A month passes before he drops in again – he gives you some warning this time, shooting you a text the day before saying that he can stay until Dean finishes up a hunt he's working in Nebraska. He stays for four days – four blissful, glorious, almost domestic days. You call out sick from work to stay in with him and watch movies and talk. You spend the evenings tangled in your bedsheets, at the local diner, or over at the lake nearby, where the two of you sit and have a picnic under the stars.
It's the life you dream of. And then, he takes off.
He calls two weeks later. It becomes a habit: a phone call every week or two, a visit every month or so.
Once when he drops in, three weeks since his last visit, he's only there for about four hours – four hours of passionate, glorious, intimate love-making, before he has to leave again. When you see him off, there's a heaviness in his eyes that tells you that he believes he's walking to his own death. But you know from the Winchester legends that neither Sam nor Dean actually stay dead.
Regardless, you don't hear from him for almost a month. After two weeks had passed, you'd given up hoping that he'd ever come back.
When he finally calls, he talks as if nothing has happened – as if no time has passed at all since his last visit. At a pause in the conversation, you break the pleasant trance.
"Sam, what happened? You haven't called in ages."
He sighs audibly on the other end of the line. You imagine that he's doing that cute awkward thing where he rubs the back of his neck reflexively.
"I know, I'm sorry, I just—"
"No, Sam – I'm not upset or anything. I just need to know that you're okay."
He's silent for six agonizingly long seconds.
"Yeah, um – well, I am, kind of. Not really. Things are never really okay here."
And it's in that moment that you realize what exactly you are to Sam: you're his distraction from the harsh reality that he lives every day – but not so much so that he needs to hide his hunting life from you. To him, visiting you means a vacation from his world. At this realization, you feel slightly used – but more than anything, you feel sympathy. Understanding. You know exactly where he's coming from.
"Tell me," you say. "What's going on? You don't have to hide things from me."
"I know. But I kind of want to. I don't want to drag you into any of this."
"I get it. I do. But maybe venting to someone else – someone besides your knucklehead brother or that oblivious angel you've told me so much about – will make you feel better."
"Yeah, maybe. I guess."
He tells you everything. Or, you imagine it's everything. The way that the words spew out of him like vomit after a long night of heavy drinking makes you think that he needed to get all of the toxins (in his case, the unvoiced stress) out of his system. He tells you about his mom and Jack and the apocalypse world and Lucifer – his torturer – and the angels and everything else on his plate. You just listen. He vents for a good twenty-five minutes. He signals the end of his rant with a long, drawn-out exhale.
"Do you feel any better?"
"A bit, I think. I don't know. I still have to find a way to save my family and another whole universe full of innocent bystanders."
"I know, Sam."
"I – I'm really sorry, but it might be a while before I get a chance to visit again."
"I understand. I miss you, but there are bigger things to worry about right now. Promise you'll let me know if there's anything that I can help with?"
"Promise." The word sounds half-hearted. "I was actually thinking of inviting you to move into the bunker with us before all of this shit started happening – we wouldn't be a six-hour drive away from each other all of the time. That'd be nice. Maybe when it's all over."
"Yeah, maybe." You don't tell him that you'd hate to leave your house and job behind. You'd rather let him have this one hopeful, promising thought.
You hear Dean's voice in the background. Sam says, "Hey, I gotta go. Dean's back."
"Yeah, okay. Look, I know you won't have time, but try to shoot me a text whenever you can, just to let me know you're alive."
He huffs a laugh. "Yeah, I'll try."
"That's all I ask," you say, reluctant to end the conversation. "Take care of yourself, Winchester. And tell Dean that I said hello."
"Will do."
You don't hear from him for several weeks. You get his text when you're sitting in the waiting room at the doctor's office.
12:27PM I'm alive, just so you know. How are you?
You think to yourself, well, I'm sick as a dog, but I can't in good conscience add that to his list of things to worry about. You type out your reply and hit send just as you're called back to see the doctor.
12:31PM Everything's good. I'm just glad to hear that you're okay.
Most of what happens, from the time that you send that text to the moment that you collapse onto your bed at home, is a blur.
The doctor's name was Dr. Patel, you think. She wasn't your usual GP – because the appointment was so last-minute, they gave you whoever was on shift. Dr. Patel was short and quiet and had a kind face. You remember telling her that you were sent home sick from work that morning after throwing up onto an exam table, and that you needed a doctor's note before you could return.
You'd told her about your stomach bug – about how you've been having trouble keeping anything down for almost a week, and how you've been sticking to the standard bland foods diet: bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. You were getting headaches and feeling dizzy too, but you made sure that you were staying hydrated, because dehydration is really the only reason you'd go to the doctor for something as common as the stomach flu.
The resulting exchange is one of the only things you can recall clearly from the entirety of that three hour time period.
After a series of fruitless, mandatory questions, the doctor asked, "When was your last period?"
Dismissively, you replied, "I'm on the pill," as if that answered her question.
"I see," she said, placing her hands gently on her lap as she adopted the voice every patient fears hearing from their doctor. "Still, unless you take your contraceptive pill at the exact same moment every single day without fail, there's still a four or five percent chance of conception."
Your heart dropped into your stomach.
"Could it be the pill that's making me feel sick?"
"Perhaps. When did you start taking this specific pill?"
"About six years ago."
"It's incredibly unlikely that you'd develop side effects now, after having taken it for this long."
"Oh," you said. The war raging in your head made it impossible to articulate anything else.
"So, can you tell me when your last period was?"
You hate that question. Trying to remember the exact date of the last time you needed a feminine hygiene product is like trying to remember what you had for breakfast three Mondays ago.
"N-not exactly. It was several weeks ago, I think."
Dr. Patel just looked at you with her kind, warm eyes for several long seconds, as if she didn't have a dozen other patients waiting for her in the waiting room.
She asked, "We can do a test for you here, if you'd like. I'll need a urine sample."
Reluctantly, you nodded your head.
And everything went blurry after that. You don't even remember the drive home.
Now, as you lie on your bed staring vacantly up at the ceiling, your mind is racing while your body is limp.
"Pregnant," she'd said.
Of course this would happen to me – of course this'd be among the four or five fucking percent of times that the pill doesn't work.
You think about everything. You think about how often your life is threatened by supernatural forces. You think about what you said you'd name your first-born baby when you were seven years-old. You think about when you were sixteen and decided, after your closest living relative died in your arms, that you'd never have kids – that you'd never subject them to the grief that you'd felt in that very moment.
You think about the empty room in your house that's currently being used for storage. You think about nine months' worth of diet restrictions, then a lifetime of obligation. You think about the fact that you have no support system – that if you were to decide to terminate the pregnancy, you wouldn't even have someone to drive you home from the clinic (there's Heather – a fellow hunter and your closest friend – but she's usually three states away and unreachable). You think about the hazards your job would pose to a pregnant woman. You think about having to explain hunting to a child.
You think about Sam. You think about calling him and getting his voicemail because he's either dead, busy saving the world, or in danger. You think about not having the heart to tell him over text message. You think about how he'd be a great father. You think about keeping it from him – then, you think about him turning up out of the blue in two years to find that he has another whole human being to protect. You think about the conflicted expression you'd see on his face when you tell him. You think about the time Sam told you that all of the people he cares about, quote, "get dead – or worse."
You feel something not unlike a bucket of cold water wash over you as you come back to reality. You finally register that you're clutching a packet of papers folded in your hand as you sit up on your bed, feeling lightheaded. Among the papers, you find the doctor's note that you requested for work, plus a generic print-out of the Options™ available to you during your… pregnancy. Your mind hesitates to even think the word 'pregnant' – it's the first time you actually admit it to yourself. At the bottom of the page, handwritten in a doctor's characteristic scrawl, are two phone numbers: one is for the OB that she recommends, and the other is for the nearest abortion clinic.
When you check your phone, you find an unread text from Sam from just over three hours ago.
12:38PM Good. I should be able to call soon, I hope. Miss you.
With great restraint, you manage to refrain from sending a reply.
That night, in the midst of your daze and existential panic, you do what you're really only ever inclined to do in an emergency: you call your best friend Heather.
She doesn't pick up, so you leave a scrambled, barely comprehensible voicemail.
She calls back about two minutes later, saying she'll be over in an hour. She hangs up before you get a chance to ask how she could possibly be so close by.
Sure as hell, she turns up as promised. You compose yourself enough to open the door to let her in, but the moment the two of you make eye contact, you practically collapse into her arms.
"I-I… I think I really f-fucked u—oh, god."
You feel both comforted and disturbed by how unfazed she is at the sight of your breakdown.
"It's alright," she coos, rubbing your back gently. "Come on, inside. Sit down. Tell me."
The two of you settle onto your living room couch, Heather looking at you expectantly as you continue to snivel.
"So," she begins seriously, "where's the body?"
The question startles you enough that you actually stop wheezing for a moment.
"No, it's – it's not like that."
"Then what the hell has you this worked up? You sound like you've just murdered someone."
"No, I—okay, so… I've been secretly seeing – slash sleeping with – Sam Winchester," you start.
"Wh—" Stunned into silence. That's a new one. It's like you just told her that you're secretly fuck buddies with Aidan Turner or something. "Jesus christ – when did that start?"
"Um, a few months ago, maybe?"
"And you never fucking told me?!" She whacks your upper arm. "What the hell, man?"
"I wanted to, but it's probably just a friends-with-benefits kind of thing, I guess. I don't know."
"I've heard he's been known to make women weep, but I'm guessing that's not why you're upset."
Right. You'd almost forgotten.
"It's not. I… oh fuck, Heather." She just waits patiently for you to gather your nerve. "I–I'm pregnant."
She's silent for for too long; the only sound in the room is your heavy, erratic breathing and the errant sniffle as you try to get a hold of your rapidly-devolving mental state.
"It's okay, sweetheart. It really is. It might not seem like it, but we can deal with this."
A fresh flood of tears streams down your flushed face. "What the fuck am I gonna do?"
"How far along are you?"
"Eight or nine weeks, I think. Give or take."
"There's still time," she says under her breath, probably more to herself than to you. "Have you told him?"
"No. I just found out. And he's busy – he's off saving the world. He can't be worrying about me right now."
"Don't take this the wrong way, my dear, but the second his DNA got involved, it became his problem too. It's your body and all, but I think he has a right to know, at least."
"I don't want to distract him. And I can't really. He's probably stitching up a stab wound as we speak, and—"
"Do you know what you want to do yet?"
It's a vague question, but you understand. She's not asking what you want to do for breakfast.
You shake your head. "I'm scared, Heather. I'm a grown-ass woman, and I'm really fucking scared."
"You'd be an idiot if you weren't scared," she quips.
"I could screw this up so bad, Heather. I could ruin a life. And I can't live with that." After a long pause, you choke, "God, what if… what if it ends up being forced into the Life like I was?"
"Okay, so say you decide to get an abortion." The taboo word feels piercing to your ears. "What happens months, or – or years from now, when you look back and wish you tried? What happens when you regret not taking this opportunity to change things? What then? Could you live with that?"
This serious tone is a stark contrast to her usual style. Usually, she backs you up like a big sister, and she does her best to make you laugh even when you feel like throwing yourself off of a bridge.
"I don't... I really don't know."
"Then let me ask you this: would you be doing it because it's the easy way out?"
You can't manage a reply. All you can think to do is spew excuse after excuse after excuse, hoping that the accumulation of such petty matters will somehow justify your reasoning for wanting to back out.
"I can't decide for you. This is your choice, and you know I'll back you no matter what, but I think you know what's right for you." She sighs. "The life we live is a crazy, dangerous one, but look where you are: you've got a job and a stable home base, you're not living out of your car like we did when we were eighteen, and you've got money and space and food and love to give. And you might not think so, but you'd make a good mom. You've kept me from doing stupid shit ever since we met – you practically raised me throughout my entire adult life."
"You're older than me."
"Still," she says. "Look, it doesn't have to be the end for you. You know what I always say: you can take the girl from the hunt, but you can't keep the emotionally-disturbed hunter from keeping salt by all accessible doors and windows." You share a hearty laugh. Maybe I can do this. "No more hunting for you, in the meantime."
"You say that as if I hunt often anyway. I don't think I've actually taken a case for myself in months."
She smiles softly at you. "Look, I'll help in any way that I can, whatever you decide. But I really think that as soon as the Winchesters' Big Bad of the Week is taken care of, you need to tell Sam."
"Yeah. I want to – but he always initiates the conversations. I don't really know how I'd go about telling him anyway."
"I can't help you there, kiddo," she says, then pauses for a moment in contemplation. "What do you say I make us each a cup of chamomile tea and we watch something? You know – to get you mind off of things. I don't think you've taken a single steady breath since I got here."
"I'd like that."
Heather stays overnight and makes you breakfast the following morning, but she has to leave by noon.
"I don't like leaving you here all alone," she says as she prepares to leave. "You should give Garth or Bess a call. It'd be good for you to have some friends around right now."
"Yeah, maybe. I go back to work tomorrow, so I'll at least have that to distract me."
She hesitates before asking, "Do you still think you want to keep it? You seemed relatively sure last night."
"I might. I really don't know."
"It's a big decision," she says, placing a hand on your shoulder as she gives you a kiss on the cheek goodbye. "You found out yesterday. Take your time. But I want a text the moment you decide."
"Sure. Bye, Heather. Thanks for being here."
"I'd say always, but we both know what my life expectancy looks like."
One evening, you find both of your cats glaring intently out of the front window. They're not chittering or meowing like they do when the see a bird or a squirrel, so you investigate.
You peek outside and find a man standing beside your car in your driveway, looking for all the world like he's concentrating on the world's most difficult problem as he stares at your house. He looks disheveled in his unfastened tan trench coat, and you think to yourself, there's no way that Garth sent this guy.
You step out onto your porch and the man looks startled, ducking behind your car to hide from your gaze.
"I saw you. The jig's up."
He reluctantly steps out from his hiding spot, looking apologetic as he very seriously replies, "I wasn't 'jigging.' There's no music. That would be preposterous."
You honest to goodness laugh at this man, who very well could have ill-intentions, but you couldn't care less. He looks thoroughly confused by your laughter.
"I don't understand." A look of realization washes over him a moment later and he remarks, "oh – that was an idiom, wasn't it? Apologies. I'm not very adept with those."
You pause for a moment to just look at him. "What do you want?" you ask.
"The, uh – the Winchesters sent me. I promised them that I'd check up on you every few days."
"Why?"
"I am unsure," he admits. "Sam made me swear. I don't think he suspects that you're in any immediate danger. It might just be sentiment."
"And you just blindly follow their orders?"
"No. I defy them when necessary. They often let emotions cloud their judgement. But Sam was very adamant – it seemed very important to him."
"You're Castiel, right?" He nods. "Come in," you say, opening your door. He looks very hesitant – like he was ordered not to interfere, and he's overstepping. "if you're going to check up on me, you can at least keep me company while you're at it."
Castiel looks like a fish out of water as he steps into your home.
You gesture towards the couch, "Sit. Would you like some tea?"
"No thank you. Besides, don't hunters usually imbibe alcohol in these sorts of social situations?"
I can't exactly tell him why I'm not drinking alcohol.
"Yeah, usually. I'm just not feeling it right now."
"Oh, it's because you're pregnant, isn't it?"
You freeze, the blood rapidly draining from your face. His words sound so casual, which only serves to twist the metaphorical knife in your abdomen.
"I, um…" he begins, realizing his misstep. "I wasn't supposed to say that, was I?"
"H-How the fuck do you know that?"
He fold his hands and says, "I am an angel of the lord. I can sense the second life force."
And in that moment, any lingering inclination to terminate the pregnancy disappears into thin air. It's the notion that fundamentally, this is no longer just an idea – this is another whole "life force," and the decision that you have to make is very real.
"I apologize. I did not mean to intrude."
"It's – it's alright. You didn't realize," you say, smiling softly at him.
"So, I suppose that Sam—" he freezes, his eyes widening as he sits up straight and flares his nostrils. Shit. "Oh. This is Sam's child. And he doesn't know." It's not a question. It doesn't have to be.
"You can't tell him, Castiel. Shit, please."
"Why not? I would think he'd be happy to hear such news. He's a very nurturing individual."
"Maybe in another life, he'd be happy. But he's a hunter. Hunters shouldn't have kids. And he's got so much on his plate right now."
"When do you plan on telling him?"
"I don't know. I thought I'd do it once the big fight is over – if he makes it out alive, that is."
Castiel smiles sadly at you. "This is an unfortunate situation. I apologize."
"He doesn't have to find out, Cas. Not yet, at least. It's for his safety." He looks like he doesn't entirely believe you. "You said it yourself – emotion will likely cloud Sam's judgement. He needs to stay focused right now."
"I suppose," he says with a sigh. "I won't tell him. That's your right, not mine. But I still plan to check in every few days. I made a promise, after all."
You smile. "Well, next time, you don't have to hide in the bushes – you can just knock on the door. I don't get visitors here very often, and I wouldn't mind the company. Maybe you can give me updates on him every once in a while, too."
"I'll be seeing you, then."
"Yeah. And Cas?"
"What is it?"
"Thanks."
