Title: Meetings
Fandom: SPN/NCIS
Rating: FRT/Gen
Summary: A series of meetings through the years.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
The first time Abigail Sciuto met Dean Winchester, he was six and she was ten. They had glared at each other until Sammy, all of two, had determinedly yanked his hand from his brother's grip, despite loud protests, and toddled over to her before sticking his pudgy little arms in the air and demanding, "Up!"
Abby, all too aware of the politics of the situation, picked the little boy up and grinned cheekily at Dean, despite the shiver that ran down her spin. She couldn't for the life of her tell if it was the way Dean's eyes hardened, or something about the two-year-old that had set the shiver off, but either way, she was one up on Dean and that was what counted.
The second time they met, Abby was fifteen and investigating wrecks in the breakers yard behind the house, having escaped from the herb-scented kitchen where her mother was passing on the secrets of voodoo.
Dean, it seemed, had managed to leave seven year old Sammy somewhere and looked to be hunting for spare engine parts. Either way, she knew Mr Winchester had told him to keep an eye on Sammy and told him so. Dean paled and stammered something which made her plant her hands firmly on her hips and glare him into submission.
Not wanting to piss off a practitioner of voodoo, even a trainee one, Dean went.
The third time Abby met Dean, beyond flying visits for advice and frantic, slightly panicked, "What the hell is it?" phone calls, Dean was twenty eight and Abby? Was still four years older and not admitting to one of them.
It was four am and she had just got in after their first long case after Gibbs had taken off to Mexico, and she was contemplating both celebrating the case and mourning Gibbs disappearance with the bottle of vodka she had in her freezer when there was a knock at the door.
Opening it brought quite some surprise. Sam was with his brother, and both boys looked like death warmed over.
"I suppose you'd better come in?" she commented, more question than statement.
Dean nodded, shoving Sam over the threshold and following. When Sam was settled in a chair and to all appearances dozing, Dean joined her in the kitchen where she was still contemplating the bottle.
"Dad's gone," he told her without preamble and handed her a small box. That explained the smell of burning which hung round the two boys like a shroud.
She examined the ashes in the box. "Protection charms?" she asked, professional mind forcing its' way forward, and Dean nodded. She nodded in reply, before carefully resealing the box and setting it to one side. Then she hauled the tall man towards her, hugging him like he was six and had just skinned his knee. Like he was eleven and had just managed to scald himself with one of her practice brews.
They stood like that for a long moment before Abby pushed him away again. "What we need," she told him, "is a chat with my Russian friend here."
Dean eyed the label-free bottle sceptically, but eventually nodded.
Sam, rather unsurprisingly, was the first to wake up the following morning.
He spent an instructive five minutes snapping photos of Dean cuddled up to what appeared to be a hippo. A farting hippo, it turned out, as Dean held onto it harder and the subsequent noise startled him into something resembling wakefulness.
Yes, he decided, making his brother turn the car towards DC and Abby Sciuto had been one of his better ideas after all.