SPN: "Lullaby"
Category: Supernatural, This Christmas Day 'verse
Title: Lullaby (AO3)
Word Count: 3300
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Summary: Nobody said a baby would be easy, but this is a little much.
Hey, borgmama1of5! Did you think I forgot your birthday?
Thanks to roxymissrose and nwspaprtaxis for all their help!
There was an annoying noise somewhere in the room. Very annoying. She hadn't gotten any sleep yet.
Except that it woke her up, and you couldn't wake up if you weren't already asleep.
Right?
Hannah was going to find the spider that had set up housekeeping in her brain and kill it. She couldn't remember why, but she was pretty sure cobwebs were bad right now.
"I got it," a voice said, and a light flared and the mattress shifted as somebody got out of bed.
Voice. Bed.
Sam, the back of her head supplied. She was surprised that much made it through the damn cobwebs. Fucking brain spider.
"Hey there, beautiful," she heard Sam's voice say softly. "Hungry?"
Of course she wasn't hungry, it was the middle of the-
Oh, wait. There were three people living here now. Sam was talking to Marianne. Sam wasn't calling her "beautiful," which frankly hadn't made much sense to begin with, since he never did. Their relationship wasn't that-oh, what was the word? Mundane? Trite? Normal?
She really needed these cobwebs out of her head. Salt'n'burn that brain spider.
Hannah was starting to think she wasn't cut out for this. She hadn't hurt this much since that time a ghost tossed her down a fire escape, she had never been this tired-
And if one more person starts lecturing me, I'm gonna hurt somebody. Sam was doing an excellent job of running interference with anybody who wanted to lecture her, but with all the visitors, he hadn't been able to get everybody, and some of them, naming no know-it-all big sisters fucking Courtney, were still nagging her.
At least the incident in the hospital had stopped Sam's protests cold. Having all the formula-feeding stuff-they made machines that mixed the formula for you now, like little baby coffeemakers-set up and ready when she came home from the hospital might just be the sweetest thing he'd ever done for her, and that included putting blessed Guatemalan jade in her engagement ring.
Now all she had to do was get Courtney, Queen of Granola, to shut the fuck up about it. If Marianne made it to six months without her mother giving her aunt a black eye, it'd be a miracle.
Actually, considering what happened the other day, it might not be Mom handing out the black eyes. Now that Sam knew she had good reasons behind it, he had much less patience for Courtney's BS. He was getting more comfortable at backtalking the family, too. Not to mention, if he'd learned one thing from Dean, it was how to be insanely overprotective.
Yeah, Courtney might be in trouble. And in a few years, Hannah would get around to feeling guilty about it.
Footsteps, and the crying migrated out of the bedroom. Probably going to get a bottle. Just another perk of not breastfeeding, as far as she was concerned: Sam could handle a midnight milk run without her. She was just so tired....
Next time she was in a church, she was lighting a candle that she'd found the magic words to convince Sam to marry her. She'd never manage this on her own.
Hannah rolled over, and swore. Her milk had come in-as the phrase oh-so-delicately put it-and dear God, her breasts hurt. Time to change the cold packs again. And maybe take some more Sudafed, although as far as she could tell, its milk-depleting properties were either severely exaggerated or just not working on her.
So far, she had resisted the urge to stuff this new wardrobe of slightly-too-small sports bras full of cabbage-the Internet swore by cabbage-but if this didn't die down in another day or so, no produce was going to be safe. Much more after that, and screw any blood clot risk, she was going to beat a doctor into giving her that shot. If her doctor still wouldn't do it, she'd go after David. In-laws with medical degrees should be good for something. Something besides scaring the shit out of her husband with childbirth stories, anyway.
Besides, he was used to Jenn. Jenn was the calm one. Faced with one of his wife's sisters in a fit of postpartum desperation? David would give in like that.
To add insult to injury, Sam was taking to this whole baby business way better than she was, especially considering that he had absolutely no experience with infants. He barely had experience with children, and most of that acquired in the last thirteen months. He and Dean had been cut off from other children when they were young, not like her. Hannah may have been the family baby, and a surprise at that, but she'd barely been ten when her first niece was born, and even when she wasn't leaving the house, her siblings were always bringing their kids over. Housebound siblings made for excellent captive babysitters. After all, what was she going to do? Leave?
But as far as she knew, before he moved into Dean's and got shoved all the way into her family, Sam had never even held a baby. That was one of the reasons he'd gone so overboard with the research.
Hannah wasn't sure if she should be proud of him or resent the hell out of him. Maybe when the cobwebs cleared, she could figure that out.
Yesterday had been warm for January, so he had chased all the visitors away, packed Marianne into her carrier along with Hannah's phone, and gone out so Hannah could have some alone time. That, or he didn't trust her alone with the baby yet and they needed milk. She hadn't asked, because she wasn't altogether sure she wanted to know the answer.
But she'd gotten a shower and an hour's sleep without any calls, knocks, or screams. That was all she'd cared about at the time.
He'd brought back groceries and her favorite take-out-and a completely unintentional jolt of humor into this madness. She hadn't realized just how utterly cute-bordering-on-ridiculous that whole baby-sling thing was.
Funny how adorable a six-foot-four giant with a menacing scar became once he engaged in fucking babywearing. By the way his ears had turned pink and he'd refused to talk about it when he got home-and the way he'd still been trying to call attention to his wedding band with every movement-every woman in Charlotte must have been coming on to him. Hannah was so going to use that for ammo. When her brain worked.
She closed her eyes, listening. Marianne was still fitfully crying, but by the noises Sam was making-sounded like a bottle being made-that shouldn't last too much longer. The kid must be really hungry; usually she shut up if Sam got within a foot of her. She was going to be a Daddy's girl, no doubt about it. She and Hannah, on the other hand....
Hannah had almost dozed back off when there was a thud on the nightstand-one of the baskets Sam was using to carry stuff around the apartment when he had one arm full of baby, the overly organized son of a bitch-and the mattress sank as Sam sat down on it. "Hannah," he said, and she opened her eyes-to see him holding out two Sudafed.
"You are entirely too good to me," she said, snatching them out of his hand.
"Don't I know it." He leaned back against the headboard, making soothing noises at Marianne, who had her face buried in his neck and didn't seem to be interested in soothing. "She won't take the bottle, and she's dry, and walking didn't help. I'm at a loss."
"Oh, Mama told me about this." Sam gave her such a pathetically hopeful look that she almost laughed. "It's called 'infancy.'"
She wasn't sure that particular bitchface had ever been aimed at her. "Hardy har har."
"At least we know it's too early for her to be teething?" He didn't look mollified. Marianne definitely wasn't. Hannah tossed the pills back dry and sat up-and swore when she accidentally hit her breast.
His lips might have twitched, but Sam was nice enough not to laugh in her face. "Okay there?"
"So help me God, I am going to bully David into that shot."
"There's a reason they don't give it anymore."
"Fuck that shit. They probably just stopped doing it to punish women who didn't want to breastfeed, like that bitch on that one forum you found."
"Mm-hm. I brought you these, too." He reached over to the nightstand.
Fresh cold packs. "I love you," she said fervently, and he chuckled. She swapped out the old ones, and hissed in relief. This, at least, helped. Some.
"That bad?" he asked, looking worried.
"I'll manage. I think."
"I'll give David a head's up," he said, because he knew her entirely too well. "Oh, and Pixie's in the crib again, so I turned the heat up a little," he said. "Sorry."
She couldn't figure out why he kept apologizing for that-whether it was an old habit from worrying about the heating bills, or if she'd just been that volatile this last couple of months. "I'll let you know if I start melting. And I don't think Pixie's in there because she's cold, I think she's just...interested. Or maybe guarding the new kitten."
He looked unconvinced. "You're not supposed to let cats-"
"I know, Sam, but we've done everything but lock one of them in the safe, so I'm all out of ideas." Pixie had managed to squirrel her way out of both the bathroom and the spare bedroom, and since they were in and out of their room every couple of hours, there was really no point in trying to keep her out of here. There were points at night where the cat outbrained them both. "Although...." she said as Marianne decided to protest...something.
"No locking the kid in the safe until Uncle Dean's taught her how to pick locks," he said absently, trying to get Marianne into a position she liked. It didn't help.
"Want me to try?" she asked.
"You sure? One wrong kick-"
"So she learns some new words."
"Please," he said, handing the baby over, "I live in terror of what her first word is going to be as it is."
"Yeah, yeah." Very carefully, Hannah attempted to comfort her daughter. Marianne graduated from crying to screaming. "My God, you've got a set of lungs on you."
"Can't imagine who she gets that from," Sam said mildly.
She glared at him. He gave her a bland, innocent smile. "Oh, stuff it, you." Remembering an incident with Tori, she tugged off the baby's sleeper, in case a tag or seam was scratching her, but that didn't help; now Marianne was half-naked and screaming. "Okay, okay. Daddy's girl." She considered. "Let's try something," she said. "Take your shirt off."
"Hannah-"
"Trust me for once." He shrugged, and pulled off his T-shirt. The bruising over his ribs was starting to fade from black to green, at least; he was keeping the splint on during the day, so she couldn't be sure about his fingers, but she thought that was mostly a precaution. "Did I tell you-"
"Hannah, if you apologize for that bruise one more time, you can go spend the night at Dean and Marcy's."
"Sorry." She handed the baby back, and then reached for a baby blanket.
"Shouldn't you be doing this?" Sam asked, cuddling the baby against his chest.
"Skin-to-skin is for daddies, too. One of those books of yours said so."
"You actually read one of the books?"
"I couldn't sleep. Knocked me right out." He rolled his eyes, and Hannah tucked Marianne's blanket around her-and, by default, around Sam, or at least one arm. "She likes you. Besides, if she tries to nurse right now, God knows what'll happen." Marianne's fussing died down a little. Or maybe she just liked the taste of Sam's anti-possession tattoo. "Maybe it's good that you're going to be the one staying home. I don't think she likes me."
"She likes you just fine," Sam said, "I just don't think she likes anything right now." He looked down at the baby. "Didn't we have a deal? You were going to take after the reasonable people in the family?"
"We have reasonable people in the family?" Hannah asked dryly. "Since when?"
"Well, there's me."
Hannah snorted. "Yeah, I have heard way too much about your younger days to believe a word of that, Winchester."
"Dean is a completely unreliable source, you know."
"Who said I heard it from Dean?" He actually winced, and she laughed for what felt like the first time in days.
Marianne was somewhat calmer, but still whimpering and occasionally fighting the blanket. "Maybe we're too old for this," Sam said quietly.
"We're not that old," she protested. "I didn't even qualify as advanced maternal age."
"Just barely. And what about next time?"
She raised an eyebrow. "So there is going to be a next time?"
Sam looked like he'd swallowed a frog. "I'll get back to you when I've caught up on my sleep."
"And you call yourself a hunter."
"I call myself an ex-hunter," he pointed out. "It's been a long time since I had to save the world on four hours of sleep." He looked down at Marianne. "Also, it's a lot easier to handle a ghost or vampire when you're sleep-deprived. It's not like you have to worry about dropping them."
"You are not going to drop her."
"They also don't cry this much. Try to kill you, maybe, but not cry."
She snorted. "True enough." She racked her brain for everything she'd learned in twenty years of nieces and nephews and forced babysitting. Changing, feeding, walking, cuddling- "You try singing?" she asked.
"I don't know any lullabies."
"Your mom had to- Oh, God, Sam. I'm sorry. My brain-"
"It's okay." He flashed her a smile-a tiny one, a little sad maybe, but genuine. "I've had some time to get used to the idea."
The tone was light-amused, even-but it didn't make her feel any better. Every time one of these things came up, she wound up slamming facefirst into that broad stone wall of things the Winchesters never had. She couldn't remember a time in her childhood when there hadn't been somebody available to comfort her or sing her to sleep. Maybe not always her parents, but one of her siblings, or a grandparent, or an aunt or uncle or cousin. Somebody.
Sam never had that. Dean had been old enough to have some memories of their mother, of a house and lullabies and a normal life, but the closest Sam had ever come was the back seat of a car that never stopped. Once they'd found out that a baby was on the way, both Bobby and Ellen had taken her aside and told her horror stories of what John considered adequate childcare, as a warning of exactly what Sam wouldn't know. It was a miracle that Sam had grown up to be as normal as he had.
They all had Dean to thank for that, undoubtedly, but Dean had been one person, and a child himself. Nobody sane would think that he could ever replace father and mother and extended family, no matter how hard he tried.
Hannah had come to understand why thunderclouds tended to appear whenever Marcy had to talk about their mutual father-in-law. Dean clearly still worshipped the man, if maybe with a little more recognition of John's shortcomings than he'd had when he was younger, and Sam had developed a sort of grudging respect for him, but....
Out on the road, Hannah had heard plenty about John Winchester, the great hunter. Occasionally, someone had even spoken about how much he loved his boys.
Nobody-not one-ever said the man was a great father.
"It doesn't have to be something that people actually call a lullaby," she pointed out, having a sudden image of a small Dean in the back seat of the Impala trying to lull baby Sam to sleep with "Highway to Hell." Postpartum brains were fucking weird, and the image was all the weirder because she was fairly certain Dean would still do that if the situation called for it. Maybe she should rethink the babysitting. "It just has to be something she likes."
"I don't know any baby-appropriate songs."
"Nobody cares about appropriate in the privacy of our own house, just what works. Mike swears that Quint would only quiet down to 'Kill Fuck Die' for ages." Sam looked unconvinced. "I don't think any little old church ladies are going to jump out of the paneling and protest. And if one does, I have guns. It would totally count as self-defense."
That made him laugh, which irritated Marianne, who let out a fresh wail. "Oh, come on, sweetheart," he pleaded.
"Didn't Dean ever-"
"Dean can't sing."
"I'm pretty sure I've heard-"
"Oh, Dean will sing, it's just that he's terrible at it. I think it's genetic. Dad couldn't carry a tune either."
"And you?"
He grinned. "Well, have you ever even heard me try?"
"Good point." She thought a minute. "If he didn't sing-"
Sam shrugged. "Distracted me, usually. Stories."
"About your mom?"
He snorted. "Not hardly. Getting either one of them to talk about Mom was so hard it's a miracle I ever knew what a mother was." That made her heart twist a little more. "Mostly it was stuff he'd picked up out of Dad's journal. The kind of things normal people tell around campfires for the thrill factor. I-um-" He got that sheepish expression she found particularly adorable and would not meet her eyes. "Sometimes, at school, when I got homesick, I'd find a rerun of Tales from the Crypt or a bad horror movie on TV. Knocked me right out."
"I'm not sure if that's impressive or disturbing." She filed it away, though. Sooner or later, she'd need that info.
Marianne started crying again. She did that every time Sam quit-
Ah-ha. "Just talk," Hannah said. "I know I find your voice soothing. I think she does too."
"I don't have anything to talk about-"
"Exorcism?"
"I am not reciting the Rituale Romanum in order to get our daughter to sleep," he said sourly. "Even we need to have some standards."
"Standards are overrated." She thought a minute. "Don't you have the Wiki entry for corundum just about memorized?"
He winced. "It's not enough that Ananda makes me read that whenever she needs a bedtime story?"
"We'll buy some storybooks tomorrow. I didn't know we'd need them this early. Just talk."
To her surprise, Sam grinned. "Talk her to sleep? Didn't I have to do that for you on our first date?"
She gave him a punch in the arm. "I thought we weren't talking about that ever again."
"I never said that, you- Comfy?"
"Getting there." She scooted over so she could lean against his solid warmth. "If things'll just stop hurting, I'll be great."
Sam sighed dramatically, but pulled the bedspread up to her shoulders with his free hand. Pixie jumped up on the bed, nosed around a second, then settled gingerly into Hannah's lap. "Oh, yay, the family's complete," Sam muttered, and Hannah whacked him on the thigh. "Ouch," he said.
"She was here before you were," Hannah reminded him. "Now, start talking."
"This is ridiculous," he muttered, but then, after a second, "'Corundum is a crystalline form of aluminum oxide typically containing traces of iron, titanium, vanadium, and chromium.' My God, it's working. 'It is a rock-forming mineral-'"
"Told you," Hannah said as Marianne's last whimpers subsided, and then, listening to Sam's voice reciting the encyclopedia, she dozed off herself.
Title: Lullaby (AO3)
Word Count: 3300
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Summary: Nobody said a baby would be easy, but this is a little much.
Hey, borgmama1of5! Did you think I forgot your birthday?
Thanks to roxymissrose and nwspaprtaxis for all their help!
There was an annoying noise somewhere in the room. Very annoying. She hadn't gotten any sleep yet.
Except that it woke her up, and you couldn't wake up if you weren't already asleep.
Right?
Hannah was going to find the spider that had set up housekeeping in her brain and kill it. She couldn't remember why, but she was pretty sure cobwebs were bad right now.
"I got it," a voice said, and a light flared and the mattress shifted as somebody got out of bed.
Voice. Bed.
Sam, the back of her head supplied. She was surprised that much made it through the damn cobwebs. Fucking brain spider.
"Hey there, beautiful," she heard Sam's voice say softly. "Hungry?"
Of course she wasn't hungry, it was the middle of the-
Oh, wait. There were three people living here now. Sam was talking to Marianne. Sam wasn't calling her "beautiful," which frankly hadn't made much sense to begin with, since he never did. Their relationship wasn't that-oh, what was the word? Mundane? Trite? Normal?
She really needed these cobwebs out of her head. Salt'n'burn that brain spider.
Hannah was starting to think she wasn't cut out for this. She hadn't hurt this much since that time a ghost tossed her down a fire escape, she had never been this tired-
And if one more person starts lecturing me, I'm gonna hurt somebody. Sam was doing an excellent job of running interference with anybody who wanted to lecture her, but with all the visitors, he hadn't been able to get everybody, and some of them, naming no know-it-all big sisters fucking Courtney, were still nagging her.
At least the incident in the hospital had stopped Sam's protests cold. Having all the formula-feeding stuff-they made machines that mixed the formula for you now, like little baby coffeemakers-set up and ready when she came home from the hospital might just be the sweetest thing he'd ever done for her, and that included putting blessed Guatemalan jade in her engagement ring.
Now all she had to do was get Courtney, Queen of Granola, to shut the fuck up about it. If Marianne made it to six months without her mother giving her aunt a black eye, it'd be a miracle.
Actually, considering what happened the other day, it might not be Mom handing out the black eyes. Now that Sam knew she had good reasons behind it, he had much less patience for Courtney's BS. He was getting more comfortable at backtalking the family, too. Not to mention, if he'd learned one thing from Dean, it was how to be insanely overprotective.
Yeah, Courtney might be in trouble. And in a few years, Hannah would get around to feeling guilty about it.
Footsteps, and the crying migrated out of the bedroom. Probably going to get a bottle. Just another perk of not breastfeeding, as far as she was concerned: Sam could handle a midnight milk run without her. She was just so tired....
Next time she was in a church, she was lighting a candle that she'd found the magic words to convince Sam to marry her. She'd never manage this on her own.
Hannah rolled over, and swore. Her milk had come in-as the phrase oh-so-delicately put it-and dear God, her breasts hurt. Time to change the cold packs again. And maybe take some more Sudafed, although as far as she could tell, its milk-depleting properties were either severely exaggerated or just not working on her.
So far, she had resisted the urge to stuff this new wardrobe of slightly-too-small sports bras full of cabbage-the Internet swore by cabbage-but if this didn't die down in another day or so, no produce was going to be safe. Much more after that, and screw any blood clot risk, she was going to beat a doctor into giving her that shot. If her doctor still wouldn't do it, she'd go after David. In-laws with medical degrees should be good for something. Something besides scaring the shit out of her husband with childbirth stories, anyway.
Besides, he was used to Jenn. Jenn was the calm one. Faced with one of his wife's sisters in a fit of postpartum desperation? David would give in like that.
To add insult to injury, Sam was taking to this whole baby business way better than she was, especially considering that he had absolutely no experience with infants. He barely had experience with children, and most of that acquired in the last thirteen months. He and Dean had been cut off from other children when they were young, not like her. Hannah may have been the family baby, and a surprise at that, but she'd barely been ten when her first niece was born, and even when she wasn't leaving the house, her siblings were always bringing their kids over. Housebound siblings made for excellent captive babysitters. After all, what was she going to do? Leave?
But as far as she knew, before he moved into Dean's and got shoved all the way into her family, Sam had never even held a baby. That was one of the reasons he'd gone so overboard with the research.
Hannah wasn't sure if she should be proud of him or resent the hell out of him. Maybe when the cobwebs cleared, she could figure that out.
Yesterday had been warm for January, so he had chased all the visitors away, packed Marianne into her carrier along with Hannah's phone, and gone out so Hannah could have some alone time. That, or he didn't trust her alone with the baby yet and they needed milk. She hadn't asked, because she wasn't altogether sure she wanted to know the answer.
But she'd gotten a shower and an hour's sleep without any calls, knocks, or screams. That was all she'd cared about at the time.
He'd brought back groceries and her favorite take-out-and a completely unintentional jolt of humor into this madness. She hadn't realized just how utterly cute-bordering-on-ridiculous that whole baby-sling thing was.
Funny how adorable a six-foot-four giant with a menacing scar became once he engaged in fucking babywearing. By the way his ears had turned pink and he'd refused to talk about it when he got home-and the way he'd still been trying to call attention to his wedding band with every movement-every woman in Charlotte must have been coming on to him. Hannah was so going to use that for ammo. When her brain worked.
She closed her eyes, listening. Marianne was still fitfully crying, but by the noises Sam was making-sounded like a bottle being made-that shouldn't last too much longer. The kid must be really hungry; usually she shut up if Sam got within a foot of her. She was going to be a Daddy's girl, no doubt about it. She and Hannah, on the other hand....
Hannah had almost dozed back off when there was a thud on the nightstand-one of the baskets Sam was using to carry stuff around the apartment when he had one arm full of baby, the overly organized son of a bitch-and the mattress sank as Sam sat down on it. "Hannah," he said, and she opened her eyes-to see him holding out two Sudafed.
"You are entirely too good to me," she said, snatching them out of his hand.
"Don't I know it." He leaned back against the headboard, making soothing noises at Marianne, who had her face buried in his neck and didn't seem to be interested in soothing. "She won't take the bottle, and she's dry, and walking didn't help. I'm at a loss."
"Oh, Mama told me about this." Sam gave her such a pathetically hopeful look that she almost laughed. "It's called 'infancy.'"
She wasn't sure that particular bitchface had ever been aimed at her. "Hardy har har."
"At least we know it's too early for her to be teething?" He didn't look mollified. Marianne definitely wasn't. Hannah tossed the pills back dry and sat up-and swore when she accidentally hit her breast.
His lips might have twitched, but Sam was nice enough not to laugh in her face. "Okay there?"
"So help me God, I am going to bully David into that shot."
"There's a reason they don't give it anymore."
"Fuck that shit. They probably just stopped doing it to punish women who didn't want to breastfeed, like that bitch on that one forum you found."
"Mm-hm. I brought you these, too." He reached over to the nightstand.
Fresh cold packs. "I love you," she said fervently, and he chuckled. She swapped out the old ones, and hissed in relief. This, at least, helped. Some.
"That bad?" he asked, looking worried.
"I'll manage. I think."
"I'll give David a head's up," he said, because he knew her entirely too well. "Oh, and Pixie's in the crib again, so I turned the heat up a little," he said. "Sorry."
She couldn't figure out why he kept apologizing for that-whether it was an old habit from worrying about the heating bills, or if she'd just been that volatile this last couple of months. "I'll let you know if I start melting. And I don't think Pixie's in there because she's cold, I think she's just...interested. Or maybe guarding the new kitten."
He looked unconvinced. "You're not supposed to let cats-"
"I know, Sam, but we've done everything but lock one of them in the safe, so I'm all out of ideas." Pixie had managed to squirrel her way out of both the bathroom and the spare bedroom, and since they were in and out of their room every couple of hours, there was really no point in trying to keep her out of here. There were points at night where the cat outbrained them both. "Although...." she said as Marianne decided to protest...something.
"No locking the kid in the safe until Uncle Dean's taught her how to pick locks," he said absently, trying to get Marianne into a position she liked. It didn't help.
"Want me to try?" she asked.
"You sure? One wrong kick-"
"So she learns some new words."
"Please," he said, handing the baby over, "I live in terror of what her first word is going to be as it is."
"Yeah, yeah." Very carefully, Hannah attempted to comfort her daughter. Marianne graduated from crying to screaming. "My God, you've got a set of lungs on you."
"Can't imagine who she gets that from," Sam said mildly.
She glared at him. He gave her a bland, innocent smile. "Oh, stuff it, you." Remembering an incident with Tori, she tugged off the baby's sleeper, in case a tag or seam was scratching her, but that didn't help; now Marianne was half-naked and screaming. "Okay, okay. Daddy's girl." She considered. "Let's try something," she said. "Take your shirt off."
"Hannah-"
"Trust me for once." He shrugged, and pulled off his T-shirt. The bruising over his ribs was starting to fade from black to green, at least; he was keeping the splint on during the day, so she couldn't be sure about his fingers, but she thought that was mostly a precaution. "Did I tell you-"
"Hannah, if you apologize for that bruise one more time, you can go spend the night at Dean and Marcy's."
"Sorry." She handed the baby back, and then reached for a baby blanket.
"Shouldn't you be doing this?" Sam asked, cuddling the baby against his chest.
"Skin-to-skin is for daddies, too. One of those books of yours said so."
"You actually read one of the books?"
"I couldn't sleep. Knocked me right out." He rolled his eyes, and Hannah tucked Marianne's blanket around her-and, by default, around Sam, or at least one arm. "She likes you. Besides, if she tries to nurse right now, God knows what'll happen." Marianne's fussing died down a little. Or maybe she just liked the taste of Sam's anti-possession tattoo. "Maybe it's good that you're going to be the one staying home. I don't think she likes me."
"She likes you just fine," Sam said, "I just don't think she likes anything right now." He looked down at the baby. "Didn't we have a deal? You were going to take after the reasonable people in the family?"
"We have reasonable people in the family?" Hannah asked dryly. "Since when?"
"Well, there's me."
Hannah snorted. "Yeah, I have heard way too much about your younger days to believe a word of that, Winchester."
"Dean is a completely unreliable source, you know."
"Who said I heard it from Dean?" He actually winced, and she laughed for what felt like the first time in days.
Marianne was somewhat calmer, but still whimpering and occasionally fighting the blanket. "Maybe we're too old for this," Sam said quietly.
"We're not that old," she protested. "I didn't even qualify as advanced maternal age."
"Just barely. And what about next time?"
She raised an eyebrow. "So there is going to be a next time?"
Sam looked like he'd swallowed a frog. "I'll get back to you when I've caught up on my sleep."
"And you call yourself a hunter."
"I call myself an ex-hunter," he pointed out. "It's been a long time since I had to save the world on four hours of sleep." He looked down at Marianne. "Also, it's a lot easier to handle a ghost or vampire when you're sleep-deprived. It's not like you have to worry about dropping them."
"You are not going to drop her."
"They also don't cry this much. Try to kill you, maybe, but not cry."
She snorted. "True enough." She racked her brain for everything she'd learned in twenty years of nieces and nephews and forced babysitting. Changing, feeding, walking, cuddling- "You try singing?" she asked.
"I don't know any lullabies."
"Your mom had to- Oh, God, Sam. I'm sorry. My brain-"
"It's okay." He flashed her a smile-a tiny one, a little sad maybe, but genuine. "I've had some time to get used to the idea."
The tone was light-amused, even-but it didn't make her feel any better. Every time one of these things came up, she wound up slamming facefirst into that broad stone wall of things the Winchesters never had. She couldn't remember a time in her childhood when there hadn't been somebody available to comfort her or sing her to sleep. Maybe not always her parents, but one of her siblings, or a grandparent, or an aunt or uncle or cousin. Somebody.
Sam never had that. Dean had been old enough to have some memories of their mother, of a house and lullabies and a normal life, but the closest Sam had ever come was the back seat of a car that never stopped. Once they'd found out that a baby was on the way, both Bobby and Ellen had taken her aside and told her horror stories of what John considered adequate childcare, as a warning of exactly what Sam wouldn't know. It was a miracle that Sam had grown up to be as normal as he had.
They all had Dean to thank for that, undoubtedly, but Dean had been one person, and a child himself. Nobody sane would think that he could ever replace father and mother and extended family, no matter how hard he tried.
Hannah had come to understand why thunderclouds tended to appear whenever Marcy had to talk about their mutual father-in-law. Dean clearly still worshipped the man, if maybe with a little more recognition of John's shortcomings than he'd had when he was younger, and Sam had developed a sort of grudging respect for him, but....
Out on the road, Hannah had heard plenty about John Winchester, the great hunter. Occasionally, someone had even spoken about how much he loved his boys.
Nobody-not one-ever said the man was a great father.
"It doesn't have to be something that people actually call a lullaby," she pointed out, having a sudden image of a small Dean in the back seat of the Impala trying to lull baby Sam to sleep with "Highway to Hell." Postpartum brains were fucking weird, and the image was all the weirder because she was fairly certain Dean would still do that if the situation called for it. Maybe she should rethink the babysitting. "It just has to be something she likes."
"I don't know any baby-appropriate songs."
"Nobody cares about appropriate in the privacy of our own house, just what works. Mike swears that Quint would only quiet down to 'Kill Fuck Die' for ages." Sam looked unconvinced. "I don't think any little old church ladies are going to jump out of the paneling and protest. And if one does, I have guns. It would totally count as self-defense."
That made him laugh, which irritated Marianne, who let out a fresh wail. "Oh, come on, sweetheart," he pleaded.
"Didn't Dean ever-"
"Dean can't sing."
"I'm pretty sure I've heard-"
"Oh, Dean will sing, it's just that he's terrible at it. I think it's genetic. Dad couldn't carry a tune either."
"And you?"
He grinned. "Well, have you ever even heard me try?"
"Good point." She thought a minute. "If he didn't sing-"
Sam shrugged. "Distracted me, usually. Stories."
"About your mom?"
He snorted. "Not hardly. Getting either one of them to talk about Mom was so hard it's a miracle I ever knew what a mother was." That made her heart twist a little more. "Mostly it was stuff he'd picked up out of Dad's journal. The kind of things normal people tell around campfires for the thrill factor. I-um-" He got that sheepish expression she found particularly adorable and would not meet her eyes. "Sometimes, at school, when I got homesick, I'd find a rerun of Tales from the Crypt or a bad horror movie on TV. Knocked me right out."
"I'm not sure if that's impressive or disturbing." She filed it away, though. Sooner or later, she'd need that info.
Marianne started crying again. She did that every time Sam quit-
Ah-ha. "Just talk," Hannah said. "I know I find your voice soothing. I think she does too."
"I don't have anything to talk about-"
"Exorcism?"
"I am not reciting the Rituale Romanum in order to get our daughter to sleep," he said sourly. "Even we need to have some standards."
"Standards are overrated." She thought a minute. "Don't you have the Wiki entry for corundum just about memorized?"
He winced. "It's not enough that Ananda makes me read that whenever she needs a bedtime story?"
"We'll buy some storybooks tomorrow. I didn't know we'd need them this early. Just talk."
To her surprise, Sam grinned. "Talk her to sleep? Didn't I have to do that for you on our first date?"
She gave him a punch in the arm. "I thought we weren't talking about that ever again."
"I never said that, you- Comfy?"
"Getting there." She scooted over so she could lean against his solid warmth. "If things'll just stop hurting, I'll be great."
Sam sighed dramatically, but pulled the bedspread up to her shoulders with his free hand. Pixie jumped up on the bed, nosed around a second, then settled gingerly into Hannah's lap. "Oh, yay, the family's complete," Sam muttered, and Hannah whacked him on the thigh. "Ouch," he said.
"She was here before you were," Hannah reminded him. "Now, start talking."
"This is ridiculous," he muttered, but then, after a second, "'Corundum is a crystalline form of aluminum oxide typically containing traces of iron, titanium, vanadium, and chromium.' My God, it's working. 'It is a rock-forming mineral-'"
"Told you," Hannah said as Marianne's last whimpers subsided, and then, listening to Sam's voice reciting the encyclopedia, she dozed off herself.