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It had been a very long day.
That was both a literal statement and a figurative one, because it was the middle of June, and it genuinely was only a few days until the longest day of the year. But right at this moment in time, Misha Collins wasn't very concerned with what time of day the sun rose and set. He was far more preoccupied with trying to herd twenty screaming children into one room so that they could all get some lunch, and hopefully, possibly act a little bit nicer towards one another that afternoon than they had all morning.
He loved every kid at the daycare, he really did. With the possible exception of Simon, who had filled the DVD player with cheese strings no fewer than five times now, and seemed to have a personal vendetta against every single one of the staff members. But aside from him, most of the kids were lovely, and while they got into plenty of mischief, they tended to listen when they got told off and never took things too far.
Usually.
Today, they'd just been out of control, and Misha had been running all over the building all morning, trying to deal with the girl who cut off another kid's hair, the boy who'd eaten three Lego bricks and a green crayon, and the two children who had somehow managed to steal his key from the pocket of the jeans he was wearing and were now attempting to get into his upstairs apartment. And to top it all off, Felicia had ended up calling in sick, so Misha had been left to take care of everything on his own.
Lunch was good, though. Nothing could seriously go wrong at lunch, Misha reminded himself as he sat down between Clarence and Rita, helping Clarence unfasten the clasp on his lunchbox, reminding Rita that she wasn't allowed to eat her Milky Way until after she'd eaten her whole apple.
She scowled, but didn't protest too much, picking up the apple. Misha turned his attention across the table to where Tom was upset because his dad had forgotten to put a drink in his lunchbox. Misha stood up to get him a cup of water from the kitchen, and--
Rita threw herself on the floor, banging a fist on the carpet. "This apple isn't sweet enough!" she cried, pelting it at the wall. It bounced off and ricocheted onto Simon's head.
If it had been any other kid but Simon, it might have been okay, even today. Misha might have been able to stop things from escalating further. But it was Simon, and worse, it was a Simon who happened to be holding a small pot of cherry tomatoes.
He took one and launched it at Rita, hitting her square in the eye, but he didn't stop there. He started hurling tomatoes all around the room, some of them splatting against tables and walls, others bouncing into yogurt pots or ruining brand new shirts.
Misha ran towards the source of the fight, planning to take Rita and Simon into separate rooms and order them to take some time out for the rest of lunchtime, but it was already too late. Fruit snacks, saltine crackers, peanut butter sandwiches, cheese puffs, spoonfuls of chocolate pudding and worst of all, open juice boxes were all flying through the air and nobody was safe, not even Misha himself, who got hit in the face with an orange slice just seconds after trying to wade into the madness.
"Emily, no," he attempted to reprimand one child, yanking a half eaten chocolate brownie out of her hand, which was poised to throw the missile. "Come on, Mike, you know better than this. Sydney, you're already on last warning. Tom, put that down."
But every time Misha managed to rescue one kid from a food attack, someone else snuck up from behind with an even better weapon, as though everyone in there had a neverending supply of food. It was twenty against one, the noise in the room was deafening, and there was no end in sight.
"Oh, God, I need some fucking backup to deal with this," he muttered to himself.
A small girl, one of the youngest in the room, froze down by his feet, letting her fistful of pasta salad fall to the floor. "Misha? Isn't that a bad word? My dad said that was a bad word."
Misha's eyes widened. Just when he'd thought this day couldn't possibly get any worse. "Yeah, Laura, that's a bad word. Your dad's right. And you shouldn't say it. Ever. In fact, you should just forget that word exists."
A hardboiled egg bounced off Laura's shoulder.
"You fucking stop that!" she shrieked at the top of her lungs, and her high pitched voice rang out over the whole crowd.
There was a moment's quiet as every child in the room learned a new word all at once. Some of them recognized it from parents, siblings and movies, some of them were hearing it for the first time, but hushed whispers that hissed throughout the room quickly told them that it was a Bad Word.
The food was forgotten. Having a food fight was so boring compared to all the new possibilities that this word brought with it. All of them wanted to test it out; it was just a matter of getting up the courage.
It was Emily who finally started it. She tugged a lump of lemon Jell-O out of her hair and nibbled at it, before shuddering and saying, "This Jell-O is fucking disgusting."
"No it fucking isn't!" yelled Dion, the original owner of the Jell-O, and that was that. The seal had burst, and everyone there knew that even if they did get into trouble for saying the word, at the very least, they wouldn't be the only one. The cacophony of screeches around the room blurred together, even as Misha tried to pick out individual voices so he knew who to have a word with later, but it was impossible to keep track.
"Why are you in my fucking seat?"
"I don't want to fucking play with you this afternoon!"
"Don't pull my fucking hair!"
"Give me back my fucking Lunchables!"
But the only one Misha really related to, for once, was Simon, who screamed, "Can you all be fucking quiet so I can eat my fucking lunch!"
Misha banged his head against the wall, close to tears, and at that exact moment a parent who'd finished work early appeared in the doorway, clearly expecting to see the usual scene of children playing together happily, but instead confronted with chaos.
--
Misha yawned, stretching his arms above his head and slipping one of them around Jensen's shoulders, pulling him closer. "And that, cupcake, is the story of the Great F-Word Incident of 2009. Since you asked."
Jensen finally managed to calm himself down, having been sleepily giggling his way through Misha's entire rendition. "That was brilliant. God, I can see why you're careful now, that sounds like chaos. But you gotta tell me more stories from the daycare sometime, you must have so many great ones."
"A few, yeah. I'll tell you tomorrow. It's getting late."
"Yeah, you need sleep. Not beauty sleep, though, you're beautiful anyway."
Misha shook his head, grinning. "So, was that the only thing you wanted to ask tonight?"he checked, his voice a little too casual.
"Yeah, Mish, that was the only thing."
Jensen smiled and rested his head on his boyfriend's shoulder. "For now."