fic: Tale As Old As Time (Supernatural; Dean; gen)
I've been threatening to write this story for a long time. I'm not sure why today was the day it finally got written, but it amuses me. I hope it amuses you, too.
Tale As Old As Time
Supernatural; Dean; g; no spoilers; 1,880 words
"You're the one who's so great with kids, or so you keep telling me."
Thanks to mousapelli for looking it over. The ball thing was graciously suggested by jenowago.
~*~
Tale As Old As Time
"Here's the deal," Sam says, giving Dean an earnest look that usually spells trouble. "Cindy has to come to the morgue to identify the body and the spell. She doesn't want to bring her daughter, and I can't blame her for that. So you're gonna have to stay here and watch her."
Dean scowls and glances over at Cindy, who's in the kitchen, quietly talking to her kid. "Why do I get stuck babysitting?"
"Because you're the one who's so great with kids, or so you keep telling me."
Dean takes another look at Cindy's kid, a little blonde girl who's probably four or five, and suppresses a shiver of fear. The only little girl he's ever spent any time with is Lilith, and he doesn't think the experience is applicable. "Choose you for it."
Sam snorts and gives him a superior look but pounds his fist into the palm of his hand. Dean thinks about throwing paper, because he knows Sam is going to throw rock, thinking he's going to throw scissors, but he's so used to throwing scissors that it's done before he can stop it.
"We won't be long," Sam says, clapping him on the shoulder and grinning.
"Emma, you behave for Dean, okay?" Cindy says, kissing her daughter and heading outside.
"And Dean, you behave for Emma," Sam says, following her out and letting the door close behind him while Dean flips him off.
Emma looks up at him with curiosity on her face. "Why did you do that?"
"What?"
Emma holds up her middle finger. "That."
Shit. Part of him thinks it's hilarious, but the other part of him is scared of Cindy--she's an expert on witchcraft, to the point that Dean thinks she might actually be a witch herself, and he doesn't want to piss her off and end up walking around with no dick for a week because he taught her kid to flip the bird.
"It's just a special code me and Sammy use," he says, thinking of what he would have told Sam at that age. "It means goodbye."
"Oh."
"Yeah." He's still got it.
Emma cocks her head and chews her lower lip for a few seconds, then asks, "Can we have a secret code?"
Dean shrugs. "Sure. Why not?"
He sits down at the kitchen table and she scrambles up onto his lap before he can suggest she sit in her own chair. She smells like baby powder and Johnson's baby lotion. He closes his eyes, remembers his mother, and has to take a deep breath before he can speak again.
He holds up a fist. "Okay, this means, freeze."
Emma picks up the hand signals pretty quickly, and they spend a few minutes prowling through the small apartment, signaling to each other like soldiers. Emma gets bored pretty quickly, too, though, so Dean says, "You wanna watch some TV?"
"No television when Mommy's not here," she says, sounding like she's repeating something she's heard many times. She crosses her arms and shakes her head firmly when Dean opens his mouth to argue. He sighs, and looks around the living room for something to keep the kid occupied. He spots a bucket of crayons in the corner and gives a soft sigh of relief. "Okay, you wanna color?"
Emma beams at him and pulls out a Little Mermaid coloring book from a pile of stuff on the coffee table. She flops down onto the floor next to the crayons and starts coloring quietly. Dean grins, pleased at how well things are going. He slouches down on the couch and reads the newspaper.
That lasts for all of fifteen minutes, and then she's climbing up into his lap again. "I like to read, too," she says. "My mommy taught me when I was little. She says I'm a good reader."
"Maybe you could read to me," Dean says.
"Okay!" Emma runs over to the bookshelf, grabs a book, and then crawls into his lap.
"This is Sam's favorite book," he says when she opens up Green Eggs and Ham.
"Mine, too," she says.
They read it twice before she gets bored, and it's obvious she's got it mostly memorized, but Dean's still impressed. He's going to suggest another book, but Emma says, "Play with me."
There's a short list of scenarios that Dean's life has never prepared him for. This is one of them. "Uh." He freezes and scans the room again, looking for something else to occupy her. He is so making Sam pay for this.
"We could play house," she says, bouncing up and down. "I could be the mommy and you could be the baby--"
"I'm not the baby!" It comes out before he can stop it.
Emma gives him an exasperated look. "Or the daddy."
"No!" He's not sure that's any better. Possibly it's worse. "What the hell kind of games does your mother let you play?"
"Tea parties!" She claps her hands and slides down off his lap to run into her bedroom. She comes back with an armful of stuffed animals that she sets in a circle on the floor.
While Emma is setting up the tea party, Dean's phone rings.
Sam says, "It was definitely Burgess, and Cindy thinks she knows what killed him, but we need to go to the library to make sure. We're gonna be a little while, okay?"
"Yeah, sure." Dean grins at Emma, who's setting up plastic cups and saucers in front of each of her stuffed animals. She smiles back. "I got it all under control."
He opens the newspaper again, but Emma is right there, banging at it with her tiny hands. "You have to come to the tea party."
"Uh, I'm not really--I don't like tea." It sounds weak even to him, and Emma knows it.
She puts her hands on her hips, and he's sure she's copying that from her mom. He has to bite the inside of his cheek so he doesn't laugh at her. "It's pretend tea, silly. You can pretend to like it."
Damn kid, using logic against him. "I, uh, I'm not dressed right for a tea party." He smiles weakly, grasping at straws.
Her eyes light up, and she runs back into her bedroom like she's being chased. Dean braces himself, because that can't be good.
She comes back with one of those clear plastic makeup bags in one hand and a big pink brush in the other. "You have to go to the beauty parlor first!" She climbs up onto the couch behind him and starts mauling his head with her hairbrush.
He's going to kill Sam.
He figures his hair isn't really long enough to entertain her, but that's before he sees the variety of curlers and combs and sparkly barrettes spilling out of her makeup bag. She chatters happily about her stuffed animals and how she does all their hair while her mom does hers, and he finds himself reluctantly charmed by the whole thing.
"Your hair isn't long enough to curl," she says looking regretfully at the pink foam curlers.
"Sam's is," he says, grinning.
She claps excitedly and hugs him. "When Mommy and Sam come back, we'll do Sam's hair too!"
He gives her a little squeeze. "You bet we will, sweetheart."
He ends up with a sore scalp and six sparkly pink and purple barrettes in his hair before she decides he's dressed up enough for her tea party.
"Look at how pretty you are!" she says, waving a heavy silver hand mirror in front of him, but not holding it still long enough for him to get a look at himself. He's kind of grateful for that. "We should polish your nails, too."
Dean sighs and gives in to the inevitable.
Twenty minutes later, Dean's nails are sloppily painted with sparkly purple nail polish, and he's painted Emma's nails the same color (with slightly neater results).
He sits on the floor and pretends to sip five cups of pretend tea and learns all about Belle and Baby Bear and Jessie the Fluffy Duck, and "Sholie the puppy. That's spelled C-H-L-O-E." She shows him the red collar with the name stamped on a little plastic heart.
Dean laughs. "I see."
And then Emma says the words he believes will be his salvation. "Now that we're all pretty, we can play ball." She runs off to her room again.
"Ball? Ball is good. I like ball," he says. He's up for football, basketball, baseball. Hell, he'll even play soccer if she wants. He remembers helping Sam practice when they were kids. He gets up and shakes the kinks out of his legs from sitting on the floor for so long. "I was an awesome ballplayer in school," he says, almost turning into one of those guys who brags about how cool they were in high school, but he stops when Emma comes running back into the room, her arms full of frilly dresses and plastic shoes. She's got a tiara perched precariously on her head, and he catches it as it falls off. "I've never played ball with dresses," he says.
"We're like Cinderella, going to the ball!"
Dean forces himself not to slump in defeat. "Of course we are." He helps her pull on a yellow dress with a flouncy skirt and big puffy sleeves, and then he gets the tiara securely anchored on her head and she only yells at him once for pulling her hair. She kicks off her sneakers and slips her feet into clear plastic shoes that have little heels, even though he doesn't think she's going to be able to walk in them.
She pops a tape into her little Hello Kitty cassette player, and the song "Beauty and the Beast" starts.
"Now you have to dance with me." She holds her arms up and waits expectantly.
It's on the tip of his tongue to say, sweetheart, I don't dance. He's said it to so many girls over the years (usually followed by a lame come on) that he's lost count. But he can't do that to Emma, with her big blue eyes and her wide smile and sparkly tiara.
He lifts her up into his arms and starts twirling her around the room, laughing when she giggles.
When Sam and Cindy finally come in, looking awfully disheveled from a trip to the morgue and the library, Dean's lying on the couch, dozing, and Emma's asleep on his chest, still wearing her tiara.
Before Sam can open his mouth, Dean says, "I will make you pay for this in ways you can't even imagine, so start sleeping with one eye open."
Sam snorts. "Whatever you say, princess."
"I'm the princess," Emma says around a yawn as her mother picks her up. "He's the Beast."
"Yeah," Dean says, pulling the barrettes out of his hair and dropping them into Emma's makeup bag. "And don't you forget it."
Emma leans out of her mother's arms to give Dean a hug. "Come play with me again," she says, burying her face in his neck.
"Yeah, kiddo, I will." Dean grins, wide and goofy. "We still have to curl Sam's hair."
The shocked look on Sam's face is worth it.
end
~*~
Feedback is adored.
~*~
Tale As Old As Time
Supernatural; Dean; g; no spoilers; 1,880 words
"You're the one who's so great with kids, or so you keep telling me."
Thanks to mousapelli for looking it over. The ball thing was graciously suggested by jenowago.
~*~
Tale As Old As Time
"Here's the deal," Sam says, giving Dean an earnest look that usually spells trouble. "Cindy has to come to the morgue to identify the body and the spell. She doesn't want to bring her daughter, and I can't blame her for that. So you're gonna have to stay here and watch her."
Dean scowls and glances over at Cindy, who's in the kitchen, quietly talking to her kid. "Why do I get stuck babysitting?"
"Because you're the one who's so great with kids, or so you keep telling me."
Dean takes another look at Cindy's kid, a little blonde girl who's probably four or five, and suppresses a shiver of fear. The only little girl he's ever spent any time with is Lilith, and he doesn't think the experience is applicable. "Choose you for it."
Sam snorts and gives him a superior look but pounds his fist into the palm of his hand. Dean thinks about throwing paper, because he knows Sam is going to throw rock, thinking he's going to throw scissors, but he's so used to throwing scissors that it's done before he can stop it.
"We won't be long," Sam says, clapping him on the shoulder and grinning.
"Emma, you behave for Dean, okay?" Cindy says, kissing her daughter and heading outside.
"And Dean, you behave for Emma," Sam says, following her out and letting the door close behind him while Dean flips him off.
Emma looks up at him with curiosity on her face. "Why did you do that?"
"What?"
Emma holds up her middle finger. "That."
Shit. Part of him thinks it's hilarious, but the other part of him is scared of Cindy--she's an expert on witchcraft, to the point that Dean thinks she might actually be a witch herself, and he doesn't want to piss her off and end up walking around with no dick for a week because he taught her kid to flip the bird.
"It's just a special code me and Sammy use," he says, thinking of what he would have told Sam at that age. "It means goodbye."
"Oh."
"Yeah." He's still got it.
Emma cocks her head and chews her lower lip for a few seconds, then asks, "Can we have a secret code?"
Dean shrugs. "Sure. Why not?"
He sits down at the kitchen table and she scrambles up onto his lap before he can suggest she sit in her own chair. She smells like baby powder and Johnson's baby lotion. He closes his eyes, remembers his mother, and has to take a deep breath before he can speak again.
He holds up a fist. "Okay, this means, freeze."
Emma picks up the hand signals pretty quickly, and they spend a few minutes prowling through the small apartment, signaling to each other like soldiers. Emma gets bored pretty quickly, too, though, so Dean says, "You wanna watch some TV?"
"No television when Mommy's not here," she says, sounding like she's repeating something she's heard many times. She crosses her arms and shakes her head firmly when Dean opens his mouth to argue. He sighs, and looks around the living room for something to keep the kid occupied. He spots a bucket of crayons in the corner and gives a soft sigh of relief. "Okay, you wanna color?"
Emma beams at him and pulls out a Little Mermaid coloring book from a pile of stuff on the coffee table. She flops down onto the floor next to the crayons and starts coloring quietly. Dean grins, pleased at how well things are going. He slouches down on the couch and reads the newspaper.
That lasts for all of fifteen minutes, and then she's climbing up into his lap again. "I like to read, too," she says. "My mommy taught me when I was little. She says I'm a good reader."
"Maybe you could read to me," Dean says.
"Okay!" Emma runs over to the bookshelf, grabs a book, and then crawls into his lap.
"This is Sam's favorite book," he says when she opens up Green Eggs and Ham.
"Mine, too," she says.
They read it twice before she gets bored, and it's obvious she's got it mostly memorized, but Dean's still impressed. He's going to suggest another book, but Emma says, "Play with me."
There's a short list of scenarios that Dean's life has never prepared him for. This is one of them. "Uh." He freezes and scans the room again, looking for something else to occupy her. He is so making Sam pay for this.
"We could play house," she says, bouncing up and down. "I could be the mommy and you could be the baby--"
"I'm not the baby!" It comes out before he can stop it.
Emma gives him an exasperated look. "Or the daddy."
"No!" He's not sure that's any better. Possibly it's worse. "What the hell kind of games does your mother let you play?"
"Tea parties!" She claps her hands and slides down off his lap to run into her bedroom. She comes back with an armful of stuffed animals that she sets in a circle on the floor.
While Emma is setting up the tea party, Dean's phone rings.
Sam says, "It was definitely Burgess, and Cindy thinks she knows what killed him, but we need to go to the library to make sure. We're gonna be a little while, okay?"
"Yeah, sure." Dean grins at Emma, who's setting up plastic cups and saucers in front of each of her stuffed animals. She smiles back. "I got it all under control."
He opens the newspaper again, but Emma is right there, banging at it with her tiny hands. "You have to come to the tea party."
"Uh, I'm not really--I don't like tea." It sounds weak even to him, and Emma knows it.
She puts her hands on her hips, and he's sure she's copying that from her mom. He has to bite the inside of his cheek so he doesn't laugh at her. "It's pretend tea, silly. You can pretend to like it."
Damn kid, using logic against him. "I, uh, I'm not dressed right for a tea party." He smiles weakly, grasping at straws.
Her eyes light up, and she runs back into her bedroom like she's being chased. Dean braces himself, because that can't be good.
She comes back with one of those clear plastic makeup bags in one hand and a big pink brush in the other. "You have to go to the beauty parlor first!" She climbs up onto the couch behind him and starts mauling his head with her hairbrush.
He's going to kill Sam.
He figures his hair isn't really long enough to entertain her, but that's before he sees the variety of curlers and combs and sparkly barrettes spilling out of her makeup bag. She chatters happily about her stuffed animals and how she does all their hair while her mom does hers, and he finds himself reluctantly charmed by the whole thing.
"Your hair isn't long enough to curl," she says looking regretfully at the pink foam curlers.
"Sam's is," he says, grinning.
She claps excitedly and hugs him. "When Mommy and Sam come back, we'll do Sam's hair too!"
He gives her a little squeeze. "You bet we will, sweetheart."
He ends up with a sore scalp and six sparkly pink and purple barrettes in his hair before she decides he's dressed up enough for her tea party.
"Look at how pretty you are!" she says, waving a heavy silver hand mirror in front of him, but not holding it still long enough for him to get a look at himself. He's kind of grateful for that. "We should polish your nails, too."
Dean sighs and gives in to the inevitable.
Twenty minutes later, Dean's nails are sloppily painted with sparkly purple nail polish, and he's painted Emma's nails the same color (with slightly neater results).
He sits on the floor and pretends to sip five cups of pretend tea and learns all about Belle and Baby Bear and Jessie the Fluffy Duck, and "Sholie the puppy. That's spelled C-H-L-O-E." She shows him the red collar with the name stamped on a little plastic heart.
Dean laughs. "I see."
And then Emma says the words he believes will be his salvation. "Now that we're all pretty, we can play ball." She runs off to her room again.
"Ball? Ball is good. I like ball," he says. He's up for football, basketball, baseball. Hell, he'll even play soccer if she wants. He remembers helping Sam practice when they were kids. He gets up and shakes the kinks out of his legs from sitting on the floor for so long. "I was an awesome ballplayer in school," he says, almost turning into one of those guys who brags about how cool they were in high school, but he stops when Emma comes running back into the room, her arms full of frilly dresses and plastic shoes. She's got a tiara perched precariously on her head, and he catches it as it falls off. "I've never played ball with dresses," he says.
"We're like Cinderella, going to the ball!"
Dean forces himself not to slump in defeat. "Of course we are." He helps her pull on a yellow dress with a flouncy skirt and big puffy sleeves, and then he gets the tiara securely anchored on her head and she only yells at him once for pulling her hair. She kicks off her sneakers and slips her feet into clear plastic shoes that have little heels, even though he doesn't think she's going to be able to walk in them.
She pops a tape into her little Hello Kitty cassette player, and the song "Beauty and the Beast" starts.
"Now you have to dance with me." She holds her arms up and waits expectantly.
It's on the tip of his tongue to say, sweetheart, I don't dance. He's said it to so many girls over the years (usually followed by a lame come on) that he's lost count. But he can't do that to Emma, with her big blue eyes and her wide smile and sparkly tiara.
He lifts her up into his arms and starts twirling her around the room, laughing when she giggles.
When Sam and Cindy finally come in, looking awfully disheveled from a trip to the morgue and the library, Dean's lying on the couch, dozing, and Emma's asleep on his chest, still wearing her tiara.
Before Sam can open his mouth, Dean says, "I will make you pay for this in ways you can't even imagine, so start sleeping with one eye open."
Sam snorts. "Whatever you say, princess."
"I'm the princess," Emma says around a yawn as her mother picks her up. "He's the Beast."
"Yeah," Dean says, pulling the barrettes out of his hair and dropping them into Emma's makeup bag. "And don't you forget it."
Emma leans out of her mother's arms to give Dean a hug. "Come play with me again," she says, burying her face in his neck.
"Yeah, kiddo, I will." Dean grins, wide and goofy. "We still have to curl Sam's hair."
The shocked look on Sam's face is worth it.
end
~*~
Feedback is adored.
~*~