This little light of mine - 1/1
This little light of mine
Rating: G, Gen
Characters: Dean, Sammy, Pastor Jim, John
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchester dolls for the purposes of general amusement. Sorry about the holes!
Word Count: 1,666
A/N: Part of my SPN Advent Calendar. My bonus present to my Flist, some of whom wanted to know more about certain moments between Pastor Jim and Dean mentioned in The Sixth Sin of Pastor Jim, Ten Green Bottles, and Over Easy. Title and lyrics from: This Little Light Of Mine. Many thanks to secret-seer for yet another perfect banner.
Setting: Blue Earth, MN. November - December 1991
Summary: In which Dean is forced wear a dress. And sing. In a church.
Pastor Jim Murphy was a soft touch. Dean was glad that there was one benefit to all that religious training, or whatever weird shit priests, reverends, rabbis, and pastors (Dean wasn’t quite clear on the differences) did to earn those dorky dog collars and dresses they were all forced to wear.
‘Now this is what we call an easy mark, Sammy.’ Dean confided quietly to his little brother outside the closed door to Pastor Jim’s office.
Sammy looked blank, but nodded anyway.
Dean sighed. He still had a lot of work to do with Sammy. Eight-year-olds were kind of dumb all the way through; a bit like marshmallows, sweet and sticky, but a whole lot smellier.
‘What you need to do, is to go in there and ask Pastor Jim if he’d like to play a small guessing game.’
Sammy brightened because he clearly remembered this bit from Dean’s rehearsal in their room earlier that morning, and Dean breathed a little easier because he didn’t want to take a chance on another practice in the narrow hallway where that battle axe of a church secretary Mrs Grimes was bound to catch them. Dean was sure she had eyes in the back of her wispy grey bun. That woman was a cast-iron bitch, no doubt about it at all. If it hadn’t been for all the wards around the church Dean would have been more than happy to perform his first exorcism on her.
‘Got the shells? And the pea?’ Dean said, trying to put the human evil that was Mrs Grimes out of his mind for a while.
Sammy silently held out one grimy, clenched fist.
‘Good boy. Go get him! And remember, take no prisoners!’
Dean had never, ever, heard Pastor Jim laugh so much in his life. Damn it!
‘It’s okay, Sammy,’ Dean said, consoling himself more than his brother, who was also laughing as if it was one big joke that the Pastor had picked the right shell every time.
‘Fucking Marines,’ Dean swore to himself. Next time he was obviously going to have teach Sammy how to palm the pea. An honest game was certainly not the way to go with Jim Murphy.
‘Boys? How about a little wager on how fast you can clean up my yard before the next service?’ The Pastor was standing in the doorway grinning evilly down at Dean.
‘Son of a bitch,’ Dean thought as he watched his gullible brother happily make a deal with God’s own particular devil.
Dean’s little battles with Pastor Jim livened up the rest of the month, and the first two weeks of December.
Dean enlisted a willing Sammy in his army of two, but unfortunately the kid was more of a sucker than their target.
Pretty much whatever they tried got turned back against them threefold.
‘The Lord is a great believer in giving, Dean.’ Pastor Jim snickered over his shoulder as he walked past with the members of his flower committee.
Dean glared at his back. He didn’t know how the Pastor did it, but he seemed to be able to read Dean’s mind, sometimes even before he thought up his next plot. Plots. Maybe he could…
‘Don’t even think about it!’ Echoed back along the corridor.
Huh. Dean prayed that his father finished up his hunt quickly and came back to rescue them. He didn’t think he could take too much more of the Pastor’s particular brand of goodness.
Admittedly the broken vase wasn’t part of the plan. And Dean would have cleaned up all those weird red flowers and the water eventually, but the Pastor just seemed to have this knack of turning up at the right, or in Dean’s case the worst possible moment.
Sammy was getting much better at aiming his bow and arrow. But next time Dean was going to try and angle the ricochet off his dustbin lid shield away from the pre-Christmas flower display. Because, impossible as it was to believe, the wrath of Mrs Patrick was almost more than that of Mrs Grimes. Dean didn’t know where all Pastor Jim’s church “ladies” came from, but Dean was still betting on the lower levels of Hell.
Luckily for him, that awesome shot of Sammy’s only earned Dean a mop in addition to the usual Hail Mary’s.
Dean could handle those sorts of punishments. And they gave him lots of time to plan the next skirmish.
War games were practically mandatory for a Marine’s sons. Weren’t they?
And that pond out the back? Well, the chances of it not freezing over at that time of the year were almost impossible for even Sammy the budding maths nerd to calculate. So, all that lovely unfrozen water was a sign, wasn’t it?
Battleships… ‘Yeeee Haaaaaaaaah! Torpedos away!’
A really cold, and wet sign.
It was all going tremendously well, and doing the job of taking both their minds off their absent father.
Well. Yeah, right up until Dean’s twenty minute chase after his very slippery brother kind of accidentally ended up going down the centre aisle of the not-so-empty-Ooops?- church whilst Pastor Jim was apparently in the middle of conducting a wedding ceremony.
Could have happened to anyone, right?
Yeah.
Besides, Dean caught Sammy right before he slimed the bride’s dress, didn’t he? How cool were his reflexes?
Fine. So, maybe Pastor Jim was holding a grudge after that.
Just a tiny one.
Nothing to worry about. Especially for a Winchester.
Then there was a little problem with some of the church wine supplies.
No worries.
Jamming all the pedals and levers and whatever on the organ into something that resulted into “Gloria in excelsis Deo” reverberating through the rafters until the roof tiles shifted was kind of awesome.
Pastor Jim looked a little perturbed at that.
His congregation were however, faintly (under all those booming Glorias) heard to be debating the efficacy of pitchforks.
Dean wasn’t even going into the incident with the…
Nope. Don’t ask.
And just to be certain, he’d had Sammy swear a blood oath too.
Dean was 75% sure that Dad was never going to find out about it. Okay, 43% sure.
‘Let me see if I got this right. You earned, what little Mikey Stephens described to me last week as “a shitload of dough” playing poker with most of the boys at school, and…’
Dean winced, because surely even Pastor Jim’s detective skills weren’t good enough to have found ou…
‘According to Carol Sanders,’ Jim Murphy was now counting off on the fingers of one hand, ‘Lois Farquahar, Anna-Maria Oriano, Di and Betty Morris…’
Dean waited in case the Pastor really was that good ‘cos if so, he was going to need to start on his other hand.
‘You traded kisses for their lunch money, and,’ yup, he was swapping hands. Damn it. ‘Let’s not forget Lucy Sharp, Harriet and Kylie Samuels, and,’ he coughed, ‘their brother David…’
Dean settled a little deeper into the armchair in the church office. It was a very long list; they were going to be there a while.
Thirty minutes later Pastor Jim removed his glasses and laid aside the, now heavily annotated, school enrolment list that Dean still had no idea who he’d bribed to get his hands on a copy. The Pastor really was almost as devious as Dad.
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Dean. But from what I can see here the only two people you didn’t “earn” money off one way or another in the past month was Alice Rose?’ One eyebrow lifted in quiet interrogation.
‘Off sick with the flu,’ Dean muttered.
‘And Bruce Lightfoot?’
‘Computer game nerd,’ Dean gritted. He’d tried his very best not to ruin his average, but Bruce really just wasn’t that into it, and Mrs Rose hadn’t even let him inside the house.
‘Dean? What am I going to do with you?’
‘Three Hail Mary’s?’ Dean offered hopefully, because he had Pastor Jim’s standard punishment down pat after all these years of “holiday visits” while Dad was hunting.
‘I don’t think so,’ mused Jim Murphy. ‘I think this time, we need something much more meaningful. Something you’ll remember for the rest of your life. Something public.’
Pastor Jim was worse than Dad. Much, much worse.
‘Everyone has free will, Dean.’
Yeah. The freedom to choose between two evils.
Dean thought free will sucked.
A day later, Dean was still debating his “choice” of punishments.
He did his best to ignore Sammy saying something about needing film for Pastor Jim’s camera, because who the heck cared about cameras when Dean’s whole life was about to be ruined? Forever!
Dean might possibly also have been snarling a little. He’d have put money on having to settle for the role of Joseph as a last resort.
But Mary? In a wig? And a dress?
Mary?
Fucking Christmas pageants.
Maybe Door number two was the better option after all?
Dean narrowed his eyes at Pastor Jim, standing there blandly with his fucking baton poised and waiting, measured the distance to the exit, took another look at his family (Dad back just in time for his eldest son’s utter humiliation), and found himself smiling automatically back at a joyously bouncing Sammy. Damn it to Hell.
As he ripped off the damn dress/robe/whatever, and stomped angrily forward to take his mark and raise his voice in praise, Dean decided that God, Pastor Jim, and Sammy had a lot to answer for.
This little light o' mine, I'm going to let it shine,
This little light o' mine, I'm going to let it shine,
This little light o' mine, I'm going to let it shine,
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
Hide it under a bushel? No.
I’m going’ let it shine…
For further Christmas stories and graphics see my: SPN Advent Calendar
Rating: G, Gen
Characters: Dean, Sammy, Pastor Jim, John
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchester dolls for the purposes of general amusement. Sorry about the holes!
Word Count: 1,666
A/N: Part of my SPN Advent Calendar. My bonus present to my Flist, some of whom wanted to know more about certain moments between Pastor Jim and Dean mentioned in The Sixth Sin of Pastor Jim, Ten Green Bottles, and Over Easy. Title and lyrics from: This Little Light Of Mine. Many thanks to secret-seer for yet another perfect banner.
Setting: Blue Earth, MN. November - December 1991
Summary: In which Dean is forced wear a dress. And sing. In a church.
Pastor Jim Murphy was a soft touch. Dean was glad that there was one benefit to all that religious training, or whatever weird shit priests, reverends, rabbis, and pastors (Dean wasn’t quite clear on the differences) did to earn those dorky dog collars and dresses they were all forced to wear.
‘Now this is what we call an easy mark, Sammy.’ Dean confided quietly to his little brother outside the closed door to Pastor Jim’s office.
Sammy looked blank, but nodded anyway.
Dean sighed. He still had a lot of work to do with Sammy. Eight-year-olds were kind of dumb all the way through; a bit like marshmallows, sweet and sticky, but a whole lot smellier.
‘What you need to do, is to go in there and ask Pastor Jim if he’d like to play a small guessing game.’
Sammy brightened because he clearly remembered this bit from Dean’s rehearsal in their room earlier that morning, and Dean breathed a little easier because he didn’t want to take a chance on another practice in the narrow hallway where that battle axe of a church secretary Mrs Grimes was bound to catch them. Dean was sure she had eyes in the back of her wispy grey bun. That woman was a cast-iron bitch, no doubt about it at all. If it hadn’t been for all the wards around the church Dean would have been more than happy to perform his first exorcism on her.
‘Got the shells? And the pea?’ Dean said, trying to put the human evil that was Mrs Grimes out of his mind for a while.
Sammy silently held out one grimy, clenched fist.
‘Good boy. Go get him! And remember, take no prisoners!’
Dean had never, ever, heard Pastor Jim laugh so much in his life. Damn it!
‘It’s okay, Sammy,’ Dean said, consoling himself more than his brother, who was also laughing as if it was one big joke that the Pastor had picked the right shell every time.
‘Fucking Marines,’ Dean swore to himself. Next time he was obviously going to have teach Sammy how to palm the pea. An honest game was certainly not the way to go with Jim Murphy.
‘Boys? How about a little wager on how fast you can clean up my yard before the next service?’ The Pastor was standing in the doorway grinning evilly down at Dean.
‘Son of a bitch,’ Dean thought as he watched his gullible brother happily make a deal with God’s own particular devil.
Dean’s little battles with Pastor Jim livened up the rest of the month, and the first two weeks of December.
Dean enlisted a willing Sammy in his army of two, but unfortunately the kid was more of a sucker than their target.
Pretty much whatever they tried got turned back against them threefold.
‘The Lord is a great believer in giving, Dean.’ Pastor Jim snickered over his shoulder as he walked past with the members of his flower committee.
Dean glared at his back. He didn’t know how the Pastor did it, but he seemed to be able to read Dean’s mind, sometimes even before he thought up his next plot. Plots. Maybe he could…
‘Don’t even think about it!’ Echoed back along the corridor.
Huh. Dean prayed that his father finished up his hunt quickly and came back to rescue them. He didn’t think he could take too much more of the Pastor’s particular brand of goodness.
Admittedly the broken vase wasn’t part of the plan. And Dean would have cleaned up all those weird red flowers and the water eventually, but the Pastor just seemed to have this knack of turning up at the right, or in Dean’s case the worst possible moment.
Sammy was getting much better at aiming his bow and arrow. But next time Dean was going to try and angle the ricochet off his dustbin lid shield away from the pre-Christmas flower display. Because, impossible as it was to believe, the wrath of Mrs Patrick was almost more than that of Mrs Grimes. Dean didn’t know where all Pastor Jim’s church “ladies” came from, but Dean was still betting on the lower levels of Hell.
Luckily for him, that awesome shot of Sammy’s only earned Dean a mop in addition to the usual Hail Mary’s.
Dean could handle those sorts of punishments. And they gave him lots of time to plan the next skirmish.
War games were practically mandatory for a Marine’s sons. Weren’t they?
And that pond out the back? Well, the chances of it not freezing over at that time of the year were almost impossible for even Sammy the budding maths nerd to calculate. So, all that lovely unfrozen water was a sign, wasn’t it?
Battleships… ‘Yeeee Haaaaaaaaah! Torpedos away!’
A really cold, and wet sign.
It was all going tremendously well, and doing the job of taking both their minds off their absent father.
Well. Yeah, right up until Dean’s twenty minute chase after his very slippery brother kind of accidentally ended up going down the centre aisle of the not-so-empty-Ooops?- church whilst Pastor Jim was apparently in the middle of conducting a wedding ceremony.
Could have happened to anyone, right?
Yeah.
Besides, Dean caught Sammy right before he slimed the bride’s dress, didn’t he? How cool were his reflexes?
Fine. So, maybe Pastor Jim was holding a grudge after that.
Just a tiny one.
Nothing to worry about. Especially for a Winchester.
Then there was a little problem with some of the church wine supplies.
No worries.
Jamming all the pedals and levers and whatever on the organ into something that resulted into “Gloria in excelsis Deo” reverberating through the rafters until the roof tiles shifted was kind of awesome.
Pastor Jim looked a little perturbed at that.
His congregation were however, faintly (under all those booming Glorias) heard to be debating the efficacy of pitchforks.
Dean wasn’t even going into the incident with the…
Nope. Don’t ask.
And just to be certain, he’d had Sammy swear a blood oath too.
Dean was 75% sure that Dad was never going to find out about it. Okay, 43% sure.
‘Let me see if I got this right. You earned, what little Mikey Stephens described to me last week as “a shitload of dough” playing poker with most of the boys at school, and…’
Dean winced, because surely even Pastor Jim’s detective skills weren’t good enough to have found ou…
‘According to Carol Sanders,’ Jim Murphy was now counting off on the fingers of one hand, ‘Lois Farquahar, Anna-Maria Oriano, Di and Betty Morris…’
Dean waited in case the Pastor really was that good ‘cos if so, he was going to need to start on his other hand.
‘You traded kisses for their lunch money, and,’ yup, he was swapping hands. Damn it. ‘Let’s not forget Lucy Sharp, Harriet and Kylie Samuels, and,’ he coughed, ‘their brother David…’
Dean settled a little deeper into the armchair in the church office. It was a very long list; they were going to be there a while.
Thirty minutes later Pastor Jim removed his glasses and laid aside the, now heavily annotated, school enrolment list that Dean still had no idea who he’d bribed to get his hands on a copy. The Pastor really was almost as devious as Dad.
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Dean. But from what I can see here the only two people you didn’t “earn” money off one way or another in the past month was Alice Rose?’ One eyebrow lifted in quiet interrogation.
‘Off sick with the flu,’ Dean muttered.
‘And Bruce Lightfoot?’
‘Computer game nerd,’ Dean gritted. He’d tried his very best not to ruin his average, but Bruce really just wasn’t that into it, and Mrs Rose hadn’t even let him inside the house.
‘Dean? What am I going to do with you?’
‘Three Hail Mary’s?’ Dean offered hopefully, because he had Pastor Jim’s standard punishment down pat after all these years of “holiday visits” while Dad was hunting.
‘I don’t think so,’ mused Jim Murphy. ‘I think this time, we need something much more meaningful. Something you’ll remember for the rest of your life. Something public.’
Pastor Jim was worse than Dad. Much, much worse.
‘Everyone has free will, Dean.’
Yeah. The freedom to choose between two evils.
Dean thought free will sucked.
A day later, Dean was still debating his “choice” of punishments.
He did his best to ignore Sammy saying something about needing film for Pastor Jim’s camera, because who the heck cared about cameras when Dean’s whole life was about to be ruined? Forever!
Dean might possibly also have been snarling a little. He’d have put money on having to settle for the role of Joseph as a last resort.
But Mary? In a wig? And a dress?
Mary?
Fucking Christmas pageants.
Maybe Door number two was the better option after all?
Dean narrowed his eyes at Pastor Jim, standing there blandly with his fucking baton poised and waiting, measured the distance to the exit, took another look at his family (Dad back just in time for his eldest son’s utter humiliation), and found himself smiling automatically back at a joyously bouncing Sammy. Damn it to Hell.
As he ripped off the damn dress/robe/whatever, and stomped angrily forward to take his mark and raise his voice in praise, Dean decided that God, Pastor Jim, and Sammy had a lot to answer for.
This little light o' mine, I'm going to let it shine,
This little light o' mine, I'm going to let it shine,
This little light o' mine, I'm going to let it shine,
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
Hide it under a bushel? No.
I’m going’ let it shine…
For further Christmas stories and graphics see my: SPN Advent Calendar