The Children's Museum for Lost Boys
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This fic is set in the One of the Boys series, in which Crowley closed the Gates of Hell and joined Team Free Will. It can be read entirely as a stand-alone fic.
I recently visited the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and their interactive "Futures" exhibit reminded me of this piece. It was originally written as a Tumblr ficlet for Emblue_Sparks (now raidensrealm) for her birthday, and I've adapted it for this fic.
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"Okay," Dean declared as the Winchesters, Cas and Crowley ambled into the mostly empty museum, "this place is awesome!"
For any imaginative child – or grown man denied the joy of childhood – the interactive children's museum and library was very much a magical place. The walls were brightly painted, with puzzles or buttons that lit up. There were large foam constructions to climb on, and nooks to hide in, rope bridges and swing sets, an obstacle course and one of those nebula lightening balls that made kids' hair stand on end. According to the map of the vast museum, there was a room where the entire floor was a pool of bubble solution, and kids could hop from island to island, using huge wands to blow massive bubbles. In another room, kids could be the bubbles, climbing inside inflated suits and bouncing around a room full of air jets. An entire wing of the museum was given over to a library, where shelves revolved to reveal hidden rooms and spiral staircases led up into miniature observatories. It was a place of childhood wonder and imagination.
All that fun, however, was being put on hold by unwelcome disappearances – and odd appearances. Lately, museum and library staff were going missing, and in their place, children were suddenly appearing. The children all went unclaimed at the end of the day, and made quite a bit of fuss when adults attempted to help them find their families. They insisted they weren't really children at all.
"A case involving children," Crowley griped, "how delightful."
"Come on, Crowley," Sam laughed at both the demon and his brother's excited exploration of one of the exhibits. "We were all kids once. With imagination and joy and – you know – optimism about life."
"Speak for yourself," Crowley muttered. He grabbed Dean by the elbow and dragged him over to the cartoon-styled map of the museum. The "FBI agents" and the "consulting Child's Services counselors" had just come from a meeting with the museum's director regarding the case, and were scoping out the place. Normally, one pair would have done the preliminary investigation while the other pair looked into lore and the victims, but the museum was massive and too much for just two people. And it was clear that Dean was going to be a bit of a handful on this case.
Cas wasn't helping much either.
"You were a child, once." The fallen angel smiled irritatingly and glanced at Crowley out of the corner of his eye, thoroughly enjoying ribbing the reformed demon. "You wouldn't have enjoyed a place like this? Is there not some small – very small – part of you that – "
"I'm going to spare you from finishing that utterly ridiculous sentence, Feathers. If this is Neverland, than I am Captain Hook. Which would make you lot the Lost Boys and that one – " Crowley eyed Dean as he enthusiastically dug a penny out of his pocket and set it to spinning down the museum's donation funnel. Crowley would murder them all before admitting something in him softened at the sight. " – the boy who will never grow up."
They all watched Dean for a moment, watching the penny as it spun round and round.
"Right," Sam said, nodding towards the entrance to the main exhibits. "Who's up for some exploring?" The four passed through the turnstile and into the museum.
It was rather obvious what was happening, of course. Something or someone was turning the museum and library staff into their childhood selves. Crowley wasn't yet clear on the how or why of it. Or how to reverse whatever was happening.
What he did know was to take the necessary precautions against the Winchesters, Castiel or himself being turned into children. The absolute last thing he needed was for Sam and Dean to be downsized to hyperactive, bloodthirsty "wee-chesters" with himself and Cas responsible for their care and the case. Or worse – much, much worse – for all four of them to be de-aged. In which case, the only real solution, horrible as it would be, would be to call his mother. Crowley could only imagine the delight Rowena would take in that particular situation. Unless, of course, reversing the spell proved to be difficult, in which case she would have not one, but four very rambunctious and very unwelcome boys under her care.
Rowena was not even remotely fond of children, much less her own son at that age. And it wasn't something Crowley had any interest in reliving either. Thus, the necessary precautions were in place.
Which left him free to enjoy, from an emotional remove and with dismissive amusement, the wonders of the children's museum.
Room after room opened into another immersive, interactive exhibit. A room where they walked on bridges and ducked under overpasses built for marble races. A room lit up in blacklight with huge, glowing blocks where kids learned about the light spectrum. More than once, they nearly lost Dean.
"Dude! Dude!" Dean grabbed Cas by a shoulder and shook him. "That room is a giant ball pit! And slides!" The hunter stared up into the two-story high room designed to look like an alien spaceship, where slides of all different colors and lengths slithered down into the ball pit. A child walked by eating a multi-colored swirled cookie from the museum's café. The treat was the same size as the kid's head. Dean stared after him. "Duuuude…"
"I am beginning to suspect," Crowley mused, glancing back with bemusement as Dean shuffled after them, craning his neck to look into every room they passed, "that whatever is causing the staff to become children likely has to do with their own over-enthusiasm for the museum."
"You think so?" Sam asked. Almost to juxtapose his brother, he straightened his suit's tie and walked like the professional FBI agent he was pretending to be. "I would have guessed it was the work of a witch."
"Oh yeah?" Dean hopped on the moving sidewalk and rode ahead of them, looking a little too proud of himself for it. "If that's the case, why bother? In my experience, witches turn adults into kids to eat them. But there are plenty of kids running around, so why not just snatch any of them?"
Castiel furrowed his brow at Dean and glanced around them, concerned. "You should not talk about snatching children so loudly in public."
"Feathers makes a good point."
"Yeah, okay, thanks, Mr. Pretend Child Services."
Crowley adjusted his cardigan and glared at the hunter. He still wasn't clear why, exactly, he and Cas needed to play at the counselors while the Winchesters got to be the investigating agents.
"Maybe it is some sort of benevolent entity," Cas offered, obnoxiously hopeful as always. "Perhaps it only wishes for the staff to enjoy the museum and the library as much as their young patrons do. And it doesn't understand that it is causing undue harm."
"Yeeeah," Sam smiled weakly at the fallen angel. "I suppose that could be it."
The four stopped at the end of the corridor, before a massive pile of books stacked to create a doorway which marked the entrance to the library. Beyond, light choired through the room in sparkling peals, shelves upon shelves climbed the walls, and in the center rose a great tree. Not a real tree, as would be immediately obvious to any adult. A sign declared it to be The Great Reading Tree, and rope ladders and staircases climbed up into its branches, where hammocks hung and platforms with railings looked out over the room. There were soft burrows carved into the tree at the base and into some of the larger branches, where children could nestle in for a read. The top branches entwined with the ceiling and drifted out over the room. Bookmarks dangled above the boys' heads.
"Don't," Sam warned his brother, "even think about it."
Dean opened his mouth to protest, but couldn't keep the massive smile off his face. It was clear just how badly he wanted to climb The Great Reading Tree. Even if he wouldn't fit in any of the hammocks or burrows or any of the rest of it.
They walked through a room bathed in ultramarine light, with floor-to-ceiling aquariums creating a child-sized maze. Dean stopped to ogle the dwarf lanternshark and scare the pufferfish into inflating. With bored exasperation, Cas reminded him not to tap on the glass. In a room without lights, the floor tiles were lit in bright colors and chimed musical notes as the boys stepped on them. Dean danced the chorus of "You Can't Always Get What You Want," and Crowley may or may not have tapped out the opening notes of Brahms' Symphony No. 3. They tottered their way through a vortex tunnel the length of a football field. Dean had to be quite literally dragged from the room where some ingenious engineer had managed to combine air hockey and bowling.
Towards the end, they walked through a holographic, interactive exhibit of the solar system. Sam studied the rings of Saturn with scholarly intensity. Dean flicked asteroids across space. Cas held the world in his hands, turning Earth this way and that, pondering, with that deep furrow carved into his brow. Pretending disinterest, Crowley wandered towards the sun. He put his hand up to it, felt a muted warmth supplied by some sensory system or other. Pretended, for just a moment, that he was the center of their little universe, rather than second-rate Pluto.
"You ever walk among the stars, Cas?"
The fallen angel looked at him over the top of their world.
"Did you?" He asked, though it wasn't so much a question as a quiet commiseration, a reminder to them both that they had more in common with one another than with the humans with which they now chose to keep company, to consider family.
They explored every exhibit in the museum, allegedly looking for clues about the case. There would be time for that later, though, once the museum closed. For now, it was admittedly fun to simply wander through and familiarize themselves with the museum.
Maybe, Crowley mused to himself in secret, there was a little bit of childlike wonder in each of them after all. Even in him, if only a little.
The maze of corridors and rooms led the four boys back around to the main entrance, with only one exhibit left. A floor-to-ceiling green screen photo booth, with a touchscreen interface that allowed the museum-goer to choose the background. And large green foam blocks and shapes to maneuver, sit or climb on, hide or lift to create a fully-immersive photo experience. On the opposite wall, the potential photo appeared, allowing photo-takers to see themselves and adjust accordingly. The final photo was available in both digital and print at the museum gift shop.
"Dude! We gotta do this!" Dean was already swiping through the available backgrounds.
"Yes, by all means," Crowley drawled. "Let's leave a record of our being here, as well as making fools of ourselves. That will surely never come back around to bite us in the arse."
"Hey, you know what? You don't have to be in the photo if you don't want to be." Dean replied, with a tone that said he wasn't about to let the demon ruin his fun. "Me and Sam and Cas? We're gonna be pirates."
"Wait," Sam started to say, "I didn't agree to – "
"Come on, Sammy!" Dean called happily over his shoulder. The screen on the opposite wall lit up with the image of a massive pirate ship, floating in what could only be, Crowley realized with some amusement, Mermaid Bay. A jolly roger flew from the mast and a crocodile lurked in the waters below the boat. Trailing among the sails was a sprinkling of golden glitter. Fairy dust.
Crowley shook his head. Neverland, indeed.
With Cas' confused assistance, Dean stacked and arranged the foam blocks so that he and Sam could appear as if over the railing of the ship. More blocks were stacked to a precarious height, especially given that the blocks had to bear the weight of a grown man, and Dean appeared in the crow's nest of the ship.
"Check it out!" Dean laughed. "We look awesome! Everyone ready?" He held the remote control clicker in one hand, ready to take the photo.
Crowley looked at the three – Dean up in the crow's nest making a fierce scowl; Sam with his hands up to his eyes, pretending to be looking through a spyglass; Castiel, so eager to go along despite his utter lack of understanding, absolutely beaming at the camera. Little boys at play, all three of them.
Crowley sighed, and stepped into the bottom corner of the green screen. He lifted a foot to "brace" against the open treasure chest resting on the shore, crossed his arms, and offered the camera his most supremely pleased smile.
There was a loud, lens-shutter sound that the exhibit's child audience would recognize and understand, and then their little tour of the museum was over.
Out in the main entrance, Sam delegated responsibilities, sending Dean and Crowley to interview the museum and library staff turned into children, under the premise of reuniting the supposedly lost children with their parents. Sam was going to look into any related lore, and Castiel was to remain at the museum, keep an eye on the staff, and see if he couldn't ascertain anything that might be of importance.
"Okay, but before we head out," Dean insisted to Crowley, after they had parted ways with his brother and the angel, "I'mma visit the café, get me one of those cookies. Maybe a nacho-flavored corn dog or some astronaut ice cream. You want anything?"
A decent cup of tea was entirely unlikely, so Crowley sent Dean off on his own, with strict instructions to return immediately after obtaining the desired treats, and not go wandering off again into the museum. He even threatened with the possibility of acquiring one of those child leashes, but Dean just laughed, patted him on the shoulder and made off towards the museum café.
In the absence of any unbelieving eyes, Crowley wandered over to the gift shop. He scrolled through the various photos taken from throughout the day in the green screen room. Ostensibly to look for anything that might pertain to the case. But when he came to the photo of the four of them, he quietly paid for a digital copy to be sent to one of his private emails. And for a printed one, which he thought would go nicely in a frame and which he might present to Dean later, with the insistence that the photo be hung in Dean's room or someplace that no one but the four of them might see it. Crowley had a reputation to maintain, after all.
Smiling to himself, Crowley wandered back into the museum in search of Dean.
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The scene in the solar system exhibit is based off of virtual reality, interactive exhibits, which are becoming increasingly common at museums like the Smithsonian and ArtechHouse. The reading tree is a fantastical version of the cardboard reading trees that forested the libraries of my youth. The book archway of the library does exist, as do many of the other exhibits mentioned here, in other libraries and interactive exhibits in museums around the world.
As always, thanks for reading. Reviews are much appreciated.
The Demonologist In Denim
