Notes: Thank you to my beta mago186
He is tired. Every part of his body aches. He has a headache that is threatening to turn into a migraine. He wants to spend the next 24 hours in bed sleeping. He wants the chance to relax, but that isn't going to happen.
Sam wants to talk to him about what he has no idea. He knows it has nothing to do with the yellow-eyed demon he had killed just four short hours ago. He can't close his eyes and go back to sleep though. Sam would only whine and moan about meaningless shit until he agreed to talk. It didn't matter that they were both exhausted and any conversation they had would be full of sharp, angry words. Summoning up the remaining energy he has left, he moves forward until he can sit on the edge of the bed.
He attempts to wipe the grit out of his eyes before looking at Sam and demanding, "What do you want that couldn't wait until tomorrow?"
"I found a letter in your bag," Sam said simply.
Dean knew that the only letter he had in his bag was the one that he had placed in a hidden compartment. A letter which represented a very painful part of his life. Sam would only have found it if he had been snooping. With a little more coldness in his voice than he would have liked, he replied, "There is no letter."
Sam reached into Dean's bag, went straight to the hidden compartment and took out the letter. Waving it in front of Dean, he demanded, "What the fuck is this because it's not a missing page from dad's journal!"
Dean reached out and ripped the letter from Sam's hand. Instead of screwing up the letter and throwing it away, he carefully placed it in his coat pocket. The letter had been the only way he had been able to pour out the emotions and questions he could never share with anyone else. Sam wanted to talk about the letter as if he had a right to. "The letter has nothing to do with you."
"It's addressed to me. It's my letter," Sam snapped. He wasn't going to let Dean wiggle out of this conversation
"It's a letter I never posted," Dean said. For him that meant Sam had no right to claim the letter as his.
"Don't argue over the small details with me Dean. I want to know all about this letter," Sam demanded.
Dean silently counted to ten in an effort to push back his anger. He was in no mood to deal with Sam's demands. He just wanted to sleep, but Sam didn't seem to understand that. Getting up from the bed so that Sam wouldn't be towering over him he said, "You don't get to make demands and expect me to just give in."
"How could you keep this a secret for six years? We've been lovers again for over a year and it's only now that I find out you haven't been entirely honest with me. We are meant to share things with each other Dean," Sam said slightly hurt.
"I'm sure you have lied to me more than once. If we were completely honest with each other all the time our relationship would just be one long, continuous argument," Dean replied coolly.
"What point are you trying to make?"
"We don't have to be honest with each other all the time," Dean said. He'd had enough relationship experience to know that complete honesty wasn't always welcome. He knew that Sam always lied when it came to the truth about Sarah, but he was okay with that.
Throwing his hands up in the air in frustration, Sam said, "I could accept that if this was any other conversation. I know you are just trying to avoid talking about this and it's not going to work Dean."
"I don't want to talk about it," Dean calmly replied.
The fact that Dean was so calm should have told Sam that Dean had gone beyond being angry and was now pissed off. When Dean became that angry, it never led to anything good. Sam ignored the signs of his brother's worsening temper and said, "I don't care what you want! I need to know about the letter."
"You don't need to know a damn thing!"
"Dean, don't be so stubborn. I know you had a miscarriage. I know how badly it must have affected you," Sam said.
"Do you honestly believe that reading a letter I wrote gives you an insight to how I was feeling?" Dean asked.
"Talk to me Dean. Tell me how you felt back then," Sam requested.
"No."
"Dean, writing that one letter couldn't have been enough to get over the loss of a baby. Did you tell the baby's father?" Sam asked.
For a very brief moment, Dean was thrown by Sam's sudden change in conversation. In one moment, Sam was talking about the miscarriage and in the next, he was asking about the baby's father. Taking a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself down Dean said, "That letter helped me Sam. The baby's dad—well—it's complicated."
"So un-complicate it for me."
Dean knew that Sam was managing to get the information he wanted about the letter in a round about manner. He knew that he could end the conversation by walking out of the room or he could just refuse to talk. However, those were both forms of running away and he had never done that before. He wasn't going to let what he knew would be an extremely painful conversation cause him to run. Turning his back on Sam so he wouldn't be able to see his lover's reaction to what he said, he spoke softly. "We only had a few dates. Those dates were nothing more than breakfast in a diner or researching a job. The baby was a result of the one and only time I let him top."
All of what Dean had just said described their first attempt at a relationship. Swallowing back the lump that was forming in his throat, Sam said, "That sounds exactly like us."
"It was," Dean whispered.
"I'm the baby's dad?" Sam asked.
"Yeah," Dean said. He wasn't going to correct Sam and tell him that there was no baby. He was just going to ignore Sam's use of the wrong words.
"How could you be so selfish as to keep this a secret? Not once during the past year have you given me a hint of this letter. If you could lie so easily about this how do I know your not hiding anything else?" Sam asked.
Turning around so he could talk to Sam face to face, he angrily replied, "Don't you dare try and take the moral high ground with me Sam! I have one secret. One thing that you didn't know about me. I have never questioned you about all of the secrets you keep."
"I don't have any secrets," Sam insisted.
He knew that Sam had gone to see Sarah seven months ago. Sam had explained that absence by telling him it was to meet up with some old college. He had offered to go with Sam, but at the time Sam had told him that it wouldn't be his type of thing. He had accepted that excuse. He had just put it down to Sam needing his own space. All he had to do was mention just one word to prove that Sam had lied to him. So that is exactly what he did. "Sarah."
"I haven't seen Sarah since we finished that job. I only kissed her once and you encouraged me to do that. I can't believe you are comparing something as innocent as a kiss with what you have done," Sam said. There was no possible way that Dean could know about the three days he had spent with Sarah. They hadn't done anything together other than talk, but he still lied to Dean about it.
"The three days you spent with Sarah didn't happen then?" Dean asked.
"How could you ..."
Waving his hand to interrupt Sam's excuse or reasoning behind the lies he said. "It doesn't matter how I know Sam. The point is that I trusted you enough to know you wouldn't do anything to hurt me."
"Do you honestly think that my small lie compares to what you have done. Our baby miscarried and I didn't find out about it until now," Sam said.
"Did you read the part of the letter about the phone calls?" Dean asked.
"Yes."
"When I was lying in that hospital bed attempting to recover from my miscarriage I phoned you. I … I actually begged you to visit me. I told you which hospital I was and how you could find it. I told you that it serious but you never came," Dean said his anger giving way to hurt.
With equal parts denial and anger for the way he had treated Dean in the past Sam replied. "You could have made the effort to visit me."
Once again, he silently counted to ten so that he wouldn't hit Sam for such an insensitive and selfish remark. "Why would I do that Sam when you had made it abundantly clear that I wasn't welcome?"
"You were always welcome," Sam said simply.
Sighing softly Dean replied, "No I wasn't."
"Dean, I don't want to argue about how I could have done things differently. I just want to talk about the letter," Sam said.
"You're asking me to drag up painful memories just to satisfy this need you have for knowledge?" Dean asked.
"I need to talk about the miscarriage. I know it's going to be painful for you but I only found out about the miscarriage an hour ago. I just need to talk about our baby," Sam said.
Running a hand over his head, Dean knew that the conversation he had hoped he would never have to deal with could no longer be avoided. He sat back down on the bed, gestured for Sam to do the same, and asked, "What do you need to know?"
"When did you find out you were pregnant?" Sam asked.
"I began to get sick in the mornings and the smell of coffee sent me running to the nearest toilet. I couldn't blame it on a hangover because back then I rarely drank alcohol. I thought it could be the flu, but when the sickness didn't stop after a week, I went to the doctor. A blood test was done and I found out I was pregnant two days later in a phone call."
"How did you react?" Sam asked moving closer to Dean.
"I drove to the nearest bar, got a beer and just sat there watching it go flat," Dean replied.
Assuming that Dean had already told their dad about the baby, he asked, "How did dad react to the news that he was going to be grandfather?"
With a smile for one of the few memories he had about his pregnancy Dean replied, "I honestly thought he would be angry with me for being pregnant. I expected him to tell me how irresponsible I was and take me to the nearest abortion clinic. He was actually happy for me. He became quite a mother hen. He even began to make plans for how we could protect the baby."
"That doesn't sound like our dad," Sam said astonished.
"He was supportive Sam. When I told him you were the baby's father, I expected him to call me every hurtful name he could think of. Dad just smiled at me. He actively encouraged me to tell you about the baby," Dean said.
"Are you sure he was our dad?" Sam asked.
"The minute he started being kind and caring, I forced him to drink holy water and I kept saying Christo. Dad drank the water and his eyes didn't turn black. Dad was just being supportive."
"I always thought he would react badly to our relationship," Sam said.
"I did as well but dad told me our relationship was something he had always known would happen," Dean replied.
"Why did he never tell me? I went though my teenage years thinking he would castrate me if he found out I loved you more than a brother should," Sam said.
"Six years ago you were not willing to listen to anything dad had to say without starting an argument. When he wanted to tell you he knew about our relationship and understood, it was too late."
"Was he with you when the miscarriage happened?" Sam asked.
Bowing his head slightly to hide the tears that were now silently falling down his face, Dean replied, "He found me lying on the bathroom floor. I … I can't remember a lot from that time other than the pain. Dad … he … told me that I was begging him to kill me."
Swallowing back the tears Sam quietly asked, "What happened next?"
"I woke up in a hospital bed five hours later. Dad was sitting by the side of the bed on this oddly shaped plastic chair. I … I didn't have to look at dad to know that I had lost the baby. The … the doctors told me that they didn't know what the exact cause of the miscarriage had been. Dad … he told the doctors that their lack of knowledge wasn't helpful. He managed to get the doctors to tell me what could have caused the miscarriage."
Sam moved closer to Dean, put an arm around his waist, and pulled him closer. Now he was so close to Dean that there was no space between them. He began to make small, soothing, circular motions on Dean's back. He knew that his actions were not enough to calm his lover, but it was something that might relax him. With a voice that was bubbling over with emotions, he asked. "What did the doctors say?"
Leaning his head on Sam's shoulder, as he had given up all pretence of hiding his tears, he said, "Infection, smoking, something wrong with the fertilized egg or environmental issues. I … I was unlucky enough to be of those miscarriages where a reason is never found."
"What happened after the hospital?"
"Went back to the motel with dad…stayed there for two days and got back on the road." Dean said. At the time, he had been grateful to get back on the road. Carrying on with his life as usual had been had been something he could focus on. It stopped him from focusing on what he had lost.
Angry for so many reasons Sam demanded. "Dad dragged you back on the road two days after you had a miscarriage?!"
"Dad didn't drag me anywhere. I could have stayed in that motel for as long as I needed to. Dad told me that he could do some research for next hunt on the laptop. He tried to convince me that we could stay in the motel room for an extra week. I told him that I needed to keep busy," Dean said.
"You should have stayed in the motel room. Throwing yourself back into the hunt was just another way of ignoring what had happened," Sam said.
If he had the energy, he would have lifted his head off Sam's shoulder, just so he could glare at Sam. Instead, he just settled for a sigh. "I couldn't talk about the miscarriage because it was too damn painful. Do you know how hard it was just to get though each day? There was no support I group I could go to. I was alone with my grief."
Sam wanted to tell Dean that he had always been there as a confidant, but it wasn't true. For so many years, he had ignored Dean. When he had first rejoined Dean on the hunt, it hadn't been to look for their dad. It had been a quest for his own personal vengeance. It had only been after a year had passed that he began to really look at Dean. That first clear look at his brother made him realize just what he had done by pushing Dean away for so many years. "Wasn't there anyone you could talk to?"
"Dad tried to talk to me about the miscarriage, but he couldn't understand how I was feeling. I wrote the letter so I could get out all of those questions I had. I needed to put some of my feelings down on paper. I've learned how to cope Sam."
"You have me to talk to now," Sam said.
"I know, but it's…" Dean stopped talking because he couldn't put what he wanted to say into words. Talking about the miscarriage was hard. He knew that Sam wouldn't leave this conversation as just a one off. He just wanted to get on with his life as normal after this conversation was over.
"Hard," Sam prompted. He knew that Dean wouldn't want to talk about the miscarriage after the current conversation had ended and he wasn't going to let that happen. Over the course of the conversation, he had learned that the letter had been Dean's only way of letting out the emotions he had felt over the miscarriage. He wasn't going to let Dean bottle up his emotions again.
"I used to believe that I could get though the grieving process quickly, but I was wrong. After the letter, it was an excuse just to shut down emotionally. I didn't have to deal with dad's expectations. I knew he wasn't ready to deal with me being broken up emotionally for months. So it was easier to just ignore the stab of pain I felt on what would have been the baby's birthday," Dean said closing his eyes and opening them again with a struggle.
"You don't have to ignore those emotions Dean. I'm not going to back away in disgust if you start crying. I don't want you to feel as if you have to hide what your feeling," Sam said softly.
"Chick flick moment," Dean mumbled as he closed his eyes for a second time. This time he didn't bother to open them.
Sam only managed to catch the last word of Dean's comment. The last couple of hours had taken a lot out of his brother both physically and emotionally. "Dean."
When after a few minutes there had been no reply to his softly spoken word, Sam knew that Dean was asleep. Although there were still a lot of questions they had to discuss, he wasn't going to wake Dean up for a second time. Gently he lifted his brother's head from his shoulder. With carefully practiced ease, he lowered Dean back onto the bed. He then got off the bed and looked at a sleeping Dean. He couldn't leave his brother laying half on the bed and half of it.
Waking Dean up just enough so that he would be able to co-operate with any movement, would help. Dean needed his sleep and he didn't want to take the risk of waking him for a second time. He would have to move the man by himself.
He would take care of Dean without any help.
Placing his hands on his brother's shoulders, he dragged Dean to the top of the bed, so he was now as he should be on the bed. The only problem was that he couldn't get Dean under the covers. It wasn't going to be something that he let bother him. Instead of using the sheets from the room's other bed, he simply got into bed with Dean. Within minutes he was asleep.