SPN FIC - Ours
I've been promising this to charis_kalos and blucasbabe for a while now -- Sam and Connie's wedding day, with thanks to charis_kalos for the wedding blessing she so kindly supplied. (The previous entries in this part of the 'verse can be found by clicking the Connie tag.)
It's schmoop. Romance. And Dean.
CHARACTERS: Sam and Dean, plus Connie and Little John (OCs)
GENRE: Het
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2394 words
OURS
By Carol Davis
…Love is a steadying hand
if the ground trembles under our feet,
and a laugh in the midst of our earnestness.
Connie’s hand is small in his, small and warm. The first time he grasped it, back in high school, he almost let it go out of fear that by holding it too tight, he’d break those little bones. She’s not fragile - not any more, anyway - but sometimes he wants her to be.
There’s more of a height difference between them now; he didn’t hit that last growth spurt until well after he and Dean and Dad had left Scranton. More of a weight difference, too. Standing beside him, she seems tiny, like something he ought to protect.
He hasn’t had anyone to protect for a while now. John is seventeen, and if Sam tells him to be careful, he gets the eyeroll he remembers giving Dean, and Dad.
He wants to protect her. Needs that.
She smiles up at him and tucks her arm through his as they listen to the pastor talk.
~~~~~~~~~~
It was a bequest.
“No shit?” was Dean’s reaction, but the gift made an odd sort of sense. The old man had had no family, no one to leave his house to, so he’d chosen as his heirs the two men who had put his mind to rest almost thirty years ago by telling him why his wife had died, the two men who’d pretty much rescued the entire town of Thompson Lake. That didn’t bring his wife back, of course, but peace of mind is some pretty valuable currency.
So there was this.
The Mouse House.
“Would you stop?” Sam asked him. “You’re going to make people think it’s infested.”
“It’s not?” Dean asked, poker-faced, then tossed Sam the I’m the funniest thing on the planet, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time if you just admit it grin that had haunted a lot of Sam’s dreams. When Dean’s time finally came, Sam thought, he was going to pay whatever it cost to bribe the mortician to put that expression on Dean’s face for all eternity. Because it would serve Dean right.
Because…hell. That expression was Dean.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Dean said as they walked through the house the day all the paperwork was completed. “The garage I built for m’ baby is bigger than this place. Liz’s old playhouse is bigger than this place.”
“Would you -“
“Sam. A friggin’ Barbie Dream House is -“
“You can probably find a buyer, if you fix it up a little,” Morgan said from the kitchen. “It’s not in bad shape. Although Dean’s right. It’s small. I don’t know who would -“
“Muppets,” Dean said.
“I want it,” Sam told him.
~~~~~~~~~~
Love is a song in the face of our despair
and a face before us when we believe we are alone,
a touch which comes from the heart when we are untouchable.
Connie’s parents are both gone, but her girls are here, their first year at NYU a few days behind them. They don’t look anything like Connie, or her parents. The easy assumption would be that they look like their father - but the truth of it is, they look like Dean, so much so that the first time Sam met them, he had to escape to the bathroom to do some frantic math, and his heart didn’t stop doing the merengue until he saw a picture of Connie’s ex.
Dean’s here, of course, standing a couple of steps away, wearing a suit that the women chose for him because every suit he’s ever picked out on his own makes him look like a small-town politician. Or Dan Aykroyd.
He’s smiling, and for once there’s no smarm in it.
“Thank you,” Sam mouths, and Dean nods.
~~~~~~~~~~
He’d been sure, dead-on sure, about maybe half a dozen things in his life. Going to Stanford wasn’t one of them.
Leaving his family wasn’t one of them.
Neither was getting married, the first time.
But this?
“Do you know what you’re doing, Dad?” John asked from the doorway, standing with his arms (sturdy, but still teenage-lean) folded across his chest. He’d come prepared to help, dressed in old jeans and a beat-up t-shirt, bearing an enormous toolbox that had been left behind by Jake Donahue and maybe wasn’t original even to Jake. “I mean - those ‘weekend warrior’ people they show on TV always manage to get in over their heads.”
“That what you think I’m going to do?” Sam asked him. “Get in over my head?”
“Maybe you should just paint. And, you know. Put in new countertops or something.”
They’d pulled out all of the old man’s belongings, every last stick of furniture and book and lamp and frying pan. The place was stripped clean, and seeing it that way made Sam understand the hesitation he was getting from everybody else: Dean, John, the Donahues, everybody in town he’d run into over the last couple of weeks.
“I don’t know how to build from scratch,” he said quietly. “But I can do this.”
They worked in silence for a little while, he and his son, John following his father’s lead, waiting to see what Sam’s intentions were before he made a move. They’d worked on small projects together for most of John’s life. Nothing like this, though. Lily - wearing an outfit almost identical to John’s - joined them late in the morning; Dean came late in the afternoon, after closing time at the garage. That pretty much filled the place up, the four of them.
The place had five rooms, none of them a lot bigger than the span of Sam’s outstretched arms: living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and something the old man used for storage. It had small windows and was as dark as a cave until Sam - to the horror of most of the people watching him - sent a sledgehammer through the front wall.
Installing a big window wasn’t as hard as he expected.
~~~~~~~~~~
Love is day after day as the years unroll
and is not defeated by ordinariness and responsibilities.
When was the last time, he wonders, when someone in his family did this? Had this? Dean and Morgan still aren’t married - not in the traditional sense, anyway. Mom and Dad’s wedding happened after Azazel killed her parents. Couldn’t have been any kind of a big, happy celebration. Maybe they got married at City Hall. That’s his best guess; Dad would never talk about it.
Sam’s own first wedding wasn’t like this.
Wasn’t…
Love is a flame of passionate life which takes many forms,
a walking with each other,
a holding of each other,
a faithfulness to each other…
There was none of this.
None of this.
A couple of steps away, Dean arches an eyebrow. Dean’s got the ring in the palm of his hand. Tried only once to pretend he lost it. “You good?” he mouths, and Sam nods.
~~~~~~~~~~
They sanded down and refinished all the floors. Pulled down the old drywall and put up new, even on the ceiling. That was a little harder than Sam expected, and the first wall they attempted had to be done twice. The electrical work they couldn’t do on their own, even with the help of the websites Sam found; they had to call in the assistance of Dougie, from town, who’s licensed to do that stuff, and was patient enough to explain it all to Dean.
“Do not let my brother run wiring,” Sam said.
Dean and electricity? The thing with the rawhead was thirty years ago. That’s about a hundred years not long enough.
They put in a new toilet and a big soaker tub.
The roof is in good shape; after gathering opinions from a variety of sources - including Bobby, and Jake, after they’ve looked at some video Sam e-mails to them, and half a dozen people from town - Sam caved to that and left it alone. A woman he’d never seen before showed up to talk to him about the newest thing in siding for the exterior walls, a job her company was willing to do for the astonishingly low price of thirty thousand dollars, but Dean sent her packing along with the set of brochures she tried to leave behind.
They built a bookcase into one of the walls. Put up crown molding. Laid tile in the bathroom.
When that was done, Sam did all the shopping himself.
Bought a sofa and a cozy armchair, end tables and lamps, a bed and a dresser, a table and chairs, some rugs and towels and a set of dishes. Got all the way to the cash register with a cart full of his choices before it occurred to him that maybe he shouldn’t have done it on his own, that maybe he should have waited for her.
But that…
No, he thought.
I want to give her all of it.
~~~~~~~~~~
…which weathers the journeying
common life enhanced and enjoyed,
and differences brought into respectful embrace.
He has no regrets. Can’t open that door any more, because it took him almost thirty years - and more therapy than he really wants to admit to - to close it. The day he finished the house he told himself he was finished dealing with the past.
Told no one else. Just himself.
But they all seemed to know.
“It’s awesome, man,” Dean told him. “It’s sized for friggin’ midgets, but if you can deal with that, who am I to question it.” Before Sam could respond, Dean reached out and thumped him twice in the middle of the chest.
Smiled.
Told him, “You did it right, Sammy.”
He believes that.
~~~~~~~~~~
They didn’t reach the house until after dark. Delayed flight, road construction, a fender bender that backed the traffic up for more than two miles.
But someone had turned the lights on.
Connie got out of the car, road weary, and stood looking at the house from the outside. “Go in,” Sam told her.
He’d allowed no space in his head (or his heart) for the possibility that she wouldn’t like it. Or that she’d shriek and flail like a game show contestant. Reality was going to be somewhere in the middle, he’d decided, back when he was shifting the new tub into place, and saw in his mind’s eye the girl he’d known back in high school. The one with the shy smile, who indicated that she liked something only via the look in her eyes.
He followed her in, lingering a couple of steps behind her.
“Does my taste suck?” he asked her quietly.
“I hope not,” she said. “You picked me.”
There was only one bedroom. The space the old man had used for storage, Sam had turned into a study, with a deep window seat for reading. “I know some people who own a bed and breakfast,” he explained. “Right down the road. When the girls come, they can stay there. John lives there already. This is just -“
“Us.”
“Yeah.”
She didn’t open cupboards or closets. Instead, like a little kid, she touched fabrics: the couch, the comforter on the bed, the towels.
When she was finished, she turned to him.
“Yeah?” he said.
She smiled. Nodded.
So he shifted his weight and sank down onto one knee.
~~~~~~~~~~
Love defies the challenges,
and defines belonging.
Love today is an act of recognition and determination,
a commitment to live on
in a rich and vivid tapestry of life together.
They listen to the questions, respond to them the way they each did once before, although with slightly different words, and to other partners.
Surrounding them are the members of their combined family and a few friends. Dean and Morgan and RJ, Lizzie and her husband and kids, Lily, John and his girlfriend, Connie’s daughters (Jenna’s boyfriend is here; Annie’s flying solo) and her longtime best friend. Bobby Singer’s here; he drove himself all the way up from South Dakota.
A lot of people are missing, Sam thinks. But they’re here. Through sheer force of will alone, they’re here.
Behind him and Connie is their new home. The Mouse House. Officially that because Dean hung a little wooden plaque saying so alongside the front door, and Connie refused to take it down. She likes the name.
Likes Dean. Always has.
That’s a good thing.
The wide front lawn, stretching from the house down to the road, is bathed with light. The grass is soft and early-spring green; the air’s a little cool but rich with the fragrance of evergreen and lilacs. It’s a perfect place.
For this. For anything.
Sam reaches out and takes the gold ring Dean’s guarded zealously for more than a week, turns to his bride and slides it onto her finger. A minute later she accepts a ring from one of her daughters and pushes it into place on Sam’s hand - larger than hers, but not necessarily stronger.
There’s no one here who’s not smiling.
A minute ago, when the pastor asked if anyone had an objection, Dean made a face. Acted like he was thinking it over.
Did that until Sam said, “Dude.”
Dean’s got no objections. There’s nothing on his face but the same sort of wise, inarguable determination he wore back when Sam and Connie were in high school. When he chauffeured them around, the times he wouldn’t let Sam borrow his car.
A lot of this is due to Dean, Sam thinks: that he started going out with Connie in the first place, back when they were sixteen years old. And that he found Connie again, after more than half their lives had gone by.
“Thank you,” he says to Dean, this time aloud.
Dean, like Connie, says a lot with his eyes. There’s pride in there, Sam thinks. Relief.
And joy.
When the time comes, when the pastor says, “You may kiss your bride,” Sam takes both her hands in his own. Surrounds them with his and holds them against his chest, close to his heart. They do nothing but look at each other for a minute. They might cry, he thinks, either or both of them - but they don’t.
When he leans down to kiss her, the people around them cheer loudly enough to be heard all the way across the lake.
* * * * *
It's schmoop. Romance. And Dean.
CHARACTERS: Sam and Dean, plus Connie and Little John (OCs)
GENRE: Het
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2394 words
OURS
By Carol Davis
…Love is a steadying hand
if the ground trembles under our feet,
and a laugh in the midst of our earnestness.
Connie’s hand is small in his, small and warm. The first time he grasped it, back in high school, he almost let it go out of fear that by holding it too tight, he’d break those little bones. She’s not fragile - not any more, anyway - but sometimes he wants her to be.
There’s more of a height difference between them now; he didn’t hit that last growth spurt until well after he and Dean and Dad had left Scranton. More of a weight difference, too. Standing beside him, she seems tiny, like something he ought to protect.
He hasn’t had anyone to protect for a while now. John is seventeen, and if Sam tells him to be careful, he gets the eyeroll he remembers giving Dean, and Dad.
He wants to protect her. Needs that.
She smiles up at him and tucks her arm through his as they listen to the pastor talk.
~~~~~~~~~~
It was a bequest.
“No shit?” was Dean’s reaction, but the gift made an odd sort of sense. The old man had had no family, no one to leave his house to, so he’d chosen as his heirs the two men who had put his mind to rest almost thirty years ago by telling him why his wife had died, the two men who’d pretty much rescued the entire town of Thompson Lake. That didn’t bring his wife back, of course, but peace of mind is some pretty valuable currency.
So there was this.
The Mouse House.
“Would you stop?” Sam asked him. “You’re going to make people think it’s infested.”
“It’s not?” Dean asked, poker-faced, then tossed Sam the I’m the funniest thing on the planet, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time if you just admit it grin that had haunted a lot of Sam’s dreams. When Dean’s time finally came, Sam thought, he was going to pay whatever it cost to bribe the mortician to put that expression on Dean’s face for all eternity. Because it would serve Dean right.
Because…hell. That expression was Dean.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Dean said as they walked through the house the day all the paperwork was completed. “The garage I built for m’ baby is bigger than this place. Liz’s old playhouse is bigger than this place.”
“Would you -“
“Sam. A friggin’ Barbie Dream House is -“
“You can probably find a buyer, if you fix it up a little,” Morgan said from the kitchen. “It’s not in bad shape. Although Dean’s right. It’s small. I don’t know who would -“
“Muppets,” Dean said.
“I want it,” Sam told him.
~~~~~~~~~~
Love is a song in the face of our despair
and a face before us when we believe we are alone,
a touch which comes from the heart when we are untouchable.
Connie’s parents are both gone, but her girls are here, their first year at NYU a few days behind them. They don’t look anything like Connie, or her parents. The easy assumption would be that they look like their father - but the truth of it is, they look like Dean, so much so that the first time Sam met them, he had to escape to the bathroom to do some frantic math, and his heart didn’t stop doing the merengue until he saw a picture of Connie’s ex.
Dean’s here, of course, standing a couple of steps away, wearing a suit that the women chose for him because every suit he’s ever picked out on his own makes him look like a small-town politician. Or Dan Aykroyd.
He’s smiling, and for once there’s no smarm in it.
“Thank you,” Sam mouths, and Dean nods.
~~~~~~~~~~
He’d been sure, dead-on sure, about maybe half a dozen things in his life. Going to Stanford wasn’t one of them.
Leaving his family wasn’t one of them.
Neither was getting married, the first time.
But this?
“Do you know what you’re doing, Dad?” John asked from the doorway, standing with his arms (sturdy, but still teenage-lean) folded across his chest. He’d come prepared to help, dressed in old jeans and a beat-up t-shirt, bearing an enormous toolbox that had been left behind by Jake Donahue and maybe wasn’t original even to Jake. “I mean - those ‘weekend warrior’ people they show on TV always manage to get in over their heads.”
“That what you think I’m going to do?” Sam asked him. “Get in over my head?”
“Maybe you should just paint. And, you know. Put in new countertops or something.”
They’d pulled out all of the old man’s belongings, every last stick of furniture and book and lamp and frying pan. The place was stripped clean, and seeing it that way made Sam understand the hesitation he was getting from everybody else: Dean, John, the Donahues, everybody in town he’d run into over the last couple of weeks.
“I don’t know how to build from scratch,” he said quietly. “But I can do this.”
They worked in silence for a little while, he and his son, John following his father’s lead, waiting to see what Sam’s intentions were before he made a move. They’d worked on small projects together for most of John’s life. Nothing like this, though. Lily - wearing an outfit almost identical to John’s - joined them late in the morning; Dean came late in the afternoon, after closing time at the garage. That pretty much filled the place up, the four of them.
The place had five rooms, none of them a lot bigger than the span of Sam’s outstretched arms: living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and something the old man used for storage. It had small windows and was as dark as a cave until Sam - to the horror of most of the people watching him - sent a sledgehammer through the front wall.
Installing a big window wasn’t as hard as he expected.
~~~~~~~~~~
Love is day after day as the years unroll
and is not defeated by ordinariness and responsibilities.
When was the last time, he wonders, when someone in his family did this? Had this? Dean and Morgan still aren’t married - not in the traditional sense, anyway. Mom and Dad’s wedding happened after Azazel killed her parents. Couldn’t have been any kind of a big, happy celebration. Maybe they got married at City Hall. That’s his best guess; Dad would never talk about it.
Sam’s own first wedding wasn’t like this.
Wasn’t…
Love is a flame of passionate life which takes many forms,
a walking with each other,
a holding of each other,
a faithfulness to each other…
There was none of this.
None of this.
A couple of steps away, Dean arches an eyebrow. Dean’s got the ring in the palm of his hand. Tried only once to pretend he lost it. “You good?” he mouths, and Sam nods.
~~~~~~~~~~
They sanded down and refinished all the floors. Pulled down the old drywall and put up new, even on the ceiling. That was a little harder than Sam expected, and the first wall they attempted had to be done twice. The electrical work they couldn’t do on their own, even with the help of the websites Sam found; they had to call in the assistance of Dougie, from town, who’s licensed to do that stuff, and was patient enough to explain it all to Dean.
“Do not let my brother run wiring,” Sam said.
Dean and electricity? The thing with the rawhead was thirty years ago. That’s about a hundred years not long enough.
They put in a new toilet and a big soaker tub.
The roof is in good shape; after gathering opinions from a variety of sources - including Bobby, and Jake, after they’ve looked at some video Sam e-mails to them, and half a dozen people from town - Sam caved to that and left it alone. A woman he’d never seen before showed up to talk to him about the newest thing in siding for the exterior walls, a job her company was willing to do for the astonishingly low price of thirty thousand dollars, but Dean sent her packing along with the set of brochures she tried to leave behind.
They built a bookcase into one of the walls. Put up crown molding. Laid tile in the bathroom.
When that was done, Sam did all the shopping himself.
Bought a sofa and a cozy armchair, end tables and lamps, a bed and a dresser, a table and chairs, some rugs and towels and a set of dishes. Got all the way to the cash register with a cart full of his choices before it occurred to him that maybe he shouldn’t have done it on his own, that maybe he should have waited for her.
But that…
No, he thought.
I want to give her all of it.
~~~~~~~~~~
…which weathers the journeying
common life enhanced and enjoyed,
and differences brought into respectful embrace.
He has no regrets. Can’t open that door any more, because it took him almost thirty years - and more therapy than he really wants to admit to - to close it. The day he finished the house he told himself he was finished dealing with the past.
Told no one else. Just himself.
But they all seemed to know.
“It’s awesome, man,” Dean told him. “It’s sized for friggin’ midgets, but if you can deal with that, who am I to question it.” Before Sam could respond, Dean reached out and thumped him twice in the middle of the chest.
Smiled.
Told him, “You did it right, Sammy.”
He believes that.
~~~~~~~~~~
They didn’t reach the house until after dark. Delayed flight, road construction, a fender bender that backed the traffic up for more than two miles.
But someone had turned the lights on.
Connie got out of the car, road weary, and stood looking at the house from the outside. “Go in,” Sam told her.
He’d allowed no space in his head (or his heart) for the possibility that she wouldn’t like it. Or that she’d shriek and flail like a game show contestant. Reality was going to be somewhere in the middle, he’d decided, back when he was shifting the new tub into place, and saw in his mind’s eye the girl he’d known back in high school. The one with the shy smile, who indicated that she liked something only via the look in her eyes.
He followed her in, lingering a couple of steps behind her.
“Does my taste suck?” he asked her quietly.
“I hope not,” she said. “You picked me.”
There was only one bedroom. The space the old man had used for storage, Sam had turned into a study, with a deep window seat for reading. “I know some people who own a bed and breakfast,” he explained. “Right down the road. When the girls come, they can stay there. John lives there already. This is just -“
“Us.”
“Yeah.”
She didn’t open cupboards or closets. Instead, like a little kid, she touched fabrics: the couch, the comforter on the bed, the towels.
When she was finished, she turned to him.
“Yeah?” he said.
She smiled. Nodded.
So he shifted his weight and sank down onto one knee.
~~~~~~~~~~
Love defies the challenges,
and defines belonging.
Love today is an act of recognition and determination,
a commitment to live on
in a rich and vivid tapestry of life together.
They listen to the questions, respond to them the way they each did once before, although with slightly different words, and to other partners.
Surrounding them are the members of their combined family and a few friends. Dean and Morgan and RJ, Lizzie and her husband and kids, Lily, John and his girlfriend, Connie’s daughters (Jenna’s boyfriend is here; Annie’s flying solo) and her longtime best friend. Bobby Singer’s here; he drove himself all the way up from South Dakota.
A lot of people are missing, Sam thinks. But they’re here. Through sheer force of will alone, they’re here.
Behind him and Connie is their new home. The Mouse House. Officially that because Dean hung a little wooden plaque saying so alongside the front door, and Connie refused to take it down. She likes the name.
Likes Dean. Always has.
That’s a good thing.
The wide front lawn, stretching from the house down to the road, is bathed with light. The grass is soft and early-spring green; the air’s a little cool but rich with the fragrance of evergreen and lilacs. It’s a perfect place.
For this. For anything.
Sam reaches out and takes the gold ring Dean’s guarded zealously for more than a week, turns to his bride and slides it onto her finger. A minute later she accepts a ring from one of her daughters and pushes it into place on Sam’s hand - larger than hers, but not necessarily stronger.
There’s no one here who’s not smiling.
A minute ago, when the pastor asked if anyone had an objection, Dean made a face. Acted like he was thinking it over.
Did that until Sam said, “Dude.”
Dean’s got no objections. There’s nothing on his face but the same sort of wise, inarguable determination he wore back when Sam and Connie were in high school. When he chauffeured them around, the times he wouldn’t let Sam borrow his car.
A lot of this is due to Dean, Sam thinks: that he started going out with Connie in the first place, back when they were sixteen years old. And that he found Connie again, after more than half their lives had gone by.
“Thank you,” he says to Dean, this time aloud.
Dean, like Connie, says a lot with his eyes. There’s pride in there, Sam thinks. Relief.
And joy.
When the time comes, when the pastor says, “You may kiss your bride,” Sam takes both her hands in his own. Surrounds them with his and holds them against his chest, close to his heart. They do nothing but look at each other for a minute. They might cry, he thinks, either or both of them - but they don’t.
When he leans down to kiss her, the people around them cheer loudly enough to be heard all the way across the lake.
* * * * *