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apocalypsos) wrote2006-03-28 12:18 pm
apocalypsos) wrote2006-03-28 12:18 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: Across the Universe (Supernatural)
Title: Across the Universe
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R
Word Count: 3,728 words
Pairing: It's het. Let's just leave it at that. ;)
Spoilers for: "Pilot", AU following
Warnings: Character death, bad language
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I just like playing with them.
Summary: The things we can survive depend on the people who stand by to help us.
*****
Across the Universe
****
1.
Everyone stands back from her as they lower the casket into the ground, as if she's about to be sucked in after it and none of them want to get caught in the backdraft. She feels small and cold and dark, and she brought a purse along with her just to have something to clutch so her fingers won't tremble.
She's the only one at the funeral not wearing black. Sam used to curl around her during storms, bury his face in her hair and pray for sunshine, and the hem of the bright yellow sundress dances around her knees in the breeze.
She's sunny, and it's sunny, and she thinks Sam would have liked that even if he didn't like any of this.
Her fingers tighten on the purse again, because no one will be standing behind her when she turns. Not her friends, who mean well but haven't touched her in three days like she's contagious. Not her family, who know she wants time alone and have taken to giving it to her in abundance. Not his family, who perform the world's most magical disappearing act on an amateur basis.
She steels herself and turns.
There is a familiar black Impala parked not far away. It's not alone.
She's been surprised by a lot of things in the last few days, but this is one of the nicer surprises, as strange as it is.
2.
She doesn't know why she gets into the car with Dean. Hell, if she met him in a bar, she'd slip him a fake number and duck out with an equally fake smile, waving her fingers and wishing guys who looked like that weren't such assholes. He'd make some comment about her legs like the only way he could picture them was wrapped around his waist and some comment about her breasts like the only way he could picture them was resting in the palms of his hands. Ten minutes with him and she figures he's one of those guys who notes the first drink he sees you buy for yourself and then pays for a steady supply of them for you for the rest of the night before you can bother asking him not to.
She wonders which one of them will crack first, and gets the impression he's thinking the same thing. If he's half as stubborn as she is and as Sam said he was, they could be here a while.
"Where to?" he says, but she can tell he's not expecting an answer and she doesn't have one anyway. Somehow, going home to Mom and Dad and her little sister being extra comforting by not being all that comforting at all makes her want to throw up.
"Drugstore," she finally says, and her voice rasps like gravel rubbing across glass.
He doesn't even question it, and she supposes she's grateful. He drives them to the nearest mom-and-pop hole-in-the-wall and forages through the bandage aisle like he's restocking the first aid kit in a large gym.
She doesn't say a word the whole time they're there, pockets what she's looking for, and ducks out the front door without paying for it.
Nobody questions her. She's blond, young, pretty, red-faced from crying. Why would they?
When Dean gets into the car, he stares at her for so long she feels like she's being tested, and she's just about to snap back an irritated, "What?" when he finally starts the Impala.
3.
She has a dozen places she could stay -- with her parents, with Rebecca, with Zach and his buddies even if it's five guys and she's pretty sure that invitation was more out of politeness anyway.
Dean drives to a rundown motel and she can't bring herself to complain. A baby wails on the second floor and there's angry shouting from the room at the far end, but the second he shuts the motel room door, it's like a wall of stone and steel's gone up in an instant.
This is when you're supposed to cry, she thinks, but all she can do is sit down on one of the beds and stare at the nightstand. The top drawer's open a crack, letting the top edge of the black leatherbound book inside peek out. Sam didn't even like that book, she thinks with an edge of hysteria, because he didn't like it but all she can do when she sees books is think of Sam.
He always got the religion questions right when they played board games. Weird, that.
"Want anything?" Dean says.
I want Sam back.
"I'm going to the diner down the street for some ... I mean, I could get you something, if you're hungry."
Sam. I want Sam.
"I'm not hungry," she says, and she wonders how long it'll take after he leaves for him to let his own tears fall.
The door slams when he leaves, less his doing and more the wind picking up outside, but when it does, it startles her like a shot and she shakes it off as if she's been in a daze, noticing things that weren't there before. A box of tissues on the nightstand. A blanket wrapped around her shoulders. A bottle of water on the floor next to her feet.
The pregnancy test she'd slipped into her pocket at the pharmacy placed gently in her lap.
4.
"Did Sam tell you how our mother died?"
Dean's voice doesn't crack, all low and gravelly like it is whenever it's not choked with emotion, but it still manages to cut through the darkness that night with more sharpness than she expects.
"He said she died in a fire," she says.
He doesn't say anything after that, and she's pretty sure he figures saying it out loud is all the two of them need to confront it.
5.
When they went to sleep the night before, they'd both curled up in their own beds facing in opposite directions. When they wake up, it's facing one another from across the gap between the beds.
She feels Sam's hands on her, like he rolled her over in her sleep, and tries to imagine she's just making it up.
6.
Dean never tells her where the hell their father was when his youngest son was being buried, but he stays in town to help her get a new place and tells her embarrassing childhood stories about Sam that make her laugh and asks her if Sam was just as irritating after he left his brother and father as he was before. The longer he's there, the more sure she is that it's less that John Winchester didn't want to go to his son's funeral and more that he couldn't, and she starts to wonder if that's the whole reason Dean stays.
He offers to arrange furniture and buy groceries and do a half-dozen other things while she goes to class, and when she comes back one day there's a crib set up on the opposite side of her bedroom like a looming monster watching her.
She sits down hard on the bed and wants to yell, but it feels like there's a hand covering her mouth and another caressing her stomach, and whatever she was going to scream dies in her throat.
One day, Dean kisses her on the forehead and rumples her hair before he leaves, makes some flirtatious comment about her T-shirt that makes her roll her eyes, and doesn't come back again for seven weeks.
7.
There's a Planned Parenthood in Redwood City.
She thinks about it sometimes, and every time she does her stomach rolls like it's a threat.
There are these weird symbols carved into the windowsills of the new apartment and salt and something else has been ground into the crack in the bottom of the front doorway so thick she can't even scrape it all out. She finds these little bags of herbs all over the place, tucked into corners and under the furniture like secret surprises of potpourri, and puts them back even when they send a chill down her spine. There's a fire extinguisher next to her bed, in plain and garish view.
She refuses to open the bottom drawer of her nightstand anymore, because the last time she did, she could have sworn she saw a gun in there.
So, yeah, she thinks about Planned Parenthood a lot, but her stomach still rolls and heaves like it's the worst revenge it can carry out.
8.
For Christmas, her sister gives her a sweater and a framed photo of her and Sam together and a giant teddy bear that's not really for her.
Her mother gives her a day at a health spa and a book of baby names and a big hug that makes her want to burst into tears.
Her father gives her a soft-hearted semi-lecture about whether she really wants to do this and a kiss on her forehead and a check that makes the tears that have been threatening to fall since her mother's hug tumble down her cheeks.
Dean gives her the scare of her life when he pounds at her door at three in the morning and a twirl in the air as he sweeps her into his arms and a cocky smile that makes her forgive him even though she really just wants to punch him in the face.
9.
When she wakes up the morning after he arrives, Dean's sitting in a chair next to her bed shirtless and holding a large mug of hot chocolate that he quickly presses into her hands. His green eyes keep a steady attentive watch as she wriggles into a sitting position and sips the hot chocolate, and there's more worry in his eyes than usual.
"What's wrong?" she asks.
He shakes his head, waves her off. "Just a bad dream," he says.
She thinks of smoke and fire, of burning flesh and Dean's arms wrapped around her as he hauled her away, and she knows exactly where he's coming from.
10.
If she stops being annoyed when Dean never stays and starts being thrilled every time he comes back, she doesn't much want to analyze it. It's only for the baby anyway, even though it's not here yet. Or at least, that's what she thinks.
Dean builds up to it slowly.
"I put the salt and cat's-eye shells in your doorway. Just a little superstitious, is all."
"You know those symbols? I could tell you what they mean."
"A woman alone needs protection, is all I'm saying."
One day when he's in town again he takes her out to dinner in this crowded restaurant, and she feels like one of those girls whose boyfriend is about to break up with them and doesn't want a scene. She wonders if he really expects her to just play along with something like that, if he thinks she wouldn't scream and call him half a dozen names as she threw her water glass and milked the sympathy that came from being visibly pregnant.
"Do you believe in ghosts?" he says.
Needless to say, it isn't what she expects.
11.
She believes him.
She is a college-educated expectant mother who managed to keep a 4.0 grade-point average even after her boyfriend burst into flames on the ceiling of their apartment, and he's a guy who barely graduated high school whose grammar she's constantly correcting and who can't stay in one town for more than a day or two, and she believes him.
Ghosts. Demons. Monsters. Jesus.
Maybe she wouldn't believe him if Sam didn't put her to sleep at night by running ghostly fingers through her hair, over her back, across her stomach.
But Sam does it, and she knows he's doing it, and now with Dean looking at her like he's waiting for her to explode, maybe that's why he's been doing it.
12.
Later on that night, he's seven beers down and she only wishes she were, too, because when he starts talking he will not shut UP. So far she's heard the story of every scar on his body and most of the scars on Sam's, and she's got him propped up against the wall outside the apartment when he slumps to the side a little and she's forced to catch him.
Coincidence or not, his hand lands on her belly and the baby kicks like it's disgusted.
She could swear he half sobers up instantly, like touching her stomach's the equivalent of downing a pot of coffee.
"Do you think my mom was pregnant when she died?" he asks.
His gaze is on her sharp and steady, waiting for an answer, and there's an "I don't know" stuck in her throat that's not coming out without a crowbar.
13.
By some miracle, Daniel waits until right after her last final exam to be born, like he snuck in a copy of the academic calendar and just waited for the day to roll around before announcing his imminent departure. She walks out of her last test, takes a deep sigh of relief, and immediately feels her water break, and the rest of the hour is spent telling him he's twice as annoying as his uncle as she catches a cab to the hospital.
Dean shows up at the hospital within the hour, and she didn't call him and she doesn't know how he knew to come but she doesn't care.
The pain is nothing, not really. She's had worse, which might have been months ago but still feels raw against her skin.
Later on that night, her family is gone and her friends are gone, but then again Dean counts as both and he's slumped in a chair passed out like he was the one who just gave birth. Daniel's in the nursery somewhere, trying to chew on his fist and not succeeding like he's been doing since the first moment she saw him.
"Hey, tiger," Dean had said, grabbing onto the tiny fingers and staring in awe as they grabbed at his own. "Those don't taste half as good as you seem to think they do."
Daniel looked up in his general direction with abject fascination. Trouble in the future, I can just see it now, she thought, and bit back laughter.
She's half-asleep when the shadow darkens her doorway, when a rumbly voice says, "You must be Jessica."
He sounds like a talking bear to her, like one of the dozen or so teddy bears people brought grumbling at her from the other side of the room. She almost lets herself go back to sleep, but then she stops and thinks, really digs herself out of the haze she's been in since the first minute the anesthesiologist walked into the delivery room.
Familiar eyes, familiar smile, familiar dark hair.
Daniel in forty years, she thinks, give or take, and she knows she should be angry but can't.
14.
She may never be able to pry Daniel from his arms, is what she's thinking. There's this bench in the park where the two of them sit and watch John carry his grandson around, cradling the baby in his arms like a fine porcelain doll.
If she closes her eyes, if they all close their eyes, maybe they can pretend that the shadows don't have eyes and that all days will be just like this.
Maybe.
"I have to go," Dean says.
Or maybe not.
"There's a swamp monster in Alabama," he says, and takes her hand.
No, definitely not.
Over on the other side of the playground, John coos to the baby in a voice so silly and ridiculous she's loving every minute of it. She'll bet Sam and Dean never got a piece of that but she doesn't care because if she closes her eyes ...
If, if, if.
"I have to ask you a question first," she says.
15.
Training is just a matter of making a list and checking it twice, like some sick game of Santa where people don't get presents, they get killed.
Folklore's another form of studying, really, just boning up on every urban legend and local myth she can get her hands on until she can barely see straight. Books arrive in the mail after that with Post-It notes attached. This author's not full of shit. Skip over the stuff on women in white -- everything else is on target. Stick to the first ten chapters -- after that, it all goes downhill.
Self-defense is easy. Tell the nice guy in charge you're a woman alone in the world with a newborn and he'll even give you a discount.
It's the hustling that's the hard part, the cheating at cards and the learning to lie. Sam might disapprove but there's ten pounds of baby in the next room that's her main argument to the contrary, because whatever it'll take to protect Daniel, she'll do. Whenever Dean's in the area he's on her doorstep, and whether he shows up in California to see her on purpose or not, she doesn't care.
Daniel falls asleep on Dean's shoulder while Dean paces around the room, bouncing him gently to sleep and giving her pointers on how to make a deck of cards dance and sing.
None of this, she thinks, should be half as comforting as it is.
16.
One night Dean shows up at her doorstep with a case of beer, a big smile on his face, and a new bandage on his hand.
"What did you do to yourself now?" she asks as she drags him into the apartment, grateful for Rebecca's offer to babysit Daniel and give her a night off. Dean puts the beer down by the couch and lets her fuss over him, lets her see that it's nothing but a bite mark that doesn't even hurt that much anymore anyway.
When she finally replaces the bandage, she catches him smiling at her and wonder just how many he's already had to drink. "What?"
He shakes his head, and it's like magic the way there's suddenly a can of beer in his hand, the way it's ice cold when he shoves it into her grasp.
17.
Two hours later, the case is mostly finished off and so are they. Three sheets to the wind? she thinks. More like a whole damn linen closet blown the hell away.
She giggles at the mental image, can't stop the laughter from erupting past her lips like the verbal version of fine champagne, and when she does, she wiggles her feet in Dean's lap without meaning to. She recognizes what she's feeling under the soles of her feet as she wriggles anxiously, though, and she could swear if she were anyone else, she'd think from the look on his face that he's about to get arrested.
"Sorry," he says, looking away and clearing his throat a little, and it's one word but it's the worst apology she's ever gotten.
Dean doesn't wear shame well. Never has, as far as she can tell.
She's had enough beers for a good excuse and enough time left behind by Sam for an even better one, and there's no such thing as regret at a time like this.
18.
Dean kisses like he's going to be killed right after the sex is over, like somebody's going to drag him out back after they're done and shoot him in the head and he's expecting it. He kisses like her mouth and lips and tongue are aphrodisiacs, like he'd rather overdose on her than anything else in the known galaxy. Dean kisses like he thinks she thinks that way, too, like she can't get enough of him and he's damn well going to give it to her.
She's pretty sure he kisses every girl like that but can't bring herself to care at the moment.
She expects selfishness in bed from him and gets some, but the way he makes it all worthwhile is letting that selfishness go both ways. That's why it's the way it is, all heat and pressure and this glazed sensation all over like he's making her hum and tingle all at once.
There are tricks he hasn't taught her yet, she sees, because his tongue traces over spots on her skin that make her writhe against him silently begging for more.
19.
She wakes up with Dean's body pressed against the back of her, arm around her waist and hand resting on her stomach. His lips brush against her skin in his sleep, setting the back of her neck on fire.
She hasn't thought about Sam since yesterday, she realizes, and it suddenly hits her that she hasn't worn shame well in a while, either.
20.
When Daniel starts speaking, he calls Dean "Daddy" from the minute he learns the word.
None of them have the heart to correct him. Some things, you save to explain for later.
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R
Word Count: 3,728 words
Pairing: It's het. Let's just leave it at that. ;)
Spoilers for: "Pilot", AU following
Warnings: Character death, bad language
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I just like playing with them.
Summary: The things we can survive depend on the people who stand by to help us.
Across the Universe
****
1.
Everyone stands back from her as they lower the casket into the ground, as if she's about to be sucked in after it and none of them want to get caught in the backdraft. She feels small and cold and dark, and she brought a purse along with her just to have something to clutch so her fingers won't tremble.
She's the only one at the funeral not wearing black. Sam used to curl around her during storms, bury his face in her hair and pray for sunshine, and the hem of the bright yellow sundress dances around her knees in the breeze.
She's sunny, and it's sunny, and she thinks Sam would have liked that even if he didn't like any of this.
Her fingers tighten on the purse again, because no one will be standing behind her when she turns. Not her friends, who mean well but haven't touched her in three days like she's contagious. Not her family, who know she wants time alone and have taken to giving it to her in abundance. Not his family, who perform the world's most magical disappearing act on an amateur basis.
She steels herself and turns.
There is a familiar black Impala parked not far away. It's not alone.
She's been surprised by a lot of things in the last few days, but this is one of the nicer surprises, as strange as it is.
2.
She doesn't know why she gets into the car with Dean. Hell, if she met him in a bar, she'd slip him a fake number and duck out with an equally fake smile, waving her fingers and wishing guys who looked like that weren't such assholes. He'd make some comment about her legs like the only way he could picture them was wrapped around his waist and some comment about her breasts like the only way he could picture them was resting in the palms of his hands. Ten minutes with him and she figures he's one of those guys who notes the first drink he sees you buy for yourself and then pays for a steady supply of them for you for the rest of the night before you can bother asking him not to.
She wonders which one of them will crack first, and gets the impression he's thinking the same thing. If he's half as stubborn as she is and as Sam said he was, they could be here a while.
"Where to?" he says, but she can tell he's not expecting an answer and she doesn't have one anyway. Somehow, going home to Mom and Dad and her little sister being extra comforting by not being all that comforting at all makes her want to throw up.
"Drugstore," she finally says, and her voice rasps like gravel rubbing across glass.
He doesn't even question it, and she supposes she's grateful. He drives them to the nearest mom-and-pop hole-in-the-wall and forages through the bandage aisle like he's restocking the first aid kit in a large gym.
She doesn't say a word the whole time they're there, pockets what she's looking for, and ducks out the front door without paying for it.
Nobody questions her. She's blond, young, pretty, red-faced from crying. Why would they?
When Dean gets into the car, he stares at her for so long she feels like she's being tested, and she's just about to snap back an irritated, "What?" when he finally starts the Impala.
3.
She has a dozen places she could stay -- with her parents, with Rebecca, with Zach and his buddies even if it's five guys and she's pretty sure that invitation was more out of politeness anyway.
Dean drives to a rundown motel and she can't bring herself to complain. A baby wails on the second floor and there's angry shouting from the room at the far end, but the second he shuts the motel room door, it's like a wall of stone and steel's gone up in an instant.
This is when you're supposed to cry, she thinks, but all she can do is sit down on one of the beds and stare at the nightstand. The top drawer's open a crack, letting the top edge of the black leatherbound book inside peek out. Sam didn't even like that book, she thinks with an edge of hysteria, because he didn't like it but all she can do when she sees books is think of Sam.
He always got the religion questions right when they played board games. Weird, that.
"Want anything?" Dean says.
I want Sam back.
"I'm going to the diner down the street for some ... I mean, I could get you something, if you're hungry."
Sam. I want Sam.
"I'm not hungry," she says, and she wonders how long it'll take after he leaves for him to let his own tears fall.
The door slams when he leaves, less his doing and more the wind picking up outside, but when it does, it startles her like a shot and she shakes it off as if she's been in a daze, noticing things that weren't there before. A box of tissues on the nightstand. A blanket wrapped around her shoulders. A bottle of water on the floor next to her feet.
The pregnancy test she'd slipped into her pocket at the pharmacy placed gently in her lap.
4.
"Did Sam tell you how our mother died?"
Dean's voice doesn't crack, all low and gravelly like it is whenever it's not choked with emotion, but it still manages to cut through the darkness that night with more sharpness than she expects.
"He said she died in a fire," she says.
He doesn't say anything after that, and she's pretty sure he figures saying it out loud is all the two of them need to confront it.
5.
When they went to sleep the night before, they'd both curled up in their own beds facing in opposite directions. When they wake up, it's facing one another from across the gap between the beds.
She feels Sam's hands on her, like he rolled her over in her sleep, and tries to imagine she's just making it up.
6.
Dean never tells her where the hell their father was when his youngest son was being buried, but he stays in town to help her get a new place and tells her embarrassing childhood stories about Sam that make her laugh and asks her if Sam was just as irritating after he left his brother and father as he was before. The longer he's there, the more sure she is that it's less that John Winchester didn't want to go to his son's funeral and more that he couldn't, and she starts to wonder if that's the whole reason Dean stays.
He offers to arrange furniture and buy groceries and do a half-dozen other things while she goes to class, and when she comes back one day there's a crib set up on the opposite side of her bedroom like a looming monster watching her.
She sits down hard on the bed and wants to yell, but it feels like there's a hand covering her mouth and another caressing her stomach, and whatever she was going to scream dies in her throat.
One day, Dean kisses her on the forehead and rumples her hair before he leaves, makes some flirtatious comment about her T-shirt that makes her roll her eyes, and doesn't come back again for seven weeks.
7.
There's a Planned Parenthood in Redwood City.
She thinks about it sometimes, and every time she does her stomach rolls like it's a threat.
There are these weird symbols carved into the windowsills of the new apartment and salt and something else has been ground into the crack in the bottom of the front doorway so thick she can't even scrape it all out. She finds these little bags of herbs all over the place, tucked into corners and under the furniture like secret surprises of potpourri, and puts them back even when they send a chill down her spine. There's a fire extinguisher next to her bed, in plain and garish view.
She refuses to open the bottom drawer of her nightstand anymore, because the last time she did, she could have sworn she saw a gun in there.
So, yeah, she thinks about Planned Parenthood a lot, but her stomach still rolls and heaves like it's the worst revenge it can carry out.
8.
For Christmas, her sister gives her a sweater and a framed photo of her and Sam together and a giant teddy bear that's not really for her.
Her mother gives her a day at a health spa and a book of baby names and a big hug that makes her want to burst into tears.
Her father gives her a soft-hearted semi-lecture about whether she really wants to do this and a kiss on her forehead and a check that makes the tears that have been threatening to fall since her mother's hug tumble down her cheeks.
Dean gives her the scare of her life when he pounds at her door at three in the morning and a twirl in the air as he sweeps her into his arms and a cocky smile that makes her forgive him even though she really just wants to punch him in the face.
9.
When she wakes up the morning after he arrives, Dean's sitting in a chair next to her bed shirtless and holding a large mug of hot chocolate that he quickly presses into her hands. His green eyes keep a steady attentive watch as she wriggles into a sitting position and sips the hot chocolate, and there's more worry in his eyes than usual.
"What's wrong?" she asks.
He shakes his head, waves her off. "Just a bad dream," he says.
She thinks of smoke and fire, of burning flesh and Dean's arms wrapped around her as he hauled her away, and she knows exactly where he's coming from.
10.
If she stops being annoyed when Dean never stays and starts being thrilled every time he comes back, she doesn't much want to analyze it. It's only for the baby anyway, even though it's not here yet. Or at least, that's what she thinks.
Dean builds up to it slowly.
"I put the salt and cat's-eye shells in your doorway. Just a little superstitious, is all."
"You know those symbols? I could tell you what they mean."
"A woman alone needs protection, is all I'm saying."
One day when he's in town again he takes her out to dinner in this crowded restaurant, and she feels like one of those girls whose boyfriend is about to break up with them and doesn't want a scene. She wonders if he really expects her to just play along with something like that, if he thinks she wouldn't scream and call him half a dozen names as she threw her water glass and milked the sympathy that came from being visibly pregnant.
"Do you believe in ghosts?" he says.
Needless to say, it isn't what she expects.
11.
She believes him.
She is a college-educated expectant mother who managed to keep a 4.0 grade-point average even after her boyfriend burst into flames on the ceiling of their apartment, and he's a guy who barely graduated high school whose grammar she's constantly correcting and who can't stay in one town for more than a day or two, and she believes him.
Ghosts. Demons. Monsters. Jesus.
Maybe she wouldn't believe him if Sam didn't put her to sleep at night by running ghostly fingers through her hair, over her back, across her stomach.
But Sam does it, and she knows he's doing it, and now with Dean looking at her like he's waiting for her to explode, maybe that's why he's been doing it.
12.
Later on that night, he's seven beers down and she only wishes she were, too, because when he starts talking he will not shut UP. So far she's heard the story of every scar on his body and most of the scars on Sam's, and she's got him propped up against the wall outside the apartment when he slumps to the side a little and she's forced to catch him.
Coincidence or not, his hand lands on her belly and the baby kicks like it's disgusted.
She could swear he half sobers up instantly, like touching her stomach's the equivalent of downing a pot of coffee.
"Do you think my mom was pregnant when she died?" he asks.
His gaze is on her sharp and steady, waiting for an answer, and there's an "I don't know" stuck in her throat that's not coming out without a crowbar.
13.
By some miracle, Daniel waits until right after her last final exam to be born, like he snuck in a copy of the academic calendar and just waited for the day to roll around before announcing his imminent departure. She walks out of her last test, takes a deep sigh of relief, and immediately feels her water break, and the rest of the hour is spent telling him he's twice as annoying as his uncle as she catches a cab to the hospital.
Dean shows up at the hospital within the hour, and she didn't call him and she doesn't know how he knew to come but she doesn't care.
The pain is nothing, not really. She's had worse, which might have been months ago but still feels raw against her skin.
Later on that night, her family is gone and her friends are gone, but then again Dean counts as both and he's slumped in a chair passed out like he was the one who just gave birth. Daniel's in the nursery somewhere, trying to chew on his fist and not succeeding like he's been doing since the first moment she saw him.
"Hey, tiger," Dean had said, grabbing onto the tiny fingers and staring in awe as they grabbed at his own. "Those don't taste half as good as you seem to think they do."
Daniel looked up in his general direction with abject fascination. Trouble in the future, I can just see it now, she thought, and bit back laughter.
She's half-asleep when the shadow darkens her doorway, when a rumbly voice says, "You must be Jessica."
He sounds like a talking bear to her, like one of the dozen or so teddy bears people brought grumbling at her from the other side of the room. She almost lets herself go back to sleep, but then she stops and thinks, really digs herself out of the haze she's been in since the first minute the anesthesiologist walked into the delivery room.
Familiar eyes, familiar smile, familiar dark hair.
Daniel in forty years, she thinks, give or take, and she knows she should be angry but can't.
14.
She may never be able to pry Daniel from his arms, is what she's thinking. There's this bench in the park where the two of them sit and watch John carry his grandson around, cradling the baby in his arms like a fine porcelain doll.
If she closes her eyes, if they all close their eyes, maybe they can pretend that the shadows don't have eyes and that all days will be just like this.
Maybe.
"I have to go," Dean says.
Or maybe not.
"There's a swamp monster in Alabama," he says, and takes her hand.
No, definitely not.
Over on the other side of the playground, John coos to the baby in a voice so silly and ridiculous she's loving every minute of it. She'll bet Sam and Dean never got a piece of that but she doesn't care because if she closes her eyes ...
If, if, if.
"I have to ask you a question first," she says.
15.
Training is just a matter of making a list and checking it twice, like some sick game of Santa where people don't get presents, they get killed.
Folklore's another form of studying, really, just boning up on every urban legend and local myth she can get her hands on until she can barely see straight. Books arrive in the mail after that with Post-It notes attached. This author's not full of shit. Skip over the stuff on women in white -- everything else is on target. Stick to the first ten chapters -- after that, it all goes downhill.
Self-defense is easy. Tell the nice guy in charge you're a woman alone in the world with a newborn and he'll even give you a discount.
It's the hustling that's the hard part, the cheating at cards and the learning to lie. Sam might disapprove but there's ten pounds of baby in the next room that's her main argument to the contrary, because whatever it'll take to protect Daniel, she'll do. Whenever Dean's in the area he's on her doorstep, and whether he shows up in California to see her on purpose or not, she doesn't care.
Daniel falls asleep on Dean's shoulder while Dean paces around the room, bouncing him gently to sleep and giving her pointers on how to make a deck of cards dance and sing.
None of this, she thinks, should be half as comforting as it is.
16.
One night Dean shows up at her doorstep with a case of beer, a big smile on his face, and a new bandage on his hand.
"What did you do to yourself now?" she asks as she drags him into the apartment, grateful for Rebecca's offer to babysit Daniel and give her a night off. Dean puts the beer down by the couch and lets her fuss over him, lets her see that it's nothing but a bite mark that doesn't even hurt that much anymore anyway.
When she finally replaces the bandage, she catches him smiling at her and wonder just how many he's already had to drink. "What?"
He shakes his head, and it's like magic the way there's suddenly a can of beer in his hand, the way it's ice cold when he shoves it into her grasp.
17.
Two hours later, the case is mostly finished off and so are they. Three sheets to the wind? she thinks. More like a whole damn linen closet blown the hell away.
She giggles at the mental image, can't stop the laughter from erupting past her lips like the verbal version of fine champagne, and when she does, she wiggles her feet in Dean's lap without meaning to. She recognizes what she's feeling under the soles of her feet as she wriggles anxiously, though, and she could swear if she were anyone else, she'd think from the look on his face that he's about to get arrested.
"Sorry," he says, looking away and clearing his throat a little, and it's one word but it's the worst apology she's ever gotten.
Dean doesn't wear shame well. Never has, as far as she can tell.
She's had enough beers for a good excuse and enough time left behind by Sam for an even better one, and there's no such thing as regret at a time like this.
18.
Dean kisses like he's going to be killed right after the sex is over, like somebody's going to drag him out back after they're done and shoot him in the head and he's expecting it. He kisses like her mouth and lips and tongue are aphrodisiacs, like he'd rather overdose on her than anything else in the known galaxy. Dean kisses like he thinks she thinks that way, too, like she can't get enough of him and he's damn well going to give it to her.
She's pretty sure he kisses every girl like that but can't bring herself to care at the moment.
She expects selfishness in bed from him and gets some, but the way he makes it all worthwhile is letting that selfishness go both ways. That's why it's the way it is, all heat and pressure and this glazed sensation all over like he's making her hum and tingle all at once.
There are tricks he hasn't taught her yet, she sees, because his tongue traces over spots on her skin that make her writhe against him silently begging for more.
19.
She wakes up with Dean's body pressed against the back of her, arm around her waist and hand resting on her stomach. His lips brush against her skin in his sleep, setting the back of her neck on fire.
She hasn't thought about Sam since yesterday, she realizes, and it suddenly hits her that she hasn't worn shame well in a while, either.
20.
When Daniel starts speaking, he calls Dean "Daddy" from the minute he learns the word.
None of them have the heart to correct him. Some things, you save to explain for later.