Bobby pushed aside the logbook when his cell rang, grateful for the interruption. He'd been going back and forth between it and the computer all day and it was starting to give him a headache. "Yeah?"
"Hey Bobby, it's Sam."
"Hey, Sam. I haven't had a chance to look that stuff up that you asked for." The weakening of the veil in a spot with no traumatic past was virtually unheard of. He suspected they just hadn't found the event yet. Probably pre-written history for the area.
"Yeah, um, about that . . ." He trailed off, oddly hesitant for Sam, and Bobby sighed. He had a bad feeling about this. "What are you doing for the next couple of weeks?"
"What did you idjits do now?"
"We bought the land we were asking about."
The older man leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead with one rough hand. "You bought a haunted house." He was amused and horrified and not surprised and so much more. It had been a bit of a disappointment when they'd been told not to stay near him, but if this was what Joan's Boss had in mind it was going to be hilarious.
"Haunted land," Sam corrected, as if that made it much better. "Will you come and help us ward the house?" There was indistinct murmur, and when Sam spoke again there was a hint of a smile in his voice. "Joan says you should stay through Thanksgiving. I think she's planning something big."
That would have made it harder to refuse if he hadn't already decided to head out there. The idea of the Winchesters in their own home was too good to pass up. "I'll be there by tomorrow night." He closed the phone with a snap and got up to pack a bag.
The drive felt good, even while his bones were aching from spending thirteen hours in the car. As much as he enjoyed his own bed and home most days, there was something to be said for being on the road. He followed the directions from Sam once he got close, glad he'd driven the battered old pickup rather than his Chevelle. Dean must wince every time the Impala hit the creek bed.
Bobby studied the house as he got out of the truck and stretched, his back and knees complaining at the movement. At first glance, it appeared to be little more than a shack of a farmhouse, but a closer look showed the lie in that impression: the roof wasn't sagging, and there was no leaning of the frame that he could see. But there were loose shingles and boards, and several of the windows were broken. Plywood was covering the holes and Bobby was sure that was high on someone's to do list.
Dean came out onto the porch and greeted Bobby. "Took you long enough," he ragged, giving him a friendly slap on the back. "What, you stop to pee every ten minutes?"
"I figured the truck would be a better bet, given where I was going. Gas mileage is pretty bad. Where's your brother?" The Impala was no where to be seen.
"Took Joan and Billy down into town." The younger man headed back into the house and Bobby followed, looking around at a surprisingly intact interior. "The gris-gris seems to be working, but until this place is warded, they're not going to be up here after dark."
Bobby agreed with the sentiment. "Place is in better shape than I would expect."
Dean nodded. "A house that's been pretty much abandoned like this one should have had animals coming in, but we haven't seen so much as a mouse turd. Haven't seen nearly as many snakes as we should either. Think the ghosts kept them out?"
"Could be," the older man admitted. "Animals can sense these kinds of things." He walked through the rooms on the first floor, testing the walls and floorboards. Everything was solid. "So what made you two buy this place anyway?"
Dean smirked. "Ask Joan. They've been looking at houses since Sam knocked her up again, but her boss kept telling her no."
"But the haunted house on cursed land got the green light?" Bobby shook his head. Winchesters were always doing things the hard way.
"Looks like," Dean said cheerfully. Bobby would have thought that he would balk at putting down roots, but that didn't seem to be the case. "It's a fixer-upper, too, but the bones of the place aren't bad. Roof's leaky, but it isn't sagging. After twenty-three years, the Winchesters have a place to call their own."
Bobby nodded, glad for his boys. It would have been nice if they'd settled down closer to his place, but he'd settle for them having a home at last. "We'll get started in the morning. We bedding down here for the night?"
"Probably the easiest. The house seems to be a little more settled since we put in the charm bags."
Dean wasn't his brother, so instead of staying up late discussing theories about whatever had caused this place to be haunted they'd shared a couple of beers and talked about some of the more practical protections that needed to go into place before opening up sleeping bags and crashing on the floor of the living room.
Sam and Joan showed up just after dawn with Billy still crashed out in his car seat and Bobby had goggled at how very pregnant the girl looked when she got out of the car. It had been several weeks since he'd seen her and in that time she'd gone from looking a little round at the middle to being undeniably pregnant. She seemed happy and Sam glowed whenever he focused on her belly. Dean was undeniably smug whenever the couple got cute.
It wasn't a hard jump to realize that the Winchesters were merely fixing up the building that would house their family. The home was already created; they were just now getting around to surrounding it with four walls.
xxx
It was a little frightening how quickly the house had turned from abandoned wreck to home, at least on the inside. Bobby was fairly certain that was mostly at Joan's prompting. He faintly remembered this from his wife's pregnancy decades ago; Karen had flitted around the house, making him fix and paint and wallpaper so that the house would be perfect when their son arrived. Joan was more concerned with getting the electrical turned on, fixing windows, gaps in the structure and making sure someone applied Murphy's Oil to the floor and all of the wooden furniture, but the sentiment was the same.
Shoving away the pain that the memory brought up, Bobby stood next to the woman in question and watched as Sam and Dean muscled a crib up the stairs, the same crib they'd moved down the day before so it could be cleaned and repaired. Billy had gotten up from his matchbox cars and asked to be held and Joan had obliged him, hitching the toddler up on her hip without a pause in the conversation. "I want to do a grocery run now that the kitchen is more or less in order. We need to get the ham for Thanksgiving before they sell out."
"Yeah, I can drive you down," Bobby agreed. Warding the house was not as complicated as it sounded, and he had finished up yesterday. Grocery shopping was preferable to the manual labor he'd be experiencing if he stayed with the boys. "We taking the kid?"
Joan addressed the child in her arms. "Do you want to stay here with Daddy and Uncle Dean or ride in the car with Mommy and Uncle Bobby?"
"Car ride!" he said, beaming, and Joan rolled her eyes.
"Such a Winchester," she muttered. "I swear, it's going to take him forever to get used to living in one place." She handed him over to Bobby and headed towards the boys. Bobby watched as she carried on an animated conversation with them, gesturing occasionally in his direction, before kissing Sam and walking (waddling, but there was no way any of them planned on saying that to her face) to the car, keys and purse in hand.
There were worse places to be than a Wal-Mart on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, but the list was rather short. Joan had two pages of items, ranging from toilet paper to lunchmeat, written in all four adult hands as they'd come up with things they needed. She was marching down the aisles with her usual determination while Bobby followed along with the quickly-filling cart, Billy chatting up a storm in the seat.
The deli and meat section of the store was their last stop and it was the most crowded, but Bobby had already learned that people took one look at the young woman's pregnant belly and got out of the way. As long as he stayed close with the cart he could follow in her wake as she worked through the list at a surprisingly high speed. He gave her a hand when it came to loading up a large spiral-sliced ham but stayed out of her way otherwise. "I'm surprised you're not going all out and getting a turkey," he commented as they got into an especially long line for a register.
"I've got no idea how to cook a turkey," she said, "and there's too much going on to learn this year. My dad always used to cook lasagna at Thanksgiving. I'm already on a pretty steep curve here."
"I wouldn't have said no to lasagna," Bobby said.
Joan turned a little pale and swallowed carefully. "That's pretty much the one food guaranteed to make me throw up when I'm pregnant. No lasagna. You'll have to deal with ham and potatoes and green beans and dressing and pie."
"Sounds like a fair exchange to me."
It was dusk when they got back to the house and all the lights were on inside. The lullaby of the Impala had long since sent Billy to dreamland and the adults were content in companionable silence. The lawn was cleared of furniture and the firewood stack under the leaning shed had doubled in size, so the boys must have made a lot of progress while they were gone, and they were waiting on the porch when the Impala pulled up. "We were starting to worry that you'd decided to run off with Bobby," Dean declared, as he popped open the trunk and whistled at the packed bags. "You leave anything at the store for others?"
"You sent me out with a two-page list," Joan reminded him. "The closest store is forty-five minutes away. Next time, you can go yourself."
Sam leaned in for a quick kiss before opening the rear door for the additional groceries there. Bobby had packed it all so he felt no remorse at letting the boys unload it all.
After the fourth trip, Dean was grumbling and teasing about Bobby using a spell to turn the Impala into a version of Mary Poppin's carpet bag. "How the hell did you fit everything in there?"
"Language," Joan chided.
"The mimic is asleep," Dean answered. "I want to know how Bobby broke the Pauli Exclusion Principle."
"Geek," Joan answered affectionately. "He's just a really good packer. It's something I'm sure you can appreciate, since it meant we only needed to make one trip." With that, she headed into the house. Bobby followed and watched as she started unloading the bags and finding places for everything they'd purchased. Sam came in behind with the last set of bags and joined her, moving the heavier items such as the ham and a gallon jug of milk into the refrigerator.
"Did you two eat dinner?" she asked, her hands busy placing newly purchased spices into a small rack that fit onto the back of the counter.
"We were waiting until you came back with bread and lunchmeat. Things were kind of sparse up here." Sam took the loaf of bread from her hands and the rest of the sandwich fixings from the counter and got busy at the newly cleaned kitchen table.
Bobby started gathering up empty plastic grocery bags while Dean swooped into the room with Billy. "I guess we should probably bring the kid in too," Dean said, grinning at Joan while he held the toddler in close to his chest. "Do you want him to wake up and eat something, or just let him sleep?"
Joan bit her lip, pausing in motion. "Wake him up," she said. "It'll be a bear to get him back to sleep before midnight, but if you don't, he'll be up at three and hungry and then crabby all day tomorrow too."
"I left the two packages of shingles in the trunk and I'll get them out when we go on the roof tomorrow."
Between the four adults and one toddler they managed to finish off an entire loaf of bread, nearly a pound of turkey, one tomato, a bag of potato chips, a bag of baby carrots, and several apples and bananas. Billy had fussed about being woken up but settled pretty quickly when Dean gave him a peanut butter sandwich and a banana. They all kept an eye on him as they ate, planning out the tasks for the next day.
Thanksgiving was two days away and other than the special meal that Joan was planning it would still be a work day. They would be on the roof tomorrow, replacing shingles as needed, and digging for a foundation for the planned extra bedroom behind the dining room, which was probably going to end up being the library with a table for meals. Bobby would be the voice of experience for that part, since he'd needed to learn in order to add on an extra space away from prying eyes. The kitchen had already been scrubbed down and put back into order, so while they were working outside Joan planned to put more of the rooms in order now that the walls and windows had been repaired.
"Are we staying here tonight?" she finally asked, as their plans wound down. The day had been long and her eyes were getting heavy. Bobby was willing to bet that she would be asleep before Billy. Sam scooted over closer to her chair and she leaned against him, reaching for his hand without looking. Even with the healing he had done over his wife, it was still almost painful to see this level of casual affection and he turned his attention to the toddler taking apart a peanut butter sandwich. "Did we check the beds?"
"It's going to be too cold upstairs to sleep up there until we get the roof completely fixed and a few more holes patched up. If we sleep here its down in the living room with the stove going and sleeping bags," Dean declared. "It might be better for you and Billy to head back to the motel."
Joan made a disgruntled noise. "All right. We better get going, then, because I am dead on my feet. We'll contact a plumber to come out sometime next week, just to make sure that everything is all right."
"If we can get one," Dean scoffed. They'd already run into a couple of people who thought they were crazy for buying the creepy haunted house outside of town. If the boys hadn't been raised to be mostly self-sufficient, they would have already had problems.
Sam escorted his tired wife to the car, the toddler carrying on a happy conversation about his toys from his position on his father's hip. Bobby listened to the rumble of the Impala's engine as they drove away. "You're going to need another car. Something a little more suited to this kind of terrain."
"I'm not giving up Baby," Dean said immediately.
"No one's asking you to, but if nothing else Joan needs a car if you boys go on a hunt. After we've got the house settled, come on back with me and see what you can put together out of the yard."
They stayed up a little while longer, exchanging tips on a couple of the weirder things that they had both run across and generally talking shop before rolling out the sleeping bags for a second night on the living room floor. Tomorrow would be another busy day.
The coffee was made and an extra pot poured into thermoses that the Winchester had owned for two decades by the time the Impala made its way up to the house. Hopefully that would work around the coffee ban in a way that helped everyone. Bobby and Dean were already working on the foundation for the ten by ten addition at the back of the house, and Sam went to help as soon as they arrived.
Joan took Billy upstairs in the big, empty front room that would eventually be his bedroom and set up the gate in the doorway, leaving him with his blocks while she worked on the other two bedrooms and the bathroom. She popped in to check on him frequently, but that first room was both solid and completely empty.
Moths and other insects had gotten into the small linen closet and ruined most of the things in there, so that all got turned into cleaning rags. The water ran clear after a second and the hot water tank had been cleaned out and repaired first thing, so even though she was planning on having a plumber check things out next week it would probably be all right to use it in the meantime.
While she cleaned the upstairs rooms, Sam and Dean were both on the roof. Bobby stayed on the ground and coordinated, corralling the old shingles as they were torn off and replaced and moving the ladder as needed and playing safety officer. When he had a bit of time, he measured the four windows on the ground floor that would need replaced. Right now, the forecast was clear but there was no telling how long that would last. The roof was the first priority. Windows were next, along with the foundation for the addition, since that would have to cure for a week before they could build on it.
Lunch was sandwiches, and dinner was going to be spaghetti with a homemade sauce that she started prepping while she made the egg salad. Billy had a plate of cut grapes and cheese chunks as a snack midmorning, which he had happily shared with his mother, and half of an egg salad sandwich for lunch along with some applesauce. The three men came in just as Billy was finishing up and helped themselves to sandwiches and beer. "I'm going to run up to the attic and look for holes from the inside," Dean said around mouthfuls of egg salad. "But I think we got all of the bad shingles replaced."
"I'll take the truck down and get what we need for the foundation and the windows after lunch. Do we need any other building supplies?"
"Not building supplies, but there aren't any sheets, blankets or towels that we can use in the house," Joan offered. "Can you drop me off at the discount store on the way?"
"Not a problem. Look for a couple of air mattress while you're in there just in case none of us can sleep on anything else up here."
Once everyone had eaten their fill Joan grabbed her purse and followed Bobby out to his truck. It was high enough off the ground that she needed a little help climbing up, which Sam provided before kissing his wife goodbye and closing the door.
The home improvement store in the closest town wasn't particularly busy on the day before Thanksgiving, so Bobby took his time and called back to double-check what the needed, adding painting supplies for the outside of the place to his list along with the other supplies he needed. He even detoured over to the sporting goods store (no way in hell he was going into someplace like Wal-Mart on the day before Thanksgiving) to get air mattress after Joan said she couldn't find anything. The truckbed was fully loaded when he pulled out of the parking lot and headed to the thrift store where he'd left Joan almost two hours ago.
She had three bags of house linens, sheets and blankets and towels, and one more of small household goods. It took a few minutes to arrange it all into the cab of the truck and boost the girl that he considered a daughter-in-law up into the seat. The girl did her best to tease stories out of him as they drove back, everything from hunting to tales of the Winchester boys growing up.
When they got back to the house Dean had started the water for the pasta and Sam was attempting to make garlic bread from the loaf of Italian bread they'd gotten for sandwiches, with Billy toddling back and forth between the two of them. Joan left them to it and went to the back mudroom to start washing sheets and towels so that they could hopefully sleep at the house that night.
With dinner in the hands of Sam and Dean, Joan wasn't quite sure what to do. Eventually she sat down at the table with a cup of tea and chatted with Bobby. Billy tried to climb up into her currently non-existent lap and had to be shuffled over to his Uncle Bobby while the boys finished up dinner.
The real treat came after dinner, when Bobby and Dean both declared the house to be ready enough to stay in. Sam had paid up at the motel that morning in hopes of exactly that.
With the roof repaired and all the broken windows replaced, the whole family woke up in the house for the first time on Thanksgiving morning. Billy had stayed in what would eventually be his bedroom with Dean and Bobby, all three of them on air mattresses that had been Bobby's housewarming gift for the family. He hadn't been looking forward to another night in a sleeping bag on the wood floor.
One of the mattresses had been fine if a little musty, no sign of damage from critters or insects, but the other one had been soaked through pretty badly at some point and wasn't usable, so Sam and Joan had taken that one functional bed and had covered it in baking soda and salt to air out the mattress. The wood frame holding the damaged mattress of that bed had been similarly soaked and warped beyond utility, so they'd taken both things out and burned them. They had the last air mattress in the bedroom that Joan had claimed while the old mattress aired out.
The foundation would take a week to cure, so while they waited on that the next big task was double-checking the electricity and making sure that the stovepipe for the wood burner was clean. It was unseasonably warm this week so they hadn't really needed it, but that wouldn't last. They would need to test the fans that pulled the heat through the house as well, and probably clean them. The windows and walls would need to be checked for less-obvious gaps and caulked or repaired as needed.
While Joan got started on her plan for Thanksgiving, Sam pulling double-duty as child wrangler and prep chef, Dean and Bobby divvied up the list and got started. As the smells started filling the house, driving away the last of the smells of mustiness and disuse, the two of them tore through their assignments.
They managed to finish up everything but two of the upstairs rooms on the last item from the list with plenty of time to get cleaned up before the meal. Bobby got first shower by virtue of age and experience and using Billy to distract Dean long enough to get there. Dean was waiting to push past him when he was done and Bobby headed down towards the delightful smells in the kitchen.
The table was set with mismatched dishes, some of which had come from the thrift store and others that had been left behind in the house and which the poltergeist hadn't broken. Sam had already strapped Billy into his booster seat, out of the way while they moved hot things from one side of the room to the table. Bobby sat down across from the boy and was immediately brought into a conversation he was having with his parents about what he wanted to do outside.
Dean came down into the kitchen with his hair still dripping wet as the pie was coming out of the oven. "How do you always manage to do that?" Joan demanded as she set a serving dish on the table. "Is there some kind of mystical pie sense that tells you when its ready?"
"That's exactly what it is," Dean answered with smug satisfaction as he sat down next to his nephew. "No one can defeat the pie sense."
Sam placed a platter of ham down on the table. "More like you took the fastest shower you could do and its all a coincidence. Bobby, what do you want to drink?"
"Is the coffee ban still in effect?"
Joan made a face. "I don't want to chance it when I'm looking forward to this. We can try tomorrow."
Bobby thought over his options. "I'll make some tea," he decided, getting up and heading over to the counter. He'd have whiskey later with his pie.
After dinner and dessert, they sat around the table and talked while Billy played with his blocks on the kitchen floor until it was time for all of them to head to bed. Bobby was starting to realize that this might be the Winchesters new home, but that it was also almost home for him as well.
With most of the outside of the house back into decent shape and several days of clear, unseasonably warm days in the forecast, on Friday morning they started scraping and painting the clapboards on the outside of the house. Joan kept Billy wrangled and out of the way, collecting some of the smaller deadfall and walking the property lines in small pieces. They still hadn't gone past the edges where Sam could feel what he'd called an emotional bloodstain towards the south end of the property and none of them were planning to do so when there were impressionable children around. Judith had told her that it wouldn't harm them now but that there would always be a higher level of benign spirits crossing back and forth, and that seemed like the kind of thing that might confuse a kid.
They headed back in and Joan put Billy down for a nap on the living room couch and started a pot of soup with some of the leftover ham and veggies for lunch before starting on more of the smaller chores that were left in their home restoration project. Gary had left behind most of the furniture and some of the household items, but they'd needed towels and sheets and Dean still needed an actual bed. Sam had gone up to the attic and taken photos of everything that was there so they knew what they were working with, and Joan had taken Bobby's truck down to the thrift store at least once already. There was an antique cast iron bed frame in pieces up there, and Dean had shown some interest in metal work. He could probably work protective symbols into it.
The back porch mudroom had a washer and dryer in it, both of them fairly old but functional. Joan tossed in the first load of family laundry, not counting the sheets and towels they'd done yesterday, and found herself at loose ends for the first time in a long time. She wandered through the first floor of the house, not really wanting the workout that the stairs would provide just then, straightening things and cleaning, before the upright piano that Gary Boot had left behind caught her attention.
She pushed back the cover and tapped a couple of keys. The instrument was out of tune, but not as badly as it could have been. The bench that went with it had been smashed by the poltergeist so she dragged a kitchen chair over and sat in front of the piano.
The chords she tried were clumsy and unpracticed. It had been years since she'd had those piano lessons and she'd barely touched the instrument since, much too busy with first school and then everything else to bother. She'd need to practice, maybe get a book or two, but it might be worthwhile to start back up.
Eventually she found a bit of rhythm, hands remembering chords as she played a rough version of the Beatles 'Yesterday.' She sang along quietly, more to help her find the notes and beat than anything else. Her lung capacity didn't allow for much more than that anyway. And as the song came together, Michael started kicking, slowly at first and then matching the beat of the song.
She stopped when she got to the end of the song and dropped her hands down onto her belly. The baby's movements slowed and eventually stopped as well. "Huh," she said. She sang a bit of Bob Dylan and kicks started up again, once again in time with the music.
Billy woke up just then and called for her from across the room. Joan got up and headed over to the couch, sitting down next to her firstborn and setting his small hands on her belly. Then she smiled at him and started singing again. As Billy smiled, all his attention on the kicking little brother that he was waiting for, Joan closed her eyes and relaxed.
After they'd put up the walls and roof for the addition, Bobby succumbed to the need to get back to his own place. Dean left with Bobby first thing in the morning once the majority of the repairs were done, planning on finding enough parts for a car in South Dakota with four-wheel drive that he could put together something that could move them all without putting huge amounts of unneeded stress on the Impala. Sam kept an eye on Billy while he sorted through the books and notebooks that they'd been carrying around in the car (way more than he had suspected, though they hardly made a dent in the bookshelves they'd put up in the dining room. Joan was painting the trim in the living room, sitting on the floor once she'd done everything she could do while standing. Around ten Billy started fussing and Sam put him down for a nap, keeping watch until his son was solidly out for the count before hurrying back down the stairs.
Joan looked up at him and put her paint brush down, lifting up her arms to him. "Help me up?"
He braced both of her arms and lifted, watching to make sure that her feet were solidly underneath her, and stepped in close once she was steady. "Do you realize," he said, his hands going to her hips and pressing her body towards him, "that we have the house completely to ourselves?" He leaned down and kissed her, his hands finding the bottom of her oversized T-shirt and slipping under to touch the smooth skin underneath.
She kissed him back, arms going around his neck. Between the lack of privacy and Joan's lingering morning sickness, they hadn't gone much further than this in months. "Do you realize that from now on hurried sex in a motel bathroom will be an outlier rather than the normal? We can go up to our own bedroom and close the door." She kissed him again, the swell of her belly pressing against him. "Or we could just take advantage of things and just use this room."
Sam looked around the mostly empty room and eyed the unswept floor. "Why don't we try the couch first?" They were going to have to use a little more planning than normal, but as Joan grabbed his hand and lead him into the living room, he was absolutely looking forward to it.
Once Dean had returned with the rebuilt Jeep Grand Cherokee that quickly became known as the Goat, the Winchesters fell into a routine of sorts. Sam was normally the first one up to check the wards and stoke the fire. The goal was to have the house comfortable before anyone else crawled out of bed. Sometimes he succeeded and sometimes not. Either way, he was deep into his classes by the time one of the others was pulled from their sleep by the smell of coffee or Billy getting out of his own bed and going for the closest adult. One of the first actual new purchases that they had made was a gate that was now at the top of the stairs, with a latch that needed more strength than his tiny hands held. They'd all had a nightmare about him tumbling down the immediately steep stairs. Dean had taken the opportunity to completely clean out the weapons compartment in the trunk of the Impala and stash a lot of the more esoteric stuff in a gun cabinet in the library/dining room space. Gary had kept all his parents' guns, of course, but he had his own cabinet and had left this one behind.
A call to Ellen to tell her about their new situation and that they were available if someone needed to rest up and recover after a bad hunt had resulted in Ash, of all people, showing up at their door. Joan wasn't overly fond of the man, mostly because the smell of pot smoke had always turned her stomach, but Dean got along well with him and apparently he'd broken his wrist tangling with a Chupacabra.
They all quickly discovered that when he wasn't high, Ash was almost painfully sharp and focused. It was probably why he self-medicated with marijuana and alcohol. Without it he couldn't seem to slow his brain down at all to deal socially with anyone, and right now he couldn't have either while on the meds they'd given him for the broken wrist and the deep scratches that he'd taken on the hunt.
He needed a project, so Dean gave him two. The first one was setting up a better internet connection for the house and was solved in a couple of days. The other would take longer, and he would need to be back at the Roadhouse to finish it. It was a piggyback from Sam's supernatural database, connecting hunters with varying resources to each other. The two of them took about a week to lay down the bare bones of what was needed before Ash headed back.
Other than Ash, Ellen had already sent the first green as grass hunter out to them for training via Ceria, who had stayed for a day or two to visit and do some of her own research before heading out again. Mark probably wouldn't be staying much longer than Christmas, but Dean had taken him out on a few routine salt and burns between weapons drills and teaching him how to do research.
Now that she had her EMT license in hand, Joan had already started to investigate what it would take to get her paramedic license as well. They were forty-five minutes from the nearest hospital in good weather, and it had occurred to her that this was probably why she'd been urged to take the classes in the first place. At this point, she couldn't do much practical work until after Michael was born but reading up on what she needed to know would be helpful for later. It surprised her how much she enjoyed it, since this wasn't the type of career she had ever planned, but she liked learning the ins and outs of emergency medicine and it turned out she was kind of good at it.
She also had several long conversations with Spencer Reid at the FBI about the supernatural world, and had invited the agent to come and visit sometime after the new year. Honestly, if Sam hadn't been absolutely secure in his wife's love he might have been a little jealous. The two of them had become pretty good telephone friends over the past few months.
With a wood burning stove and the constant chore of chopping firewood, the favorite axes were moved from the Impala trunk to the woodshed. The spare axes remained in the trunk for emergencies, more natural than supernatural currently.
Joan had managed to find a midwife that would accommodate her as a late-joining patient. As much as she would miss Patricia, six hours one way was too much for an appointment now that they were settled in one place. She didn't like Janice quite as much as she liked Patricia, but that might come in time. They got along reasonably well and Janice and she mostly agreed on the options she had chosen when it came time for this one to be born. There was a birthing center just under an hour away that was willing to accommodate everything, including Winchester stubbornness in making sure that the child was born behind lines of salt.
Billy turned three shortly after Dean got back. They celebrated with cupcakes and a stack of secondhand children's books, along with a stack of coloring books and crayons from the Girardis and a set of blocks from Bobby. He'd started learning his letters from all three of them, picking things up more quickly than any of them expected. It made Joan both happy and a tiny bit sad. Her baby was growing up so fast. When she closed her eyes sometimes she could see him as a grown man, taller than Sam and helping people. It made her want to tuck him in close sometimes and never let him leave the safety of their family.
After the incredibly fantastic reprieve of nice weather in the couple of weeks after they moved into the house winter slammed down into the area. The stove got a workout and Joan made sure to pile the thrift store blankets onto everyone's bed. Dean was still sleeping on an air mattress, but he'd really liked the idea of redoing the cast iron bed frame and had taken it with him to Bobby's, since the older man had a forge that he could use. They were just waiting for a little extra money to come in before they could buy an actual mattress for the empty frame. Slowly but surely their home was coming together.
"We should decorate for Christmas before my family gets here," Joan said on the twentieth. It had crept up on them this year, between Sam doing his best to knock out classes and Dean working on the house -putting up the drywall and trim on the addition- and the hunter's network he and Ash had been cooking up. They didn't have a television at the house because it was an expense that they could do without for at least a little while and she'd barely paid attention to that kind of thing when she was at the grocery store or one of the thrift stores in town. "Also, I don't know about you two but other than the things I've made I haven't got Christmas presents for anyone." They hadn't been planning on exchanging gifts between the adults this year. The house had taken a lot of their reserves, between the initial purchase and what they'd had to put into it. Joan had accidentally made a few commissions on projects that she'd been working on while in the midwife's waiting room, which brought in a little money, and they still received their stipend from the Order, but money was tight and would continue to be tight for the next little while.
"We can cut down a tree from the property. What kind of stand do you need for that?"
"I'll look it up," Sam said. "Have there been any decorations in the thrift stores?"
"I haven't seen any. I'm guessing if they get any, they disappear pretty quickly this time of year. We shouldn't have anything breakable anyway, between Billy and the two of you. Let's start with what we can make."
The finished tree wouldn't win any design awards, but the base that Dean had cobbled together from scrap wood was sturdy and allowed the large planter holding the small tree to be filled with water easily. Joan made a conical paper angel out of the cardstock that they kept for making both fake and real business cards for themselves and other hunters. It wasn't much, but it was theirs.
xxx
Sam leaned over the table, long fingers wrapped around a steaming hot cup of coffee. Waking up at three in the morning was a lot harder than staying up until the same hour. He hadn't done it since Stanford and that insane work-study program, which right now seemed like a million years and as many miles removed from his kitchen table in Missouri. He smiled to himself despite the exhaustion. His kitchen table, in his own home, with his wife and son asleep upstairs and his brother down the hall.
He heard the stairs creak and looked up as Joan came into the room, yawning. She gave him a sleepy kiss and settled into the chair next to him. "You didn't have to get up," he pointed out, taking a healthy swallow of blissful caffeine.
"I'm not going to see much of you today," Joan replied. "Wanted to get in some alone time with you before the horde descends. I can always go back to bed later." She smiled at him, seeming a little more awake as she sniffed the coffee-scented air. Six weeks ago, that smell would have been sending her straight into the bathroom. The lifting of the coffee ban had been one of the happier moments of Dean's life.
Sam regarded his wife over the rim of his mug as she stood up and fixed herself some tea. Settling down here had been the right thing to do. The lines of exhaustion and stress had disappeared from her face as soon as they had moved in, the morning sickness had finally followed shortly after, and she seemed honestly herself again for the first time in months, mood swings aside.
He waited until she set her mug down on the table before reaching out and tugging her closer. She allowed him to pull her into his lap without resistance, humming a little as he nuzzled the back of her neck. "Give me something to keep me entertained," Sam murmured into her ear, skimming his hands over her belly and resting them on her hips. "I'm going to be stuck in the barge for half the day."
"With my parents for half of that," Joan teased, turning until she was sideways. It was still an awkward angle, but he made it work, pulling her in until she was leaning against him and kissing her thoroughly. "Do you really want to be thinking about this when you're sitting next to my dad?" The words would have been more effective if they hadn't been delivered with a breathless sigh.
Sam smiled and gave her his response to that question.
xxx
Sam was still in a good mood when he spotted his in-laws on his fourth circuit of the passenger pick-up area. He pulled the Jeep up to the curb and allowed Helen to pull him into a hug, shaking Will's hand once he was released and turning to help load up the luggage. "Joan didn't come with you?" Luke asked as he helped with the bags. Helen and Will were assisting Kevin into the vehicle. The wheelchair needed to be carefully folded up and packed around so that it wouldn't roll around in the back of the SUV.
"Three hours in the car is a little much for her these days. She was baking up a storm when I left, though."
They made decent time on the way back, though it helped that Helen kept up a pretty continuous conversation most of the trip. Will inserted a few questions, most of them carefully neutral, but seemed content to listen to his wife's questions and Sam's careful answers. All in all, it could have been a lot worse. His relationship with his father-in-law was apparently improved with the addition of a house and a second child on the way.
In the daylight, the house looked ten times better than it had when they first moved in. They'd painted after Thanksgiving, turning it from weather-beaten grey and dingy white into a yellow the color of sunshine, and Bobby had replaced the broken windows like it had been his own personal mission. It looked snug and neat and warm and comfortable, and the Impala parked off to the side completed the image of home for Sam.
"I love it," Helen truly smiled at Sam as he started unloading the luggage. "I hope you haven't gotten to paint all of the rooms yet?" she asked hopefully.
"All of the upstairs still needs done."
Helen brightened even more. "Could I do a mural in Billy's room?"
"Take it up with Joan." Sam was sure she'd say yes. At that moment Joan hurried out of the house and the next few minutes were a flurry of hugs and exclamations over how much Billy (and Joan, though that was said with a little more tact) had grown since the last pictures had been sent.
Will was eyeing the house with less disapproval than expected as he helped carry the bags inside. "Air tight?"
"That was one of the first things we did," Sam answered honestly. "Any rooms that Joan and Billy are in had priority. The room that you're staying in has the bed piled high with blankets just in case. The wood burning stove works a little too well."
"A stove for heat, with a toddler?" Will asked.
"Billy's good about obeying 'hot.' He doesn't even like his food warm so it's easy to discourage him."
Fortunately, Billy proved his point by grabbing 'Gamma's' hand amidst the chaos of the greetings, pulling her toward the stove, pointing and saying, "Hot. Hot."
"Yes, Billy," Helen agreed. "The stove is hot. Don't touch."
"Ouchie."
Sam and Joan exchanged a grin, watching Helen fall in love with her grandson all over again. Will was standing off to the side, but obviously charmed as well. Billy had that effect on most people, including his parents and uncle. While Helen and Will fawned over their grandson, Sam and Dean made sure everyone's things got stashed into bedrooms and out of the way.
Kevin was in the new downstairs bedroom. It was small, barely any room for more than the bed and his wheelchair, but it had a wide door, no steps and very close to the also new downstairs bathroom. Luke got the 'big boy' bed in Billy's room. Billy couldn't sleep in the crib with a stranger in the room and ended up in Joan and Sam's bed most nights. Dean planned on relinquishing his bed to Helen and Will and crashing on the couch. He didn't mind since he could feed the fire all night long and prevent everyone from waking up to a cold house. It would also put him in prime position to guard the house every night and start coffee every morning.
After the first dinner, Helen was eager to go upstairs and investigate Billy's room. It didn't take any convincing for Joan to agree to a mural. They planned to leave first thing in the morning to go to the store for paints, brushes and assorted materials. They returned with all that plus more yarn, as Joan had managed to use up her meager stores on Christmas presents. Most of the next several days, the women could be found in Billy's room. Helen was painting and Joan was knitting up a baby's blanket. The two would chat and talk and laugh and just renew their relationship.
That first afternoon, while Helen was putting down her outline on the blank wall and Joan was in the rocking chair that they'd found in the attic and repaired in the first couple of weeks she called her mother over once she had cast on her stitches. "Want to see something cool?"
She set her needles down, sat up straight to give her lungs as much space as possible, and started singing. Once Michael started moving she reached for her mother's hand and placed it so Helen could feel the baby moving. After she had first noticed the pattern she had tested it a few more times. As long as she kept singing, the baby would keep moving to the beat of the music. Her mother was delighted. And cried a bit.
Their end results were a blanket for the baby, a new one started for Billy and a hat and scarf for Luke who forgot his on Joan's part and an entire wall filled with an overflowing artist's palette where the paints formed emergency vehicles ("every boy likes loud trucks") and space shuttles –human and alien- and rockets ("for Luke") and all sorts of musical instruments and books ("did you know that Kevin is now doing the arts and entertainment section of the newspaper in addition to sports?") Interspersed with all the possibilities were supernatural creatures like friendly-looking dragons, unicorns and nature sprites and, of course, Roswell aliens next to the spaceships.
Meanwhile, the men cleared a couple of trees, chopped firewood, repaired furniture and hung the curtains Joan had bought. There was always something to do, but if one of the Girardis wanted silence or a break, they could retreat to their assigned room. Luke had books upon books of reading to finish for his senior thesis and Will spent quite a bit of time keeping Billy safe and entertained. Dean and Sam had reinforced the lean-to being used as a garage until the temperature dropped and the cold rain changed to sleet. The Impala was as secure as they could make it, so they ran for the house, dodging ice pellets.
"Think it'll snow?" Dean asked as hopefully as a kid as they watched the precipitation.
"Could," Sam agreed, but then he was distracted by being in the same house as his father-in-law without causing a scene. The whole family pitched in with dinner and in diffusing the tense situation.
The next morning, Dean nearly fell on his ass his first step out the door to check on his 'baby.' The world was sparkling and not covered in snow. Ice coated everything. Nature was absolutely still. Every couple of minutes the brothers could hear the branches breaking in the trees and the crack echoing through the hills.
"Well, shit," Dean grumbled. "It's not worth starting the car when a branch or ten are going to be blocking the driveway."
"If we want to get them to the airport on time, we're going to have to start now," Sam added. The brothers tugged on their coats and trudged outside. They grabbed the axes from the woodshed and started clearing the way. Luke and Will chipped the ice off of the SUV, so that they could turn it on, turn the heat up to high and let the rest of the ice melt off. Every single door was frozen shut.
Helen lingered inside, anxiously filling up the Winchester thermoses with coffee and hot chocolate and making egg sandwiches for the road. All of the luggage was by the door and Joan had done one last pass through all the bedrooms to make sure that nothing important was left behind. Finally, after they'd walked the entire two-mile driveway and cleared the fallen timber, Sam went back in to clean up and grab a sandwich while Dean packed the back of the Jeep. There was a round of lingering goodbye hugs as the Girardis slowly filtered out to the warmed-up car. Sam kissed Billy on his cheek and handed him over to Dean before bending down to embrace his wife. She kissed him, arms around his neck, for long enough that Kevin rolled down the window to wolf-whistle at them. "Be careful, I love you, and please don't kill my brother," she sighed. And with that Sam was back on the road.
They had cleared the driveway and had gotten through the first small town before his father-in-law spoke up. "Could we stop at the store before the airport?" Will asked.
Sam eyed the clock on the dash and evaluated the condition of the roads. "Possibly. We'll see."
Will settled in his seat, agreeable with the answer. As luck would have it, the roads improved dramatically the closer to civilization they got, so they were actually an hour early. Without being reminded, Sam pulled into the strip mall and let Will out at the door.
"I won't be ten minutes," he promised. He returned in twelve minutes with a shiny and rather small chainsaw.
"You can't take that on the plane," Kevin said in astonishment.
Will gave his oldest son a look. "It's Sam's Christmas present. They'll need it, staying in that house." The gift Sam had opened at Christmas had read 'from Will and Helen,' but everyone had known that it was from Helen and she had added Will's name. It was a pleasant surprise for Will to be correcting the oversight now and so practically.
A chainsaw had been discussed in the Winchester household, but finances were tight with the house sucking up their savings. It was top of the list if Dean managed to find a poker game or a pool table to hustle. Sam's shoulders were still aching from the work-out of removing branches out of their way. He would barely be able to move tomorrow and he knew that Dean was just as sore. He swallowed his pride and told his father-in-law, "Thank you. We are sure to get a lot of use out of it."
Will nodded. "It's gas-powered and light-weight so you'll be able to clear the entire deer trail you call a driveway."
Helen gave her husband a dirty look at the possible slight, but the man was right. Their two-mile driveway currently resembled two parallel game trails more than anything else. It had been several years since the previous owners had graveled it. Just one more thing on the list for spring, assuming they could pay for it.
"Thanks again," Sam said his bit. Thankfully, they had arrived at the airport. Any confusing or contradictory emotions were overshadowed by good-byes, hugs from Helen and the collection of luggage. Then Sam waved one last time and drove away.
He had a ninety-minute drive to think about the implications of the chainsaw in his backseat. It was probably the most 'you'll do' sign he'd ever received from his father-in-law. Even getting married and going back to law school hadn't really seemed to thaw out Will Girardi. He tossed a blanket over it while he ran into the grocery store (they were pretty much cleared out at home, between the visiting family and the distance between here and the house, and Joan had handed him a list on his way out the door). Dean uncovered it when he helped bring the groceries inside.
Once everything was inside Dean was still staring at the chainsaw, like he couldn't wait to try it out. "Dude," he murmured. "Your father-in-law just showed his approval of you with a chainsaw. Talk about a mixed message."
"I thought the message was clear. Joan's going to be happy, though," Sam agreed.
Dean turned to look out the front windshield and grinned. "So what are you waiting for? Let's go tell her."
That night, Sam laid in bed and listened to the wind moan around the eaves. His wife was in his arms, sleeping soundly in their warm bed, his brother was down the hall in the bed he'd rebuilt from the old cast-iron frame they'd found in the attic, and his son was in the room across from them, all of them safe and comfortable.
It was good to be home.
xxx