Home Away From Home (Supernatural)
Title: Home Away From Home
Fandom: Supernatural
Prompt: Teaching/Learning
Medium: Fanfiction
Size/length: 700
Summary: 6 year-old Jo helps her father assemble a tent.
Rating: G
Pairing: Ellen/Bill Harvelle
Content Notes: None.
AO3
“Ready for our big trip?” Daddy asked her in morning while he drank his coffee. He offered her a sip, but she’d tried it before and knew better than to try it again. It might smell nice, but it’s bitter and gross, worse than medicine.
Jo nodded eagerly. "Are we having a sleepout? Is Mom coming too?" Mom hadn't gotten up yet and Mom always got up first.
"It's just us this weekend." Daddy said, "Mom's staying home to work. We're gonna have fun. Some camping, some cooking."
"Can I light the fire?" Jo asked. It's her very favourite job and Mom never lets her do it, always says she's too little, maybe when she's older.
"We'll see." Daddy finished his coffee, but he didn't say no and that counted for something. "Bathroom?"
Jo shook her head and brought her cereal bowl over to the sink. Mom was sleeping so she didn't have to do the dishes and Daddy didn't say anything when she went over to the door to pull her boots on.
Daddy lifted her up into his truck and made her buckle her seatbelt, but it was better than the car seat Mom made her ride in. She was big now, Mom said she was going to go to school in the Fall, be part of the First Grade.
"Is it far?" Jo asked when they started driving. Daddy had put the radio on and he let her pick the station.
"It's far enough." Daddy let her roll down the window and stick her hand out. She fell asleep before lunch.
She woke up when the car stopped. They were in the shade now and the sun was on its way down. "Are we there?" Jo asked, looking at all of the tall trees outside.
"Yep, come on out." Daddy opened up the back of the truck and started taking out the heavy bags. Jo couldn't lift any of them, not yet, but she could half drag them over to the place by the fire pit where Daddy was piling most of them.
"Tent!" Jo exclaimed when she got to the last bag. This one she didn't bother trying to carry over, just undid the zipper and started pulling out the tarps, pegs and poles.
Daddy stopped her, closed his big warm hands over her little ones. "Not yet Joey. We have to find a place first."
"And pick up all of the sticks." Jo added, she remembered. They'd done this before.
Daddy laughed and she felt it rumble in his chest. "Righto. I think we'll set it up over by that tree." He pointed at the forest around them. "That one right there, with the white bark. Do you see it?"
Jo nodded. "It's a sycamore. I saw it in a book."
"Good eye." Daddy picked up the tent bag and all of the stuff on the ground and followed her over. "Remember, all of the sticks and
stones."
"Because they're pokey."
When the ground was clear enough for Daddy, which was really clear. He wasn't okay with her leaving the little sticks, they all had to be gone, Jo got to help stretch out the tarp to go on the bottom.
"It protects the tent from the wet ground." Daddy said and he let her tug on the tent until it came free from the bag. "Which way should the door face?"
Jo looked around, trying to remember which direction was which. "North?" She guessed. "So the sun doesn't get in our eyes."
"Why not south?" Daddy asked and she scuffed a circle in the dirt with her boot. Which way was south?
"Because the trees are south! Too many bugs." Jo told him. North was towards the fire.
Daddy smiled and knelt beside her as they carefully fed the pegs into their slots. He didn't let her put the pegs in the ground. "Maybe next year, when you're bigger." He told her before crushing them into the ground with the heel of his boot.
"It looks nice." Jo announced when the tent was assembled.
"I had a good helper." Daddy told her and unzipped the door so she could set up her sleeping bag.