SPN Fic: To Everything A Season (8/12) (Gen, R, FutureFic)
Thupid LJ. Because of character length limits, LJ cut off the last 2 sections of this segment, so I'll have to post them sepearately. Hopefully, that will be either later tonight or tomorrow, as they are edited and ready to post. Sigh. Can nothing be easy? Anyways ...
Title: To Everything A Season (Part 8/12)
Author:
dodger_winslow
Challenge: Firsts Chart: First Memory
Genre: Gen (some het, not graphic), FutureFic
Word Count: 110,000 (total)
Pairings/Characters: John/OFC, Dean/OFC, Sam/OFC (hey, did I mention it was Future Fic?)
Rating: R
Warnings: Language, sexual situations (not graphic)
Spoilers: Oh yeah. Everything S1
Disclaimer: I don't own the boys, I'm just stalking them for a while.
Timeline Note: Set seven years after the events of Devil's Trap. John, Dean and Sam all survived the crash to hunt down and destroy the Demon. For Sam, life goes on. For Dean, life stalls. For John, life has no more meaning, and he begins to self destruct.
Summary: A little piece of good advice: Never hunt a wendigo when you're drunk.
Part 8
Julie sat on the edge of the bed, watching him, waiting for him. His skin was waxy and cold. He hadn’t moved since he collapsed in the driveway, shutting down, turning off.
She’d never been so frightened in her life.
She thought she was ready for this. She and Danny had talked about it for years, knowing the memories that haunted John were going to find him some day; and when they did, it was going to be bad. They’d talked about the day Sammy was born and about how what happened then could happen again, Danny explaining to her how John looked right before he disappeared, the way his expression snapped in mid-word, and he just got up and walked away and didn’t come back.
Her brother’d spent the better part of the last four years preparing her for what happened today, for what she saw when John looked at his son and snapped.
She thought she was prepared. She was wrong.
*
Dean sat in his father’s living room, his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees, every ounce of his energy focused singly and solely on not coming apart at the seams. Not unraveling to a fray of nothing; not splitting along thirty years of ill-knit fractures and fault lines; not falling to the floor in pieces like a sack of flesh, gutted and discarded, a hollow, dried, desiccated husk of the man he was or might have been.
Mary was sitting beside him, her knee touching his, her thigh pressed tight to his, her hip bone-to-bone with his, the side of her swollen belly warm against his ribs. One hand flat between his shoulder blades, she was rubbing small circles up and down his spine like she was applying a protection spell to keep him safe from demons, or spirits, or ghosts. She hadn’t spoken to him for several minutes … perhaps longer: he’d lost all concept of passing time.
His dad was in a bedroom at the end of the hall. Their bedroom. He and Sam carried him there after he collapsed, settled him into a bed he shared with her, a woman Dean didn’t even know. They’d left him there in the care of her - a woman cooking his child in her belly - and with her brother - a doctor, a man who considered their father his friend.
Julie. Danny.
Them.
Dean couldn’t focus on the wrongness of his father’s life being something he didn’t know. It wouldn’t fall into line for him, wouldn’t step up and be counted among the possibilities of a viable reality.
How his father must have felt - staring up at his mother pinned to the ceiling in Sammy’s nursery, burning in a way that defied all concept of everything he knew as possible - that’s how Dean felt now. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. He couldn’t comprehend it as something that existed: His father here, married, having children, having friends and him knowing nothing of it.
His mom. He and Sam. Garrison. Pastor Jim and Caleb and Bobby. Joshua. Missouri. That was reality.
This was something else.
This was him being a stranger to his father’s life, and it defied him to believe it. Defied him to let it exist in his head as anything other than the lie it was to everything he’d ever known.
Sam was saying something. Dean had no idea what.
Mary’s fingers changed their pattern against his spine. She leaned in closer to him, her lips moving against the skin of his face as she spoke. Her voice was little more than a whisper as she said the only thing she’d said since he sat down here, dropped his elbows to his knees and his head to his hands, sinking inside himself where no one else could go, not even her, not even Sam. "I love you, baby."
He nodded, just to let her know he heard.
Her palm when back to making circles. She retreated from the closeness of her lips against his skin, leaving the intimacy of his space but staying well within the circle of his awareness; making sure he knew she was there, but letting him be where he wanted to be - where he needed to be - to try and re-arrange all this into something that made sense.
Anything that made sense.
He heard Sam’s voice again. It sounded like it was coming from a thousand miles away.
Over a crappy cell connection.
In a mountainous area plagued by random EMF spikes.
He still had no idea what Sam was saying; if Sam was talking to him or if he was talking to their father’s friend again.
The doctor.
Danny.
Fucking Doctor Danny.
Mary’s fingers changed their pattern a second time. Her thumb pressed into his shoulder blade, tapping him there. It was a warning: Her way of bringing him up to where he wouldn’t be ambushed by an intrusion she could see coming and he couldn’t. She always had his back. She and Sammy never let him down, never forgot to know what he needed and do it without having to be asked.
Dean reeled himself in with an effort. He looked up, saw Sam crouched directly in front of him.
"Hey, Sammy," he said as if he’d known his brother was there all along.
Sam looked like he was about to fracture into a million shards of little Sammy. His eyes were a panic trying not to happen. His hands were actually clenched to fists where they rested against his thighs, an effort to keep them to himself.
The way he looked now reminded Dean of the way he’d looked then, in that hospital room wherever, the time the doctors told him there was nothing they could do, that Dean was going to die and the best he could expect was for it to be a comfortable thing rather than an agony like being torn apart from the inside out by a Demon wearing their father’s meatsuit.
That was fun, surviving that one. Trading someone else’s life for his own. Being the beneficiary of Sue-Anne LaGrange’s particular brand of evil. Being alive instead of Marshall. Being alive instead of Layla.
"Are you okay, Dean?" Sam asked.
He could tell by Sam’s expression that he’d asked this several times already. That he’d waited as long as he could to make it an issue, to seek out an answer by stepping away from his wall across the room and crouching down right in front of Dean, assuming the proximity would be something his brother would sense, not realizing the only reason Dean came up to meet him was because Mary warned him Sam was there, warned him someone was coming in after him if he didn’t come out, at least for a moment, to play the "Dean’s always fine" game with a grin, a quip and a lie.
"Just peachy," he said.
"He’s going to be okay," Sam offered. "Danny says he’s stabilized. His blood pressure’s back up again. He’s just resting right now."
Sam didn’t lie for shit, but Dean resisted the urge to tell him as much. He nodded instead, just to let Sam know he’d heard, then dropped his head back into his hands.
Mary’s palm resumed making circles along his spine. She leaned in closer to him again, her lips only just touching his face, a reminder rather than an actual contact. She didn’t speak this time, she just stayed there, breathing, telling him he wasn’t alone without intruding on his need to be alone.
Grateful for how well she understood him, how well she understood what he needed, Dean closed his eyes and listened to her breathe.
*
Danny slipped through the door, closing it quietly behind him. Julie looked up, watched him cross the room to her side.
"Anything?" His eyes were critical as he assessed John, pale and still as a corpse laid to rest in a nest of pillows and blankets.
"He hasn’t moved."
"Not at all?"
"Nothing. He’s not even dreaming."
"He isn’t really asleep, Julie. He’s more …"
"Comatose?" Julie ventured when he didn’t finish.
"No. He’s not in a coma." Danny checked John’s pupil response with a small pen light. "He’s in a … it’s called a reduced level of consciousness. Which basically means he’s just not conscious." He took John’s pulse, then measured half a dozen other vital readings that didn’t require any of his doctor’s bag’s worth of yardsticks and pressure dials.
"That’s not very helpful, Danny," Julie observed as she watched him work.
"Yeah. I know. Sorry. It’s all that technical doctor stuff I had to go to medical school to learn. It can be very hard to follow for anyone without several advanced degrees and an embarrassingly high IQ."
She smiled a little. "Care to simplify it for your idiot sister?"
"It’s like conscious, only not. Reduced. As in less. Don’t worry if that’s too complicated. Sometimes I have trouble dumbing things down to laymen’s terms." He checked the IV he’d started earlier, both at the infusion point on the inside of John’s arm and at the bag that hung from a fortuitously placed plant hook located where it was by virtue of anything but lucky happenstance. "That’s one of the drawbacks of being a genius. It can be very lonely sometimes, this sense of isolation that comes from no one but me fathoming the complexities my very complicated world."
"You’re quite the miracle of genetics," Julie said dryly.
"Yeah. Too bad that kind of thing isn’t hereditary." Danny reached under the comforter John was wrapped in, putting a hand on the side of his neck, then flat on his chest, under his tee-shirt, judging the temperature of his skin.
"He’s still clammy," Julie offered. "His hands are like ice."
"Yeah. I expected that." Danny felt both of John’s forearms, then each of his lower legs in turn, before wrapping him back in the comforter and saying, "Just keep him tacoed up in this thing for the time being. He needs to stay warm. He flushes or starts sweating, we’ll reconnoiter and come up with a new plan."
"Are you going to tell me what else you expect?" she asked.
He looked at her, then looked away. His one shouldered shrug was evasive and imprecise. It was a natural gesture for him the way flying is a natural mode of transportation for pigs. "Not a psychic, Julie," he said. "Wish I was."
"You don’t lie for shit, Danny," Julie said.
He wouldn’t look at her, kept looking down at John. "Why don’t you go lie down for a while," he suggested. "Get some rest. I’ll sit with him until you’re gone and I can sneak off without you catching me."
"No."
"Not good for the baby, you sitting here like this all day."
"Baby’s fine. I’m not leaving John."
Danny sighed. He knew better than to argue with her. He never won; it was one more thing he and John had in common.
"You think he’s gone, don’t you," Julie said suddenly.
It wasn’t a question, but Danny answered it as such, saying, "I think we should wait and see." He still wouldn’t look at her. He still worked to avoid the necessity of meeting her eyes.
"Right. Wait and see. That’s a fun game. One of my favorites." She sat in silence for a bit, then asked, "How’s Sam doing?"
"He’d handling it pretty well. Dean’s a wreck. He’s a lot like John. I doubt he feels anything half way."
"He worth it?"
Danny did look at her then. He didn’t like the question. He didn’t like the tone with which she’d asked it. "Worth it?" he repeated.
"Dean. Is he worth what’s happening to John?"
Danny studied her, gauging her. For just a moment, he let her see how much he and John talked about that wasn’t something either one of them would ever discuss with her. "John would think he is," he said finally.
"What do you think?"
"I think he’s a lot like John."
Julie nodded, then asked, "This is worse than before, isn’t it?"
He tried to hide from her, trying not to be seen the way he wasn’t seen so easily when he spoke to anyone else. Anyone else but John. He gave up finally, saying, "Yes," letting her read the truth in the tone of his voice.
"Tell me what to expect, Danny," she said quietly.
"Expect him to be the man he was."
"Before he came here?"
"Yes."
"Will he remember me at all?"
"He remembered you last time."
"Will he remember me this time?"
"I don’t know."
Danny didn’t lie for shit. She wanted to cry, but she didn’t. Instead, she reached out and took her husband’s hand again. "Okay," she said.
Danny leaned over, pressed his lips to the top of her head. "I’m sorry."
She nodded.
He stayed that way for some time, his face resting against the top of her head, holding her right hand while she held John’s with her left.
"I love you," he said suddenly. He’d told her that maybe ten times in their entire lives. It was ten times more than he’d ever said it to anyone else. Even Sarah didn’t hear those words from him. She either knew it or she didn’t.
"I know," Julie said.
"Nothing’s going to change for a while. I’m going to go pick up Sammy, take her over to Sarah. Grab a few things at the hospital. He won’t, but call me on the cell if he wakes up, then get Sam in here until I get back. Don’t deal with it by yourself."
"I will," she said.
"I mean it, Julie."
"I know you do."
He kissed the top of her head again, then let go of her hand and stepped away from the bed. "He’ll be okay. He wouldn’t dare be anything else."
"Thanks for picking Sammy up yourself," Julie said. "I know it would be easier to have Sarah to do it, but I’m glad you’re going. She’ll be scared. You deal with that better than anybody but John."
"Kid’s a genius, same as me. She gets my complexities. You change your mind about lying down, have Sam sit with him. He said he’s had some experience with shock, so he’ll know what to look for, how to respond if something changes."
"I’m fine, Danny," she said. "Go."
"Don’t order me around, Bossy Pants."
"Go," she said again.
He sighed, but did as she asked, leaving her to her vigil.
*
Dean didn’t know how long he sat there - how long Mary sat there with him, pressed close to his side, her breath warm against his face, her hand always on his back, always moving, always working to keep him tethered to the outside world even as he sank deeper into the recesses of his mind - but when he was done, he was done.
He came out of himself like an anchor line cut free of its weight. He looked up, found Sam standing across the room, leaning against a wall, his eyes still very near a Sammy panic in how they expected him to spontaneously combust at any moment. Meredith was sitting in a chair nearby.
Danny wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
"What time is it?" Dean asked, his voice harsh and louder than he meant for it to be.
"Two fifteen."
He nodded. It had been hours. He’d been sitting here for hours, staring at nothing, just listening to Mary breathe. He stood, leaving her behind as he walked across the room to stare out the bay window at the Impala.
He wanted that car back. He’d wanted it back since the day he decided to give it to Sam.
"Talk to me, Dean," Sam said. "Tell me what you’re thinking."
"I’m thinking you’re a bitch for actually accepting that car," Dean said, still staring at the Impala.
"Dude. You gave it to me."
Dean turned. He smiled at Sam in a way that was anything but a real smile. "That car’s in my bones, Sammy. Always has been. I thought you knew that."
"You gave it to me," Sam repeated.
"Can’t give away your bones, Sam. Trust me; I’ve tried. Where’s Doctor Danny?"
"He’s taking care of a few things. He’ll be back in a little while."
"He say anything about Dad?"
"Not much. Nothing’s changed."
"That BrotherSpeak or DoctorSpeak?"
Sam half shrugged. "He was talking about psychological shock. Acute confusional state, whatever that means."
Dean snorted. "Means Dad can’t grab his ass with both hands. Shows how much Doctor Danny knows."
"Danny’s a good guy," Sam said.
"I’m sure he is. He have any suggestions other than sit on our asses and wait?"
"Not right now. He says the big issues are blood pressure and heart rate; and he’s got both stabilized for the moment, so it’s mostly a matter of keeping an eye on him, keeping him warm, waiting for him to come back up."
"Or sink down deeper," Dean said grimly. "We both know how shock works, don’t we Sammy? Between the two of us, I bet we have ten times the first-hand experience with it some hick town doc does."
"Danny’s a good guy," Sam said again.
"You president of his fan club or something?"
Sam started to answer, then changed his mind, looking away instead.
Dean sighed. He rubbed at his eyes, saying, "Sorry. Didn’t get my beauty sleep last night. Just ignore me. Pretend I love the guy, too. Sign me up for the newsletter." Then, referring to Julie, he asked, "So is she in there with him? Keeping him warm?"
"Julie?"
"Whatever."
Sam’s expression flexed, but all he said was, "Yeah."
"Great. Cozy." This time, it was Sam Dean left behind, returning to Mary, kneeling in front of her the way Sam had crouched in front of him. "I need you to do something for me," he said.
"Okay."
He put one hand on the back of her calf, stroked the back of her knee with two fingers, a small intimacy just to remind her what his touch felt like on her body. "I want you to go home."
Mary’s eyes narrowed. She studied him, trying to read him. He gave her nothing because she understood him too well to accept a lie as the truth.
"I’m going to stay here; ride this thing out. But I want you to go home." He moved his hand from her calf to her belly. The baby kicked him. "Take her home," he said, speaking to Mary but watching the motion in her belly that was his child.
"All right," Mary said. "If that’s what you want."
Dean looked up, met her eyes. She wanted to know why. He didn’t tell her, smiling instead, nodding once just to let her know he’d heard the question she wasn’t asking but he wasn’t going to answer.
Twisting in his crouch, he shifted his attention to Meredith. She knew what he was going to ask before he asked it. Her expression gave him his answer.
Dean pushed to a stand, seeing no point in asking something she’d already refused without saying a word. "Mary can’t drive that far alone," he said instead. "Not at this late stage of the game. It isn’t safe. You can understand that, can’t you, Meredith?"
Meredith shook her head. "I’m sorry, Dean. I’m staying with Sam."
"Please."
It was the only time he’d ever asked her for anything, even when they were dating, even before she realized it was okay for a one night stand to only last one night. "Please take Mary home for me. I need for her to be somewhere else when Dad wakes up. And I think Sam needs that, too." He looked at Sam, then back to Meredith. "For it to be just him and us. You know how this works, don’t you? Just dad and Sammy and me? What did you used to call it? The Winchester Club, right?"
He was playing dirty, reminding her of the only thing she’d ever asked him in all these years. Really asked him, not because she wanted it, but because she needed it. Not a simple "don’t bring your dad to dinner" request. Not a jaw-clenched "can you get your feet off the coffee table, Dean" request. Not even a sighing, long-suffering, "can’t you refrain from using that kind of language for just one night please" request.
Not a request at all, in fact; but a plea. Something she asked him the same way he was asking her this.
Don’t drag Garrison into your Winchester’s Boy Club, Dean. I know you can. I know you want to. But don’t do it. Give him a day pass, but don’t let him become a member. Please.
Meredith looked down at her hands. For the first time since she married his little brother, she didn’t look to Sam for direction when it came to dealing with him. She knew what Sam would tell her. Whatever other failings she might have, Meredith knew her husband well enough to know he would send her away in a heartbeat if Dean asked him to.
And she knew Dean well enough to know he was asking her this now, but he’d go over her head to Sam if she pushed him to it. Just as she would have gone to Sam if he’d pushed her to it over how much Garrison wanted to join in on Winchester games that would have left his mother on the outside looking in, watching her son turned against her.
Only Dean would win with Sam, where she wouldn’t have.
Sam was like that. Despite his expensive shoes to the contrary, he was still a Winchester to the bone: something Meredith would never be, no matter how hard she tried; but something her son had been since the day he was born.
But because she’d asked - and because she was right to ask, and smart to know to ask - Dean did his best over the years to keep Garrison’s membership card in The Winchester Club limited to a day pass. To keep her son from viewing her the way he eventually would have if they let him in, if they let him play, if they let him be a Winchester the way Mary always was and Meredith never would be.
Meredith was right in seeing the potential for that happening before he did. She was right to ask him not to do it; right to speak to him about the danger he was becoming to her relationship with her son so he could avoid being that danger, avoid what he would have done if she hadn’t specifically asked him not to do it.
But she didn’t see it that way. She saw it as asking him for a favor … a favor he granted.
So he was using that against her now, wishing he was a better man than to do it, but considering her deserving of what he was doing just for believing him capable of corrupting Garrison’s relationship with his mother after she pointed out that’s what he was doing. In her eyes, he had the leverage, and she no doubt thought he’d use it. If the leverage had expired, he was pretty sure she wouldn’t even be considering what he was asking; but it hadn’t, and it wouldn’t until Garrison outgrew his aspirations to grow up to be his Uncle Dean. So unless she wanted Garrison to see her the way he did, the way Mary did - something he was pretty sure Meredith could feel, even if Mary was far more diligent about not showing it than he was - she had no choice but to reciprocate, favor for favor.
Which was exactly why she’d never be a Winchester. First, because she thought he would do anything that wasn’t in Sam’s son’s best interests, no matter how it affected her to the positive or negative. And second, because a favor earned with her wasn’t a favor in the bank … not unless he still had the collateral to threaten her with when the loan came due; and not unless she was still stupid enough, as she always would be, to believe any collateral involving Garrison’s well being was ever on the table in the first place.
"Please," Dean said again, trying to make it easier for her to do what he really wasn’t giving her any choice but to do.
She hated him right now. More than she’d hated him all these years, she hated him now. He could see it in the way her eyes lifted to meet his, completely devoid of expression as she said, her lips pressed to a tight line, "If that’s what Sam wants me to do."
"It is," Sam said, not giving her time to hope he’d say anything different.
Meredith nodded. Still looking at Dean instead of turning to face her husband, she said, "Okay then. When do you want me to leave?"
"Now." He didn’t miss that she said me rather than us. Typical that she would think this was about her instead of his father. Typical that she couldn’t see past her own needs to consider the needs of anyone else.
Meredith stood, smoothed her skirt against her legs. "I’ll go pack my things."
"Thank you, Meredith," Dean said as if he’d given her any other choice, as if she’d done what he asked voluntarily rather than making him threaten her relationship with her child, making him show her who Sam would choose if she forced Sam to make a choice.
As much as she hated him right now, he hated her that much. Hated her for making him let her think he would betray Garrison. Hated her for making him let her think he’d ever voluntarily put Sam in a position where he was forced to choose between them, between his brother and the life he wanted for himself and his children.
Meredith left the room without answering him, without ever looking at Sam.
"I’m having a vision, Sammy," Dean said when she was gone. "Your birthday’s going to be loads of laughs this year. Make sure her surprise plans don’t include a Colombian necktie for your big brother, will you?"
"She understands," Sam said.
"No she doesn’t. She fucking hates me. And she should. I’m not being fair to her. Or to you, for that matter. But that’s just how I am, you know? Just a selfish punk bitch who’s never actually loved anyone enough to care more about them than I do myself."
"Yeah," Sam agreed. "That’s you, all right."
"Selfish punk bitch," Dean said again. He shook his head, laughing a little, the sound bitter in an old, quiet way. "Even after all these years, I still can’t believe he called me that." Then, without given Sam a chance to comment, he added, "Mary and I are going for a walk. I need some air, and I’m such a handsome one she follows me everywhere I go. Help Meredith pack so they can get on the road, will you? Tell her I’m just a punk ass bitch who doesn’t know anything about love and doesn’t really even have a right to talk on the subject, but I’m your brother so you really didn’t have much choice in the matter. Family first and all that crap. She’ll buy that. Especially the part about me being a punk ass bitch."
"You’re giving me relationship advice about Meredith?" Sam asked, his tone amused.
"Just giving you permission to lay it all off on me," Dean said. "Tell her if it was up to you, you’d have her stay. That should earn you some brownie points to balance the scales for not telling me to fuck off when I was bullying her into going."
"She doesn’t hate you," Sam said quietly. "And I would."
That surprised Dean, caught him off guard. "What?" he asked after a moment.
"She doesn’t hate you," Sam repeated, deliberately disingenuous.
"You don’t lie for shit, Sammy. But I’m talking about the other thing. You would what?"
"If it were up to me, I’d ask her to stay," Sam said. "I’d rather have her here than have her go."
Dean frowned. "I thought you didn’t want her here in the first place? That you wanted her at home with Olivia and Garrison?"
"I did," Sam said. Then, after a beat, he added, "I was wrong."
"You’re saying you want her to stay?"
"I’m saying that would be my preference. But this isn’t about me."
Dean studied Sam for a long moment before he said, "Sure it is. He’s as much your dad as he is mine."
"He’s a lot more yours," Sam corrected. "Trust me. Now go take your walk. I’ll help Meredith pack and try to convince her you’re a punk ass bitch. It’ll be a hard sell, but I’ll give it my best shot."
"I’m serious, Sammy. If you need her here, tell her to stay. I didn’t … I didn’t think about that. It didn’t really occur to me."
"Go take your walk," Sam said again.
Dean watched him for a moment longer, then nodded. "All right. Whatever. We’ll wait for you outside."
"We’ll be out in ten," Sam agreed, walking back toward a pink bedroom as Mary and Dean headed for the front door.
*
"Hey," Sam said from the doorway.
Meredith was zipping her suitcase, pulling it off the bed and setting it on inline skate wheels that could spin the bulk of thirty pounds on a dime without tipping it off the center mass that kept it upright. "I’ll be done in a minute," she said without looking up.
She put her cosmetics into a smaller bag and zipped it closed, too. Sam watched as she clipped the two bags together into a single unit, compact and efficient and ready to roll through any of a hundred airports in the continental United States or abroad.
"I appreciate you doing this," Sam said. "Dean needs it. I’m not sure how he’s going to get through this; but he’s right to send Mary back home, and he’s right to think she shouldn’t be making the trip alone."
Meredith rolled her bag to the door and parked it near the expensive shoes she’d kicked off last night and hadn’t put back on since. She put them on now, slipping her feet into them like they were flip flops rather than the kind of stiletto high heels he’d never been able to figure out how she endured, let alone wore with such graceful aplomb, navigating stairs and parking lot pavement with equal ease at a clip that would put most mall-trained power striders to envious silence.
"I’m not doing it for Dean," she said.
"Yes, you are."
"I’m assuming Mary and I are both driving to Portland in separate cars so I can return the rental, then we’ll road trip it back home from there?" she asked as if she hadn’t heard him correct her. She looked up, smiled at him: the perfect wife playing her perfect role.
"Dean needs this," Sam said. "If he didn’t, I’d want you to stay."
She considered that for a moment, unsure how to respond. He took advantage of the rarity of her indecisiveness to move in closer, to pull her face to his by hooking his fingers behind her jaw and pulling her into him, to kiss her the way he’d kissed her the night before, the way he’d kissed her goodnight in this God-awful garishly pink room, starting something neither of them expected, igniting a familiar intimacy to an unfamiliar passion that required expensive shoes to be kicked off and expensive clothing to be shed, peeled away, thrown aside so skin could find skin, so heat could find heat, so husband could find wife.
He held on to her mouth long after he was finished kissing her, the warmth of her lips responsive to him in ways he’d never properly appreciated before.
"He needs this," Sam said again. "I wish he didn’t, but he does."
"What do you need, Sam?’ Meredith asked.
"I need for Dean to be okay. I need you to do exactly what you’re doing so Dean will be okay."
"Dean isn’t the only one John remembered," she said.
"But Dean’s the one who matters. He’s the one who needs to be remembered."
"You need it, too."
Sam shook his head. "No. I don’t. Dad can’t hurt me. I have what I need whether he remembers me or not. In some ways, it would have better for me if he hadn’t remembered. If I could have been his friend the way we were last night, rather than his son now, someone he remembers the way he’s going to remember me when he wakes up."
"You are his son, Sam," Meredith said.
"But I don’t need to be. Dean does. And if he can’t be, it’s going to get bad. For both of them, not just for Dad."
"Dean will be fine either way. Dean’s always fine. It’s his greatest skill."
"No, Meredith. You’re wrong. You don’t know him the way I do. Dad can destroy him, and I can’t let that happen."
"And you think me not being here has anything to do with that?"
"Mary not being here does," Sam said.
She studied him for a long moment.
"I know it’s not fair," he added when she didn’t respond, "but the only way he can make Mary go is for you to go, too. It has to be about you so Mary won’t know it’s about her. That’s why he asked you to leave. And if he hadn’t, I would have. Because if this goes bad, Mary can’t be here; and the only way that happens is if she thinks she’s getting you out of the way. It has to be about you and your relationship with Dad. It has to be her helping Dean by getting you out of here."
"Do you really think it’s going to go that bad?" Meredith asked.
"I don’t know. But if it does, the only way Dean makes it is if Mary and the baby aren’t here."
"He could just ask her to go. She loves him. She’ll do whatever he asks her to do."
"If I were drowning, and you were the only thing holding me up, would you leave? Even if I asked you to? Even if I begged you to?"
"No," she said quietly.
"Exactly. Mary’s never met Dad. She’s never seen Dean with him. She knows how important he is to Dean, but not how vulnerable Dean is when it comes to him. No one can understand that about Dean unless they’ve seen it for themselves. He seems so indestructible it’s impossible to believe he can really be that fragile about anything. But he can. He is. And if Mary sees that, she’ll never go. She won’t leave him any more than you’d leave me."
"Why does she need to go at all?"
"It’s hard to explain. Just trust me on this. I know him. I know the way he thinks. What he’s doing now - getting Mary out of here - means he’s afraid of the same thing I was, the same thing that kept me from calling him in the first place when they told me they’d found Dad’s truck, and why I didn’t tell him Dad was alive until he didn’t give me any other choice."
"I still don’t understand that," Meredith said.
"You don’t have to. I do. And Dean does, too. That’s why he’s protecting himself - protecting his family - the only way he can. The same way I tried to protect him, but he wouldn’t let me."
"And you think the only way to protect him is for Mary not to be here?"
"I know it is."
"Okay. If that’s what he needs - what you need - then of course I’ll do everything I can. I don’t understand it, but I’ll do whatever you think is best. I don’t want Dean hurt. I just don’t want you to forget John has two sons, and you’re one of them. Even if you don’t think you need to be, you are."
"I haven’t forgotten that."
"You’ve forgotten you need it, Sam. I saw you last night. For the first time, I saw what you lost when you lost John. And it broke my heart. It broke my heart like it would break my heart to see Garrison lose you."
Sam tried to smile. It was hard to do. "I learned how to be a father from my dad," he said. "I know it’s been hard for you to see that, but he and Dean …." He shook his head, shaking off what he started to say and saying instead, "I never knew my mom. Anything about me - everything about me - that’s worth anything is because of Dean and my dad. Because of who they are, and how they were with me."
"They do good work," Meredith said.
Sam laughed. He kissed her again, more fiercely than before, pressing his body against her, holding her face with both hands. When he finally let her go, her eyes were sharp with a look that made his skin burn on the back of his neck, in the small of his back. Her perfect lipstick was smeared. The pressure of his fingertips left mars in the otherwise flawless finish of her Estee Lauder complexion.
"Thank you," he said. "Thank you for doing this."
"I love you, Sam," she returned. "There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you." He started to respond, but she cut him off, saying, "Call me when John wakes up. Let me talk to you even if I can’t be here with you."
"I will." He smiled, ran one thumb across her lower lip. "I think I screwed up your lipstick."
"Fucked up," she corrected.
He lifted an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"
"Fucked up," she repeated. "You fucked up my lipstick, and you should feel free to do that whenever the urge strikes you. That’s why Gucci invented purses. Other than Kleenex and credit cards, having a spare lipstick on hand for a quick touchup is really the only reason to carry one."
He smiled slowly. "I love it when you talk dirty," he said.
"Hold that thought and call me tonight."
He laughed again and kissed her a third time, lightly this time, a mere brush of lips against lips. "We’ve really got to paint the bedroom pink."
"I think it may be the horses," she said.
"I can work with that."
She smiled. "Anything you want me to tell Garrison?"
"Tell him I plan to fuck his mother silly when I get home ."
Meredith slapped his chest, saying, "Sam!" in a way that was both indignant and pleased at the same time. "I can’t tell your son that."
"Then don’t tell him anything."
"You always have me tell him something. It will break his heart if you don’t send a message home with me."
"Tell him I love him then," Sam said. "And that I feel the same way about his mother."
He’d told her he loved her hundreds of times over the twelve years they’d been married, but it sounded different this time, and both of them heard it. She stared at him, unsure what to say. He smiled a bit, kissed her again. Then, his lips dropping close to her ear, he said, "And tell him I plan to fuck her silly when I get home ."
This time, Meredith didn’t slap his chest, or pull away like she thought he was joking. Instead, she slid closer to him, pressed her body into his, saying, "Hurry home, Sam," her fucked-up lipstick smearing against his skin as she spoke.
*
Go to Part 9