The Huntress -Chapter 2
Freeport, January 16
The YMCA men’s locker room was cold and Sumiko’s skin broke out in goose bumps as Sam undressed her on one of the plastic changing tables. It was only nine in the morning, the temperature outside was close to minus twenty. Sam yawned, asking himself once again what the hell he was doing here anyway. And damn it, on top of everything, they were late.
Sitting on a low, wooden bench, still wearing his thick winter coat, Dean was dozing, mouth half open, his head tilted to the side to rest on his shoulder.
Last week, Dean had declared that Sumiko was bored, that they should think of some social activity for her to do “with kids of her age”. In other words, babies. Sam had found the baby swimming class in a Freeport brochure and had immediately thought it would be a good idea. Dean had agreed, as long as Sam was the one getting into the pool with Sue, since his belly would be expanding throughout the eight week class and raised undesired questions.
And yeah, Sam had been enthusiastic about it. He had been to the store all by himself to buy Sue a very tiny swimsuit - red with small white dots - and those swimming disposable underwear they made especially for babies, smiling all the while, imagining himself doing something as normal as taking a swimming class with his daughter.
This morning, though, all he could do was curse himself, shivering in his shorts as Sumiko refused to stay still for him to slide her into the damn underwear. She was grumpy and still drooling copiously. The tooth hadn’t cut through yet.
“Dean, a little help?” Sam snapped impatiently.
Dean startled awake and rubbed at his eyes, standing up slowly. He was tired and Sam felt a little guilty. His brother had applied for the statistic compilation job and gotten it, mostly because he’d made himself a nice fake resume full of statistic compiling experience. He’d been working since Monday. It wasn’t as easy as Dean had first thought it would be. It was time consuming and there were graphs to make as well as different charts. Each Monday, he had to go to the company, which was some sort of big accountancy center, and pick up all the documentation he had to computerize. He would be paid for a fixed number of hours each week and had until Friday at five pm to send back the data through the internet. He’d barely had the time to finish yesterday afternoon and was sending everything, Sue crying on his lap, when Sam had gotten back from work.
It was a lot, taking care of a six month old baby and working several hours every day. The morning sickness was now hitting him full force, he had lost at least a couple of pounds and his face was a pasty white even at the best of times. Sam doubted that Dean would be able to keep it up for long, but as stubborn as he was, his brother had refused his offer of help.
Sam held Sumiko as Dean slid the bathing diaper through her wriggling legs. She took the opportunity to grab hold of a hank Sam’s hair and to pull on it, hard.
“Sumiko, no!” He snapped, tears pooling in his eyes as Dean pried open their daughter’s deadly grip.
Sam never, ever raised his voice in her presence, and she looked at him, her chin wobbling, eyes wide and wet, making Sam’s heart break into tiny little pieces.
“I’m sorry babe,” he murmured, but it was too late. She burst out crying, and no matter what they did to sooth her, she cried through them getting her into her bathing suit.
“Come on, we’re late,” Dean groaned as Sumiko screamed her lungs out in his arms. “And you forgot this,” he pointed at the bathing hat which Sam had maybe left in the bag on purpose.
Sam put it on, not even looking at Dean who now had a big, goofy smile on his face. At least, someone was enjoying this.
As it turned out, Sam was the only father in the baby swimming class. He found himself waiting on the side of the pool, surrounded by women and babies, feeling gigantic and clumsy while Dean sat on a bench, still laughing so hard his face was turning a worrying shade of red.
Sumiko forgot to be mad when she saw all those people smiling at her and went into seduction mode. She didn’t stop once they were in the pool, just looked kind of surprised, then went with it. She didn’t cry when Sam had to immerse her head in the water and he felt ridiculously proud to find out she was one of the few.
It was kind of fun and Sam was slowly forgetting all about how stupid he must look and was just beginning to enjoy the class when the instructor told them it was time to sing the goodbye song.
Sam sang.
When he looked at Dean, his jerk of a brother had his phone pointed in the direction of the pool, filming the whole thing and still grinning like a mad man.
Sam would never live it down.
Sam went to bed first that night because Dean, having some serious stomach reflux trouble, stayed up to watch TV while drinking ginger ale. Sam was aware of his brother joining him later
in the evening, sliding under the covers, warm body pressing against him, and he felt himself sinking deeper into sleep once Dean was there with him.
It didn’t last long.
He woke up again when he heard Dean’s voice trembling with distress. Rubbing at his eyes, he rose on his elbows.
“No… I won’t, please. Jus… let me go.” Dean said.
Sam went from half-awake to completely lucid in a matter of seconds.
“Dean, what is it?”
In the dim moonlight, he could see Dean sitting very straight in the bed, moving his arms awkwardly in front of him, like he wanted to get rid of a mosquito. His eyes were wide and full of fear.
“Dean?”
“I don’t wanna see her. Get her away from me.” Dean murmured, and wrapped both of his hands around his stomach.
He was dreaming, Sam realised finally. It was strange. During all their years of living together, Sam had seen Dean have plenty of bad dreams and he knew how they normally affected him. Dean would mumble in his sleep or wake up suddenly, covered in sweat, but he didn’t move around that much, not enough to be sitting up and still be asleep.
Usually, Sam’s hand on his arm, shaking it lightly, was more than enough to wake him up.
Not this time.
“Dean,” Sam repeated more firmly, accentuating the pressure on his arm.
Dean shook his head and suddenly moved his legs so they were resting on the floor.
Then he stood up.
“What the hell,” Sam groaned.
His brother was sleepwalking.
He got up quickly to follow him, just as Dean reached the doorway.
“Dean, come on, man,” he repeated, trying to remember if he knew anything at all about sleepwalking.
Dean walked directly to the stairs and started his slow way down, Sam following him carefully, ready to catch him if he was to lose his balance.
Dean stopped in the middle of the living room, still staring into nothingness. He raised his arms right in front of him and made curious complicated motions with his hands. The gestures grew in intensity until his entire arms were moving.
Like he was trying to open a locked door.
“It won’t open,” Dean rasped. “She’s coming and it won’t open.”
“Who, Dean?”
Dean turned his head toward him and there was a glimmer of recognition in his eyes, but they remained glassy, unfocused. “Dianna. We’re locked in, Sam.”
“No, we’re not. We’re home, Dean,” Sam said carefully, keeping his voice low.
“Home,” Dean repeated. “She’s coming. She knows. She knows everything,” he said and grabbed Sam’s arm as he started shaking from head to toe.
“Come on, Dean. You’re tired. Let’s get back to bed, okay?”
Dean looked at him, biting his lips, then nodded slowly. “I’m tired,” he agreed. “Tired of running away from her.”
He followed Sam obediently until they were back in their room. He let Sam put him to bed, frowning, still confused, but pliant and docile.
“Time to sleep,” Sam said.
Dean sighed, turned on his side and closed his eyes.
Sam, still a little shocked, stood there for a long minute, wondering what that had been about. Dean seemed to have fallen back into a normal sleep pattern, his features relaxed, his breathing even.
Shrugging, Sam went to have a look at Sumiko who was sleeping soundly in her favorite position: at the head of the bed, on her stomach, her butt raised high.
It took Sam almost an hour before he was able to go back to sleep.
::: :::
“You’re messing with me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t… sleepwalk.”
Dean looked like a stubborn kid, arms crossed on his chest, his breakfast untouched in front of him.
“Well, you sure did last night.”
“Huh.”
He was uneasy with it, Sam realised, and decided to let it slide for a few minutes and concentrate on feeding Sumiko instead. She opened eagerly each time he raised a spoonful of cereal to her mouth, then spit it out with the same enthusiasm.
“Come on, Sue. It’s good. Cereal. Mmm…”
Sue found Sam’s encouragement incredibly funny. She banged on her highchair tray and smiled, and that’s when Sam saw it.
“Dean.”
“What?”
“I think…”
Sam presented his finger to Sue who considered it with curiosity before opening her mouth slowly, like she was asking, “Really? You want me to taste that?”
Sam quickly rubbed his finger on Sue’s lower gum and felt it, a small pointy thing sticking out. Sumiko fought the intrusion, pushing at his finger with her tongue.
“Hey, her tooth is out!”
“Really?”
Dean dragged his chair closer and tried to have a peek, making faces so she would laugh and open her mouth.
“We need to talk about this, Dean.”
“Talk about what? Her tooth? You’ll write it in her baby book… Come on, sweetheart, open your mouth for daddy.”
“I mean the somnambulism. You don’t recall anything at all?”
Dean was sticking his tongue out at Sumiko who kept her mouth closed shut and shook her head.
“You talked about someone named Dianna. You said she was after you. Who is she?
“I don’t fucking know, Sam!” Dean cut him off abruptly, features tensed in anger. “I don’t remember; what do you want me to say? I’m tired and my sleep patterns are all fucked up. I’m a pregnant guy, in case you haven’t noticed. My biology is shot to hell.”
Sue froze, hearing Dean’s tone, and her heart-shaped mouth dropped open.
“Look, all I’m saying is-“
“Holy shit, there it is!” Dean gave Sumiko a triumphant smile and she shook her legs in excitement as if she was saying: “Yeah, I’m awesome. I don’t know why, but I definitely am.”
Sam figured he could let it go since Dean really didn’t want to talk about his sleepwalking experience. After all, Sam was the one who had been plagued with demon blood and visions, not Dean. And besides, all of that was behind them now.
At least, it seemed like it.
::: :::
The sleepwalking thing repeated itself again two nights later, very early Wednesday morning. This time, Sam didn’t wake up instantly, but he must have felt Dean’s absence from the bed because he woke up with a sense of something very wrong going on.
He had a look at Sumiko before going downstairs. He found Dean sitting at the kitchen table, peeling potatoes in the dark with his Bowie knife. This time, Dean’s speech was incomprehensible, a couple of slurred words that Sam couldn’t make out. And exactly as last time, he followed Sam obediently when he told him it was time to go to bed.
Sam took Dean’s knife and hid it with the rest of the weapons, all the while thinking that a hunter suffering from sleepwalking was going be a handful to deal with.
The next morning, Dean blushed bright red when Sam showed him the peeled potatoes.
“I… really?”
“Yeah. I think it would be better if you didn’t sleep with your knife under your pillow from now on.”
“I was peeling potatoes, Sammy, not skinning a cat.”
“I know but still… Maybe we should talk to Rania about this? I mean-“
“Shit,” Dean mumbled, and ran to the bathroom.
He looked so miserable afterward that Sam let it go. It wasn’t like Dean was sleepwalking on purpose, or that he had any control over it, and he was stressed out enough as it was without having one more thing to worry about.
Sam would do the two things he did best: research and look after Dean in such a way that it wasn’t obvious.
::: :::
Freeport, January 27
Sam came back from work a little later than he usually did, having to stop at the grocery store to buy some food. Milk and jungle crackers were all Dean seemed to be able to keep down these days. “What about apple juice?” Sam had asked. “Ugh. Don’t even mention it, please,” had been Dean’s answer. Sam had read that symptoms could differ between each of a woman’s pregnancies, and apparently, that was also the case with Dean.
Everything he had read about sleepwalking in the last couple of days pointed to a stress-related symptom. Sam couldn’t wrap his head around it. Dean’s first pregnancy had been much more stressful, if only by its very existence, but maybe having Sumiko and buying a house was messing with Dean’s fragile balance. He was, after all, being bombarded with hormones and undergoing the same intense physical changes as when he’d been pregnant with Sumiko.
Changes in sleep patterns could be another cause, but Dean wouldn’t give up his job on this pretense. Sam could already hear him arguing that he’d never had a normal sleep pattern in his life. Which was true.
He was surprised - and immediately worried - when he saw an unknown car parked in the alley behind the house. He grabbed the grocery bags and got out in a hurry, sliding on a patch of ice and only just barely keeping his feet underneath him in an awkward lurching glide to the porch steps. It wasn’t Bobby’s car, but it did look like some rebuilt vehicle that could’ve come straight from his salvage yard.
“Dean?” He asked out loud as soon as the door was closed behind him.
“In the kitchen!” Dean answered, and there was a slight hint of something wrong in his voice.
Before Sam had time to take off his boots, he saw Ellen Harvelle walk out of the kitchen, a smile on her face.
Huh, he thought.
“Ellen? What’re you doing here?”
“Just passing by,” Ellen answered, kissing him on both cheeks. “I’m supposed to meet Jo in Montpellier for a hunt and I thought I could make a little detour to see your new home.”
“Well, what do you think?” Sam asked, trying to sound as enthusiastic as he could.
“It’s lovely.”
Dean joined them with Sumiko canted on his hip. He looked uneasy and awkward. “Ellen is going to stay for dinner. There’s a chicken roasting in the oven.”
“Your brother is quite a cook, and your niece is adorable,”
Ellen stated, smiling at Sue who stretched her small arms toward her.
“Yeah, she’s a terrific baby,” Sam agreed, finding it strange to be called Sue’s uncle. When it was just Dean and him, Sam always talked - and thought, of course - about himself as Sue’s father. Daddy is going to change your diaper, come to daddy … Dean did the same. They would have to stop that soon before Sumiko started talking, and it filled Sam with sadness, even though he was convinced he and Dean had made the best choice regarding what to tell people about the appearance of Sumiko in their lives.
The dinner started well, considering. Dean didn’t talk much, giving all of his attention to Sue and doing his best not make eye contact with Ellen even when she was addressing him directly. Ellen frowned a couple of times, but didn’t let on in any other way that she was bothered by it. Sam made an effort at conversation, asking about Bobby and Jo - now Mrs. Jamie Schwartz - and various hunts he knew they’d been working on, guessing between the words that apparently Ellen was now more or less living with Bobby and that she still didn’t like her stepson much.
At one point, Sumiko, who was finished with the few drops of cereal she was willing to eat, let her rattle toy drop on the floor and Sam fetched it, starting to say without even thinking,“There you go, sweetheart, dad-“
As soon as the word left his mouth, Dean paled. Sam cleared his throat and went on, ”…dad is too busy stuffing his mouth. Luckily your uncle is here.”
Sumiko looked at him intently, like she was wondering when the hell one of her dads had become her uncle. Sam dropped his gaze to his plate, but not before taking a quick look at Dean’s almost untouched serving.
Wow, they were doing great with this lying thing. Now, both of them were avoiding Ellen’s thoughtful stare like two guilty kids. It didn’t get any better when Dean stood up so quickly his chair almost fell over and left the table in a hurry.
“It’s… it’s a stomach bug,” Sam mumbled when the very audible noise of Dean throwing up came to their ears.
“That’s what he told me this afternoon,” Ellen said, looking so intently at Sam that he found it hard to breath.
Damn, the woman was learning staring lessons from Bobby.
“I’ll go see if he’s alright.”
“Yeah, you do that, Sam.”
In the bathroom, Dean was drinking water directly from the faucet. Sam closed the door as quietly as he could.
“You okay?”
“I don’t know. What about you, dad?” Dean rasped, slowly straightening.
“Okay, I made a mistake. But it was only because you were acting so strangely and it stressed me out. What the hell, Dean? When she and Bobby visited last time you weren’t this uneasy.”
“I don’t know.”
Dean was still a little greenish. He sat on the closed toilet lid. Sam wet a washcloth in cold water and handled it to him.
“She knows we’re up to something,” Dean mumbled, his face buried in the washcloth. “Man, the way she keeps asking questions and looking at me and… Hell, I threw up twice before you got here.”
“Because of Ellen or…? Is it always this bad in the afternoons?”
“That’s not the problem,” Dean snapped, raising his head. “Now, get back out there and act normal.”
Ellen was already up and filling the dishwasher. Sam helped and when Dean got back to take Sumiko out of her high chair and announced that he was going up to bathe her, he only had to glare at Sam for him to stay quiet.
He would’ve taken care of Sumiko. Dean looked exhausted, but he probably thought it would seem strange to Ellen for Sam to be the one taking care of Sumiko..
“So?” Ellen asked after Dean was gone.
Sam stood there with his mouth open, wondering what was she talking about for a moment before answering. “So what?”
“Dean told me you’re doing good at your job.”
Sam shrugged. “It’s not really difficult, you know.”
“Computer tech?”
“Kind of.”
“So let me get this straight. You’re working and Dean stays home to take care of Sue. And you’re getting by that way?”
“Dean is working too.”
“Yeah, he told me. Here at home, statistics compilation or something like that.”
“That’s right. He… he doesn’t want Sumiko to have a babysitter. He thinks she’s still too young.”
Ellen closed the dishwasher door with a little too much strength. “Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“It… Sweetie, your brother doesn’t look well. He’s lost some weight, he’s nervous, he’s pale and this stomach bug…”
“Look. Ellen. We’re doing okay, really. And Dean… Dean is good. He just caught this virus and huh… Sue hasn’t slept that well the last two nights or so. That’s all.”
“Okay.”
Sam, who had been ready for a long and difficult discussion, couldn’t really hide his surprise.
“Okay?”
“Yeah, okay. I’m just worried about you boys, Sam. That’s all.”
“We’re fine, Ellen.”
“Just…”
Ellen got close to Sam and stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. “If you ever need something, I hope you won’t hesitate. Bobby and I…you boys are important to us.”
“Oh, so now there’s a Bobby and you?” Sam jumped on the occasion to change the subject, and he couldn’t help but be proud of himself when he caught a pink flush on Ellen’s cheeks.
“Now, don’t be a smartass, Sam Winchester.”
But she smiled at him. He smiled back.
Ellen left soon after. She hugged Dean for a long time, holding him tight in her arms, telling him to take care of himself. He turned his head away, eyes suspiciously wet, and went straight to the bathroom as soon as she was gone.
Hormones, Sam thought. He heated Sumiko’s milk and sat with her on the couch. She would try to hold her bottle most of the time now, working hard to coordinate both hands, and smiling around a mouth full of dripping milk whenever she succeeded. It never lasted long. When she really “got into it”, as Dean would say, she would drop all pretense and let go, especially with her evening bottle.
She was sound asleep, mouth slack around the latex nipple, when Dean finally joined Sam in the living room, sitting in the armchair next to the couch. His eyes were swollen and he had red blotches on his cheeks. He really had been crying, Sam realised with a little shock. He had to fight with himself not to ask what was wrong because that would be the fastest way to make Dean defensive.
“She sleeping?” His brother asked with a gruff and scratchy voice.
“Yeah. M’just too lazy to take her upstairs.”
Dean nodded and turned the TV on to a basketball game, keeping the sound on mute.
“You know,” Sam ventured a couple of minutes later, “Ellen was just worried about you.”
“Sam-“
“I mean, how could she know about us? It’s not like-“
“Sam,” Dean warned again. “Stop it. I don’t know how she knows, but I could…”
Dean bit his bottom lip and took a long, shuddering breath as if he had something difficult to say. “Don’t make fun of me.”
“I won’t.”
“It’s like I could feel it, and damn it, I know it’s bullshit, I can’t explain it, and I don’t want you to ask me questions about it. I just… I could feel it, is all.”
Dean’s chin wobbled then. He cleared his throat, scratched the back of his head. “M’going to bed. I’m freaking exhausted.”
He stood up and left the living room using long, hurried strides.
Sam couldn’t remember Dean being this emotional at the beginning of his first pregnancy. Adding in Dean’s sleepwalking and his strange dreams left Sam with an uneasy feeling that something strange and gloomy was hovering over them.
…Or maybe he was just being pessimistic. Things had been so quiet and peaceful for them since Dean got hit with the curse that Sam couldn’t help but think that it wouldn’t last, that sooner or later, something would come back to bite them in the ass.
He hugged Sumiko tighter against his chest.
Chapter 3