Title: But He Was Mine
Summary: They both made choices. They both traveled different roads, but at the end of the day, of a lifetime, they are still intertwined.
Pairings: Het. Sam/Dean
Author's Note: Thank you to my lovely beta, Kermitfries, who basically gave me the self-esteem to post this story, which isn't pathetic, at all. To the readers, I appreciate and encourage ALL comments and critiques. Thanks so much. xoxo- Skankatude.
She remembers fire. Fire and pain and hands gripping so hard it nearly broke bone, pulling her back out of the rubble. She remembers him, voice rushed and loud over the sound of a city dying. She remembers the way he saved her, and she remembers someone else. Someone with black eyes.
On their wedding day, she's shaking with excitement. She's wearing her mother's dress, with a blue diamond bracelet, given to her from her daddy. Her hair is tied up with ribbons, just skimming her cheeks. She looks beautiful. She hopes he'll see it too.
The music starts up, and she holds her breath when it's her turn to walk down the aisle. There is an arm pulling her forward, her dad looks back and smiles. "I love you so much, sweetie."
She walks into the church, eyes on the ground, on the stain-glassed colors and flickering sunlight. It's a spring wedding. She finally pulls her eyes up, onto him and his expression. His smile is wide, crinkling his eyes at the corners. She smiles back, and that's the only moment she sees the expression twitch to stay put. She forgets it almost instantly—doesn't matter anyway, and runs her thumb over his hand when they finally meet at the end. The smile looks the same.
Their first year of marriage is the stuff of the American Fairytale. Their honeymoon doesn't happen—not really, just a weekend in Florida spent in an above average motel room. Back home, that's when the story starts. He works down a couple blocks, in the town's only high school. He hates it, he says. He complains about the kids whining, and not giving a damn about anything but parties and intercourse. She laughs at him.
"What do you care about, exactly, baby?"
"One out of two!" He says, arms flailing wildly, "That's called maturity."
Every night he comes home to something fresh made by her.
"Marie honey, you know I wouldn't still be with you if it wasn't for this fantastic cooking."
And every night, they do what married people do, and he closes his eyes as he fucks her. The mornings are warm and happy in their small apartment. Marie painted the walls yellow when they first moved in, and most of the furniture got a healthy amount of the paint all over it. He just smiled and wrapped an arm around her waist. He kissed the top of her head and told her it was too goddamn bright.
You could come with me, you know.
No I can't.
The first time Marie gets pregnant, it's a bit of a surprise. He practically screams with joy, but she tells him to calm down right away, because she does not need a little girl in the house quite yet.
"Is it a girl?" He asks.
"I think so."
He comes over, and puts a hand over her belly. "I can feel it kicking." He whispers.
She swats him on the head "No you can't, you big liar! I'm barely one month along. Now go get the mother of your child a sundae."
"We're going to call it Mary!" He yells as he scoops ice cream one room over.
"Mary, huh? After my sister? I didn't know you were so fond of her."
He comes into the room holding blue star sprinkles and gummy worms. "Of course I am, darling, like she's my flesh and blood."
Marie nods, and lets him get away with the lie.
Marie miscarries on her eleventh week, three days before her birthday. She is bleeding and crying, and can't even pick up the phone because she knows, she knows, she knows.
He wraps his arm tight around her, and calls 911. Voice slow and quiet as he speaks to the woman on the other end.
"I hate you." She says. He hugs her till the ambulance comes, rides in the back, and doesn't speak once.
"I'm so sorry."
Life goes on, Marie's birthday is a quiet event. He buys her a blue cake with spaceships and sings her happy birthday. It is the kindest he can be.
There are no baby blankets to hide, no painted nursery's to lock the door on. The only evidence that anything ever happened is the feeling of empty and lonely pressing in on her every day. He is not the type to talk this sort of thing out. She's cries herself to sleep every night, and he acts like he doesn't hear it.
You want to have kids some day, Sammy?
Sure, the same day you grow a vagina.
I mean after this, asshat. When you're all settled down with some hot blond chick.
There is no after this, Dean. It's just going to be you and me. This is forever.
They try again, four different times. Eventually, the doctor pulls them from the waiting room with a frown, and a voice tinged with sympathy worn over.
"We could adopt?" He offers on the ride home.
She sighs shakily. "No. No we can't. Just take me home."
Instead, he takes her out to a bar, and even at thirty-five, she's still a lightweight. "I needed this." She tells him, as they make out in the shadows later that night.
He puts a hand over her mouth and grinds his hips into hers. He whispers something into her shoulder, but she doesn't hear.
They live in the typical small town. Everyone knows everything about everyone's business. So, word gets out that he's been skulking around back alleys, with the types of men who'd usually pay for the pleasure. She hears it from everywhere. She hears it from friends, from her aunt down the road, from the woman she's hated since childhood. She doesn't pay it any attention. She can't.
One day, he brings her home a pair of silver earrings and yellow rose. Not for any particular reason, he's just trying to be thoughtful. She smiles, and never reminds him that she hates roses. She takes a needle the next day, and pierces her own ears. She convinces herself it isn't crazy. Even if it is, she thinks, love isn't really love if it isn't a little crazy.
She curls up with him on the sofa on most nights, and watches a movie she'd usually not spend ten minutes on. He scoots over, and makes room for her to put her feet under him. They're almost always cold. She pulls her hand onto her lap, and she runs her fingers over his veins, all the way up his arm.
He looks over and smiles at her, and lays kisses all over her face when the scary parts start. When she swears over and over she's going to have nightmares, he'll sigh, very put upon, and get her popcorn with butter, and a warm beer. That's the only way she'll drink it, and that, she thinks, is what really matters knowing.
She'll fall asleep like that most nights, her head somehow making its way over to his lap. He braids her hair into all kinds of crazy looks, and it lulls her into sleep. He never wakes her up to brush her teeth, or take out her colored contacts. He picks her up, and carries her into bed. Most mornings, she'll wake up with the other side of the bed empty, but that's not the part she'll remember.
She's always been an optimist.
A couple times a month, she goes to a daycare center to volunteer. The town is poor, and the kids there are poorer. She brings them coloring books, and board games, and videos for the TV she brought on the first day. She ignores the way they're destroyed by her next visit, just brings replacements.
She tries to teach them important things, like manners and reading, and adding. They don't usually listen. A lot of them adore her, climb all over her when she comes in the door, and hugs her till she has to push them off to even breathe. Some of them hate her, but those are the ones she tries with the hardest.
Mostly every visit, she brings some kind of homemade treat. Apple pie is everyone's favorite. One little boy, Cody, has taken a special affection to her and the dessert.
"You know, it's my husband's favorite, too." She says. He frowns fiercely, and twirls her engagement ring around her finger.
"Can I be your husband?" He asks, kissing her cheek.
Someone clears his voice from behind her, and she turns. There he is, much prettier than any man at forty has a right to be.
"I'm sorry; son, but I just don't know what I'd do without her." He pulls her up, and asks her if she can leave early, because he's made dinner reservations.
"Of course." She says, as he's already guiding her outside.
"You know, you would've made an amazing mother." He says, and suddenly she wishes he wasn't around, that she was back inside, with a little boy proposing, and the whole world a lot brighter.
What the fuck, Sammy? How could you do this to yourself? To us?
It doesn't have to be that way, Dean! It doesn't.
What do you think I'm supposed to do?
Almost every night, he has nightmares. She'll roll over, and pull him close, and shush him through the shaking and crying. She never asks about it the next morning, at least, not until today.
"Hey, baby?"
"Yes, sunshine?"
"You had a nightmare last night."
He looks up, suddenly very pale, like he could actually keep a secret from her for thirty years.
"Oh, yeah? Why do you say that?"
She doesn't answer him, flips over a pancake, and peers over her shoulder at him.
"You've had them before." She says, piling the food onto a plate, and bringing the breakfast over to where he's sitting at their worn down kitchen table. She sits down across from where he's sitting, silent as the grave.
"Who's Sam?"
You have to promise me you'll find someone else, Dean. You have to promise.
He thinks she doesn't know.
In a small, back closet, where Dean goes to work on bits and trinkets, and sometimes to muffle out sobs, in that closet, where Marie has been banned, Dean keeps a small, wooden box.
Marie isn't a snoop; she's just a good wife. She was looking for one of Dean's missing socks, and, well, if that was an unlikely place for it to end up, she put that thought aside. The box was hidden under rags and locked. Marie's daddy was a cop, she'd known how to pick a lock since she was seven.
Inside the box, there were newspaper clippings and motel keys, things she couldn't understand. Pictures, though, told everything clearly in a thousand colors. In almost every one, there is her husband wrapped around another man. She tried to see them as best friends, arms just thrown casually over shoulders. The last few pictures knock her breathless. They are worn at the corners, from fingers bending them over and over. They're holding hands, kissing, tangled on top of each other, in the middle of barren, dusty field.
She knows who Sam is, even before she asks.
Marie and him go to California for their thirtieth anniversary. It's the most uncomfortable five days of Marie's life.
The car ride over isn't so bad. He drives, and puts on a CD of an old band Marie actually doesn't mind. He doesn't look at her, just drums out the song on the steering wheel.
Once they get to the hotel though, he stays quiet, just lies in bed and watches old reruns, even when Marie suggests they walk around the hotel. Marie sighs and goes down the pool, orders burgers and fries and a milkshake—enough food for two people.
"Can I get you anything else?"
The waiter is old, but not ugly. Maybe inching in on sixty five, but his skin is aged from spending his days out in the sun. His question sounds a little more than friendly.
"Nope, but my husband should be down in a minute, can I have a burger for him?" She says, just to be sure. She's a loyal woman, even if her husband can't do her the same favor.
He never comes down.
She goes back upstairs, and unlocks the door quietly, to make sure she doesn't wake him up if he's sleeping. He isn't. He's watching porn, an old one, where a woman with huge tits is giving a man a lap dance.
"I wish you'd invited me." She says, trying to sound seductive, slipping next to him in the bed. He flicks off the TV, and scoots away almost imperceptibly.
"I'm fine." He says. The message is clear enough. The rest of the week passes in silence, and if Marie visits the waiter a few more times, one can hardly blame her.
So, how are we gonna do this?
You don't have to. I can manage this one on my own.
Sam.
Just make it fast.
They say marriage isn't easy, and God knows Marie has been a patient woman.
The day Marie throws him out is the day she finds him in bed with another woman. The rest she could forgive, because she remembers the beautiful boy, and thinks it's a small price to pay, to have him be with her.
That is inexcusable. He agrees easily, nods like he'd seen it coming for years. He packs his things and when Marie goes to get chicken for dinner, he moves out.
She calls him later that evening, lonely and scared and asks him to come back home.
"I don't deserve you." He whispers, when he pulls her to him for a crushing hug.
Privately, she thinks the same about him.
These days, he stays curled away from her on his side of the bed, quiet, thinking. The time is sacred, and she understands not to break him from it. The first time he speaks in almost five years startles her half out of her skin.
"You know about him, don't you?"
Marie lays a hand on his back, and he relaxes into it.
"Sam?" She says softly, even though she already knows.
"Yeah." He says, voice breaking just a little bit.
"He was beautiful." She says, he nods, turning to her, the sweetest smile on his face.
"He was everything." He says, pulling her close to him, "But now." He pauses, breathes in the smell of her vanilla shampoo and avocado lotion, "Now that's you."
Marie figures she deserves this little piece of happiness.
He hangs himself on May 23, on a mild autumn day, in a motel bathroom, fifty miles out of town. At least, that's what the police say. Marie likes to think it was a last favor to her.
She mourns his death with her family holding her tight. The funeral is packed, her, people from her church, her friends, brother and a man older than time himself.
"Did you know Michael?" She asks him after the service. He looks at her with eyes that should be blind, and lays a hand on her cheek.
"I knew Dean." He says.
For that, Marie mourns alone.
Hey, Dean?
Yeah, baby?
I just want you to know I love you.
I love you too, Sammy. Love you, too.