SN fic: "Sacrificial" Dean/OFC, Adult
Title: Sacrificial
Author: Rilla
Rating: Adult
Genre: Het; Dean/OFC; in-canon future-fic
Summary: “I think mothers are ultimately built for sacrifice. Mothers…and Dean Winchester.”
A/N: I’m as wary of first-person fics as the next fangurl, but I’m hoping some of you will give it a chance. This fic is complete...LJ just thinks I write too much.
Thanks to
little_jen for the beta and the encouragement. You are priceless, unless you care to name a price.
Sacrificial (Part I)
When we first moved into this small craftsman cottage on Maryland's eastern shore, I was all about feng shui and insisted that the bed align east-to-west, the sun rising in our faces to greet us each morning like a middle-class coffee commercial. But after a month of Dean crawling into bed just as the sun came up, aching and filthy from a hunt, too beat to care that he was getting blood and sweat and god-knows what else on my pretty duvet covers, barely managing a growl that I “close the friggin’ blinds”...well, there are some battles not worth fighting.
I bought burgundy muslin curtains and tucked the bed into the northeast corner-at least that direction still governed children-and now I can't tell if it’s midnight or dawn without my alarm clock.
Today, however, I have the curtains pulled back and I'm sitting in a stiff chair I've brought in from the kitchen, perched right in front of the bedroom window. It's only just after 4 a.m., but I think there’s a lightness to the sky already. The black is less black. The stars are fading. I will know-I must know-the second the tongue of the sun slips up from the horizon to start the day. It's all the participation in this night that Dean has allowed me. Not that I didn’t fight him on it. I fought him for weeks leading up to tonight. Screamed and railed and called him a selfish motherfucker and broke down and pleaded and stewed and finally begged. And I beg well-especially to Dean. I don’t fight dirty, but I beg dirty; using tricks and touches that ordinarily reduce him to some begging of his own. And only after he relents, do I.
"For the last time, Kate, no."
I knew it was over when he gave his final, quiet refusal. His stillness can be more terrifying than his rage. To be clear, I'm not frightened of my husband. But I'm frightened of that which he is capable.
So since sunset last night, I have sat in this room-our bedroom-and waited. My brother-in-law is slumped against the doorjamb, seated just outside in the hallway. His long legs are sprawled and taking up most of the corridor. There is a sawed-off lying across his lap and he’s keeping me in here as much as he’s keeping something else out. His head is tipped back against the doorframe, shaggy brown hair feathered across his brow, and I know he’s not asleep. But he’s an hour or two past alert...not that I could sneak by him. He knows Dean would kick his ass eight ways from Sunday if he let me out of this room.
"I don't care what happens. I don't care what you hear. You stay in this room and you don't come out until daylight."
"She's my daughter, too, Dean. I can't promise that."
"You have two choices. You either stay in here with Sam guarding you. Or Sam takes you on the road until this is done. And if that’s the way it has to be, then it can be on your head that Sam wasn’t here to help protect her if-. I'm not fucking around with this, Kate.”
He wasn’t trying to be an asshole. But guilt was something he embraced so easily, he assumed everyone else did, too. So I filed it away to use against him the next time he left the toilet seat up, and kept my mouth shut. I opted for the bedroom, under guard, salted, and, on the night stand, my own 9mm gleaming from frequent cleanings.
I had never shot a gun in my life before Dean, though I can hardly recall my life before Dean. No fault of my own-that’s just how it goes when a demon slaughters your whole family and then puts you in a coma for 12 years until some fierce, dead-sexy demon hunter chops the kudzu vines down outside your house in Savannah and wakes you up with a holy water kiss and his brother reading Latin over your dust-covered body. After our daughter was born, Dean broke the nose of a coworker of mine who gave me a copy of “Sleeping Beauty” as a present. He spent a night in jail and Sam salted and burned the book on principle.
I turn back to the window and, yes, the sky is definitely getting lighter. Now most certainly a blue-black.
Only two more hours, tops, and I’ll thread my way over Sam’s legs and cross into the nursery where Dean has sat all night, an arsenal of supernatural weaponry at his side, and our six-month-old daughter-six months old at midnight-sleeping in the crib.
***
When Dean first told me what might happen to Meredith on her six-month birthday, I was still doped up on pain killers from the emergency Caesarian I’d had two days earlier. I could hardly get up to go to the bathroom, let alone comprehend the fact that the nightmare that had torn his life to shreds 29 years ago could happen to our brand new little family.
When I realized he was serious, and that it was this terror that had caused him to miss the birth of his child because he was out hunting the yellow-eyed demon, trying to kill it before his daughter entered the world-well, I didn’t handle it gracefully. There was a lot of yelling and crying and Sam had to step in and remind us that we were still in the hospital and were scaring people. And then I’d thrown it in Dean’s face that I should have married Sam because he’d been the one holding my hand when Meredith was born. He, not Dean, signed the papers allowing the doctors do the surgery. That alone should serve as evidence for how medicated I was at the time, because as much as I love my brother-in-law, loving my brother-in-law would be like trying to cuddle a horse.
And as with any grieving process, denial set in. Then anger. Bargaining. All of which Dean understood. But acceptance was something none of us were going to allow. Four months after she was born, we three came to a firm conclusion: No way in heaven or hell would Merry-nicknamed, perhaps prophetically, for their mother Mary-fall victim to the yellow-eyed demon.
“And neither will you,” Dean had promised hoarsely into my ear after a tired but much-needed fuck against the kitchen counter in between changing diapers and breast feeding and 2 a.m. drives in the Impala to get Merry to sleep
And that’s around when the debate over my role in all this kicked off. Dean wanted it both ways: he wanted be where he could protect me, but also wanted me on the other side of the globe, as far away from Meredith’s nursery as possible. Sam was my ally. He reminded Dean that even if he snuck Merry off to some far corner of the earth to turn six months old-if the demon wanted to find her, he would. So it didn’t much matter where I was in all of it. Most importantly, I should be somewhere where all three of us could protect Merry. After all, it was protecting Merry that was the most important thing.
Dean didn’t see it that way, but that’s why I love his obstinate ass. He railed that protecting Merry was as important as protecting me; was as important as protecting Sam. Not that I necessarily believed that. Like I said, he’s fierce, my husband, and a little blind.
***
I hear a stirring, the sound of a movement so minute I doubt either of the boys, awake as I know them to be, would hear it. It’s a mom-thing. When I was pregnant with Merry, I read a study on the maternal instinct in one of the scads of books Sam bought me. The study was on a bunch of sleeping mothers who had the sound of their babies crying recorded and played back to them in their sleep. Only when it was her own baby crying, did that particular mother wake. I thought it was bullshit. I’d been around enough crying babies on airplanes (pre-Dean, of course) to know that there was no way a person could sleep through that caterwauling. Then I had Merry. And Dean, as devoted as he could be when he wasn’t recovering from a hunt, didn’t even twitch in his sleep when she cried. I revised my opinion.
She’s awake. I know she’s awake and stirring and very shortly will begin her clipped little wails that signal her need for boob and Mom, in that order. And if she doesn’t get them in a manner she considers timely, then she’ll prove she’s just as a good a yeller as her mommy and daddy. The sounds of her little lips smacking together makes my breasts ache.
I stand and cross to the doorway and am surprised to find Sam has, in fact, drifted off. But still, I’m unwilling to pass him. Instead I stand in the doorway and wait. And from the gloom of the nursery, lit only by the tiny AC/DC nightlight Dean picked up at a garage sale, he appears holding our daughter in his arms.
He’s wearing loose jeans and a plain-white t-shirt. A typical outfit for battle. His heavy boots look aggressive on the sky blue area rug I bought for her nursery. And Merry…she’s nestled into the crook of his arm, but her legs are kicking and she’s ready to fuss. She’s craning her head against him, searching. I can see the bow of her mouth working along the curve of his bicep, trying to suckle. Usually he laughs at this, apologizing in a saucy voice for not having the right equipment. But now her demanding hunger is frightening him.
“Dean,” I murmur, careful not to wake Sam. “You’ll be right here. You’ll protect us,” I urge.
He’s looking down at her as I speak and when he glances up at me his eyes are red-rimmed. From across the dark hallway I can see a silvery track on his cheek that disappears into the dark blonde stubble at his jaw. No tears, but the trace of them. He looks just this side of holding it together and I know the idea of both Merry and I so close is tearing at his instincts. He wants to keep us apart so that if it comes down to a fight, he only has to think about saving one of us.
“Baby, I can’t think about protecting you both at the same time. At some point, I’d have to choose and I can’t. I can’t.”
It has been this way since we first made love. Not sex, mind you. We’d had plenty of sex before love entered into it. But when that line was tripped, Dean could never go back. Now his unease was always just below the surface. Whenever Sam and I are both near danger, Dean becomes testy, snappish and mostly unpleasant to be around. It was Sam that first realized Dean was tormenting himself with the what-ifs. What if they were both in danger? What if he had to choose between his wife and his brother? How could he make that choice? Because for Dean it was all or nothing. Only now, “all” was getting to be more than he could control.
I was never much bothered by this back-and-forth with Dean. I knew the answer even if he didn’t. He would save Sam. And I was totally at peace with this choice. But with the birth of Meredith, all bets were off. As much joy as she brought to Dean’s dark life, she also brought with her a condition that rocked everything on which his choices were based. It was no longer Sam first, Kate second, Dean last. Merry shot straight to the top, as she should have. And then Sam. And then me. And if he had the time, Dean himself.
If he knew that I knew this was the order of things, he would deny it until he was blue in the face. But again, I’m ok with it.
After all, in my book, Merry comes before all else, too. Before Dean. Before Sam. Before me. I think mothers are ultimately built for sacrifice. Mothers…and Dean Winchester.
So now our daughter has two parents that are willing to fight to the death for her, but in this moment, the only thing I want to do is pull out my swollen breast and pop my nipple into my daughter’s mouth so this ache can be done.
“Come on, babe,” I say softly. “She needs to be fed. I need to feed her.”
It’s this gentle prodding, coupled with Merry’s building frustration with Dean’s taut but ultimately useless bicep, which brings Dean a step closer to me. His footfall between Sam’s legs causes his brother to jump but Dean grunts at him that everything is fine. I can feel Sam’s shame at having fallen asleep on the job simply by the way he fidgets on the floor with the shotgun. With heavy reluctance, Dean passes Merry over Sam’s head and into my waiting arms.
The second she’s with me, I see her tiny nostrils flare. She can smell my milk like a cat.
“Hey,” I coo in her face, turning back toward the bedroom, Merry tucked against me with one arm. I hear Dean follow, but stop just inside the room. With my other hand, I quickly unbutton my shirt and, braless, my left breast falls free, and damn if my little boob-monger isn’t honed in on it in under a second. She gives one short cry of aggravation when I chuckle at her and dislodge her mouth for a brief moment, and then she settles in, her small fingers groping for and finding the long chain and protective amulet I always wear around my neck.
Swaying my hips side to side to keep her in rhythm, I swing back to face Dean. He’s standing with his hands at his sides and for the first time I see the Colt dangling in his right hand. He must have had it there all along, tucked beside his daughter in his arms. He sees my eyes flare in anger-I know he does because he gives me a look right back that dares me to fight him on this. Again, it’s something I’ll store away for use later when he really pisses me off.
Behind him, Sam has risen and is standing, leaning in the doorframe, taking up the whole open space with that towering body. Over Dean’s shoulder he’s watching me breast feed his niece, his eyes drifting down to my open shirt and Merry’s sandy blond curls. I suppose other sisters-in-law would be uncomfortable with this, but as I said before, Sam was there when Merry came into this world. And before the doctors abandoned hope and went with the Cesarean, it had been Sam and not Dean who was palming my right foot in his hand, letting me shove into it for all I was worth as I tried to birth my daughter naturally.
And if that wasn’t enough, Sam has a serious mother-complex. Anything from seeing me breast feed to weathering a colic fit brought it out in him. And it was hard to deny those puppy-dogs anything when they shone down at me all laced with sadness and yearning.
“You okay, Kate?” he asks, finally tearing his eyes away from my boob to look me in the face.
“Everything’s fine, Sam,” I say quietly, deliberately keeping my gaze on Dean.
Sam nods once and then melts back into the dim hallway. “I’ll be right out here.” And then Dean and I are alone. And it’s exactly what he wished would not happen.
We lock eyes for a long moment and I can tell he’s at odds with himself. Because Sam’s not the only one with mommy issues. And seeing me breastfeed has nothing short of a Pavlovian effect on my husband, though he snorts when I suggest it. Tells me not to psycho-babble him; he just likes my tits and is jealous of anything that gets first dibs over him. But that’s macho crap. Because I think Dean remembers somewhere in the back of his terminally fucked-up childhood memories, his mother feeding his new baby brother. He remembers watching that bond, probably getting a little jealous, but then also probably being reassured of his place in this world by a motherly hand on his head. I know this because when Dean watches me and Merry, I suddenly feel keenly that I have two children and not one.
There are times I wish Mary Winchester were alive so I could ask her about these kinds of things. I may be the only wife in history who actually yearns for a mother-in-law.
I take a step toward Dean and, like a tango, he steps back. I give him a reproachful stare and he has enough sense to look embarrassed. I steal a peek at the bedside clock. It’s nearly 4:30.
“Come here,” I murmur, beckoning him to me.
Dean starts to shake his head, ‘No,’ so I ask him again, this time letting a bit of pleading color my voice. I need him right now with the same kind of urgency that Merry needed me. All this fear and evil pressing in…I need Dean. I need my husband.
He crosses the distance between us in two long strides and suddenly I’m in his arms and Merry is curled between us and his mouth is on mine. I know this kind of kiss. It’s his urgent, grounding kiss. The one he sometimes gives me after he’s seen something particularly disturbing on a hunt and needs to be reassured there are still some good things in this world. It’s a kiss that begs me to give him something…what that something is depends on the moment. Patience. Understanding. Peace. Reason. But tonight, I need to take comfort in him as much as he needs it from me.
I plead his name into his mouth and his tongue sweeps over mine in response. The hand not holding the Colt is suddenly pressing at the back of my head, ensuring that I do not break contact. He doesn’t have to worry. I have made a home for myself in his kiss. Three days of anxiety and not shaving have turned his bristly scruff soft, and the perpetual beard burn I get on my upper lip and chin gets a break. I sink further in…
And then the mouth on my nipple breaks away and Merry gives a short shriek of protest.
Dean pulls back before I can find my balance and he has to clasp a hand to my shoulder as I sway with our daughter. She’s finished with the left side and so I reposition her and offer her the right, which she takes with what I can only describe as a smug expression. Baby always gets what she wants. It’s a look so like Dean when he’s winning his daily victories-getting 100 more miles out of the Impala, beating Sam at poker, making me come with just his tongue and languid determination.
He stares down at Merry for a long second before bending to kiss her head, then planting a dry kiss on my collarbone. I pass a hand through his soft hair quickly before he pulls away.
“How are you holding up?” he inquires, his voice gravely from disuse.
I sigh tiredly and answer truthfully, “I can’t wait for you to come to bed.”
He grins a little at this, “I don’t know if Sam will be up for babysitting.” But we both know that of course Sam will watch over Merry. It’s all part of the devotion package. “Sunrise is almost here,” he remarks, looking over my shoulder and out the window. The sky has shifted again, more gray in the blue than before. I begin to smile, relief trickling in at the corners, but it’s the wrong thing to do. The sun is still behind the horizon and that means the yellow-eyed demon still has more than an hour to finish what he started in Lawrence.
“I need her back, Katie,” Dean warns, the sleepy softness of his features fading away as sharp and wary angles return to his jaw and cheekbones.
“She’s almost done,” I reply, looking down to see Merry has slowed her suckling and her eyes are starting to roll. “She’ll be asleep in a minute and then you can take her.”
He bites at his lower lip, uneasy now-the small bit of comfort he took from our kiss melting as fast as it came. He looks so uncomfortable it’s nearly catching, and I turn my attention back to Merry who has unlatched, her jaw slack with sleep. Her warm brown eyes, my eyes, are closed and if her pattern holds she’ll be out for the next two hours at least.
Without a word, Dean tucks the Colt into the back of his jeans’ waistband and then slips his daughter from my arms. She twitches in her sleep, but stills the moment Dean snuggles her against his hard, smooth chest. Our eyes meet and I feel like I should say something in parting. Be careful? Watch your back? Call me when you get there? It all sounds idiotic for someone who’s just going back across the hallway. And still, it’s a canyon he’s crossing.
“I love you,” I murmur.
Sometimes the simplest way is the best way.
And he smirks; the left corner of his mouth picking up as he gives me a little self-satisfied sniff. He purses his lips and for a second I think he’s going to say something, maybe something incredibly meaningful, or, knowing Dean, incredibly rude. But then he seems to think better of it, winks at me, and starts to shuffle back into the nursery.
And suddenly I’m gripped by a frantic thought.
“Dean!” I call out, not so loud as to wake the baby, but laced with urgency.
He jerks back around, his eyes wide and alert. “What’s wrong?”
This is going to piss him off, but I don’t care. My daughter’s life is too important to care about hurting his feelings right now. “Cristo,” I say clearly.
I watch his face and it remains placid and even. Not a flinch in sight. Just a kind of resigned sadness in his eyes that wasn’t there before, but that I’m all too familiar with.
He sighs out heavily, as though the weight of this night is just about ready to crush him. And then, flatly, “Love you, too.”
As he leaves the room, Sam has reappeared and I hear Dean chastise him, telling him to see if he can’t manage a little sentry duty in the name of his niece and goddaughter. Sam mumbles an apology and then steps into the bedroom where I’m still standing, shirt unbuttoned, the feel of accusatory Latin on my lips.
“It’s almost over, Kate,” Sam says kindly, his eyes averted as I fumble with the buttons on my shirt.
With my clothes in order I look into Sam’s honest, kinda dopey face and think that the devil could be hiding in him as easily as in his darker brother. More easily in fact.
“Cristo,” I say again and watch intently.
Sam just gives me a slow forlorn smile. “That musta pissed him off,” he concludes, and I shrug. “But it doesn’t work on the yellow-eyed demon, anyway. He’s too strong.”
I bring my hands up to my face and pull them over my eyes, mouth, chin. Their world, even in the periphery as I usually am, is so damn exhausting. “I didn’t know that,” I admit.
Sam cocks his head to one side and then looks over his shoulder at the nursery, then back at me. “It was a smart idea,” he offers me, lamely. I know he’s probably being sincere, but still…it doesn’t feel good to accuse your husband and his brother-your only family-of demonic possession. “I’ll be out here,” he says, and then turns from me to retake his position, guarding the abyss between me and Merry. Me from Merry. Merry from me. I’m too tired to even know anymore.
***
There is a lavender tinge to the sky now, adding a new layer to the blacks and blues and grays of the pre-dawn. I can’t help but think it looks like a bruise. A wide, brushstroke of a bruise like the ones I kiss on Dean’s back, thighs, shoulders, stomach, face...after a hunt. The ones that scream out to me: He’s only human! He, himself, is not supernatural even if what he does for a “living” makes him seem that way. He bleeds; he bruises; he can’t always stop the nastiness from getting too close.
But as damaged as the sky might look to my overly metaphorical state of no sleep and raw nerves, I’m cheered because I can just make out the edge of our landlord’s cornfield in the back yard. We rent this little house from a man who could be the ad campaign for Farm Aid-the family farmer, eking out a living on fertile land that still can’t compete with the conglomerates of big-agriculture resting on his doorstep. Dean was wary of putting down roots, even rented roots, until he met the man who would take his (my) cash every month. They bonded over classic cars and the belief that a man had to do what a man had to do. It was all very grunt-worthy, and Sam and I had hung back while Dean brought the deal to a close. These two men with dirt under their fingernails shook paws on a ridiculously low rent in exchange for a little mechanic work on Dean’s part and privacy for us all.
We’ve lived here for more than a year. I work as a receptionist in a real estate office, situated on the main drag of a tourist town where shops boast homemade ice cream and crab-themed crafts, and out-of-towners whistle at the property listings I tape up in our front window. Whether the prices are criminally high or embarrassingly low, I have no idea. I just take messages and organize the office holiday party.
Of course, I’d had bigger dreams for myself. I wanted to be a veterinarian before the demon struck, locking me in stasis at age 23 for more than a decade. And now, two years after Dean and Sam “woke me up,” when I start to feel low about blown career plans and the need for a stolen social security card-the pre-Sleeping-Beauty Kate was, for all intents and purposes, dead-Dean swoops in with his roguish charm and wandering hands.
“But I get the best of both worlds, sexy. I get the older woman in the body of a 25-year-old.”
I wish I had more willpower to stay sulky, but his logic always makes me laugh.
Dean’s career aspirations are harder to pinpoint. He and Sam trundle about the country in the Impala, chasing ghosts and gremlins and zombies and wraiths and poltergeists and wendigos and demons and everything else gothic and disturbed under the sun…or moon as is usually the case. The pay is crap-which is where my decent salary and our miniscule rent come in handy-and they’re often gone for days, even weeks, at a time. But it’s what brought them to me, saving my life two years ago, so how can I pout and try to keep him here with me just to play house?
I liken it to being married to a traveling salesman-which is what I tell my coworkers is Dean’s job. And usually these short bursts of loneliness are rewarded with tremendous leather-scented hugs upon his return and the sheer, stupid-faced smiles I can’t contain as I watch him scoop up Merry, high into the air, before bringing her back down into a close snuggle as he chirps her name in a decidedly un-Dean way.
But there are also times, padding around my house with my daughter, that I feel utterly abandoned by Dean. When these spates of absence happen, though they have been very rare since Merry’s birth, I look at my wedding ring to remember. It’s a plain gold band. Plain because I wouldn’t let “Ishmael Abramowitz” pick up the tab on the symbol of Dean’s and my lifelong commitment. Rampant credit-card fraud was one of the trade-ins Dean had to make when we decided to settle for a while.
We had what one might call an unorthodox courtship. Utterly orphaned, 12 years older by the calendar but no more aged in mind and body, Dean and Sam woke me from my coma and returned me to a world I was no longer a part of. Graciously, Sam offered me a lift anywhere I wanted to go. Dean’s what-the-fuck glare at Sam’s suggestion did not go unnoticed. Problem was, there was no where to go. No family. No friends I could reach out to who would understand. So for weeks I hunkered down in the back of the Impala and said hardly a word as Sam and Dean crisscrossed the country following murders and disappearances and general spooky mayhem.
I read the books Sam gave me; acted as the errand girl for rubbing alcohol, bandages, salt, Twinkies and beef jerky; and did research for them in libraries while they were out pounding the pavement. I earned my keep by dressing like a slut to distract the guys Dean hustled at pool. But other than to palm me money for my “work,” Dean spoke to me only in monosyllables. His one kind concession: he gave me his bed in the motel rooms they would rent, and he and Sam would bunk together or he’d sleep in the armchair.
I was in the way and knew it, but was at a complete loss-and probably still in some state of post-traumatic stress-to decide what else to do. Sam was sweet to me, maybe even sweet on me for a time, but it was Dean who I wanted desperately to forgive me for my trespass into his life. Dean whose eyes I would meet as he glanced into the backseat from the rearview mirror.
It happened about a month into my intrusion. It was November and we were in New Mexico. The boys had just finished ending a little reign of terror caused by a pissed-off, cattle-rustling ghost. There was some downtime, and I had finally figured out what I was going to do. I would settle here since it seemed like a sunny enough place, and get a retail job with the false identity Sam had procured for me. I would save my money and then apply to some kind of trade school. Maybe be a vet-tech…as close as I was likely to get to my old ambitions. I had laid out the plan to Sam and Dean the previous night over steak and eggs in a diner across from the motel. Sam was encouraging. Dean just frowned.
The next day Sam hooked into the laptop to do recon work at a coffee shop, trying to locate their next hunt. I was about to ask the kid behind the coffee counter if they were hiring, when Dean grabbed me by my sleeve and tugged me out onto the side walk. He loped around the Impala, got in and told me to do the same.
In silence, we drove three miles outside the city limits and pulled off onto a dusty, no-man’s road where he finally parked along a fence line that faced a sandstone ridge. He got out of the car and I scrambled to follow. Popping open the trunk of the Impala, he lifted the hidden hatch and snagged two .45s from the heap of weapons, pocketed a fistful of ammo, and tucked a bunch of empty soda cans under his arm.
“Come on.”
I walked several steps behind him, stopping when he held out a hand for me to do so. He continued on to the fence line 30 years away. With care, he lined up the cans and then strode back to me. Handing me one of the guns, he talked me through how to make sure the barrel was clear; load it; cock it. I held it limply in my hands, completely out of my element, and watched him when he told me to. He raised his gun-hand out straight, eyed the target and pulled the trigger. The deafening sound of the shot made me scream, but it didn’t distract Dean. He cleanly hit one of the cans, sending it whirling off the fencepost.
“Your turn.”
He moved behind me, cloaking me with his body and helping me line up my shot. My hand trembled from the weight of the gun, the adrenaline rush and-beyond all else-the heavy, musky closeness of Dean.
“You don’t have to do much. Just squeeze.”
His warm breath, the scent of him…it made my stomach twist.
I fired off a shot, missed the can by a few time zones, and turned with a sheepish look at Dean.
And he did something he hadn’t done since Sam offered me squatter’s rights in their life. He smiled.
“Try again.”
Dean shot holes in every dispensable item in his car that afternoon, and I tore the crap out of the surrounding dirt hills, hoping I hadn’t maimed a poor prairie dog in the process. Then we nearly had sex on the hood of the Impala until an urgent phone call from Sam about their next hunt interrupted us.
“We should head out tonight. Do you think Kate will be ok?”
I heard Sam’s question through the phone, and Dean paused to look at me. If I wasn’t already pinned beneath his just-about-naked body on the car’s slick, black hood, I would have been pinned by his hazel eyes.
Looking right at me, Dean replied.
“Kate’ll be fine, Sam. Kate’s coming with us.”
The next night, 500 miles further down the road in an Interstate motel, Dean got a separate room for Sam, and he and I finished what we began.
***
Sacrificial (Part II)
Sacrificial (Part III) - fin
If you read, I'd love some feedback. Thanks!