Title: Charges Are
Summary: Mister Winchester, please. Dean is nine. He is not qualified to be giving his class self defense lessons.
Category: Humor, gen.
Characters: Dean. John. Sammy.
Rating: PG-13 -one rude word.
Feedback: Is the coffee and M&M concoction that keeps me going.
Notes: Another little delve into the relationship between John and Dean Not as angst as Old Man's Winter Night, I'm actually rather fond of John in this one. In fact it is little more than sugary sap.
"Mister Winchester." The principle's voice was as dry as a day in the Sahara, but it was Dean's face that instantly drew his attention.
Sheepish and shy, but not in the least bit apologetic -turning back to stare at the man behind the desk with a twitch and a glower. The principle must have been going on for eighty, yeah, Dean could take him.
"Principle," cough, clear throat, check out name plaque on desk, "Johnston." Polite, no nonsense, and a hand on Dean's shoulder that made it perfectly clear whose side he was on. "You called me."
Or rather the man had his barely legal secretary call him. The same secretary who nearly fell out of her red shirt when greeting him. Definitely the last time Bobby got to recommend a school for the boys.
Dean shuffled slightly under his hand. A quick squeeze, and he stilled. The boy didn't bother to look up at his father, simply continued on glaring. This wasn't the first time John had been called into the principle's office on Dean's behalf, and it would undoubtedly not be the last. Dean, normally quick to admit fault, accept blame when handed out by his father, stood tall and proud under John's hand. He knew that no matter what happened behind their front door, in that tiny office, his dad had his back.
"Have a seat."
"No, thank you."
He didn't have to see Dean's smirk, he saw it reflected in the twitch of the other man's eyebrow.
Dean was a good boy, but Johnston wouldn't be the first upholder of education to inexplicably suffer a nervous breakdown in his presence.
Johnston cleared his throat with a hacking cough, and John considered transferring the boys then. The man should probably have retired thirty years ago. He wasn't qualified to deal with a Winchester child. Especially not two of them.
"Yes. Mister Simmons, Dean's teacher, says that the boy has been late for class everyday since the beginning of term."
John….blinked.
He hadn't really been called out of the town's only-shitty- library to answer a charge of tardiness. Had he?
"I see." John replied slowly when Johnston's frown demanded an answer. The boys were always at school on time. It took seven minutes to walk the short distance between home and the yard, and they left the house at a half past eight every morning. On the dot.
"I was checking Sam in." Dean said flatly, explaining everything with one simple sentence. The start of a headache, then. Those two boys had more rituals than a satanist's convention. It was like witnessing the Spanish Inquisition. Bound to take time.
He'd make sure they left at twenty after eight in the future.
John nodded. Okay, and he next charge is…
"Vandalism." Johnston remarked promptly.
Dean flinched under John's hand.
Someone was going to be running laps for a long, long, long, long-
Johnston thrust a glossy photograph over the desk. The kindergarten classroom door. Complete with neatly rendered Hebrew protection charm in red spray paint.
Oh for the love of…long, long time.
Subtlety, Dean. What happened to subtlety? Of course, his son was about as subtle as an anvil to the head.
"Right." Johnston was Texan, John was good at spotting accents, and his could cut through a train line.
"Any explanations, young man?" The glare turned from John to Dean. Dean shrugged.
"Art class?"
Girls. Why couldn't he have had girls?
"What about janitor Bill?"
Self-conscious, Dean shrunk back slightly into John's shadow.
Interesting.
"Sorry, what about janitor Bill?" John needed a little more information. This square off between student and teacher, whilst amusing, was rather leaving him in the dark.
Taking a break for glaring at his son as if Dean were the antichrist, Johnston fixed his watery grey stare on the elder Winchester.
"Broken ankle. Sprained wrist-the poor man is scared for life!"
Dean. His Dean. His skinny, waist high, eighty-pound son-
"You attacked the janitor?"
Wait-possession maybe? Shape shifter? Werewolf?
The boy carried holy water, didn't he? John made a note to ask Jim if blessed fruit juice carried the same weight in an exorcism.
"No." Dean muttered, instantly setting bells ringing in his father's head. Dean didn't mutter. Occasionally he stuttered, but that was something else entirely. "There was a power cut, the lights were screwed up-flickery, I went to check on Sammy, and…it was dark." A hint of desperation, and if John wasn't so damn proud, he'd be wringing the boy's neck on principle.
So he'd mistaken the janitor for a demon, and-
"-kicked him off his ladder!" Johnston exclaimed vehemently.
At least the kid knew how to improvise.
"I'm sure it was an accident." John could be contrite enough for the both of them. Sammy liked this school. Dean would have to rough it out for a little longer.
If he didn't get kicked out first.
"Accident." Long, boney fingers arched together and that was honestly the first time he'd ever heard anybody 'humph' since the seventies. "Accidents happen a lot around Dean."
"Just clumsy that way." Dean shrugged artlessly.
Clumsy, ha!
"This happens a lot?" John really didn't need a list of people his eldest had maimed. There were some things a father didn't need to know.
"Nurse Ryan's cat, for one." The principle slapped his hand down on his desk, and John was afraid his bones might just shatter.
Wait, a cat? Dean liked cats-ever since Caleb started filling the boy's head with those terrible Egyptian mystery stories he liked so much. Dean had become fixated with the idea of ghosts and ghoulies being scared of the next door neighbor's kitten.
It was probably a good thing he couldn't see his son's face. "She tried to claw Sammy's friend Clara. Didn't mean to hurt her." Dean sounded more remorseful about the damn cat than the janitor, and John vaguely recalled the boy coming home one day a few weeks ago with scratches up his arms.
Johnston wasn't buying it for a second. "Timothy StClaire."
"Who?"
John echoed his son's statement. Who the fuck was Timothy StClaire?
"Timothy is in the fifth grade. One of your classmates, a mister Rooke, broke his nose."
"And that's my fault?"
John would like to echo that statement as well.
"Principle Johnston, I fail to see how you can hold Dean responsible for another boy's left hook!"
Not a blink from the old principle.
"Dean, tell your father who taught Steven Rooke how to punch."
Conveniently enough, Dean's found a hole in his sneakers that needed investigating.
"As I said-"
John is not a man used to being interrupted, but Johnston does so anyway.
"Mister Winchester, please. Dean is nine. He is not qualified to be giving his class self defense lessons."
"Dean?" Okay, that one John was going to call. The boy knew better than that.
Dean tensed at the growl. "Richard Gibson and Todd Sanderson always pick on Mathew and Ben. And Sally said that Richard stole her lunch money, and they gave Tyler a black eye and ripped Megan's book, and broke Toby's lunch box and-"
"Breathe, Dean." An order.
Sally and Megan and Tyler and-just how many kids were there in Dean's class?
Johnston said nothing further, simply peered over misty glasses.
So to recap, his son, his nine year old boy, was single handedly responsible for the maiming of a staff member- and cat, redecorating the kindergarten classroom with occult symbols, and rallying the forth grade in retaliation against school yard bullies. And he was always late for class.
They were how many weeks into the term?
Four?
Great.
Home schooling sounded like a much more appealing prospect.
"Have you done anything productive this year?" He asked his boy with a wry smile that didn't touch his lip, but Dean saw jut the same.
"I got to name the kindergarten mascots." Dean said brightly.
Darkness settled on Johnston's grey face. "Ah yes, Mint and Crispy."
Mint and who?
"Mint," Johnston said- and John was surely imagining the humor in the man's eyes, because hadn't he just spent ten minutes listening to what a delinquent his boy was turning out to be? "Mint is a rather baleful looking stuffed lamb."
Mint? He named a lamb Mint?
"And Crispy is the duck that frequents the school's pond."
Mint and Crispy.
Improvisation and imagination.
Dean shrugged as if to say 'what of it?'
"I was hungry at the time."
Hungry. The boy was always hungry. Step on his foot and his head might just flip open like the trash can in the kitchen.
John felt his shoulders sag.
Dean was going to be waxing the Impala for months…
"I there anything else?"
Because if there is, you can shove it up…
"He's scored over eighty percent on every math test this term."
…And cleaning all John's guns.
Wait.
What?
Dean?
To hell with the face front crap, he seized Dean's shoulders and spun him around to face him.
"Dean?"
What on earth had the child so scared that he couldn't meet his old man's eyes?
"Kinda slipped my mind." Dean shrugged. Ah, embarrassment, not fear.
John laughed, loud and rough, and tousled the kid's hair in a way that had him squirming and smiling shyly.
That's my boy!
"Dean." Father and son turned back to judge/jury/executioner. Johnston peered over his glasses and, dear lord almighty, actually smiled. "Do you read Spiderman?"
Corporal punishment to comic books. Interesting.
Dean was obviously as confused as John. He stuttered. "What?"
John coughed.
"Sorry, pardon?"
"With great power comes great responsibility. A Spiderman quote, if I remember correctly. In other words, if you stopped trying to drive my staff members to early retirement, and refrained from starting fight clubs in the canteen- if you put that sharp mind of your to good use, you could find yourself excelling."
John wasn't quite sure which of them was the more stunned, but he lost himself in that warm, glowy, fatherly pride.
"Detention is from three to four every day this week. Samuel is welcome to stay in the after school creative class, if you wish him to remain on the premises. Mister Winchester, if you could perhaps dissuade your children from reenacting scenes from the Beano."
John nodded a brief "Yes, sir."
"That is all, thank you." A nod, and Johnston's attention turned to his paperwork.
Feeling a though he were the naughty school boy, and not Dean, he followed his son into the hallway.
"Quiet a boy you have there." Johnston called after him, once Dean was out of earshot.
John nodded mutely.
Later, waiting outside Sammy's classroom, John managed to find the words.
"Excelling, huh?"
Dean pulled a face, appalled by the very notion.
"Where's the fun in that?"
The classroom door, still sporting it's cultural motif, swung open, and a small, dark haired bundle of laughter and light speed past John and scaled his older brother like a tree.
"Dean! Dean! Guess what we did today!"
John plucked Sammy from Dean's shoulders. "Detention, sport."
Dean groaned.
"I'll pick you up in an hour, and then we'll talk about you kicking demons off a set of stepladders."
The boy flinched.
"Yes, sir."
In the end, Dean was only kept back for forty minutes. Forty minutes in which Sammy had recruited John's help in trying to catch Crispy the duck.
"Want me to fetch the shotgun?" Dean called out as he jogged to meet them.
Girls. Why couldn't he have had girls?