Adventures in Babysitting: Angel Edition

Prologue: The Fine Art of Delegation

Author's Note: So, this is a story set in an AU in which the apocalypse was stopped and Lucifer did get shoved back in the cage, but Gabriel didn't die in the process, Sam didn't get stuck in the cage, and Michael remained at large. Here Michael has taken charge of heaven while Castiel and Gabriel mop things up on earth. In my head-cannon Michael spent some time wandering earth as well pre-almost-apocalypse. Now he has no memory of those years, for reasons that will be explained in later chapters.

"Heeey, Cassie!" Gabriel's voice was chipper, perky and supremely annoying as he suddenly appeared behind his younger brother.

Castiel (for he had a name and wished more people would use it instead of these ridiculous nicknames) turned around to face his elder sibling. "Yes, Gabriel?" he said with a somewhat world-weary sigh. "What do you want?"

Gabriel grinned brightly and clapped him on the shoulder. "I have a quest for you! Loads of fun, really. You wouldn't want to pass up this unique and thrilling opportunity!"

"Gabriel, I have many tasks awaiting my attention on both heaven and earth, I do not have the time for your nonsense," Castiel reminded the elder angel.

"But, Cassie!" Gabriel whined, "It could fun!"

Castiel narrowed his eyes at his brother, "NO," he intoned solemnly.

Gabriel remained unfazed in the face of his brother's flat refusal. "I knew you'd see it my way!" he chirped, slinging an arm around the taller angel's shoulders.

Castiel shrugged the arm off, looking affronted. Then again, he seemed to exist in a constant state of slightly ruffled feathers and mild confusion, so Gabriel decided to ignore his little bro's more Vulcan-like attributes. Pasting a wide smile across his face, Gabriel slung his arm back over Castiel's shoulder, ignoring the seraph's attempts at escape.

"See, big brother Mikey just keeps giving me work now that the apocalypse is over and all. And well, I'm just not as into working or being dutiful as I used to be. I grew up, matured, grew a pair, whatever you wanna call it, Mikey's being bossy and I'm not taking it."

"How does this pertain to me?" Castiel deadpanned.

"Weeelll, Mikey's given me this job and I want you to do it for me!"

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

"C'mon Cas…It's so boorrrinnggg. And I don't do boring. Ever. Well, maybe for a bit there around five AD, but that wasn't so bad. Those shepherds were freaking hilarious. All bug-eyed and freaked out." Gabriel helpfully duplicated the shepherds' shocked facial expressions, 'Oh my sweet sandals it's an angel!" he imitated in a squeaky falsetto, breaking into cackles at his own inherent hilarious-ness towards the end.

Finally getting himself under control, Gabriel took a deep breath and made a big show of re-centering himself zen-style. "Man, I'm hilarious. Anywho, Cassie. You need to do this job for me like the good little brother I know you are."

Castiel was fed up, "As I believe the Winchesters would say: I am not your bitch, ass-thing."

This sent Gabriel into even greater hysterics. "Ass-thing?"

Castiel furrowed his brows, "I have yet to discover exactly what nouns and or body parts are socially acceptable to pair with 'ass'. It seems to be a rather complicated hierarchy of profanity."

Gabriel raised his eyebrows and nodded mockingly, "Uh-huh, real complicated there, sport."

"I am gratified that you understand my difficulty." Castiel's voice remained serious, his ice-blue eyes earnest.

"Yeah, okay," Gabriel raised an eyebrow at his brother, "So this job. Now don't give me the BAMF bitch-face yet, it could be interesting! Now, it turns out that while Mikey and I were wandering the earth like the holy vagabonds we are we may have sowed a few too many wild oats if you catch my meaning." He winked suggestively at Castiel.

"I do not," Castiel informed him, "What exactly were you and Michael sowing? And what makes the oats wild? Isn't oat a generally domesticated grain in today's society?"

Gabriel made an exaggerated show of pinching the bridge of his nose to stem the rush of the oncoming stress-headache the longer he spent with Castiel. "We have kids, Castiel. Me and Michael apparently have a few things in common. One of which is a deep admiration for sexy human ladies. Well, Mikey found out that apparently a few of my liaisons," the last word was said with heavy innuendo and an overdone French accent, both of which sailed right over Castiel's head. Gabriel gave up joking with Castiel as a lost cause and carried on, "Produced some half-breed offspring. He told me that I needed to round up the ones whose powers weren't dormant or who are likely to become unstable and take care of them. So, I started, and most of my kiddies have nice, normal picket-fence lives. Pretty boring, actually. Anywho, turns out Mikey had a little monster of his own while he was slumming on earth before Team Apocalypse shook everything up. She's fourteen now and needs some heavenly guidance. So does one of my ankle-biters. Your new and exciting job, Cassie, is to find them and babysit them until Michael can round up some low-rank guardian angels for them!

"Got it? Good, cuz the World's Largest Chocolate Fountain is calling my name!" And with that, Gabriel was gone.

"Damn you, ass-head," Castiel muttered at the empty air once occupied by his brother, pausing, considering the profanity he just produced, Castiel shook his head, "No, that's not quite right either. There are dickheads, but I don't think there are ass-heads… I should consult with Dean. He seems familiar with human profanity." Of course, he wouldn't be able to check up on his human friend until he had at least rounded up Gabriel's 'job'.

Sighing, thinking of all the work he still had to do, Castiel winked out of existence, already soaring to a new location.

…

When he saw Cas standing on the front step, Sam knew he shouldn't have answered the door. But realizing that if he slammed it in the angel's face the angel would just teleport into the living room anyway, Sam reluctantly held it open and invited him in.

Castiel nodded, but did not move. "I have a job for you," he intoned.

Sam began to oh-so-subtly back away.

"I was informed that it could be fun," Castiel offered.

"Uh huh, and what exactly is this job?" Sam's voice was wary.

"Babysitting."

"Babysitting what?"

"Gabriel and Michael's bastard children." The matter-of-fact way that Cas said those few words somehow made everything worse.

Sam groaned and ran his hand down his face, "No, Cas. We have jobs to work and evil to fight-"

"You are not currently hunting," Castiel observed. "You are 'crashing' as you would phrase it, at Bobby Singer's house. You have plenty of spare time."

"No, we don't." Sam returned to backing up, as if he could escape the solemn, glacial gaze of the trenchcoat-wearing angel.

"It is a heavenly mission, Sam."

"Sorry, buddy, we don't do heavenly missions. They typically end up with us as meatsuits or dead, so we're gonna play it safe and take a raincheck on this one." Dean's voice echoed down the hall as he meandered over to where Sam was attempting to slink away from the front door.

"Hello Dean," Cas greeted.

"Hey Cas, and it's still a no on heavenly missions."

Cas's eyes narrowed, his brow furrowed and he stared at the brothers intensely, looking very much like a small, offended cat. After a long moment of bestowing his silent, reproachful stare on the duo, he intoned, voice as grim and serious as ever, "My brothers are ass-things who can't do their jobs. I can't do their work and my work so I'm delegating the task to you. Understand?"

Dean snickered, focusing, as usual, on the profanity first and the sentence's actual meaning second, "What did you call your brothers?"

If possible, Castiel furrowed his brow even more, "You mock me whenever I attempt to combine 'ass' with an appropriate noun, I thought 'thing' was an adequate compromise until I learn the finer arts of profanity."

Dean just kept laughing. Sam punched him in the arm. This seemed to only further inflame Dean's hysteria. Heaving a long-suffering sigh, Sam turned his attention back to their angelic visitor. "Fine, Cas, we'll help. But not permanently."

"Of course it would not be permanently. Your charges would far outlive you, despite your apparent inability to die without swift resurrection."

"Charges?" Dean looked perplexed, "What is he talking about?"

"Our heavenly mission," Sam deadpanned.

"Wait, no, dude, we said no. No heavenly missions. I did not sign up for angel scouts!"

Cas simply gave Dean a very expressive, exasperated, look before winking out of existence.

"Freaking angels," Dean summed up the conversation, "So, what was all that about?"

"Apparently we're babysitting Gabriel and Michaels' unintended offspring."

"WHAT?!" Dean squawked, "What the freaking-?"

He did not have time to finish the sentence, or the thought, because Cas had reappeared in front of them, a child on each side. One was a girl who looked to be about fourteen with reddish blonde hair and suspiciously narrowed blue eyes. The second was a boy around eight years old with short, unruly dark brown hair and sharp green eyes. On the surface they looked fairly normal, with only one significant difference. And it was a significant difference. Each child had, folded neatly behind their shoulders, a pair of wings. Not feathery and bird-like per se, they looked like bird-wings but didn't have realistic element. Instead they were more shadowy, like they were woven out of light and darkness rather than flesh and bone. All and all, pretty damn distracting and really not human.

"These are you charges," Cas began introductions, "The girl is Cynthia Matthews, daughter of the archangel Michael. The boy is Timothy Ryan, son of the archangel Gabriel. Treat them well and try not to destroy anything too significant," Castiel had just barely finished his instructions when he disappeared in a flap of angel-wings.

"So, uh, hi," Sam offered in an attempt to defy the growing heavy silence.

Several quiet moments passed before anyone spoke. And this time it was Dean, "CAS ARE YOU FRIGGING KIDDING ME?!" he bellowed, "BABYSITTING? ANGELS? REALLY?"

Sam sighed at his brother's dramatics. Turning to the kids as Dean continued to rant about how babysitting was a job for twelve-year-old girls, Sam gave a wry smile. "Hi, my name's Sam Winchester. That's my brother Dean. This is going to be a very interesting few weeks isn't it?"

Author's Note: So here ends the prologue! Sorry the OCs barely did anything. I promise the next chapters will focus on them! This story is meant to be funny, and hopefully now that the prologue is out of the way, more funny stuff can happen.

PLEASE REVIEW! I love hearing from people, especially when I start a new fic, and this is one of my first supernatural fics that isn't a crossover with something else, so feedback is hugely appreciated.

See you next chapter!