Fic: A Home for a Bunny (SPN/HIMYM) [2/4]
Robin met the guys Lily had given her number to at a small diner not far from the station. She recognised them from the graphic description Lily had supplied when Robin had rung to check they were for real. Lily was right. They were stunning. And they looked like real men, in jeans and flannel. She bet they’d been in a fight or two in their time. They probably had scars… She crossed the room to where they sat on opposite sides of a red vinyl booth, empty plates before them.
“Sam and Dean?”
The one on the right smiled at her pleasantly and extended a hand. “You must be Robin. I’m Sam, this is my -“
Robin glanced at the other one, who seemed frozen in place. Then his face broke into a wide grin, revealing perfect white teeth and crinkles at the corners of his eyes. “You’re the hot chick from ‘Come on, get up New York!’”
In her excitement over being recognised, Robin nearly missed the swift kick in the shin and tight-lipped expression he received from the man across the table. “You actually watch the show? I mean it’s great to meet a fan,” she tried to stop herself sounding surprised. She reached into her bag for a pen, just in case he wanted an autograph.
“Everyday,” said Dean, casting a flirtatious glance at her, “And if you don’t mind me saying, the camera does you no justice.”
Robin opened her mouth to reply, but was interrupted by Sam. “Why don’t you sit down, Robin?” He suggested tightly, gesturing at the empty spot next to him. “As I was saying, I’m Sam McCready and this is my husband Dean.” He shot another pointed look at the man across from him. Dean’s smirk dropped away to a slight pout, like a child denied a toy because he’d already picked something else. “We’re new in town, and we’re not really used to the big city. We thought maybe you could show us around?” Sam continued.
Robin put away her pen and slid into the seat next to Sam, pushing down the disappointment at her show being dismissed so quickly. Sam must have seen something in her face, because he said: “Love the show by the way. We watched it this morning.”
Dean chimed back in, his grin reappearing. “Sammy just loved the interview with the woman who makes those handmade dolls - he’s a collector, you know.”
Huh. Robin glanced sideways at Sam. She hadn’t thought anybody actually collected those horrific dolls. And he looked so masculine.
Sam’s smile was somewhat forced as he agreed. “I thought you asked very pertinent questions.”
“We watched on Friday, too,” Dean continued. “It was the weirdest thing when we took Cas to his new school, and there was the woman you’d interviewed the other day. Total coincidence.”
“Oh wow, you saw Lily and Marshall’s interview?” Holy crap, they had actually watched her show more than once.
“Yeah, about that,” said Sam. “I mean, she seemed fine at the school, but…”
“Basically, we want to know if she’s a crazy person,” Dean finished. “Uh, Cas is very… delicate… we just want to make sure he’ll be okay.”
Well, she couldn’t blame them really. Lily had been talking about a ghost. And wearing her pyjamas. “Lily’s not crazy,” Robin assured them, “Your son will be fine. She’s great with kids. She’s just got a vivid imagination.”
“So you don’t believe there’s a ghost in her classroom?”
Robin laughed. “Of course not. Ghosts aren’t real. What, are you crazy?”
Some kind of look passed between the men then, but, much in the same way as Lily and Marshall’s psychic silent communication did, its meaning bypassed her.
“But it wasn’t completely made up for TV, was it? I mean, something made her imagine the ghost,” Sam pressed.
“She said something about colouring pencils being thrown across the room and sudden drops in temperature. It was all in the interview,” Robin frowned. For people who supposedly wanted to see the city, they sure were sitting around asking a whole lot of weird questions.
“So none of that was exaggerated to make more exciting TV?” Dean asked, taking a last swallow of his black coffee.
Robin bristled at the slight on her journalistic integrity. “Did you just want to ask questions about Lily all day, or do you actually want to see the city? Because if you just came to ask about Lily, that’s kind of creepy. She’s perfectly sane, and she’s not a liar. Something’s wrong with the air conditioning and she thinks it’s a ghost. That’s it.”
Sometimes Robin was a bit ashamed of the deep and gleeful satisfaction she felt at seeing grown men quail before her.
“Sorry, we just want to make sure our little angel is in good hands,” Dean held up his hands in an unconscious gesture of surrender.
“Dean’s very overprotective,” Sam coughed to cover a smile, “Just one more thing - who does she think it’s the ghost of?”
“She doesn’t know,” Robin told them, sliding out of the booth and surreptitiously checking her hair in the window. “Now, do you want to see New York?”
The day improved from there. She showed them all of her favourite places, pointed out the deli that sold the best food and the one that would result in hours of unrelenting upchucking, and the best place to watch hockey on the big screen. They relaxed their questioning about Lily’s ‘ghost’, but still seemed troubled. Dean hid it well, keeping up a constant flow of friendly, unthreatening flirtation, but when he thought nobody was watching the smile dropped away, leaving him looking tired and sad. Sam was polite, listening to her and asking all the right questions in a way that made her feel valued and intelligent. He apologised when he walked into people and kept looking over at Dean with a variety of expressions, from jealous glares when Dean’s flirting became too obvious to barely concealed concern when his husband started looking tense. Occasionally they would drop back and have a quick, whispered conversation, standing very close together and parting with a quick pat on the shoulder or back. They really were a cute couple, and seemed to genuinely care about each other. She wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or not.
Yes, they were a cute couple. But the whole time she was with them, she couldn’t shake the feeling she was missing something.
XXX
There was something weird about the new kid in Lily’s class. And not just normal five-year-old weird, either. He spoke like an adult (and quite a pretentious one at that) and was apparently fascinated by Flopsy to the point of continuing to stand a foot away from the rabbit hutch, staring creepily at it after school had started.
Lily crouched beside the tiny boy. “I know this is all new, but it’s time to come and sit down. We’re doing some reading. It’ll be lots of fun!” She smiled widely at him. He acknowledged her by turning his head to stare expressionlessly at her before returning his gaze to the rabbit hutch, a small frown on his face. “Come on, reading time,” Lily placed her hands on his shoulders to turn him around and steer him in the direction of group three. He was surprisingly sturdy for such a small boy, but he seemed to take the hint, walking over to his group with only one quick look back at the rabbit hutch.
Lily shook her hands to try to get the weird staticky feeling out and followed him to the table where group three was sitting, practicing reading books with brightly coloured pictures and few words. They slowly sounded out the words, fingers keeping places, and looked up at Lily as she passed for approval or help.
Cas sat stiffly in one of the colourful chairs, his back straight and his knees together. Lily searched quickly through the box of books on the table for the one she wanted. She handed the thin book to Cas. “Here you go honey. You like bunnies, don’t you. Why don’t you show me your reading?”
Cas looked at her with a puzzled expression and began to flip through ‘A Home for a Bunny’.
“Can you read it out to me?” Lily requested, wanting to judge his reading ability
Cas briefly looked up to the sky, clearly asking God for deliverance from stupid people, and began to read. “In the spring, a bunny came down the road…”
Lily stared as he continued to read. There was definitely something weird about this kid, and it wasn’t just her imagination. It was freaking her out almost as much as the ghost had. Cas read in an even monotone, every word clearly enunciated. His body remained completely still except for his eyes and mouth as he read. He didn’t stumble over a single word, and barely paused as he turned the pages. Lily knew adults who couldn’t read out loud that well. The feeling that Cas was not a normal five-year-old intensified.
“What is the point of this book?” The small boy asked in a tone that was half impatience and half genuine curiosity. “It has a very weak basis in reality and misinforms readers about the rabbit’s ability to form coherent thought.”
Lily blinked, her mouth opening and closing like a fish’s as she searched for a reply. “It’s a story. It’s just for fun,” she replied when she found her voice, “Don’t you read stories at home?”
Cas’s brow crinkled as he thought about it. “I occasionally read the Winchester Gospels,” he stated. Lily had never even heard of the Winchester Gospels. True, she wasn’t all that religious, but still, she thought she would have heard of them. She was starting to think that the boy’s upbringing was even more unusual than Sam had suggested. Like, religious cult unusual.
Cas paused, deep in thought, and then he said: “Dean had a book about an elephant named Babar.”
Lily didn’t know what to say to that, so she clapped her hands and called cheerily to the class: “Art time! Who wants to do some colouring?”
It wasn’t just the reading, either. Cas didn’t get any less strange over the course of the day. During art time, he sat bolt upright on his tiny green chair. For some reason, the chair seemed too small for him, despite the fact that his body fit on it perfectly. He watched, motionless and expressionless as the other children drew messy rainbows and flowers and decapitated people (she made a note to call James’s parents). It wasn’t that he couldn’t draw. Lily had a feeling that if he tried, he would draw every bit as neatly and precisely as he had read. It was more like he didn’t understand what the point was and there were much more important things he could be doing with his time.
When lunch rolled around, Cas wouldn’t leave the classroom, despite all of Lily’s coaxing and encouragement to get him to play with the others. When Marshall arrived, she got Cas’s dinosaur lunchbox out of his Thomas the Tank-engine bag, handing it to him with a firm instruction to eat his lunch outside. Sometimes she had to be firm with the clingy ones, even if it broke her heart. She closed the door behind him and turned to Marshall.
Marshall held out the ghost-facing kit. “Any sign of the ghost today?”
Lily shook her head. “But it caused some destruction over the weekend. Flopsy’s cage got broken and the art corner was a mess this morning.”
“Okay,” said Marshall, setting the ghost-facing kit on Lily’s desk and pulling out the instructions. “The first thing we have to do is figure out who the ghost is. There’s a checklist.” He sat down on a miniscule blue chair. It creaked ominously under his weight. “Has anyone died here recently?”
“Marshall, this is a kindergarten classroom.”
“So that’s a no?” Marshall made a mark on his list with a purple crayon. “How about a family member or someone close to the person witnessing the ghostly activity?”
“I think we would know if one of my family members died.”
“No again,” Marshall made another mark. “Any possibility that a visitor to the haunted area is involved in witchcraft or the binding of spirits?”
“Again, this is a kindergarten classroom. Although the new kid is a little scary…”
They continued through the list up to the final item: “Is the haunted area the site of animal sacrifices of any kind?”
Marshall looked up. “According to this, there is no ghost.”
“Was there a previous rabbit?” A voice asked from behind Lily. She jumped, squeaking, and clutched a hand to her hammering heart.
“How did you get in here?” She asked; her voice turned high-pitched by fright. She turned to look at the blue-eyed five-year-old. He was in the same position he had occupied that morning, peering closely at the rabbit hutch. The dinosaur lunchbox was still clutched firmly in his left hand, shiny and unmarked like it had never been opened. His hair was even more untidily wild than it had been that morning, almost like he had been out in a strong wind. Lily peered out the window. The sky was overcast, but the large oak tree outside her classroom was completely unruffled by any breath of wind.
“Flopsy is not the first rabbit to live in this cage, is she?” Cas asked intensely, as though it was vitally important.
“Of course she is,” Lily assured the little boy with an overly cheerful smile, “Now, it’s time to go outside again.” Kids generally didn’t respond well to rabbits dying, which was why Flopsy had been replaced with the very similar Flopsy two, and subsequently with Flopsy the third.
“Do not lie to me, Lily,” Cas fixed her with a glare, looking her straight in the eye. Lily suddenly felt very small. She suddenly couldn’t wait for Dean and Sam to pick up their child.
Cas continued to stare at her just long enough to make her feel like he could read her thoughts before returning to the green chair he had been sitting in that morning. He had just sat down, perched uncomfortably, when the bell rang to call the children back in. It was almost like he’d predicted it.
Marshall left with a promise to think about who the ghost could be, and the kids filed reluctantly back into the classroom for their math lesson. Cas’s gaze followed Lily unblinkingly, leaving her with the feeling of being judged and found wanting by someone far more powerful than a kindergarten kid. The end of the school day couldn’t come fast enough.
AN: ‘A Home for a Bunny’ was written by Margaret Wise Brown. It’s fantastic.
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