A/N: Just a fluffy little oneshot for you guys. Don't worry, you'll still get another chapter in Beautiful Soldier on Wednesday. This is just to shake things up a little so I don't go completely insane.
Disclaimer: What makes you think I own Supernatural? If I did, I wouldn't be writing fanfiction, now would I? I would just put my ideas into the show.
"Another day," sighed Elaine Neesmith as she sat down at her desk on a cold February morning. There weren't any students in her classroom yet, for which the young teacher was thankful.
As she set up the classroom for the day, Elaine's thoughts kept straying to one particular student. In all her eight years of teaching home economics, Elaine had never encountered a student quite like Dean Winchester. Each time they started a new unit, the boy would surprise her with some unconventional method to completing the classwork that had nothing to do with her instructions. The most memorable instances she could think of were cooking and sewing.
The first lesson she'd taught that Dean Winchester had attended had been cooking. The assignment was to make ramen noodles. It was a simple food to cook, which made it a perfect introduction to the unit. Instead of following the instructions, which had been to boil the noodles and add the seasoning to the water, the 17-year-old had drained the noodles, added the seasoning, then mixed it all together with ranch dressing. While she'd been impressed by his ingenuity, Elaine had been forced to dock his grade for not following directions.
The sewing unit had been weirder. The first assignment the class had been given was to make a small pillow, just to get started. Dean had started out stitching the pillow with normal stitches, but Elaine noticed that the rest of it had been sewn with neat surgical stitches. She was astounded by how secure they were and disturbed by the precision, and she was forced, once again, to deduct from his grade.
"I wonder what he's going to do today," Elaine wondered as she set out dummy infants. Today would be the beginning of their childcare unit, and the young teacher was a little nervous about what Dean would come up with next.
"Speak of the devil," she thought as the subject of her musings sauntered into the classroom. "You're here early," she greeted her student.
Dean just shrugged nonchalantly and glanced around the room. "Sammy had to be at school early this morning, and it was too far away to walk back home. So I came back here."
Elaine wasn't unfamiliar with the name Sammy. Each time she'd brought up Dean's assignments, his explanation had something to do with a Sammy. He'd never mentioned his mother, and his father had only been alluded to once. She didn't know Dean's relationship with the younger child, but Sammy was a name spoken often.
"What are we learning today?" the student's bored voice broke into Elaine's thoughts.
"We're starting our childcare unit today," she answered. "Have you had much experience with children, Dean?"
"Just Sammy," said Dean.
Elaine wasn't surprised by that answer in the least. She was still anticipating what the student before her would do. "Dean, will you put a onsie beside each baby, please?" she requested, handing him a stack of tiny clothes as she placed a diaper on each desk.
As he stood to help, Dean got distracted by the soft material in his hands. Elaine noticed this. "What is it, Dean?" she asked gently.
"Nothing," he answered, shaking himself out of his head space.
The teacher gave her student a smile. "Oh, come on. You can tell me," she invited lightly. She considered it an important part of her job to get her students to open up to her, and Dean Winchester was one of the most closed-off kids she'd ever met.
Dean still didn't say anything for a minute. "Just memories," he said finally. "Of Sammy when he was a baby."
Elaine couldn't stop the smile that twitched her lips. Dean's voice didn't express much, but one look at his face and in his eyes told her just what Sammy meant to her student. Elaine didn't want to make any false assumptions, but the look on the teenager's face was one she was very familiar with. She'd seen it on her husband's face everyday since their daughter had been born. It was the face of a proud father.
Before she could ask any questions, more students began to trickle into class. Elaine put her thoughts aside for later.
Alright, people," the teacher said once all her students were seated and attendance had been taken. "We're starting our childcare unit today." A few groans and grumbles could be heard around the room. "Oh yeah, my heart breaks for you," she joked, and she could see Dean's tiny smirk out of the corner of her eye. "If you guys can cook, you can put a diaper on a baby doll. It's much harder to put a diaper on a real baby. They move." Dean snickered, and Elaine fought to reign in her smile.
After a brief lesson on how to diaper an infant, Elaine let her students practice on the dolls in front of them. It was amusing to see them struggling to figure out the diapers, despite the tutorial they'd just been given. Some of the girls were able to do it pretty easily, but the majority of the class was still having trouble.
Curious about how Dean might be doing, Elaine turned her gaze to the very back of the room. There sat Dean with a bored expression on his face, the perfectly-diapered doll on the desk in front of him. "That was fast," the teacher thought as she observed her students.
Once all the baby dolls had been diapered, the next tutorial was putting clothes on an infant. This time, when the students were set free to dress their dolls, she looked to Dean first. To her amazement, the teen already had the baby's feet covered and had the doll leaning against his chest to pull the onsie over its legs and torso. A glance at the rest of the class showed everyone else trying to wrestle the onsie onto the doll while it was still on the desk."Dean has definitely done this before," mused Elaine, and she filed the thought away with her suspicions from earlier. Practiced hands laid the baby doll onto the desk once Dean was done dressing it, and Elaine could see the natural gentleness of his movements. Once again, he had finished before the rest of his classmates.
At the end of class, Elaine called on Dean to help her gather up the dolls, clothes, and diapers. She was thankful he hadn't done anything weird that day, but his expertise with the baby earlier still had her dumbfounded.
"Hey, Dean," Elaine called as she folded the onsies and placed them back into a box. Dean looked up from where he was dropping dolls into a large bin. "Where did you learn to be so skilled with infants?" she asked.
The question cause the color to drain from Dean's tanned face, his freckles standing out against the pale skin. He was considering how to answer when a knock sounded from the door. There stood a boy, Elaine guessed him to be 12 or 13, with shaggy brown hair and deep green eyes.
"Excuse me," the boy asked politely. "I'm looking for Dean Winchester."
"Dean," Elaine got her student's attention. He turned to the door, and his entire face lit up at the sight of the younger kid.
"Dean, Dad's outside," the boy said. "He have to go." Dean seemed to know exactly what that meant.
"Okay, Sammy, just let me finish helping Mrs. Nesmith," Dean answered. There were only a few dolls left to gather, and once they were all in the bin, Dean shouldered his backpack and approached the door. "Bye, Mrs. Neesmith," the teenager said.
For some reason, there was a sense of finality to Dean's goodbye. "You take care, Dean," she said sincerely.
"You, too. Come on, Sammy." Elaine couldn't resist watching the boys as they walked down the hallway. The way Dean ruffled Sammy's hair and settled his arm around his shoulders made the teacher rethink every assumption she'd made about Dean Winchester.
The pride on his face as he recalled the memories, the obvious practice he'd had with children, and the utter joy on Dean's face when he saw his brother told Elaine just what the boys' relationship really was. "Dean raised his brother," Elaine whispered to herself. Despite being only 17, the teacher could tell her student had already been a father for years. "He certainly is unconventional."
A/N: Oh, the fluff. Leave me a review please! Thank you for reading.