor that he was, silently took two steps backward out of the likely blast radius.

Sam stood in the middle of the workshop in an oversized dark sweater, one hand low on his stomach, hair a little wild from the wind outside, and the kind of beautiful, serene expression that meant everybody should begin praying in shifts.

Dean narrowed his eyes.

“No.”

Sam blinked at him. “I didn’t even say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“That sounds paranoid.”

“It’s experience.”

Sam turned slowly in a circle, taking in the steel shelving, the oil-stained concrete, the practical gray walls, the black trim around the office window, and the entire masculine, utilitarian atmosphere of a business that had spent years being comfortable in its own ugly skin.

His gaze came back to Dean.

“Glitter pink,” Sam said.

Dean closed his eyes.

“Absolutely not.”

“Not all of it.”