AUTHOR'S NOTES – Come Hell or High Water (Season 6)
This is the sequel to my previous story Between Heaven and Hell which covers Season 5 of Supernatural, and prior to that there are my stories Highway to Hell, All Hell Breaks Loose, Hell to Pay, To Hell and Back, and Between Heaven and Hell which cover Seasons 1-5 respectively. If you haven't read any of those yet, I suggest you start with Highway to Hell because otherwise you're jumping into a story already in progress, and it will give you all the background you need to know about who Beth is and her story. (Plus, it's like several weeks (at least) worth of fun stories!)
This story picks up within the following months after the end of Season 5 – Swan Song. Sam has sacrificed himself the The Pit in order to prevent the end of the world. Dean and Beth must now find a way to move on with their lives, to embrace the "normal" life away from hunting and starting a family of their own. But nothing is ever that simple in the lives of the Winchesters and just as they start to find normality a big secret is about to emerge that will change their lives yet again.
Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural, it's characters or any of the storyline that follows the show itself. Any changes to storyline and addition of characters (ie. Beth & Jefferson, just to name a couple) are all mine :)
Journey without
Journey within
No longer know where I'm going
Just where I've been
I know it's hard
It's coming soon
A place that's more than a suitcase
More than a room [...]
Follow the road
Into the storm
When I am feeling the cold
Then you, you keep me warm [...]
I want my feet on the ground [...]
Just you and I
Just you and I
Just you and I
Home. Home. Home.
A NORMAL LIFE
TWO MONTHS IN
Dean's POV
I loved the way her eyes sparkled when she laughed. I'd almost forgotten what it sounded like.
It felt like only yesterday that we'd just escaped Armageddon, the literal end of the world - angels, demons and all. The only thing that had brought it all to an end had been Sam, my brother. He'd allowed Lucifer to take possession of his body, and then gained it back just long enough to throw himself, and our possessed-by-archangel-Michael half-brother Adam into the fiery pit of Hell.
We'd sealed it off, never to see them again, and Beth and I had retreated to Cicero, Indiana and the home of our friend Lisa, mother of my son Ben. She'd been looking out for us ever since, as we slowly started to make our way in the world again. It felt like it had been a long time since we'd had anything to be happy about.
But right now we were camped out on Lisa's couch, wool blanket tucked around our legs, watching Zombieland. On the screen, Woody Harrelson was losing his collective cool over Twinkies, or the lack thereof, and smashing a truck that had been run off the road. In the movie, zombies had taken over the world, humans were fleeing to whatever safety they could find, and in the middle of this zompocalypse, Woody Harrelson had a craving for Twinkies that was going unmet, and he was losing his shit and taking it out on an inanimate object.
Beth found it hysterically funny, shaking with laughter next to me as she tried to catch her breath.
"Could you imagine?" She asked, and when she turned to look at me, I swear my heart stopped for a moment.
Funny thing was, I could. We both could. We'd been to the future and seen what happened if we'd failed to stop the demon-made Croatoan virus, and what would have happened if Sam had failed to take back control of his body and throw himself, and Lucifer, into the Pit.
There'd been no Twinkies. There hadn't been much of anything, including toilet paper from our friend Chuck's reports, and it had been desolate times. I couldn't even imagine a world where people lost their minds over toilet paper. It seemed surreal, like there could be so many more things one would be worried about than going to Costco and stocking up on toilet paper, when the world was coming to an end. But there you had it, there was no accounting for what brought people to their knees in an apocalypse.
For Woody, it was Twinkies.
For me, it had been a world without Beth in it.
"No," I said after a moment and I reached out to run a hand through her long, curly tresses. "I couldn't imagine it at all," I lied. I savoured the way her hair trailed through my fingers as I continued to stroke along its length. She tossed me a smile, and fed me some popcorn, which I happily took from her fingers.
"You'd be looking for pie instead of Twinkies," she grinned.
That did make me laugh, anyone who knew me was well aware of my pie obsession. She was right, but I wasn't going to let her have the win that easily.
"Uh, no… it would be Twinkies," I corrected, shaking my head. "They're the only dessert that will outlast the end of the world."
She snorted and reached for more popcorn, I took the opportunity to grab her hand, pulling her to me so that my mouth hovered over hers, a crooked smile tugging at the corner.
"I don't need pie if I've got you," I said, corny as I knew it would sound.
Beth ghosted my lips with her own.
"Oh?" She queried. "Is that right?"
"Mhmm."
"You'd still go crazy after a while," she replied, placing a quick kiss against my mouth.
"Hmm," I mused. "Maybe."
I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against me, feeling the way she sank in against my chest, a perfect fit. We watched the movie for a while in silence - my thoughts drifted from the movie to the past week and things I'd been talking to Lisa about - things that I wasn't sure Beth was ready to hear. I wasn't even sure I wanted to hear it. Lisa had wisely told me not to rush it, but I felt that age-old recklessness rising within me. Only this time I knew it could backfire on me.
Unwittingly I sighed at my own thoughts, trying to push them aside with a kiss to the top of Beth's head.
"What's up?" She asked, lifting those chocolate brown eyes to look at me. She won me over with them every time. I tried to shrug it off, smiling my disarming grin I knew usually worked.
"Nothin'"
"Yeah, right," she scoffed, the movie forgotten as she pulled back a little to give me a more intense stare. "What is it?"
I narrowed my eyes at her, unhappy for having let my guard slip. But maybe, deep down, I'd done it on purpose. Anyone else would have missed that sigh, but not Beth. She knew me inside and out and perhaps there was a part of me that wanted this conversation to happen, needed her to ask.
"Well," I ventured, pausing for a moment as I searched for the right words. "Lisa and I took a look at a house today, while you were out with Ben."
"A house?" Beth sat up so she could get a better look at me.
"Yeah." I nodded and gauged her reaction. She was startled, but not as alarmed as I thought she'd be.
"Does Lisa want us to go?"
"No," I said, with a shake of my head. "No, she's fine with us staying here. More than fine, actually…it's just..."
"You're not," she finished my thoughts while barely batting an eyelid.
I paused, my stomach squirmed as I felt a wave of guilt wash over me. Lisa said I was trying to bury the past by moving on too soon, and maybe I was, but I couldn't live on the maybes. Either we started to build this life Sam had wanted us to have soon, or I was going to go crazy trying to think of ways to get him back.
"It's just down the road…" I ventured, not directly answering her question.
"Oh."
"I thought, it would still be close to Lisa and Ben, but give us our own space to … you know, live…" I didn't know how to have this conversation - girl chats were not my area of expertise, they had been Sam's. Ironically, it had been a girl chat with Sam that was driving this whole discussion.
When he had come to the realisation that he was going to have to sacrifice himself to stop Lucifer, he'd had only one demand. That I take Beth, and our unborn child, and make a life for us all. One that was not hunting monsters, or trying to break into Hell to save him. He'd been adamant on this one thing. He was giving up his life, for ours, and we were to make a go of this if it killed us.
I hated myself for pushing Beth, taking her into the unknown again. But as much as I was trying ot honour Sam's wishes, I was also doing it for my own reasons. I needed this, for us… for me.
Beth bit her lip, gently gnawing at it as she contemplated what I was saying.
"Can we afford to do that?" She asked.
I'd already thought about that, and nodded. I'd just started working at the local garage doing cash-in-hand work, it wasn't much, but it was enough for us to get a rental and make a go of things.
"Well, we can always hit up a few pool halls…" I grinned. Beth laughed, nodding in agreement. "But yeah, we can afford it. And Jefferson says he'll buy anything we want," I said with a shrug. "If it comes to that."
"But you don't want to take him up on it?"
"No," I said. "He's done enough for us. I want this to be our life, something we build together. A home."
"You're my home," she said without hesitation, and I loved her for it. "I don't care where we are so long as I'm with you."
"I know," I said, touching the softness of her cheek. "But Beth, we need … a home base."
"The car…"
"Isn't somewhere we can raise a child. I've been there, done that, believe me," I said, feeling a twinge of sadness in my chest. I refused to raise our baby like Dad had done to Sam and me.
"So you just want to… get a house?" She asked with a short breath.
"If that's what you want, yeah."
"What about Blue Earth?"
"I know, it sounds crazy to be looking elsewhere when we have what we want right there - and we were happy there," I ventured, watching as she nodded.
"But?"
"But we're in Indiana. Whatever we have here will never replace that house, but we have to create a home here, for the baby," I answered.
As if she'd forgotten about the life growing inside her, Beth absently raised a hand to her stomach, her eyes growing distant. I felt my heart tug at all the different things that would be running through her mind right now. I had to get us back to the present, that was what counted.
"A little brother or sister for Ben," I pointed out. "We'd be just down the road."
She thought about it, and I reached out to squeeze her hand. "Just come look at the place with me?"
It'd been a long time since I'd felt this vulnerable. At times, I woke up thinking it had all been a dream, these last eighteen months out of Hell.
When I'd first escaped the fiery pits of blood, sweat and pain I couldn't tell the difference for a long time. It had been touch and go for us both as I'd wake, mid-dream, and find myself holding a knife to my own wife's throat, hell-bent on killing her before they got to me. I still didn't know how we got through it, other than a lot of love and patience on Beth's side.
It was less and less, but in the last few months I'd been bolting up from a deep sleep, drenched in a cold sweat. Each time I reached in the dark for Beth, and she was there, solid, real. In Hell that moment had been the dream, she had been the dream, and I had been quickly reeled back into the hard reality of where I was, and the eternal torture I was facing.
In those moments I thought about Sam, and I felt broken. There was simply no way for me to protect my entire family, and that harsh truth must have been what he'd seen too when he'd told me to take Beth and get out; give her a normal life with the baby.
"Okay," Beth said with a nod, pulling me out of my internal thoughts. "Yeah, I can do that."
I smiled, putting on a brave face for her.
I'm trying Sam, I'm trying.
THREE MONTHS IN
Beth's POV
I was trying.
Dean was at the garage, I was doing… laundry. In my own house. It was almost too normal to feel real. I watched as the water started to pour into the machine, added in the detergent, and dropped the lid, turning to walk into the living room and survey my surroundings.
We didn't have a lot of stuff, we never had. A life spent on the road, living out of duffel bags, had made it so that we didn't keep a lot of sentimental things. We had three or four changes of clothing, more weapons than you could count - although they were locked away in a storage unit now - and a few momentos from different moments in our lives - photos or trinkets, whatever we could tuck into the corners of our bags, yet still manage to cart around in the trunk of a car.
It made a house look empty, but what was on display was priceless.
I walked over to the buffet that we'd picked up at a garage sale, and reached out for the framed photo sitting with several others on the surface. It was an old photo, taken before Sam had gone to Stanford - with John, Sam, Dean and myself. We looked happy in the photo, but I knew it was all a lie. None of us had been happy in the years leading up to that moment.
I told myself we had been. But in reality, Sam had been wrestling with the idea of leaving the family and going away to college. Dean and I had been head butting constantly, in an eternal struggle of fighting our feelings for each other. We'd both known what we wanted, yet how we had fought to not have it, to live up to John's moratorium that we couldn't get romantically involved, not under his roof. The irony of course had been that John had been living his own lies, things we'd had no idea about until years later.
Letting out a hot breath, I put the frame back on the buffet, my thoughts drifting to Sam.
And Hell.
I knew what it was like. I remembered the dreams from when Dean had been in Hell. They had been vivid three dimensional walks through fire and brimstone due to what a psychic called my soulmate connection to Dean. I'd seen what he'd seen, witnessed the tortures he'd been put through, and I'd been utterly powerless to stop it.
I couldn't leave Sam down there to go through the same.
Determined, I spun on my heel and crossed the room into the hallway, then up the stairs to the spare bedroom. I pulled a little step stool out of the closet, placing it so I could rise up and look on the top shelf, reaching into the very back to take hold of a box. It was heavy, I tugged and pulled it toward me with a slight struggle until it reached the edge of the shelf and slid into my arms. Stepping back off the stool, I turned to place the box on the little desk in the room, opening the lid.
The Aeneid by Virgil, Inferno by Dante, James Joyce, Jean-Sartre, The Sandman by Neil Gaiman, Edward Fudge's theological dialogues; it was all dry reading and nothing I'd not been through before, but I was trying to come up with a new angle, some access to Hell that we'd never looked into when Dean was down there.
I sighed, sitting heavily on the chair and flipping open the Dialogues to where I'd left off several days earlier.
Reaching over to the lamp, I flicked the switch and waited for the light to flood the desk. The lamp flickered a few times, and then went off. I looked up sharply at the room.
Did it feel cold all of a sudden?
In an instant I was across the room to the closet again, this time reaching into a chest on the floor, pulling out a couple of blankets and tossing them aside to find the false bottom where there was a gun, loaded with salt rounds.
Exiting the room, I heard a noise in the kitchen like plates clattering.
Ghost?
I crept down the stairs, silently chiding myself for not having done a deeper dive into the history of this house before we'd moved in. The archway into the living room seemed familiar and unremarkable, I rounded it toward the kitchen, gun held in front as the light in the kitchen flickered and utensils clattered.
Knives.
I spun into the kitchen, letting out a breath as I prepared to pull the trigger, and came face to face with…
"Dean?"
"Woah woah woah!" Dean said, dropping the plate of fried chicken he'd just gotten out of the fridge onto the island bench and putting his hands up.
"Don't shoot."
"Dammit Dean," I cursed, pointing the gun at the floor. "What are you doing here?"
He narrowed his eyes at me, I could almost feel the way he was taking in my heaving chest, the adrenaline coursing through my veins, he was reading me as surely as I'd been about to read those books in the spare room.
"What's wrong?"
I shrugged. Suddenly it was really embarrassing.
"Nothing."
"Doesn't look like nothing," he countered. I sighed, putting the gun on the bench.
"The lights… they were flickering, and I felt cold, then …" I rolled my eyes and raked a hand through my hair.
Dean smirked, I wanted to hit him for it.
"You thought I was ...a ghost?"
"You're supposed to be at work!" I retorted. "And … and… the lights?"
"Yeah, I think we have a loose wire somewhere," Dean responded, reaching out and taking a chicken leg, chomping into it with a shrug.
"A wire?"
"Yeah," he nodded, speaking around a mouth full of food. "I noticed it this morning as I was leaving, came home to take a look at the fuse box."
"A wire."
I could barely believe it. I sighed and tucked the gun into the back of my jeans, crossing my arms.
"I could have shot you."
"Sugarpie, your reflexes are a lot better than that," he replied, finishing off the leg and dropping the bone on to the plate before grabbing paper towel and wiping his fingers.
"I don't know…"
"Beth, you don't forget how to hunt after three months," he said, eyes narrowing. "What's going on with you?"
"Nothing," I protested. "I just got jumpy, I guess. I'm not used to being alone."
Dean paused, hearing the jump in my voice. He opened his mouth, but clearly was at a loss for words. I'd not voiced this before, but I'd been thinking more about it. The days were… long… when he wasn't here. Lisa worked. Ben was at school. I only had myself and my thoughts, and a growing child inside of me, to keep me busy and it was driving me crazy.
"I'm sorry," he said softly. "I didn't think."
"We've not been apart, other than ...than …" I waved my hands in the air futilely. I couldn't even say it. When he'd been in Hell. Or when I'd been in the Underworld. "You know that nearly killed me, Dean."
He crossed the room, pulling me into his arms and I sank into the embrace, letting out a wavering breath. I was better than this, stronger than this insecure, fearful woman who jumped at shadows. I killed werewolves, demons and God only knew how many other creatures without blinking an eye!
"We knew it wasn't going to be easy," I said into Dean's shoulder.
"We'll figure it out," he replied, squeezing a little harder.
"What's to figure out?" I asked, pulling back slightly. "This is what normal people do."
"We're anything but normal," he snorted, shaking his head.
"But we're trying to be, right?"
"I don't know," he whispered. "This is new to me too. I don't know."
Hearing the doubt in his voice was better than him telling me he had it figured out. It told me we were still on the same page, just two crazy kids trying to figure out how to live in a world we weren't built for.
FOUR MONTHS IN
Dean's POV
There was a knock at the old wooden door and I jumped up from the threadbare couch where I'd been lounging, half asleep as Beth paced the worn carpet in front of the only wall that was blank enough to stick pictures, textbook pages and post-it notes on.
She didn't even acknowledge that someone was at the door.
Shaking the weariness from my eyes, I sighed and opened the door to see Lisa standing on the other side, arms folded across her chest.
I hadn't even checked to see who it was.
Getting sloppy Winchester.
"Oh hey Lis," I said, attempting a half smile.
"Hey...Lis?" She scoffed, arching her eyebrow at me. "Really?"
"Uh, yeah?"
"You two have been missing for weeks, and I finally track you down to some backwater motel on the outskirts of Indianapolis, and you open with 'hey Lis'?" She was seething. I could see it in the way her mouth twitched, not unlike Beth's but she didn't tend to get angry like Lisa. I couldn't blame her for being annoyed, but I wasn't the one she needed to be mad at - I'd texted her. Kind of. If you could call "we're fine" an update.
I shrugged, not sure what to say to that and hoping my usual rugged good looks and boyish charm would carry me through, of course, Lisa didn't fall for that anymore than Beth did. It was the strange, twilight zone of my life, that the two women in my life were the only two that saw right through me.
Lisa had been a one-night-stand, a moment of frustrated passion on my side after an argument with Beth. I had thought we had moved past the hesitation of being together, in spite of my father's wishes, and then when Beth had rejected me once again, I'd lost myself in Lisa's arms for a night because she'd reminded me so damn much of the one woman I'd thought I couldn't have.
And from that we'd had a child, Ben, who I'd only found out about a few years ago. We were all trying to make the most of an awkward situation for his sake - and for the most part, Lisa was amazing, and supportive, and both women were more than I thought I deserved.
Lisa looked past me and into the room to where Beth was still staring at the wall, muttering to herself.
"What is going on?" She asked after a moment.
"You don't want to know," I sighed, running a hand across my face.
It wasn't anything good. We'd spent the better part of the last few weeks going through every text book, essay, article or other form of information we could find on Heaven and Hell. Beth was obsessed. She'd completely forgotten any and every promise she'd ever made to Sam about leaving him in the Pit, and was pulling a complete and utter… well, Beth.
She was determined not to rest until we rescued him.
Cas had disappeared. Who knew if any of the other winged freaks were even alive anymore, we certainly hadn't heard anything.
Jefferson and Bobby were the only ones who had been making an effort and Beth had quickly shut Bobby out when he told her to let Sam go and focus on the fact that she was about to become a mother.
"Probably not, but you guys can't stay here," she said, frowning at the discoloration on the floor - I glanced in the same direction and shuddered slightly. I didn't disagree, but this was where I'd tracked Beth down to, and she wasn't budging.
After the ghost incident, she'd told me what she'd been doing with her time while I was at work, and that was when things had spun out of control. It quickly led to a confession that she'd already rented a motel room outside of Indianapolis, paid for it six months in advance, and had been coming here every spare moment she got.
The room was a work of art, something Dad would have been proud of if he was alive to see it. Every available wall was covered with articles, folklore, pieces of red string tacked and strung between pieces of paper, tying themes together.
I still didn't know how to get things back on the road to normal. To be honest, I wasn't sure I wanted to, and yet I'd promised … well, everyone I knew, pretty much… to at least try.
"Beth?" Lisa asked, stepping into the dark room. "Hey, how's it going?"
I shut the door before someone wandered by and saw the interior, turning to frown at the women.
"Oh hey Lisa," Beth replied, not even glancing in our direction. "It's good… it's good," she said, nodding. "I think I'm really… you know… making a breakthrough, here."
She wasn't.
I knew it, she knew it, but she was holding on to a thin ribbon of hope.
"Yeah?" Lisa asked, walking toward her, looking at the walls. "And what are we … breaking through?"
"Hell," Beth replied nonchalantly. "Of course."
"Right… of course."
Lisa turned wide-eyed to scowl at me, I shrugged.
"What do you want me to do?" I mouthed at her. "You think I haven't tried?" She shrugged back, shaking her head. Beth missed the whole exchange.
"I think, maybe, if we can just get our hands on a crossroads demon…"
"No," I shot her down. "You tried that with me, it didn't work."
"But, this time…"
"Is no different, sugarpie," I said gently. "You know that."
"Beth," Lisa tried, reaching out and leading her to the couch. "Please sit down."
Beth sighed, and moved slowly, lowering herself onto the faded furniture and then readjusting when a spring poked her in the buttock, I grimaced, I'd already been on the receiving end of that prick.
Lisa sat next to Beth, taking her hands.
"I know these last few months have been hard. But, you know Sam wouldn't want this," she started gently. "He wanted you and Dean to … well to have a normal life."
"I can't," Beth replied, shaking her head.
"You have to give it a chance," Lisa said, waving me over. I frowned, moving to sit on the coffee table in front of Beth; effectively we were ganging up on her. It felt strange. I didn't like it one little bit. I also felt strangely like I was being chastised, by Dad … or Mum, for allowing this charade to go on as long as it had. It occurred to me that maybe I'd been wanting to look into this saving Sam business more than I wanted to admit. As much as I wanted to take Beth home, to forget all this, I still felt guilty.
I bit my lip, and stayed silent.
"You know, you told me you had faith that the angels were looking after you," Lisa said.
I snorted, rolling my eyes.
"Dean," Lisa chided, her eyes cutting from me and back to my wife.
"Beth, you remember? It was your prayers that led to getting Dean out of Hell."
"Maybe…"
"You were certain," she pushed, seeing the doubt on Beth's face. "Nothing else had worked, nothing. So you did the only thing you could do… you prayed."
I swallowed, realising that Lisa might be onto something here. I looked around the room, searching for that thread that might allow her to let go of all the others criss-crossing the walls. The silver medallion caught my eye first, hanging from the mirror - just like we'd found the rosary Beth had given Dad all those years ago. She'd taken it off days ago, even stopped praying it. That's when I knew things were bad.
Standing up, I quickly moved to take the rosary in my hands. The beads were smooth, worn from over a decade of daily use. Lisa nodded when she saw what I was doing, and I returned, dropping the beads into Beth's hands, closing her fingers around it.
"She's right," I agreed. "You've given up."
"I haven't," Beth protested.
"You have," I disagreed. "Or you'd still be wearing them."
"Dean…"
Beth's eyes shone with unshed tears, and I hated myself for doing this to her. But I had to, I'd promised Sam. I had to do it not only to her, but to myself.
"You've been doing this for months now," I pointed out. "We've had no contact from Cas, the others, and we're no closer to cracking the code on how to break open the Pit. Hell we don't even know if we can, or if it's safe to do so - you let Sam out, Lucifer might just come with him. And that asshole Michael."
"They're both your brothers," Beth countered.
"I know," I replied. "And you're my wife." I reached down to lay a hand on her stomach. "This is our baby. Sam wanted us to have a family more than anyone."
"Dean…"
"Beth," Lisa said, "people die. It's … it's life. You gotta let them go if you're ever going to know any kind of peace in this life."
"I don't know if I can," Beth whispered.
"Then you pray," Lisa said, covering Beth's hands with her own. "You pray to God, the angels, whoever you gotta pray to in order to get through the day. You pray for the strength to let them go."
"Dean?"
It wasn't easy, but...
"She's right," I said gruffly, hearing my throat catch. I cleared it, frowning slightly. "We gotta do what we couldn't do before. We gotta stop resurrecting the dead."
And just like that, I put the final nail in my brother's coffin. Like we should have done all those years ago. Before seals were broken, crossroads deals were made… our lives taken from us, all to bring Sam back. He'd given us a gift, taking Lucifer with him to the Pit. Hard as it was, I was going to give us the kind of life I'd promised myself we would have, if we could ever get out of the family business.
We were going to be normal if it killed us.
FIVE MONTHS IN
Beth's POV
There was a splinter sticking into my ass. That's all I could think about as I tried to gracefully shift my bulging stomach sideways in an effort to move further along the baseball stands where I was sitting. You might as well have been calling Dumbo's mother a swan, because I was anything but light on my feet and easy on the eye right now.
I groaned, feeling my bladder compress under the dead weight of the baby; I'd just been to the toilet ten minutes ago!
A woman glanced sideways at me as I sighed with frustration and a little angry sound escaped my mouth. I threw her a tightlipped smile and pushed myself up off the bench, wavering slightly on the wooden planks under my feet before I pulled myself together and waddled to the edge of the stands, easing myself down the steps.
"Batter up," Dean's voice echoed that of the umpire's and I paused to smile at the childlike excitement of my husband as he did a little jump in front of the stands, watching his son walk up to the home plate, looking nervously at the pitcher as he got into position.
"You got this Ben!" Lisa called out from where she was standing next to Dean, holding a tray of drinks while Dean was carrying the hotdogs. They'd gone to get refreshments twenty minutes earlier and still hadn't made it back to me.
I chuckled and turned back to my task at hand, I had to pee.
I'd just finished emptying my bladder, for what had to be the tenth time that day and was washing my hands when Dean stuck his head in the bathroom door, glanced around at the stalls to make sure I was alone, and then let himself in, leaning again the door so no one could come in.
"What are you doing?" I asked, grabbing a paper towel and drying off my hands.
"I missed you," he said with a cheeky grin.
"Is that right?"
"You missed Ben's home run," he said, glancing back toward the baseball field through the door.
"Awww," I said, feeling genuinely sorry. "He must be thrilled."
"He is," Dean said, beaming at me.
"Well, let's go celebrate," I said, stepping toward him and reaching for the door.
"In a minute," he said, reaching out to catch my wrist in his hand.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"I'm great."
"Why are you here then?"
"Well, like I said, I missed you," he said, his voice dropping a little deeper.
Oh.
"I'm right here," I said, my breath catching a little.
"I can see that."
"Now, is really not an… opportune time," I pointed out, gesturing to our surroundings. We were, after all, in the women's bathroom at the local baseball club, and with the game finishing up we would soon be inundated with people needing to do exactly what I had been in here minutes ago doing.
Dean didn't speak, his eyes filled with a dark need as he pulled me into him, then turned me so my back was against the door. His lips were firm, determined when they met mine and I let out a little whimper as his tongue flicked across my own.
"Mmm, yes," he moaned in reply. "You drive me crazy when you do that."
His hands were everywhere, mouth hot and wet against my neck, a knee pressed in against my groin slowly sliding back and forth.
I felt things tighten down there, and suddenly I didn't care where we were. It wasn't as if we hadn't had sex in plenty of other odd locations since we'd been together. Our whole lives had been about stolen moments in strange places, between killing monsters.
Dean's hands pulled at the elastic of my pants, slipping between my legs and I shuddered with wanton need as fingers found folds, and pressed closer, he knew where he was going and what he could do to me.
"Dean?"
"Yeah?" He asked, his fingers twisted and I forgot myself.
"We better be quick."
His smile said it all.
I mirrored his actions, and before I knew it his pants were around his ankles, mine were on the ground, and he had one of my legs wrapped around his waist, adjusting his position so that he could still enter me, even with my growing belly pressed tightly between us.
As he pushed deep inside, I groaned.
He moaned with me, catching my mouth with his, and started to slowly grind in and out, then as we got used to the position and the angle, he got faster, more urgent.
We fell into a space we hadn't been in for years, lost in each other's sounds and touch, miles away from where our physical bodies were. I shuddered as I finally hit my peak and bit down on my lip to muffle the sounds I desperately wanted to call out. He buried his face into my shoulder, thrusting hard several more times before coming to a stop, his breathing short and heavy, wet against my skin.
Slowly, sounds started to tumble back into our reality: of little voices scampering past the doors on the way to the changerooms, and people talking animatedly about the end of the game as they passed outside in the corridor.
We both felt the door at the same time, it pushed against us as we leaned into it, the door wouldn't budge, which was completely unexpected by the person outside. There was a pause, and Dean grinned as he pulled up his pants and then leaned into the door so I could do the same. Someone knocked tentatively, not sure what to do.
"Sorry, just a minute," I called out.
With a couple of childish grins, I wriggled back into my pants and quickly adjusted my shirt. I smoothed my hands over my hair, trying not to be obvious about what we'd been doing in here. Just before we opened the door, Dean took my arm, and put a concerned look on his face.
"Waddle," he winked at me as he pulled on the handle, holding it with one hand and me with the other.
"What?"
"You heard me," Dean said as the door opened.
"Sorry," he said to the woman and two children with her who stared at the sight of us, confused as we exited the bathroom.
"Pregnant woman, coming through," Dean announced as if that was the explanation for everything.
They stepped back, and I smiled, apologising as we rushed away. Dean fussed over me like I was an invalid until we got around the corner, and then we burst into laughter, leaning against the brick wall.
His hand found mine, and tangled my fingers in his.
"That… was… amazing," he said. "I can't remember the last time we did that."
"Errr… last week."
"No, not that," he grinned, leaning over to kiss me.
"Then what?"
"That," he replied, inclining his head back toward the bathroom. "Us, public place, interruption likely at any minute."
"Mmmm. Yeah, that has been a while."
"I missed it."
I leaned my head against the wall and gazed at his laid back, happy smile. He looked younger, not quite as burdened by all the concerns of the last few years. I realised with a start that it had been a long time indeed, since we'd been two careless young people just living life with reckless abandon at every moment. When John had gone missing - then died, it had changed everything. Dean had to take on the responsibility of the hunting, the heaviness of helping other people survive evil creatures, and then there had been Sam.
All that was behind us now.
And we'd just had a quickie in the bathroom, like we were twenty-one years old again.
"Me too," I said, finally. "I missed it too."
I stretched my neck out so that I could kiss him again, this time it was soft, lingering, and every bit as tender that our earlier moment had missed.
"And," Dean said, "now we know you can do it in that position."
"Dean!" I hit him playfully, feeling my cheeks turn red.
He chuckled, slipping his arm around me. "Come on, let's go," he said and started to move us back toward the stands to pick up our things. "We'll have dinner with Ben and Lisa. Then I have a few more positions I want to try at home."
I laughed as he excitedly skipped ahead, waving to Ben who was waiting by the stands with his mother.
I felt a little kick to my abdomen and smiled wistfully, slipping my hand down to my stomach and patting it softly. In that moment, everything else was forgotten, we were just a young couple, about to start a family.
We were...normal.
SIX MONTHS IN
Dean's POV
Where had the time gone?
I steered the Impala down the busy street, growling as I found myself at a complete standstill. Up ahead the telltale blue and red flashing lights told the story of someone else's day that was not going to plan.
Like mine.
"Come on, come on!" I yelled, hitting the steering wheel and looking around for alternatives.
I was sandwiched between a garbage truck and a little old lady in an oversized Buick. Traffic wasn't moving in either direction.
My heart hammered in my chest as I thought about my destination. The last time I'd been rushing to meet Beth for the same reason.
Stop.
It's not the same this time.
Didn't make me feel any better.
I tooted the horn at the truck in front of me. I knew it wasn't going to make a difference, but it made me feel better.
"Come on!" I muttered, looking skyward and contemplated a prayer.
No.
I wasn't going to pray to them. I wasn't going to give those overgrown birds the satisfaction. I didn't even know if they were listening anyway.
The green beast of a machine in front of me lurched forward suddenly, leaving me just enough room to inch the car between it and a lamp post. I cringed as the mirror missed the post by a whisker, and then I was through, on to the sidewalk, tooting at a few pedestrians standing around and gawking at the accident that had been the reason we were all stuck in the first place.
"Out of the way!" I shouted, waving at them with one hand as I expertly swerved along the path and then hit the side street.
Freedom!
I was moving again, and this helped settle my nerves a bit.
I needed to keep going, regardless of the delay, I could re-route through the city around the accident, and be there within ten minutes if I was lucky.
The phone next to me beeped and I glanced down. It was Jefferson. He could wait.
Should I call her?
No.
She wouldn't want me to yabber at her while she was… doing what she was doing.
I didn't even want to think about it.
I'd seen Beth in a lot of pain before.
Too much pain.
When she'd lost our first child, miscarried him early because a demon had possessed Sam and then kicked her so hard she'd started to bleed and contract. I'd watched helplessly as she sobbed her way through the loss, unable to do a thing to stop it. I'd never felt so useless in my whole life, so powerless. All those feelings of guilt and shame welled up inside of me as the memories flooded back.
I wasn't looking forward to going through any of this.
I could handle any level of pain pitted against me. I'd been in Hell, I'd been on the receiving end of every soul destroying torture you could think of, and then some you couldn't. The demons in Hell were a creative collective, made up of some of the most evil sons of bitches who'd ever walked the face of the Earth. In Hell, they were not bound by the physics we were, so they came up with pain inducing ideas that you wouldn't think of in your wildest dreams. All of them felt real.
The worst had been psychological. Watching them put Beth through the same tortures, keeping me tied up and out of reach so that I could do nothing but watch, and beg until my voice was raw. And then just when I couldn't take any more, they'd come up with something new to break me further.
It hadn't been Beth, of course, but other souls made to look like her. No, my wife's soul had been safely inside her body as she grieved and mourned my death. But when I was in the middle of it, watching it, there were moments of doubt where I'd thought maybe, just maybe they'd managed to drag her into the Pit along with me.
That had been a long time ago. I was free now, I reminded myself, as I pushed the car that little bit faster toward the hospital. We were together, and we were having a baby. Right now.
I wasn't going to let her go through it alone.
A car drifted in front of me without warning, I slammed on the brakes and cursed as they rounded the corner ahead and then sped off.
"Moron!"
I shook my head, my attention fully returned to the matter at hand.
Drive.
It wouldn't do any of us any good if I ended up in a fender bender like the poor bastards behind me.
I steeled my nerves and breathed a sigh of relief as I spotted the hospital up ahead. I was almost there. The moment we'd been waiting on, for so long, was finally here.
I'd never been so terrified in my life.
I FELT MY eyelids getting heavy. Drifting closed, my head nodded a little bit before I jerked it back, causing the little human in my arms to gurgle.
Beside me Beth had fallen asleep after a gruelling labour that was mercifully now over. She looked peaceful and happy as the early morning sunlight shone through a gap in the curtains, lighting the room up with a soft, warm hue.
I glanced down at the sleeping baby, snuggled into my chest, and felt my heart skip a beat.
She was perfect.
I stifled a yawn and heard the door to the room open, followed by quiet footfalls. It might have been telling that I didn't instantly jump to attention, wary of what could be entering without warning, but I was so damn tired I didn't care.
"Good morning," said the nurse, her voice low and gentle. "I'm here to take baby Winchester to the nursery."
That woke me up.
"Nursery?" I asked, my voice a little sharper than intended.
"Yes, to give you both a chance to get some sleep, you can go home for a few hours if you like."
I looked down at the baby and shook my head.
"Uh, no, no that's okay," I said, my voice throat feeling dry and my voice coming out gravelly. "No nursery. She can stay here with us."
"It's not hospital policy…"
"I don't care!" I said sharply, then grimaced at the alarmed look on her face.
"Sorry, it's just, we agreed… Beth and I, she doesn't leave our sight."
The nurse looked perplexed, but hid it quickly with a smile, nodding at me.
"If you say so."
"I do," I said with a nod. "We can't lose another one," I whispered softly, glancing over at Beth. She was stirring at the conversation, and opened one eye to take in her surroundings, her breath slowing to fill her chest.
"Are you all right, Mr Winchester?" The nurse pressed, a frown wrinkling her otherwise smooth brow. "Is there someone I can call?"
"Call?" Beth asked, announcing she was awake. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I said, smiling at her. "It's nothing."
"I was just offering to take the baby to the nursery," the nurse said, turning to Beth as if she expected a different reaction, perhaps a more reasonable one. She was going to be sorely mistaken.
"No," Beth said simply.
"Are you…?"
"We're sure," she cut off the nurse, nodding at me. "We're fine."
"Well, okay, but if you change your mind, just come and find one of us at the nurse's station," the woman frowned again, but didn't press matters. She left as quietly as she'd entered, and I started to feel a little uneasy about being in the hospital. I wanted to get us home, all of us, as soon as was humanly possible.
"Are you okay?" Beth asked as soon as the door closed.
"Yeah, we're all good here, aren't we little one?" I said with a soft, lilting voice, smiling as my daughter flailed an arm up in the air that had come loose from the swaddling she was in. "We're perfect, aren't we?"
My daughter.
If you'd told me ten years ago about this moment, I'd have said you were stark raving mad. Yet here we were. A family.
"We're a family," I said, seeing Beth's face light up with a smile. "You did it."
"We did it," she replied, leaning back into her pillows.
"Are we still set on her name?" I asked, looking down at the sleeping angel.
"I am if you are," she replied.
"Well, if that little jaunt to the future did anything for us, it was to help us avoid arguing over a name," I grinned at her, but my heart tugged at my emotions just the same.
Beth smiled sadly at me, and I knew she was thinking about how Zachariah had zapped us five years into the future. A bad future. One that had been overrun by infected humans, zombies of sorts, and it had been a future no one wanted to see. In it, Beth had been killed - infected - and I'd had to kill her. Not me, the future me, and it had broken him… me… us.
But one thing we'd taken from it, had been our daughter's name.
"Sophia," I whispered, and her mouth curled up in her sleep.
"She smiled," I said, looking up at Beth. "She likes it."
"It's probably gas," Beth yawned, stretching her arms above her head, and wincing as a muscle pulled.
I frowned at her, shaking my head.
"Gas," I said, rolling my eyes. "I don't think so. You're my little princess, you don't do gas."
Sophia responded with a noise that sounded suspiciously like a fart with more, and her face turned red as she grunted. I looked up in horror at Beth, feeling the little butt under my hand grow warm.
"Oh no," I said, shaking my head.
"Oh yes," Beth laughed, her shoulders shaking. "Daddy's first diaper change."
I frowned slightly, biting my lower lip as I looked down at the monster in my arms.
"You couldn't have done this when the nurse was here?" I asked her.
"You can't bring the nurse home with us," Beth grinned, raising her eyebrow in amusement.
But it was all in good humour. I wasn't afraid of a diaper. Sam had given me that much at least. I'd been changing dirty pants on babies for as long as I could remember. I'd missed out on Ben's infancy, I would be damned if I was going to do the same with our daughter.
"It's all good," I said with a smile, watching Sophia's little dark eyes flicker open.
"SuperDad's got this."
And I did.
I had everything I'd ever needed, right in this moment.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Song for this chapter is "Home" by the incredible Wendy Rule.
THANK YOU all for reading this far. Next chapter we delve into the first episode of Season 6 Supernatural, keeping it as "canon" as possible within the BEAN Universe. I'm looking forward to exploring both Dean and Beth's softer sides as they tackle raising a baby in their "normal life".
As always please leave me a review, I look forward to receiving them and they inspire me to keep going with the series.
Upcoming: There is a new story featuring some backstories and the secret love life of Sam coming SOON which will weave itself in and out of this Universe (because even Sam deserves love. My friend Bubbles is driving that story with a little input from me - stay tuned!)