If Dean thinks hard, if he really puts his mind to it, he can still dredge up the exact sensation of his first kiss.
Anna's lips caught and dragged, sticky with chapstick just applied. He made this wild sucking move that swallowed air and vacuumed his teeth taut against the insides of his cheeks, tugging her lower lip inward. She pushed away and laughed at him, but then came closer still. The touch of her hand tender on his jaw was a sick benediction; that gentleness, that acceptance, insured that she was his first and she'd be his last, even if she wasn't his only. There would be other girls. Dozens. But Anna would be the one that dug her nails in deepest and held on tightest.
She will always love him more than he loves her. He still has no idea what she sees in him.
It's days like this, especially, when he thinks she'd be better off without him.
Blood mars the underside of his left thumbnail. How it got there is unknown to him, as he wore gloves according to protocol, then scrubbed clean with the passion of a sinner after his shift. Excess adrenaline has him shaking like a rookie, tremors fierce enough to warrant Anna's worry; no way he's going inside before he calms down. He stands on his front porch, chasing after just one calm breath. He clings to the steady planes of the door, the chips in blue where weathered brown peeks through, the knob that rattles and catches beneath his hand just-so. He'll fix it all up one day. Really.
"Son of a bitch," he mumbles, and goes inside.
Low lights and the sulfur-and-pumpkin of a just-lit candle play over his senses. He pauses in the doorway to draw them in. Anna's probably lounging in the living room with rough drafts and a red pen, and he regrets immediately that he didn't just go for a beer instead of coming home on time. She wouldn't have noticed his absence in her editors' funk. Never does. In the same way, she doesn't acknowledge his presence as he slouches into the archway of their living room.
For the thousandth time, he surveys the plain, dollar-store decoration of their single-story two-bedroom and wishes he could have done better. Anna deserves something nicer, he's always thought. She says she's happy with it, of course, and doesn't complain. But she looks so out of place amid the second-hand furniture and the fake flowers in plastic pots. The sagging couch cradles her, long legs as lovely as ever in sweats, one of his shirts draped over her top. Her hair furls in fiery rings across her shoulders and over the swell of her breasts, face vague but lovely in the sparse light. She places a hand to her rounded belly and something like possession unfurls high and trembling in Dean's chest.
He wants, more than anything, to be proud of his wife and their unborn child. But Anna isn't his to be proud of, not really. She's a beautiful soul, which is a pussy thing to believe, but a true one. She is her own creature, or perhaps she belongs to something far off and unknown, something that threads beneath their every conversation, something she always hints at after a few too many beers, something that hangs heavy in each sigh. Anna is an enigma, a heady weight on Dean's subconscious; he is always afraid that the quaint windowpanes of their house are gilded bars to her. She could be something— someone— much more, a visionary or a new mother Theresa or some romantic crap like that. Something greater than what she is, a wife with a child inside and the red-streaked rough drafts of second-rate journalists resting on her belly.
Dean is almost certain she wouldn't have stayed with him had their childhoods not been so tangled up in each other, troubled souls indentured to each other's acceptance. He's heard about this "love map" shit before, a psychology concept that says someone can get stuck loving only certain people if they grow up too cramped together. He and Anna don't have a love map. They have a fucking love atlas, just the heights and depths of each other, except half of the Anna pages were ripped out at some point.
"Long day?"
Dean looks up at the croon of her voice. Despite everything, the familiar tone pulls one corner of his mouth quirking upward. "Long enough," he says.
Smiling, Anna shifts so that she's sitting with her feet on the floor and pats the vacant couch cushion beside her. Dean huffs low in his mouth, then takes the unspoken invitation, letting his duffel slide off his shoulder before he collapses next to her. She puts a soft hand against his stubble and presses down until he succumbs to lying his head against her shoulder. The backs of her nails draw through the fine-cropped hair on the side of his skull. His eyes slip shut.
"Did you lose someone today?" she asks.
Dean seizes up.
Anna's fingers fall still in his hair. "Wanna talk about it?"
Might as well. "Hit-and-run," Dean breathes. "14 years old. Had a fighting chance, then just…" His head throbs when he shakes it. "Slipped through my fingers."
"Baby, don't beat yourself up. It's not your job to save the whole world."
Except it really is.
The rush of a deep breath pulls past Dean's face, then Anna whispers, "You know I love you, right?"
And that's the thing about her: that love inside her, potent and vicious and more than he can ever return or deserve, always makes him feel like he's forging upstream as he tries to add even one lasting current to the overwhelming tide that is her love.
"I know," he murmurs.
Sometimes Dean wishes he was enough of a dick to be unfaithful.
Anna continues to stroke his hair and says nothing else. He loses himself in the ebb and flow of her gentle fingertips, and is thankful that he's known Anna too long to hide from her. If anyone else tried this shit, he'd be up and out in a heartbeat. But with her, he can just— just let himself be weak for a moment. He can depend on her comfort, if only for a while.
Finally, though, it's too much. He sits up.
"Let's go out," he says.
Thin brows shift higher on Anna's face. "Why?"
Dean shrugs. "Just 'cause."
"Where?" She watches him as if expecting a punchline, eyes bright, a smile crouched to pounce on the loose corners of her lips.
"You know, a restaurant or some place."
Anna cocks her head, an avian habit that once made Dean's chest go fuzzy and now puts a chill in his belly. He can't say why.
"What's the occasion?"
"Nothin'." Dean picks at a loose thread in his jeans. "Just wanna go eat someplace with you."
Chuckling, Anna asks, "Where? McDonald's?"
"No, like—" he turns to face her full-on. "What's that place you love? Chin Jung's or whatever?"
She indicates her belly. "No raw fish."
"Oh. Oh, right, yeah. What about that Bela Noche place? Italian?"
Her eyelids draw thin, lashes catching candlelight. "What's this for, Dean?"
"Just to be together."
A moment rolls by as she studies him, lips tight, before she treats him to a blooming smile that's become rarer over these past months. "Oh, Dean. You're so sweet. But I just—" she sighs and brushes her editing off of her lap, where it's been forgotten. "I'm such a mess right now. And I don't have anything to wear. Maybe we could just—"
"You've got that red dress," Dean says, referring to the number she wore a few weeks before to a church event. He recalls how the outfit framed her body with a clarity only possible in a man who hasn't experienced said body in months.
Anna flushes as if she knows what that dress does to him (she probably does; he isn't subtle about it). "I don't know, Dean…"
And he presses his lips to her temple, pushes close and breathes her in. "Stop worryin'. You look gorgeous." Somehow he still moves haltingly when he touches her belly, always haunted by the feeling that he's interrupting something, like he shouldn't impose himself on the internal bond between mother and child. His hand curves large and jagged in the low light over the soft swell of her. He breathes a sigh against her hair. "You deserve a little fun before you pop this one out, you know? Last few weeks of freedom and all that."
She laughs, then pushes him away. "Fine, fine, you win. Help me up."
Chuckling, Dean pushes to his feet and takes his wife's hand. He learned quickly that commenting on her new lack of balance is an expectant father faux pas, so he keeps it to himself when she almost stumbles into him upon standing. On her way out of the room, he taps her butt with a wandering hand and meets her glare with his most expensive smile.
His lips drop the moment she vanishes up the stairs.
"Am I losin' you?"
Dean really didn't mean to ask it out loud. He's just been sitting in front of his tortellini, trying to keep a lid on it, when it bursts out of him with a tone of gravel and a shaky throat.
Anna nearly drops her fork into her spaghetti. "What?"
His first impulse is to turn and call for the check, but he's already gone and dug himself into this one, so he might as well keep digging until he reaches the bottom. Then, at least, there'll be no place to go but up. He pushes a hand over his face, then lets it spill:
"Look, babe, lately I've been a hopeless sunnavabitch, and you've always been so gracious and good, and if this is some kind of calm before the storm or somethin'—"
"Dean, I'm having your baby!" Anna whispers, sharp enough to draw blood. "What are you talking about?"
Leaning over his tortellini, Dean struggles to keep his voice low. "Well, it's not like we planned this! Maybe if you weren't pregnant you would've gone and left by now, and now that there's a kid in the mix you feel stuck, and—"
"How could you say that?" Anna sifts forward with the weight of everything gleaming into her eyes, straining the smooth cut of the tendon in her neck. "I promised, Dean. Before God and our families and everybody. You really think I would make a promise like that and ever want to go back on it? I would give up heaven and earth for this, Dean. For my life. For you."
Shit, that's the problem. Anna is nothing but powerful love and terrifying promises and commitment that feels like a fucking war order.
And Dean is… fuck. He doesn't know what he is.
"Have you stopped seeing your therapist again?"
All at once, his collar goes tight and his jaw goes clenched and his vision may go a little blurry. "The hell do you get off asking me something like that? We said we weren't gonna—"
"Well I'm sorry, Dean, but when you start asking if I'm getting ready to leave you a week before I have your baby, it makes me wonder if you're thinking straight." Anna's fork, which has been clenched in her fist, hits the tabletop under the thunder of her flat palm. Neighboring patrons steal glances at them. "Is this about the kid you lost today?"
Yeah, Dean's vision is officially blurry. He wants to fucking hit something. "We already talked about that."
"No, we really didn't, Dean. You never talk about it." She leans closer, and the whites of her eyes are almost blinding. "This complex you have where it's your job to do everything is crap, Dean. You always say you have faith in your team to preform their jobs, then you only blame yourself when you lose someone? Do the occupational hazards of being a paramedic really screw with your savior complex so bad that you think you're not good enough to have a wife who loves you?"
If they were at home, he would have broken a lamp by now. As it is, he shakes with the effort of not screaming. "Shit questions like that are why I stopped seeing the goddamn therapist in the first place."
Anna's voice goes dangerous-low. "Well, maybe you should go back to seeing him, since apparently now you're dealing with your abandonment issues by taking them out on me. I'm not your father, and I'm not Sam."
Dean jerks back and realizes: hell, right, this is Anna. Anna, who plays rougher than him and cuts deep without a thought. Anna, who knows all the little ways he's broken and isn't afraid to use them. Anna, who fights with abandon because she knows he'll come crawling back later, and she can pour her love into the wounds and wash him pure again.
"I just don't want to lose you," Dean says, and his voice settles broken in his ears.
Anna's mouth opens as if to answer, then gasps and clutches the rim of the table.
Dean flinches. "Anna?"
"Dean, that's—" One hand goes white-knuckled against the table. The other goes to her belly. "I think it's happening."
"It's happening," Dean repeats, deadpan.
Another gasp, and Anna's wide eyes turn on him. "The baby. Oh, my god. I think I'm having the baby."
Anna screams like death for the first six hours. The nurses inject her with all types of hell knows what, but nothing helps. They mumble half-theories and try to mask their alarm in Dean's peripheral, but Anna commands his eyes, anyway. She goes pale then red then pale then red, washed out with the tide of pain, then sobbing when it swells and crashes over her.
She grabs for Dean's hand, and guilt drops heavy into the bottom of his stomach.
Seventeen hours in, someone says C-section, and Anna begins to thrash.
"No, no, don't— you can't cut me, don't break in, please—" Her nails bite the back of Dean's hand into burgundy laces, crescents slicing into one another every time she shifts her grip. He has to choke back a whine of pain because he's supposed to be the strong one here.
He's never felt more helpless in his life.
"What the hell, Doc?" he hisses at Anna's physician when a lull in the contractions has left Anna half-asleep.
The doctor shakes her head. "I don't know. We haven't found any complications. The baby just… doesn't want to come."
Anna shrieks. The lights shudder. Nurses scramble, checking equipment, splitting up to go find out what the hell is going on with the electricity.
The shock of his wife's scream is going to break Dean, sooner or later. He all-but-snarls at the doctor, "Can't you up her doses? Cut down some of this pain?"
Another despairing head-shake. "Any more and we'd risk affecting the baby. I'm sorry, Mr. Larson. It's going to be rough, but your wife will be okay."
Anna shrieks again, and somehow Dean does not believe the doctor.
During the final hour of labor, Anna goes silent. Dean assumes the drugs have kicked in when her head lolls and her eyes roll, and it scares the fuck out of him, but the professionals in the room assure him that she's fine because her vitals are pristine and she's still pushing. The lights continue to flicker, and no one can figure out why; eventually they stop trying, since the important equipment runs on different generators (or something like that; Dean stopped listening ten hours ago).
When the baby crowns, the lights burst. No one is hurt, but Dean forgets to breathe amid the shrill song of glass against the floor. He shouts Anna's name, and her eyes snap forward. She screams like a woman possessed on the last push.
After twenty-one and a half hours, Dean is a father.
The baby cries once, and is silent. Dean's heart thunders and his head swims, but they assure him the child is fine. She's breathing. Her little heart is beating. She's just quiet. Unusually quiet.
The doctor, nurses and new parents are just as quiet, even as the baby is taken to be cleaned and Anna is moved to another room so the broken lights can be swept up and repaired. No one says anything beyond the necessary.
Dean sits in the corner of the new room and tells himself that he will not tremble. Pain flares up in his knuckles as he grips the arm rests of his chair, and his teeth grate so hard they echo into the back of his skull, but he remains rigid. He doesn't move until the nurse finishes with the baby, at which point he jerks forward to take the squirming bundle in his arms, only to drop back into his seat when he's passed by and his daughter is placed in Anna's arms. Anna stares, wordless, at the baby as she nurses for the first time.
Some part of Dean's brain keeps telling him to make Rosemary's Baby references, and he keeps telling it to shut the fuck up.
When Anna finishes nursing and Dean's daughter, fuzzy and purple and warm, is finally placed into his arms, it's as if the last day never happened. The tremor of his heart and the hitching of his lungs and the cold stirrings in the pit of his gut all ease away, until he's not wrought, exhausted Dean anymore; he is father now, protector, and all he wants to do is wrap safe and tight around his baby girl. He cradles her close and fears to breathe because all he wants for her is stillness. She has fought so hard already. He desires for her peace above all else.
She stares into him.
"Never did decide on a name, did we?" he whispers to Anna, brushing the tips of his fingers over kitten-soft hair. The baby's gaze has not left his, not once. He didn't think they could focus on anything this early. The more he stares back, the more he thinks he sees something shining and almost grey on the cusps of her tiny pupils.
"Adriel," says Anna.
Dean looks up at his wife. God, she's pale. Exhaustion drapes bruise-purple beneath her eyes. He returns his gaze to the baby because that's easier. "What?" he asks.
"Adriel." Her voice drags, long and lazy. "The angel of the souls who pass through the eastern gates. S'a good name."
"Oh," Dean says, because it's just that sort of day. At least it's a pretty name. "Sounds good. Yeah." Maybe they'll wait a while before putting that on the birth certificate.
It's then that a nurse comes in to take the baby away again, for tests and getting the feet prints and all of the medical voodoo Dean knows nothing about. Their daughter goes into a cart, and then she's gone. An overwhelming and slightly embarrassing urge to flag the nurse down almost overcomes Dean, but he swallows it and scoots his chair over to Anna instead. He pushes a tangle of hair out of her face then leans in to leave a kiss on her forehead.
She watches him with glassy eyes. "I wish they didn't... didn't take her away."
"She'll be back," Dean murmurs, and feels an impossible smile tug at the corners of his lips when her fingers thread into his, though her IV tries to come between them. Sneaky little bastard.
Anna draws a long, shaking breath. Then she whispers, "I made something. Something human. Earthy, dirty, squirming. Just like me. I'm human, Dean."
Shit, those drugs must be strong.
"Why don't you get some sleep, huh, baby?" This time he kisses her cheek.
Her fingers slide out of his, and she nods. "Yeah. Good… good idea."
She's out in moments.
Dean waits until her sleep goes deep and still before he allows himself to leave. He's only deserted her side three times since her labor began, twice to piss and once because a nurse ordered him to get some food into his gullet before he passed out on them. Now, he wanders out into the lobby and flips his phone open.
His brother is the first person he calls. Three rings, then a familiar voice leaps through the static.
"Hey, lil' bro!"
Dean smiles despite his insides being jello and says, "Hey, Liam."
"So, s'this the call?" A rustle in the background, like blankets thrown aside. "She popped?"
"Yeah, yeah."
"Congrats, Dad! You named it yet?"
"Her. It's a girl. And yeah— uh, I guess." Dean chuckles and rubs his face from the temples downward. God, his hands are still sweaty. "It's not official, but I think her name's gonna be Adriel."
A snort. "That's weird."
"Anna chose it." (Liam humphs like no surprise there.) "I think it's out of the Bible or something."
"Sweet. How's New Mom?"
"Knocked out cold. Sleepin' like an angel."
"Great, Dean. But, uh…" More rustling in the background. "How about we come tomorrow? Lacy's already in bed, and you know how she gets when—"
"Dude, it's cool. Tomorrow's great." Dean scuffs a shoe against the floor and realizes for the first time that he never changed out of his date suit. Loose tie, baggy eyes, rumbled slacks: he'd be the quintessential brand new dad, if it were the fifties. "We didn't expect you guys to drop everything and come running out here. We need the rest, anyway."
"Thanks, bro. Hey, you called Mom and Dad yet?"
Dean snorts. "Nah, man. It's like 4 AM in London, right?"
"Heck if I know. Hey, when you do call them, you better record it or something. Can't wait to hear what Mom says when you tell her she's got her first grandchild."
"I will, man."
"What about Anna's parents? They there already?"
Oh, fuck. Dean completely forgot to call them. And Anna was in too much pain to talk for most of the past day, let alone remember to make calls. Hell. He'll be in the dog house for the rest of eternity. Way to go, Dean. He's not notorious for getting along with the in-laws, but forgetting to inform them that grandchild numero uno is on the way? He'll be lucky if Anna doesn't leave him.
Rather than risk Liam's teasing, or worse, one of his lectures, Dean says, "Uh… not yet."
"Aw, you two have your little bundle of joy all to yourselves, then. Cool."
That sounds best in theory, Dean thinks. "Yeah, something like that," he mumbles, then steels his voice. "See ya tomorrow?"
"Bright and early. Congrats again!"
"Thanks."
"Buh-bye."
Dean hangs up.
He calls Anna's parents next and bullshits the answering machine about "quick labor" and "didn't have a chance to call you guys until now." His stomach goes hot and tumultuous as he does it, but he's practiced in biting down that feeling with a deep breath and an oath not to think about it. Once that's done, he stares at his speed dial, and has to tell himself not to call the number listed under 0.
Self-control has never really been his forte, but the rules are simple: don't take a joint from a guy named Don, and don't ring your AWOL fugitive brother.
Dean glares down at the little 0 until it begins to swim in his vision and tells himself that he will not dial it. He knows better. Even if somebody were to pick up the other line, what good would it do? He misses the kid, but he sure as hell isn't gonna let him anywhere near his new family. No. No, siree. He is not going to call. There's no reason to.
He breathes, "Fuck," and hits 0.
Ten rings, then a generic answering machine recording.
He clears his throat. "Hey, Sammy. I don't know where you are, or what you're doing, or if you're even— hell. Look, if you get this, you should know I get to call you Uncle Sam now. Anna just had a baby. I think we're calling her Adriel. She's— she's awesome, man. Uh, call me if you get this."
Dean hangs up and pushes a hand over his face. The dial tone is a dirge in his ear. He snaps the phone shut.
Sam's not going to call.
Dead men don't, he supposes.
Dean is not superstitious.
He does not believe in ghosts. He believes the only bad luck in breaking a mirror is getting a piece stuck in his foot, and the worst of crossing a black cat is having to vacuum its hair out of the carpet later.
But it really fucks with a man when the lights flicker every time his newborn baby cries.
Tonight Adriel's whinging mewls don't wake him up, simply pull his mind from the cradle of contemplation to the stillness of his bedroom. He allows the sounds to go on for a moment, broken already of his instinct to run to her at the first signs of distress. As hard as it is, he knows that waiting her out provides a fair chance for everybody to fall back to sleep on their own. Well— on another night, it would. He doesn't foresee any rest for himself in the immediate future.
The sheets stir beside him. "Dean—"
"I've got her," he murmurs, voice midnight-rough. "You sleep."
Anna makes a noncommittal sound and shifts back into the blankets.
By now the flutter of the hallway lights is expected. That doesn't make the walk from their room to the nursery any less haunting. The planes of his house dance from familiar to hostile in his peripheral, lit one moment and an abyss the next. If he walks a little faster than necessary, that's just because the linoleum is cold on his feet. November will do that kind of thing to a guy.
In Adriel's room, the night light flickers and the mobile spins of its own accord above her crib. Adriel quiets somewhat when she sees him, and reaches out with awareness and dexterity that the pediatrician called things like "incredible" and "prodigious" at her ten week checkup. Dean calls it eerie.
All the same, his chest goes warm when he lifts his daughter close. Her soft body curls into his arms, and he can't help but smile. "Hey, Addie," he murmurs against her forehead, drawing in in the milky scent of baby. He rocks on his feet as he breathes low nonsense into her skin, a constant murmur of promised presence, protection and love. Slowly, the night light steadies and the mobile stops. Dean waits at the crib side, sensing sleep in the slow quell of her breathing. She'll be out like the lights around them in no time.
He wonders if he should mention the electrical upsets to Anna.
The first time he brought it up they were arguing, a shouting match after it became apparent that Dean had not only forgotten to contact the in-laws, but lied about it later. He was tired and guilty, feeling cornered by his wife's postpartum funk, and in his desperation asked her if she was so tuned out that she didn't even notice the behavior of their lights. Anna blamed it on the quality of the house, which spiraled into an uncalled-for fight about their living conditions, and ended in Dean sleeping on the couch.
Perhaps Anna doesn't want it mentioned.
A small snuffle from Adriel pulls Dean to attention. She's asleep. A kiss to her forehead, and he levels her gently into the crib. He backs out of the room with soft breaths and even softer steps, then pulls the door soundlessly closed behind him.
In the undisturbed darkness of the hallway, he allows himself to ask if it is possible to fear something as much as he loves it. No one answers.
And that's when Anna screams.
Dean thought, foolishly, that the wails of Anna's labor were the worst sounds he'd ever hear from her. This scream grabs those by the neck and chokes the terror right out of them. He's back down the hall crying her name before he has time to think, deaf to Adriel's renewed wailing, deaf to anything but the splitting agony from Anna's lips.
He finds her twisted up in she sheets, head thrown back, hair a fiery tangle. The spill of horror goes silent the moment his hands clutch her shoulders; she throws her eyes upon him, and the whites are blown wide, pupils almost gone. Her breaths rattle.
"Anna! What! You okay?"
Anna draws a wheezing gasp and says nothing.
"Anna, baby, please! Talk to me!"
The overhead light whines to full wattage, then bursts in a shower of glass and sparks.
Then Anna says, "John Winchester has broken."
