Fic: Supernatural - Raising Cain 'Verse - Let Love Survive
Title: Let Love Survive
Summary: “Raising Cain: causing trouble or creating an uproar.” AU “Do you... do you want to hold him?”
Characters/Pairings: pre-Dean/Sam, Sam/Jess
Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): none
Disclaimer: I’m just borrowing Kripke’s toys to play with in my sandbox for a while.
Notes: I originally wrote a one-shot for this prompt on comment_fic, “Sam and Jess had an infant son when she died.” This is a companion piece to the original one-shot, Searchlights Look Across the Night (But They Keep Missing Me) and is set in Dean’s POV, when he meets Sam’s son for the first time.
Raising Cain: causing trouble or creating an uproar.
Dean stands outside their door for a full five minutes before deciding, fuck this, he’s going in the old fashion way. It ends up being through the living room window, which probably isn’t considered very old fashioned to the rest of society, but Dean’s point still stands.
It had only been weeks since he last visited Pal Alto, parked his car right across the street from the house, even. Sam was just leaving for work, kissing his girl and their baby-even now Dean still can’t believe his brother, little Sammy, has a kid-goodbye. He tickled the kid’s feet for a while, kissing each toe, and laughing when his girlfriend scolded him, though they were both smiling.
Something ugly rose in Dean then, begging him to walk right up there, push her-baby and all-off the stoop, and whisk Sam away. But he couldn’t, because while he may be fucked up, he wasn’t cruel. It hurt that Sam could be happy somewhere else other than with him-not him and Dad, just him, Dean Winchester, Sam’s older brother-but he loved his brother too much to take that away from him.
Except that’s what he’s now back at Stanford to do; drag Sam-probably kicking and screaming-away from his perfect life, perfect family, and back into the life he hated for years. He had reasoned with himself that he needed to do this. At the very least, Sam deserves to know about Dad’s disappearance. But even he can’t deny that he had a more selfish motive. He just wants Sammy back. So, so much.
He’s not surprised when the kid gets the jump on him, had even been waiting for it. But he’s not prepared for the floodgates to open as they spar, however brief it is. He remembers training with Sam at least three times a week, on the hottest of days to the coldest of nights, because John Winchester’s motto is “Be prepared”. He remembers how they grew to learn each other’s moves, to adjust their own moves to fit with each other. How, eventually, whenever they fought, it wasn’t so much a fight as it was a dance between two bodies of one soul.
It’s over in about ten seconds, with Sam landing on his back and Dean triumphant, just like he usually is. He gets his first good look at Sam and has to fight to keep the grin on his face at what he sees. The brother he remembers and the brother he sees now are different yet they’re clearly the same person. The light in his eyes haven’t faded and seemed to have grown brighter over the years. But there’s a kind of aura around him now... peace. Like the burden he’d been carrying around since he first found out about Dad’s real job, the truth about their family, is gone.
Then Sam flips him over and Dean is reminded just how much the kid had grown since he last saw him. God, he’s the perfect embodiment of the phrase “sprouted like a weed”. He’d started filling out his lanky frame as far back as when he was sixteen, but now... now he had definitely grown into it. Unlike the old Sammy he knew, this Sammy, this stranger, is much more confident with his body, having gotten used to it over the years.
Dean pushes him off when he feels heat pulling in his stomach because this is not the time to be thinking inappropriate thoughts about his baby brother. Though, really, it’s not like any other time is good for that, either.
“Dean, what the hell are you doing here?”
Dean grins cockily. “Well, I was looking for a beer.”
Ah, there’s the Sam Eye Roll. He didn’t realize how much he missed it until that moment. “What the hell are you doing here?” Sam repeats, slower this time and obviously pissed.
“Okay, alright,” he says, “We gotta talk.”
“Uh, the phone?” replies Sam, like it’s just that simple.
Like picking up the phone and dialing Sam’s cellphone, still clear in his memory like the sun is bright, is that easy. Like being able to hear his voice from a thousand miles away without breaking down wasn’t a challenge at all.
He never got past hearing Sam’s “Hello?” without hanging up abruptly, trying to slow his breathing and force his heart rate to go back to normal.
So Dean turns the question back on Sam, because he’s not above being a dick. “If I had called, would you have picked up?”
Sam is spared from answering when the sound of a baby’s wail-Sam’s baby, Dean reminds himself-begins to echo through the house. Sam shoots off like a rocket to what Dean assumes is the nursery. He follows and soon finds himself watching Sam pick the kid up from the crib and rocking it gently while whispering, “Shhh, it’s okay, baby, Daddy’s here.”
“Sam?”
They both turn to the voice as one, and that’s when Dean gets his first good look at Sam’s girl. “Jess,” says Sam, “hey.” He clears his throat and turns to Dean, all the while bouncing the baby in his arms. “Dean, this is my girlfriend, Jessica.”
“Wait, your brother Dean?” she asks.
Sam talks about me, Dean realizes, as something inside him flutters with the knowledge that Sam actually talked about him. Sam didn’t forget him. Sam still thought about him.
He flashes her his most dazzling smile. “I love the Smurfs,” he says, pointing at her shirt. Before she can say anything else, his mouth is shooting off a mile a minute, “You know, I gotta tell you, you are completely outta my brother’s league.”
Jess smiles at him, unsure but not afraid and that instantly gains her points in Dean’s books. “Just... let me go put something on.”
“Oh no,” he cuts in, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
The baby chooses then to make a gurgling noise, drawing everyone’s attention to him, as babies tend to do. “And who’s this little tyke?” Dean asks brightly.
Jess joins Sam and the baby. “This,” she says, her voice soft and warm, “is Cain. Cain, say ‘hi’ to your Uncle Dean.” She picks the baby’s arm up and waves it.
Dean waves back. “Hi, Cain,” he says, testing the name out on his tongue. It’s odd but it fits.
Baby Cain’s eyes are closed but Dean’s confident he has his dad’s inquisitive brown eyes. He’s got a small tuft of blond hair that reminds Dean of Mary, but he knows he’s just fooling himself. The kid’s half Sam and half Jess.
Sam looks him up and down for a brief moment, something unidentifiable in his eyes, before quietly saying, “Do you... do you want to hold him?”
Jess gasps, “Sam-”
Dean blinks. “Um.”
But Sam’s smiling and Dean already knows he’s lost. He’s held babies before, mainly Sam, but it’s been years since then and he’s not sure he won’t drop the kid on its head. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
After some complex motions, Dean’s got Cain in what Sam assures him is the right position. Cain gurgles again but doesn’t wake up and Dean finds his heart melting of its own volition. Memories of holding Sam just like this, of feeding him, burping him, and singing to him come rushing back like a storm and it’s all he can do not to accidentally let Cain go.
After a moment, he realizes Sam and Jess are both staring at him, though for entirely different reasons. Jess is looking like she’s ready to faint and to be fair, Dean can’t really blame her. After all, if he were in her shoes (or slippers, as the current case may be), he’d be pretty freaked out over the fact that some stranger who just broke into her home is currently holding her baby, too. But Sam... Sam’s whole face is glowing like the fucking sun and part of Dean wishes this moment can go on forever, as long as he can see Sam like this.
“Uh,” he clears his throat, “Sam, we gotta talk,” he says quietly.
And just like that, the spell is broken. Sam’s eyes harden and Dean cringes at the sight. “Whatever you say, you can say it in front of Jess.” To emphasize his point, he puts an arm around her waist. Jess, for her part, looks confused but remains silent.
“Okay,” says Dean, adjusting his grip on little Cain, “Dad hasn’t been home in a few days.”
“So he’s working overtime on the Miller time shift-I’m sure he’ll stumble back in sooner or later.”
Dean sighs, “Dad’s on a hunting trip... and he hasn’t been home in a few days.”
Something unidentifiable changes in Sam. “Jess, excuse us.”
Dean wordlessly hands the baby over to Jess, and just in time, too, because it just started crying again. “Yeah, I know,” he chuckles, “I’ll miss you too, kid.”
*
“What’s first thing Monday?”
Sam’s struggling with himself, Dean can tell. It hurts that Sam’s even thinking of not telling Dean what’s ‘first thing Monday’ but he waits. Finally, he seems to give in. “I have this... I have an interview.”
“What, like a job interview? Skip it.” But Dean senses it’s more than that.
His suspicions are confirmed when Sam scoffs, “It’s a law school interview and it’s my whole future on a plate.”
My whole future on a plate.
“Law school?” The words come out more strangled than Dean had planned.
“So we got a deal or not?”
Dean doesn’t respond for a long time, but eventually he says, “Yeah, I’ll have your ass back by then.”
Sam straightens his back and nods curtly. “Good.”
*
By the time they get back into the house Jess had just finished feeding Cain and is in the process of putting the bottle back in the cupboard. “Sam? What’s going on?”
“I... uh,” Sam lowers his head and shuffles his feet, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. Dean has to refrain from rolling his eyes. Sam’s never been a good liar and it’s not too much of a stretch to think he’d have gotten better at it in the past two years. “We’re gonna... take a trip for a while.” Jess simply stares at him. “I’ll just go pack now,” he mutters, making his way upstairs.
Jess clearly wants to follow him but with the baby... “I’ll take care of him,” offers Dean, already reaching out for Cain.
She pulls back instinctively but after a moment, she sighs and relinquishes her hold on Cain. “I’ll be back,” she promises. Then she’s sailing up the stairs after Sam.
Dean sits himself down on the living room couch, bouncing Cain in his lap. The baby gurgles again but this time he’s wide awake. “Hey, I was right,” Dean smiles, “You really do have your daddy’s eyes.”
Cain responds by making a sound not unlike that of a kitten. After a while, he seems to realize that Mommy and Daddy are no longer there and starts sniffling. Dean’s smile falls away, all too familiar with what’s going to happen next; crying-lots of it. “Oh no, please don’t cry.” But Cain ignores him and Dean can see tears brimming at the edges of his eyes. “Okay,” he sighs, “if I promise to sing something, will you promise to go back to sleep?”
This seems to get Cain’s attention, who pauses long enough to stare at Dean with those big eyes. “Geez, no pressure,” Dean chuckles. But he opens his mouth to start singing anyway.
He picks the first song that pops up in his head, which happens to be Metallica’s Enter Sandman. About halfway through now I lay me down to sleep, he realizes that it might not have been the best choice for an infant. But Cain doesn’t seem to care, because he’s gurgling happily along with Dean and who is Dean to keep someone with such awesome musical taste to from enjoying it? Nonetheless, he switches the song to Bachman Turner Overdrive’s Hey You and, for an upbeat song, it seems to soothe Cain until he’s sleeping.
When Dean looks up and sees Sam staring at them, he feels a lump in his throat. He’s aware of how domestic they look but he can’t bring himself to care at that moment.
It’s just him, Sam, and Cain.
“Hey, Sammy,” he whispers.
Summary: “Raising Cain: causing trouble or creating an uproar.” AU “Do you... do you want to hold him?”
Characters/Pairings: pre-Dean/Sam, Sam/Jess
Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): none
Disclaimer: I’m just borrowing Kripke’s toys to play with in my sandbox for a while.
Notes: I originally wrote a one-shot for this prompt on comment_fic, “Sam and Jess had an infant son when she died.” This is a companion piece to the original one-shot, Searchlights Look Across the Night (But They Keep Missing Me) and is set in Dean’s POV, when he meets Sam’s son for the first time.
Raising Cain: causing trouble or creating an uproar.
Dean stands outside their door for a full five minutes before deciding, fuck this, he’s going in the old fashion way. It ends up being through the living room window, which probably isn’t considered very old fashioned to the rest of society, but Dean’s point still stands.
It had only been weeks since he last visited Pal Alto, parked his car right across the street from the house, even. Sam was just leaving for work, kissing his girl and their baby-even now Dean still can’t believe his brother, little Sammy, has a kid-goodbye. He tickled the kid’s feet for a while, kissing each toe, and laughing when his girlfriend scolded him, though they were both smiling.
Something ugly rose in Dean then, begging him to walk right up there, push her-baby and all-off the stoop, and whisk Sam away. But he couldn’t, because while he may be fucked up, he wasn’t cruel. It hurt that Sam could be happy somewhere else other than with him-not him and Dad, just him, Dean Winchester, Sam’s older brother-but he loved his brother too much to take that away from him.
Except that’s what he’s now back at Stanford to do; drag Sam-probably kicking and screaming-away from his perfect life, perfect family, and back into the life he hated for years. He had reasoned with himself that he needed to do this. At the very least, Sam deserves to know about Dad’s disappearance. But even he can’t deny that he had a more selfish motive. He just wants Sammy back. So, so much.
He’s not surprised when the kid gets the jump on him, had even been waiting for it. But he’s not prepared for the floodgates to open as they spar, however brief it is. He remembers training with Sam at least three times a week, on the hottest of days to the coldest of nights, because John Winchester’s motto is “Be prepared”. He remembers how they grew to learn each other’s moves, to adjust their own moves to fit with each other. How, eventually, whenever they fought, it wasn’t so much a fight as it was a dance between two bodies of one soul.
It’s over in about ten seconds, with Sam landing on his back and Dean triumphant, just like he usually is. He gets his first good look at Sam and has to fight to keep the grin on his face at what he sees. The brother he remembers and the brother he sees now are different yet they’re clearly the same person. The light in his eyes haven’t faded and seemed to have grown brighter over the years. But there’s a kind of aura around him now... peace. Like the burden he’d been carrying around since he first found out about Dad’s real job, the truth about their family, is gone.
Then Sam flips him over and Dean is reminded just how much the kid had grown since he last saw him. God, he’s the perfect embodiment of the phrase “sprouted like a weed”. He’d started filling out his lanky frame as far back as when he was sixteen, but now... now he had definitely grown into it. Unlike the old Sammy he knew, this Sammy, this stranger, is much more confident with his body, having gotten used to it over the years.
Dean pushes him off when he feels heat pulling in his stomach because this is not the time to be thinking inappropriate thoughts about his baby brother. Though, really, it’s not like any other time is good for that, either.
“Dean, what the hell are you doing here?”
Dean grins cockily. “Well, I was looking for a beer.”
Ah, there’s the Sam Eye Roll. He didn’t realize how much he missed it until that moment. “What the hell are you doing here?” Sam repeats, slower this time and obviously pissed.
“Okay, alright,” he says, “We gotta talk.”
“Uh, the phone?” replies Sam, like it’s just that simple.
Like picking up the phone and dialing Sam’s cellphone, still clear in his memory like the sun is bright, is that easy. Like being able to hear his voice from a thousand miles away without breaking down wasn’t a challenge at all.
He never got past hearing Sam’s “Hello?” without hanging up abruptly, trying to slow his breathing and force his heart rate to go back to normal.
So Dean turns the question back on Sam, because he’s not above being a dick. “If I had called, would you have picked up?”
Sam is spared from answering when the sound of a baby’s wail-Sam’s baby, Dean reminds himself-begins to echo through the house. Sam shoots off like a rocket to what Dean assumes is the nursery. He follows and soon finds himself watching Sam pick the kid up from the crib and rocking it gently while whispering, “Shhh, it’s okay, baby, Daddy’s here.”
“Sam?”
They both turn to the voice as one, and that’s when Dean gets his first good look at Sam’s girl. “Jess,” says Sam, “hey.” He clears his throat and turns to Dean, all the while bouncing the baby in his arms. “Dean, this is my girlfriend, Jessica.”
“Wait, your brother Dean?” she asks.
Sam talks about me, Dean realizes, as something inside him flutters with the knowledge that Sam actually talked about him. Sam didn’t forget him. Sam still thought about him.
He flashes her his most dazzling smile. “I love the Smurfs,” he says, pointing at her shirt. Before she can say anything else, his mouth is shooting off a mile a minute, “You know, I gotta tell you, you are completely outta my brother’s league.”
Jess smiles at him, unsure but not afraid and that instantly gains her points in Dean’s books. “Just... let me go put something on.”
“Oh no,” he cuts in, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
The baby chooses then to make a gurgling noise, drawing everyone’s attention to him, as babies tend to do. “And who’s this little tyke?” Dean asks brightly.
Jess joins Sam and the baby. “This,” she says, her voice soft and warm, “is Cain. Cain, say ‘hi’ to your Uncle Dean.” She picks the baby’s arm up and waves it.
Dean waves back. “Hi, Cain,” he says, testing the name out on his tongue. It’s odd but it fits.
Baby Cain’s eyes are closed but Dean’s confident he has his dad’s inquisitive brown eyes. He’s got a small tuft of blond hair that reminds Dean of Mary, but he knows he’s just fooling himself. The kid’s half Sam and half Jess.
Sam looks him up and down for a brief moment, something unidentifiable in his eyes, before quietly saying, “Do you... do you want to hold him?”
Jess gasps, “Sam-”
Dean blinks. “Um.”
But Sam’s smiling and Dean already knows he’s lost. He’s held babies before, mainly Sam, but it’s been years since then and he’s not sure he won’t drop the kid on its head. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
After some complex motions, Dean’s got Cain in what Sam assures him is the right position. Cain gurgles again but doesn’t wake up and Dean finds his heart melting of its own volition. Memories of holding Sam just like this, of feeding him, burping him, and singing to him come rushing back like a storm and it’s all he can do not to accidentally let Cain go.
After a moment, he realizes Sam and Jess are both staring at him, though for entirely different reasons. Jess is looking like she’s ready to faint and to be fair, Dean can’t really blame her. After all, if he were in her shoes (or slippers, as the current case may be), he’d be pretty freaked out over the fact that some stranger who just broke into her home is currently holding her baby, too. But Sam... Sam’s whole face is glowing like the fucking sun and part of Dean wishes this moment can go on forever, as long as he can see Sam like this.
“Uh,” he clears his throat, “Sam, we gotta talk,” he says quietly.
And just like that, the spell is broken. Sam’s eyes harden and Dean cringes at the sight. “Whatever you say, you can say it in front of Jess.” To emphasize his point, he puts an arm around her waist. Jess, for her part, looks confused but remains silent.
“Okay,” says Dean, adjusting his grip on little Cain, “Dad hasn’t been home in a few days.”
“So he’s working overtime on the Miller time shift-I’m sure he’ll stumble back in sooner or later.”
Dean sighs, “Dad’s on a hunting trip... and he hasn’t been home in a few days.”
Something unidentifiable changes in Sam. “Jess, excuse us.”
Dean wordlessly hands the baby over to Jess, and just in time, too, because it just started crying again. “Yeah, I know,” he chuckles, “I’ll miss you too, kid.”
*
“What’s first thing Monday?”
Sam’s struggling with himself, Dean can tell. It hurts that Sam’s even thinking of not telling Dean what’s ‘first thing Monday’ but he waits. Finally, he seems to give in. “I have this... I have an interview.”
“What, like a job interview? Skip it.” But Dean senses it’s more than that.
His suspicions are confirmed when Sam scoffs, “It’s a law school interview and it’s my whole future on a plate.”
My whole future on a plate.
“Law school?” The words come out more strangled than Dean had planned.
“So we got a deal or not?”
Dean doesn’t respond for a long time, but eventually he says, “Yeah, I’ll have your ass back by then.”
Sam straightens his back and nods curtly. “Good.”
*
By the time they get back into the house Jess had just finished feeding Cain and is in the process of putting the bottle back in the cupboard. “Sam? What’s going on?”
“I... uh,” Sam lowers his head and shuffles his feet, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. Dean has to refrain from rolling his eyes. Sam’s never been a good liar and it’s not too much of a stretch to think he’d have gotten better at it in the past two years. “We’re gonna... take a trip for a while.” Jess simply stares at him. “I’ll just go pack now,” he mutters, making his way upstairs.
Jess clearly wants to follow him but with the baby... “I’ll take care of him,” offers Dean, already reaching out for Cain.
She pulls back instinctively but after a moment, she sighs and relinquishes her hold on Cain. “I’ll be back,” she promises. Then she’s sailing up the stairs after Sam.
Dean sits himself down on the living room couch, bouncing Cain in his lap. The baby gurgles again but this time he’s wide awake. “Hey, I was right,” Dean smiles, “You really do have your daddy’s eyes.”
Cain responds by making a sound not unlike that of a kitten. After a while, he seems to realize that Mommy and Daddy are no longer there and starts sniffling. Dean’s smile falls away, all too familiar with what’s going to happen next; crying-lots of it. “Oh no, please don’t cry.” But Cain ignores him and Dean can see tears brimming at the edges of his eyes. “Okay,” he sighs, “if I promise to sing something, will you promise to go back to sleep?”
This seems to get Cain’s attention, who pauses long enough to stare at Dean with those big eyes. “Geez, no pressure,” Dean chuckles. But he opens his mouth to start singing anyway.
He picks the first song that pops up in his head, which happens to be Metallica’s Enter Sandman. About halfway through now I lay me down to sleep, he realizes that it might not have been the best choice for an infant. But Cain doesn’t seem to care, because he’s gurgling happily along with Dean and who is Dean to keep someone with such awesome musical taste to from enjoying it? Nonetheless, he switches the song to Bachman Turner Overdrive’s Hey You and, for an upbeat song, it seems to soothe Cain until he’s sleeping.
When Dean looks up and sees Sam staring at them, he feels a lump in his throat. He’s aware of how domestic they look but he can’t bring himself to care at that moment.
It’s just him, Sam, and Cain.
“Hey, Sammy,” he whispers.