(no subject)
The blame for this story is on all of you. Be ashamed.
That being said, I think the next fic might be even more cracked out.
Beta by Brenda, crack by all the people who commented on the things I said about "Something Wicked".
Family Comes First
"Are you joking?" Sam eyes Dean with his eyebrows drawn together and a sigh close to the edge of his lips.
Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, Dean can still trick him with a deadpan like this. Dean looks up at him, his mouth dimpled at the side. So, not kidding. "I'd say get a blood test, dude."
"I can't believe my life has come to this, Sammy. Am I really the kind of guy who asks for a paternity test?" Dean's saying a whole lot more, about family and the road and Dad, but Sam just answers the surface question.
"She's a fucking bitch, Dean, I wouldn't put anything past her." Sam has no time for people who even look at Dean sideways with intent, much less some fucking random-ass backwoods witch who tore Dean's heart out and all but ate it in front of his face.
"What are we gonna do if it's mine?" Dean's voice drops, his work voice, the voice Sam hears in his dreams.
"Whatever we have to, just like always." Sam answers back with the lowdown timbre that scares men with knives and sends dogs running the other direction.
*
Naturally, because that's the way shit works, the kid's Dean's. Fortunately, Chantal doesn't want it. Fortunately for her continued existence on the planet, because Dean was sure as hell not going to leave his baby with her, and Sam sure as shit was going to do whatever he thinks Dean needs him to. That means kill. It also means figuring out how to work a car seat.
"This sucks, Dean." The backseat of the Impala was not made for children or the gear that goes along with them.
Sam looks up, and Dean's framed by moss-hung, ancient oaks, the late afternoon Louisiana sun licking pink and orange through the branches. He has the baby's head tucked under his chin and is whispering softly, maybe singing a little. Sam stands up all the way and sees the way Dean's face is relaxed, calm, the lines by his eyes promising a smile soon. Sweat runs down his spine and down the backs of his legs, and Sam watches Dean become the person he was always meant to be.
He leans back into the car and cusses the car seat into submission.
Dean straps the baby in with more care than he's ever taken for anything besides the Impala.
"So, John?" Sam asks. That's what Chantal named the baby, and she said it with a knowing look and saucy jut of her hip. Sam knows she's got a bit of the shine, for real, seen it in her from time to time. He recognizes that sort of thing in other people, naturally.
"Somehow I don't think she was taking my feelings into consideration on that one." Dean scowls. Dean scowls a lot, so Sam doesn't feel the need to remark. "Winding me up or something."
"There's always the possibility she knows something we don't." Sam knows it's stupid to pretend that isn't true, even if it is Chantal--the only person alive Sam would honestly say he hates. He usually reserves his directed emotions for positive ones because he's got enough bad in his life without creating it himself.
"Yeah, well, we're calling him Jack."
Sam almost says like, duh, but he bites it back.
Jack is six weeks old. Dad's been dead four years, three months, and six days.
*
Sam floats the idea of feeding Jack organic food by Dean.
"What, you mean it's grown without chemicals and stuff, like so it won't have bug spray or anything, even a little?" Dean tilts his head and wipes his hands on the dishrag hanging over his shoulder.
Sam smoothes his hand over Jack's tiny back in a circular pattern.
"Yeah, that's what I mean." Sam smiles when he sees Dean's brain click and whirl with finality.
"Well, shit, he's not ever gonna eat anything else, then!"
*
"I'm going to Tempe to check out that disturbance." Sam pulls out Dad's journal and flips through the well-worn pages.
This is how it starts.
Dean dangles his keys in front of Jack and purses his mouth.
"I'm not taking Jack anywhere near that kind of thing." Jack gets a hold of the leather strap on the keyring and jambs it into his mouth before Dean can snatch it away. "Aww, nah, come on Jay-Jay, that's nasty." He negotiates getting the stained leather out of the baby's mouth. Jack laughs and burbles and kicks his feet in glee, and Dean starts laughing, too, loud and uninhibited.
Sam smiles. "Nah, man, of course not. I'll handle it on my own."
Dean meets his eyes with a huge grin on his face. Sam suddenly feels too full, like he needs to cry or scream to let out how much he feels, like steam out of kettle.
*
When Jack is eighteen months old, Sam dreams about him while laying in a motel room in Boise. His dream flashes from Jack to Chantal. Sam wakes up sweating and gritting his teeth. He wonders if Chantal really thought that by giving Jack to Dean she could save herself.
Sam hates her, but he pities her, because he's known a long time that there are some things no one can save themselves from.
He thinks about not telling Dean. He then thinks about what will happen if Pastor Jim or Betsy or someone drops that bomb in Dean's lap. Sam balances which would be worse on Dean. The lying one, probably.
Sam calls Dean at three in the morning.
"Sammy? You hurt?" Dean sleeps with the phone in the bed with him when Sam's away. The phone and Jack and the knife under his pillow.
"It's gonna get Chantal. Burn her."
Dean's silent for a long stretch.
"Dean? You still there?" Sam knows he is, though, can hear Dean breathing. He knows Dean's probably reaching out and touching Jack's light brown hair.
"That's why she gave him up, to save herself." Dean's washed out, tired and raw in the face of another betrayal. He has an endless capacity to get hurt all over again. He's never grown any calluses over his heart, and Sam hates Chantal again. Should have let that bitch burn.
"You want to come with me?"
"Yeah." Dean's voice is tight. He's putting up the rage screen, trying to push down on the little boy goodness that gets him into things like this in the first place.
They don't make it in time. Sam had known that'd be the case all along. He had to give Dean the illusion of free will.
Some things are inescapable. Sam doesn't believe in fate, but he knows that they're fucking cursed. That's as clear as Dean's freckles or Jack's laughter.
*
When Jack is two and a half, Dean moves the family a little outside of Tulsa. That's how they do things now-Dean makes all the big decisions and Sam grouses but never really puts up any resistance. Dean is the head of the family in a way that probably should have happened when Dad died, but only actually did when Jack came along.
Dean gets an honest to god job, granted as a mechanic with some local stock car racer, so it's hardly work for him.
Oklahoma's in the middle of the country, so Sam can come and go in all directions. But Sam knows Dean picked it because Sam went to high school in Norman, and they both have some almost normal memories about the region.
One afternoon in July, Sam kicks open the front door of the house Dean's renting to own and hollers "Dean!" He shuffles his duffle off his shoulder and hold his wallet in his teeth as he fishes in his pocket for the candy he's brought Jack.
"Excuse me, but what are you doing in here?" A pretty girl with black hair and olive skin stands in the kitchen doorway with her hands on her hips glaring bloody murder at Sam.
"I live here, what's your excuse?" He's exhausted and he's been peeing blood from the kick to the kidney he took from the horse of the ghost rider he just put down.
The girl's hands drop off her hips. "Oh, I'm supposed to ask you a password question thing to make sure you're you." She lifts an eyebrow like Dean had been a real pain in the ass about that. Sam smiles.
"Shoot." He retrieves the bag of gummis from his pocket.
"Why do you suck so much?" The girl says with a bored tone.
"What?" Sam almost laughs.
"That's the question. 'Why do you suck so much?'" She makes a little waving motion to indicate Sam needs to move it along.
"Oh, for the love of God, Dean, I hate you." Sam rolls his eyes and clutches the gummis. He just wants to see Jack, get something to eat, and lay down.
"Ok, you must be Sam. Man, that's weird. He predicted what you'd say word for word. Huh. Y'all don't look like brothers." She smiles at him, and Sam feels his shoulders loosen. Really damned pretty.
"We get that a lot. What do I get to call you?" She turns in the doorway and starts to walk away.
"Anything you wanna, but my name's Becky."
Sam laughs and follows Becky into the living room. Jack toddles up to him with his arms out making grabby hands. Sam scoops him up and flings him around a little. Jack screams with joy and Becky settles on the couch, muting the video on the television. She's got some kind of school book open face down on the arm of the couch and a pencil in her hair. Sam kisses all over Jack's face as he kicks and grabs and laughs. Sam laughs in return.
"I don't know why y'all can't keep a sitter. I'd prob'ly pay y'all to come over here and watch you with that baby." Becky's smiling big and bright when Sam looks at her over Jack's head.
"Dean's special, that's why."
"SAMMY!" Jack squeals and Sam sets him down and lays down on his back so Jack can go through his pockets or pat him or roll around or whatever he wants to do.
"Uh huh. Sure thing." Becky makes no move to leave, and Sam has no idea how much they owe her, or even if he has any cash. He watches her working out some kind of table in her notebook, pencil flying and eyes tracking the page. She's wearing a t-shirt with a scowling pirate on it and loose jeans. Barefoot with bright purple toenails.
"Wanna stick around for a beer?" Sam's not Dean, but he doesn't get turned down all that much all the same, and he needs to stall until Dean comes home to pay the girl.
Becky throws her head back and starts laughing this deep, gorgeous laugh, and Jack scuttles away from Sam to run over to her, big smile on his face and grabby hands all over her.
"BECK!" Jack shouts. "JUICE!"
"Dean told me you're a real lady killer." Becky keeps laughing as she sets her book aside and grabs Jack.
Sam groans. "Oh, great."
"Don't worry, I've got that one's number." She winks. "Sure, I'll have a beer with you, but you oughta take a shower first, because you've got blood all over the side of your neck."
Sam reaches up and touches dried blood. He stares at her, waiting for her to comment further, but she just stares right back and doesn't say anything else.
Sam gets up and takes a shower, all the while wondering what's going on with Becky, if maybe it's more than he'd thought at first-another pretty sitter who Dean will piss off or fuck that will be replaced with another pretty sitter, wash, rinse, repeat.
They have a beer, and Becky explains how she thinks magic is just another branch of physics that people can't explain yet. She's some kind of local native, he gleans in sideways way through random comments she makes. She's in graduate school. Sam forgets to ask her how the fuck she met Dean's sad ass.
This time, it's Sam who fucks the sitter.
*
When Jack's four, Sam's gone more than he's not. When he's back, he spends his days listening to Dean go on and on more than ever about cars, which is pretty much Sam's idea of hell, or talking about theoretical and practical magic with Becky or teaching Jack his multiplication tables and how to speak Spanish and what a werebeast is and how you kill one.
Becky moves around Dean's kitchen putting up groceries and updating Sam on Dean's latest antics.
"I don't even know where he finds them. There must be some kind of Skank-Mart with aisles and aisles of skeazy women just waitin' on a guy like Dean to come along and unwrap the cellophane." Becky puts the milk in the door of the fridge and pops several containers of leftovers onto the counter.
"HEY!" Dean scowls and rubs his chin with his permanently stained hands. "Not in front of the b-a-b-y."
Jack looks at Dean like his head just fell off. "Daddy, I'm not a baby, I'm a big boy."
Dean smiles at Jack like he just produced the cure for cancer. "That's right, you are, the smartest big boy ever."
Sam and Jack roll their eyes and Becky makes a gagging noise.
Later, when Jack's asleep and they've had a few beers, Sam lets Dean check the bandage on his back and whispers to Becky and Dean about claws and teeth and pure evil. Later still, Becky laughs in his ear and bites him and gives him just a little oblivion. She's not Jess, and she's not innocent, and she probably deserves a lot better than Sam. He's not a good enough person to let her have a happier life with someone else, though; he's never been very good at letting people go.
Sam waits on the dream of Becky on the ceiling.
*
When Jack starts kindergarten, Dean actually cries. Sam laughs so hard he thinks he's broken something vital. Becky kicks Sam in the ass with her sandal when he doubles over, and Dean jumps on his back as the school bus rounds the corner.
It's only a half-day of school, and Dean takes the day off, is barely containable that morning. He doesn't have to be convinced to head out into the fields Sam uses for target practice. The shotgun slides into Dean's hand just like always. Sam watches him hitting can after bottle after beanbag Becky tosses into the air like white trash skeet. Dean's got grey in his hair and in his stubble, the lines around his eyes are deeper, but the grim concentration is the same as he shoots, and the blistering smile when he hits every target is exactly the same, too.
"You know how to handle a gun?" Dean turns to Becky. Dean in ratty old jeans and Becky in cut-offs and a Math Club t-shirt.
"You're kidding, right?" She makes the you're-so-dumb face that always makes Dean laugh. Like now. Dean laughs the belly rumbling chain of mirth that automatically yanks a smile from Sam.
She's not the best shot ever, but she can work a gun and learns fast when Dean gives professional pointers patiently. He demonstrates how to take the recoil to minimize bruising and switches to a semi-automatic Ruger when he's comfortable with how she handles a shotgun. Dean teaches with efficiency that doesn't seem patronizing, with a smile and praise and apparent pleasure.
Dean reminds Sam so much of Dad that by the time they leave to pick Jack up from school, he's exchanged moods with Dean. Dean is all easy smiles and cracks about Becky's hair; Sam feels like nothing is ever going to be good enough, that happiness is for people not named Sam Winchester. He had to trade Dad for Jack, and that is wrong on a fundamental level.
"Who peed in your cornflakes?" Dean slaps Sam across the chest with the back of his hand. "Cheer up, it's a special day, McDonalds for supper."
Sam does laugh at that. After eating hamburgers and fries their entire life, Dean won't hardly even let ground beef in the house anymore, and fuck if you want something fried.
"Mickey D's? Really? You are such a pussy, Dean." Sam laughs and Becky answers it.
Dean's face crumples into the faux-wounded one, mouth dimple and squinting eyes. "It's a treat."
The funniest part? He's totally serious. Sam's black mood breaks up around the ridiculousness that is his brother.
*
Jack looks so much like Sam that people almost always think he's his dad. When that happens, sometimes, just sometimes, Sam wishes he was. Wishes maybe for a lot of things he's never gonna have, never has had. He doesn't pine for "normal" anymore, but the ghost of the want still lingers. Sam knows you can't kill all the ghosts in the world, just too many of them.
Sam picks up Jack from school in his Honda Accord and takes him to Little League when Dean's working late and he feels like he's watching Jack's life through fits and starts because he's gone so much.
"How do you shoot a gun?" Jack asks with the sort of uncanny directness he has. He's six and tall for his age. He has changeable green eyes and freckles and dark brown hair that flies around his head in cowlicks.
"You know what your dad said."
Dean and Sam have been having this fight for six years now. Which is not nearly their longest on-going fight, but it might be the most intense.
Dean says no like he's Moses on high, and Sam whisper-shouts and name-calls and goes for the jugular. This is what dad would have wanted. Sam thinks that if acting like an asshole and hurting Dean's feelings keeps Jack alive the look on Dean's face when Sam says things like that will be worth it.
"So?" Jack says like Sam's mentally deficient. "He also says that computers run by gerbils on little wheels. Duh."
"Who says they aren't?" Dean strolls in, big grin on his face, and Jack forebears the manhandling as Dean kisses and hugs all over him.
*
A few months after that, Becky's about to defend her dissertation and Sam's in Fort Wayne, New Jersey when his phone rings.
"Yeah."
"Becky's 'bout to finish school." Dean's been drinking; Sam can hear it in the slippery vowels.
"Yup." Sam already knows where this is going.
"She's the only mom that Jack's ever had, Sammy, please." Sam wasn't expecting Dean to take it there so fast. Dean doesn't say family always comes first or I'd marry her myself if she'd be willing but Sam can hear Dean's voice in his head saying them.
"She won't marry me, Dean. You think I haven't asked?" Because he's wandered around that one for years now. Sam knew a long time before Dean started realizing it that Jack's concept of mother begins and ends with Becky, and that's a whole other layer of Sam's self-loathing, because Becky deserves a lot more than to be tied down to the Winchester family because she accidentally answered the wrong ad.
He gets violently ill sometimes thinking about something happening to Becky, and he knows she should be as far away from Sam as she can get.
"What if she moves, Sammy?" Dean's broke down and scared. He gets like that when the weight of all the worry and all the desperate love just gets too much to cover up anymore.
"I'll ask her, ok? It's gonna be ok, Dean. She loves Jack."
"I know that. That's why I could fucking shoot myself that I let you have her." And that pretty much sums up why Dean can't maintain any kind of relationship right there. Jack comes first, then Sam, then Becky, then cars, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for someone for Dean. Except that Sam's wondered more than once about those two and what goes on when he's not around. Sam's not the jealous type, and he'd do pretty much anything to keep Dean happy anyway. What makes Dean happy makes Sam happy, for the most part.
"Maybe you should ask her." Sam smiles into the phone.
"I already did, you dumbass, she laughed in my face."
Sam starts laughing.
"She's smarter than I thought." Sam can see the scene in his mind. "I'll ask, but, honestly, Dean any woman would be fucking signing her own death warrent to get that involved with one of us."
The other end of the line is dead silence. Sam still says things he shouldn't, and Dean still shuts down and pretends shit away unless directly confronted.
Of course, the next week when he gets home, Becky laughs in Sam's face, too.
*
Three weeks short of Jack's seventh birthday, Sam watches him screw his face up with his mouth pursed like his daddy, and eyebrows together like Sam's seen in many photographs of himself. Sam watches Jack looking at a crayon laying on the kitchen table out of reach. Sam watches the crayon fly into Jack's hand.
"So, you been able to do that long?" Sam asks conversationally around his Coke.
Jack shrugs, smiles a little in that yeah-check-it-out way that Sam's been annoyed by all his life. "Awhile."
Sam snatches Jack's coloring book away with his inner whatever, that something that he can use without really thinking about it anymore. Like breathing or walking. Jack looks up at him with wide, shocked eyes, then laughs with his whole body. He pounds the table and rolls his head around and just laughs. Sam laughs in return.
*
Dean and Sam trade off taking cases after that. Sometimes they even go out together again, leaving Jack with Becky. Sometimes Becky goes with Sam or Dean.
When Jack turns ten, he goes on his first hunt and explodes a vampire with his mind. Sam's never been more proud or more conflicted in his life, and he sees the same exact feelings cross Dean's open face.
~
Now, I know you were sitting there going "where is the GAY?" This is what I have to say about that: YOU figure out a way to negotiate around Dean having a baby and the fact of Jessica and make them gay. They refused to be gay for each other. It's harder when you introduce a kid, because then it really becomes a whole lot WORSE for them to be all, you know, like that, because it impacts more than them.
That being said, I think the next fic might be even more cracked out.
Beta by Brenda, crack by all the people who commented on the things I said about "Something Wicked".
Family Comes First
"Are you joking?" Sam eyes Dean with his eyebrows drawn together and a sigh close to the edge of his lips.
Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, Dean can still trick him with a deadpan like this. Dean looks up at him, his mouth dimpled at the side. So, not kidding. "I'd say get a blood test, dude."
"I can't believe my life has come to this, Sammy. Am I really the kind of guy who asks for a paternity test?" Dean's saying a whole lot more, about family and the road and Dad, but Sam just answers the surface question.
"She's a fucking bitch, Dean, I wouldn't put anything past her." Sam has no time for people who even look at Dean sideways with intent, much less some fucking random-ass backwoods witch who tore Dean's heart out and all but ate it in front of his face.
"What are we gonna do if it's mine?" Dean's voice drops, his work voice, the voice Sam hears in his dreams.
"Whatever we have to, just like always." Sam answers back with the lowdown timbre that scares men with knives and sends dogs running the other direction.
*
Naturally, because that's the way shit works, the kid's Dean's. Fortunately, Chantal doesn't want it. Fortunately for her continued existence on the planet, because Dean was sure as hell not going to leave his baby with her, and Sam sure as shit was going to do whatever he thinks Dean needs him to. That means kill. It also means figuring out how to work a car seat.
"This sucks, Dean." The backseat of the Impala was not made for children or the gear that goes along with them.
Sam looks up, and Dean's framed by moss-hung, ancient oaks, the late afternoon Louisiana sun licking pink and orange through the branches. He has the baby's head tucked under his chin and is whispering softly, maybe singing a little. Sam stands up all the way and sees the way Dean's face is relaxed, calm, the lines by his eyes promising a smile soon. Sweat runs down his spine and down the backs of his legs, and Sam watches Dean become the person he was always meant to be.
He leans back into the car and cusses the car seat into submission.
Dean straps the baby in with more care than he's ever taken for anything besides the Impala.
"So, John?" Sam asks. That's what Chantal named the baby, and she said it with a knowing look and saucy jut of her hip. Sam knows she's got a bit of the shine, for real, seen it in her from time to time. He recognizes that sort of thing in other people, naturally.
"Somehow I don't think she was taking my feelings into consideration on that one." Dean scowls. Dean scowls a lot, so Sam doesn't feel the need to remark. "Winding me up or something."
"There's always the possibility she knows something we don't." Sam knows it's stupid to pretend that isn't true, even if it is Chantal--the only person alive Sam would honestly say he hates. He usually reserves his directed emotions for positive ones because he's got enough bad in his life without creating it himself.
"Yeah, well, we're calling him Jack."
Sam almost says like, duh, but he bites it back.
Jack is six weeks old. Dad's been dead four years, three months, and six days.
*
Sam floats the idea of feeding Jack organic food by Dean.
"What, you mean it's grown without chemicals and stuff, like so it won't have bug spray or anything, even a little?" Dean tilts his head and wipes his hands on the dishrag hanging over his shoulder.
Sam smoothes his hand over Jack's tiny back in a circular pattern.
"Yeah, that's what I mean." Sam smiles when he sees Dean's brain click and whirl with finality.
"Well, shit, he's not ever gonna eat anything else, then!"
*
"I'm going to Tempe to check out that disturbance." Sam pulls out Dad's journal and flips through the well-worn pages.
This is how it starts.
Dean dangles his keys in front of Jack and purses his mouth.
"I'm not taking Jack anywhere near that kind of thing." Jack gets a hold of the leather strap on the keyring and jambs it into his mouth before Dean can snatch it away. "Aww, nah, come on Jay-Jay, that's nasty." He negotiates getting the stained leather out of the baby's mouth. Jack laughs and burbles and kicks his feet in glee, and Dean starts laughing, too, loud and uninhibited.
Sam smiles. "Nah, man, of course not. I'll handle it on my own."
Dean meets his eyes with a huge grin on his face. Sam suddenly feels too full, like he needs to cry or scream to let out how much he feels, like steam out of kettle.
*
When Jack is eighteen months old, Sam dreams about him while laying in a motel room in Boise. His dream flashes from Jack to Chantal. Sam wakes up sweating and gritting his teeth. He wonders if Chantal really thought that by giving Jack to Dean she could save herself.
Sam hates her, but he pities her, because he's known a long time that there are some things no one can save themselves from.
He thinks about not telling Dean. He then thinks about what will happen if Pastor Jim or Betsy or someone drops that bomb in Dean's lap. Sam balances which would be worse on Dean. The lying one, probably.
Sam calls Dean at three in the morning.
"Sammy? You hurt?" Dean sleeps with the phone in the bed with him when Sam's away. The phone and Jack and the knife under his pillow.
"It's gonna get Chantal. Burn her."
Dean's silent for a long stretch.
"Dean? You still there?" Sam knows he is, though, can hear Dean breathing. He knows Dean's probably reaching out and touching Jack's light brown hair.
"That's why she gave him up, to save herself." Dean's washed out, tired and raw in the face of another betrayal. He has an endless capacity to get hurt all over again. He's never grown any calluses over his heart, and Sam hates Chantal again. Should have let that bitch burn.
"You want to come with me?"
"Yeah." Dean's voice is tight. He's putting up the rage screen, trying to push down on the little boy goodness that gets him into things like this in the first place.
They don't make it in time. Sam had known that'd be the case all along. He had to give Dean the illusion of free will.
Some things are inescapable. Sam doesn't believe in fate, but he knows that they're fucking cursed. That's as clear as Dean's freckles or Jack's laughter.
*
When Jack is two and a half, Dean moves the family a little outside of Tulsa. That's how they do things now-Dean makes all the big decisions and Sam grouses but never really puts up any resistance. Dean is the head of the family in a way that probably should have happened when Dad died, but only actually did when Jack came along.
Dean gets an honest to god job, granted as a mechanic with some local stock car racer, so it's hardly work for him.
Oklahoma's in the middle of the country, so Sam can come and go in all directions. But Sam knows Dean picked it because Sam went to high school in Norman, and they both have some almost normal memories about the region.
One afternoon in July, Sam kicks open the front door of the house Dean's renting to own and hollers "Dean!" He shuffles his duffle off his shoulder and hold his wallet in his teeth as he fishes in his pocket for the candy he's brought Jack.
"Excuse me, but what are you doing in here?" A pretty girl with black hair and olive skin stands in the kitchen doorway with her hands on her hips glaring bloody murder at Sam.
"I live here, what's your excuse?" He's exhausted and he's been peeing blood from the kick to the kidney he took from the horse of the ghost rider he just put down.
The girl's hands drop off her hips. "Oh, I'm supposed to ask you a password question thing to make sure you're you." She lifts an eyebrow like Dean had been a real pain in the ass about that. Sam smiles.
"Shoot." He retrieves the bag of gummis from his pocket.
"Why do you suck so much?" The girl says with a bored tone.
"What?" Sam almost laughs.
"That's the question. 'Why do you suck so much?'" She makes a little waving motion to indicate Sam needs to move it along.
"Oh, for the love of God, Dean, I hate you." Sam rolls his eyes and clutches the gummis. He just wants to see Jack, get something to eat, and lay down.
"Ok, you must be Sam. Man, that's weird. He predicted what you'd say word for word. Huh. Y'all don't look like brothers." She smiles at him, and Sam feels his shoulders loosen. Really damned pretty.
"We get that a lot. What do I get to call you?" She turns in the doorway and starts to walk away.
"Anything you wanna, but my name's Becky."
Sam laughs and follows Becky into the living room. Jack toddles up to him with his arms out making grabby hands. Sam scoops him up and flings him around a little. Jack screams with joy and Becky settles on the couch, muting the video on the television. She's got some kind of school book open face down on the arm of the couch and a pencil in her hair. Sam kisses all over Jack's face as he kicks and grabs and laughs. Sam laughs in return.
"I don't know why y'all can't keep a sitter. I'd prob'ly pay y'all to come over here and watch you with that baby." Becky's smiling big and bright when Sam looks at her over Jack's head.
"Dean's special, that's why."
"SAMMY!" Jack squeals and Sam sets him down and lays down on his back so Jack can go through his pockets or pat him or roll around or whatever he wants to do.
"Uh huh. Sure thing." Becky makes no move to leave, and Sam has no idea how much they owe her, or even if he has any cash. He watches her working out some kind of table in her notebook, pencil flying and eyes tracking the page. She's wearing a t-shirt with a scowling pirate on it and loose jeans. Barefoot with bright purple toenails.
"Wanna stick around for a beer?" Sam's not Dean, but he doesn't get turned down all that much all the same, and he needs to stall until Dean comes home to pay the girl.
Becky throws her head back and starts laughing this deep, gorgeous laugh, and Jack scuttles away from Sam to run over to her, big smile on his face and grabby hands all over her.
"BECK!" Jack shouts. "JUICE!"
"Dean told me you're a real lady killer." Becky keeps laughing as she sets her book aside and grabs Jack.
Sam groans. "Oh, great."
"Don't worry, I've got that one's number." She winks. "Sure, I'll have a beer with you, but you oughta take a shower first, because you've got blood all over the side of your neck."
Sam reaches up and touches dried blood. He stares at her, waiting for her to comment further, but she just stares right back and doesn't say anything else.
Sam gets up and takes a shower, all the while wondering what's going on with Becky, if maybe it's more than he'd thought at first-another pretty sitter who Dean will piss off or fuck that will be replaced with another pretty sitter, wash, rinse, repeat.
They have a beer, and Becky explains how she thinks magic is just another branch of physics that people can't explain yet. She's some kind of local native, he gleans in sideways way through random comments she makes. She's in graduate school. Sam forgets to ask her how the fuck she met Dean's sad ass.
This time, it's Sam who fucks the sitter.
*
When Jack's four, Sam's gone more than he's not. When he's back, he spends his days listening to Dean go on and on more than ever about cars, which is pretty much Sam's idea of hell, or talking about theoretical and practical magic with Becky or teaching Jack his multiplication tables and how to speak Spanish and what a werebeast is and how you kill one.
Becky moves around Dean's kitchen putting up groceries and updating Sam on Dean's latest antics.
"I don't even know where he finds them. There must be some kind of Skank-Mart with aisles and aisles of skeazy women just waitin' on a guy like Dean to come along and unwrap the cellophane." Becky puts the milk in the door of the fridge and pops several containers of leftovers onto the counter.
"HEY!" Dean scowls and rubs his chin with his permanently stained hands. "Not in front of the b-a-b-y."
Jack looks at Dean like his head just fell off. "Daddy, I'm not a baby, I'm a big boy."
Dean smiles at Jack like he just produced the cure for cancer. "That's right, you are, the smartest big boy ever."
Sam and Jack roll their eyes and Becky makes a gagging noise.
Later, when Jack's asleep and they've had a few beers, Sam lets Dean check the bandage on his back and whispers to Becky and Dean about claws and teeth and pure evil. Later still, Becky laughs in his ear and bites him and gives him just a little oblivion. She's not Jess, and she's not innocent, and she probably deserves a lot better than Sam. He's not a good enough person to let her have a happier life with someone else, though; he's never been very good at letting people go.
Sam waits on the dream of Becky on the ceiling.
*
When Jack starts kindergarten, Dean actually cries. Sam laughs so hard he thinks he's broken something vital. Becky kicks Sam in the ass with her sandal when he doubles over, and Dean jumps on his back as the school bus rounds the corner.
It's only a half-day of school, and Dean takes the day off, is barely containable that morning. He doesn't have to be convinced to head out into the fields Sam uses for target practice. The shotgun slides into Dean's hand just like always. Sam watches him hitting can after bottle after beanbag Becky tosses into the air like white trash skeet. Dean's got grey in his hair and in his stubble, the lines around his eyes are deeper, but the grim concentration is the same as he shoots, and the blistering smile when he hits every target is exactly the same, too.
"You know how to handle a gun?" Dean turns to Becky. Dean in ratty old jeans and Becky in cut-offs and a Math Club t-shirt.
"You're kidding, right?" She makes the you're-so-dumb face that always makes Dean laugh. Like now. Dean laughs the belly rumbling chain of mirth that automatically yanks a smile from Sam.
She's not the best shot ever, but she can work a gun and learns fast when Dean gives professional pointers patiently. He demonstrates how to take the recoil to minimize bruising and switches to a semi-automatic Ruger when he's comfortable with how she handles a shotgun. Dean teaches with efficiency that doesn't seem patronizing, with a smile and praise and apparent pleasure.
Dean reminds Sam so much of Dad that by the time they leave to pick Jack up from school, he's exchanged moods with Dean. Dean is all easy smiles and cracks about Becky's hair; Sam feels like nothing is ever going to be good enough, that happiness is for people not named Sam Winchester. He had to trade Dad for Jack, and that is wrong on a fundamental level.
"Who peed in your cornflakes?" Dean slaps Sam across the chest with the back of his hand. "Cheer up, it's a special day, McDonalds for supper."
Sam does laugh at that. After eating hamburgers and fries their entire life, Dean won't hardly even let ground beef in the house anymore, and fuck if you want something fried.
"Mickey D's? Really? You are such a pussy, Dean." Sam laughs and Becky answers it.
Dean's face crumples into the faux-wounded one, mouth dimple and squinting eyes. "It's a treat."
The funniest part? He's totally serious. Sam's black mood breaks up around the ridiculousness that is his brother.
*
Jack looks so much like Sam that people almost always think he's his dad. When that happens, sometimes, just sometimes, Sam wishes he was. Wishes maybe for a lot of things he's never gonna have, never has had. He doesn't pine for "normal" anymore, but the ghost of the want still lingers. Sam knows you can't kill all the ghosts in the world, just too many of them.
Sam picks up Jack from school in his Honda Accord and takes him to Little League when Dean's working late and he feels like he's watching Jack's life through fits and starts because he's gone so much.
"How do you shoot a gun?" Jack asks with the sort of uncanny directness he has. He's six and tall for his age. He has changeable green eyes and freckles and dark brown hair that flies around his head in cowlicks.
"You know what your dad said."
Dean and Sam have been having this fight for six years now. Which is not nearly their longest on-going fight, but it might be the most intense.
Dean says no like he's Moses on high, and Sam whisper-shouts and name-calls and goes for the jugular. This is what dad would have wanted. Sam thinks that if acting like an asshole and hurting Dean's feelings keeps Jack alive the look on Dean's face when Sam says things like that will be worth it.
"So?" Jack says like Sam's mentally deficient. "He also says that computers run by gerbils on little wheels. Duh."
"Who says they aren't?" Dean strolls in, big grin on his face, and Jack forebears the manhandling as Dean kisses and hugs all over him.
*
A few months after that, Becky's about to defend her dissertation and Sam's in Fort Wayne, New Jersey when his phone rings.
"Yeah."
"Becky's 'bout to finish school." Dean's been drinking; Sam can hear it in the slippery vowels.
"Yup." Sam already knows where this is going.
"She's the only mom that Jack's ever had, Sammy, please." Sam wasn't expecting Dean to take it there so fast. Dean doesn't say family always comes first or I'd marry her myself if she'd be willing but Sam can hear Dean's voice in his head saying them.
"She won't marry me, Dean. You think I haven't asked?" Because he's wandered around that one for years now. Sam knew a long time before Dean started realizing it that Jack's concept of mother begins and ends with Becky, and that's a whole other layer of Sam's self-loathing, because Becky deserves a lot more than to be tied down to the Winchester family because she accidentally answered the wrong ad.
He gets violently ill sometimes thinking about something happening to Becky, and he knows she should be as far away from Sam as she can get.
"What if she moves, Sammy?" Dean's broke down and scared. He gets like that when the weight of all the worry and all the desperate love just gets too much to cover up anymore.
"I'll ask her, ok? It's gonna be ok, Dean. She loves Jack."
"I know that. That's why I could fucking shoot myself that I let you have her." And that pretty much sums up why Dean can't maintain any kind of relationship right there. Jack comes first, then Sam, then Becky, then cars, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for someone for Dean. Except that Sam's wondered more than once about those two and what goes on when he's not around. Sam's not the jealous type, and he'd do pretty much anything to keep Dean happy anyway. What makes Dean happy makes Sam happy, for the most part.
"Maybe you should ask her." Sam smiles into the phone.
"I already did, you dumbass, she laughed in my face."
Sam starts laughing.
"She's smarter than I thought." Sam can see the scene in his mind. "I'll ask, but, honestly, Dean any woman would be fucking signing her own death warrent to get that involved with one of us."
The other end of the line is dead silence. Sam still says things he shouldn't, and Dean still shuts down and pretends shit away unless directly confronted.
Of course, the next week when he gets home, Becky laughs in Sam's face, too.
*
Three weeks short of Jack's seventh birthday, Sam watches him screw his face up with his mouth pursed like his daddy, and eyebrows together like Sam's seen in many photographs of himself. Sam watches Jack looking at a crayon laying on the kitchen table out of reach. Sam watches the crayon fly into Jack's hand.
"So, you been able to do that long?" Sam asks conversationally around his Coke.
Jack shrugs, smiles a little in that yeah-check-it-out way that Sam's been annoyed by all his life. "Awhile."
Sam snatches Jack's coloring book away with his inner whatever, that something that he can use without really thinking about it anymore. Like breathing or walking. Jack looks up at him with wide, shocked eyes, then laughs with his whole body. He pounds the table and rolls his head around and just laughs. Sam laughs in return.
*
Dean and Sam trade off taking cases after that. Sometimes they even go out together again, leaving Jack with Becky. Sometimes Becky goes with Sam or Dean.
When Jack turns ten, he goes on his first hunt and explodes a vampire with his mind. Sam's never been more proud or more conflicted in his life, and he sees the same exact feelings cross Dean's open face.
~
Now, I know you were sitting there going "where is the GAY?" This is what I have to say about that: YOU figure out a way to negotiate around Dean having a baby and the fact of Jessica and make them gay. They refused to be gay for each other. It's harder when you introduce a kid, because then it really becomes a whole lot WORSE for them to be all, you know, like that, because it impacts more than them.