Supernatural: A Fairy Tale or: A Tale of Two Fairies
Title: A Fairy Tale or: A Tale of Two Fairies
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Dean, and a few OCs
Genre: Fluff, Humor
Rating: PG-13 for Language and a whole lot of innuendo.
Word Count: 4,166
Author’s Note: Written for whenthewarsover prompt # 44:
Sam and Dean give domestication a go and get roped into babysitting a kid for the afternoon, and after a couple hours, they're all like, "Demons, please. And ghosts. And other things that might try to kill us. Anything but this."
Ah, yes, I did claim this prompt because I hate children. I shamelessly stole the twist here from the South Park episode The Wacky Molestation Adventure. Beta’d by wutendeskind, who strongly hinted that she would like to be paid for her work in kama sutra. Divider found here. ETA 5/7/2013: Thanks to eos_rose, you can now read this in epub format here.
Summary: When Sam and Dean agreed to babysit, they had no idea it would be like this.
It’s safe to say that life had always been hard for Sam and Dean Winchester. For most of their lives, happy was a foreign concept. They didn’t have much and the little they did was torn from them time and time again; they fought tooth and nail just to hold on to each other. Most of the time, they didn’t think about that. That was just life for them. It sucked, but they didn’t know anything else. Neither pretended that the Apocalypse being over was going to change that for them, neither expected life to just start being happy. Not without work.
Dean had been ready to work. Sure, he was daunted by what it would take to finally settle down into some kind of normal, but he was going to fight for those little things people took for granted. He’d just killed goddamn Lucifer for crying out loud, and if his little brother wanted to stay a few nights in a town just because he liked it there, the hunts could wait. Sam deserved that and Dean deserved to see Sam get it. Because Dean didn’t know how to be happy, had no plans on how to make it happen, was terrified by the size of the task. All he knew was that he could live forever in the moments that Sam would smile so wide his dimples almost swallowed his face. To make that permanent, Dean was prepared to put as much effort into this crusade as he had put into the last one.
But life never went the way Dean expected it to. Usually this was a bad thing. This time, determined and stocked for war and willing to go to any lengths to make happy real, the irony was that happy came to Dean by accident. And it wasn’t him who was responsible, it was Sam.
Sam and Dean were used to getting hurt, used to patching each other up. There was nothing different about that day, except for the mistakes Dean made. Dean had wanted Sam for years; he had gotten pretty good at controlling it. But that night…that night he forgot to draw the line. Forgot he was only supposed to be Sam’s brother, even though Sam was his everything. He couldn’t help it; he’d been too worried to think.
Sam had been cut up pretty badly on that hunt and even though Dean had patched him up, he’d been in bad condition. He was drenched in sweat and Dean was just trying to help. Sam’s long hair was plastered to his face, in his eyes, in his mouth-it looked uncomfortable. Dean had suffered through a million wicked dreams of running his fingers through that hair but this time he was sure it would be okay. Sam was too weak to do it himself and would appreciate the help. Nobody would have thought there was anything unusual about someone pushing some hair out of their injured brother’s line of vision. Eyebrows would definitely have lifted, however, at the way Dean’s face instinctively moved towards Sam’s, the way his fingers lingered on the younger man’s neck once the hair was out of the way. Dean had caught himself, had pulled away just in time. But even after massive blood loss, that was just not normal family behavior and Sam wasn’t exactly a moron.
“Were you about to kiss me?” Sam asked, completely in shock.
“What?! No. Of course not! Why would you even ask that?!”
Sam was silent for a long time. He had looked at his brother closely before responding, his voice shaky and more than a little confused.
“Because I think…I wanted you to.”
It had taken seven words to make happy a reality. If Dean had known it would be that easy, he would have beat Sam to it by a decade.
Sometimes, Sam worried that happy may have come a little too easy. They got used to it immediately, they got comfortable. They had a home and could do whatever they wanted-the angels made sure Dean never had to worry about money so they were free to hunt when they felt like it and go home and relax when they felt like it. Sam had a taste of living like this from Stanford, but Dean…Dean was used to always looking into the shadows, to never getting a second to relax. A comfortable Dean was a dangerous Dean. He was always thinking of ways to spice up life, new things he could heap onto his plate because he was just so damned free nowadays. Most of the time his ideas were kind of, well, crazy. Sam usually humored them because Dean was nothing if not fun, but there were times he would be forced to worry. For example, when Dean would say things like…
“You know what, Sammy, we should have a kid.”
“I’m afraid nature disagrees with you on that one.”
“No, not have a kid. But like, you know, have a kid. I mean, there’s been more than one case where we arrived too late and had to hand an orphan over to the state. We could give one of those kids a home.”
“You want to kidnap a child to play house?”
“You’re such a prissy bitch sometimes. C’mon, it’d be fun! I love kids!”
“Dean, I like kids too and all, everyone likes kids. But we can’t raise a child-“
“Why not?”
“For starters, we’re still hunters. We tried quitting and we didn’t like it. We both decided it’s what we want to do. But we’re lost causes-we’re permanently messed up. No way am I raising a kid like we-“
“We don’t move around anymore, Sam. Lots of hunters have kids.”
“I don’t care what other people do. Nobody is growing up knowing the things we knew under my watch.”
“We turned out okay! All I’m saying is I think we’d be pretty great at it, alright? We could help some kid, have a real family.”
“We help kids all the time, Dean. But this isn’t a puppy we’re talking about. What are we going to do, leave them alone while we go on hunts? Lie to them for their entire lives? What if one of us gets hurt? What if we both get hurt?”
“Alright, alright. Let up. You’re the one who always wanted all the picket fence crap. It was just an idea.”
Dean had left it at that, but it was never that easy with Dean. He was in a mood for the rest of the night and though he was back to normal by the next day, two weeks later he would still make offhand comments whenever they passed a child on the street. Sam had to figure out a way to get Dean’s biological clock to calm down before he brought it up again and started another fight, or worse yet, showed up one night with a child and no explanation as to where the hell it came from. You could never know with Dean.
The answer had presented itself in the form of Carol and Walter Bailey, a couple of hunters Sam and Dean had met and befriended while working a case a few years before the war. When the Apocalypse had come and most retired hunters got back into the game, Carol and Walter did the most ill-advised thing possible: they dropped the job, settled down, and had two daughters. Luckily for them (and for everyone, really) the world hadn’t actually ended and the family was still living a perfectly normal life in Oakland, Maryland.
It usually fell to Dean to keep up with professional contacts, but ever since the Baileys retired, Sam had kept up with Carol over the phone about once a month. Dean liked the Baileys well enough, but couldn’t ever quite get over his annoyance that when everyone was out fighting they had turned their backs and brought children into a world that could potentially end any moment. Sam was more sympathetic toward that need to be normal and he liked Carol too much to hold a grudge.
They were talking over the phone one day when Carol casually mentioned how much she envied him and Dean for their freedom. She and Walter hadn’t had a night to themselves in years. That didn’t seem fair to Sam and, in a more selfish light, Sam had heard that the Bailey girls were terrors and Dean would learn better from experience than from logical reasoning. So Sam had volunteered himself and his brother to babysit while Carol and her husband went out for a night. After all, how bad could a six and a seven year old really be?
“Hey, Dean, are you still fixated on how awesome kids are?”
“Yeah, why?” Dean replied, his eyes lighting up like Christmas as he turned to look at Sam.
“How do you feel about driving across the country to babysit?”
“What?”
“Carol and Walter need a babysitter. I thought you might like the idea.”
“You’re agreeing to drive to Maryland so I can hang out with some kids for a few hours?”
Sam nodded.
“Oh, Sammy!” Dean said in a comically high-pitched voice. “You do care!” He’d hugged Sam briefly and then scurried off to pack.
Sam hadn’t given the Baileys a firm date on when they would show up so they took the trip slowly, stopping to enjoy the places they liked and wanted to explore and taking the jobs that they stumbled upon as they worked their way East. By the time they finally showed up on the Bailey’s doorstep, it had been well over a month and Carol had dismissed the offer as a joke.
“Hey Carol! Sorry it took us so long to get here,” Sam said with his best “oops!” smile.
“Boys! I didn’t think you would actually drive all this way to give us a night off!”
“I keep my promises! Now go grab Walter and get the hell out of this house!”
“Yeah,” Dean added. “We don’t want to see either of you again until you’re sloppy drunk and have had sex at least three times.”
Sam rolled his eyes so hard he was sure Dean could hear it, but Carol just giggled and grabbed her husband. It was still early in the day and if they weren’t expected home until late at night, she wanted to make every minute count. The couple had dressed and been ready to go at a remarkable speed and rushed out after making brief introductions.
Elizabeth (who only answered to Dotty for reasons unknown to apparently everyone but herself) and Rebecca were nothing short of precious. They wore matching pink princess dresses and ribbons in their hair and looked like perfect angels. It was a little creepy.
“Hey girls, what do you want to do today?” Dean asked as soon as he and Sam had been left alone with the girls.
“We’re going to watch our Disney Princess Enchanted Tales Sing-along video…duh.” Dotty answered as if Dean was a little slow. Sam stifled a snort and Dean looked back at him a little shocked.
“Well, alright then, I guess that answers that.”
Twenty minutes in, Sam had the worst headache he’d had since the demon blood fiasco.
“Who’s hungry? I’m hungry! I’m going to go make us all some lunch.”
Dean nodded at him disinterestedly as Sam made his escape, eyes suspiciously intent on the video. Dean actually didn’t really notice that Sam was missing until he smelled something burning and realized that he had never actually seen Sam cook anything in his entire life.
“Where’s the fire?” Dean asked from the kitchen door. Sam turned around, he was a little sweaty from the heat coming off whatever he was making, but he looked like he was holding up alright. Actually, he looked better than alright. He looked really, really good. Dean glanced out at the living room to make sure the girls were still distracted. They were-babysitting was easy, the tape they were watching was like crack.
“No fire! I’m making grilled cheese,” Sam said, sounding proud of himself and indicating a plate with three sandwiches, the fourth still on the stove.
“I didn’t even know you knew how to do that,” Dean said feeling robbed. He’d always been the one that had to get them fed and now was when Sam decided to mention his lazy ass had just been holding out on him?
“I spent four years in college, Dean. I learned how to make a grilled cheese.”
“Well that’s good to know.” Dean watched hungrily as Sam took the last sandwich off the stove, placed it on the plate, and turned off the heat.
“Hungry?”
“Not for those,” Dean answered, licking his lips and trapping his brother against the counter. Dean’s mouth pressed against Sam’s neck.
“Dean, stop it. There are children in the next room!”
“Mmm, I’m not gonna do anything, I’m just gonna make you really uncomfortable.”
“I will kill you,” Sam half squeaked as Dean’s fingers slipped up his shirt. Dean shut his brother up with his lips and Sam gave up trying to fight him off.
“Are you kissing?” They heard a little voice ask from the door and Dean immediately pulled away from Sam.
“Uh…maybe?”
“But you’re both boys.”
“Well, sweetie,” Sam said, glaring daggers at his brother. “Sometimes boys do that. And that’s okay.”
“But then who’s the mommy?”
Sam made an awkward noise and Dean barked a laugh.
“That’s a loaded question,” Dean mumbled.
“Usually he is,” Sam said, pointing to Dean and Dean’s mouth dropped open as he turned to face Sam. Sam lifted an eyebrow and made an evil face. “What? You are.”
“You can’t tell a little girl-“
“What does that even mean?” Rebecca asked, picking up her older sister’s interrogation.
“You know what, honey, it doesn’t matter,” Dean said, crouching so that he was on level with the girls and could look them both in the eye. “Don’t ask your parents, okay? Promise?”
“Okayyyyy,” they both said sounding disappointed.
“Hey, what ever happened to that nice sing-along tape we were having so much fun with?”
“It ended,” Dotty replied. Dean scowled. What kind of respectable video tape was less than an hour long?
“Are you and him married?”
“Uh. Yes. You should only kiss people you’re married to.”
“I want to marry Becky. I don’t like anyone but Becky and she doesn’t like anyone but me.”
Rebecca nodded.
“While I sympathize with your situation, I really think you should wait a few years before you make that decision.”
Dean heard Sam drop something behind him and Sam cursed under his breath. Served him right for telling a six year old about their sex life.
“I don’t know what sympathize means,” Dotty informed Dean.
“Lunch time!” Sam said, interrupting the conversation before Dean explained just how understanding he was of wanting to marry one’s sibling.
Lunch had been mostly uneventful…until Becca finished her juice box and asked for another.
“There aren’t anymore,” Sam said nicely. “Would you like some water or milk instead?”
Suddenly an empty juice box hit Sam right in the face.
“Did you just throw a juice box at Sam’s head?” Dean asked, obviously more amused than annoyed by Dotty’s antics.
“You’re not allowed to tell Becky no. You have to give her a juice box,” the older girl said sternly.
“Alright then, boss,” Sam said a little dazed. “I’m going to go buy some juice; you think you can handle these girls alone?”
No, Dean did not think he could handle the girls alone. But he wasn’t about to admit that out loud.
“Of course I can handle it!” Sam looked uneasy but left anyway.
When Sam returned, one thing was immediately clear. Dean could not handle it.
“Dean, what the hell happened to you?”
“They wouldn’t stop crying and hitting me until I agreed. It was terrifying, Sammy.”
Ten minutes later, Sam was almost finished laughing. Almost. Nearly. Ok, not so close after all.
“Dude, laugh a little more, see how fast I plant my foot up your-“
“Oh, dear! A pretty girl like you shouldn’t use such language.”
Sam had returned to find Dean sitting on the living room floor, decked out like a princess. And not just any princess. Sam’s eyes flicked to the screen, back to Dean, and back to the screen. That was what made him lose it for ten minutes. When finally his hysterics calmed down, the girls reappeared, their previously pristine dresses smudged with makeup.
“Do you like it, do you like it?” Rebecca asked with big, hopeful eyes.
“When you told us he was the mommy, we realized that he wasn’t a very pretty one, so we fixed it.”
“We made him Princess Aurora because you looked most like Prince Phillip.”
The girls were clearly extremely proud of their handiwork. As for Dean…he was a disaster. It was apparent that one girl had taken each side of his face and neither had bothered to consult the other on the color scheme. Dean’s cheeks were caked with blush. His lips had been used like a coloring book, red lipstick slathered on with no regard for the lines. One eye was shadowed with blue while the other was hot pink. The little hair Dean had was stuck with clips, blonde extensions falling from them and onto Dean’s face. He even had pink tiara with fake jewels glued onto it.
“Put your phone away right this instant.”
“NO WAY, I am so getting a picture of this.”
The girls had refused to let Dean get up and clean himself off, so by the time Sleeping Beauty ended, he was still looking as ridiculous as he had been when Sam got home. They put another movie on (Sam had no idea when Hunchback of Notre Dame became suitable for children because even the Disney version had a horny priest) but the girls were getting bouncier and Sam could tell they wouldn’t sit quietly through another movie.
“Saaaaaammmmmmyyyyy,” Dean whined. “Dooooo soommmeeetthiinnnggggg.”
By now, Sam felt a little bad for Dean. The girls, for no reason, had chosen to pick on him alone and they were really not giving him a moment.
“Ok, ladies, it’s dinner time. Who wants to come make something to eat?”
“That depends…are we going to get to turn it weird colors with food coloring?”
“Uhh…sure.”
“And afterwards you’re going to make cookies?”
“I don’t know how to make-“
“YOU HAVE TO MAKE US COOKIES IF BECKY WANTS COOKIES.”
“I think you should learn how to make cookies, dude,” Dean said, concerned.
“Yeah, you might be right about that.”
In the end, the girls had helped Sam turn out four bowls of macaroni and cheese-Rebecca’s red, Sam’s green, Dotty’s blue, and Dean’s stubbornly yellow. After that the girls had gone back to the living room to watch The Little Mermaid while Dean and Sam tried to figure out how to make cookies from scratch. It had gotten off to a rocky start. Mostly because when Sam had tried asking Rebecca if she knew where the cooking supplies would be, Dotty came up behind her and confidentially informed her that “you don’t have to answer that” which Becca took as a hint that she should not. That led to thirty minutes of Dean and Sam sacking the kitchen to find everything they needed while the girls stood in the doorway laughing at them.
Finally everything was together, their cookie batter actually looked like cookie batter, and the smell from the oven wasn’t awful. Neither was using waiting for the cookies to be ready as an excuse to hide in the kitchen.
“They terrify me, Sam. I am terrified.”
“Well, look, it’s already seven-thirty, they must be getting tired, right?”
“THEY’RE SINGING, SAM. THEY’RE STILL SINGING. AND DANCING. THEY DON’T SOUND TIRED TO ME.”
“Maybe the cookies will help?”
“More sugar, genius.”
“I don’t see you having any ideas, princess.”
“We could crush up Benadryl and put it in their milk.”
“Kids can’t turn down milk and-Dean! That’s completely unethical.”
“You were considering it.”
“We’re not drugging the toddlers, Dean.”
Dean pouted.
When the cookies were ready, Sam and Dean took them out to the living room with milk (not spiked, thank you very much) for everyone and the girls took them happily, their attention finally distracted from the television and the seemingly endless collection of Disney movies.
“Tell us a story!” Dotty demanded.
“What kind of story?” Dean asked cautiously. He didn’t really know any stories that were rated below PG-13.
“A fairy tale, obviously.”
“Sam should do that. Sam loves fairy tales. Don’t you, Sam?” Dean asked wiggling his eyebrows and moving his hips a little closer to Sam’s. “Don’t you just looooovvveee fairy tails?”
Sam rolled his eyes but he couldn’t help adoring how insufferable Dean was. And, well, okay. He maybe took a children’s lit class sophomore year and did know his way around bedtime stories.
“Yeah, I got it. Why don’t you go shower that stuff off your face while I tell a few?”
“Sounds good,” Dean replied getting up but bending back down to put a little kiss on the top of Sam’s head.
Dean felt a little bad leaving Sam alone with those monsters, but Sam had abandoned him during his juice buying endeavor and really there was just nothing that could be worse than what he sat through alone. So Dean took his time in the shower, thoroughly enjoying the warm water and the silence. By the time he got out it was already late and Dean just wanted to get the hell out of dodge. When he went out to the living room to assess the damage, however, he was surprisingly greeted by the sweetest image he’d probably ever seen.
His giant of a brother was still sitting on the floor where Dean had left him, his back against the sofa and his long legs stretching almost all the way to the television. He was sleeping and tucked under each arm a little pink ball was rolled, heads resting on Sam’s chest as the girls slept peacefully. Apparently Sam knew magic or something.
Sam made a tiny satisfied noise as Dean shook him awake. He looked down and immediately started when he saw that the girls were missing.
“Where’d they go? Oh god, you killed them.”
“They’re in bed, Sammy. Sleeping. You’re incredible.”
“Naw, it wasn’t so hard,” Sam said, covering a yawn with his hand.
“So what do we do now?”
“I guess we wait for the parents.”
“They better show up soon, I wanna get the hell out of here.”
“We did okay though, didn’t we? We wouldn’t be such bad parents after all!”
“What, are you kidding me?”
“No?”
“Sam, I never want to talk to a kid again. I’d rather hunt a shape shifting vampiric demon werewolf with a gift for witchcraft.”
“But you said-“
“I guess I thought all kids would be like you were. Turns out you didn’t suck so much after all.”
“Oh, I’m flattered.”
They cuddled on the couch for the rest of the night watching TV until the Baileys got back. Dean pretty much dragged Sam out of the door as soon as Carol and Walter were inside without even giving Sam a chance to hear about how they’d spent their day. Sam didn’t complain. Usually Dean was only this impatient when he was feeling frisky and after a day of pretty much no touching, that was more than alright with Sam. At least until they got back to the motel they were staying at and things started to get heated…
“Okay, I’m sorry Dean, you have to stop.”
“Stop what?” Dean asked, taken completely by surprise.
“We have to go to the store. I can’t do this.”
“You…never had a problem with it before.”
“Dean, your finger nails are pink and sparkly. There’s gay and then there’s that. I’m not letting you touch me like that, it makes me think of really unsexy things, dude.”
“What? Come on! I’m still your princess, aren’t I?” Dean made an obscene face.
“No, yeah, truly unsettling. Let’s go.”
“And here I was thinking you would enjoy a happy ending.”
“It’s really remarkable how many puns like that you can come up with. All day with it. Seriously, do you sit around thinking of ways to pervert everything?”
“Naw, I’m a natural.”
Sam sighed and pulled Dean out of bed. They ran to the nearest pharmacy and bought nail polish remover which they then used to set the world right again. The week after they got back to their house, Sam brought home a puppy. Neither ever mentioned adopting a kid again. And they both enjoyed many happy endings forever after.
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Dean, and a few OCs
Genre: Fluff, Humor
Rating: PG-13 for Language and a whole lot of innuendo.
Word Count: 4,166
Author’s Note: Written for whenthewarsover prompt # 44:
Sam and Dean give domestication a go and get roped into babysitting a kid for the afternoon, and after a couple hours, they're all like, "Demons, please. And ghosts. And other things that might try to kill us. Anything but this."
Ah, yes, I did claim this prompt because I hate children. I shamelessly stole the twist here from the South Park episode The Wacky Molestation Adventure. Beta’d by wutendeskind, who strongly hinted that she would like to be paid for her work in kama sutra. Divider found here. ETA 5/7/2013: Thanks to eos_rose, you can now read this in epub format here.
Summary: When Sam and Dean agreed to babysit, they had no idea it would be like this.
It’s safe to say that life had always been hard for Sam and Dean Winchester. For most of their lives, happy was a foreign concept. They didn’t have much and the little they did was torn from them time and time again; they fought tooth and nail just to hold on to each other. Most of the time, they didn’t think about that. That was just life for them. It sucked, but they didn’t know anything else. Neither pretended that the Apocalypse being over was going to change that for them, neither expected life to just start being happy. Not without work.
Dean had been ready to work. Sure, he was daunted by what it would take to finally settle down into some kind of normal, but he was going to fight for those little things people took for granted. He’d just killed goddamn Lucifer for crying out loud, and if his little brother wanted to stay a few nights in a town just because he liked it there, the hunts could wait. Sam deserved that and Dean deserved to see Sam get it. Because Dean didn’t know how to be happy, had no plans on how to make it happen, was terrified by the size of the task. All he knew was that he could live forever in the moments that Sam would smile so wide his dimples almost swallowed his face. To make that permanent, Dean was prepared to put as much effort into this crusade as he had put into the last one.
But life never went the way Dean expected it to. Usually this was a bad thing. This time, determined and stocked for war and willing to go to any lengths to make happy real, the irony was that happy came to Dean by accident. And it wasn’t him who was responsible, it was Sam.
Sam and Dean were used to getting hurt, used to patching each other up. There was nothing different about that day, except for the mistakes Dean made. Dean had wanted Sam for years; he had gotten pretty good at controlling it. But that night…that night he forgot to draw the line. Forgot he was only supposed to be Sam’s brother, even though Sam was his everything. He couldn’t help it; he’d been too worried to think.
Sam had been cut up pretty badly on that hunt and even though Dean had patched him up, he’d been in bad condition. He was drenched in sweat and Dean was just trying to help. Sam’s long hair was plastered to his face, in his eyes, in his mouth-it looked uncomfortable. Dean had suffered through a million wicked dreams of running his fingers through that hair but this time he was sure it would be okay. Sam was too weak to do it himself and would appreciate the help. Nobody would have thought there was anything unusual about someone pushing some hair out of their injured brother’s line of vision. Eyebrows would definitely have lifted, however, at the way Dean’s face instinctively moved towards Sam’s, the way his fingers lingered on the younger man’s neck once the hair was out of the way. Dean had caught himself, had pulled away just in time. But even after massive blood loss, that was just not normal family behavior and Sam wasn’t exactly a moron.
“Were you about to kiss me?” Sam asked, completely in shock.
“What?! No. Of course not! Why would you even ask that?!”
Sam was silent for a long time. He had looked at his brother closely before responding, his voice shaky and more than a little confused.
“Because I think…I wanted you to.”
It had taken seven words to make happy a reality. If Dean had known it would be that easy, he would have beat Sam to it by a decade.
Sometimes, Sam worried that happy may have come a little too easy. They got used to it immediately, they got comfortable. They had a home and could do whatever they wanted-the angels made sure Dean never had to worry about money so they were free to hunt when they felt like it and go home and relax when they felt like it. Sam had a taste of living like this from Stanford, but Dean…Dean was used to always looking into the shadows, to never getting a second to relax. A comfortable Dean was a dangerous Dean. He was always thinking of ways to spice up life, new things he could heap onto his plate because he was just so damned free nowadays. Most of the time his ideas were kind of, well, crazy. Sam usually humored them because Dean was nothing if not fun, but there were times he would be forced to worry. For example, when Dean would say things like…
“You know what, Sammy, we should have a kid.”
“I’m afraid nature disagrees with you on that one.”
“No, not have a kid. But like, you know, have a kid. I mean, there’s been more than one case where we arrived too late and had to hand an orphan over to the state. We could give one of those kids a home.”
“You want to kidnap a child to play house?”
“You’re such a prissy bitch sometimes. C’mon, it’d be fun! I love kids!”
“Dean, I like kids too and all, everyone likes kids. But we can’t raise a child-“
“Why not?”
“For starters, we’re still hunters. We tried quitting and we didn’t like it. We both decided it’s what we want to do. But we’re lost causes-we’re permanently messed up. No way am I raising a kid like we-“
“We don’t move around anymore, Sam. Lots of hunters have kids.”
“I don’t care what other people do. Nobody is growing up knowing the things we knew under my watch.”
“We turned out okay! All I’m saying is I think we’d be pretty great at it, alright? We could help some kid, have a real family.”
“We help kids all the time, Dean. But this isn’t a puppy we’re talking about. What are we going to do, leave them alone while we go on hunts? Lie to them for their entire lives? What if one of us gets hurt? What if we both get hurt?”
“Alright, alright. Let up. You’re the one who always wanted all the picket fence crap. It was just an idea.”
Dean had left it at that, but it was never that easy with Dean. He was in a mood for the rest of the night and though he was back to normal by the next day, two weeks later he would still make offhand comments whenever they passed a child on the street. Sam had to figure out a way to get Dean’s biological clock to calm down before he brought it up again and started another fight, or worse yet, showed up one night with a child and no explanation as to where the hell it came from. You could never know with Dean.
The answer had presented itself in the form of Carol and Walter Bailey, a couple of hunters Sam and Dean had met and befriended while working a case a few years before the war. When the Apocalypse had come and most retired hunters got back into the game, Carol and Walter did the most ill-advised thing possible: they dropped the job, settled down, and had two daughters. Luckily for them (and for everyone, really) the world hadn’t actually ended and the family was still living a perfectly normal life in Oakland, Maryland.
It usually fell to Dean to keep up with professional contacts, but ever since the Baileys retired, Sam had kept up with Carol over the phone about once a month. Dean liked the Baileys well enough, but couldn’t ever quite get over his annoyance that when everyone was out fighting they had turned their backs and brought children into a world that could potentially end any moment. Sam was more sympathetic toward that need to be normal and he liked Carol too much to hold a grudge.
They were talking over the phone one day when Carol casually mentioned how much she envied him and Dean for their freedom. She and Walter hadn’t had a night to themselves in years. That didn’t seem fair to Sam and, in a more selfish light, Sam had heard that the Bailey girls were terrors and Dean would learn better from experience than from logical reasoning. So Sam had volunteered himself and his brother to babysit while Carol and her husband went out for a night. After all, how bad could a six and a seven year old really be?
“Hey, Dean, are you still fixated on how awesome kids are?”
“Yeah, why?” Dean replied, his eyes lighting up like Christmas as he turned to look at Sam.
“How do you feel about driving across the country to babysit?”
“What?”
“Carol and Walter need a babysitter. I thought you might like the idea.”
“You’re agreeing to drive to Maryland so I can hang out with some kids for a few hours?”
Sam nodded.
“Oh, Sammy!” Dean said in a comically high-pitched voice. “You do care!” He’d hugged Sam briefly and then scurried off to pack.
Sam hadn’t given the Baileys a firm date on when they would show up so they took the trip slowly, stopping to enjoy the places they liked and wanted to explore and taking the jobs that they stumbled upon as they worked their way East. By the time they finally showed up on the Bailey’s doorstep, it had been well over a month and Carol had dismissed the offer as a joke.
“Hey Carol! Sorry it took us so long to get here,” Sam said with his best “oops!” smile.
“Boys! I didn’t think you would actually drive all this way to give us a night off!”
“I keep my promises! Now go grab Walter and get the hell out of this house!”
“Yeah,” Dean added. “We don’t want to see either of you again until you’re sloppy drunk and have had sex at least three times.”
Sam rolled his eyes so hard he was sure Dean could hear it, but Carol just giggled and grabbed her husband. It was still early in the day and if they weren’t expected home until late at night, she wanted to make every minute count. The couple had dressed and been ready to go at a remarkable speed and rushed out after making brief introductions.
Elizabeth (who only answered to Dotty for reasons unknown to apparently everyone but herself) and Rebecca were nothing short of precious. They wore matching pink princess dresses and ribbons in their hair and looked like perfect angels. It was a little creepy.
“Hey girls, what do you want to do today?” Dean asked as soon as he and Sam had been left alone with the girls.
“We’re going to watch our Disney Princess Enchanted Tales Sing-along video…duh.” Dotty answered as if Dean was a little slow. Sam stifled a snort and Dean looked back at him a little shocked.
“Well, alright then, I guess that answers that.”
Twenty minutes in, Sam had the worst headache he’d had since the demon blood fiasco.
“Who’s hungry? I’m hungry! I’m going to go make us all some lunch.”
Dean nodded at him disinterestedly as Sam made his escape, eyes suspiciously intent on the video. Dean actually didn’t really notice that Sam was missing until he smelled something burning and realized that he had never actually seen Sam cook anything in his entire life.
“Where’s the fire?” Dean asked from the kitchen door. Sam turned around, he was a little sweaty from the heat coming off whatever he was making, but he looked like he was holding up alright. Actually, he looked better than alright. He looked really, really good. Dean glanced out at the living room to make sure the girls were still distracted. They were-babysitting was easy, the tape they were watching was like crack.
“No fire! I’m making grilled cheese,” Sam said, sounding proud of himself and indicating a plate with three sandwiches, the fourth still on the stove.
“I didn’t even know you knew how to do that,” Dean said feeling robbed. He’d always been the one that had to get them fed and now was when Sam decided to mention his lazy ass had just been holding out on him?
“I spent four years in college, Dean. I learned how to make a grilled cheese.”
“Well that’s good to know.” Dean watched hungrily as Sam took the last sandwich off the stove, placed it on the plate, and turned off the heat.
“Hungry?”
“Not for those,” Dean answered, licking his lips and trapping his brother against the counter. Dean’s mouth pressed against Sam’s neck.
“Dean, stop it. There are children in the next room!”
“Mmm, I’m not gonna do anything, I’m just gonna make you really uncomfortable.”
“I will kill you,” Sam half squeaked as Dean’s fingers slipped up his shirt. Dean shut his brother up with his lips and Sam gave up trying to fight him off.
“Are you kissing?” They heard a little voice ask from the door and Dean immediately pulled away from Sam.
“Uh…maybe?”
“But you’re both boys.”
“Well, sweetie,” Sam said, glaring daggers at his brother. “Sometimes boys do that. And that’s okay.”
“But then who’s the mommy?”
Sam made an awkward noise and Dean barked a laugh.
“That’s a loaded question,” Dean mumbled.
“Usually he is,” Sam said, pointing to Dean and Dean’s mouth dropped open as he turned to face Sam. Sam lifted an eyebrow and made an evil face. “What? You are.”
“You can’t tell a little girl-“
“What does that even mean?” Rebecca asked, picking up her older sister’s interrogation.
“You know what, honey, it doesn’t matter,” Dean said, crouching so that he was on level with the girls and could look them both in the eye. “Don’t ask your parents, okay? Promise?”
“Okayyyyy,” they both said sounding disappointed.
“Hey, what ever happened to that nice sing-along tape we were having so much fun with?”
“It ended,” Dotty replied. Dean scowled. What kind of respectable video tape was less than an hour long?
“Are you and him married?”
“Uh. Yes. You should only kiss people you’re married to.”
“I want to marry Becky. I don’t like anyone but Becky and she doesn’t like anyone but me.”
Rebecca nodded.
“While I sympathize with your situation, I really think you should wait a few years before you make that decision.”
Dean heard Sam drop something behind him and Sam cursed under his breath. Served him right for telling a six year old about their sex life.
“I don’t know what sympathize means,” Dotty informed Dean.
“Lunch time!” Sam said, interrupting the conversation before Dean explained just how understanding he was of wanting to marry one’s sibling.
Lunch had been mostly uneventful…until Becca finished her juice box and asked for another.
“There aren’t anymore,” Sam said nicely. “Would you like some water or milk instead?”
Suddenly an empty juice box hit Sam right in the face.
“Did you just throw a juice box at Sam’s head?” Dean asked, obviously more amused than annoyed by Dotty’s antics.
“You’re not allowed to tell Becky no. You have to give her a juice box,” the older girl said sternly.
“Alright then, boss,” Sam said a little dazed. “I’m going to go buy some juice; you think you can handle these girls alone?”
No, Dean did not think he could handle the girls alone. But he wasn’t about to admit that out loud.
“Of course I can handle it!” Sam looked uneasy but left anyway.
When Sam returned, one thing was immediately clear. Dean could not handle it.
“Dean, what the hell happened to you?”
“They wouldn’t stop crying and hitting me until I agreed. It was terrifying, Sammy.”
Ten minutes later, Sam was almost finished laughing. Almost. Nearly. Ok, not so close after all.
“Dude, laugh a little more, see how fast I plant my foot up your-“
“Oh, dear! A pretty girl like you shouldn’t use such language.”
Sam had returned to find Dean sitting on the living room floor, decked out like a princess. And not just any princess. Sam’s eyes flicked to the screen, back to Dean, and back to the screen. That was what made him lose it for ten minutes. When finally his hysterics calmed down, the girls reappeared, their previously pristine dresses smudged with makeup.
“Do you like it, do you like it?” Rebecca asked with big, hopeful eyes.
“When you told us he was the mommy, we realized that he wasn’t a very pretty one, so we fixed it.”
“We made him Princess Aurora because you looked most like Prince Phillip.”
The girls were clearly extremely proud of their handiwork. As for Dean…he was a disaster. It was apparent that one girl had taken each side of his face and neither had bothered to consult the other on the color scheme. Dean’s cheeks were caked with blush. His lips had been used like a coloring book, red lipstick slathered on with no regard for the lines. One eye was shadowed with blue while the other was hot pink. The little hair Dean had was stuck with clips, blonde extensions falling from them and onto Dean’s face. He even had pink tiara with fake jewels glued onto it.
“Put your phone away right this instant.”
“NO WAY, I am so getting a picture of this.”
The girls had refused to let Dean get up and clean himself off, so by the time Sleeping Beauty ended, he was still looking as ridiculous as he had been when Sam got home. They put another movie on (Sam had no idea when Hunchback of Notre Dame became suitable for children because even the Disney version had a horny priest) but the girls were getting bouncier and Sam could tell they wouldn’t sit quietly through another movie.
“Saaaaaammmmmmyyyyy,” Dean whined. “Dooooo soommmeeetthiinnnggggg.”
By now, Sam felt a little bad for Dean. The girls, for no reason, had chosen to pick on him alone and they were really not giving him a moment.
“Ok, ladies, it’s dinner time. Who wants to come make something to eat?”
“That depends…are we going to get to turn it weird colors with food coloring?”
“Uhh…sure.”
“And afterwards you’re going to make cookies?”
“I don’t know how to make-“
“YOU HAVE TO MAKE US COOKIES IF BECKY WANTS COOKIES.”
“I think you should learn how to make cookies, dude,” Dean said, concerned.
“Yeah, you might be right about that.”
In the end, the girls had helped Sam turn out four bowls of macaroni and cheese-Rebecca’s red, Sam’s green, Dotty’s blue, and Dean’s stubbornly yellow. After that the girls had gone back to the living room to watch The Little Mermaid while Dean and Sam tried to figure out how to make cookies from scratch. It had gotten off to a rocky start. Mostly because when Sam had tried asking Rebecca if she knew where the cooking supplies would be, Dotty came up behind her and confidentially informed her that “you don’t have to answer that” which Becca took as a hint that she should not. That led to thirty minutes of Dean and Sam sacking the kitchen to find everything they needed while the girls stood in the doorway laughing at them.
Finally everything was together, their cookie batter actually looked like cookie batter, and the smell from the oven wasn’t awful. Neither was using waiting for the cookies to be ready as an excuse to hide in the kitchen.
“They terrify me, Sam. I am terrified.”
“Well, look, it’s already seven-thirty, they must be getting tired, right?”
“THEY’RE SINGING, SAM. THEY’RE STILL SINGING. AND DANCING. THEY DON’T SOUND TIRED TO ME.”
“Maybe the cookies will help?”
“More sugar, genius.”
“I don’t see you having any ideas, princess.”
“We could crush up Benadryl and put it in their milk.”
“Kids can’t turn down milk and-Dean! That’s completely unethical.”
“You were considering it.”
“We’re not drugging the toddlers, Dean.”
Dean pouted.
When the cookies were ready, Sam and Dean took them out to the living room with milk (not spiked, thank you very much) for everyone and the girls took them happily, their attention finally distracted from the television and the seemingly endless collection of Disney movies.
“Tell us a story!” Dotty demanded.
“What kind of story?” Dean asked cautiously. He didn’t really know any stories that were rated below PG-13.
“A fairy tale, obviously.”
“Sam should do that. Sam loves fairy tales. Don’t you, Sam?” Dean asked wiggling his eyebrows and moving his hips a little closer to Sam’s. “Don’t you just looooovvveee fairy tails?”
Sam rolled his eyes but he couldn’t help adoring how insufferable Dean was. And, well, okay. He maybe took a children’s lit class sophomore year and did know his way around bedtime stories.
“Yeah, I got it. Why don’t you go shower that stuff off your face while I tell a few?”
“Sounds good,” Dean replied getting up but bending back down to put a little kiss on the top of Sam’s head.
Dean felt a little bad leaving Sam alone with those monsters, but Sam had abandoned him during his juice buying endeavor and really there was just nothing that could be worse than what he sat through alone. So Dean took his time in the shower, thoroughly enjoying the warm water and the silence. By the time he got out it was already late and Dean just wanted to get the hell out of dodge. When he went out to the living room to assess the damage, however, he was surprisingly greeted by the sweetest image he’d probably ever seen.
His giant of a brother was still sitting on the floor where Dean had left him, his back against the sofa and his long legs stretching almost all the way to the television. He was sleeping and tucked under each arm a little pink ball was rolled, heads resting on Sam’s chest as the girls slept peacefully. Apparently Sam knew magic or something.
Sam made a tiny satisfied noise as Dean shook him awake. He looked down and immediately started when he saw that the girls were missing.
“Where’d they go? Oh god, you killed them.”
“They’re in bed, Sammy. Sleeping. You’re incredible.”
“Naw, it wasn’t so hard,” Sam said, covering a yawn with his hand.
“So what do we do now?”
“I guess we wait for the parents.”
“They better show up soon, I wanna get the hell out of here.”
“We did okay though, didn’t we? We wouldn’t be such bad parents after all!”
“What, are you kidding me?”
“No?”
“Sam, I never want to talk to a kid again. I’d rather hunt a shape shifting vampiric demon werewolf with a gift for witchcraft.”
“But you said-“
“I guess I thought all kids would be like you were. Turns out you didn’t suck so much after all.”
“Oh, I’m flattered.”
They cuddled on the couch for the rest of the night watching TV until the Baileys got back. Dean pretty much dragged Sam out of the door as soon as Carol and Walter were inside without even giving Sam a chance to hear about how they’d spent their day. Sam didn’t complain. Usually Dean was only this impatient when he was feeling frisky and after a day of pretty much no touching, that was more than alright with Sam. At least until they got back to the motel they were staying at and things started to get heated…
“Okay, I’m sorry Dean, you have to stop.”
“Stop what?” Dean asked, taken completely by surprise.
“We have to go to the store. I can’t do this.”
“You…never had a problem with it before.”
“Dean, your finger nails are pink and sparkly. There’s gay and then there’s that. I’m not letting you touch me like that, it makes me think of really unsexy things, dude.”
“What? Come on! I’m still your princess, aren’t I?” Dean made an obscene face.
“No, yeah, truly unsettling. Let’s go.”
“And here I was thinking you would enjoy a happy ending.”
“It’s really remarkable how many puns like that you can come up with. All day with it. Seriously, do you sit around thinking of ways to pervert everything?”
“Naw, I’m a natural.”
Sam sighed and pulled Dean out of bed. They ran to the nearest pharmacy and bought nail polish remover which they then used to set the world right again. The week after they got back to their house, Sam brought home a puppy. Neither ever mentioned adopting a kid again. And they both enjoyed many happy endings forever after.