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A while ago, I wrote this: Family Comes First and after I did, I made the stupid, stupid mistake of saying that I would write a mirroring story that was the sort of, hm, answer back to it. A companion story. A different kind of story around the same theme. monkiedude has mentioned that every chance she's gotten. I wrote her the butt-fucking story, so why not this?
Beta by Allie and audiencing by Annalazarus.
Holy Family
Sam’s idea of family is wrapped up in two dead parents and Dean. He’s never had to adjust that, never had to…well, there was Once Upon a Time and a pretty princess who seems even deader now than the two parents. Sam's no fairy tale prince and he’s only ever been able to save one person. Just one person over and over and over again. Sometimes he pretends he’s saving other people, victims and the innocent, whatever that means. Really, he’s only ever saving Dean.
“Sam, you have to do the right thing here.” Dean’s voice is low, Dad’s voice.
“Tell me what the right thing is, Dean. Is the right thing dragging a kid into this maelstrom of blood and evil and violence or is the right thing letting her go to a family who’s been waiting for a child for years and who would love and cherish her?” Sam means all that. He honestly believes this child could do so much better than Sam.
But Dean’s standing there with his hard mouth in the early afternoon light, backlit like some kind of goddamned middle-American angel, and Sam can even imagine creamy gold feathers flexing against Dean’s back in outrage. Dean presses the baby’s face against his cheek and glares bloody murder at Sam. Sam honestly believes this child could do so much better than Sam, but no way in six hells could she do better than Dean.
Sam relents the same way he always does (when he does) by throwing his hands up in the air (literally) and letting go and letting god (figuratively, because Sam only believes in the bad gods now and doesn’t particularly like to give them much).
*
The first argument is over the name.
“Mary,” Dean says predictably.
“No,” Sam drives because he doesn’t want to hold the baby even as far as the Wal-Mart to buy a car seat. He doesn’t know if it’s from the low-buzz of fury directed at Dean or because Dean and the baby keep staring at each other. Sam watches them out of the corner of his eye as he drives. Dean’s hazel eyes staring right into huge baby hazel eyes. They blink together and keep on staring. “That’s creepy.”
Dean breaks eye contact silhouetted by a Sonic sign. “What?” The baby makes a fussy gurbling noise and Dean’s eyes immediately snap back to her face. She silences. They stare.
Sam rubs his forehead. He wonders why he never thought of this, of the fact that Dean’s been a parent for a long time, a childless parent since Sam first went to college. It’s all fucking tragic, just one more facet of martyrdom for St. Dean. Sam didn’t even mean that in a sarcastic way anymore, which is where the real, deep-down tragedy lies.
“Nothing.” Sam pulls into a Target parking lot and pops the car into park. “You should name her, but not Mary.”
Dean makes his dismissive grunt. He’s not paying attention to Sam at all. His focus has shifted. Sam feels weird. Maybe jealous. He’s not really in-touch with his feelings anymore, though, so he doesn’t bother to parse it.
*
Sam stands in the baby isle of Target and runs his hands through his hair. He rubs his chin and sighs. He’s at a loss. He walks back out to the car where Dean is leaning against the passenger door with the baby in the crook of his arm pointing to a passing seagull overhead and murmuring.
“I think you should come inside. You’d know better than me what to get.” This is not strictly true. Sam could figure it out, but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to get too invested in this because he isn’t sure how he feels about this. In their division of labor, Sam is not the care-giver. He doesn’t know how to be, but more importantly, he doesn’t need to be that person because Dean already is.
Dean squints up to at him and presses his mouth back together. He looks through Sam like God, replaying Sam’s life over his head like Judgment Day. All he says as he steps away from the car, shifting the baby to rest on his chest is “Layla?”
Sam laughs a sharp bark, one note. “Yeah, that’s about perfect.”
Lailah, the angel of conception. Perfect.
*
Sam’s standing barefoot on cool, slick bathroom tiles listening to the whine of the window unit air conditioner when the shell shock wears off a bit. He realizes Dean’s in the other room with a baby settled against his side watching Spanish-language t.v. in hopes “something will sink in. never too early.” Not a baby, Sam’s baby. Just fucking great.
Sam knows his fatal error was involving Dean. If he could have just kept his fucking mouth shut…but Sam doesn’t remember how to keep secrets from Dean anymore. Secrets mean death and demonic possession and arterial spray and deals with the devil.
Sam had said “fuck me blind!” and Dean had looked up from the laptop with his eyebrows raised. “You remember Susan?” Sam had said and Dean had smiled wide, baring teeth. “Some adoption agency just called because she’s putting up a baby…” and Dean had shot to his feet. “Sammy?” Sam remembers the smell of chili from Wendy’s and the sarcastic tones of John Stewart on the television. But mainly, he remembers the look of unguarded happiness on Dean’s face. Beatific radiance. Sam’s biggest flaw now is never being able to tell Dean no. Sam spent a lot of years only ever saying no. He’s been breaking his neck trying to make up for that. He knows it’ll never happen. He sort of sees the baby as a trade off, like Abraham, he’ll give Dean his only child in exchange for his trust.
*
Ellen is there when Dean calls her. Sam and Ellen aren’t on what one would call the best of terms, but it’s a baby and Dean’s still the most charming thing for six states around when he wants to be. Ellen doesn’t buy what Dean’s selling, but for Layla’s sake she pretends to. Sort of. Mostly, Sam ignores Ellen.
Ellen holds Layla up in the daylight and takes in her pug nose and wisps of curly dark hair and hazel eyes. “Yup, this one’s a Winchester for sure.” She doesn’t sound exactly pleased by that, but Dean’s smiling like he just invented air and Sam’s itching to get out of Dodge.
Layla makes a displeased sound and Dean’s right there, gently grabbing the baby away from Ellen who watches with wide eyes for a second before she locks down again.
“Looking for a job?” She turns to Sam. Ellen’s quick. She’s also probably testing him to see how big of a jackass he is.
“Yup.” Sam’s the biggest jackass in the county. He can’t explain to Ellen how he feels about this, though. There’s no one he can explain it to, because what words are there for it? Displaced? Replaced? Stupid? Unsavory? Incestuous? Mortal Sin?
Dean frowns but doesn’t say anything. He wouldn’t, not with Ellen here, maybe not in front of Layla. How weird Dean’s gonna be about the baby hasn’t been settled in the three hotel rooms and car ride from Augusta.
“Kevin McKidd’s been tryin’ to rent his place over by Jefferson Creek for a while. Probably cut you a deal on the rent.” Ellen uses her most withering mom-face on Sam, but Sam’s immune to mom-face, never having been confronted with it. Dean’s the one with mommy issues and he’s already beginning to look nervous.
“Uh,” Dean fills the empty space of Harvelle’s parking lot.
“We were looking more over in Council Bluffs.” Sam runs a hand through his hair and watches a mid-70’s Chevy truck rattle past them. No one has to mention the junction between I-29 and I-80.
“Know a guy in Bellevue, too,” Ellen says.
*
The guy in Bellevue, strangely enough, is in the Air Force.
Major Robert Moore is a tall guy with a red brush cut and a sarcastic smile. His eyes latch on Dean and Layla and slide over Sam. He knows who they are, Ellen had told them he would.
“John was a hard man,” that’s all he says as he unlocks the old, brick Craftsman’s front door and waves them inside. He waits on the porch as Dean moves from room to room, stupid-ass baby-snuggler thing looped over his chest and Sam stands in the kitchen looking out through the window over the sink watching the birds in the backyard. It’s a straight-shot from the porch to the kitchen sink and Sam feels Major Moore’s eyes on him. The gaze isn’t prickly, just heavy. Sam’s tired of too-knowing eyes and father-figure censure.
He turns and looks Major Moore in the eye from the distance of two very different lifetimes (Sam assumes) and the dimness of the unlit living room as they both stand in bubbles of bright daylight. “How much?”
Major Moore looks right back and there’s something there, the way he blinks slowly and his mouth compresses that makes Sam rethink his first assumptions about this man. “I’m shipping out to Iran.” So, no money then, just payment in duty done on both sides.
“Chaplain?” Sam turns around fully and stuffs his hands in his pockets. He realizes now that’s what he sees hanging around this guy, the Lord.
Major Moore smiles and his eyes crease on the outside corners. “Some call me that, sure.”
Deeper then. That’s fine. Some could probably call Sam a chaplain too, in another life, maybe it fits Dean better with his milagros and holy water and naming babies after angels.
“Okay, then.” Sam says listening for Dean who’s down the hallway murmuring to the baby. “We’re gonna reward, you know.”
Major Moore laughs rumbly and very much like a man who doesn’t fight the forces of darkness and men with guns who want to shoot him in the face. “I’d lose respect for you if you didn’t.”
*
Major Moore doesn’t have a church, but he has parishioners, people he’s saved, people he’s changed.
A dark-skinned girl with ringlet curls in overalls and untied tennis shoes shows up the evening of their first night in the house and knocks on the screen door. Sam’s standing right there when she walks up the steps and was crossing the empty living room to the door when she knocked. Children are very strange.
She blows a huge, pink bubble as he swings the metal framed door open. “Can I help you?”
The bubble snaps apart and collapses all over the girl’s face. She pulls it away with dirty fingernails. “Got some stuff for you.” She turns around and prances off, maybe dancing, Sam’s not sure. He looks behind him at Dean who’s jiggling the baby on his shoulder smiling.
“Funny kid,” Dean says with a laugh.
The “stuff” turns out to be a Queen Anne chair and sofa.
“Creepy,” Dean says.
“Probably cursed,” Sam replies.
The baby reaches for Sam’s hair.
“Probably should cut that mop before she gets enough muscles to make the yanking count.” Dean kisses the side of her face. She coos in reply. Sam rolls his eyes.
There’re also two queen-sized beds, an antique crib, and odds and ends-lamps, end tables, a dresser and matching hutch.
Major Moore isn’t with the stuff. One of his parishioners is-a black guy about Dean’s age with a big scar on the side of his face and an easy laugh.
“I’m Augustus,” the guys says. “Met you daddy couple times. Y’all look like him, weird since you don’t look alike.”
Sam shakes his hand and helps him move the furniture. Dean covers the baby’s face in case some kind of infectious dust might get on her. Dean’s ludicrous.
Sam and Augustus carry the furniture. Dean and the strange girl (Janey) and the baby watch.
Augustus doesn’t say how he got his scar or why he’s here with a little girl who doesn’t look like she’s his. Sam doesn’t ask questions like that.
They drink iced tea the neighbor, Tiffany, brings over and eat bologna sandwiches. Augustus tells them about the good spirits that live in the river like it’s a fable. Sam’s glad they chose Bellevue when he’s done.
Later that night, Sam’s sprawled on the cursed couch with his hand over his eyes, exhausted. His skin’s so dry he wants to climb into a bathtub full of oil. He listens to Dean’s socked feet shushing over the old, scarred wooden floor and doesn’t even twitch when Dean lifts his leg and sits next to him, replacing Sam’s leg on his lap.
“Sam?” Dean whispers and leans his side along Sam’s. “Sam?” He lifts Sam’s hair away from the side of his face.
Sam doesn’t move his hand, afraid that if he does, Dean’ll be there with the baby in his lap. Dean’s hand drops to Sam’s belly, low, and a broken fingernail catches on the skin exposed where Sam’s shirt rides up.
“Sam?” Dean breathes into Sam’s ear, tongue following to touch a ridge, the lobe. Sam keeps his eyes tightly shut as Dean drags his stubble against Sam’s own, the hairs catching and falling together like the call and response of a litany.
“Dean,” Sam finally answers against Dean’s mouth, chapped lips on both sides of the kiss. Dean's hand slides under the loose fly of Sam's jeans and Sam doesn't remember the baby for a while between cracked fingertips and Dean's earnest tongue.
*
Sam only really gets jealous of Layla once they begin to settle into the house that might be a home, Sam doesn’t know because he’s not really conversant on what home means beyond the worn seats of the Impala and the elfin curves of Dean’s ears.
Dean only leaves Sam with the baby when he has no other choice-like when he goes on his job interview at Lockheed Martin.
“It’s better to heat the bottles in the water on the stove. I don’t trust-“
Sam cuts him off. “Yeah, I know magical radiation poisoning from the microwave. Heard you the first seven hundred times!”
Dean looks at Layla in her bassinette with her hands curled around the afghan Tiffany had tucked around her the first time she popped around “to see how they are settling in”--tiny digits holding fast to Technicolor purple and yellow yarn in her sleep. Sam feels weird. He can’t say he loves this child. He doesn’t know how he feels-protective, worried, resigned. It’s the same way he feels about the civilians who raise the dead or get cursed.
“Just don’t drop her, ok?” Dean says it in all seriousness. Sam can’t help laughing.
“Like I’m going to pick her up unless she cries!” Sam is sort of joking. Maybe. The look on Dean’s face could petrify a ghost.
“Maybe I shouldn’t…” Dean starts, one foot set in a trajectory back towards the sleeping baby.
“No, Dean, it’s fine. Really. I can handle it.”
Dean purses his lips and points at him. “Just be careful, ok, Sammy?” He’s pleading and it’s instinctual for Sam to frown at the childish nickname and squint at Dean like he’s pissed, but inside a part of him that needs Dean’s approval rings loud and joyous at the reminder that Sam came first.
“Yeah, ok.” Sam tips his head towards the door and Dean turns and grabs his coat. At the door, Dean pauses and looks over his shoulder with a smile.
“She’s beautiful, huh?”
Sam looks down at the baby and just sees a baby. They all look pretty much the same. “Yeah, Dean, she’s beautiful.”
*
Major Moore forwards his contacts to Sam. The first case Sam takes is a poltergeist in Papillion. Dean stands in the kitchen with Layla in his arms, barefoot in a red plaid shirt and jeans so ratty they’re held together with a safety pin.
“Tiffany would look after her if you need me.” Dean rubs circles on Layla’s back and she pats him on the face with her hand splayed open. Pat, pat, pat, trying to get him to look at her.
“No, it’s just a poltergeist. Don’t worry about it.” Dean looks exhausted, circles under his eyes and two-days’ growth of beard. “Go lay down with the baby.”
“You can use her name every once in a while,” Dean grumbles and turns away from him to test the water in the sink for the baby’s bath.
“Whatever,” Sam replies. It’s exactly what he thinks whatever.
*
Sam stumbles back into the house smelling like cordite and copper. Dean’s sitting on the weird, old Victorian couch in the corner of the living room with the tv on and the lights off. Shadows and brighter light scroll across his face, and Dean puts a finger against his lips. Sam sets his bag on the floor without a sound and crosses the room to sit next to Dean. Harvey Birdman is even more nonsensical without the sound.
The baby’s in her basket next to Dean’s knee. Sam doesn’t look to see if she’s awake or not. She’s quiet, that’s good enough. Dean leans over and pushes Sam’s hair away from the back of his neck where he has four claw or fingernail gouges. The wounds have clotted up already. He wiped them off with a Taco Bell napkin soaked in holy water. Sam lets Dean turn his head this way and that to inspect the cut by his left eye and the bruise along his jawline. This is Sam’s time to decompress-Dean’s no-nonsense field medic-ing and his eyes firmly on Sam and nothing else.
Sam accidentally smiles. He knows he’s done it as soon as Dean turns his head sharply so their eyes can meet. Dean holds Sam’s chin with a sharp thumb dug into the bone spur on the right side where Sam’d been clocked with a lead pipe years ago.
Dean holds his gaze, and Sam feels that horrible laying-bare, like Dean can see every sin he’s ever committed stretching back to the very first lie of omission, every theft and death and wrong thought. Dean’s face fixes, his “don’t fuck with me” face, his work face, the face he wore after Dad died around the clock.
Dean leans down and presses their mouths together hard. He holds them together like that, bruising Sam’s lips and jaw, without moving.
When he pulls away, he’s still wearing the same expression. “Okay?” he mouths. “Get it?” he mouths.
Sam looks down at Layla whose eyes are wide open and staring right back. Dean stares at Sam with the same eyes. Three pairs of identical eyes make a loop, a circuit, a trinity. Sam wonders if three is their destiny; three is a sacred number.
~amen
Ah, remember, I said I couldn't make the other story Wincest? I managed this time! I had to eliminate the growing up process to do it, but there you go.
This fandom has been v good to me, so I thought it was beyond time for me to give back. Bless, and pass the biscuits.
Beta by Allie and audiencing by Annalazarus.
Holy Family
Sam’s idea of family is wrapped up in two dead parents and Dean. He’s never had to adjust that, never had to…well, there was Once Upon a Time and a pretty princess who seems even deader now than the two parents. Sam's no fairy tale prince and he’s only ever been able to save one person. Just one person over and over and over again. Sometimes he pretends he’s saving other people, victims and the innocent, whatever that means. Really, he’s only ever saving Dean.
“Sam, you have to do the right thing here.” Dean’s voice is low, Dad’s voice.
“Tell me what the right thing is, Dean. Is the right thing dragging a kid into this maelstrom of blood and evil and violence or is the right thing letting her go to a family who’s been waiting for a child for years and who would love and cherish her?” Sam means all that. He honestly believes this child could do so much better than Sam.
But Dean’s standing there with his hard mouth in the early afternoon light, backlit like some kind of goddamned middle-American angel, and Sam can even imagine creamy gold feathers flexing against Dean’s back in outrage. Dean presses the baby’s face against his cheek and glares bloody murder at Sam. Sam honestly believes this child could do so much better than Sam, but no way in six hells could she do better than Dean.
Sam relents the same way he always does (when he does) by throwing his hands up in the air (literally) and letting go and letting god (figuratively, because Sam only believes in the bad gods now and doesn’t particularly like to give them much).
*
The first argument is over the name.
“Mary,” Dean says predictably.
“No,” Sam drives because he doesn’t want to hold the baby even as far as the Wal-Mart to buy a car seat. He doesn’t know if it’s from the low-buzz of fury directed at Dean or because Dean and the baby keep staring at each other. Sam watches them out of the corner of his eye as he drives. Dean’s hazel eyes staring right into huge baby hazel eyes. They blink together and keep on staring. “That’s creepy.”
Dean breaks eye contact silhouetted by a Sonic sign. “What?” The baby makes a fussy gurbling noise and Dean’s eyes immediately snap back to her face. She silences. They stare.
Sam rubs his forehead. He wonders why he never thought of this, of the fact that Dean’s been a parent for a long time, a childless parent since Sam first went to college. It’s all fucking tragic, just one more facet of martyrdom for St. Dean. Sam didn’t even mean that in a sarcastic way anymore, which is where the real, deep-down tragedy lies.
“Nothing.” Sam pulls into a Target parking lot and pops the car into park. “You should name her, but not Mary.”
Dean makes his dismissive grunt. He’s not paying attention to Sam at all. His focus has shifted. Sam feels weird. Maybe jealous. He’s not really in-touch with his feelings anymore, though, so he doesn’t bother to parse it.
*
Sam stands in the baby isle of Target and runs his hands through his hair. He rubs his chin and sighs. He’s at a loss. He walks back out to the car where Dean is leaning against the passenger door with the baby in the crook of his arm pointing to a passing seagull overhead and murmuring.
“I think you should come inside. You’d know better than me what to get.” This is not strictly true. Sam could figure it out, but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to get too invested in this because he isn’t sure how he feels about this. In their division of labor, Sam is not the care-giver. He doesn’t know how to be, but more importantly, he doesn’t need to be that person because Dean already is.
Dean squints up to at him and presses his mouth back together. He looks through Sam like God, replaying Sam’s life over his head like Judgment Day. All he says as he steps away from the car, shifting the baby to rest on his chest is “Layla?”
Sam laughs a sharp bark, one note. “Yeah, that’s about perfect.”
Lailah, the angel of conception. Perfect.
*
Sam’s standing barefoot on cool, slick bathroom tiles listening to the whine of the window unit air conditioner when the shell shock wears off a bit. He realizes Dean’s in the other room with a baby settled against his side watching Spanish-language t.v. in hopes “something will sink in. never too early.” Not a baby, Sam’s baby. Just fucking great.
Sam knows his fatal error was involving Dean. If he could have just kept his fucking mouth shut…but Sam doesn’t remember how to keep secrets from Dean anymore. Secrets mean death and demonic possession and arterial spray and deals with the devil.
Sam had said “fuck me blind!” and Dean had looked up from the laptop with his eyebrows raised. “You remember Susan?” Sam had said and Dean had smiled wide, baring teeth. “Some adoption agency just called because she’s putting up a baby…” and Dean had shot to his feet. “Sammy?” Sam remembers the smell of chili from Wendy’s and the sarcastic tones of John Stewart on the television. But mainly, he remembers the look of unguarded happiness on Dean’s face. Beatific radiance. Sam’s biggest flaw now is never being able to tell Dean no. Sam spent a lot of years only ever saying no. He’s been breaking his neck trying to make up for that. He knows it’ll never happen. He sort of sees the baby as a trade off, like Abraham, he’ll give Dean his only child in exchange for his trust.
*
Ellen is there when Dean calls her. Sam and Ellen aren’t on what one would call the best of terms, but it’s a baby and Dean’s still the most charming thing for six states around when he wants to be. Ellen doesn’t buy what Dean’s selling, but for Layla’s sake she pretends to. Sort of. Mostly, Sam ignores Ellen.
Ellen holds Layla up in the daylight and takes in her pug nose and wisps of curly dark hair and hazel eyes. “Yup, this one’s a Winchester for sure.” She doesn’t sound exactly pleased by that, but Dean’s smiling like he just invented air and Sam’s itching to get out of Dodge.
Layla makes a displeased sound and Dean’s right there, gently grabbing the baby away from Ellen who watches with wide eyes for a second before she locks down again.
“Looking for a job?” She turns to Sam. Ellen’s quick. She’s also probably testing him to see how big of a jackass he is.
“Yup.” Sam’s the biggest jackass in the county. He can’t explain to Ellen how he feels about this, though. There’s no one he can explain it to, because what words are there for it? Displaced? Replaced? Stupid? Unsavory? Incestuous? Mortal Sin?
Dean frowns but doesn’t say anything. He wouldn’t, not with Ellen here, maybe not in front of Layla. How weird Dean’s gonna be about the baby hasn’t been settled in the three hotel rooms and car ride from Augusta.
“Kevin McKidd’s been tryin’ to rent his place over by Jefferson Creek for a while. Probably cut you a deal on the rent.” Ellen uses her most withering mom-face on Sam, but Sam’s immune to mom-face, never having been confronted with it. Dean’s the one with mommy issues and he’s already beginning to look nervous.
“Uh,” Dean fills the empty space of Harvelle’s parking lot.
“We were looking more over in Council Bluffs.” Sam runs a hand through his hair and watches a mid-70’s Chevy truck rattle past them. No one has to mention the junction between I-29 and I-80.
“Know a guy in Bellevue, too,” Ellen says.
*
The guy in Bellevue, strangely enough, is in the Air Force.
Major Robert Moore is a tall guy with a red brush cut and a sarcastic smile. His eyes latch on Dean and Layla and slide over Sam. He knows who they are, Ellen had told them he would.
“John was a hard man,” that’s all he says as he unlocks the old, brick Craftsman’s front door and waves them inside. He waits on the porch as Dean moves from room to room, stupid-ass baby-snuggler thing looped over his chest and Sam stands in the kitchen looking out through the window over the sink watching the birds in the backyard. It’s a straight-shot from the porch to the kitchen sink and Sam feels Major Moore’s eyes on him. The gaze isn’t prickly, just heavy. Sam’s tired of too-knowing eyes and father-figure censure.
He turns and looks Major Moore in the eye from the distance of two very different lifetimes (Sam assumes) and the dimness of the unlit living room as they both stand in bubbles of bright daylight. “How much?”
Major Moore looks right back and there’s something there, the way he blinks slowly and his mouth compresses that makes Sam rethink his first assumptions about this man. “I’m shipping out to Iran.” So, no money then, just payment in duty done on both sides.
“Chaplain?” Sam turns around fully and stuffs his hands in his pockets. He realizes now that’s what he sees hanging around this guy, the Lord.
Major Moore smiles and his eyes crease on the outside corners. “Some call me that, sure.”
Deeper then. That’s fine. Some could probably call Sam a chaplain too, in another life, maybe it fits Dean better with his milagros and holy water and naming babies after angels.
“Okay, then.” Sam says listening for Dean who’s down the hallway murmuring to the baby. “We’re gonna reward, you know.”
Major Moore laughs rumbly and very much like a man who doesn’t fight the forces of darkness and men with guns who want to shoot him in the face. “I’d lose respect for you if you didn’t.”
*
Major Moore doesn’t have a church, but he has parishioners, people he’s saved, people he’s changed.
A dark-skinned girl with ringlet curls in overalls and untied tennis shoes shows up the evening of their first night in the house and knocks on the screen door. Sam’s standing right there when she walks up the steps and was crossing the empty living room to the door when she knocked. Children are very strange.
She blows a huge, pink bubble as he swings the metal framed door open. “Can I help you?”
The bubble snaps apart and collapses all over the girl’s face. She pulls it away with dirty fingernails. “Got some stuff for you.” She turns around and prances off, maybe dancing, Sam’s not sure. He looks behind him at Dean who’s jiggling the baby on his shoulder smiling.
“Funny kid,” Dean says with a laugh.
The “stuff” turns out to be a Queen Anne chair and sofa.
“Creepy,” Dean says.
“Probably cursed,” Sam replies.
The baby reaches for Sam’s hair.
“Probably should cut that mop before she gets enough muscles to make the yanking count.” Dean kisses the side of her face. She coos in reply. Sam rolls his eyes.
There’re also two queen-sized beds, an antique crib, and odds and ends-lamps, end tables, a dresser and matching hutch.
Major Moore isn’t with the stuff. One of his parishioners is-a black guy about Dean’s age with a big scar on the side of his face and an easy laugh.
“I’m Augustus,” the guys says. “Met you daddy couple times. Y’all look like him, weird since you don’t look alike.”
Sam shakes his hand and helps him move the furniture. Dean covers the baby’s face in case some kind of infectious dust might get on her. Dean’s ludicrous.
Sam and Augustus carry the furniture. Dean and the strange girl (Janey) and the baby watch.
Augustus doesn’t say how he got his scar or why he’s here with a little girl who doesn’t look like she’s his. Sam doesn’t ask questions like that.
They drink iced tea the neighbor, Tiffany, brings over and eat bologna sandwiches. Augustus tells them about the good spirits that live in the river like it’s a fable. Sam’s glad they chose Bellevue when he’s done.
Later that night, Sam’s sprawled on the cursed couch with his hand over his eyes, exhausted. His skin’s so dry he wants to climb into a bathtub full of oil. He listens to Dean’s socked feet shushing over the old, scarred wooden floor and doesn’t even twitch when Dean lifts his leg and sits next to him, replacing Sam’s leg on his lap.
“Sam?” Dean whispers and leans his side along Sam’s. “Sam?” He lifts Sam’s hair away from the side of his face.
Sam doesn’t move his hand, afraid that if he does, Dean’ll be there with the baby in his lap. Dean’s hand drops to Sam’s belly, low, and a broken fingernail catches on the skin exposed where Sam’s shirt rides up.
“Sam?” Dean breathes into Sam’s ear, tongue following to touch a ridge, the lobe. Sam keeps his eyes tightly shut as Dean drags his stubble against Sam’s own, the hairs catching and falling together like the call and response of a litany.
“Dean,” Sam finally answers against Dean’s mouth, chapped lips on both sides of the kiss. Dean's hand slides under the loose fly of Sam's jeans and Sam doesn't remember the baby for a while between cracked fingertips and Dean's earnest tongue.
*
Sam only really gets jealous of Layla once they begin to settle into the house that might be a home, Sam doesn’t know because he’s not really conversant on what home means beyond the worn seats of the Impala and the elfin curves of Dean’s ears.
Dean only leaves Sam with the baby when he has no other choice-like when he goes on his job interview at Lockheed Martin.
“It’s better to heat the bottles in the water on the stove. I don’t trust-“
Sam cuts him off. “Yeah, I know magical radiation poisoning from the microwave. Heard you the first seven hundred times!”
Dean looks at Layla in her bassinette with her hands curled around the afghan Tiffany had tucked around her the first time she popped around “to see how they are settling in”--tiny digits holding fast to Technicolor purple and yellow yarn in her sleep. Sam feels weird. He can’t say he loves this child. He doesn’t know how he feels-protective, worried, resigned. It’s the same way he feels about the civilians who raise the dead or get cursed.
“Just don’t drop her, ok?” Dean says it in all seriousness. Sam can’t help laughing.
“Like I’m going to pick her up unless she cries!” Sam is sort of joking. Maybe. The look on Dean’s face could petrify a ghost.
“Maybe I shouldn’t…” Dean starts, one foot set in a trajectory back towards the sleeping baby.
“No, Dean, it’s fine. Really. I can handle it.”
Dean purses his lips and points at him. “Just be careful, ok, Sammy?” He’s pleading and it’s instinctual for Sam to frown at the childish nickname and squint at Dean like he’s pissed, but inside a part of him that needs Dean’s approval rings loud and joyous at the reminder that Sam came first.
“Yeah, ok.” Sam tips his head towards the door and Dean turns and grabs his coat. At the door, Dean pauses and looks over his shoulder with a smile.
“She’s beautiful, huh?”
Sam looks down at the baby and just sees a baby. They all look pretty much the same. “Yeah, Dean, she’s beautiful.”
*
Major Moore forwards his contacts to Sam. The first case Sam takes is a poltergeist in Papillion. Dean stands in the kitchen with Layla in his arms, barefoot in a red plaid shirt and jeans so ratty they’re held together with a safety pin.
“Tiffany would look after her if you need me.” Dean rubs circles on Layla’s back and she pats him on the face with her hand splayed open. Pat, pat, pat, trying to get him to look at her.
“No, it’s just a poltergeist. Don’t worry about it.” Dean looks exhausted, circles under his eyes and two-days’ growth of beard. “Go lay down with the baby.”
“You can use her name every once in a while,” Dean grumbles and turns away from him to test the water in the sink for the baby’s bath.
“Whatever,” Sam replies. It’s exactly what he thinks whatever.
*
Sam stumbles back into the house smelling like cordite and copper. Dean’s sitting on the weird, old Victorian couch in the corner of the living room with the tv on and the lights off. Shadows and brighter light scroll across his face, and Dean puts a finger against his lips. Sam sets his bag on the floor without a sound and crosses the room to sit next to Dean. Harvey Birdman is even more nonsensical without the sound.
The baby’s in her basket next to Dean’s knee. Sam doesn’t look to see if she’s awake or not. She’s quiet, that’s good enough. Dean leans over and pushes Sam’s hair away from the back of his neck where he has four claw or fingernail gouges. The wounds have clotted up already. He wiped them off with a Taco Bell napkin soaked in holy water. Sam lets Dean turn his head this way and that to inspect the cut by his left eye and the bruise along his jawline. This is Sam’s time to decompress-Dean’s no-nonsense field medic-ing and his eyes firmly on Sam and nothing else.
Sam accidentally smiles. He knows he’s done it as soon as Dean turns his head sharply so their eyes can meet. Dean holds Sam’s chin with a sharp thumb dug into the bone spur on the right side where Sam’d been clocked with a lead pipe years ago.
Dean holds his gaze, and Sam feels that horrible laying-bare, like Dean can see every sin he’s ever committed stretching back to the very first lie of omission, every theft and death and wrong thought. Dean’s face fixes, his “don’t fuck with me” face, his work face, the face he wore after Dad died around the clock.
Dean leans down and presses their mouths together hard. He holds them together like that, bruising Sam’s lips and jaw, without moving.
When he pulls away, he’s still wearing the same expression. “Okay?” he mouths. “Get it?” he mouths.
Sam looks down at Layla whose eyes are wide open and staring right back. Dean stares at Sam with the same eyes. Three pairs of identical eyes make a loop, a circuit, a trinity. Sam wonders if three is their destiny; three is a sacred number.
~amen
Ah, remember, I said I couldn't make the other story Wincest? I managed this time! I had to eliminate the growing up process to do it, but there you go.
This fandom has been v good to me, so I thought it was beyond time for me to give back. Bless, and pass the biscuits.