Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Author's Note: Just a quick little slice of life before delving back into the demonically based quasi-angst. Enjoy!
"So he is going to sell?" she asks, finally sitting after effectively positioning plates, silverware, food, and kids at the table.
"Yeah," Dean mutters, mouth and plate already full, "I guess so."
"You guess?" She shakes her head admonishingly. "Baby, you can't guess about these things. You need to know. We need to know."
"Oh, we do?" he asks snidely, earning him an icy glare from his wife.
"I'm sorry," she shoots indignantly, "you're right. It's not something I need to know about. It's not something I should have any say in. After all, it was only my life savings that was drained so you could buy that place."
Dean swallows hard and offers up a shit-eating grin. "Glad you understand."
John shifts uncomfortably in his chair, quietly interrupts with a meek, "Mom?" just to break the obvious tension between his parents. Dean and Ava don't fight often, not really. Little spats are one thing, hell, there's probably not a single person in Dean's life whose relationship with him isn't peppered with asinine little tiffs. But real fights, those are pretty rare for the two. And when they do happen, they tend to be loud, messy, and all out free-for-alls that any boy his age would be eager to quell.
"Yeah, sweetie?" she responds, eyes not moving from Dean's still rather smug face.
"Um," he starts, trying to come up with something to say. To no avail.
The two adults don't seem to notice, neither paying particular attention to their son in the first place. "That garage is mine too," she says under her breath, beginning to slap portions of food on her children's plates.
"Oh really?" he asks sardonically. "Explain that one to me."
"Marital. Property. State," she issues out with a satisfied tilt of her chin.
"Yeah, well…" he starts, trailing off before taking another mouthful of potatoes.
"Yeah, well," she mocks, "like I said, it was my savings that got us here."
"I bought the place," he booms, tossing down his fork.
Ava doesn't so much as blink. "And I kept this house running and these children fed and clothed the entire time your garage wasn't making any money."
"It was just starting out. And I don't hear you complaining about not having any money now."
"No, Dear," she placates. "You don't hear me."
He glares daggers at her, lets out an indignant snort before, "Anytime you wanna run the place, Sweetheart, you just feel free," falls critically from his smirking lips.
"Well, gee," she says, faux saccharine sincerity leadening her words, "I just doubt I'd have time, what with having to run this place here." She sweeps her arm around the cluttered kitchen in a dramatic show off gesture before spitting out, "Sweetheart."
"Mom?" John says again, this time with an inkling of something to follow it up with.
"What?" she replies, still staring down her husband.
And again, as before, John's too slow to weasel his way in, his father taking over once more with, "You wanna trade? Fine by me."
She laughs, incredulously, haughtily. "You don't know the first thing about how to run this house."
"You know how to rebuild a carburetor?" he snipes back.
"I'm sure Jimmy could teach me," she says with a coy smile, referencing the young, totally built, not too bright, mechanic he'd hired a few months before.
"I'll bet he could," he mumbles, shoving more food in his mouth, averting his eyes from his smirking wife.
She sighs, long and drawn out, eager to still make her point. "You can't cook," she begins, counting off on her finger tips. "You can barely do laundry. You act like you've never even seen a vacuum before in your life." He huffs in that you don't know what you're talking about way he has, and she fires up some more. "You mowed down my tomatoes when you tried to cut the grass. You can't seem to understand that dishes need to be rinsed off before being thrown in the dishwasher."
"It's a dishwasher," he snarks. "Why the hall should I have to wash them first?"
"Because you do," she tosses back vehemently. Then, "You are incapable of making a bed, cleaning a toilet, putting the top back on the tube of toothpaste," she hisses bitterly.
"Oh, yeah, that again," he says, rolling his eyes and effectively drowning out his son's repeated effort to get their attention.
She leans forward, across the table at him and says, an argument to end all arguments, "The last time I left you alone with the kids, you lost our daughter."
His mouth drops, a truly affronted expression. "I did not lose her. She was hiding."
"And you failed to find her," she responds, smugly shoving a chunk of chicken in her mouth.
"He," he exclaims, pointing at Michael with his fork, "failed to find her."
"She's really good," Michael nods.
"And if you're so worried about that happening again, we'll strap a bell on her," Dean says deeply, hoping to end the conversation.
Everyone sits in silence for a moment, Ava absently piling food on her children's plates. It's not until she begins cutting Michael's chicken into a million tiny pieces that she speaks again, uttering with a fair amount of contempt, "You should call Sam."
"Why?" he asks dryly.
"Because this deal is contractually based."
"So?"
"So, he's a lawyer," she says, voice hitting a near squeal. "You do know what lawyers do, right?"
Dean narrows his eyes at her, fills his mouth greedily before responding with, "Lawyer things."
She smirks. "Smart ass." And then, turning quickly to Michael, whose mouth is already half open and poised to repeat, "No. Don't you dare. You, mister, are in enough trouble already."
The boy pouts deeply, sliding back into his chair, his father's suddenly voice drilling into him, "Now what?"
"He brought that rabbit to school again and was tormenting some poor girl with it," Ava explains.
"She has a name," he snipes at his mother, quickly apologizing when her eyes turn on him, wide and fiery.
"Yeah?" Dean says, voice suddenly lighter, an audible smile trailing after. "What's her name?"
Michael looks at him like he's crazy, like's he's completely lost his mind, not knowing her name after living with her for over a year. "Mike," he says plainly.
Dean cocks his head at Ava briefly, utterly perplexed scowl on his face. "Sheila," she tells him, offering up the name of the girl.
"Oh," Michael says, shooing his mother's hands away from his plate, eager to get on with dinner, "her."
"What's she like?" Dean asks his son, voice low and conspiratorial.
"Who?"
"Sheila," he says, drawing the name out into two long and sultry syllables.
Michael rolls his eyes dramatically, but can't hide the shy smile perking the corners of his lips. He shrugs. "I don't know."
John giggles from across the table, singsongs, "You like her," and shares a knowing smirk with his father.
"Do not!"
"Do so."
"I do not," he repeats, high pitched voice making everyone cringe.
Ava turns to her left, silverware in hand, and reaches for Samantha's plate, readying herself to cut the three-year-old's meat, when she says plainly, despite a glint in her eye, "Leave him alone."
"Yeah," the younger boy spouts. "Leave him alone."
Ava almost laughs, locking eyes with Dean and matching his coy grin with one of her own. She almost laughs. But before she gets the chance, a sudden sharp pain hits her mid hand, and, "Fork stabbed!" rings out in clear toddler speak as tiny fingers release the tip of the instrument just thrust into Ava's flesh.
"What the hell?" Dean bellows, jumping up and taking hold of her hand. His eyes bounce wildly back and forth between his daughter and his wife, seeing Ava's shocked, wide-eyed expression, and the little girl's giddy bright smile. "The fuck," he mutters, moving to the other side of the table to better tend to the wound.
"No!" Ava shouts over her shoulder in Michael's direction as Dean drags her to the sink.
"Let me see," he demands, holding her hand steadily. It's not bad, not too deep, Sammy's only a child after all, how strong could she be? He almost laughs a little when she grunts in pain as he wiggles the fork out of her hand, because, really, "It's nothing."
"Fork stabbed!" is heard from behind them, followed quickly by John's, "No," as he grabs another fork away from his little sister.
Dean runs his thumb gingerly over the four-pronged wound, working the sudsy water in so as to clean it properly. "It's barely even bleeding," he says slowly, calming her.
"It hurts," is her only reply. To which Dean brings her hand to his lips and kisses it softly, a sensual sort of all better.
"Mom?" John calls out from the table. "Are you okay?"
She turns off the water and spins round, heads back to her seat, "Yeah, honey, I'm fine."
Dean kneels down in front of his daughter, eye to eye, and asks in a serious, yet not at all intimidating voice, "Why did you do that?"
She shrugs, gleeful smile still lingering on her chubby little face.
Ava tries, tone a bit harder, "That hurt, Sammy. Why'd you hurt Mommy?"
She looks up at her mother, grin slowly fading into a terrible pout. "Fork stabbed," she says simply. "Is funny."
"No," Dean says, shaking his head for added effect. "No, it's not."
"You laughed," Michael mumbles under his breath. Then, when both parents turn to him, "Last night, on TV. You laughed at it then."
Ava's eyes go wide, turning on her husband just in time to see that crooked half smile, oops, my bad expression flood his face. And damn if it wasn't the same as that dreaded you can't be mad at me, I'm too darn cute face. Try as she might, she'd never be fully immune to that one.
"I uh," he tries to explain, having some difficulty navigating through the possible excuses – I didn't realize they were in the room. I was tired from working all day. I might have had a couple of beers in me. Hey, at the time, it was funny.
"You let our children watch a show about fork stabbing people?" she asks evenly.
"It wasn't about fork stabbing," he responds, words all tainted with nervous breaths.
But John – and up until a moment ago, John had been his new favorite child – chimes in with, "No, it was about kicking ass. And showing boobs."
"Michael," Ava says sharply, eyes sweeping in the younger boy's direction, "tell your brother what soap tastes like."
"It's not good," he responds with wide eyes.
"And you," she hisses, low and deep, glaring daggers at her husband who's still kneeling by Samantha's side. "This is exactly what I'm talking about."
He snickers and stutters uncomfortably, "I don't know what you mean." Then, as he moves in a little closer to his daughter, using the age-old baby shield, "The kid's obviously nuts. There was no ass kicking, boob showing, fork stabbing…"
"Get off the floor," she chides, injured hand shooing him back towards his seat at the table.
"Okay," he responds, voice suddenly submissive and childlike.
"John," she says, turning to her eldest, "Tell Daddy what you're allowed to watch on television."
The boy clears his throat, this being an often practiced, well-rehearsed routine. "Cartoons made expressly for children," he begins, ending each item on the list with an arrogant tilt of his head. "Network, prime time family oriented sitcoms." Which earns a rather obnoxious snort from his father. "And anything on the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon."
"John," Dean says plainly, "Tell Mommy, that's crap."
"Don't you dare," she issues, supposedly to John. But her fiery eyes are locked in on Dean.
He stares her down for a moment, finally looking away when her cold intensity gets to be too much. "Look," he says, gaze trained on the food before him, "it wasn't that bad, really. It was just an old, funny show."
She shrugs dramatically. "Old funny show about ass kicking, fork stabbing boobs."
"No" he snickers, ridiculous images flooding his brain. "No, that actually would have been better."
"Dean…"
He looks up, offers a sincere smile. "Yeah, I know."
Ava settles back in her chair, seemingly content with his near apology, and begins to eat along with the others. The entire family seems to calm down, everyone silently partaking of their meal, no more asinine comments or argumentative rifts. They all just…eat.
No one notices Samantha pick up another fork.
"It was pretty freakin' hysterical though," Dean mutters with a slight laugh. "I mean," he starts, a bit louder, end of his thought being suddenly cut off and replaced with, "Ow, son of a bitch!"
Ava looks up to see him quickly reach out and tear the piece of silverware from his hand, stare painfully, angrily, at the little girl beside him. Then she smiles wide, and asks in a saccharine sweet voice, "What do you say, Honey, is fork stabbing still funny?"
He considers responding, considers making some sort of defensive retort or sarcastic comment. But really, what would be the point?