SPN fic: Waiting Game
Title: Waiting Game
Rating: R but only for a few bad words; more like a hard PG-13
Summary: Ruby never signed up to be a babysitter, so it was super inconvenient of Dean to get knocked up and leave Sam with his spawn before he went to Hell. Takes place around October of what would be S4. 3,700 words.
A/N: This fic is for pocochina, who requested a snippet or title/summary for the prompt "Sam/Ruby, accidental-baby-acquisition” (my new favorite name for a trope ever). As I was already plotting out Dean/Bela mpreg thanks to snickfic and this scenario was a logical offshoot of S3…it turned into a bit more than a snippet. :)
When she and Lilith devised their plan, Ruby had known she was signing up to be a lot of things: traitor, prey, outcast, bitch slut cunt Winchester whore.
She hadn’t signed up to be a babysitter.
* * *
It was all Dean’s fault of course (many things were, it seemed, and she was willing to blame him for everything else, too). He just had to get knocked up, and he had to decide to carry it to term instead of aborting it like any self-respecting man would, and he had to go and die and leave his squalling spawn in Sam’s less than capable hands (actually, the dying part was good; at least that part of the plan had worked).
And now all Sam wanted to do was take care of the stupid thing, which was putting a serious crimp in her schedule.
“We can go after Lilith,” she’d said, more times now than she could remember. “We’ll train harder. You’ll get stronger, and next time, you’ll be able to kill her.
“I thought you wanted revenge,” she prodded, when he didn’t react.
“I do,” he finally answered, so seriously that she felt a flicker of hope. “But I promised Dean I wouldn’t. Not with Mary around. I need to take care of her.”
“Find someone else to take care of her! Bobby or that woman and her daughter you mentioned-”
“I’m not giving up my brother’s daughter,” he snarled, so fiercely that Ruby fell silent.
(And thought that he and his brother really were more alike than anyone ever gave them credit for; she remembered Dean’s face last spring when she suggested he offer to trade the baby for his soul; it was the first and only time she’d feared him.)
Sam looked down at the babe in his arms, expression softening dangerously. “She’s more important than revenge.”
Maybe she was, but last time Ruby checked, changing diapers and singing lullabies weren’t going to break any Seals.
“I’m sorry,” she lied, after one of their worse arguments (it was a fine line between pushing him in the right direction and pushing too hard that he told her to leave). “I’m just trying to help you.”
Sam sighed, a bone-deep, soul-sick sound. “If you really want to help, you can watch her for a few hours so I can sleep.”
The second he said it he seemed to regret it, though. She saw it in the widening of his always-baggy eyes, the way his grip tightened around the infant.
After everything, he still didn’t trust her.
She always knew he was a smart one.
But intelligence and common sense were not what she required of Sam Winchester, so she and Lil had a pow-wow, and a few days later, the horde of demons came a-knocking- well, a-breaking-down-the-door- to kidnap the infamous, impossible progeny of Dean Winchester.
There were too many for Sam to fight alone, even if he hadn’t had the infant to protect, and Lilith’s minions blocked all the exits before he could flee. One of the mouth-breathers managed to get a hold of the babe, and while Sam struggled in the grasp of two others, roaring in impotent rage, it raced from the motel-
(Lilith broke off with a smirk and tipped her champagne glass toward Ruby to continue the thread.)
And smack into Ruby, who had conveniently just returned from one of her scouting trips. Utterly heedless of her own safety, she threw herself at the kidnapper and fought tooth and nail to save the child-
When Sam finally escaped his attackers and staggered out of the motel, tear-streaked and anguished, he’d found Ruby huddling against a wall, bearing multiple stab wounds and, more importantly, one wailing Mary Winchester.
(“I hope it didn’t hurt, too much, darling.” Lilith’s fingers slipped under the hem of her shirt, tracing the healed skin. She smiled, glinting eyes not sorry at all, and Ruby leaned closer.)
They went back into the motel, and after flinging several pounds of salt around the room (being encircled made her skin crawl, but she never said anything), Sam tended the baby while Ruby tended her wounds. While cleaning them she asked casually, as though it had only just occurred to her, “Do you want some? In case they come back? Might as well make the most of it.”
He looked at the bloodstained finger she held up, and she saw the longing flash across his face as clear as day. But then his features tightened, and he shook his head.
“No. Thanks, but I- it’s not good for me. And I need to-” Avoiding her gaze, he gestured vaguely at the babe, even though she was, for once, calm.
(She could practically see Dean’s ghost behind him, nodding in sanctimonious approval. He had barely tolerated the blood drinking even after they traded the Colt for his extension and it seemed to be their only option; she just knew he had made Sam promise to never do it again after the child was born if they failed and Dean still died. And everything precious Dean had wanted was a Papal Bull now that he was dead and canonized.)
His refusal was disappointing, to be sure, but at least she’d accomplished her immediate goal.
He didn’t hesitate after that when she offered to take the child; he smiled gratefully instead of looking wary when she told him to get some rest; he asked, more and more often (but always politely and never for things he could do himself), for help (“Will you watch her while I run to the store for more formula? I’ll only be ten minutes, I promise.”).
(And later the night of the raid, after the child was asleep, even though he’d already thanked her, she found herself wrapped without warning in tight, powerful arms, her cheek pressed against his tee shirt. It was so sudden, so tactile, that it was all she could do not to flip him and gut him. She could feel the power in him, both physical and demonic, but she could also feel him trembling.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you for saving her.”
She didn’t know what to say, so she nodded her head beneath his chin and raised her hand tentatively to his back. It was another minute before he released her, and when he stepped back, red-eyed, he smiled almost shyly. She tried to smile back, even though her body’s heart was racing uncomfortably fast.
He hadn’t touched her so intimately since Dean’s death. In fact, it felt more intimate than sex, almost more than intimate than the blood.
She didn’t remember the last time someone had hugged her.)
The other result of Lilith’s raid was that they finally packed up and moved to the Big Apple. They’d had the keys to the thief’s apartment since her death in May, but in the three weeks since Dean’s death, Sam had lingered in motels within a twenty-mile of radius of his grave instead of moving on like the brothers talked about. They were fairly certain the demons knew Bela’s address (she knew they knew because she had told Lil), but her apartment was protected with (literally) the best anti-demon enchantments money could buy (she’d needed to get a special tattoo just to cross the threshold, and her head still buzzed if she got too near the wards’ power centers). After the attack, Sam was finally ready to take advantage of them, even if it meant leaving his brother’s bones behind.
Sam didn’t need to work (if nothing else could be said for her, the thief had at least ensured that her child would never want for anything before shuffling off her pathetic mortal coil), but once they reached NYC they still fell into a routine of sorts; not a do-everything-at-the-same-time-every-day routine (even if she could have borne being that domestic, the infernal child’s non-existent sleeping pattern wouldn’t have allowed it), but they each developed their daily habits.
Sam obsessively tended to the child's every need, picking it up the second it began to wail, changing it practically before it had soiled its diaper, microwaving its bottle until the formula was the exact temperature Google told him it should be. If it was fussy before naps, he stayed in the bedroom until it fell asleep, and then he carried the monitor with him wherever he went, even to the bathroom. He sang to it and made funny faces at it and told it he loved it more times in one day than Ruby could remember having said in her entire life.
(And every night, without fail, he showed the infant a picture of Dean and Bela, taken days before her death, and he whispered, “And these are your dad and your mom, and they love you, too.” The first time she heard him, she didn't know whether to laugh or throw up, but it seemed a bit less funny as days passed and he didn't stop having to wipe his eyes afterward.)
The first week in the city, Sam was so paranoid of another attack that he never left the apartment with the child, which meant he never left it himself except to pick up necessities. Ruby was only able to persuade him to venture outside with the argument that staying indoors 24/7 would stunt the infant's growth (not that she cared about its growth, but she was getting more than a little stir-crazy being so cooped up). Once he got over his fear, though, they went out every day; sometimes it was just for a few minutes to pick up take-out or go to the convenience store around the corner, but more often it was for a walk around Central Park or for a trip to Babies-R-Us (Ruby didn’t know any other children, of course, but if she did, this one would undoubtedly be the most spoiled).
Whenever it was asleep, Sam was on his laptop or buried in a book, either obsessively researching how to be a father (there were more child-rearing guides strewn around the apartment than the local bookstore probably had) or obsessively researching how to bring his brother back from Hell (the only edict of Saint Dean’s he had broken). He was on the phone with Bobby every other day comparing theories, and on the days in between he was on the phone with Ellen asking anxiously for parenting advice.
His devotion meant that taking care of himself occasionally got left out of the routine, like forgetting to eat if Ruby didn’t remind him (she drew the line at cooking for him, but sometimes, if she was feeling generous, she’d pick up take-out).
If she had actually been his girlfriend, it might have bothered her that he lived solely for his niece and his dead brother’s memory, but she wasn’t, and it didn’t (other than how it related to the plan, of course; but the First Seal wasn’t even broken yet; they had time). His preoccupation meant he didn’t think too hard on her motives or where she was when she wasn’t with him.
She stopped going on “scouting” trips after they settled in the city (there was no point, if he didn’t want to find Lilith), but every few days she took the subway to another borough to check in with Lil (“I’ll be gone for a few hours. Going to make sure there aren’t any demons hanging around the neighborhood,” she told him, and he’d nod gratefully).
She pretended to be interested in his resurrection research (she learned after the first few days to stop telling him it was impossible; it only distanced him from her) and read the pages he dog-eared for further perusal.
She went on the shopping excursions, and she walked beside the stroller in Central Park.
(“Which is cuter? Baby giraffe or baby duck?”
“They’re both fine.”
“You barely looked at them. C’mon, which is cuter?”
“Oh for…baby giraffe.”
“Okay. Baby giraffe onesie it is.”)
And she helped take care of the baby. If it woke from its nap while Sam was in the shower, she changed it and dressed it. If it started bawling while Sam was talking to Bobby or Ellen, she waved for him to stay on the phone and picked it up herself. She fed it and burped it and soothed it and never said a word against it- well, almost never.
(“She’s psychotic!” Wincing, she held the screaming thing at arm’s length while Sam disposed of its excrement and washed his hands.
“She’s not- look, of course she’s- colicky.” Sam finally took it away, somehow able to cradle it despite the noise. “She doesn’t have her parents! How am I- how am I supposed to be good enough for her?”
The sudden desperation in his tone so surprised her that it didn't occur to her until later that she should have suggested again, gently, that he give the child away.)
It was a loud, fretful baby, as annoying as its father (as its mother, too, no doubt; Ruby hadn’t interacted with the thief much, but there had to be something wrong with anyone who would fuck Dean).
It never slept through the night, and it emitted the worst smells (which was saying something, considering she came from the realm of brimstone).
Although Lilith always sounded amused when asking after the child (“And how’s our darling spawn today? Having fun with Auntie Ruby?”), Ruby did not appreciate the irony of her situation: the fact that she’d never wanted children when she was human but was now stuck mothering one in her afterlife. She missed the days when her only contact with infants was kidnapping them to feed Lil’s sweet tooth.
She daydreamed frequently about killing this one, too: smothering it with a pillow; stabbing it with one its father’s own weapons; or best of all, twisting its tiny head off its tiny neck with her bare hands.
She would never kill it, though, even if Sam weren’t in the picture. Lilith had forbidden it, for good reason: even if the circumstances of her birth didn’t make her special, the girl had Winchester blood; the daughter might prove as useful as her father and uncle someday (and if not, it could always be killed later).
So Ruby took care of it; she swaddled it, and rocked it, and sang to it, and cooed at it, and smiled at it.
(And if she felt a strange jolt in her chest the first time Sam said, “Aunt Ruby’s gonna watch you for a few minutes while Uncle Sammy runs an errand,” it was just her meat suit acting up somehow; this body, the new one she’d had to get after Lilith used her blonde one to kill the thief, was dead, after all; it was bound to be a bit temperamental.)
Unexpectedly, there did turn out to be one upside to her new nanny role in Sam’s life: with that intimacy came others.
In their weeks spent squatting around Dean’s grave, they hadn’t had sex once. The one time she’d tried to kiss him, a few days after the birth, in a rare moment when the baby was asleep and he looked close to short-circuiting from grief and exhaustion, he had pushed her away. He claimed to be too tired, but she’d seen the flash of resentment, even disgust, in his eyes (he’d spent the past few months debasing himself- in multiple ways- with a demon because she had promised to save Dean; and then Dean had died anyway). She hadn’t shown the nerve it struck, but she also hadn’t tried to seduce him again.
He looked at her differently after the raid, though. He looked at her with respect again, gratitude; she took advantage of it as soon as possible.
When the babe woke them both up with its shrill screaming in the middle of their second night in New York, she stumbled into his room, feigning a yawn and rubbing her eyes, as though she belonged. She sat with him on the bed for over an hour while he rocked the child back to sleep. When it was finally in its bassinet, he sat back down next to her and looked at her.
“You didn’t have to stay,” he whispered.
She didn’t speak; just rested her hand lightly on his where it lay on the comforter. The corners of his eyes crinkled.
And it was that easy.
They only kissed that night, but two evenings later, when the babe fell asleep earlier than normal, they fucked, short and fast, on the couch in the living room. Before their first week in the city was up, she was sleeping in the master bedroom with him.
She’d only thought to toy with him, to bind him closer to her and maybe have a little fun herself in the process, but the sex turned out to be more…enjoyable than she had anticipated. Before, it had always been sinful, a dirty and shameful byproduct of the bloodlust. Now (with Dean gone), it was more than just rutting; it could be rutting, but it could also be slow (not that it was usually; they didn’t have the time), and it could be playful, and at the end of it he smiled instead of frowned (that did odd things to her chest, too, but it was probably just the body).
She’d always thought he was an adequate partner (certainly more than adequate in some ways; the proportions his height implied did not disappoint), but she’d also always looked at the sex as simply part of her job. Now it not only made this holding pattern of surrogate parenting more bearable, it was something she looked forward to.
(He came second, with a stifled wheezing sound, always aware of the sleeping baby in the next room. She barely felt his weight before he rolled to the side, always mindful of how much smaller she was than he. She waited for him to shift away like he normally did, but instead he stayed pressed against her, and a moment later his arm slid around her waist.
Her breath hitched, for reasons she couldn’t explain, and she knew if she looked in a mirror, she’d look like a stupid doe in stupid headlights. He must have felt her seize up, because a few seconds later he said, sounding nervous and un-Sam-like, “Is this okay?”
She swallowed. “Yeah.”
She didn’t think she’d fall asleep like that (Lil never held her; she always slept alone), but the next time she opened her eyes, there was light in the room, and the baby was fretting over the monitor.)
It came as a genuine surprise when Lil told her only two weeks after their move that Dean had caved and the First Seal was broken; with all that righteousness coming out of his ass she’d sort of expected him to hold out longer than five weeks (then again, in her experience, the righteous were usually the most hypocritical).
She didn’t ask for details, and their talks were short enough these days that Lil didn’t offer them, but Ruby assumed they’d used the thief as leverage somehow to force Dean’s hand; the fool had probably considered her family just because she donated some genetic material to his wonder-spawn, never mind that in life they’d always seemed one step away from strangling each other (the Winchester Achilles heel; family was always a liability).
The news was invigorating, even if it also ratcheted up the pressure; now that the First Seal was broken, she finally had a timetable to work toward again. Fortunately, she had a plan; if Sam persisted in refusing to develop his powers, she would force his hand as easily as those below had forced Dean’s.
A few more Seals from now, the demons would raid again, and this time she wouldn’t be in the right place at the right time to rescue the poor, helpless baby. The demons would spirit precious Mary away, to Lilith, and Sam would have no choice but to go after her. In fact, maybe Lil would even come herself this time, to remind Sam exactly who had ruined his life and twist the knife just a bit more.
Whichever way, by the end of the battle he’d be begging Ruby for her blood.
The thought buoyed her, made everything easier to bear; the babe’s cries seemed softer, its smells less noxious; even its little wrinkled face was less ugly. Singing, and cooing, and smiling were easier to do, and at night, in bed, she was more playful, thinking of the nights to come when there would be no baby.
Sam must have noticed her optimism, because one night, when her head was on his chest and her eyes were already closed, his fingers stilled in her hair and he said abruptly, “Why are you here?”
She couldn’t keep from freezing, for the shortest of instants. Her throat felt inhumanly dry as paranoid thoughts skittered through her mind. Did he suspect her? Had he followed her and heard her talking to Lil?
(Don’t you want me?)
“What do you mean?” she stalled.
“Why do you stay with me?” he said.
You’re a demon.
“Why do you care?”
She shifted so she could look at him full on. He wasn’t grim-faced, by any means, but it wasn’t a throwaway question either. She saw his curiosity, and the shadow of something that could turn to doubt.
She took a deep, contrite breath. “I promised you I could save your brother, and I failed. I can’t make that up to you, but when you want to kill Lilith, I’m going to help.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “You’re stuck with me, Sam.”
He didn’t smile back. “I’m not going to go after Lilith.”
She waited a moment, looking him in the eyes. “Then I’ll still be here.”
Another beat passed, and then she kissed him.
He kissed her back.
* * *
Sam was so much more likable without Dean around (softer around the edges; less suspicious; more open-minded; kinder) that it was easy to forget he could be dangerous, too. The sooner she was done playing the damn babysitter and they were back to hunting Lilith- the sooner she could make him dangerous the way she wanted- the better things would be.
(And if sometimes she liked when he held her, and if sometimes it felt good that he trusted her, and if sometimes she didn’t even mind watching him rock Mary to sleep, well-
There was nothing a little stint in Hell couldn’t fix.)
Fin