Interlude - Playing In Other People's Sandboxes
Title: Inheritance
Author: Zippy
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: DC Comics knows I'm not worth suing, right? Right.
Summary: This takes place in the Small Town Lives AU which I borrowed from the awesome merfilly and ilyena_sylph wherein there is Dinah/Slade and piles of win. Posts of the Filly variety gave me granddaddy!Slade ideas that I was then forced to drabble upon. Holy, this was supposed to be brief but it kind of exploded.
Of his three children Slade was unsurprised that Joey, despite being youngest, had been the first to have kids of his own. Dinah said he just had the temperament for it and Slade couldn't argue different. He remembered with a distinct clarity seeing Joe with Corrine for the first time, the exhaustion in his face mixed in equal parts with love and disbelief. She'd been tiny and round-cheeked tucked against her father's chest, crowned with blonde curls and blinking sleepily up at him with her mother's blue-grey eyes.
Slade had always found Joe's wife a little on the odd side. Not unpleasant, certainly, just different. Raven was soft-spoken and polite, perhaps a bit detached at times and a real spiritual type - meditation and incense and all that sort - not really the kind of woman to command attention. She was as far and away from Joey's usual dating pool as the sky from the sea on first glance but Joe had been smitten from day one (to the point that Grant had made a running joke about witchcraft and Joe had made a running response of elbowing him for it at the dinner table). As it had all turned out Raven and Joe were well matched, as peaceful and easygoing a pair as you could ever find.
Their daughter made a point of shaking up her quiet household as much as possible.
Corrine was just... boisterous. She would talk incessantly if you let her, sing if you told her to stop talking, and then sign if you told her to be quiet (her finger vocabulary was possibly more extensive than her verbal one). And every time an excuse for a party rolled around she would fling herself out of the car and right into Slade's knees by way of a hello while her parents were barely halfway up the front walk. Joey would follow at an easy pace just shaking his head, one arm around Raven and guitar slung over his shoulder. No point in rushing to catch up with her when she was just going to outrun him anyway.
On the most recent visit Corrine had knocked Slade back a step or two when they connected.
"Corrie you're going to hurt Granddad like that." Raven scolded, but there was more amusement than menace in the rebuke. Like the girl would listen given that Granddad had already picked her up and tossed her in the air as a 'hi to you too'.
Truth be told Slade tended to get HIMSELF scolded more often than Corrie was at these get-togethers, although lord-knew why. He was only trying to help!
Fourth of July, the summer that Corrie was turning five, he'd been stretched out on a chair, working on a hot dog when she had come up next to him and leaned on his legs. Her little yellow sundress was crinkled up and grass-stained, one shoe gone, a leaf in her hair and her face damp with tears. Everything but the crying was standard issue Corrie.
Slade put his plate aside and scooped her into his lap with one arm.
"What's wrong?"
"Stephen's mean." she sniffled, rubbing her eyes. "He pushed me in the sandbox!"
Slade raised a brow and peered over his grandaughter's head at Roy's grandson stomping about in the sandbox next to the fence. He was younger than Corrie by a month or so, but bigger and heavier and worse at sharing. Not that he was a bad kid just, selfish sometimes in the way very young boys often were. And because Corrie wasn't any slouch - she had a pretty solid punch for a four year old, Slade had made sure of it - he had no qualms about being rough with her.
Slade glanced around, then lowered his voice.
"Why didn't you push him back?"
"I tried to trip him like you showed me but it din'n work. He stepped on my ankle." She pouted, folding one leg up into her lap to examine the tread-marks left on her calf by Stephen's sneaker, her still sandal-clad foot caked with dirt.
Slade made an appropriately sympathetic sound.
"Mmmm, do you remember what I taught you about aiming for the backs of the knees?" (Joints are never a bad target.)
Corrie nodded, blonde curls bobbing slightly.
"Go try that. Use the foot with the shoe still on it."
Joe's shadow fell over him just as Corrie slid out of his lap.
'Dad' was among the first hand signs Slade had learned to read after the accident that had cost Joey his voice, which meant that no matter how exaggerated and scolding his son made the word he still recogized it with ease.
'She's going to be beating up all other kindergartners come September!' Joe signed, clearly exasperated. 'What are you trying to do?!'
"Trust me," Slade replied, picking up his hot dog again. "This will make your life easier when she's a teenager." Over in the sandbox Stephen went down in a heap.
Twelve years later the first boy to overstep his bounds with Corrie at a school dance went home with a broken nose and Joe kind of had to concede the point.
Author: Zippy
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: DC Comics knows I'm not worth suing, right? Right.
Summary: This takes place in the Small Town Lives AU which I borrowed from the awesome merfilly and ilyena_sylph wherein there is Dinah/Slade and piles of win. Posts of the Filly variety gave me granddaddy!Slade ideas that I was then forced to drabble upon. Holy, this was supposed to be brief but it kind of exploded.
Of his three children Slade was unsurprised that Joey, despite being youngest, had been the first to have kids of his own. Dinah said he just had the temperament for it and Slade couldn't argue different. He remembered with a distinct clarity seeing Joe with Corrine for the first time, the exhaustion in his face mixed in equal parts with love and disbelief. She'd been tiny and round-cheeked tucked against her father's chest, crowned with blonde curls and blinking sleepily up at him with her mother's blue-grey eyes.
Slade had always found Joe's wife a little on the odd side. Not unpleasant, certainly, just different. Raven was soft-spoken and polite, perhaps a bit detached at times and a real spiritual type - meditation and incense and all that sort - not really the kind of woman to command attention. She was as far and away from Joey's usual dating pool as the sky from the sea on first glance but Joe had been smitten from day one (to the point that Grant had made a running joke about witchcraft and Joe had made a running response of elbowing him for it at the dinner table). As it had all turned out Raven and Joe were well matched, as peaceful and easygoing a pair as you could ever find.
Their daughter made a point of shaking up her quiet household as much as possible.
Corrine was just... boisterous. She would talk incessantly if you let her, sing if you told her to stop talking, and then sign if you told her to be quiet (her finger vocabulary was possibly more extensive than her verbal one). And every time an excuse for a party rolled around she would fling herself out of the car and right into Slade's knees by way of a hello while her parents were barely halfway up the front walk. Joey would follow at an easy pace just shaking his head, one arm around Raven and guitar slung over his shoulder. No point in rushing to catch up with her when she was just going to outrun him anyway.
On the most recent visit Corrine had knocked Slade back a step or two when they connected.
"Corrie you're going to hurt Granddad like that." Raven scolded, but there was more amusement than menace in the rebuke. Like the girl would listen given that Granddad had already picked her up and tossed her in the air as a 'hi to you too'.
Truth be told Slade tended to get HIMSELF scolded more often than Corrie was at these get-togethers, although lord-knew why. He was only trying to help!
Fourth of July, the summer that Corrie was turning five, he'd been stretched out on a chair, working on a hot dog when she had come up next to him and leaned on his legs. Her little yellow sundress was crinkled up and grass-stained, one shoe gone, a leaf in her hair and her face damp with tears. Everything but the crying was standard issue Corrie.
Slade put his plate aside and scooped her into his lap with one arm.
"What's wrong?"
"Stephen's mean." she sniffled, rubbing her eyes. "He pushed me in the sandbox!"
Slade raised a brow and peered over his grandaughter's head at Roy's grandson stomping about in the sandbox next to the fence. He was younger than Corrie by a month or so, but bigger and heavier and worse at sharing. Not that he was a bad kid just, selfish sometimes in the way very young boys often were. And because Corrie wasn't any slouch - she had a pretty solid punch for a four year old, Slade had made sure of it - he had no qualms about being rough with her.
Slade glanced around, then lowered his voice.
"Why didn't you push him back?"
"I tried to trip him like you showed me but it din'n work. He stepped on my ankle." She pouted, folding one leg up into her lap to examine the tread-marks left on her calf by Stephen's sneaker, her still sandal-clad foot caked with dirt.
Slade made an appropriately sympathetic sound.
"Mmmm, do you remember what I taught you about aiming for the backs of the knees?" (Joints are never a bad target.)
Corrie nodded, blonde curls bobbing slightly.
"Go try that. Use the foot with the shoe still on it."
Joe's shadow fell over him just as Corrie slid out of his lap.
'Dad' was among the first hand signs Slade had learned to read after the accident that had cost Joey his voice, which meant that no matter how exaggerated and scolding his son made the word he still recogized it with ease.
'She's going to be beating up all other kindergartners come September!' Joe signed, clearly exasperated. 'What are you trying to do?!'
"Trust me," Slade replied, picking up his hot dog again. "This will make your life easier when she's a teenager." Over in the sandbox Stephen went down in a heap.
Twelve years later the first boy to overstep his bounds with Corrie at a school dance went home with a broken nose and Joe kind of had to concede the point.