Rating: K+
Pairings/Characters: John
Genre: Gen, pre-series, wee!Winchester fic.
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, not being paid. Any resemblance to family members of mine is intentional.
Author's Notes: Huge thank you to lunardreamed and Freelance for betaing. On a random note, it's a pity that Paul Jennings is Australian, because I could really see Dean loving his books.
Summary: The boys were asleep, Jim was working on a sermon and John got to discard another bit of their life. John POV.
John plunked the second bag on the floor beside the table. The boys were asleep, Jim was working on a sermon and John got to discard another bit of their life, his boys' life. It was better to do it now, when both boys were asleep, than risk either of his sons throwing a tantrum.
John pulled a box of their old things, which Jim kindly stored from year to year, towards him and, after unzipping the larger bag, got down to business.
Both plastic toy dinosaurs went to the left on the table, the Tyrannosaurus Rex rattling as he put it down. Both boys still liked playing with them, if for no other reason than that they could hide things in them. Kermit and Miss Piggy went in the middle – he'd see how things worked out. Sammy would be devastated if Kermit had to be left behind, but he'd have to deal; the Impala did not have an infinitely large trunk and they'd pick up extra toys over the year.
An absolutely and utterly destroyed Tonka truck, Thomas the Tank Engine (who had probably taken on the Tonka truck) and some bits of Lego that had been snapped in half went on the floor. Only Dean could manage to destroy stuff that was virtually indestructible just by playing with it, even though he was never really that rough.
He found a few of the smallest pieces of Lego and frowned. They were the thin brick pieces that he'd thought he'd gotten rid of when Sammy followed Dean's example of using his teeth to separate the pieces (or just decided that Lego would taste nice) and breathed one in. Luckily, Sammy could breathe around it, but it resulted in a very panicked father and older brother. One ER trip later, Dean was protesting that he couldn't make anything without those pieces, but John wasn't going to budge on choking hazards. They joined the other refuse on the floor. The rest of the Lego, which was meant to make a helicopter, went to the left.
The Rubik's Cube went to the right. Dean had played with it almost solidly for three weeks, before throwing it against the wall in frustration. While John had found Dean's struggles with the toy amusing (and the end result not amusing), it hadn't been touched in at least six months. He'd bring it out again in a couple of years to torment Sammy.
Dean's purple, scruffy toy dog also reluctantly joined it. Dean hadn't slept with it in a couple of months; he had proclaimed that he was 'too old' at 'almost nine' for it. John had tried to get him to change his mind, but hadn't succeeded. He could keep the toy for Sammy, but it was Dean's, bought only a couple of months after the fire, and that wouldn't be right. John patted the dog gently on the head and sighed. Dean was growing up too fast.
Chutes and Ladders, UNO, Jenga and the dominos went to the left without any hesitation. Anything that would keep the boys entertained for hours were a must and UNO was something that they could play in the car.
He put the harmonica and the sticker book to the right, after flicking through the book. Dean had stopped collecting the stickers several months before, right about the time when he decided that he was too old to sleep with a stuffed toy. The harmonica had to go for the sake of John's sanity. Four-year-old boys giggling through it and torturing the poor instrument was amusing the first few times and very annoying then after. Even Dean had started to get frustrated with Sammy, and normally he had the patience of Job.
Han Solo, minus his gun and with no foot, and Luke Skywalker with broken legs went to the left. Dean adored Han and Sammy adored Luke. Both the poor toys had had mishaps: Dean had swallowed Han's gun (John hadn't even bothered asking why the gun was inside Dean's mouth) and chewed off his foot (after the gun, why would John even speculate?) and Sammy had tried to make Luke do the splits because, as a Jedi, he should be capable of contortions that most human males would grimace at. Luke now had a detachable leg. Dean had used to have a TIE-Fighter, until Sammy threw it down the stairs at a motel they were staying at. Dean had almost strangled him for that one.
Marbles and yo-yos went to the left, minus the yo-yo that Sammy had managed to get completely tangled up. Dean had been teaching Sammy how to do 'walk the dog' and 'around the world', although so far he'd only succeeded at 'walk the dog'. He'd been so excited when he'd first managed it that he'd rushed inside to John to perform it for him and after his third failed attempt had burst into tears. He hadn't even touched the yo-yo for a couple of days after that, but three weeks later John had finally seen him do it.
The water pistols went to the right. John did not want another soaking, thank you very much. They proved how good an aim Dean was.
He flicked through the puzzle books (Dean's) and the colouring books (Sammy's) and threw on the floor the ones that were more than half-finished. The puzzle books kept Dean quiet in the car and cut down his bothering of John with incessant repetitions of "Are we there yet?"
The Roald Dahl books stayed – John wasn't going to leave anything behind that got Dean reading. All the other kids in school had been reading the books, which had meant that Dean wouldn't, until he saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on TV. Something about the movie had captured Dean's imagination and he'd devoured all the books, The BFG quickly becoming his favourite as evidenced by its dog-eared nature.
Animalia and Where's Waldo? were Sammy's Christmas presents, and in the couple of weeks since had seemed to somehow bring him hours of joy. As many times as he found Waldo, he never could seem to remember where he was the next time he looked at the book. It had resulted in Sammy in a flood of tears once, from Dean calling him an idiot and pointing Waldo out on each page as he'd quickly flipped through the book. John couldn't really blame Dean, although he had had to punish him, because Sammy insisted that Dean read it with him almost every time. John flicked through a few of the pages, realising that he'd also read the book a few too many times with Sammy when he easily spotted the striped little man. John had a feeling that there was more Waldo in his future.
Finished with the large bag, John picked through the box of their old toys. He put Dean's fireman's helmet back into the mix – while too small for Dean it would now fit Sammy – and a few of Dean's old trucks that had survived their tenure as his toys. Stuffing everything back into the bag, he found that there wouldn't be enough room for Kermit or Piggy and a couple of Dean's books. He took the dinosaurs back out to make room for the books, which allowed him to include a few of the Matchbox cars.
It would have to do. He couldn't afford to let their toys expand beyond the bag; otherwise he didn't know when it would stop or when he'd be able to say no to his sons. The boys deserved Lego cities with trains that really ran, lightsabers, Halloween masks and cubby houses, but he couldn't give them that. He could only try to give them a little bit of what every other child got.
He rubbed his hand tiredly over his face before reaching for the smaller bag. Time to find out what clothes needed to be thrown out and what old clothes of Dean's would now fit Sammy.
Then he could sleep.
Additional author's note: For those possibly interested, this fic is set in early to mid January 1988. Animalia and Where's Waldo? (or Wally in Australia) were released in September and December of 1987 and Jenga was released in 1986.