SPN FIC - Santa's Little Helper
I just keep chuggin' along. Christmas 1987, with John and the boys.
Characters: John, Dean (age 8), Sam (age 4), OCs
Pairings: none
Rating: PG, for language
Spoilers: none
Length: 2310 words
As if he’d heard John thinking, Sammy wandered over to his father and leaned against John’s side.
“What’s goin’ on, kiddo?” John asked him.
“Dean got a job.”
Santa’s Little Helper
By Carol Davis
He’d been on the other side of the counter, five years ago. On the other side of “Can I help you?” Understood how tough it was to keep a smile going when the person facing you was determined to be pissed off.
The thing was, John wouldn’t have been pissed off if the little dickhead on the other side of the counter had seemed even remotely interested in helping him solve his problem. Or in standing behind his merchandise.
Not that it was his merchandise, really. Cory (according to the crooked nametag pinned to his shirt) hadn’t made the battery. Hadn’t sold it to John, either; as John remembered it, the red-shirted kid in charge of that transaction had been a girl who didn’t even look old enough to drive. No, Cory’s only role in this was to provide John with a speedy and chipper, “We’ll take care of that for you right away, sir.”
Right.
And tomorrow morning Ed McMahon would show up at the door with a camera crew and a shitload of balloons to tell John Winchester he’d won the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes.
“It’s a brand-new battery,” Cory pointed out.
“It’s a brand-new dead battery,” John countered.
“That’s not possible. Unless you left the lights on. It needs to be recharged.”
“It doesn’t” - John dropped his voice - “hold the fucking charge. I told you that. I bought the goddamn battery eight days ago, and it’s deader than a stone. That is not a new battery.”
Cory blinked at him.
“I want to see the manager,” John said.
“I’m the manager.”
“The store manager.”
“He’ll tell you the same thing I’m telling you. We’ll replace the battery. Or we’ll refund your money.”
Christ, he was smug.
He was the fucking King of smug.
“And I’m telling you again,” John said. “It cost me eighteen dollars in cab fare to come over here because my car is useless. It’ll cost me another eighteen dollars to go home. I’m asking you about that. I’m asking you to solve this problem.”
“We can -“
He’d do that all day. Hell, he’d do it for weeks. Parrot the same thing over and over again. Replace the battery or refund your money. Never mind that this little escapade was sucking almost forty dollars out of John’s wallet that should have gone toward Christmas gifts for the boys. If somebody’d bought a bad battery from him and Mike back in Lawrence, John would have gone to their house, replaced the battery himself, and tossed in a coupon for a free oil change to sweeten the deal.
This kid, this Cory, probably wouldn’t step up to do anything more labor-intensive than blowing his own nose.
“Give me the money back,” John said.
Just to rub a little more salt into John’s aggravation, Cory picked up the dead battery and disappeared into the stockroom with it. There was no doubt in John’s mind - not even a crumb - that if he’d asked for a replacement, Cory would have given him the same battery. Or one that some other unlucky bastard had returned.
Forty bucks, John thought bitterly.
They’d stolen forty bucks from his kids, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
Cory came back after a few minutes of…what? Taking a nap? Taking a piss? Showing off to one of the red-shirted girls who were wandering around? Either way, when he finally deigned to return to the counter, he counted the refund into John’s hand like Marie goddamn Antoinette handing out cake to the peasants.
“Thank you for your business,” he smarmed into John’s wake as John strode away from Auto Parts.
It took John a good half a minute to remember where Dean had said he and Sammy would be. The answer came like a jab in the gut. With Santa. Waiting in line so Sammy could talk to Santa. So he could sit on the lap of some minimum-wage clock-puncher who wouldn’t give a rat’s ass that Sammy wasn’t likely to find much of what he’d asked for sitting under the tree on Christmas morning. Even less of it now that that forty bucks was going to cab fare.
If he’d been on his own, he would have walked. But they’d already checked out of the motel, and there’d been nowhere to leave the boys that he trusted that wouldn’t cost anything.
He’d passed on through Hardware, had gone thirty or forty feet, when he realized he was heading into Toys.
A harmless place to be.
A place he’d loved, as a kid. It hadn’t mattered to him then that he couldn’t have his pick of things, that money was limited and neither of his parents was much inclined to spoil him, but fifteen or twenty minutes in a toy department was more than enough to fire up his imagination. The Johnny Winchester who lived there had his pick of games, of cowboy outfits, of Erector sets and modeling clay and whole battalions of toy soldiers.
Back in Lawrence, he’d tried to make some of that dream turn real for Dean, and for Sammy. There was still no mountain of money available, but there was some.
You could stop this. Get a job.
Whose voice that was, he wasn’t sure. Not Mary’s, though he heard Mary within the confines of his head often enough. Her voice was a comfort, an advisor, a reinforcement, even if he was only talking to himself.
And this, right now, certainly wasn’t his own voice. Telling him to get a job.
Who, then?
He ran a chapped hand through his hair and leaned wearily against the end of a shelf. A couple of yards away, a little blonde girl was examining rows of Barbie dolls in fancy outfits.
He might’ve had a daughter by now, if he hadn’t lost Mary. It occurred to him to be grateful that he had boys, only boys. How he’d manage to raise a daughter this way, in motels, in strange cities, on the road, all of them crammed into one room…
The little girl looked at him curiously, then returned to her Barbies.
There was nothing to do but keep moving. Out of the toy department, out of the store, out of this town. He’d have the cab take them back to the motel, set the boys back up with food and the TV, and try to find a garage within walking distance. A place owned by someone who’d speak John’s language. Someone who might let him help out for a week or two to build up some cash and get the Impala back in good order.
So they could move on, John and his boys.
He saw the line of kids before he saw Santa. Had to be more than twenty of them, twitching in winter coats and boots, overheated and overexcited and overtired. A couple of them were whining. A couple more were crying.
There was Sammy, standing off to the side, sucking on a candy cane.
And Dean was…
Was…
Up in the front, alongside the guy manning the big Polaroid camera, mugging at the kid sitting on Santa’s lap. The kid was little, a baby, really, much too young to understand what was going on. His eyes were as big as dinner plates and he had that tomato-faced look that said he was about to let out a screech they’d hear in Biloxi. But Dean went on mugging, making the booga-booga face, doing a little dance that made him look like his ass was on fire, and after a minute the baby’s skin color faded down toward normal.
Then the baby started to grin, and the guy with the big Polaroid snapped a picture.
John stood there watching as one kid after another took a turn with Santa. Dean had a routine for each of them, making the older ones looked relaxed and happy, the little ones pop-eyed with awe and wonder. He was so smooth at it that the picture-taking probably took half the time that it would have without him - and the photographer seemed to recognize that. It’d probably all started with Sammy, who wore that pinched-face look of distress so often it made John wonder if he could manage another expression, or if his default was set on Woe.
As if he’d heard John thinking, Sammy wandered over to his father and leaned against John’s side.
“What’s goin’ on, kiddo?” John asked him.
“Dean got a job.”
“A job?”
“Yeah.”
“Seems pretty good at it.”
Sammy shrugged. He was getting bored and droopy, so John scooped him up and cradled him so he could doze. By the time the last kid in line had had his turn with Santa, Sam was sound asleep.
Dean had a broad grin on his face as he walked over to join his family.
“Hey, bud,” John said.
“Hi, Dad. I helped.”
“I see that.”
Dean dipped into his pocket and came up with a Polaroid of Sam sitting on Santa’s lap. Sure enough, he looked content and happy.
“You didn’t get one?” John asked.
“Dad,” Dean said, stricken. “I’m eight.”
“Almost nine.”
“That Santa thing is for little kids.” Dean shifted gears then and looked around. “Didn’t you get a new battery?”
“Nope.”
“Oh.” After a moment of pondering, Dean asked, “Now what?”
“Back to the motel.”
“So we won’t get to Pastor Jim’s for Christmas.”
John shook his head slowly. “Probably not, kiddo. Think we can make do here? It’s not the best place in the world, but -“
“It’s okay, Dad.”
“You sure?”
John started walking toward the front of the store, Dean falling into easy step beside him. Sam went on sleeping as they dodged around shoppers and carts and cardboard displays of bows and wrapping paper.
“Yeah,” Dean said as they passed the shoe department.
“Thanks, bud.”
Dean tipped his head and peered up at his father. “You’re welcome.”
They’d almost reached the entrance when the photographer caught up to them. He moved into John’s path and smiled broadly down at Dean, then said warmly, “Your son was a huge help. He made my job a lot easier, and let me tell you, this time of year that’s no small feat.”
“You’re welcome,” Dean told him.
The photographer extended something toward John: a white envelope with the store logo on the front. “I spoke with the store manager. We’d like you to have this.”
Frowning, John took the envelope and peered inside.
“It’s a gift certificate,” the photographer said. “As thanks for Dean’s efforts.”
John almost handed it back. That impulse lasted long enough for him to wonder what his life had become, when his eight-year-old could have more of a productive day than he’d managed himself. That Dean had spent the best part of an hour making other kids smile while John had spent it having a lopsided battle of wills with a scrawny teenager who held all the cards.
“Thank you,” he told the photographer.
“Can I shop, Dad?” Dean asked in a near-whisper. “For Sammy. If you wait…there”- he indicated the snack bar - “I can be really fast. I’ll have them double-bag it, so you can’t see through. We can tell Sammy it’s clothes.”
The photographer chuckled softly. “I think he’s management material,” he told John.
John shook his head. “Way more than that.”
He settled into a seat in the snack bar with Sam snoring wetly against his neck and watched shoppers come and go. Dean, escorted by the photographer, returned in what seemed like only a few minutes, excited and toting a lumpy, bulging sack of treasures. “Mr. Dennis is gonna give us a ride,” he announced. “He lives right near where we’re going.”
“Sorry about the battery,” the photographer said.
He had been that man once, John thought as he closed the door to the motel room they’d left six hours before. The one who rewarded good work, who was quick with a smile and a thank you and an offer of help. He’d had a temper then, too, but it surfaced so seldom he could forget it existed.
Sam seemed like he might have the beginning of a cold. He’d slept all the way back to the motel, and as John laid him down on one of the beds he barely stirred. With a smile that had nothing to do with humor John took off his jacket and wrapped it around his child.
Not much went according to plan, he thought. Five years ago he’d figured on building the business into something good, something he and Mike could advertise around town and have people line up to get in the door. Sammy was on the way, and he and Mary had talked about maybe another baby or two after that. They had plenty of room, in the house and in their hearts. There was a Christmas tree in the corner of the living room, gifts stacked high underneath.
At noontime today he’d left this room with his children, intending to drive up to Minnesota to spend Christmas with Jim, in a house that was warm and cozy and welcoming. A house where there was a Christmas tree in the corner, gifts stacked high underneath.
But not much went according to plan.
And maybe never would.
“It was a good day, Dad,” Dean told him, standing there with his face rosy from the cold, his sack of gifts resting at his feet.
“Yeah,” John said, looking from Dean to Sam and back again. There was no tree here…but there were gifts, both tangible and not. “Yeah, bud,” he repeated with a fleeting smile as he pulled Dean in for a hug that the boy accepted and gave back in kind. “It was a pretty good day.”
Characters: John, Dean (age 8), Sam (age 4), OCs
Pairings: none
Rating: PG, for language
Spoilers: none
Length: 2310 words
As if he’d heard John thinking, Sammy wandered over to his father and leaned against John’s side.
“What’s goin’ on, kiddo?” John asked him.
“Dean got a job.”
Santa’s Little Helper
By Carol Davis
He’d been on the other side of the counter, five years ago. On the other side of “Can I help you?” Understood how tough it was to keep a smile going when the person facing you was determined to be pissed off.
The thing was, John wouldn’t have been pissed off if the little dickhead on the other side of the counter had seemed even remotely interested in helping him solve his problem. Or in standing behind his merchandise.
Not that it was his merchandise, really. Cory (according to the crooked nametag pinned to his shirt) hadn’t made the battery. Hadn’t sold it to John, either; as John remembered it, the red-shirted kid in charge of that transaction had been a girl who didn’t even look old enough to drive. No, Cory’s only role in this was to provide John with a speedy and chipper, “We’ll take care of that for you right away, sir.”
Right.
And tomorrow morning Ed McMahon would show up at the door with a camera crew and a shitload of balloons to tell John Winchester he’d won the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes.
“It’s a brand-new battery,” Cory pointed out.
“It’s a brand-new dead battery,” John countered.
“That’s not possible. Unless you left the lights on. It needs to be recharged.”
“It doesn’t” - John dropped his voice - “hold the fucking charge. I told you that. I bought the goddamn battery eight days ago, and it’s deader than a stone. That is not a new battery.”
Cory blinked at him.
“I want to see the manager,” John said.
“I’m the manager.”
“The store manager.”
“He’ll tell you the same thing I’m telling you. We’ll replace the battery. Or we’ll refund your money.”
Christ, he was smug.
He was the fucking King of smug.
“And I’m telling you again,” John said. “It cost me eighteen dollars in cab fare to come over here because my car is useless. It’ll cost me another eighteen dollars to go home. I’m asking you about that. I’m asking you to solve this problem.”
“We can -“
He’d do that all day. Hell, he’d do it for weeks. Parrot the same thing over and over again. Replace the battery or refund your money. Never mind that this little escapade was sucking almost forty dollars out of John’s wallet that should have gone toward Christmas gifts for the boys. If somebody’d bought a bad battery from him and Mike back in Lawrence, John would have gone to their house, replaced the battery himself, and tossed in a coupon for a free oil change to sweeten the deal.
This kid, this Cory, probably wouldn’t step up to do anything more labor-intensive than blowing his own nose.
“Give me the money back,” John said.
Just to rub a little more salt into John’s aggravation, Cory picked up the dead battery and disappeared into the stockroom with it. There was no doubt in John’s mind - not even a crumb - that if he’d asked for a replacement, Cory would have given him the same battery. Or one that some other unlucky bastard had returned.
Forty bucks, John thought bitterly.
They’d stolen forty bucks from his kids, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
Cory came back after a few minutes of…what? Taking a nap? Taking a piss? Showing off to one of the red-shirted girls who were wandering around? Either way, when he finally deigned to return to the counter, he counted the refund into John’s hand like Marie goddamn Antoinette handing out cake to the peasants.
“Thank you for your business,” he smarmed into John’s wake as John strode away from Auto Parts.
It took John a good half a minute to remember where Dean had said he and Sammy would be. The answer came like a jab in the gut. With Santa. Waiting in line so Sammy could talk to Santa. So he could sit on the lap of some minimum-wage clock-puncher who wouldn’t give a rat’s ass that Sammy wasn’t likely to find much of what he’d asked for sitting under the tree on Christmas morning. Even less of it now that that forty bucks was going to cab fare.
If he’d been on his own, he would have walked. But they’d already checked out of the motel, and there’d been nowhere to leave the boys that he trusted that wouldn’t cost anything.
He’d passed on through Hardware, had gone thirty or forty feet, when he realized he was heading into Toys.
A harmless place to be.
A place he’d loved, as a kid. It hadn’t mattered to him then that he couldn’t have his pick of things, that money was limited and neither of his parents was much inclined to spoil him, but fifteen or twenty minutes in a toy department was more than enough to fire up his imagination. The Johnny Winchester who lived there had his pick of games, of cowboy outfits, of Erector sets and modeling clay and whole battalions of toy soldiers.
Back in Lawrence, he’d tried to make some of that dream turn real for Dean, and for Sammy. There was still no mountain of money available, but there was some.
You could stop this. Get a job.
Whose voice that was, he wasn’t sure. Not Mary’s, though he heard Mary within the confines of his head often enough. Her voice was a comfort, an advisor, a reinforcement, even if he was only talking to himself.
And this, right now, certainly wasn’t his own voice. Telling him to get a job.
Who, then?
He ran a chapped hand through his hair and leaned wearily against the end of a shelf. A couple of yards away, a little blonde girl was examining rows of Barbie dolls in fancy outfits.
He might’ve had a daughter by now, if he hadn’t lost Mary. It occurred to him to be grateful that he had boys, only boys. How he’d manage to raise a daughter this way, in motels, in strange cities, on the road, all of them crammed into one room…
The little girl looked at him curiously, then returned to her Barbies.
There was nothing to do but keep moving. Out of the toy department, out of the store, out of this town. He’d have the cab take them back to the motel, set the boys back up with food and the TV, and try to find a garage within walking distance. A place owned by someone who’d speak John’s language. Someone who might let him help out for a week or two to build up some cash and get the Impala back in good order.
So they could move on, John and his boys.
He saw the line of kids before he saw Santa. Had to be more than twenty of them, twitching in winter coats and boots, overheated and overexcited and overtired. A couple of them were whining. A couple more were crying.
There was Sammy, standing off to the side, sucking on a candy cane.
And Dean was…
Was…
Up in the front, alongside the guy manning the big Polaroid camera, mugging at the kid sitting on Santa’s lap. The kid was little, a baby, really, much too young to understand what was going on. His eyes were as big as dinner plates and he had that tomato-faced look that said he was about to let out a screech they’d hear in Biloxi. But Dean went on mugging, making the booga-booga face, doing a little dance that made him look like his ass was on fire, and after a minute the baby’s skin color faded down toward normal.
Then the baby started to grin, and the guy with the big Polaroid snapped a picture.
John stood there watching as one kid after another took a turn with Santa. Dean had a routine for each of them, making the older ones looked relaxed and happy, the little ones pop-eyed with awe and wonder. He was so smooth at it that the picture-taking probably took half the time that it would have without him - and the photographer seemed to recognize that. It’d probably all started with Sammy, who wore that pinched-face look of distress so often it made John wonder if he could manage another expression, or if his default was set on Woe.
As if he’d heard John thinking, Sammy wandered over to his father and leaned against John’s side.
“What’s goin’ on, kiddo?” John asked him.
“Dean got a job.”
“A job?”
“Yeah.”
“Seems pretty good at it.”
Sammy shrugged. He was getting bored and droopy, so John scooped him up and cradled him so he could doze. By the time the last kid in line had had his turn with Santa, Sam was sound asleep.
Dean had a broad grin on his face as he walked over to join his family.
“Hey, bud,” John said.
“Hi, Dad. I helped.”
“I see that.”
Dean dipped into his pocket and came up with a Polaroid of Sam sitting on Santa’s lap. Sure enough, he looked content and happy.
“You didn’t get one?” John asked.
“Dad,” Dean said, stricken. “I’m eight.”
“Almost nine.”
“That Santa thing is for little kids.” Dean shifted gears then and looked around. “Didn’t you get a new battery?”
“Nope.”
“Oh.” After a moment of pondering, Dean asked, “Now what?”
“Back to the motel.”
“So we won’t get to Pastor Jim’s for Christmas.”
John shook his head slowly. “Probably not, kiddo. Think we can make do here? It’s not the best place in the world, but -“
“It’s okay, Dad.”
“You sure?”
John started walking toward the front of the store, Dean falling into easy step beside him. Sam went on sleeping as they dodged around shoppers and carts and cardboard displays of bows and wrapping paper.
“Yeah,” Dean said as they passed the shoe department.
“Thanks, bud.”
Dean tipped his head and peered up at his father. “You’re welcome.”
They’d almost reached the entrance when the photographer caught up to them. He moved into John’s path and smiled broadly down at Dean, then said warmly, “Your son was a huge help. He made my job a lot easier, and let me tell you, this time of year that’s no small feat.”
“You’re welcome,” Dean told him.
The photographer extended something toward John: a white envelope with the store logo on the front. “I spoke with the store manager. We’d like you to have this.”
Frowning, John took the envelope and peered inside.
“It’s a gift certificate,” the photographer said. “As thanks for Dean’s efforts.”
John almost handed it back. That impulse lasted long enough for him to wonder what his life had become, when his eight-year-old could have more of a productive day than he’d managed himself. That Dean had spent the best part of an hour making other kids smile while John had spent it having a lopsided battle of wills with a scrawny teenager who held all the cards.
“Thank you,” he told the photographer.
“Can I shop, Dad?” Dean asked in a near-whisper. “For Sammy. If you wait…there”- he indicated the snack bar - “I can be really fast. I’ll have them double-bag it, so you can’t see through. We can tell Sammy it’s clothes.”
The photographer chuckled softly. “I think he’s management material,” he told John.
John shook his head. “Way more than that.”
He settled into a seat in the snack bar with Sam snoring wetly against his neck and watched shoppers come and go. Dean, escorted by the photographer, returned in what seemed like only a few minutes, excited and toting a lumpy, bulging sack of treasures. “Mr. Dennis is gonna give us a ride,” he announced. “He lives right near where we’re going.”
“Sorry about the battery,” the photographer said.
He had been that man once, John thought as he closed the door to the motel room they’d left six hours before. The one who rewarded good work, who was quick with a smile and a thank you and an offer of help. He’d had a temper then, too, but it surfaced so seldom he could forget it existed.
Sam seemed like he might have the beginning of a cold. He’d slept all the way back to the motel, and as John laid him down on one of the beds he barely stirred. With a smile that had nothing to do with humor John took off his jacket and wrapped it around his child.
Not much went according to plan, he thought. Five years ago he’d figured on building the business into something good, something he and Mike could advertise around town and have people line up to get in the door. Sammy was on the way, and he and Mary had talked about maybe another baby or two after that. They had plenty of room, in the house and in their hearts. There was a Christmas tree in the corner of the living room, gifts stacked high underneath.
At noontime today he’d left this room with his children, intending to drive up to Minnesota to spend Christmas with Jim, in a house that was warm and cozy and welcoming. A house where there was a Christmas tree in the corner, gifts stacked high underneath.
But not much went according to plan.
And maybe never would.
“It was a good day, Dad,” Dean told him, standing there with his face rosy from the cold, his sack of gifts resting at his feet.
“Yeah,” John said, looking from Dean to Sam and back again. There was no tree here…but there were gifts, both tangible and not. “Yeah, bud,” he repeated with a fleeting smile as he pulled Dean in for a hug that the boy accepted and gave back in kind. “It was a pretty good day.”