Glimpses 'verse fic: "Five Times Jan Winchester Knew Better Than Her Daddy - PG13
1. I think possibly the schmoopiest fic I write is about parent-child relationships. This is...I dunno, I'll share anyway.
2. Soy nog! The tastiness of nog, but not as heavy and guaranteed salmonella-free.
3. I had no internet pretty much since I posted the other day. I fixed it, yay! But I'll never catch up. Oh well.
Title: Five Times Jan Winchester Knew Better Than Her Daddy
Characters/Pairings: Dean Winchester, Jan Winchester (OC), Faith Lehane, Sam Winchester, background Faith/Dean. SPN/Buffyverse crossover.
Rating: PG13.
Summary: See title. Glimpses ‘verse, but most of the relevant “plot” stuff is referenced, I think.
Author's Note: Dialogue-heavy. CUTE. Some people have mentioned that they'd like Jan to get her own fic. She has to share this one with her dad.
Word Count: About 2000.
1.
It’s the night before Jan’s first day of kindergarten. Her clothes are laid out on the chair next to her bed: Oshkosh overalls and her favorite T-shirt, blue with yellow ducklings printed on the front and down the sleeves, a gift from her uncle Sam before he left for England. Dean called the elementary school every half hour that afternoon until Faith rolled her eyes and the principal told him, Mr. Winchester, that everything would be fine, they were looking forward to meeting his daughter in the morning.
“Kindergarten isn’t an actual grade now, is it? And she didn’t go to pre-school or anything. Besides she’s ahead of all those other kids-already reading! So really, she doesn’t need to go.” He’s talking into the air, taking long, nursing sips off a longneck beer bottle.
“It’s the law,” Faith points out, drumming her fingertips against the open refrigerator door.
Dean glares. “Since when do you care about that?”
She ignores him. “What are we gonna eat tonight? Got any ideas, kiddo?”
“Pizza!”
Jan’s running around the kitchen in circles, sliding on socked feet over the linoleum. Dean catches her and throws her over his shoulder like a sack of progeny-potatoes. “Pizza it is! You’re a genius, baby. You don’t need school, do you?” He gives her a raspberry on her exposed tummy. Jan giggles and squirms.
“But Daddy!” she protests. “I wanna go.”
“Okay, okay,” he says, putting her down softly on her feet. “Let’s get veggie and sausage. It’s Daddy’s favorite.”
Jan looks up at him, little face serious beneath her pigtails. “No, it’s not. That’s what Sam likes. You like ham and pineapple. Let’s get that.” She pauses for a second and considers. “But half pepperoni, for me an’ Faith.”
Dean looks down at her and forces himself to smile. Faith tosses him the phonebook with the yellow pages open to “P.” As he’s dialing the only pizza place that’ll deliver, Dean can’t help but think that Sam should really be here for this-he was the one who taught Jan her ABCs after all.
2.
“She’ll make a great hunter,” Dean says to Sam. “A real chip off the old block. Dad would be proud.” For some reason, he always feels the need to brag as if Sam’s never met her, even though he’s been stateside four times this year, helping with hunts.
From her perch on the couch, Jan huffs. “No, I wouldn’t. I’m not even that good of a shot.” At eleven, there’s no shutting her up. Not that there ever really was.
Sam looks slowly from Dean to Jan. “I’m sure your Grandpa would have been proud of you if he’d ever gotten the honor of meeting you,” he says placidly to his niece.
Dean sputters.
“I think,” Jan announces, closing her book with a loud clap, “that when I grow up I’d like to be a Watcher like you, Sam. What do you think?”
“I think,” Sam says, quirking his mouth, “that you can do whatever you set your mind to, Jan-I-Am.” He gives his brother a pointed look. “But let’s wait until you’re older, okay? No reason to decide yet.”
3.
“You realize, Daddy Dearest, that this might be the stupidest thing you have ever decided to do. Even stupider than taunting that troll that one time.” Jan has her wisest, most patient expression on her face. Which is somewhat counteracted by the jaunty placement of her hand on one skinny, adolescent hip, looking like a sassy version of her uncle in drag, circa 1997. Actually no, Sam was always sassy-he just didn’t wear lipgloss.
“Are you kidding me? It’ll be a piece of cake, er, pie.” Dean chuckles to himself and prints his name in big, block letters on the sign-up sheet labeled BLUEBERRY PIE EATING CONTEST. “Easy winnings straight into your college fund, darlin’.”
“You’re going to make yourself sick! Wait-I have a college fund?”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Am not! And of course you have a college fund. What kind of father do you take me for?”
“A completely insane one who can’t resist any opportunity for displays of competitive, masculine behavior,” Jan says lovingly.
Dean ruffles her hair with equal affection. “Competitive...what? See, this is exactly why we have a college fund for you, nerd-girl.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. But y’know, Daddy, PIE isn’t exactly a form of currency and if you look at the fine print there you’ll see that the Grand Prize is a gift certificate from the bakery.”
“Well, pie is good.”
*
The next morning Dean wakes face down on the couch with a horrible ache in his still-swollen stomach and the wretched scent of blueberry and sugar wafting into his nose.
“Get that away from me, demon-child!”
Jan cackles and seats herself cross-legged on the floor in front of him, stabbing a fork through flaky crust into gooey purplish fruit. “You’re just a sore loser.” Munch. “Oh yeah and told you so.”
“Whatever. I was robbed-that asshole was cheating. He didn’t eat his crusts.”
4.
“So that one there, she’s pretty hot, right?” Dean points at the TV. On either side of him, Faith and Jan don’t answer, their eyes glued to the screen, periodically grabbing handfuls of popcorn out of the bowl resting in his lap.
“Okay, what about that little redheaded vixen with the badass crossbow-smokin’, am I right?”
This time Jan takes a moment to give him a weird look and replies, “Yeah, she’s not my favorite. The dialogue they give her is crap.”
“But she’s hot, right?” Dean repeats hopefully.
“Um, sure,” Jan says. Faith coughs.
At the commercial break, Faith grabs the remote and presses mute, leaning over Dean to say directly to Jan, “Look, what Mr. Articulate is trying to say is that if you like girls, we’re cool with it, okay? Okay.”
Jan sits wide-eyed for a moment, then laughs like she’s choking. “I’m not gay, you guys, but uh, thanks. Good job there with the sensitive parenting.”
“Yeah, real subtle,” Dean says, elbowing Faith and giving Jan his best, aw-shucks-look-at-me-I’m-your-cool-dude-dadmeister grin. “Really though, we’re totally fine with you dyking out if that’s what you want. Totally fine with it. You know your mother used to...”
Jan interrupts him to say, in the exasperated tone of sixteen-year-old daughters everywhere, “Yeah, Dad, I know.” Then she turns to Faith and asks, “Um, how exactly did you end up with him anyway?”
“There was no escape,” Faith says wryly, and gives Dean a kiss on the mouth, more sound effect than make-out.
“Ewww,” Jan mock-complains. “Sorry, Dad, I know you really wanted to join PFLAG and everything...Wait, that’s it-you want me to be a lesbian, don’t you?”
Dean looks a little guilty, but says authoritatively, “First of all, the name’s Daddy, and secondly, what’s your problem with the gays?”
“I don’t have a problem with ‘the gays,’” Jan air quotes. “What’s your problem with boys?”
“Well, there’s the fact that they all want to get their grubby mitts on my daughter...”
“Not the ones in this town,” Jan says evenly, but looks down into her lap.
Dean physically lifts her chin. “Of course they do-you’re my kid. You’re totally hot.”
“Okay, so let me get this straight. First you want...then you say...You make no sense!” Jan throws her hands up in the air, then adds, softer, “Thanks, Daddy,” and snuggles into Dean’s flannel shoulder as Faith turns the volume back up on the TV.
5.
When Dean first finds out that the Watcher’s Council (read: Sam) is transferring Jan back home, he’s overjoyed. He calls Sam-interrupting a tweed-squad meeting of some kind-with his gratitude.
“Thanks, man.”
“It’s what she wanted, and she’s earned it.”
“Yeah, cool. One thing though, did you have to let what’s-his-name tag along too?”
“You mean the guy she’s been living with for two years? They work well together. Dean, he’s a good kid. He’s got two degrees from Oxford and...”
“...And that qualifies him to put his hands on my daughter?”
Sam exhales loudly.
“Just kidding, dude. Kidding.”
“He really is a good kid. Look man, I’ve gotta go. I’ll call you later.”
*
When Jan announces at dinner on her first night back that she’s pregnant, says, “We’re having a baby” while holding what’s-his-name’s hand, Dean is in a far less giving mood.
“You’re only twenty-three!” and “I’m too young to be a grandfather!” and, “You did this to my little girl.”
Jan makes her rebuttal in organized list format, raising her slim fingers in the air point by point: 1. Calm, heartbreakingly mature: “Twenty-three is an adult, Dad. I’m an adult.” 2. Cajoling, teasing him the way she has ever since she could talk: “You’ll be the most handsome Grandpa ever.” 3. Rational, standing up for herself just the way he raised her (but turning slightly pink in the face): “He doesn’t do things to me that I don’t want him to. And I...this is what I want.”
After the bullet points, Jan pulls out the big guns, looking right at Dean with her big hazel eyes and pleading, “I’m happy, Daddy. Please be happy too.”
Faith and what’s-his-name are quiet, the air thrumming between father and daughter, each one propped up on locked arms, facing off across the table.
“Okay, it’s getting a little crazy in here,” Faith finally says. “Can I, uh, get anybody a beer? Oh wait, you can’t drink, kidlet. And maybe I should stop calling you that now. Well, I’ll get one for myself anyway.”
As she’s standing up, Dean swivels his head and squints his eyes. “You knew about this? You knew about this.”
Faith shrugs. Dean accuses, “Traitor!” To Jan, plaintive, “You told her but you didn’t tell me?”
But as Jan opens her mouth and closes it, uncharacteristically tongue-tied, Faith puts her hand on Dean’s shoulder. “She just wanted to tell you in person, babe. Had this insane idea that you might flip out.”
*
Later that night, Dean can’t sleep. He plods down to the living room, pulls out the shoe-box labeled “Jan, pint-sized,” and scatters photos all over the coffee table, lifting them up one at a time and staring. He’s so engrossed that at first he doesn’t notice when she enters the room, hugging herself in flannel pjs, still wiry-skinny like always-not showing yet.
Jan sits down beside him and picks up a yellowing photo of Dean, just a few years older than she is now, holding her tiny self wrapped up in a baby blanket-or maybe one of Sam’s checkered shirts, it’s unclear-sitting in the driver’s seat of the old Impala. It’s framed at close-range, off center: Dean took it himself.
“It was you and me against the world then, Dad,” she says softly.
“Yeah,” he agrees.
“Couldn’t have been easy,” she offers.
“Sam helped,” he grunts.
They’re both silent for a long minute until Jan asks, “You forgive Faith?”
Dean starts, shocked. “You know I did.” Turns sheepish, “Oh, you mean about this-tonight-not telling me about you and...” He gestures in the vague direction of Jan’s tummy.
Jan nods.
“Yeah, of course. I mean, I got the honor of buying your first tampons, so...”
“Dad!”
Dean grins. Jan responds in kind.
“Of course, now she won’t stop calling me ‘Gramps’ every chance she gets.”
Jan nudges him, shoulder to shoulder, conciliatory. “Yeah? You should just call her ‘Grandma.’ See how she likes that.”
“Tried that already-she hit me! And she’s kind of strong, you know.” A pause. “I’m sorry, baby. I just-you surprised me. It’s just...surprising, that’s all.”
“I seem to recall that I wasn’t exactly the result of careful planning.”
“Yeah, but it’s well established that you’re way smarter than we are.”
Jan dimple-grins and leans her head into that spot on his shoulder-her spot-and says, “You can still teach me things. Like about diapers and stuff.”
Dean snorts, and pets her hair.
Jan looks up. “I-I need you, Daddy. I always will.”
That’s all Dean really needed to hear.
*
An outtake:
“So I want a home birth. This friend of Willow’s is gonna fly in and be my midwife...”
“Friend of Willow’s, huh? You sure you’re not gay?”
“Give up the dream, Dad.”
2. Soy nog! The tastiness of nog, but not as heavy and guaranteed salmonella-free.
3. I had no internet pretty much since I posted the other day. I fixed it, yay! But I'll never catch up. Oh well.
Title: Five Times Jan Winchester Knew Better Than Her Daddy
Characters/Pairings: Dean Winchester, Jan Winchester (OC), Faith Lehane, Sam Winchester, background Faith/Dean. SPN/Buffyverse crossover.
Rating: PG13.
Summary: See title. Glimpses ‘verse, but most of the relevant “plot” stuff is referenced, I think.
Author's Note: Dialogue-heavy. CUTE. Some people have mentioned that they'd like Jan to get her own fic. She has to share this one with her dad.
Word Count: About 2000.
1.
It’s the night before Jan’s first day of kindergarten. Her clothes are laid out on the chair next to her bed: Oshkosh overalls and her favorite T-shirt, blue with yellow ducklings printed on the front and down the sleeves, a gift from her uncle Sam before he left for England. Dean called the elementary school every half hour that afternoon until Faith rolled her eyes and the principal told him, Mr. Winchester, that everything would be fine, they were looking forward to meeting his daughter in the morning.
“Kindergarten isn’t an actual grade now, is it? And she didn’t go to pre-school or anything. Besides she’s ahead of all those other kids-already reading! So really, she doesn’t need to go.” He’s talking into the air, taking long, nursing sips off a longneck beer bottle.
“It’s the law,” Faith points out, drumming her fingertips against the open refrigerator door.
Dean glares. “Since when do you care about that?”
She ignores him. “What are we gonna eat tonight? Got any ideas, kiddo?”
“Pizza!”
Jan’s running around the kitchen in circles, sliding on socked feet over the linoleum. Dean catches her and throws her over his shoulder like a sack of progeny-potatoes. “Pizza it is! You’re a genius, baby. You don’t need school, do you?” He gives her a raspberry on her exposed tummy. Jan giggles and squirms.
“But Daddy!” she protests. “I wanna go.”
“Okay, okay,” he says, putting her down softly on her feet. “Let’s get veggie and sausage. It’s Daddy’s favorite.”
Jan looks up at him, little face serious beneath her pigtails. “No, it’s not. That’s what Sam likes. You like ham and pineapple. Let’s get that.” She pauses for a second and considers. “But half pepperoni, for me an’ Faith.”
Dean looks down at her and forces himself to smile. Faith tosses him the phonebook with the yellow pages open to “P.” As he’s dialing the only pizza place that’ll deliver, Dean can’t help but think that Sam should really be here for this-he was the one who taught Jan her ABCs after all.
2.
“She’ll make a great hunter,” Dean says to Sam. “A real chip off the old block. Dad would be proud.” For some reason, he always feels the need to brag as if Sam’s never met her, even though he’s been stateside four times this year, helping with hunts.
From her perch on the couch, Jan huffs. “No, I wouldn’t. I’m not even that good of a shot.” At eleven, there’s no shutting her up. Not that there ever really was.
Sam looks slowly from Dean to Jan. “I’m sure your Grandpa would have been proud of you if he’d ever gotten the honor of meeting you,” he says placidly to his niece.
Dean sputters.
“I think,” Jan announces, closing her book with a loud clap, “that when I grow up I’d like to be a Watcher like you, Sam. What do you think?”
“I think,” Sam says, quirking his mouth, “that you can do whatever you set your mind to, Jan-I-Am.” He gives his brother a pointed look. “But let’s wait until you’re older, okay? No reason to decide yet.”
3.
“You realize, Daddy Dearest, that this might be the stupidest thing you have ever decided to do. Even stupider than taunting that troll that one time.” Jan has her wisest, most patient expression on her face. Which is somewhat counteracted by the jaunty placement of her hand on one skinny, adolescent hip, looking like a sassy version of her uncle in drag, circa 1997. Actually no, Sam was always sassy-he just didn’t wear lipgloss.
“Are you kidding me? It’ll be a piece of cake, er, pie.” Dean chuckles to himself and prints his name in big, block letters on the sign-up sheet labeled BLUEBERRY PIE EATING CONTEST. “Easy winnings straight into your college fund, darlin’.”
“You’re going to make yourself sick! Wait-I have a college fund?”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Am not! And of course you have a college fund. What kind of father do you take me for?”
“A completely insane one who can’t resist any opportunity for displays of competitive, masculine behavior,” Jan says lovingly.
Dean ruffles her hair with equal affection. “Competitive...what? See, this is exactly why we have a college fund for you, nerd-girl.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. But y’know, Daddy, PIE isn’t exactly a form of currency and if you look at the fine print there you’ll see that the Grand Prize is a gift certificate from the bakery.”
“Well, pie is good.”
*
The next morning Dean wakes face down on the couch with a horrible ache in his still-swollen stomach and the wretched scent of blueberry and sugar wafting into his nose.
“Get that away from me, demon-child!”
Jan cackles and seats herself cross-legged on the floor in front of him, stabbing a fork through flaky crust into gooey purplish fruit. “You’re just a sore loser.” Munch. “Oh yeah and told you so.”
“Whatever. I was robbed-that asshole was cheating. He didn’t eat his crusts.”
4.
“So that one there, she’s pretty hot, right?” Dean points at the TV. On either side of him, Faith and Jan don’t answer, their eyes glued to the screen, periodically grabbing handfuls of popcorn out of the bowl resting in his lap.
“Okay, what about that little redheaded vixen with the badass crossbow-smokin’, am I right?”
This time Jan takes a moment to give him a weird look and replies, “Yeah, she’s not my favorite. The dialogue they give her is crap.”
“But she’s hot, right?” Dean repeats hopefully.
“Um, sure,” Jan says. Faith coughs.
At the commercial break, Faith grabs the remote and presses mute, leaning over Dean to say directly to Jan, “Look, what Mr. Articulate is trying to say is that if you like girls, we’re cool with it, okay? Okay.”
Jan sits wide-eyed for a moment, then laughs like she’s choking. “I’m not gay, you guys, but uh, thanks. Good job there with the sensitive parenting.”
“Yeah, real subtle,” Dean says, elbowing Faith and giving Jan his best, aw-shucks-look-at-me-I’m-your-cool-dude-dadmeister grin. “Really though, we’re totally fine with you dyking out if that’s what you want. Totally fine with it. You know your mother used to...”
Jan interrupts him to say, in the exasperated tone of sixteen-year-old daughters everywhere, “Yeah, Dad, I know.” Then she turns to Faith and asks, “Um, how exactly did you end up with him anyway?”
“There was no escape,” Faith says wryly, and gives Dean a kiss on the mouth, more sound effect than make-out.
“Ewww,” Jan mock-complains. “Sorry, Dad, I know you really wanted to join PFLAG and everything...Wait, that’s it-you want me to be a lesbian, don’t you?”
Dean looks a little guilty, but says authoritatively, “First of all, the name’s Daddy, and secondly, what’s your problem with the gays?”
“I don’t have a problem with ‘the gays,’” Jan air quotes. “What’s your problem with boys?”
“Well, there’s the fact that they all want to get their grubby mitts on my daughter...”
“Not the ones in this town,” Jan says evenly, but looks down into her lap.
Dean physically lifts her chin. “Of course they do-you’re my kid. You’re totally hot.”
“Okay, so let me get this straight. First you want...then you say...You make no sense!” Jan throws her hands up in the air, then adds, softer, “Thanks, Daddy,” and snuggles into Dean’s flannel shoulder as Faith turns the volume back up on the TV.
5.
When Dean first finds out that the Watcher’s Council (read: Sam) is transferring Jan back home, he’s overjoyed. He calls Sam-interrupting a tweed-squad meeting of some kind-with his gratitude.
“Thanks, man.”
“It’s what she wanted, and she’s earned it.”
“Yeah, cool. One thing though, did you have to let what’s-his-name tag along too?”
“You mean the guy she’s been living with for two years? They work well together. Dean, he’s a good kid. He’s got two degrees from Oxford and...”
“...And that qualifies him to put his hands on my daughter?”
Sam exhales loudly.
“Just kidding, dude. Kidding.”
“He really is a good kid. Look man, I’ve gotta go. I’ll call you later.”
*
When Jan announces at dinner on her first night back that she’s pregnant, says, “We’re having a baby” while holding what’s-his-name’s hand, Dean is in a far less giving mood.
“You’re only twenty-three!” and “I’m too young to be a grandfather!” and, “You did this to my little girl.”
Jan makes her rebuttal in organized list format, raising her slim fingers in the air point by point: 1. Calm, heartbreakingly mature: “Twenty-three is an adult, Dad. I’m an adult.” 2. Cajoling, teasing him the way she has ever since she could talk: “You’ll be the most handsome Grandpa ever.” 3. Rational, standing up for herself just the way he raised her (but turning slightly pink in the face): “He doesn’t do things to me that I don’t want him to. And I...this is what I want.”
After the bullet points, Jan pulls out the big guns, looking right at Dean with her big hazel eyes and pleading, “I’m happy, Daddy. Please be happy too.”
Faith and what’s-his-name are quiet, the air thrumming between father and daughter, each one propped up on locked arms, facing off across the table.
“Okay, it’s getting a little crazy in here,” Faith finally says. “Can I, uh, get anybody a beer? Oh wait, you can’t drink, kidlet. And maybe I should stop calling you that now. Well, I’ll get one for myself anyway.”
As she’s standing up, Dean swivels his head and squints his eyes. “You knew about this? You knew about this.”
Faith shrugs. Dean accuses, “Traitor!” To Jan, plaintive, “You told her but you didn’t tell me?”
But as Jan opens her mouth and closes it, uncharacteristically tongue-tied, Faith puts her hand on Dean’s shoulder. “She just wanted to tell you in person, babe. Had this insane idea that you might flip out.”
*
Later that night, Dean can’t sleep. He plods down to the living room, pulls out the shoe-box labeled “Jan, pint-sized,” and scatters photos all over the coffee table, lifting them up one at a time and staring. He’s so engrossed that at first he doesn’t notice when she enters the room, hugging herself in flannel pjs, still wiry-skinny like always-not showing yet.
Jan sits down beside him and picks up a yellowing photo of Dean, just a few years older than she is now, holding her tiny self wrapped up in a baby blanket-or maybe one of Sam’s checkered shirts, it’s unclear-sitting in the driver’s seat of the old Impala. It’s framed at close-range, off center: Dean took it himself.
“It was you and me against the world then, Dad,” she says softly.
“Yeah,” he agrees.
“Couldn’t have been easy,” she offers.
“Sam helped,” he grunts.
They’re both silent for a long minute until Jan asks, “You forgive Faith?”
Dean starts, shocked. “You know I did.” Turns sheepish, “Oh, you mean about this-tonight-not telling me about you and...” He gestures in the vague direction of Jan’s tummy.
Jan nods.
“Yeah, of course. I mean, I got the honor of buying your first tampons, so...”
“Dad!”
Dean grins. Jan responds in kind.
“Of course, now she won’t stop calling me ‘Gramps’ every chance she gets.”
Jan nudges him, shoulder to shoulder, conciliatory. “Yeah? You should just call her ‘Grandma.’ See how she likes that.”
“Tried that already-she hit me! And she’s kind of strong, you know.” A pause. “I’m sorry, baby. I just-you surprised me. It’s just...surprising, that’s all.”
“I seem to recall that I wasn’t exactly the result of careful planning.”
“Yeah, but it’s well established that you’re way smarter than we are.”
Jan dimple-grins and leans her head into that spot on his shoulder-her spot-and says, “You can still teach me things. Like about diapers and stuff.”
Dean snorts, and pets her hair.
Jan looks up. “I-I need you, Daddy. I always will.”
That’s all Dean really needed to hear.
*
An outtake:
“So I want a home birth. This friend of Willow’s is gonna fly in and be my midwife...”
“Friend of Willow’s, huh? You sure you’re not gay?”
“Give up the dream, Dad.”