Fic: Dean's Adventures in Babysitting: Napalm in the Morning
Title: Dean’s Adventures in Babysitting: Napalm in the Morning
Author: alexjanna91
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean, (past)Dean/Lisa
Series: Apple Pie Life
Rating: PG- PG13
Genre: Gen, Post Season 5
Word Count: 5,416
Warning: kids(lots of kids), abundant OCs, BAMF!Dean, parental!Dean, parental hovering, kids & Dean thinking they’re sneaky, language
Summary: Between the combed hair, the summer homework, and the overbearing mother the kid was miserable. Dean is determined to fix that.
A/N: Timestamp to Dean’s Adventures in Babysitting. Some content may trigger, be advised.
*
It was six forty-five in the morning. The sun had just barely started rising in the sky like it needed coffee just to try and make the effort. It was about two hours too early for the doorbell to start ringing. Dean was groggy and stiff and still fighting with the last dregs of another screaming night terror.
The yoga breathing Lisa had started forcing on him when he started to wake up half the neighborhood with his screaming only did so much to calm him down. As it was, his lungs still felt shredded and his hands still felt sticky with blood. Dean barely got enough shut eye to walk in a straight line much less answer the door at ass-crack o’clock in the morning.
Still, it was one of his kid days, as he called them, and the doorbell only rang this early for one of two reasons; there was a problem with one of his kids, or Jehovah’s Witness was being freakishly persistent.
Stumbling from his overheated and sweat dampened bed, Dean struggled into a pair of overly ripe jeans and yanked on a shirt that was stiff from either motor oil or vomit. These days it was a tossup to which one it could be.
He never thought he’d miss the days when his options for mysterious stains were just blood or monster guts.
On his way down the hall, Dean tripped on a mountain of Legos left over from the day before and brained himself on the creepy-ass grandfather clock Lisa was convinced was just charming and not in anyway possessed by the voyeuristic spirit of a dirty old man. Dean was convinced otherwise; the clock still gave him the willies despite having secretly done all the tests he could dredge up from his not inconsiderable repertoire on it. Disappointingly it came up clean.
Then again maybe the thing was just butt-fuck ugly.
By the time Dean finally made it to the front door, the bell had rung another three times and Dean was having serious issues feeling anything other than annoyed and cranky.
“For fuck’s sake!” Dean cursed louder than he normally would when his mind was firing on all cylinders. “I’m right here! Quit it with the bell already!”
He yanked the door open expecting Laurie Grant, recently divorced Mom-On-The-Prowl, otherwise known as Cary and Hugh’s mom, or Madison Strait, the Catty-But-Charming Clark and Sydney’s mom. They were the only two moms of his group that were cheeky enough to make such a racket this early in the morning and risk his ire.
Dean was not, however, expecting to find Shelly St. James, Helicopter-Mom and Super-Bitch, shifting anxiously, impatiently on Lisa’s welcome mat with her quiet introverted son Nathan standing next to her unhappily.
The snarky comment on his lips died and he was sure his mouth was hanging open unattractively. Shelly had made no secret about her disdain and distrust of his child caring skills. She’d even threatened to have him investigated until he’d gotten his daycare permit and still had categorically refused to even think about leaving her son in his obviously incapable and negligent hands.
To say Dean was debating checking the sky for flying pigs, or splashing her with holy water wasn’t an understatement. He’d seen way stranger things; Shelly St. James standing on his porch being one of them.
“Mrs. St. James.” Dean said when it looked like her distaste and discomfort wasn’t going to permit her to start off the conversation. “Is there a reason you’re ringing my doorbell at Ungodly o’clock in the morning?”
Okay so he wasn’t as polite as he should be. He was sleep-deprived, coffee starved, and he was pretty sure he’d grabbed the vomit shirt and not the motor oil one like he’d been silently hoping.
Shelly scowled something fierce, but apparently decided to ignore his impertinence in favor of expediency. How magnanimous of her.
“Mr. Campbell, I know this is short notice and… unexpected-”
Dean kindly refrained from snorting. He had little control of his incredulous eyebrow expression however.
“But I have a family emergency, my husband is out of town on business, and our sitter has the stomach flu.” She paused and opened her mouth like she was going to continue, but by the grimace on her face and the wrinkle of her nose she was having some real trouble actually forcing the words out.
Dean was tempted to wait her out, but the kid, Nathan looked seriously miserable with sad and tired brown eyes. Dean had never been able to resist any kid’s sad puppy expression. He blamed years of Sam steadily wearing down his defenses.
“You want me to take Nathan for the day.” He finished for her and kindly did not sound smug about it.
Shelly sighed like she was being tortured and nodded. “Yes, Mr. Campbell. I would very much appreciate if you could watch Nathan for the day. Just until I get my… family emergency taken care of.”
Dean wanted to ask why she seemed about to shake out of her skin with anxious worry every time she mentioned her “family emergency”, but he didn’t bother asking. It was none of his business and she wouldn’t have told him. His protective instincts, his yearning need to just find any kind of threat, problem and eliminate it was not welcome or practical here.
“I would be glad to take Nathan.” Dean said, figuring the sooner he got Shelly off his porch the sooner he could get out of his vomit encrusted shirt and take a shower before he started breakfast. “He’ll be fine with the other kids.”
Shelly nodded in grudgingly grateful acceptance then started giving instructions like a drill sergeant. “He has asthma so if he starts to have trouble breathing his inhaler is in his backpack. He’s allergic to strawberries, wheatgrass, and pineapple, his epinephrine pen is in the middle pocket. His study books are in there as well, he should have math pages fifteen through twenty-four finished by eleven then history pages seven through thirteen, followed by English thirty through thirty-three.
“He’s sensitive to the sun so no longer than fifteen minutes at a time in any kind of direct sunlight. No running, it triggers his asthma, no sugar, no candy, no sports drinks, and no rough play.” She finished off and Dean was just a little bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of restrictions on this kid. Shelly wasn’t finished just yet apparently. She unzipped her purse and pulled out a packet of bound and laminated notecards and shoved them at Dean like it was mission brief.
“This is all of the contact information you need. His pediatrician, our pharmacy, my office, my husband’s office, both our cells, and the hospital I’ll be at today and any and all instructions for his inhaler and epi-pen should he need them.” She flipped through each entry in the packet consecutively like Dean wouldn’t have been able to find it on his own. Then she paused and waited to see if he had any questions.
When all Dean seemed able to do was stand there with a stupid look on his face she seemed suddenly ten times less sure about leaving her apparently snowflake fragile kid with the mouth-gaping, vomit smelling Neanderthal in front of her.
Shaking himself, Dean tucked the packet in his back pocket and tried to get his brain to process the information dump he’d just undergone. “I got it,” was all his sluggish brain seemed to be able to spit out just then.
Shelly looked completely unenthused about leaving Nathan in his bumbling care, but she didn’t have much of a choice so she just steeled her resolved and turned to crouched down in front of her son grasping him by the shoulders in a gentle steadying hold.
“Alright Nathan. I’m going to leave now. Do you have your inhaler?”
The kid huffed and ducked his head as if embarrassed. “Yes, Mom.”
“Do you have your epinephrine pack?”
Nathan looked up then and Dean was mildly amused to see the kid’s cheeks were bright red with embarrassment. “Yes, Mom. You checked before we left the house. Remember?”
His mom just sighed and nodded then leaned forward and kissed the kid on the forehead before standing again and leveling a glare at Dean. He would have taken more offense to the expression if he hadn’t been watching Nathan’s face fairly catch on fire with the force of his blush. The kid’s face was once again tuned down to the floor and Dean felt for him.
Parents could be so embarrassing sometimes.
Before Shelly could open her mouth and spew even more instructions, Dean cut her off. “Mrs. St. James, I have your information, Nathan has his stuff, you have an emergence and I have a breakfast to start preparing.”
She huffed then with one last warning glance at Dean and a stroking hand over Nathan’s head she was in her car and reluctantly pulling away from the curb.
Dean waved somewhat mockingly from the front porch before turning his attention to the nine year-old boy in front of him.
Nathan was dressed like he was auditioning for yacht club poster boy, polo shirt neatly pressed and tucked into his perfectly creased khaki trousers, his shoes were too dressy for any kid under the age of forty and his brown hair was combed to the side and held in place by a thin smear of hair gel. His blue backpack hanging off his shoulders looked almost new it was so clean despite having obvious creasing and softening from use.
In that moment Dean looked at this poor miserable kid with more instructions and restrictions than an ancient Sumerian summoning ritual and sighed. No kid should be that well taken care of and still look so fucking sad.
“Alright.” He rubbed at his hair absently and stepped back from the door and ushered the kid inside. “Let’s get you inside, okay, Nate?”
The kid looked up at Dean for the first time and wrinkled his nose. “It’s Nathan.”
His heart clenched a little, but Dean couldn’t stop himself smiling. Kid kinda reminded him of Sam just then. Maybe today wouldn’t be so bad after all. “Sure thing, kid.” He smirked and led the kid over to the living room.
Nathan passed him on his way to the sofa and wrinkled his nose again. “You smell like throw up.”
Yep, Dean thought wryly. Kid definitely reminded him of Sammy.
*
It was a much more reasonable hour and all of Dean’s kids had shown up and eaten breakfast and were now overrunning the house in a not very controlled chaos. Dean allowed the in-door-out-door rampaging for about fifteen minutes before he put his foot down and shoved the lot of them out into the backyard to amuse themselves somewhere Lisa wouldn’t have a conniption if they broke anything.
It almost took Dean twenty minutes of watching games of tag, trampoline, and a tea party that looked more like a NATO Parliamentary Assembly than a garden party to notice that one of his kids was missing. Looking around he finally spotted his missing charge on the other side of the sliding glass door seated at the kitchen table with a study book open in front of him and a mournful look on his face as he watched the other kids outside.
Sighing, Dean looked for Ben out in the yard and yelled for him to keep an eye out on the other kids before he stood up from his lounge chair and headed inside.
The kid had barely said a word the entire morning seeming to prefer to sit quietly and sink into the background when the other kids were around him. Dean hadn’t been blind to the way the other kids watched Nathan surreptitiously like they didn’t quite know how to interact with him either. It wasn’t hard to draw the conclusion that Nathan wasn’t much of a joiner in school and as a result probably didn’t have many, or any, friends.
Of course having an overprotective, overachieving, over controlling helicopter-mom that ruled the PTA like a despot probably didn’t help either. Dean had felt smothered and he’d barely spent ten minutes talking to her.
Dean hadn’t been planning on holding the kid to the homework during the summer thing, but apparently Nathan was just the brand of lonely isolated, protectively bubbled kid to do it anyway even without having his mother breathing down his neck.
When he stepped back into the kitchen, Nathan looked up at him and watched Dean take a seat next to him at the table.
“So…” Dean started, nudging one of the kid’s study books closer to get a better look at it. Allied Movements in the South Pacific Theater during WWII… “Wow that’s some heavy learning, kid.” Dean whistled, mildly impressed that an nine year-old could even comprehend reading like that much less be at all interested enough to even try.
Nathan just looked back down at the study book tugging it back to him. “My Great-Grandfather fought in World War II, my Grandfather was in the Marines in Vietnam, and my Uncle was stationed in Afghanistan for two tours.”
Huh… So Helicopter-Mom was a military brat. Somehow that made perfect sense. She was just that kind of uptight to have been raised in a family of military officers.
“My dad was a Marine.” Dean offered and just like that Nathan didn’t look like he was waiting for Dean to lose interest in him at any moment. “Fought in Vietnam, too. Taught my little brother and me pretty much everything he knew.”
Nathan bit his lip seeming nervous to press his luck with the attention of an adult nearly all of the neighborhood kids gushed about being “so totally cool”.
“Where did you serve?” He asked hesitantly.
The question took Dean aback.
“It’s just that you act like my grandfather and uncle sometimes.” Nathan rushed to say, afraid he’d offended Dean. “You always flinch and look toward sudden or loud sounds, you watch for threats to the other kids like they could come at any time even though they’re just in the backyard, and when you walk around the yard to watch the kids you’re really just checking the perimeter.”
Dean was a little bit stunned. To think that Nathan was either so observant or so used to being around veterans with no small amounts of PTSD, like Dean had, that he recognized the signs was just a little bit amazing. The kid was seriously smart.
“And,” Nathan continued starting to fidget nervously at Dean’s continued stunned silence, “Ben always makes more noise than normal when he’s walking up behind you if he can’t approach in your line of sight. Errol does it too, but I think he just does it cause Ben does it and the other kids sometimes do it if they see Ben doing it.”
“Nate.” Dean interrupted before the kid could babble himself into a nervous fit. “That’s pretty impressive.” He said and Nathan seemed more surprised by the praise than he’d been when Melanie had asked him if he wanted braid her hair after breakfast. “You got all that just from three hours of this crazy fest?” Dean asked gesturing around at the chaos that was the house filled with nearly a dozen kids under the age of twelve
Nathan blushed so deep Dean was sure the kid was going to burst into flames. “Yeah.” He murmured shyly. “My uncle told me it’s always good to be extra observant of your surroundings.”
“Well, he’s right.” Dean nodded knowingly, still a little bit shocked by just how observant this kid was.
He looked at the kid again taking in his periodic glances at the play going on outside and the naked yearning in his brown eyes then looked at the kid’s stack of work books. It was summer, Dean decided. No kid deserved to be stuck inside doing homework; freakishly overbearing mother or not.
Plus, the kid was just way too pale to be anything other than sunshine deprived.
“Nate, is there any specific reason why you’re not allowed sun for more than fifteen minutes, or that you can’t run around with the other kids?”
“No.” The kid sighed like he’d resigned himself to being miserable in air conditioning. “Mom’s just worried cause I almost died when I was a baby or something. My asthma isn’t really that bad.”
It was said with the nonchalance of a child that didn’t quite understand the fear of parenthood already inured to the obsessive precautions that fear often birthed. Dean himself was getting a few flashbacks to the close calls and the inevitable fall of Sam. He understood Shelly a little better now that he knew she’d come by that fear honestly, but at the same time the kid was clearly miserable and Dean was already dead set on doing something about it.
“Well, then I don’t see a reason why you can’t just put off the homework for a little while and come outside and play with us. I’m thinking of starting up a game of water gun war in the yard in a few minutes.” He smirked just thinking about the idea of it.
“But I’m not supposed to get my clothes dirty.” Nathan protested mournfully.
“No problem, you can borrow a pair of Ben’s swim shorts.” Dean waved the kid’s words away with a hand. “All the kids keep swimsuits here after the first impromptu water gun fight we had.”
“But I have asthma.” Nathan said like he was just searching for a reason he shouldn’t have any kind of fun whatsoever.
“We’ll keep your inhaler in your pocket. No big deal.” Dean answered easily. This was going to be so much fun he just knew it.
Nathan’s mouth opened and closed for a moment like he was trying to think of another protestation, but when he finally came up empty he looked hesitantly excited at the idea of joining the game with them all. “Okay.” He finally said.
Dean grinned so big he knew he must look stupid. “Awesome.”
*
Thirty minutes later, the kids were all slathered in sunscreen (Dean learned his lesson after the first time all the moms gave him stink eyes when he’d returned their kids looking like over boiled lobsters) and clothed in their swimsuits. Nathan was in Ben’s suit from the summer before and since he was nearly two sizes smaller it fit alright. His inhaler was safely ensconced in the Velcro pocket on the leg in a zip-lock baggie for extra protection from the water.
Dean was in a pair of cut-offs that had to be sacrificed after he’d ripped the left leg almost entirely off while trying to clean out Lisa’s gutters around her house. Nathan’s eyes had been inquisitive and curious when he’d spotted Cas’s handprint on Dean’s shoulder along with his other various scars, and his tattoo, but he’d refrained from asking since all the other kids seemed unfazed by the sight of Dean without his shirt on.
Standing at the backyard water spigot filling up red and blue water balloons, Dean watched as the kids divided into two teams that inevitably split the kids by age.
Melanie, Clark, Cary, and Hugh were standing apart in one team while Ben, Errol, Thomas, and Sydney made up the other one. Nathan was standing off to one side looking more unsure of himself than he had standing on Dean’s welcome mat that morning.
“You can be on our team, Nathan.” Melanie spoke up and waved the awkward little boy over. “We’re gonna beat them so you don’t want to be on their team anyway.”
Dean chuckled under his breath as he tied off the last balloon. Melanie never failed to impress him with the sheer amount of confidence and feistiness she had for a six year-old.
“Alright, kids!” Dean shouted as he whistled shrilly to get their, “Attention!”
The kids snapped to like trained cadets, Nathan being the only one slow to fall in rank seeing as he was new to the game. Dean just winked at him when he blushed.
“Okay! Three rules to the game. Rule number one!”
“Not in the eyes!” The kids shouted in unison losing their childishly exaggerated straight backed stances with their enthusiasm.
“Rule number two!”
“Don’t cry wolf!” They called just starting to vibrate with eagerness to get to it already.
Dean had added rule two after he’d nearly had a heart attack when Melanie tried to stage a fake broken arm on Cary to get the other side to come out of cover to investigate. Needless to say, Dean had not been amused.
“And rule number three!”
“Kick butt and take names!” The kids positively screamed then dived at the pile of primed water guns in a free for all to get the heavy hitters. There were extras so every kid got at least one.
The designated team leaders each grabbed a bucket filled with red or blue balloons and the two teams scattered to their bases. Dean watched and laughed the entire time. This was going to be so much fun.
*
Shelly was exhausted. She’d spent the entire day at the hospital waiting for her little brother, Owen to come out of surgery. When he’d been honorably discharged from the military after he’d been injured in his second tour in Afghanistan she’d thought she was finished worrying about him getting shot.
Then he’d just gone and joined the FBI. It seemed even though his big sis was quite finished with him being shot at, he wasn’t.
It was just a through and through in the shoulder while he’d been chasing down a suspect with surgery to repair some minor muscle damage, but that didn’t stop Shelly from nearly having a heart attack when she’d gotten the call as his next of kin.
Owen was safely ensconced in a hospital bed hooked up to one of those button powered morphine drips so he was feeling no pain, but still. Shelly was keyed up and all she really wanted to do was get Nathan, go home and cry a little bit before she had to make dinner.
She was walking up to the Braeden’s front door when she heard the screaming and started to panic a little. Children screaming, an adult screaming… and laughing.
She pressed a hand to her chest to slow her heartbeat back to normal. When she was sure she had it under control she followed the noise around the side of the house to the back gate. It was locked, but that had never been much of a deterrent when she’d been a rebellious teen, so it wasn’t much of one now that she was an uptight housewife.
Yes, she knew she was uptight. Sue her. It seemed like she’d forgotten how to unwind when her baby boy had almost died from a severe asthma attack at the age of two and a half.
She placed her foot on the horizontal slat of the gate and boosted up, her hands on the top of the wooden gate to steady herself as she looked over into the yard prepared to vault over if there was any danger.
It looked like full out warfare… with water balloons.
The kids were all running around in swimsuits and screaming their heads off with glee as they pumped super soakers and quick fired water pistols. Red and blue water balloons sailed through the air like hand grenades.
As Shelly watched, she realized the battle field was divided into two teams, the younger kids against the older kids. It seemed like the young ones were winning.
Trisha Walsh’s little girl was leading a coordinated attack with Laurie Grant’s twin boys with super soakers from one side while Shelly’s own Nathan was directing an attack of red water balloons with Madison Strait’s little boy.
The older kids seemed to be losing badly even though, with the exception of Nathan, the other team was composed of younger kids. Really it should have been a relatively evenly matched game; it was not. They were getting thoroughly trounced.
She stood on the gate and watched. Just when Shelly was sure the game would be over and one side would stand victorious, Dean Campbell came out the bushes on one side of the battlefield and started pelting both teams with a behemoth water gun the size of a rocket launcher, playfully maniacal laughter lighting up his face.
“Traitor!” Little Melanie suddenly bellowed, turning her gun on the new enemy.
“Get him!” yelled Errol Flynn as he too abandoned his previous adversary for this new threat.
Nathan stood from his crouch and cocked back an arm to launch a balloon grenade. “Attack!” He let it fly and Dean Campbell was hit in the chest and soaked.
Shelly watched long enough to know that Dean would inevitably go down under a pile of kids still laughing like a loon before she dropped from her perch and leaned against the gate.
She’d given explicit instructions that Nathan wasn’t do to any strenuous activity. That he wasn’t to be out in the sun longer than fifteen minutes. That he wasn’t to have any sugar and judging by the empty pouches and plastic bottles of fruit flavored sugar drinks on the back porch that direction had obviously not been heeded either.
The sound of Nathan’s laughter rose over the din and made her heart clench. It has been so long since she’d heard her son so free and joyful. It has been a long time since she didn’t feel that gut gnawing, throat tightening anxiety at the thought of letting him out of her sight.
Dean Campbell’s laughter rang clear and deep from the other side of gate and Shelly closed her eyes.
Was this really what she’d been reduced to? Was she really the type of mother that worried and hovered and monitored and controlled so much that she’d almost forgotten what the sound of her own son’s carefree laughter sounded like?
She picked the bright sound out of the din once more and knew her answer.
Glancing down at her watch, Shelly realized that it was about two hours before any of the other parents would be around to pick up their kids and she came to a decision.
She walked away from sounds of childish battle and got back into her car and drove the three streets back to her home.
*
There was a mad scramble after their game of war had finally ended with the kids victorious and Dean thoroughly defeated lying on his back in the grass. The parents were going to start showing up any minute now and there was precious little time to get everyone dried off and redressed to go home.
There was precious little time to get Nathan looking like he hadn’t just been involved in a battle royal with water guns, on a sugar high, in the sun for hours on end.
Seeing as they’d all bonded in their war against Dean, the kids took it upon themselves to help Nathan get ready to face his mother like nothing had ever happened.
Melanie took over Nathan’s hair combing and gelling the tangled, windswept mess into submission. Sydney was directing Ben in the task of finishing all of Nathan’s homework since Dean had taught the kid the fine art of forging handwriting. Errol, Cary, and Hugh were busy racing around the house putting away and downright hiding any and all evidence of outdoor fun or sugary treats. Thomas was stationed at the front entrance windows as the look out.
Dean and Clark were trying to stage the kitchen table and living room with healthy snacks (fruit and crackers) and educational board games (a dusty edition of Trivial Pursuits that was about five age levels too high for this demographic).
“She’s here!” Thomas shouted over the barley controlled chaos of the cleanup effort as he peeked out of the curtained window. Thirty seconds later the doorbell rang.
There was a mad scramble as the kids stumbled over each other to get to their appointed staged positions around the board game in the living room and Dean finished tugging a clean (this time vomit free) shirt over his head on top on a pair of jeans that wouldn’t be able to get up and walk away on their own.
Melanie shoved Nathan out of the hall bathroom as the boy was just finished hurriedly tucking the last corner of his shirt tails into his pants, his hair looked so neat and tidy a hurricane wouldn’t have been able to ruffle it.
“You ready, kid?” Dean looked down at him and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly.
Nathan gave him a grave nod and hefted his backpack onto his shoulders, all his homework and emergency medical equipment stowed inside. He faced the door like he was about to face the firing squad.
Dean had to admire the kid’s bravery. If he had a mom like Shelly St. James he’d have been scared shitless too.
Dean opened the door and found Shelly St. James on the other side looking tired and worn out and maybe a little sad.
“Mrs. St. James.” Dean greeted.
“Mr. Campbell.” Shelly nodded and forced a painful looking smile on her face. “Thank you for looking after Nathan.”
Mildly stunned that the words didn’t sound nearly as insincere as he’d have imagined, Dean answered back truthfully.
“It was absolutely no problem. Nate’s a good kid. I’d be happy to have him any time. The other kids especially really enjoyed having him around.”
A more genuine, less forced smile curved at Shelly’s face then. She didn’t look quite as bitchy or severe like that, Dean noted absently.
“That’s good.” Shelly said then turned to her son who had moved to her side, leaning into her hip. He was obviously glad to see her despite all the subterfuge. “Did you have fun, Nathan?”
“Yes, Mom.” Nathan said with a small barely controlled spark of excitement in his voice, lighting up his face. “I had lots of fun.” Then he back tracked. “After I finished my homework.”
The slight softening of Shelly’s face seemed to tighten a little more at that, but her expression cleared again and she swept a gentle hand over his impeccably styled hair. There was about a pound more hair gel in it now than there had been when she’d dropped him off that morning, and his cheeks were pink where the sunscreen had faded.
The thought of Dean Campbell or one of the other children trying to tame her son’s nearly uncontrollable hair mildly amused her; though they did seem relatively successful at it. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her beautiful son with sun kissed cheeks.
“That’s good, sweetie. Let’s go home and I’ll tell you about Uncle Owen.”
Dean watched them walk back to their car and lifted a hand in return when Nathan looked back at him from the passenger side and waved. He hoped the kid got to come back. It had been awesome seeing him come out of his shell and he fit in well with the group dynamic of the other kids. Plus Nathan had freaking loved it, Dean had seen as much in the kid’s shining eyes and wide smile.
*
When the next morning dawned and Dean found himself watching over one more kid, he smiled.
Nathan was watching the trampoline action like approaching the concept required a complicated tactical maneuver while Melanie kept trying to tempt him onto it despite his obvious wariness of the thing. She’d taken him under her wing and the poor kid was two parts baffled and two parts blushing up a storm under her attentions.
Dean looked down at the envelope Shelly had handed him that morning and tore it open to find a check written out for a week’s worth of daycare and a note.
The note read:
Mr. Campbell,
There is an epinephrine pen, an inhaler, an extra set of clothes, and a swimsuit in Nathan’s bag to be kept at your residence in case of emergency.
-Shelly St. James
P.S. Nice try, but a mother always finds out.
Dean looked between the note and the navy blue cameo swimsuit he’d found in the kid’s bag and laughed.
*
END.
Author: alexjanna91
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean, (past)Dean/Lisa
Series: Apple Pie Life
Rating: PG- PG13
Genre: Gen, Post Season 5
Word Count: 5,416
Warning: kids(lots of kids), abundant OCs, BAMF!Dean, parental!Dean, parental hovering, kids & Dean thinking they’re sneaky, language
Summary: Between the combed hair, the summer homework, and the overbearing mother the kid was miserable. Dean is determined to fix that.
A/N: Timestamp to Dean’s Adventures in Babysitting. Some content may trigger, be advised.
*
It was six forty-five in the morning. The sun had just barely started rising in the sky like it needed coffee just to try and make the effort. It was about two hours too early for the doorbell to start ringing. Dean was groggy and stiff and still fighting with the last dregs of another screaming night terror.
The yoga breathing Lisa had started forcing on him when he started to wake up half the neighborhood with his screaming only did so much to calm him down. As it was, his lungs still felt shredded and his hands still felt sticky with blood. Dean barely got enough shut eye to walk in a straight line much less answer the door at ass-crack o’clock in the morning.
Still, it was one of his kid days, as he called them, and the doorbell only rang this early for one of two reasons; there was a problem with one of his kids, or Jehovah’s Witness was being freakishly persistent.
Stumbling from his overheated and sweat dampened bed, Dean struggled into a pair of overly ripe jeans and yanked on a shirt that was stiff from either motor oil or vomit. These days it was a tossup to which one it could be.
He never thought he’d miss the days when his options for mysterious stains were just blood or monster guts.
On his way down the hall, Dean tripped on a mountain of Legos left over from the day before and brained himself on the creepy-ass grandfather clock Lisa was convinced was just charming and not in anyway possessed by the voyeuristic spirit of a dirty old man. Dean was convinced otherwise; the clock still gave him the willies despite having secretly done all the tests he could dredge up from his not inconsiderable repertoire on it. Disappointingly it came up clean.
Then again maybe the thing was just butt-fuck ugly.
By the time Dean finally made it to the front door, the bell had rung another three times and Dean was having serious issues feeling anything other than annoyed and cranky.
“For fuck’s sake!” Dean cursed louder than he normally would when his mind was firing on all cylinders. “I’m right here! Quit it with the bell already!”
He yanked the door open expecting Laurie Grant, recently divorced Mom-On-The-Prowl, otherwise known as Cary and Hugh’s mom, or Madison Strait, the Catty-But-Charming Clark and Sydney’s mom. They were the only two moms of his group that were cheeky enough to make such a racket this early in the morning and risk his ire.
Dean was not, however, expecting to find Shelly St. James, Helicopter-Mom and Super-Bitch, shifting anxiously, impatiently on Lisa’s welcome mat with her quiet introverted son Nathan standing next to her unhappily.
The snarky comment on his lips died and he was sure his mouth was hanging open unattractively. Shelly had made no secret about her disdain and distrust of his child caring skills. She’d even threatened to have him investigated until he’d gotten his daycare permit and still had categorically refused to even think about leaving her son in his obviously incapable and negligent hands.
To say Dean was debating checking the sky for flying pigs, or splashing her with holy water wasn’t an understatement. He’d seen way stranger things; Shelly St. James standing on his porch being one of them.
“Mrs. St. James.” Dean said when it looked like her distaste and discomfort wasn’t going to permit her to start off the conversation. “Is there a reason you’re ringing my doorbell at Ungodly o’clock in the morning?”
Okay so he wasn’t as polite as he should be. He was sleep-deprived, coffee starved, and he was pretty sure he’d grabbed the vomit shirt and not the motor oil one like he’d been silently hoping.
Shelly scowled something fierce, but apparently decided to ignore his impertinence in favor of expediency. How magnanimous of her.
“Mr. Campbell, I know this is short notice and… unexpected-”
Dean kindly refrained from snorting. He had little control of his incredulous eyebrow expression however.
“But I have a family emergency, my husband is out of town on business, and our sitter has the stomach flu.” She paused and opened her mouth like she was going to continue, but by the grimace on her face and the wrinkle of her nose she was having some real trouble actually forcing the words out.
Dean was tempted to wait her out, but the kid, Nathan looked seriously miserable with sad and tired brown eyes. Dean had never been able to resist any kid’s sad puppy expression. He blamed years of Sam steadily wearing down his defenses.
“You want me to take Nathan for the day.” He finished for her and kindly did not sound smug about it.
Shelly sighed like she was being tortured and nodded. “Yes, Mr. Campbell. I would very much appreciate if you could watch Nathan for the day. Just until I get my… family emergency taken care of.”
Dean wanted to ask why she seemed about to shake out of her skin with anxious worry every time she mentioned her “family emergency”, but he didn’t bother asking. It was none of his business and she wouldn’t have told him. His protective instincts, his yearning need to just find any kind of threat, problem and eliminate it was not welcome or practical here.
“I would be glad to take Nathan.” Dean said, figuring the sooner he got Shelly off his porch the sooner he could get out of his vomit encrusted shirt and take a shower before he started breakfast. “He’ll be fine with the other kids.”
Shelly nodded in grudgingly grateful acceptance then started giving instructions like a drill sergeant. “He has asthma so if he starts to have trouble breathing his inhaler is in his backpack. He’s allergic to strawberries, wheatgrass, and pineapple, his epinephrine pen is in the middle pocket. His study books are in there as well, he should have math pages fifteen through twenty-four finished by eleven then history pages seven through thirteen, followed by English thirty through thirty-three.
“He’s sensitive to the sun so no longer than fifteen minutes at a time in any kind of direct sunlight. No running, it triggers his asthma, no sugar, no candy, no sports drinks, and no rough play.” She finished off and Dean was just a little bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of restrictions on this kid. Shelly wasn’t finished just yet apparently. She unzipped her purse and pulled out a packet of bound and laminated notecards and shoved them at Dean like it was mission brief.
“This is all of the contact information you need. His pediatrician, our pharmacy, my office, my husband’s office, both our cells, and the hospital I’ll be at today and any and all instructions for his inhaler and epi-pen should he need them.” She flipped through each entry in the packet consecutively like Dean wouldn’t have been able to find it on his own. Then she paused and waited to see if he had any questions.
When all Dean seemed able to do was stand there with a stupid look on his face she seemed suddenly ten times less sure about leaving her apparently snowflake fragile kid with the mouth-gaping, vomit smelling Neanderthal in front of her.
Shaking himself, Dean tucked the packet in his back pocket and tried to get his brain to process the information dump he’d just undergone. “I got it,” was all his sluggish brain seemed to be able to spit out just then.
Shelly looked completely unenthused about leaving Nathan in his bumbling care, but she didn’t have much of a choice so she just steeled her resolved and turned to crouched down in front of her son grasping him by the shoulders in a gentle steadying hold.
“Alright Nathan. I’m going to leave now. Do you have your inhaler?”
The kid huffed and ducked his head as if embarrassed. “Yes, Mom.”
“Do you have your epinephrine pack?”
Nathan looked up then and Dean was mildly amused to see the kid’s cheeks were bright red with embarrassment. “Yes, Mom. You checked before we left the house. Remember?”
His mom just sighed and nodded then leaned forward and kissed the kid on the forehead before standing again and leveling a glare at Dean. He would have taken more offense to the expression if he hadn’t been watching Nathan’s face fairly catch on fire with the force of his blush. The kid’s face was once again tuned down to the floor and Dean felt for him.
Parents could be so embarrassing sometimes.
Before Shelly could open her mouth and spew even more instructions, Dean cut her off. “Mrs. St. James, I have your information, Nathan has his stuff, you have an emergence and I have a breakfast to start preparing.”
She huffed then with one last warning glance at Dean and a stroking hand over Nathan’s head she was in her car and reluctantly pulling away from the curb.
Dean waved somewhat mockingly from the front porch before turning his attention to the nine year-old boy in front of him.
Nathan was dressed like he was auditioning for yacht club poster boy, polo shirt neatly pressed and tucked into his perfectly creased khaki trousers, his shoes were too dressy for any kid under the age of forty and his brown hair was combed to the side and held in place by a thin smear of hair gel. His blue backpack hanging off his shoulders looked almost new it was so clean despite having obvious creasing and softening from use.
In that moment Dean looked at this poor miserable kid with more instructions and restrictions than an ancient Sumerian summoning ritual and sighed. No kid should be that well taken care of and still look so fucking sad.
“Alright.” He rubbed at his hair absently and stepped back from the door and ushered the kid inside. “Let’s get you inside, okay, Nate?”
The kid looked up at Dean for the first time and wrinkled his nose. “It’s Nathan.”
His heart clenched a little, but Dean couldn’t stop himself smiling. Kid kinda reminded him of Sam just then. Maybe today wouldn’t be so bad after all. “Sure thing, kid.” He smirked and led the kid over to the living room.
Nathan passed him on his way to the sofa and wrinkled his nose again. “You smell like throw up.”
Yep, Dean thought wryly. Kid definitely reminded him of Sammy.
*
It was a much more reasonable hour and all of Dean’s kids had shown up and eaten breakfast and were now overrunning the house in a not very controlled chaos. Dean allowed the in-door-out-door rampaging for about fifteen minutes before he put his foot down and shoved the lot of them out into the backyard to amuse themselves somewhere Lisa wouldn’t have a conniption if they broke anything.
It almost took Dean twenty minutes of watching games of tag, trampoline, and a tea party that looked more like a NATO Parliamentary Assembly than a garden party to notice that one of his kids was missing. Looking around he finally spotted his missing charge on the other side of the sliding glass door seated at the kitchen table with a study book open in front of him and a mournful look on his face as he watched the other kids outside.
Sighing, Dean looked for Ben out in the yard and yelled for him to keep an eye out on the other kids before he stood up from his lounge chair and headed inside.
The kid had barely said a word the entire morning seeming to prefer to sit quietly and sink into the background when the other kids were around him. Dean hadn’t been blind to the way the other kids watched Nathan surreptitiously like they didn’t quite know how to interact with him either. It wasn’t hard to draw the conclusion that Nathan wasn’t much of a joiner in school and as a result probably didn’t have many, or any, friends.
Of course having an overprotective, overachieving, over controlling helicopter-mom that ruled the PTA like a despot probably didn’t help either. Dean had felt smothered and he’d barely spent ten minutes talking to her.
Dean hadn’t been planning on holding the kid to the homework during the summer thing, but apparently Nathan was just the brand of lonely isolated, protectively bubbled kid to do it anyway even without having his mother breathing down his neck.
When he stepped back into the kitchen, Nathan looked up at him and watched Dean take a seat next to him at the table.
“So…” Dean started, nudging one of the kid’s study books closer to get a better look at it. Allied Movements in the South Pacific Theater during WWII… “Wow that’s some heavy learning, kid.” Dean whistled, mildly impressed that an nine year-old could even comprehend reading like that much less be at all interested enough to even try.
Nathan just looked back down at the study book tugging it back to him. “My Great-Grandfather fought in World War II, my Grandfather was in the Marines in Vietnam, and my Uncle was stationed in Afghanistan for two tours.”
Huh… So Helicopter-Mom was a military brat. Somehow that made perfect sense. She was just that kind of uptight to have been raised in a family of military officers.
“My dad was a Marine.” Dean offered and just like that Nathan didn’t look like he was waiting for Dean to lose interest in him at any moment. “Fought in Vietnam, too. Taught my little brother and me pretty much everything he knew.”
Nathan bit his lip seeming nervous to press his luck with the attention of an adult nearly all of the neighborhood kids gushed about being “so totally cool”.
“Where did you serve?” He asked hesitantly.
The question took Dean aback.
“It’s just that you act like my grandfather and uncle sometimes.” Nathan rushed to say, afraid he’d offended Dean. “You always flinch and look toward sudden or loud sounds, you watch for threats to the other kids like they could come at any time even though they’re just in the backyard, and when you walk around the yard to watch the kids you’re really just checking the perimeter.”
Dean was a little bit stunned. To think that Nathan was either so observant or so used to being around veterans with no small amounts of PTSD, like Dean had, that he recognized the signs was just a little bit amazing. The kid was seriously smart.
“And,” Nathan continued starting to fidget nervously at Dean’s continued stunned silence, “Ben always makes more noise than normal when he’s walking up behind you if he can’t approach in your line of sight. Errol does it too, but I think he just does it cause Ben does it and the other kids sometimes do it if they see Ben doing it.”
“Nate.” Dean interrupted before the kid could babble himself into a nervous fit. “That’s pretty impressive.” He said and Nathan seemed more surprised by the praise than he’d been when Melanie had asked him if he wanted braid her hair after breakfast. “You got all that just from three hours of this crazy fest?” Dean asked gesturing around at the chaos that was the house filled with nearly a dozen kids under the age of twelve
Nathan blushed so deep Dean was sure the kid was going to burst into flames. “Yeah.” He murmured shyly. “My uncle told me it’s always good to be extra observant of your surroundings.”
“Well, he’s right.” Dean nodded knowingly, still a little bit shocked by just how observant this kid was.
He looked at the kid again taking in his periodic glances at the play going on outside and the naked yearning in his brown eyes then looked at the kid’s stack of work books. It was summer, Dean decided. No kid deserved to be stuck inside doing homework; freakishly overbearing mother or not.
Plus, the kid was just way too pale to be anything other than sunshine deprived.
“Nate, is there any specific reason why you’re not allowed sun for more than fifteen minutes, or that you can’t run around with the other kids?”
“No.” The kid sighed like he’d resigned himself to being miserable in air conditioning. “Mom’s just worried cause I almost died when I was a baby or something. My asthma isn’t really that bad.”
It was said with the nonchalance of a child that didn’t quite understand the fear of parenthood already inured to the obsessive precautions that fear often birthed. Dean himself was getting a few flashbacks to the close calls and the inevitable fall of Sam. He understood Shelly a little better now that he knew she’d come by that fear honestly, but at the same time the kid was clearly miserable and Dean was already dead set on doing something about it.
“Well, then I don’t see a reason why you can’t just put off the homework for a little while and come outside and play with us. I’m thinking of starting up a game of water gun war in the yard in a few minutes.” He smirked just thinking about the idea of it.
“But I’m not supposed to get my clothes dirty.” Nathan protested mournfully.
“No problem, you can borrow a pair of Ben’s swim shorts.” Dean waved the kid’s words away with a hand. “All the kids keep swimsuits here after the first impromptu water gun fight we had.”
“But I have asthma.” Nathan said like he was just searching for a reason he shouldn’t have any kind of fun whatsoever.
“We’ll keep your inhaler in your pocket. No big deal.” Dean answered easily. This was going to be so much fun he just knew it.
Nathan’s mouth opened and closed for a moment like he was trying to think of another protestation, but when he finally came up empty he looked hesitantly excited at the idea of joining the game with them all. “Okay.” He finally said.
Dean grinned so big he knew he must look stupid. “Awesome.”
*
Thirty minutes later, the kids were all slathered in sunscreen (Dean learned his lesson after the first time all the moms gave him stink eyes when he’d returned their kids looking like over boiled lobsters) and clothed in their swimsuits. Nathan was in Ben’s suit from the summer before and since he was nearly two sizes smaller it fit alright. His inhaler was safely ensconced in the Velcro pocket on the leg in a zip-lock baggie for extra protection from the water.
Dean was in a pair of cut-offs that had to be sacrificed after he’d ripped the left leg almost entirely off while trying to clean out Lisa’s gutters around her house. Nathan’s eyes had been inquisitive and curious when he’d spotted Cas’s handprint on Dean’s shoulder along with his other various scars, and his tattoo, but he’d refrained from asking since all the other kids seemed unfazed by the sight of Dean without his shirt on.
Standing at the backyard water spigot filling up red and blue water balloons, Dean watched as the kids divided into two teams that inevitably split the kids by age.
Melanie, Clark, Cary, and Hugh were standing apart in one team while Ben, Errol, Thomas, and Sydney made up the other one. Nathan was standing off to one side looking more unsure of himself than he had standing on Dean’s welcome mat that morning.
“You can be on our team, Nathan.” Melanie spoke up and waved the awkward little boy over. “We’re gonna beat them so you don’t want to be on their team anyway.”
Dean chuckled under his breath as he tied off the last balloon. Melanie never failed to impress him with the sheer amount of confidence and feistiness she had for a six year-old.
“Alright, kids!” Dean shouted as he whistled shrilly to get their, “Attention!”
The kids snapped to like trained cadets, Nathan being the only one slow to fall in rank seeing as he was new to the game. Dean just winked at him when he blushed.
“Okay! Three rules to the game. Rule number one!”
“Not in the eyes!” The kids shouted in unison losing their childishly exaggerated straight backed stances with their enthusiasm.
“Rule number two!”
“Don’t cry wolf!” They called just starting to vibrate with eagerness to get to it already.
Dean had added rule two after he’d nearly had a heart attack when Melanie tried to stage a fake broken arm on Cary to get the other side to come out of cover to investigate. Needless to say, Dean had not been amused.
“And rule number three!”
“Kick butt and take names!” The kids positively screamed then dived at the pile of primed water guns in a free for all to get the heavy hitters. There were extras so every kid got at least one.
The designated team leaders each grabbed a bucket filled with red or blue balloons and the two teams scattered to their bases. Dean watched and laughed the entire time. This was going to be so much fun.
*
Shelly was exhausted. She’d spent the entire day at the hospital waiting for her little brother, Owen to come out of surgery. When he’d been honorably discharged from the military after he’d been injured in his second tour in Afghanistan she’d thought she was finished worrying about him getting shot.
Then he’d just gone and joined the FBI. It seemed even though his big sis was quite finished with him being shot at, he wasn’t.
It was just a through and through in the shoulder while he’d been chasing down a suspect with surgery to repair some minor muscle damage, but that didn’t stop Shelly from nearly having a heart attack when she’d gotten the call as his next of kin.
Owen was safely ensconced in a hospital bed hooked up to one of those button powered morphine drips so he was feeling no pain, but still. Shelly was keyed up and all she really wanted to do was get Nathan, go home and cry a little bit before she had to make dinner.
She was walking up to the Braeden’s front door when she heard the screaming and started to panic a little. Children screaming, an adult screaming… and laughing.
She pressed a hand to her chest to slow her heartbeat back to normal. When she was sure she had it under control she followed the noise around the side of the house to the back gate. It was locked, but that had never been much of a deterrent when she’d been a rebellious teen, so it wasn’t much of one now that she was an uptight housewife.
Yes, she knew she was uptight. Sue her. It seemed like she’d forgotten how to unwind when her baby boy had almost died from a severe asthma attack at the age of two and a half.
She placed her foot on the horizontal slat of the gate and boosted up, her hands on the top of the wooden gate to steady herself as she looked over into the yard prepared to vault over if there was any danger.
It looked like full out warfare… with water balloons.
The kids were all running around in swimsuits and screaming their heads off with glee as they pumped super soakers and quick fired water pistols. Red and blue water balloons sailed through the air like hand grenades.
As Shelly watched, she realized the battle field was divided into two teams, the younger kids against the older kids. It seemed like the young ones were winning.
Trisha Walsh’s little girl was leading a coordinated attack with Laurie Grant’s twin boys with super soakers from one side while Shelly’s own Nathan was directing an attack of red water balloons with Madison Strait’s little boy.
The older kids seemed to be losing badly even though, with the exception of Nathan, the other team was composed of younger kids. Really it should have been a relatively evenly matched game; it was not. They were getting thoroughly trounced.
She stood on the gate and watched. Just when Shelly was sure the game would be over and one side would stand victorious, Dean Campbell came out the bushes on one side of the battlefield and started pelting both teams with a behemoth water gun the size of a rocket launcher, playfully maniacal laughter lighting up his face.
“Traitor!” Little Melanie suddenly bellowed, turning her gun on the new enemy.
“Get him!” yelled Errol Flynn as he too abandoned his previous adversary for this new threat.
Nathan stood from his crouch and cocked back an arm to launch a balloon grenade. “Attack!” He let it fly and Dean Campbell was hit in the chest and soaked.
Shelly watched long enough to know that Dean would inevitably go down under a pile of kids still laughing like a loon before she dropped from her perch and leaned against the gate.
She’d given explicit instructions that Nathan wasn’t do to any strenuous activity. That he wasn’t to be out in the sun longer than fifteen minutes. That he wasn’t to have any sugar and judging by the empty pouches and plastic bottles of fruit flavored sugar drinks on the back porch that direction had obviously not been heeded either.
The sound of Nathan’s laughter rose over the din and made her heart clench. It has been so long since she’d heard her son so free and joyful. It has been a long time since she didn’t feel that gut gnawing, throat tightening anxiety at the thought of letting him out of her sight.
Dean Campbell’s laughter rang clear and deep from the other side of gate and Shelly closed her eyes.
Was this really what she’d been reduced to? Was she really the type of mother that worried and hovered and monitored and controlled so much that she’d almost forgotten what the sound of her own son’s carefree laughter sounded like?
She picked the bright sound out of the din once more and knew her answer.
Glancing down at her watch, Shelly realized that it was about two hours before any of the other parents would be around to pick up their kids and she came to a decision.
She walked away from sounds of childish battle and got back into her car and drove the three streets back to her home.
*
There was a mad scramble after their game of war had finally ended with the kids victorious and Dean thoroughly defeated lying on his back in the grass. The parents were going to start showing up any minute now and there was precious little time to get everyone dried off and redressed to go home.
There was precious little time to get Nathan looking like he hadn’t just been involved in a battle royal with water guns, on a sugar high, in the sun for hours on end.
Seeing as they’d all bonded in their war against Dean, the kids took it upon themselves to help Nathan get ready to face his mother like nothing had ever happened.
Melanie took over Nathan’s hair combing and gelling the tangled, windswept mess into submission. Sydney was directing Ben in the task of finishing all of Nathan’s homework since Dean had taught the kid the fine art of forging handwriting. Errol, Cary, and Hugh were busy racing around the house putting away and downright hiding any and all evidence of outdoor fun or sugary treats. Thomas was stationed at the front entrance windows as the look out.
Dean and Clark were trying to stage the kitchen table and living room with healthy snacks (fruit and crackers) and educational board games (a dusty edition of Trivial Pursuits that was about five age levels too high for this demographic).
“She’s here!” Thomas shouted over the barley controlled chaos of the cleanup effort as he peeked out of the curtained window. Thirty seconds later the doorbell rang.
There was a mad scramble as the kids stumbled over each other to get to their appointed staged positions around the board game in the living room and Dean finished tugging a clean (this time vomit free) shirt over his head on top on a pair of jeans that wouldn’t be able to get up and walk away on their own.
Melanie shoved Nathan out of the hall bathroom as the boy was just finished hurriedly tucking the last corner of his shirt tails into his pants, his hair looked so neat and tidy a hurricane wouldn’t have been able to ruffle it.
“You ready, kid?” Dean looked down at him and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly.
Nathan gave him a grave nod and hefted his backpack onto his shoulders, all his homework and emergency medical equipment stowed inside. He faced the door like he was about to face the firing squad.
Dean had to admire the kid’s bravery. If he had a mom like Shelly St. James he’d have been scared shitless too.
Dean opened the door and found Shelly St. James on the other side looking tired and worn out and maybe a little sad.
“Mrs. St. James.” Dean greeted.
“Mr. Campbell.” Shelly nodded and forced a painful looking smile on her face. “Thank you for looking after Nathan.”
Mildly stunned that the words didn’t sound nearly as insincere as he’d have imagined, Dean answered back truthfully.
“It was absolutely no problem. Nate’s a good kid. I’d be happy to have him any time. The other kids especially really enjoyed having him around.”
A more genuine, less forced smile curved at Shelly’s face then. She didn’t look quite as bitchy or severe like that, Dean noted absently.
“That’s good.” Shelly said then turned to her son who had moved to her side, leaning into her hip. He was obviously glad to see her despite all the subterfuge. “Did you have fun, Nathan?”
“Yes, Mom.” Nathan said with a small barely controlled spark of excitement in his voice, lighting up his face. “I had lots of fun.” Then he back tracked. “After I finished my homework.”
The slight softening of Shelly’s face seemed to tighten a little more at that, but her expression cleared again and she swept a gentle hand over his impeccably styled hair. There was about a pound more hair gel in it now than there had been when she’d dropped him off that morning, and his cheeks were pink where the sunscreen had faded.
The thought of Dean Campbell or one of the other children trying to tame her son’s nearly uncontrollable hair mildly amused her; though they did seem relatively successful at it. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her beautiful son with sun kissed cheeks.
“That’s good, sweetie. Let’s go home and I’ll tell you about Uncle Owen.”
Dean watched them walk back to their car and lifted a hand in return when Nathan looked back at him from the passenger side and waved. He hoped the kid got to come back. It had been awesome seeing him come out of his shell and he fit in well with the group dynamic of the other kids. Plus Nathan had freaking loved it, Dean had seen as much in the kid’s shining eyes and wide smile.
*
When the next morning dawned and Dean found himself watching over one more kid, he smiled.
Nathan was watching the trampoline action like approaching the concept required a complicated tactical maneuver while Melanie kept trying to tempt him onto it despite his obvious wariness of the thing. She’d taken him under her wing and the poor kid was two parts baffled and two parts blushing up a storm under her attentions.
Dean looked down at the envelope Shelly had handed him that morning and tore it open to find a check written out for a week’s worth of daycare and a note.
The note read:
Mr. Campbell,
There is an epinephrine pen, an inhaler, an extra set of clothes, and a swimsuit in Nathan’s bag to be kept at your residence in case of emergency.
-Shelly St. James
P.S. Nice try, but a mother always finds out.
Dean looked between the note and the navy blue cameo swimsuit he’d found in the kid’s bag and laughed.
*
END.