Chapter 19
May 22, 2012. Douglas, Wyoming.
Consciousness returned in long, shallow waves, like the tide creeping up a beach, her senses registering her surroundings, and only slowly recognising and separating that input.
Smell came first. The air was dry, lifeless, underlaid with the scents she associated with hospitals – antiseptic, the muted reek of ammonia and some kind of fake conifer – pungent and long-lasting and irritating her nose. Over that and closer to her, a more familiar smell. The collaboration of leather and whiskey, an underlying and uncompromising male musk, the tang of gun solvent and those particular signatures of oils, gun and engine, made it unmistakable.
Sound intruded; humming and quiet beeps, the quiet murmur of indistinct words in a deep voice she knew, a voice that matched the scent, followed by the rasp of an indrawn breath. More distantly, the distinctive squeak of rubber soles on linoleum floors. She grew conscious of touch; the invasive prod of a cannula, taped to the inside of her elbow, the soft weight of covers, over her body, the warmth of hands, cupped around hers, the pull of stitches in her skin and a generalised ache, from head to foot.
She'd never felt so tired.
She pressed her fingers against his, felt his respond, wrapping more closely around her hand. Forcing her lids to rise, the room was a dim blur until her eyes remembered how to focus. Green eyes, dark and filled with emotion, looked into hers.
"Hey."
There was pain as her lips curved up, tenderness and the pull of a dressing on one side of her face.
"H-eh ... heh"
Her throat was parched, her attempt failing to make it all the way out. She licked her lips, grimacing internally at the lack of saliva even for that.
"You been out for a while," Dean said, getting to his feet and reaching to the small nightstand.
"Here."
She felt a straw end prod her lip and opened her mouth, lifting her hand to steady the cup. The tepid water tasted ambrosial as it flooded her mouth. Her tongue returned to a more normal size, mouth and throat swelling with moisture, and the unspeakable tastes she'd woken with were washed away. The straw made a gurgling noise and Dean drew it away.
"Enough?"
She nodded. "For now."
Just a whisper, but at least her voice was working now. Watching him return the cup and pull his chair closer to the bedside, she noticed the purple shadows around his eyes, the lines of tension bracketing his mouth.
"What happened?"
He gave her a sour look. "Gate took more'n you said it would," he told her, the tone of his voice leaving her in no doubt who he blamed for that misrepresentation.
"Old gate." It was, and she dimly remembered thinking it could be a factor. "I'm still here."
"Just," Dean allowed darkly. "You ever do that to me again and I'll –"
"What?" Her mouth tucked in at one corner. "You'd do the same."
He ducked his head, apparently unwilling to admit to that.
"What else happened?" she asked, moving her hand until she could feel his again, lying on the bed.
"Crowley caught up with us, when we got through," he said. "I killed him."
Her fingers tightened involuntarily and his hand enclosed hers. Whatever'd happened while she'd been out, it'd taken its toll on him. She was too tired to ask for the specifics.
"Is, um, everyone okay?"
Dean shook his head. "Sam's here too. ICU," he said, waving a hand in the direction of the door. "Demon put a machete through him. He came through surgery okay. He'll need a few days. You too."
Ellie peered at him, trying to gauge his feelings about that through her fatigue.
"Are you okay?"
"Uh, well, about fifty-fifty." He glanced up at her from beneath his brows, mouth twisting disparagingly. "You're both still alive, guess I have to settle for that."
She probed at her body mentally, taking note of the areas that weren't working so well. A glance at the monitors surrounding her was reassuring; her heart rate and blood pressure looked fine. The exhaustion was a given for losing a lot of blood. Most of her body's supply would have gone to the core, protecting her organs and the child she carried. A couple of days on replacing what she'd lost and she'd be on her feet again. As for the rest, a bit of time doing non-demanding things would take care of them. Her shoulders would probably take the longest.
"What'd the doc say?" she asked him.
He let out a gusting exhale. "Doc says you'll be okay. The – uh – baby, too. But they got an eyeful and she's called the cops and wants you to have a, uh, psychiatric exam."
"I bet." She snorted, a bubble of amusement rising through the weariness as she considered the normal reactions to seeing what the demon'd done. "What did you tell them?"
He shrugged, his mouth quirking up a little. "Told them you were in a cult. Got brainwashed. Said we tried to intervene, get you out and all hell broke loose."
"Follow up?"
"Marcus took the cops to the church they used in Colt's trap," he said. "They, uh, went a bit nuts with the protection so it was an easy buy. Lots of tyre tracks around the place and across the lines, but the – uh – surviving cult members must've taken off, taken the bodies with them."
"Tidy."
It was a good story, she thought. Enough evidence to seemingly support it, even though there was no real evidence of anything. Her pragmatic response brought another half-smile to his face she saw, glad for anything that would erase the tension lines.
"Doesn't let you off the hook," he added, looking at her. "Doc figures with all those scars, old ones as well as the new, you got a few screws loose."
She wrinkled her nose, wondering how time-consuming – or thorough – a psych evaluation was likely to be. "Did you offer an explanation?"
"Couldn't think of one," he said, brows rising in an expression of innocence.
"Call yourself a professional."
"Ha, yeah, well, I was – uh – a little worried about other things at the time," he retorted.
"No excuse," she said, lifting her hand carefully to stifle a yawn. "I guess, with Crowley gone, we can go back to the cabin?"
He nodded. "To start off with," he said. "Thought we'd look around for something bigger in a while."
Ellie dropped her gaze, not sure if it was the right time to ask. Not, she considered with an internal sigh, there would ever be a right time.
"What?"
"Are you – you know – okay with all of this?"
"All of this?" She heard him pull in a breath. "With you being grabbed by demons, taken to Hell and tortured? Losing a quarter of your body's total volume of blood to open a gate so we could get out? Sam getting kebabbed and losing bits of his intestines?" he asked, one brow rising sardonically. "No, not okay with that at all. Not okay with finding out you had a tiger by the tail and were jumping in an' out of Hell either."
Her gaze snapping up, Ellie opened her mouth to protest and he shook his head, his expression softening as he cut her off.
"But us? This?" His right hand slid across the covers, coming to rest over her stomach. "This, yeah, I'm – I'm – uh – better than okay with this."
His gaze moved from his hand back to her eyes. There were a lot of questions he wanted to ask, she thought uncomfortably. There were a lot of things she wasn't sure she could answer.
"Are you?" he asked, head tilting to one side as he searched her face.
"It's a big change," she hedged.
"The biggest," he agreed straight away, nodding. "You scared?"
"Aren't you?"
"Not if it's what we both want," he said, and she blinked at him, astonished at his certainty.
"You're sure?"
"The more you keep askin' me that, the less sure I get," he said, his hand closing around hers. "Just tell me straight, Ellie. You want this? Us? A – uh – a family? Together?"
"Yes." Her hand slid down over the cotton blanket, slipping over his, no less surprised at the way that'd come out, without a second's hesitation. "I want it."
He tucked his chin down to his chest, exhaling in a long sigh. She felt the shudder that rocked through him, through his hand, through the bed where he leaned against it.
"Okay then."
May 24, 2012.
Dean walked into the ICU and went straight to the bay holding his brother's bed. Sam was elevated, the nasogastric tube still in place, the bags of fluids and morphine hanging, like bunches of deflated party balloons, beside him. In a semi-circle around him, banks of machines showed his heart rate and blood pressure, oxygen levels and temperature. He opened his eyes, squinting to focus as Dean stopped by the bed.
"How you doin'?"
His brother gave him a dry smile. "Still attached."
"Doc said they nailed the infections," Dean said, leaning against the side of the bed. "You can get out of bed tomorrow, they think. Start getting your blood moving around."
"Yeah, that'll be a real sight, walkin' around the ward with the catheter and bag in one hand and this thing in the other," Sam said, gesturing vaguely at the wheeled pole with its hanging fluids beside him. "You can take pictures."
Cocking his head to one side, Dean shrugged. "Better'n not walking at all."
"How's Ellie?" Sam asked, looking at the frosted glass of the unit's single window.
"She's good," Dean said, frowning a little at his brother's flat tone. "Saw the psych doc yesterday, spun her a story. They want to do a follow-up in a couple of weeks, but she's being let out tomorrow. We, uh, got a room, motel down the block."
Sam nodded. "Good."
They'd been in a lot of hospitals, over the years. Dean studied his brother, wondering at the lack of energy he could see. The second and third ops the doc'd promised had gone good, he'd been told. All that was left for his brother to do was heal up.
Looking back at Dean, Sam said, "You should, you know, get out of here, get back to the cabin."
"What?" Dean straightened, brows knitting up. "What're you talking about?"
Giving him a small shrug, Sam said, "I'm in here for another eight days, minimum. Probably be five or six weeks of convalescence after that. No point you waiting around with nothing to do."
"What's going on, man?"
"Nothing," Sam said, his mouth thinning out. "I'm – nothing. I'm not a great patient."
"You never were," Dean said. "Had to be flat on your back or out of it."
He watched his brother's gaze drop to his lap.
"Anyway, m'not doing nothing," he continued. "We're house-hunting."
"What?" Sam's brows shot up. "Seriously?"
Dean grinned at the floor, pleased his brother's apathy had been banished, even briefly.
"Semi-seriously," he allowed, shooting a sideways glance at him. "Don't give me that look, I've done this before."
"You have?"
"They take some brain cells along with the four inches of gut, Sam?" he asked, with a quizzical look. "Moved house a couple of times with Lisa and Ben."
"Oh." Sam nodded. "Yeah."
Dean added, "Anyway, it's Ellie who's gung-ho on this. I'm just the go-fer. She's looking for a place you can recuperate in without having to worry about anything."
His brother's gaze cut away. "You don't want that."
"Yeah, well, actually, bro, I do," Dean contradicted, moving down the bed a couple of feet and propping himself on it. "You might not be ready for field action for a few weeks, but you're gonna have to do something to keep from stir-crazy. Big house, plenty of room, Ellie and Bobby's libraries and computers, and you can at least pull your weight."
He watched his brother absorb that idea, Sam's expression smoothing out as he considered it. It was a good plan. They all needed some time and some place to regroup, get a fix on the levis, on the monster action and what Hell would do without a leader.
"Where're you looking?"
"Nowhere specific, at the moment," Dean told him, folding his arms across his chest as he recognised his brother's interest. "Doesn't make much difference where we set up shop. She's kind of keen on Oregon right now."
"That's not really central," Sam objected.
"No," Dean agreed. "Probably full of new age-y, crystal-watching, post-hippy communes too. You'll fit right in."
"Ha ha."
"S'probably just temporary," Dean said. "So long as its someplace we can protect, I don't care."
"An' you're okay with this? Going, uh, domestic?"
"Sure," Dean answered, raising a brow. "Why not?"
"I dunno," Sam said, his expression bemused. "You two talk about – about, you know – the future?"
"Uh, some," Dean said. "Not really. Not yet."
"You're waiting for –?"
"No distractions." Dean shrugged. "She's tired as hell and half my mind's on my little brother who's still recovering from three rounds of surgery; we don't know what the levis are doing, or what the fuck is happening with Hell –"
Sam sighed. "Those are good excuses –"
He cut himself off, gaze sliding to the central nurse's station as two people walked in.
"What? They're not 'excuses'–"
Dean glanced around, following his brother's eyeline when he realised he'd lost Sam's attention.
At the station, Dwight and a tall, young woman were talking to the ICU nurse. In jeans and a sleeveless blouse, a mass of blue-black curls tied back from her face, the young woman drew the eye. Dean looked back at his brother. Sam's attention was firmly fixed on her.
"Who's that?" he asked.
Bingo, Dean thought, smothering the grin that wanted to emerge.
"Uh, yeah, that's Dwight's daughter."
"Daughter?" Sam cocked a brow at his brother. "Didn't even know he had a daughter."
"I didn't mention that?" Dean shook his head, ignoring his brother's frown as Dwight and the young woman walked over.
"Sam, how you doin'?" Dwight asked as they reached the bed.
"All things considered? Not bad, I guess." Sam nodded at the older hunter, his gaze flicking back to the woman standing beside him.
Getting to his feet, Dean tried to keep his face expressionless.
Up close, the brunette was even more interesting. An inch or two off his six foot one, slender and fit, she filled out her shirt modestly, denim jeans encasing legs that went on forever. The black curls that'd escaped the constraints of the hair band framed an oval face with smooth, Irish-fair skin, bright cornflower-blue eyes, high cheekbones and a full-lipped, heart-shaped mouth.
"This is my daughter, Trish. Uh, Patricia Healy," Dwight said, putting his arm around the woman. "Trish, meet Sam Winchester, and his brother, Dean."
"It's a pleasure to meet you," Trish said, her voice a soothingly deep contralto. She extended her hand to Sam and he took it, shaking awkwardly with his left hand. Turning to Dean, she added, "Both of you. My dad's told me a lot about the Winchesters."
He shook her offered hand, hiding his surprise at the strength in her grip.
"He has?" Dean raised a brow, glancing at his brother. "Uh, not everything, I hope? Right, Sam?"
"Huh?"
"Just the, uh, good parts." The older hunter cleared his throat. "Since Twist and me're looking at a job near Fargo, and, uh, Garth got a call yesterday, and well, Marcus, he's doin' the follow up with the cops, I asked her come out here, uh, see if she could help out."
"Help out?" Sam focussed on him abruptly.
"Yeah, you know Trish's been overseas the last two years, but she's got some time, between jobs," Dwight said, his gaze flicking to Dean. "She's a –"
Dean saw his brother's expression sour, Sam's hazel eyes narrowing as he shot an accusing look at him. He met it with a bland look, seeing his brother's jaw tighten as he looked back at Dwight and Trish.
"I, uh, don't really need a baby-sitter," he said. "Or nurse."
"That's a relief, since I'm neither," Trish said, her smile polite and impersonal. "I'm a physiotherapist, Sam. I specialise in trauma recovery, most recently and specifically a new protocol developed in South Africa, ERAS. Enhanced Recovery After Surgery. You could see my credentials, if you like."
Dean watched a faint flush of red creep up his brother's neck.
Ellie'd told him Trish had qualified with a full medical licence, but'd decided to specialise in post-traumatic injury care, her post-doctorate in rehabilitation, getting trauma injury patients through post-op treatment, rehabilitation and care. It'd seemed like a good idea. She was smart, something that should've appealed to his brother, and she was extensively easy on the eye. She radiated a competent air, no doubt from being good at her job, and she already knew about their life, having grown up in it.
Sam's gaze fell to the bed cover. "Thanks, but, uh, I –"
"I spoke to your doctor, Sam," she continued briskly, overriding the half-hearted protest. "He said you've got about seven or eight weeks of convalescence and recovery, if he follows normal processes for traumatic surgical recovery, including time at the rehabilitation centre in Casper."
She paused for a moment to let that sink in. "With ERAS, we can cut your hospital time, cut your mobility recovery and reduce your physio requirements significantly. Dr Phillips has already agreed to the modifications in hospital process, so it's really up to you."
Dean watched his brother fiddling with the bed cover, wondering if it was such a good idea, after all. He'd figured she'd take Sam's mind off being stuck here, help him with the pain and frustration of a necessarily slow recovery time, maybe even give his little brother some much-needed time out. He should've known Sam would resist help of that nature, no matter how attractive the package it came in.
"Controlled movement can be critical in the first few days of post-operative healing," Trish was saying, her tone professional and crisp. "Improved blood circulation and strengthening of the abdominal muscles are an essential to regaining full range of movement and fitness. But you know all that, right?"
Sam's lower lip pushed out mulishly, and Dean sighed internally at the expression. His brother couldn't argue with her but he was still going to resist the idea as much as possible.
Trish let the silence between them drag out for a minute more. Her voice softened when she added, "A part of the ERAS protocol is to get you off the machines as quickly as possible, including the nasogastric drip and catheter. We'll also be moving to solid foods as soon as possible. Because of the danger of peritonitis, you'll be on antibiotics for a while longer, your white cell count, temperature and BP monitored regularly, but I can take that treatment out of the ICU. And I won't ask you about the rest of your scars," she added, her cheeks dimpling as her mouth twitched up at the corners.
Sam's gaze flicked from her face to Dean's. The look promised retribution, down the line. Dean shrugged.
"You gotta problem with getting out of here ASAP, Sam?" he asked.
His brother let out a long-suffering sigh and shook his head.
"Good," Trish said, keeping her eyes on Sam. "We'll get started this afternoon."
"Uh, Dr Phillips said –" Sam said, eyes widening.
"Nothing major." Trish smiled reassuringly at him. "Some gentle stretches to see what's been lost in the last few days, that's all. We're not rushing you, but movement is important in abdominal trauma and progress can be fast. It's not like a brain injury which can take months."
"Uh, oh. Yeah. Okay."
Dean turned away to hide his grin. His little brother was susceptible to women who knew their own minds. That'd been obvious from the moment he'd met Jess. Sam would get over his snit about being taken care of and do exactly what the doctor ordered.
"I'll come by later, man," he said over his shoulder as he headed for the door. "See how you're doin'."
"Yeah," Sam muttered.
Ellie looked around as the door to the room opened and Dean walked in. She was using the room's small bureau as a makeshift barre, supporting herself as she extended her leg out to a horizontal position and held it.
"Should you be doing that?" Dean asked, closing the door behind him.
"Yes," Ellie said, bending her leg and lowering it slowly to the ground, resisting the impulse to wipe the sheen of perspiration from her forehead.
Dr Emmet had been surprised to see how fast her injuries had healed and the lack of ill-effects from the transfusion. The stitches were already out and scabs sealed the smaller cuts. Her bruises were almost uniformly fading out from blue and lavender to shades of green and yellow, the swelling almost gone. Iron supplements, A, E and C supplements and the folate tablets were all she was currently taking. Dr Emmet wanted another blood test at the end of the week.
"How's Sam?"
"Annoyed," Dean replied, dropping onto the end of the bed and resting an arm along the rail. "He wasn't happy with the idea of being managed."
"Managed?" Ellie frowned at him. "C'mon, Trish's qualified in everything –"
"Hey, preachin' to the choir here," he said, shaking his head. "He gave in at the end. S'just not that thrilled with it. Not that I blame him. Not that much fun to try to walk around draggin' all that crap, with a tube up your Johnson."
"Part of the protocol is to get rid of that stuff as quickly as possible."
"I heard," Dean said. "Sam's a lousy patient."
"Like his brother?"
"Nah." He grinned at her. "I'm a great patient. Love the attention."
She smiled and turned around, taking a grip on the edge of the bureau to repeat the exercises to the other side.
"What about you?" Dean asked. "That doctor say you could get outta here tomorrow?"
"Yep."
"You alright to make the drive to the cabin?"
"In a couple of stages? Sure," she said, lifting her arm to a comfortable level instead of shoulder-height for the plié. "I thought you wanted to stay here for a bit? Keep an eye on Sam?"
He shook his head. "Sam'll be alright. If we're gonna move someplace else, I wouldn't mind getting started."
"Are we aiming to be out of there before Sam's discharged?"
"No," Dean said. "Don't want to rush this. We'll go back to Whitefish, box up all the stuff there, do the same thing at your place. I'll make a couple of trips back here, until he's ready to go, then bring him out."
"That's a lot of boxing," Ellie warned him.
He shrugged. "Not giving up any of that stuff. We can find a place to store it, can't we?"
"Yeah," she agreed, thinking about the best place to do that. "Twist dropped by earlier, said he'd heard about a job in North Dakota."
"Yeah, Dwight mentioned something about it. He say what kind of job?"
"Vampire. He and Dwight are going to take Trip along and check it out." She bent her leg and slowly lowered it, drawing in a deep breath before she turned to look at him. "I told him to give us a call if it turned out to be a nest like the others."
She watched his face screw up at the thought. The problem with surviving a horrendous set of events was always coming back to the ongoing problems. Patrick had called. The information on the tablets was a dead-end and he and John were going to go back over everything to see if they could pick up another lead. In the meantime, Roman had been busy with his attempts to rule the world. Picking up the towel from the bed, she wiped at the light sheen of sweat coating her, scrubbing at her face and neck.
"You hear from Frank?" he asked, his gaze on the curtainless window.
Ellie nodded. Frank had been let out two days ago. He'd spent a couple of hours talking to Bobby, then had taken off, promising to stay in touch.
"He called this morning. He's bought himself a new trailer," she said, putting the towel around her neck and walking slowly across the room to the bathroom. "State of the art, he said. He'll meet us at Whitefish in a couple of weeks."
"Can hardly wait," Dean's comment was barely audible as she put the towel on the rail.
He appeared in the doorway. "Anything I can do to help?"
Glancing around at him with a half-smile, she asked, "Is this going to be a regular service?"
"Uh, s'long as you don't mind," he said, leaning against the door-frame and unlacing his boot. "You're, uh, still sore, aren't you?"
"Yeah," she said, her gaze cutting aside. She couldn't get her arms much above elbow level without feeling it. "But I – uh – I can manage, if you'd rather not."
He dropped the boot and looked at her. "You serious?"
"I don't want you to feel, um, obligated."
"Obligated?"
She could hear the disbelief in his voice and she grimaced internally at her choice of words.
It was more than just the injuries and fatigue. There was still a wall between them, all the leftovers of what'd happened before Crowley'd made his move. They didn't talk about it, both pretending, she thought, that the lack of physical intimacy was due to more practical considerations, but she'd thought they both knew it was just a pretence. It'd been a surprise when he'd offered and sought closeness in other, less overt ways ...
"What're you doin'?" Dean's brows'd drawn together as she'd pushed back the covers, unpeeling the sensors from her chest and arms, two days before.
"If I don't get into a shower in the next five minutes, I'm going to kill someone," she'd told him, very carefully easing herself off the edge and onto the floor.
Two days lying in the bed and waiting for the tiredness to ease back and she'd run out of patience. Her hair had been itching with the sweat, blood and dirt still in it, and she hadn't even considered the fatigue moving around would bring. She'd hit the call button and a nurse'd come in, the pert, officious afternoon shift.
"Can I get a chair for the shower?" she'd asked, ignoring both the young woman's consternation over the unplugged machines and her increasingly irritable attempts to regain control of her patient.
"Just get the damned chair," Dean'd finally snapped at the woman, eliciting a dirty look over her shoulder as she'd scurried from the room.
"Thank you," she'd said, leaning on the rail at the end of the bed, her chest heaving as if she'd just climbed one of the lower Tetons.
"This isn't looking like such a good idea, Ellie," he replied, glancing at the nurse when she'd returned and banged the shower chair in the small cubicle with an indistinct mutter.
"Can't be helped," she'd said. She wanted to be clean. Needed to be clean. The smell of sulphur was still on her, and it followed her into her dreams.
He'd watched her take a couple of faltering steps across the room on her own, grabbing her when she'd stopped and swayed.
"Tired," she'd gasped in explanation. Tired'd been an understatement but that's all it basically was. Her injuries were healing, shoulders slowest but that was only to be expected. Her oxygen levels were fine but her red cell count had been depleted and the transfused blood had kept her alive but hadn't returned her energy. He'd nodded without saying anything and had half-supported, half-carried her to the bathroom.
The first inkling had hit her then, she recalled with a sigh. She'd felt uncomfortable undressing in front of him, and he'd known it, she thought. It hadn't been a discomfort with him seeing the extent of what Crowley'd done, her body a patchwork of cuts and bruising. It'd been something else, some loss she hadn't quite understood then. She'd turned her back to him and had finally managed to get into the cubicle, leaning on the back of the chair to turn on the faucet.
Within moments, it'd felt like, her small store of energy had been depleted completely, her shoulders throbbing as she'd tried to reach for the soap. He'd stepped in then, turning the chair sideways with her in it, unhooking the shower hose and soaking her hair, his hands so gentle she'd barely felt them.
Her emotions had gone haywire.
Not so much being incapacitated and helpless. He'd seen her like that before, not often, but it was a risk that came with the job. Not even the weepy feeling that'd been bubbling under her skin, a reaction to both exhaustion and being looked after. That too he'd seen before, had held her through, had understood. Fear – and all the possible outcomes of any job – were held down until it was all over, but they had to come out sometime. On bad jobs, she'd found a good cry was a needed catharsis.
It'd been a lot more than that. Closer to hysteria, she recalled disparagingly. Crowley's threat had hit her a lot harder than she'd realised at the time. Trying to get herself and Frank out had taken a different kind of toll, one with the added pressure of needing to get out as fast as possible, knowing what Dean was going through, what the demon had shown him.
All those unacknowledged tensions had reached ignition when he'd lathered the shampoo through her hair, the tenderness of his touch detonating not into an out of control sobbing, expected from the fullness in her throat, the tightness in her chest, but transformed into a monstrous flood of arousal, lancing right through her, stopping her breath and shuddering along the nerve paths from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes.
Need. The need to feel herself again. The need to feel what they'd had again. She'd wanted to move past the spectres still haunting her. But she'd found that need wasn't strong enough to banish them. Not on her own ...
"Ellie? You wanna explain that?" Dean asked, his expression darkening at the long silence.
Ducking her head, she drew in a breath, putting a hand out to lean against the sink. "I hope I can."
Looking up, she saw his expression switch from defenceness to concern instantly.
"C'mon, you're gonna fall down if you stay there," he said, taking a stride into the small room and sliding an arm around her waist. She let him walk her over to the bed, unable to argue that point at all. Blood took its own sweet time to rebuild and there was absolutely nothing she could do to hurry it up, even with a focussed diet.
"Alright. What's this about?" he asked, dragging the chair closer and sitting in it.
Where the hell to start, she wondered? She knew how he felt, knew what he wanted. Intellectually, that is. That knowledge, as sure as it was, wasn't having the right impact on the mess of her emotions.
"Do you still want me, Dean?" she asked, her gaze dipping to the floor between them.
"What?"
Lifting her eyes, she could see he hadn't been expecting that, his eyes wide. "Don't make me ask that again."
He blinked. "Wha–? Uh – never mind … why the hell would you ask that?"
"Do you?"
"Yes!" His brows pinched together, hand rising to swipe over his jaw. "I – you – you think I don't?"
She rubbed the inside of her wrist against her temple, wishing there was any other way to get through this. She hadn't been able to think of one.
"Not want us, not want this relationship," she clarified awkwardly, making a face as she was forced to be precise. "Want me – uh –"
He seemed to get it, his mouth dropping open. "Are you kidding me?"
"No. I'm not," she said, her arms folding themselves around her as she pulled in another deep breath. Even him saying it wasn't enough, she realised. But it'd opened the conversation and there was no simple way to put any of what she thought she was feeling. "I told you, before, at the house, I needed some time to – uh – put the reactions behind me, you remember?"
He nodded, his expression wary. "Yeah."
"I didn't get that," she said. "Everything that happened – it –" She shook her head, lips pursing with the memories of the last few days. "It made most of that stuff clear – crystal clear – too clear, it made – it made everything seem, um, trivial, almost, like how could I even worry about it, with – Crowley and, uh, trying to get out, trying to get Frank out, knowing what I'd have to do, knowing you knew – all of it."
He was watching her, his eyes troubled. It was harder than she'd thought, trying to explain something that was more feeling than anything else.
"When I saw you, in there, it just seemed so … ridiculous … I guess, what we'd gone through before," she said. "I – I didn't care about that, you know? Didn't want anything but to get out, be with you, put it all behind me."
Dean nodded uncertainly. "Me too."
She smiled weakly at him, her brow creasing. "But it didn't go away. It's – it's forgiven. I understand what happened and I understand why. But I can't forget it, you know? I know – here –" She tapped her temple with one finger. "– how you feel, what you want, but not here –"
Pressing her hand against her chest, she shook her head helplessly, hoping he'd get the difference. Sex wasn't the only component of their relationship, not even the most important one, but it was important, she'd realised. Vitally important. It was the physical aspect of their intimacy, the one place they could show, without any of the constraints or limitations or misunderstandings of language, what they felt, how they felt, in what had been perfect trust. And wasn't any longer. At least not for her.
"– any more. What I – uh – took for granted, before, that – uh – you – the way you felt, about me, the way you wanted, um … the way we were – uh – together … it's hard to believe. Now."
She let her gaze fall, frowning down at her lap. "I know I'm making this sound – I don't know – too much? Too important? But it is – important, I mean – to me. That – that – intimacy, that place where it was – uh – just us, you know? Nothing else. It feels like – like the foundation, one of the foundations for everything else. I can't – I can't just – I –"
She stopped, hearing herself floundering in words that didn't mean what she was trying to say, her emotions tripping her up as much as the need to somehow try to translate what was instinctive reaction to comprehensible language.
"I never stopped loving you, Dean, and that hasn't changed." Tears were filling her throat, and she swallowed against them impatiently. "And I want you – sometimes so much it feels – uh – too much – and it was where I could be – where we could, uh, be – honest, with each other, where it was, um, safe to show – how it felt, how I felt –"
Dean stared at her, a growing feeling of unease filling him as he struggled to understand what she was saying. He was hearing the words, knowing some of what they meant, not sure he was getting the big picture.
He could hear a but coming and he wanted her to stop right there, no but, nothing but she loved him and wanted him and why the fuck couldn't they just go from there? Wasn't that enough? It was for him; it was all he needed, all he wanted, to get up, cross the two feet that separated them, put his arms around her and submerge himself in the feel and smell and taste and sight of her, not thinking about anything else.
"– but –"
And there it was, the word he didn't want to hear, the one that didn't belong in this story, that wasn't needed, goddammit.
"– every time I – uh – when I try to – to –" She stopped, her head bowing suddenly.
He waited, picking through what she'd said, turning it over. She'd needed time and no, she hadn't got it. In her head, there were all the things that couldn't just be wiped away, the way that powerful surge of feeling and memory'd wiped him clean, from the inside out, when he'd let it all go, let it all out to break Crowley's hold.
As she lifted her gaze, his stomach clenched tightly, propelling him to the edge of the chair. Her eyes were swimming, tears spilling from the lower lids and no, he couldn't deal with that, the fuck he could, but he couldn't move, couldn't get in the way of what she was trying to get out.
She smiled, her face screwing up, her hand lifting to wipe her cheeks. "I can't ask, Dean. Can't – make – myself reach out and I don't know how to get that back and I don't know if – how we were – how it was – is going to be the same."
Ask what, he wondered? Ask for what? Reach out … how?
The pieces were there, he thought, his gaze dropping. He just didn't know how they were supposed to fit together. Do you still want me? Not us … me … it seemed trivial … I didn't care … it didn't go away … it's forgiven … I can't forget … do you still want me? … I can't ask … can't reach out …
One piece fit.
… on the road, down to Lawrence and back, and how many times had he wanted to reach out to her, to touch her, hold her and how many times had he tied himself in knots, knowing he couldn't, couldn't risk it because the situation was too hard and any kind of rejection cut through him like a fucking knife … lying in the dark, knowing she was close, his body prickling with sense memories, wanting and needing and not moving … when he'd held her after the nightmare, wanting it too much, waiting too long, kidding himself and the paralysing shock afterwards …
… before Seattle … between them, there'd been something, he didn't know what to call it – agreement? understanding? – he pushed the semantics aside in frustration, whatever it was called, it'd been mutual, born gradually out of trust and love and without thought of denial or rejection, that freedom to reach out and touch and hold and comfort and arouse each other without thought.
He blinked as memory and thought intertwined, coalescing into understanding. Being themselves. No lies. No words to misunderstand or fuck it up. It'd always been the one place he was completely himself and when they'd been together, it'd been the one place they were free to let every emotion out, trusting completely in each other.
That's what had gone for her, if not for him. What might never come back.
"Ellie …" he hesitated, not knowing what to say. He didn't know how to undo that. He couldn't tell her, ever again, she was the only one, even though it was the truth, even when it reached right down through to the marrow of his bones. There was no reason for her to believe it anymore. He'd been with someone else. Had wanted and touched and fucked someone else. Not before or after her. Instead of her.
He drew in a shuddering breath, expelling it instantly, and drew in another, slumping back in the chair.
"I want to," she said, her voice shaking. "I just can't."
"Yeah," he said, getting to his feet, taking the step across to the bed and sitting down beside her. "I know."
He was half-expecting her to pull away when he slid his arm around her. She didn't, and belatedly, abruptly, he got another part of what she'd been trying to say, cursing his denseness at not realising it sooner. She couldn't ask. Couldn't ask for that intimacy between them. Not yet, anyway. But he could. He could make all the moves, risking rejection sometimes, he thought, but too bad, he'd suck it up if it happened.
Another habit he'd have to find a way to break, he thought, leaning his chin on top of her head as she moved closer. Years of waiting for overt interest from women before making a move was going to bite him now, if he let it. It was Ellie, he told himself, relaxing without realising as her cheek found the hollow under his collarbone and settled there. He'd gone to Hell for her. He could take the occasional no, if that's what was needed.
"So, uh, you still want that shower?" he asked, leaning back a little to look down at her.
"Yeah, I really do," she said, scrubbing at her face with both hands.
"You, uh, want the chair?"
She shook her head. "No, I can stand."
Getting to her feet, she closed her eyes, testing her balance, he thought, then nodded without looking at him, and headed for the bathroom.
He yanked off his other boot and followed her, pulling off his clothes and leaving them in a meandering trail. Anything below chest level, she could manage on her own. Tee shirts needed help, he knew. He dropped his jeans and kicked them clear, reaching out and catching the hem of the close-fitting shirt in his hands. Easing it over her head and down her arms, he let it fall and opened the cubicle door. He flipped on the single faucet and adjusted its position until the water temperature was comfortable.
"You ready?"
She nodded, stepping in and under the water. Reaching past her for the soap, he looked down, wondering how the hell she could've had any doubts about what he wanted and how much. Just looking at her was enough, he thought.
Her breath rushed out as his hands moved slowly down her back, gliding over her skin in a froth of bubbles. The sound pierced him, catching at his throat, igniting a flush of heat through his body.
I can't ask, she'd said, but he could give. He could give what she couldn't ask for, and he closed his eyes, swearing silently at himself for the second time in ten minutes. He couldn't recall being this inept with what a woman wanted a few years ago. Then again, he considered, those interactions hadn't ever been tangled up with any kind of emotion.
Sensation rioted through his fingertips and his palms, following the smooth curves and long muscles. He probed and loosened the knots and tensions he found as he moved down, acutely conscious of the way the trembling in her body strengthened and eased, according to where he touched, how firmly, how gently.
The main event was out, at least for the moment, but there were a lot of other options and his nerves lit up as they tumbled through his mind, his memories and knowledge of her electrifying every inch of his skin.
Putting the soap down, he picked up the shampoo, tipping it into his palm and working it through her hair. Wet, it was the colour of mahogany, a dark red that contrasted vividly with her skin, a contrast that somehow never failed to light something up inside of him. He massaged the foam through the strands, moving in small circles over her scalp, his scalp tingling in vivid recall of the way it'd felt when she'd done it for him. He reached for the shower rose, lifting it off the bracket and directing the flow directly over her, teasing the lather out, his attention divided between rinsing it clean and the way the bubbles and droplets slipped across her skin, pearling it under the diffused bathroom light.
He put the rose back and stepped closer to her, reaching around her to run the soap over her stomach and hips, his head ducked beside hers as he watched his hands slide upward, over her ribs, to cup and caress her breasts. Watching them rise and fall as she pulled in a deep breath, his exhale scattered the bubbles when she pressed back against him, a frictionless glide that sent a bolt of pleasure straight to his groin.
The groan that rumbled in his chest was echoed by Ellie's soft moan as he wrapped one arm around her, sliding his hand down over the curve of her stomach and between her legs.
The heated, liquid readiness for him brought another frisson, sparking along his nerves, and he pressed his lips along her neck, licking at the water droplets as they ran down, the steam intensifying the heady scents rising from them both.
When she arched back, grinding into him, swollen, heated muscle vibrating and spasming around his fingers, the sensations flooded his entire nervous system, bringing him so close he wasn't sure if he could stop it – or if he wanted to. Holding her up, holding her tightly as she shuddered against him, around him, he moved his head as hers tipped back over his shoulder, and the last four months was banished for long, light-filled moments, along with the world and all its problems.
May 25, 2012. Douglas, Wyoming
Sam winced as he eased his legs toward the side of the bed, conscious of the sweat that'd suddenly beaded his brow and was threatening to trickle down into his eyes.
"It's a rough gig," Trish said, moving around to lift his legs over. "The abdominal muscles are the core. We need them for everything, from just being able to stand straight to bending, reaching, walking, anything you can think of doing. We're not in a rush, alright?"
He nodded, balefully aware that the hospital gown he was wearing was open right down the back and he had to grab the drainage bag in plenty of time to avoid ripping out the catheter that was still in place.
"Don't worry about the gown. Not the first time I've seen a nice, male tush, Sam," Trish told him as he inched his way to the bed's edge and felt the gown open behind him.
Glaring at the floor, Sam tried to stop the flush of heat spreading upwards from chest to neck before it turned his face and ears red. He would kill Dean for this, he decided, tipping forward a little too much when he felt the cold vinyl under his toes, the stitches down one side pulling and complaining as he tried to reverse direction.
"Not so sudden," Trish said, catching him across the chest and holding him. "Try to keep your movements small, as much as possible."
His lungs were labouring and he stayed still for a moment, eyes closing to shut out her proximity. It only made the rest of his senses go into overdrive, he realised uncomfortably; the light perfume she wore filling his nostrils and the warmth of her arm burning through the thin hospital gown over his chest.
"No taking a nap," Trish said, fracturing the images his mind'd been conjuring. "You're going to just stand, get some feel for balancing again, okay?"
Opening his eyes, Sam nodded. There wasn't a single move he could make that didn't use the muscles he'd damaged, he realised as his shifted his arms to the bed edge and tried to push up. Everything goddamned thing was connected to the rib cage and pelvis and all the muscles in between.
"Don't rush it," Trish encouraged. "Get your feet flat on the floor first. Then inch your weight over them."
He tried to follow those instructions, bracing himself to either side when it seemed possible he might fall one way or the other. The edge of the mattress gave a little and he felt his calves and thighs shake as he started to transfer weight. Just a couple of days without using them, he thought, a little disbelievingly.
"One of the side-effects of severe internal trauma, I'm afraid," Trish said. "Shock takes time to work through. The rest of the body is worried about doing more damage so it kind of forgets how it worked before."
He glanced up at her, wondering if she'd read his expression or if it was a part of her standard patter.
"The shakiness? It's normal," she elaborated. "It'll stop in a minute."
He didn't have much choice but to believe her, he thought. For a moment, it didn't seem like his legs would obey him. Then he was up, a wave of dizziness blurring his vision.
"Keep still, let your body compensate," Trish advised. "You've been horizontal for a couple of days, it's going to take a few seconds to get used to being vertical."
"Nauseous," he muttered at her without opening his lips. The last thing he wanted to do was regurgitate his breakfast onto her feet.
"Breathe deeply but slowly, through your nose," she said. "Don't close your eyes. Find something that's fixed and distant to look at. Let your inner ear adjust."
He focussed on the framed print on the other side of the ICU and the nausea and giddiness gradually dissolved.
"Okay."
"Good." Trish nodded. "Straighten up a little, you're leaning forward."
He tried to push his shoulders back, grimacing at the internal tug.
"Not too much, we just want reasonably straight, not WestPoint."
"How long is this gonna take?" Sam asked.
"Longer than you'd like, not as long as you're worried about," Trish replied. "It'll get easier."
"Couldn't be any worse," he said, under his breath.
"Don't bet on it."
The room had steadied and he was standing fairly erect, on his own two feet, leg muscles aching.
"What now?"
"Ambitious, aren't you?" she asked with a smile. "Try sitting down again, nice and controlled, not just flopping back on the bed."
That took a lot more effort, Sam found. He was panting by the time his ass was firmly secure.
"Good work," she told him. "We'll do some massage work on your legs and then have another session in a couple of hours."
His gaze snapped up as she turned away to get a padded stool from the end of the bed.
Massage?
She was back too quickly, positioning the stool in front of him and easing his leg from the floor onto it, her hands gripping ankle and behind his knee.
"A lot of the enhanced recovery process is about getting your body working the way it should instead of being pampered," she was saying as she turned to get out a bottle of some sort of liquid from her bag. "Drinking instead of the IV, eating instead of the nasogastric drip feed, getting you on your feet so we can remove the catheter."
That, he would welcome, he thought.
"Most of the time, it only takes a little work to remind the body of what it can do," Trish told him, pouring the liquid into her palm and working it upward from his foot, around the ankle and with deeper pressure along the calf muscles. "We're not really built for lying down for extended periods of time."
"What made you get into this?" he asked, eyes half-closing as his leg blissed out with the steady kneading.
She laughed. "Taking care of my Dad, and his partners, really," she said. "I saw more traumatic injuries as a kid than most doctors have seen in their entire careers."
"You're okay with that?"
"Yes, and no," she admitted. "I wanted to make a difference, I suppose, and I have. We did a small study in Cape Town, forty patients under the new protocol, thirty-eight under the old. Hospital time was halved, incidence of complications was reduced, it didn't cost any more but the patients were independent much faster and they left our care with a good understanding of what they needed to do and how to do it."
"Sounds good," Sam said, his breath catching a little in his throat as her hands moved above the knee, working on the big muscles at the back of his thigh.
She nodded. "You, your brother, my father, his friends, you hunt monsters, but people die from every kind of trauma every day, all the same causes, all the same problems."
She moved around him, her hands gentling as she kneaded the inner muscles along the artery. Sam sucked in a breath, trying to shut out the way that felt.
"One of the things I've been interested in is the pathology of what you guys hunt. I've been talking to some friends who manage blood research studies, trying to get some information on an antibiotic that will knock out the bacterium in werewolf or skinwalker saliva."
He blinked at that. "What?"
"My Dad thinks it's a virus, not bacteria," Trish said, rolling the muscle around the femoral artery. "But if silver works, it has to be bacteria of some kind."
"Huh," Sam grunted, eyes screwing shut at the persistent sensations along the inside of his thigh. "Because silver is anti-bacterial?"
"Right." Trish straightened. "Try stretching that leg out."
Opening his eyes, Sam complied. The shakiness had gone, and he flexed his foot and eased it down to the floor by himself.
"Good?"
"Yeah." He looked at his right leg, trying to dissociate the leg muscles from the abdominal ones as he lifted it higher. An involuntary grin lit up his face when he got it onto the stool without help. "Very good, right?"
3.00 p.m. May 26, 2012. Bozeman, Montana
Dean stared suspiciously at the giant plastic cup in Ellie's hand. It was filled with a liquid whose colour defied definition.
"The hell is that?"
She glanced at it, her expression pensive. "It's a protein shake."
"You're gonna drink that?" he asked, brows shooting up. "Voluntarily?"
Shooting a caustic look at him, Ellie nodded. "I need it," she said, nose wrinkling up as she caught a whiff of the drink's smell from the straw. "Apparently."
"Lemme know if you're gonna hurl," he said, dropping into the chair on the other side of the table. "So I got time to get out of the way."
He opened the paper sack in front of him and pulled out the styrofoam packaged hotcakes, grease-paper wrapped burger and bagged hash browns, inhaling appreciatively. "Want a hash?"
"No." Ellie averted her eyes from his breakfast and tentatively put the straw to her lips.
As he watched her take a cautious sip, Dean pulled out the plastic cutlery, cutting his pancakes into bite-sized pieces and pouring the contents of the small cup of maple syrup over them.
She slurped a mouthful of the shake down, swallowing and looking back at him.
"It's alright." She sucked up another mouthful. "I'm supposed to be rebuilding my vitamins and minerals. This –" She flapped her hand at the shake. "– is rumoured to be a fast way of doing that."
"Uh huh," he said, wiping the last of the pancake in the syrup. "I – was, uh – I read somewhere that, uh, Milo is supposed to be good for building the blood."
Ellie's gaze narrowed on him. "What's Milo?"
"Uh, some kind of chocolate drink, I think," he said, shrugging and unwrapping the burger. "Couldn't find it here, but it's, uh, available in Canada."
"You read this somewhere?"
"Well, you know," he said around a mouthful of the burger. "I was just, uh, looking around."
"At what?"
"Uh, well, sites about blood," he hedged, shifting his position in the chair. "And, uh … pregnancy."
The last word was muffled as he hastily chewed the cheekful of burger and swallowed.
"You're reading pregnancy web sites?"
"I had to get another laptop since ours is in Sioux Falls," he said, waving a hand toward the car in a diversionary gesture. "Had some time to kill while you and Sam were still getting your blood-to-go."
He lifted his gaze. She was staring at him, one brow slightly raised.
"Hey, stop looking at me like that. I, uh, just wanted to know what, y'know, to expect."
"And the reference to the … Milo? … that came up where, exactly?"
He ducked his head, taking another bite of the burger and mumbling, "Was some kind of chat room, about – uh – bleeding in delivery. Lotta chicks were swearing by this stuff."
"Where's it made?"
"Uh, Australia, originally," he said, forcing the half-chewed lump down his throat. He should've just gone ahead and ordered the damned stuff, instead of running it by her.
"But, uh, you can order it." He tilted his head, glancing at her from under his brows. "Uh, y'know, if that stuff doesn't taste too bad, you could just forget about it."
She looked down at the cup. It was still two-thirds full. "It tastes like crap."
"Oh."
"I need a hash," she said, her gaze homing in on his plate.
"Sure," he said, picking one up and handing it over. "You, uh, want me to see if I can get this Milo stuff?"
"Chocolate?"
"Uh, yeah, among other things. Uh, malted barley? I think? You can have it hot or cold, with water or milk."
"Really? That's a lot of information to have at your fingertips for something you read in passing." She pushed the shake aside, propping her chin on her hand as she looked back at him. "You do realise I'm mildly freaked out now."
"Hey." He finished the burger and scrunched up the wrapping. "You're the one who keeps nagging me to think about every damned contingency, be prepared, figure out what's what ahead of time."
"Nagging you? Did you say nagging you?" She shook her head. "You're not laying this on me. You're voluntarily reading about haemorrhaging during childbirth."
He glanced around and spotted the trash can twenty feet away, throwing the wrapping in a gentle overarm curve and watching it land neatly inside.
"An' the crowd goes wild," he chuffed. "Doesn't seem to've affected my, uh, masculine – uh …"
"Prowess?" Ellie snorted. "Nothing could do that."
"You, uh, want to find a motel around here?" he asked. "Break the trip up?"
Glancing at her watch, Ellie shook her head. "If you don't mind me falling asleep on the way, it would be good to get there tonight."
They'd borrowed Marcus' Nova for the drive and Dean wondered if she'd find the bucket seat comfortable enough to drop off in.
"We'll have to stop in Missoula, grab some supplies," he said, calculating time and distance in his head. "If we, uh, get there, and you're too tired, we can grab a room?"
"Sounds like a plan." She looked at the shake, her mouth compressing to a thin line of distaste. Picking up the oversized cup, she pulled off the lid and straw and tipped it into her mouth.
Dean smiled wryly as he watched her chug the drink in a half a dozen giant swallows, putting the empty cup down with closed eyes and wiping at her mouth with one hand.
"That was truly disgusting," she said, when she could speak.
"I would've got you a burger if you'd asked," he said, shaking his head.
"Now you tell me," Ellie replied, tipping her head back and pulling in a mouthful of air. "If you can read pregnancy sites, I guess I can sacrifice my taste-buds for the greater good."
6.15 p.m. Missoula. Montana
"You didn't need to do this, y'know," Dean said, shooting a sideways glance at Ellie as she walked stoically alongside the cart he was pushing, one hand curled around the side. "I have purchased groceries on my own before."
"I know," she said, her fingers tightening on the metal side of the cart. "I need to keep moving around, even when I'm tired. Something about keeping the blood oxygenated."
"Even if it kills you, you mean," he muttered, stopping and looking at the row of canned vegetables. "We need any of this stuff?"
"Canned tomatoes," she said, following his gaze. "We'll get fresh too."
"Really?"
"You like Italian, right? Lasagne? Spaghetti? Meatballs?"
"Yeah –"
"Practically all tomato-based," she said, rubbing her fingers over her eyes. "Get a dozen."
He pulled an unopened box from the top shelf and set it in the cart, continuing slowly up the aisle, trying to keep the worried looks at her to a bare minimum. He had the feeling she could sense them.
"So, um, what started you looking at web sites anyway?" Ellie asked.
Keeping his eyes on the far end of the aisle, Dean hesitated. What he'd told her in Bozeman had been mostly the truth. He'd started browsing because he'd wanted to know what was going on with her without having to keep asking.
"Uh, just … uh, y'know. Research."
There was an exasperated snort from beside him. "You wanted to know when you might get laid again, didn't you?"
He tried for an affronted expression, giving it up when he saw her grin. "Uh, no – that is, yeah, I was, uh – but that wasn't all –" He frowned, staring at the bottom of the cart.
It wasn't all, but that's where it'd started. The day after she'd regained consciousness, she'd been determined to have a shower, but even the nurse producing a plastic chair for the cubicle hadn't been enough to let her do the job by herself. He'd offered help without thinking it through, just figuring it wouldn't be that hard. Arousal had come and gone in unpredictable waves, not just for him, but for her as well, taking him by surprise. Over the sensuality of the physical contact, there'd been an aching longing to give comfort, to take care of her. She'd done the same for him before; he'd been glad to return the favour. At least, that's what he'd been telling himself.
Her disjointed explanation of what Seattle had done, what that night had taken away from her, from them … that'd changed everything. He was happy to initiate intimacy with her, prepared to wait as long as it took for her to heal, but … if he was being totally honest with himself, he wanted more. Wanted them back where they'd been. Wanted that intimacy to be there unthinkingly, for her. For them both. He couldn't figure out how a future for them would work without it.
"Maybe, uh, initially."
"Then the mysterious lore of childbirth captured your interest?"
He shot her a wary look and shrugged.
It hadn't been the ins and outs of the physical condition that'd caught his interest so much as the completely frank discussions between the women on the chat room. Like eavesdropping in a women's locker room, it'd felt slightly sleazy but insistently addictive. Some of the women had been gushing about their sex lives, how much better it was, how horny they felt all the time, what their significant others'd thought about it. Others'd seemed happy their duties in the bedroom were over, temporarily at least. They'd talked with an unembarrassed matter-of-factness about nausea, stretch marks, aching breasts, pelvic floor exercises, diets and supplements, mind-blowing fatigue, weird food cravings, what they did with their partners, what they fantasised about doing and how they felt – what it meant – about all of it and he'd been amused, appalled, turned on and turned off, astonished, even angered a little, on some of the women's behalf, but overall, kind of hypnotised by all that brutal honesty.
Fucking eye-opening stuff.
"Did you know guys can get the symptoms of pregnancy if they're living with a pregnant woman? Blowing chunks in the mornings, uh, back pain, the whole thing?"
Ellie laughed. "I don't think it's all that common, but yeah, it's called Couvade syndrome; sympathetic pregnancy."
"You knew that?" He shook his head. "People are fucking weird."
"No argument," Ellie said, pushing the nose of the cart left as they reached a T intersection. "We need fresh food too."
"You, uh, getting any, uh, cravings yet?" he asked, looking curiously at her. She hadn't said anything about how was she feeling aside from being tired. And that, he thought, had more to do with losing blood than being pregnant. Extreme tiredness was supposed to a first trimester thing, he'd read, which sure as hell had explained the way she'd been on the way to Lawrence and back. According to more than half of the chicks on the site, the second should've been much smoother.
"Hard to say," she said, slowing them down when they reached the cooler, produce section. "I wasn't eating very well before I found out. I need to make up for that. What I mainly want is fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, nothing packaged. Is that a craving?"
"Got me." He watched her bag up tomatoes and onions, potatoes, lettuce, carrots and broccoli, nose unconsciously wrinkling up.
"You're not, uh, expecting me to eat this stuff too, right?" he asked as she picked up a large, oval-shaped something with a very dark purple skin. He wasn't sure if it was a fruit or a vegetable.
Glancing up at him, Ellie shook her head. "Nothing you don't want to."
She added a couple of bunches of some dark green, bushy vegetable to the cart and headed for the dairy section.
The cart was full when they reached the checkout, one wheel spinning perversely in the opposite direction to the other three, making it painful to manoeuvre in the tight quarters.
They could feed an army for a month, he thought as he finally got the end wedged up against the register counter and started unloading. He remembered the big kitchen at her place in Thompson Falls and wondered if she realised how small, in comparison, the cabin's kitchen facilities were.
Ellie watched the products flowing across the checkout and being packed into bags absently. She was getting cravings, she admitted to herself, her mouth filling with saliva at the sight of the raw, ripe vegetables and fruit. Probably to rectify the unbalanced nature of her diet earlier in the pregnancy. She could've sat down and eaten pretty much everything she'd bought without bothering to cook it first. Whole milk and cheese was something she'd have to ration herself with, at least till her iron levels were back to normal. Too much calcium had a tendency to inhibit the body's ability to assimilate iron easily, the doctor'd warned her, slowing the return of her energy. Not something she was prepared to sacrifice.
She glanced sideways at Dean, the corners of her mouth tucking in with the transparent relief on his face when the fresh produce tapered off and steak, bacon, chicken and eggs began to slide across the reader. She'd bought flour and yeast in preference to packaged bread, hoping she'd have enough energy to make a few loaves per week. That was definitely a craving, she thought. No preservatives or additives, just fresh bread, hot from the oven.
It wouldn't be dusk for a couple more hours at least, but the day's drive was already weighing on her. It should've been a time of more energy, not less. The other reactions to the changes in her body had already been there, distracting for quite a lot of the time, frustrating for a lot of the time. The memory of the hospital shower came back and she ducked her head, feeling a flush of heat fill her, her mind readily providing her with the vivid details. She'd needed that intimacy. They both had, she thought. It was too soon, but at the same time, it wasn't.
Shunting her R-rated thoughts aside, she tried to focus on what she needed to do to keep her recovery improving. A better diet, gradual increase in exercise and fresh air, as much sleep as she could get and she'd be all caught up, she decided. The cabin would be good for all of those things.
9.00 p.m. May 27, 2012. Whitefish, Montana.
Dean cut the lights as the porch light came on, coasting to a stop in front of the porch steps in neutral. He turned off the engine and looked over at the passenger seat.
Half-curled up, Ellie was asleep. She'd dropped off shortly before they'd reached Kalispell. He reached over and pushed the few errant strands of her hair back from her face as softly as he could. He didn't want to wake her yet.
Opening the driver's door, he got out, automatically drawing in a lungful of the cool, untainted air. The silence surrounding them was deep, not even the cars on the highway below disturbing it. He could probably stand someplace like this, he thought, however impractical it might be on most counts. He walked up the porch steps and unlocked the front door, pushing it open, his gun in his hand as he reached around the frame for the light switch.
Illuminating the room, the bare bulbs over living room and kitchen came on and he looked around, brows knitting together as he realised it seemed like forever since he'd been here. No more than a week, but it felt like a lifetime ago.
The back wall was still covered with the notes, pictures, articles, print-outs and darts, string joining some of the information, most of it remaining unconnected. A layer of fine dust mantled everything and he groaned under his breath when he saw the piles of dirty dishes in and surrounding the sink.
Some fucking welcome home, he thought, his teeth worrying the corner of his lip. He could do something about the mess, he decided. Nothing Home & Garden, but at least get rid of the dishes and pick up the clothing strewn across the furniture and floor. The upstairs bedroom wouldn't be in much better shape, he realised, remembering how he'd left it.
Glancing back over his shoulder, he could see Ellie, still asleep in the car. He turned back to the room and told himself to nut up.
9.45 p.m.
Dean glanced at his watch, and swept a fast look around the cabin. The dishes were done, drying in the rack by the sink. The groceries they'd bought in Missoula were packed into the fridge and cupboards – he'd even found a couple of big bowls to stick the fruit into – and they sat on the clean counter, inviting enough to eat ... if you were into that sort of thing. Most of the dust was gone from the obvious places and his clothes, and Sam's, had been picked up and shoved into the laundry behind the back bedroom. Upstairs, the floor was clean, the bed made with fresh linen. He'd cleaned off most of the grime from around the sink up there, and it smelled of the spray cleaner he'd used liberally, sort of lemony.
It was better than it'd been, he decided critically. Probably not to any normal standard, but he couldn't leave Ellie in the car all night.
Walking out onto the porch, he went down the steps and around the car, opening the door and leaning in.
"Hey."
She stirred, stretching out her legs, and sleepily looking over her shoulder at him.
"Hey, we there?"
"Yeah." He stepped back, holding out a hand as she turned around and swung her legs out of the car. "You hungry?"
"I think so," she said, standing up slowly. He took a step closer as her hand gripped his. "Dizzy. Gimme a sec and it'll pass."
"C'mon," he said, slipping an arm around her waist. "Mesquite steaks, and I'll even make a salad."
"You're too good to be true," she said, leaning against him.
"S'a fact," he agreed, straight-faced. "Good at everything."
"Modest, too." Ellie stumbled up the steps, stopping for a moment as he steadied her.
"As a church mouse," he said, glancing at her. "Uh, wait – are they modest? Or is that something else?"
"Humble. Humble as a church mouse. Close enough." She went up another step, nodding at him when her balance seemed to return. "You could make a case for being humble."
"Doesn't sound much like me."
"Yeah," she said, a small crease appearing between her brows. "Okay, so maybe not so much humble. Not really modest either, come to think of it."
"Hey."
"But you are good at everything," she conceded, letting go of him as her stride strengthened and she stepped through the doorway.
"Everything that counts," he agreed comfortably, following her inside.
"You did all this while I was sleeping?" she asked, looking around the interior of the cabin.
"Not just a pretty face."
"Clearly not."
He glanced around the big room, trying to see it the way she was. It didn't look bad, exactly, he thought. Not the way it'd looked when she'd been here, but not … bad.
She turned, resting a hand on his chest and meeting his eyes. "Thank you."
"You were worried?"
"No," she said, shaking her head and walking to the kitchen area. "I just thought, well, you know, you and Sam wouldn't've had much time –"
"You were worried," he cut her off, his mouth curling up on one side.
"Well," she allowed, smiling. "I wasn't looking forward to dusting when we got here."
He snorted. "Not much faith in me."
She turned around at the fridge. "I have enormous faith in you," she said. "Maybe not so much in your ability to actually recognise mess. But, you've proved me wrong about that. You said something about, um, food?"
"Yeah, steak and, uh, salad." He went to the fridge to pull out the steaks, watching her make another circuit of the kitchen aimlessly. "You could, uh, sit down, y'know. I can cook a steak."
"If I sit down now, you'll have to carry me up the stairs after we eat," Ellie pointed out.
"Would that be so bad?"
"Depends," she said, leaning against the counter and watching him take a knife from the drawer.
"On what?"
"On whether you could actually make it to the top or not."
It surprised a laugh out of him. "You sayin' I can't?"
"No." She was peering into the fridge when he looked back at her. "You want a beer?"
"Have I ever said no to a beer?"
"Not within living memory." She straightened and put the beer beside his elbow on the counter. "But I figure there's always a chance of a first time."
"No chance. Not in this lifetime."
Turning back to the fridge, she pulled out tomatoes, some long, limp greens and a couple of peppers.
"I'll make the salad," she said, depositing the ingredients at the end of the counter.
"Now you're just tryin' to hurt my feelings," he said, reaching back to the drawer and pulling out another knife. He passed it to her as she pulled out a chopping board.
"Not at all, I love your feelings, I'd never try to hurt them," she said, smiling as she sliced up the tomatoes. "But, you know, many hands make light work."
"What is it with you and these sayings?"
"What sayings?"
"Humble church mice and multiple hands."
"No idea what you're talkin' 'bout." She waved the knife. "Are you cooking or gabbing?"
He watched her for a moment, trying to damp down the tangible flood of emotion that felt like his veins were filled with champagne. Ten days. That was all it'd been since he'd gotten back here. Two weeks since he'd left Sam and gone to Thompson Falls. Three and a half months since Seattle. He ducked his head, narrowly missing taking the end of his finger off with the knife as he lost concentration.
Several goddamned lifetimes had occurred in that short amount of time and every one of them'd had impacts he still hadn't looked at. Didn't really want to look at, he admitted. Not yet.
He put the steaks on a plate and turned for the cupboard, grabbing the seasoned pepper and mesquite sauce. When he turned back, she was looking at him, her expression slightly shadowed.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, I'm good," he said, returning to the counter and shaking the pepper over the steaks. "These won't take long."
She nodded and picked up a lettuce, pulling the leaves off. "Sooner the better, I'm starving."