happy birthday dani_forever!!
PROMPT: None, it's a birthday ficlet!
AUTHOR: Jessi, princessjessia ( Disclaimer)
FANDOM: Heroes, Supernatural [
parabolical universe]
CHARACTERS: Claire, Dean, Natalie, Ben.
SUMMARY: The consequences of falling asleep before your child. September 2015.
RATING: PGish.
WORD COUNT: 1590+
NOTES: Future-fic for a current RPG. This scenario has been in my brain for a few months as the art-I-wish-I-could-draw, and with the future plot coming up, it seemed even more fitting for a present. For my BFF, dani_forever, on her birthday, with much love. ♥
A quiet fills the house less than two hours after the rest of the family has gone to their own homes, which is certainly a welcome respite - in theory - for Claire, but with a teenage boy who is technically a man, a grown man who acts like he's still a teenage boy, and a two-year-old girl within limitless energy as the other occupants of the house, quiet rarely means anything good. She's learned to cope with it, even embrace it, but that doesn't mean she's become stupid enough to let that silence go on forever without investigating it.
She follows a trail of toys through the house and up the stairs, tugging a laundry basket along behind her as it grows heavier with each toy. Though she watched by no one at the moment, the actions quietly speak of that maternal patience that's been earned in the course of caring for people, suited to her thirty-one years of life and an even older soul, even if that patience doesn't seem to fit with the forever-sixteen exterior.
At the top of the stairs, she adds to the pile of toys in the laundry basket several articles of clothing - a button shirt of Dean's, an Angel's ballcap of Ben's, and the hoodie that Sam hadn't been allowed to have back upon departure. The female fascination with wearing a loved male's clothing starts very young, apparently.
The first thing Claire notices after pushing the laundry basket to one side is the turquoise lines on the open door to the bedroom that hadn't been there earlier in the day.
Marker lines.
Only an insane person would give a two-year-old free reign with markers. Well. An insane person and Dean Winchester.
Taking a deep breath, Claire peers around the doorframe and groans quietly. The door wasn't, as a part of her hoped futilely, the single artistic endeavour of Miss Natalie Winchester. Purple and yellow join the turquoise in long streaks and concentrated scribbles along the wall from the door to the upholstered rocking chair, and she is once again grateful that the walls are painted, not wallpapered. Slashes of blue mingle with those three colors on the tan fur of the enormous Mastiff snoring away on the floor in front of the rocking chair, and she sighs. The scribbles continue up the denim pant legs and bare arms of the nineteen-year-old boy slouched in the rocking chair, and Claire has to make a correction.
Only an insane person, Dean Winchester and Ben Braeden-Winchester would give a two-year-old free reign with markers.
Stepping entirely into the room, Claire surveys the rest of it before turning off the small TV and picking up the three coloring books that lay open on the floor. If she were feeling generous, she might give them points for giving Natalie the right thing to color on, but she would then have to take away so many points they would be in the negative due to them both falling asleep in the same room as a toddler with a box of brightly-colored markers and flat surfaces aplenty.
The rest of the walls and Ben's face are free of inked decoration, but she guesses this is only the case because, one, his face is pressed into the plush back of the chair, and two, there was another face in the room that was more appealing.
Dean's.
A minute and forty seconds later, Claire returns to Natalie's bedroom with the camera and starts snapping pictures. Response time is crucial for these moments, not just for the cherished memories and blackmail value, but also as proof later when her husband wakes up and cheerfully denies having put even one marker within reach of his 'Gnat Nat'.
Only when evidence is gathered does Claire finally stop to cover up Ben and then move to truly admire the ink-to-skin damage. Dean'll be cleaning Natalie up come morning, no matter how loudly their brightly-colored child screeches about it, but the bulk of the rainbow is entirely on the Manly and Tough Dean Winchester.
He'll say it isn't manly, but Claire still thinks it's one of the manliest things he does, being a dad.
Ten years ago, he wouldn't have been caught dead sprawled on his back on a very pink little girl's bed with marker all over him. Ten years ago, he wouldn't have knowingly had a child with any woman, let alone have married said woman first and planned for that child years later. But a lot has changed in ten years, much of it for the better.
Claire sits on the bed close to Dean's shoulder to put the markers back in their latch box, but that act is broken up with brushing Natalie's long, light brown hair back from her face, covering the two of them up and noting all the details, small and large, that fit together to make Natalie's full-face marker makeup on Dean. Brown eyebrows now backed by truly industrious purple scribbles on the skin beneath the hair. Yellow scribbling around his eyes in large circles. Black slashes above his lip, like an handlebar mustache gone very awry. Those perfect, kissable lips, now as cherry red as the wide circle of skin around them and his entire nose. It's at that point that Claire suspects Natalie fell asleep, as the coloring on Dean's nose is messy even for a toddler's scribbling and the line of red continues down Dean's cheek and neck to where Natalie's hand came to rest.
All in all, he looks like a clown, and Claire takes a moment to reflect that it's a good thing Sam has already gone home, as she can just imagine his reaction to Dean the Clown. It's that brief moment of imagination that sends her into a silent, helpless fits of giggles and she slips down the side of the bed to the floor, holding her sides and biting her tongue to keep from waking her daughter.
It's the giggling that wakes Dean, but not the sound, as Claire isn't making any. Instead, it's the way the toddler bed shakes with the laughter that drags him out of his sleep to check for an earthquake, even as he protectively tightens his grip on Natalie and looks for Ben. It's not an earthquake, though, as nothing else in the room is shaking.
What he does find is the top off his wife's head a few inches from his face, twitching a bit in time with the faint motions of the bed, ones that had felt more extreme seconds ago.
He barely swallows the rising grumble, as he knows she's going to harass him for being an old man who can't stay awake long enough to get Natalie to sleep. It's not his fault they make little kid's mattresses so comfortable or that his daughter is as stubborn as they come. Clearly, she got that from Claire, not him. Ben's stubbornness he blames on John and Mary.
"What're you laughing at, woman?"
Despite the whisper-soft quality of the question, Natalie stirs slightly and the red line on his neck moves from three inches to four, as she still holds the marker in her hand. The felt tip is damp against his neck, an odd sensation, but it only takes Dean a few seconds to realize what is likely so funny.
Dammit, Winchester.
A swipe at his face leaves the palm of his hand multi-colored and he has to cut himself off mid-curse. Natalie's not yet three; she needs other words in her vocabulary before adding in what almost came out of his mouth, especially because she's a little girl and shouldn't sound like a hunter. It's only taken him this long to be successful at sometimes watching his mouth.
The muffled half-curse adds to Claire's amusement and makes her proud, all at once. He's had almost ten years parenting Ben, but it was an entirely new thing to parent a girl, especially from the beginning. Ben's language and too-mature way of speaking as a child had been in place before Los Angeles, but Dean's vowed that Natalie won't get that from him. It's just one more point of responsibility among all the rest that form his perception of begin a father. He's a natural at it just the same; being Sam's big brother the way that he'd had to be was just the early steps of that natural 'parenting'.
He moves Natalie off him and onto the bed with a tenderness that makes Claire fall in love with him again. It's a frequent occurrence, once that nine and a half years hasn't slowed. If anything, it's allowed it to happen more often.
"Well, Supergirl? What's so funny?"
His voice is husky and close to her ear, but she still has laughter to spend before she can turn her thoughts to other activities.
"You have a... little something right there, baby," she stammers in a whisper and then gives herself over to the laughter entirely, still giggling when Dean scoops her ups and carries her out of the room.