✨Boop✨

CHAPTER LISTING

1 - The Precursory

2 - Regression to the Mean

3 - Response Bias

4 - Reporting Bias

5 - Non-inert Treatments 

Additional Notes: phew! It’s been awhile! As most stories go, the final product is very different to how it all started. The original concept I had was to turn the fake dating trope into a fake pregnancy one. Some days it did my head in, but here we are!

I signed up for the competition late last year and throughout the process there were moments I thought I wouldn’t get it done on time thanks to a very mushy brain. To all my lovely mutuals and regular readers who read this, I hope you enjoy, and apologies for being absent for so long. Hopefully, I’ll get back into my regular interactions and reading - Beth ❤️

You see the way they care for each other. The way Sam plays into his role as little brother, rebels against Dean in a way that is so soft, so sweet, even though you can see he wants to push him further. The way Dean takes care of Sam, looks after him. Puts a jacket on him when the leaves start falling. Makes sure he always brings his books if Bobby takes you anywhere, but not to read them while he’s in the car, or he’ll get nauseous. Despite how young you are, it moves you deeply. This little boy taking care of another little boy. 

Their closeness makes your own loneliness feel almost violent. Some of the kids in school start being less understanding about your mother’s strict regime. You feel different, and it’s not nice, it’s painful. But looking at Sam and Dean, you’re pretty sure they’re different too. It’s just that, on them, it has something mesmerizing, beautiful. You wish you could be like them. Be one of them, a sister maybe, but not quite, because anytime you see their father, John, he scares you a little. He’s quiet, rarely raises his voice, but there is something about the way he narrows his eyes at the world that lets you know there is something bubbling under the surface. When he snaps, he snaps suddenly. You feel it at the bottom of your spine. Like a slap, or the sound of a gun going off.

Dean tells you about the cases his father goes on, but it doesn’t take long for you to realize he doesn’t really know what his dad is doing. Still, you don’t call him out on it - he is still closer to the hunting world than you can ever hope to be, so you hang on his every word. How he saw his dad pack a shotgun, and salt. At night, you repeat everything you remember to yourself while you lie in bed. You have salt in the kitchen and although you don’t have a shotgun, you’re sure you could hunt ghosts anyway. You will, one day, but in the meantime, you know you have to learn. Once you wonder what it would be like to hunt with Sam and Dean when they’re grown-up too. Maybe you’d be a good team. And you wouldn’t have to walk into old houses and dark basements on your own.

The first postcard arrives when you’re eight years old. It’s from Salt Lake City. You take it up to your room, sit on your bed, and read it.

There are a lot of churches here. Dad works all the time. There is a snack machine at the motel. Dean ate a whole thing of sour candy and got a stoumech stomach ache. I’m reading Huckleberry Finn and I like it, I like that he tries to be a good person.

Sam W.

And then scribbled below that:

We watched monster trucks on TV and Dad has been hunting. I nearly fired a shotgun, but then didn’t have to. He says he’s gonna drop us off at Bobby’s while he finishes the hunt.

You keep looking at the card, hold it between your fingertips. Turn it around, look at the front, then turn it back again, read it once more. 

The thought that someone, somewhere, is thinking of you makes you feel funny. It makes you feel like you’re real. So far, you haven’t been sure, always, if you actually are.

Later, in bed, you hold the card over your heart and stare at the ceiling. You close your eyes, imagine a motel, which you've only seen in movies. 

The cards keep arriving. Your mother tends to bring in the mail, throws it on the small table in the hallway. Sometimes there are letters in red envelopes there, which you know means something bad. When you go to church and to your grandfather’s house afterwards, and a lot of the red letters have been showing up, your mother is always extra nice to him. Smiles and nods, the corners of her mouth tensed and twitching. As you get older, you notice there’s always less of the red letters that show up for a while.

You make it a habit to bring in the mail when you come home from school. You’re not sure if your mother would mind the boys sending you postcards, but you’re not going to risk it. The anticipation of going through the stack of mail makes your heart beat fast, your mouth dry. Most of the time, there’s nothing. Sometimes there’s so little mail that you immediately know there won’t be a card, but you still carefully go through it. Drop it on the table in the hallway and stare at it for a second, as if it might materialize at the last second. You’re already thinking of the next day.

One card has the Niagara Falls on it, even though that’s not where Sam and Dean went. They tell you they drove by it, stopped at a gas station. You imagine them going through their pockets, looking for change to buy it. Another card, just before Christmas. More and more. You keep them all locked away in a jewelry box wedged into the space between your mattress and the wall of your room.

The card you’ll always remember, the one you never get to read, shows up in the summer. You’re nine. The Olympics are on TV. You like the pole vaulting. The way they seem to defy gravity for a few seconds. 

School is out for the summer, and you’ve started running outside as soon as you know the postman has delivered the mail. Your mother doesn’t work, hasn’t for as long as you remember, due to what you’ve heard an aunt call a “nervous condition”. So you never know when she’ll be home. 

The reason you’re so careless is because when you grab the pile of letters out of the mail box, you can immediately see the corner of the postcard. Your heart beats faster, but rather than simply grab it and pull it out, you slowly go through the pile. That’s the rule. The anticipation, the ritual, is important. If you rush, look at it immediately, it will transform from a card from Sam and Dean into something else, something not meant for you. 

You’re walking up the small path to the house as you go through the pile with shaking fingers. Shoulder open the front door you left open, push it closed with your foot, which you know you’re not supposed to do. Only one brightly colored flyer separates you from your window into the world out there. The window into what could be.

Your mother shows up out of nowhere. You didn’t hear her, too absorbed with your process. Your entire body goes rigid, and you can’t bring yourself to look up at her.

“Give me that,” she says, not more or less mean than she usually does. Her nice, manicured fingers come into your field of vision. She needs to tug on the letters for you to let go.

Maybe she won’t see it. Maybe she won’t care. But you know she will. You know.

She looks at the flyer, does a small scoffing sound at whatever is on it, then moves it to the back of the pile. The card is next. She stares at it, then turns it around. You feel numb. Nauseous.

“What…” she says, but doesn’t finish the sentence. She keeps reading, then slowly turns to you.

“Look at me,” she says, and you force yourself to look at her face. There’s dark rings under her eyes. Lately, you often hear her walking around the house at night. Once, when you went down to the kitchen for a glass of milk, she was sitting at the small table there. Smoking and muttering to herself.

“What is this?” she asks, holding up the card, but it feels like you’re looking at it through a tiny hole. You move your lips, but no sound comes out for a second.

“It’s a… it’s a postcard,” you say. She waves the card in front of your face.

“I know what it is,” she replies, tone nasty, and you want to tell her that if she knows then she didn’t need to ask. But you don’t. “I’m asking why you always have to ignore everything I say!”

And no, she didn’t ask that, but you know not to point that out. You’re also not sure what she means by ignoring what she said, but when you open your mouth, she’s quicker.

“I told you explicitly I don’t want you to be friends with these boys,” she says, and now her voice is raised, and you feel the hot heat of anger flow through you. She never told you that. She does that, though. Insists she told you something she never did, then gets mad you forgot, or didn’t read her mind. “I told you– hey, come here!”

You haven’t moved, but still she grabs your arm. Her hand wraps around your biceps, the fingertips digging into your flesh. You look up at her, wonder if she’ll slap you. But she’s not angry enough at you yet. She always needs a little bit of time to become comfortable in her anger.

But you don’t. It’s been growing in you recently. The older you get, the more you feel like some significant part of your life is made up of lacking - lacking a father, lacking a mother who is nice to you, lacking a family that doesn’t make your skin crawl. Of consistency, of honesty. You have stomach aches all the time. So you pull your arm back, out of her grip.

“You didn’t tell me anything,” you say, your voice already thick with tears at the unfairness of it all. “They’re my friends!”

“Oh, your friends?” your mother asks, her tone mocking, and it’s so mean, so disgusting. 

“Yes, they are!” you say back, your voice cracking and shrill. You’re terrified she’s going to question your friendship to Sam and Dean. There’s enough holes there. How little you see them. How much of your time is spent apart. But for that, to point these holes out, she would need to pay more attention to your life. And you know she doesn’t. So she takes a different route.

“Well, they’re not anymore,” she shoots back. “I forbid you to see them! They’re nasty little boys.” Your eyes widen.

“You don’t know them!” you bite back, your voice taking on a tinge of hysteria. 

“I know where they come from,” your mother says, meeting your voice with a raise of her own. “I know what they are. Them and Bobby. They’re all filthy.”

“They’re not!” you scream now. If she forbids you to see Sam and Dean, if she forbids you to go to Bobby’s… you don’t know what you’ll do. The thought is too terrible. “They’re not! They’re not!”

“Stop yelling!” she yells back, and if you were a little more removed from the scene, you might see the irony in that. But you’re not, and you can’t. Because what your mother is saying is that you are filthy. Whether by association or not, it doesn’t matter. But it’s even worse actually. Because if they are filthy, then you want to be filthy too. And that’s a sin if you’ve ever heard one.

It sets something free in you that makes it feel like you’ll catch fire. Your mother keeps looking at you for a moment longer, studying you with disdain. Then she grabs your arm again.

You assume she’s gonna take you up to your room. You still tear against her hold, but your muscles feel weak and atrophic. You whine, and she only pulls harder, making your shoulder hurt. She drags you after her.

But it’s not to your room. 

It’s only a few feet to the door to the basement.

She rips it open before you can say anything, react in any way. She pulls you down the stairs, and for a few seconds, you have to concentrate on not tripping and falling. Your hand goes out to steady you against the wall as the rickety stairs below you groan. She lets go of you when you’ve reached the bottom.

The low dangling light bulb illuminating the space throws strange shadows over your mother’s face. It makes her look demonic, evil, like something out of a nightmare.

“You’re gonna stay down here,” she says, panting hard, “and think about what you did. You need to listen to your mother, and I won’t—” She briefly loses her place in what she is saying, unsure how to continue.

“You do not disobey your parents,”she starts over. “That is a sin. And I don’t want you coming upstairs until you’ve understood that.”

Before you can say another word, she turns, starts stalking up the stairs. At the top, she flicks off the light and then closes the door behind her with a slam. You are too alight to say anything, shout something after her. Because deep fear has gripped you.

You don’t like the basement. You don’t like the dark. It scares you, the way it encroaches on you. The way it’s so easy to see people and faces in the shadows. The way they come close, crowd in.

It’s suddenly deadly quiet around you. You can still hear your mother moving upstairs, her footsteps heavy and fast, but it feels distant, the dull quality of it making it feel worse than if they were in the room with you.

You look away from the stairs, carefully take in the rest of the room. There is a small, dust-covered window at the far end, but the light that comes through it is miserable and weak. The dark is already feeling closer. 

The first sound leaves you and you barely believe it’s you making that noise. Terror sits low in your spine, but it’s quickly spreading outwards, into your stomach, into your fingers that become numb. Reaches your lungs, making them flutter and tighten. 

You look the other way, away from the window, immediately realizing it’s a big mistake. The other end of the room is pitch black, or not quite, but close enough that you can still see shapes in it. One shape in particular.

It must be a shelf. It must be. An old winter coat hanging from it. But it looks like a person. Standing there, watching you. He will step towards you at any second. And you know what happens then. You can’t turn and look away and move towards the window. If you turn your back on him, everything will be much, much worse.

You begged your mother to buy you a night light after you moved out of your grandfather’s house. All bedrooms were pitch black there. It wasn’t a place for children. Your mother told you you were too old for one, which you don’t think is right, but had no way to prove it. You know none of the kids at your grandfather’s house had nightlights. Even though you were the only child living there, cousins would come over, spend a week there with their parents. None of them had nightlights. You loved having them sleep in your room, which you always had to beg for, because while that didn’t light up the night, it meant he wouldn’t come.

You whimper, fat tears spilling from your eyes now, as you’re sure the thing moves closer. It’s like that one dream you have, that recurring nightmare, where your arms don’t work and your hands don’t work and you can’t move, like something thick and heavy is sitting on your chest. Except you’re not sure it’s a nightmare.

If you were a hunter, you wouldn’t be scared. Or maybe you would be. Maybe you’d just be more brave than you are scared. You’d raise your gun, which you’d have, of course, point it at the thing. Tell it to stop, because in the movies you’ve watched with Sam and Dean, the good guy always tells the bad guy to stop, giving him one last chance. But the bad guy never takes it. He always moves, despite the warning.

You’ve seen the way both boys flinch at the inevitable gunshots. Sam’s eyebrows draw together, and he looks more worried than scared, like he’s upset at the whole entire state of the world. Dean flinches too, but he corrects himself almost immediately. Puts down the hands that went up as if he’s defending himself against something, forces down his shoulders. Reaches for the bowl of popcorn, like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

If they were here now, and if all of you were hunters, you would not tell the bad guy to stop. You would shoot right away. Bang! You would see him crumble, fall down on the floor. You’d turn to Sam and Dean. All of you are older, but it’s difficult to imagine what you would look like. Still, you think you manage. 

“Good job,” one of them says, you’re not sure which one of them. And they say it in a nice way, in a way where they mean it. Not like your mother does when you accidentally push over a glass and spill the water inside it. Not the way your teacher says it when you haven’t been paying attention, have been looking out the window dreaming of a different life, and can’t answer their question. Good job. You want someone to say it to you and mean it.

Sam and Dean would mean it. They would pat your shoulder, those strange, adult versions of them, the ones that have their childhood faces. They pat your shoulder, and then all of you go upstairs and watch a movie, and none of you flinch when the bad guy is shot. Because you know that it’s right and it needs to happen.

You don’t know when you sit down on the floor. You don’t know when you realize that your mother has forgotten you down there. Her footsteps become slower and less performatively angry. At some point, you can hear her hum, something she only does when she thinks you’re not around. The ground below you is dusty and cold, and soon your butt is cold too. 

A thin rivulet of snot makes its way from your nostril to your lips. It tastes salty.

The light from the window grows dimmer. You hear your mother walk up the stairs, maybe to sit on her bed and turn on the small TV she has in her room. You sit there a little longer. When the light is almost fully gone and you can’t see the thing standing in the corner anymore, you get up. 

Your entire body hurts as you unfold it. But that is part of the life of being a hunter. Bangs and bruises and cuts. You know this because the good guys always need to hurt a little. But they make it in the end. The bruises are there to remind them of the battles they fought, and the hardships they faced. 

The lights are off downstairs, the last of the day’s sunlight filtering in through the large windows. You go to the kitchen, turn on the faucet, wait until the water is icy cold. Then you form a cup with both of your hands and wash it over your face. Next you drink some of it. You’re hungry, but nauseous at the same time. You walk upstairs to your room, pass your mother’s on the way.

You peer into her bedroom, carefully. She's lying there, eyes closed, chest slowly rising and falling, still dressed in her day clothes. The light of the TV plays over her features, the volume turned down low. She looks peaceful.

How can she sleep? How can she sleep after doing that to you? 

A weird, eerie calm settles over you as you stand there and watch her. For a moment you contemplate simply dropping into your own bed, letting tiredness overtake you. But you can’t. You need someone to know that you’re alive, that you made it out of that basement, even if they didn’t know you were in there in the first place.

You walk downstairs again. Quietly open the front door. Take your bike from where it’s lying behind the large hydrangea bush in the front yard. Walk it out the garden gate before you get on it and start pedaling. 

You’re definitely not allowed to be out this late, and you sort of understand why. The cars with their headlights seem more imposing, bigger than they do during the day. You drive fast, and there’s goosebumps on your arms from the evening chill. You should have brought a jacket.

The road to Bobby’s house is dark and quiet, as opposed to the streets in town. You can hear cicadas so loud that you think they must be sitting on your shoulder. A possum crosses the road in front of you and you need to swerve to avoid it.

The porchlight is on. The house seems quiet, and you wonder if he’s already gone to bed. You don’t know why you came here. For comfort. To be somewhere you don’t feel so unwanted, even if you only sit on the porch stairs for a bit, leaving Bobby to sleep in peace inside. You quietly get off your bike and put it down on the ground before you keep walking towards the house.

“What are you doing here?” you hear a voice from your left and you whip your head in that direction. 

Dean looks taller than when you last saw him. He’s sitting on the hood of a beat-up beige car. You step closer to him, which is when you see the bruise under his eye, dark and angry. 

The silence is loud between the two of you. You feel a little light-headed, and maybe that’s why the moment feels so significant. 

“I just needed to get away,” you say, your voice sounding foreign to you. You’re not sure if what you’re saying is making any sense, but Dean nods slowly. He scoots to the side and indicates the space on the hood next to him.

You walk over, hoist yourself up. The metal is dusty and it’s getting on your clothes, but you don’t care. You feel too tired to care.

You look over at Dean, then follow his gaze up to the night sky. It seems massive, with thousands and thousands of stars. It makes you feel tiny. It makes you feel huge.

“I’m gonna grow up,” you say, breathing slowly, “and I’m gonna become a hunter, and I’m never, ever coming back here.” You don’t say it to Dean, not really. You say it to the stars. Make this promise to them. Witness, you think they call it when someone says something did or didn’t happen in court. You hope they hold you to it.

You’re surprised when you hear Dean speak. For a long time and many years later, you’ll wonder what moved him to say the things he says. You never get a chance to ask him.

“I’m gonna become a hunter too,” he says, his voice breaking then squeaking, something that you already noticed happening the last time you saw him. He stops, presses his lips together, then starts over. “I’m gonna become a hunter, and I’m gonna be the best one there is, and I’m… I’ll just be really good, and I’ll watch after Sam, and we’ll be safe cause I’m so good at it. And my dad can stop hunting then.”

You’re not sure why Dean thinks his father would want to stop hunting. He must like it too, you think, your idea of what hunters are already colored by John Winchester. But again, you’re too tired to question it. You watch his face, watch the way the low porch light reflects in his eyes.

“I could come with you,” you say, and it takes every bit of bravery you have. “To hunt. We could both look after Sam.” You feel sudden heat rise to your cheeks, as you realize how that sounds, like you’d be mother and father, but you don’t know how to correct yourself. Dean shifts without looking at you.

“You can,” he says, and you take a slow, endlessly grateful breath. “But there’s something we need to do.” You nod. Anything. You would do anything.

“What do we need to do?” you ask. You see Dean’s fist clench and unclench.

“We need to kill a demon,” he says. You nod again.

“Okay,” you say. “Which… which demon?” Truth be told, the thought of any demon scares you. You’ve read a little bit about them in Bobby’s books, but they seem terrifying. Able to go into people’s bodies, control them. But if this is the price, you’re fine with that.

“The one that killed my mom,” Dean says. You purposefully quiet your breathing, the moment feeling too monumental to interrupt. 

Sam and Dean’s mother is a taboo subject. Sam has mentioned her a few times, but the longer you’ve known the two, the more you notice that he does it when Dean’s not around, notice the dip in his voice. You know her name is Mary, like the Virgin Mary. You know that she died when both boys were very, very young. 

“If the demon’s dead,” Dean says, and his words sound weirdly recycled, “then everything’s gonna get better.” You don’t reply anything, just keep looking at Dean. Barely thirteen years old, a splattering of freckles over his nose, a big, ugly bruise under his eye. Staring up at the night sky, swearing blood vengeance. You’re not sure if your picture of him ever changes much after that night.

“I’ll help you,” you say, quietly. Dean turns to you, frowning. He could make fun of you. What do you have to offer to possibly help him? But maybe he’s as afraid of being alone in that basement as you are. “I’ll help you kill it.”

He could laugh at you now, just because. But he chooses kindness over ridicule. Buys your eternal loyalty, in that second.

“Promise?” he says, and it makes your heart bloom that he wants to make sure.

“Promise,” you say. “I swear. We should…” You look around. Dean blinks, looks around too, though he doesn’t know for what. 

“We should make a blood oath,” you say, one leg dangling off the front of the car, flair for the dramatic taking over. “To swear it.” Dean keeps looking at you for a second, and maybe there is just a hint of doubt on his face. But then he reaches into the pocket of his jeans, drags out a pocket knife. Of course Dean has a pocket knife. You should have known.

You scoot closer to him. Watch as he opens the knife, then brings it to the heel of his hand. He hesitates, then presses the knife against it. He smells like grass and sweat. Like laundry detergent, but that must just be his clothes.

He makes a hissing noise, and only when he pulls the knife back do you see that he’s actually parted skin. It shocks you a little, how easily he does it. He hands the knife to you, then looks at your face. Maybe he expects you to back out.

You take the knife from him, press it against your skin too. It hurts, and then it hurts more, and then you move the blade in a slight cutting motion, and all of a sudden the nature of the pain changes. It becomes clear and sharp. You pull the knife back. Watch beads of blood bloom on your palm.

“What are you doing?”

Both of you look up, even though you know the only other voice it could be is Bobby’s, but it’s way too small for that.

Sam stands in an oversized t-shirt, dark hair messy and too long again. His arms are hanging at his sides. He’s skinny as all hell, which is an expression you’ve heard from Bobby. The heck has your daddy been feeding you? You’re skinny as all hell. Look, arms like twigs.

“Sammy, go inside,” Dean says, voice slightly raised to seem like the authoritative brother, but not loud enough for it to carry across the rest of the lot up to the house. Sam just shrugs, apparently unimpressed.

“Bobby’s asleep with the TV on,” he says and Dean sighs. “What are you doing? Can I do it too?”

“No,” Dean immediately says, and Sam throws him a dark look. You look between the two, then at Dean.

“Just let him,” you say. Dean gives you a sharp look.

“No,” he says again. Sam takes a step forward.

“Please, Dean?” he says. Dean looks at his brother, then at you, both of you imploring. You two are the biggest pains in my ass, he’d say if you were fifteen years older. Sam would laugh, and you would press up on your toes to kiss Dean’s cheek. But all of that is still a long way off.

Dean sighs, shakes his head.

“Fine,” he says. “But if anyone asks, you fell, okay? Scratched your hand.” Sam nods eagerly, steps closer. 

You drop off the hood of the car and cross the two steps towards him. He’s still shorter than you, but won’t be for long. When he sees the knife in your hands, his eyes widen, and it’s only then that you realize that he begged to join you and Dean even while the darkness was still hiding what you were actually doing.

“I can do it for you,” you say, and he looks up at you. You give him your most reassuring look back. You see him tense, but then he nods.

Carefully, you take his hand in yours, press your thumb into his palm so he doesn’t move away. It’s way stranger, and worse, in a way, to do it on someone else, but Sam’s brave. You hear him make a little noise when his skin finally parts, but you keep it to yourself. Dean doesn’t have to know. 

You step back and pass the knife to Dean. He takes it, and then the three of you stand there, clueless. You stretch out your hand.

“To what we wished for tonight,” you say, feeling like you better choose your words carefully, since they seem important. “And that we help each other… do it.”

You’re unhappy with your choice of words, but then Sam and Dean extend their hands too. You’re pretty sure for it to be a proper blood oath, the blood of all three of you needs to mix, but you don’t feel like pushing it, so all three of you just awkwardly bleed on the ground for a few seconds. Then you pull your hand back, press it against the side of your leg, against the jeans fabric. Let your mother yell at you for ruining it. Let her dare to.

“Yellow Eyes,” Dean says, and you look up at him. He’s looking down at the dark ground where the three of you have washed the earth with your blood.

“What?” you ask.

Dean looks up, looks at your face. Something stoic and sure there.

“The demon,” he says. “His name is Yellow Eyes.”

Next time on SUN BLEACHED FLIES:

You burst into puberty like you burst into a cold body of water.

Everything is different. Everything is uncomfortable. It’s like you’re morphed into a different person. Some sort of freak monster rather than the soft femininity you were hoping for. You thought things would get easier once you started looking more like a woman. They don’t. They become infinitely worse.

You’re twelve when you start your period, cramps so violent you think your insides will burst out of you. Such deep discomfort you’ve never known. 

You’re fourteen when you kiss Dean Winchester for the first time.

He must notice you’re awake too because he curls his arm, pulls you against him, bringing his lips close to your ear.

“Morning,” he mutters, his breath tickling you, and you grin.

“Good morning,” you reply, reaching for his hand and raising it to your mouth, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. He, in turn, kisses the shell of your ear, his free hand running up your waist before he slips it under the covers.

He runs it over your front, gently pets your stomach, before he travels lower to down between your legs.

Sam’s big hand cups your pussy, and you sigh. He moves his fingers only slightly, testing, teasing, and you press yourself down against his hold.

“Slow,” he half-slurs, half-whispers and you need to grin at the fact that he is still mostly asleep, but this is his first instinct. You’re not about to complain. Instead, you press yourself back, Sam’s nose bumping against yours when you turn your head.

You always want him, but the last few weeks have been ridiculous. It’s like it was when you first got together. You look at him, and it takes your breath away. Need to press up on your toes, run your fingers into his hair and kiss him to remember he’s yours. It makes your breathing catch every time, just like it does now with him touching you.

“Is that good?” he asks, as if he doesn’t know, still soft and going torturously slow. You nod, and your own pleasure confirmed, Sam presses his hips against you, and you feel his growing erection press between your ass cheeks. You bring your own hand between your legs, laying it over Sam’s to urge him on, and when he finally does, it drags a high moan from you.

Your sounds wake Dean with such a violent start that it makes you flinch. One second he’s lying on his front, face pressed into the pillow, the next he’s pushed up on his elbow, other hand in a fist as he looks around for the source of danger, a disoriented look on his face. He blinks, then looks over at you where you are giving him a wide-eyed stare.

You have to laugh when he drops his hand, turning from someone willing to commit violent murder one second to charming Casanova the next when he sees what you and Sam are up to.

“Mind if I join?” he asks, rolling towards you and grinning down at you. You nod, head against the pillow.

“Be our guest,” you say, voice sounding a little cracked. Sam stops touching you, pulls his hand out of your pajama pants, and you roll back against him, some more room now so that you’re lying on your back. Dean pulls away the thin blanket with a dramatic flurry, then gives you a quick kiss on the mouth before moving down your body.

Sam meanwhile pushes up on his elbow, head resting in his hand, the other one going to his crotch and squeezing himself before he pushes into his sweats, starts stroking himself. You tilt your head up to kiss him, then bring your hand to the outside of his pants, your hand assisting his, before you’re distracted by Dean when his kisses reach your stomach.

“Good morning, kid,” he whispers, pushing up your shirt as he leans in and kisses the bump growing there before moving lower. 

A passionate hour and a rushed, cramped shower later, the three of you are loading up the car. Dean insists on carrying your bag while Sam picks up coffee from the diner next door. You’re giddy as you get into the backseat. 

The drive to Sioux Falls isn’t long, not compared to the miles and miles you already have behind you, have collected over the last year. Plus you’re not just taking the drive to see Bobby again, although that is long overdue. There is another reason:

Bobby Singer is, after a long and intense career in the hunting business, retiring. He is moving to Florida, and of course you and Dean have made every imaginable joke at that, Sam rolling his eyes at the two of you. Dean suspects Bobby’s met a woman, but if he has, he’s not telling. Good for him, you think. He’ll let you know when he’s ready. But there’s another reason you’re driving down to meet him.

Bobby is leaving the boys his house. He doesn’t know you’re pregnant, but the timing feels serendipitous. Sam, Dean and you have been discussing whether you want to raise your child on the road or settle down. This feels like the question has been answered for you. It feels like a sign.

You will give this child what you and the boys never had - stability, and unconditional love. A home that feels like a home. The thought feels overwhelming.

As Dean starts the car, you remind yourself to enjoy this drive. If everything pans out the way you’ve planned it, this will be the last one like it for a long time. You imagine yourself, holding your baby in your arms, the Impala parked outside. Used for errands and trips down to the river, but never again to take a loved one away from you.

You sit in the back, the leather seats warmed from the early spring sun. Sam and Dean are up front. The windows are rolled down, the wind whipping in the way it did in the summers of your youth.. You still remember it all so well. The only difference is a handful of years.

Sam used to sit in the back with you then, when John was around, Dean in the passenger seat. And when Dean drove, you got shotgun privileges, his little brother banned to the backseat, usually so Dean could stroke your knee, throw you suggestive glances. 

Later, when Sam returned from Stanford after his time away, you let him have the front seat. Because he needed to feel like he belonged, and also because it allowed you to look at both of them at the same time. 

That’s what you do now. Watch them talk, their voices drowned out by the music Dean put on. Sam laughs at something Dean said. You drop your head back against the bench, lightness in your heart. The love for them making it feel like you’re flying.

The road stretches on behind you as well as before you. Symbolic, and you try not to read too much into it. You run your hands over your stomach, over the life building in there, press your back into the leather seat, and it feels like time and space are moving around you.

When you finally stand in front of Bobby and tell him you’re expecting, it’s Dean who’s got his arm around you, Dean who is slapped on the shoulder by Bobby whose lips are pressed together before he squeezes your arm, Dean who pulls you close when Bobby sniffs, looks away so you won’t see the tears in his eyes. Bobby doesn’t know you’re with Sam too, so to make things easy, you’ve decided this is the story. 

You looked at Sam earlier, standing just off to the side, looking between his brother and Bobby. The look on his face tugged at your heart, even though he agreed to this as well. It seemed to make sense, seeing as you were with Dean first, and people might not react well to what the three of you have. 

You look again now, just as Dean makes a joke about grandpa Bobby, and see that Sam is gone.

You find him once things have calmed down. He’s unpacking his backpack in the library downstairs, sitting on the couch he’ll be sleeping on, knees nearly up to his ears with how low and worn-out it is, while you and Dean take the guest room. You lean against the wide doorframe connecting the room to the hallway, knock gently. Sam looks up and smiles when he sees you. 

“Why are you down here and not upstairs?” you ask with a frown. Sam looks down, the smile disappearing as he pulls his toiletry kit from his bag. 

“We agreed we wouldn’t let Bobby know right now,” he says. You nod. 

“Okay, but you’re coming upstairs tonight, right?” you ask, and then you walk towards him. 

You stand between his legs where he’s sitting, put your hands on his shoulders. Sam shoots a quick look towards the open door, but you know Bobby’s outside with Dean, that you’d hear him long before he shows up.

“Because you know I don’t sleep right when you’re not there,” you say, and then run your hand over your stomach. “Neither of us does. We want daddy close.” 

Sam raises his hand, lays it over yours. He’s not looking at your face, but you can see the thoughts working away behind his eyes. 

“You don’t even know if it’s mine or Dean’s,” he says, looking up at your face. You’ve talked about this before, but you understand what Sam needs. What he has to hear. 

You move forward and straddle him, moving gingerly. Sam looks surprised, but then his hands land on your sides. You pull him close, then, with a grin, you look down at yourself. 

“Couple of months, I won’t be able to do this,” you say and Sam can’t help but grin too. 

“Yeah,” he mumbles, and you press your nose against him, then pull back a little before turning a little more serious. 

“This is our baby, Sam. Ours,” you say, looking deep into his eyes. “It’s yours and Dean’s and mine, okay? The details don’t matter.” Sam returns your gaze, then nods slowly. 

“I know,” he says and swallows. You move your head to kiss his cheek, and his eyes fall shut as he takes a deep breath. 

“I want you to come upstairs tonight,” you whisper, giving him another gentle kiss, your lips barely leaving his cheek. “And I want you and Dean to make love to me in our new home.” Sam takes a shuddering breath as you run your lips along his skin. 

“It’s too risky,” he says, but he doesn’t sound half convinced by his own words. 

“Guess we’ll have to be quiet then,” you say with a bit of a grin. Sam opens his eyes, and studies your face. Then he’s smiling too, and slowly shaking his head. 

“You drive me crazy, you know that?” he asks. You nod. 

“My whole entire purpose in life,” you respond and Sam chuckles. His hands go to your ass, and he pulls you closer, kisses you deeply. You run your hands into his hair. 

“I can’t wait to watch you be a father,” you say when the two of you separate, and Sam swallows again. You could drown him in compliments, the things it does to him to be revered their own reward. He squeezes you where he holds you. 

“I should finish unpacking,” he says, a gentle smile on his lips. “Because if you keep talking like that, Bobby’s definitely gonna hear us.” You chuckle, give Sam another quick kiss and then reluctantly get up. 

“It would save us the trouble of having to tell him,” you say to Sam’s grinning face before you leave the room and walk upstairs again to unpack your own things.

It’s later in the day. You make some coffee and bring Bobby a cup. He’s back in his office, getting together all the paperwork for the house. He sighs when you walk in and place the steaming cup in front of him. 

“Damn bureaucracy,” he mutters. “I’m too old for this shit.” You chuckle and move to the window, look out at the junkyard beyond. The Impala is parked close by and Dean is lying under it, working on something. You smile to yourself. 

“Are you excited about tomorrow?” you ask, not turning back to Bobby but instead picking up a book from a dangerously high-stacked pile next to you. You scan the cover, run your fingers along the leather binding. 

“Not sure if excited’s the right word for it,” Bobby answers. “Try terrified.” You chuckle again, look out the window at Dean again. He’s getting up now, walking to the opened hood of the car. His face is concentrated and his hands are dirty. 

“You can always come back if you don’t like it,” you say, only half hearing yourself. 

You are too mesmerized, imagine Dean doing what he is doing but a small child running up to him, wanting his attention, Dean cleaning his hands on a rag he’s thrown over his shoulder before picking them up. It’s not just a dream anymore – it’s the future. 

“I was surprised Sam and Dean even wanted the house,” you hear Bobby say. “They don’t seem like the settling down types, but I guess with a little one on the way…” Then he clears his throat and you are distracted from your daydream. 

“Hell, you know these boys are like sons to me,” Bobby mumbles. You put the book down on the wobbly pile again, turn to him. 

“I know, Bobby. And they know that, too,” you reply. Bobby makes one of those sounds he makes, tilts his head. 

“Look, sweetheart,” he says, and it seems like he has a hard time saying whatever he wants to say. You wonder why. 

“You know I’m leaving Sam and Dean the house,” he continues, fingers fidgeting with the coffee cup you brought him. You nod. 

“I guess I’m just getting to an age,” Bobby says, “where I think about… what I leave behind. It’s not much.” You shake your head. 

“Bobby, you were a father to them,” you interrupt him. “The material stuff is nice and all, but what you gave them is so much more important. You made them who they are.” Bobby looks down at his desk, the way he always does when you say something nice to him, something that moves him a little. He’d be telling Sam and Dean to shove it, lovingly, if they tried to say something similar, but you know you get a pass, on account of being a girl. 

“And that’s how I know,” Bobby starts up again, “that they’ll take care of you, even if it’s their house.” You huff a little. 

“Of course they will,” you say, because there has never been a single inkling of doubt in you that they would. 

“Of both of you, I mean,” Bobby adds, throwing a pointed look at your stomach, and you smile, but then Bobby looks back up at your face and suddenly you know he means something else. 

“They’ll both take care of you, I know that,” Bobby says. 

He knows, you realize then. He knows that you’re with Sam and Dean, both of them. A reply is on your lips. You want to tell him he’s got this wrong, that he misunderstood something. People don’t react well to… that. 

But the kindness in Bobby’s eyes stops you. He’s not confronting you with what he knows, or suspects. He’s just letting you know he knows. 

“There’s plenty of stuff in life I don’t understand,” he continues, and you see him blush a little as he looks away from you. “But I know those boys. And I know you. And I know that’ll be a damn lucky child having all three of you as its family.” 

Tears shoot to your eyes, because this is the last thing you were expecting when you walked in here. You’d never hoped for Bobby’s approval, because you simply assumed he would never know. So this is… 

You don’t want to make a bigger deal out of it than it is, don’t want to embarrass Bobby. But you can’t stop yourself when you walk around the desk, kneel next to him and wrap your arms around him. The tears are stinging your eyes so you squeeze them shut. Bobby wraps his arm around you, pats your shoulder and then you let go, because you really don’t want to make him uncomfortable. He’s not the hugging type after all. 

“I know Uncle Bobby is gonna take care of this kid, too,” you say, smiling up at him. Bobby mumbles a little, hides his eyes behind the visor of his cap. 

“Got a nice ring to it,” he replies and you chuckle.

“I better go check on dinner,” you say, pushing yourself up, but you plant a quick kiss on the top of Bobby’s head. Then you bounce off to the kitchen. 

That evening is the first time since you found out you’re pregnant that you wish you could drink. Not because you need it, but because the evening turns so jovial. 

The food is great, the meat thick and juicy, the potatoes soft and warm, and the three boys are drinking and getting louder, and you all tell stories you’ve told a million times before but laugh as uproariously as if you’re hearing them for the first time. It fills your heart with so much love that it threatens to spill over. 

Home, you think. This is all you want, all you’ve ever wanted. You look at the dining table and catch yourself wondering how many children you can fit around it. One thing after the other, you remind yourself, hiding your grin in the glass of water you pick up. 

Dean catches you when you’re on your way back from the bathroom, corners you in the small, dark hallway. His arms are around you and he’s leaning down, the taste of beer on his lips and tongue and he’s kissing you so deeply that it makes you feel drunk, even though you haven’t had a sip. He gently presses you against the wall behind you and you feel white hot arousal explode in you as he squeezes your ass. 

“We should go back in,” you breathe as his lips leave your mouth and go to your jaw, then your neck. 

“Just one minute,” he says and you grin, because it’s such an obvious lie, and yet you don’t mind. A small moan leaves you as Dean presses his lower body against you and you feel his outline against your crotch. One hand goes from your ass and drops between your legs, pulling up the simple summer dress you’re wearing. He quickly finds you where you’re warmest, sighing against you when he touches you there. 

“God, I wish it could be like this forever,” he mumbles with his lips just below your ear. He starts drawing circles on you and you need to wrap your arms around his shoulders because it makes you feel almost dizzy, almost high. 

“Wish we could stay here forever and I could just keep putting baby after baby in you,” he whispers and that idea, combined with a slight increase in pressure of his fingers makes you slap your hand over your mouth, arm still around his shoulders, because you know the sound you would have made otherwise could be heard in the entire house. Jesus, what a visual, what a thought. You don’t expect it to turn you on this much. 

“Keep going,” you breathe, just briefly lifting your fingers from your mouth. Dean’s either not surprised that this is working you up, or he’s too into it himself to care. 

“I’d need to come inside you again and again and again,” he’s saying, and the pleasure between your legs is getting so intense as to be almost painful. 

“I’ll watch it leak out of you,” he says, voice so low that you almost have to strain to hear it. “And then I’d put more into you just to make sure.” 

The back of your head hits the wall with a loud thud as you come, but at least you manage to not make any other noises. It’s a Herculean achievement though, because the orgasm makes you feel as if electricity is shooting through you. Because it might be talk, but what’s hiding behind it is the truth, the truth of what all three of you want, and are now suddenly shockingly close to getting. Normalcy. Safety. A place to build a family out of your love. 

Your lips land on Dean’s the second you have oriented yourself again. 

“I love you so goddamn much,” you say and it comes out shaky. Dean strokes the side of your face, shushes you. 

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he says, his full lips caressing your face, from your cheeks to your ears. “I love you too, baby, it’s okay.” 

You rub yourself against him like a cat marking its territory, then blink your eyes open. See Dean’s strikingly green eyes and you wonder if your child will have those eyes, or the tricolor of Sam, or yours, or a mix of all three. The last one’s not possible, but still, you can’t stop yourself from thinking how nice that would be. Dean kisses you again. 

“Let’s go back,” he says. You tilt your head. 

“What about you?” you ask, but Dean only smiles. 

“Later,” he says. 

The evening eventually winds down. You keep yawning and snacking on the food left on the table, while Bobby is actually pretty drunk, but Sam and Dean aren’t faring much better. You climb up the stairs, leaving the dishes for tomorrow, drag Dean behind you, but throw Sam a meaningful look, one you’re not sure he catches. 

Dean plops down on the bed face first, making the frame squeak. You pull off his shoes and just manage to wrestle his shirt from him, but he’s too heavy for anything else. You try to roll him over to get his jeans off him, try to make him more comfortable, but he groans at your pushing and prodding. 

“No shaking, I’m dizzy,” he slurs with his eyes closed, one of your legs caught under his torso and his arm slung around your hip, and you lean forward, forehead landing on his back, your shoulders shaking with laughter. 

Just then the bedroom door opens. You turn around, and Sam is doing his very best to be sneaky, but the first thing he does after closing the door behind him is bump his hip into the dresser. His face contorts as he silently cringes and then he’s next to you, his big frame pulling a loud noise from the bed and a squeal from you as he grabs you, pulls you down onto the mattress. 

The three of you shuffle around for a little longer, but soon you’re between the two, still half-dressed yourself, but you don’t care. Their two big, warm bodies are like anchors to a ship, lulling you in, making you so comfortable that you barely manage a small, joyous wiggle and then you’re pulled down into the quiet dark.

You’re the only one who isn’t complaining of a headache the next morning, so you’re generously distributing painkillers and glasses of water. Bobby seems to be doing mostly fine, but then you’re pretty sure at this point that he’s ninety percent whiskey anyway. You and the boys are cleaning while Bobby packs and then suddenly it’s later than you thought and he’s getting ready to leave. You give him a long hug, tell him to come right back if he doesn’t like it, tell him you’ll miss him. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Bobby says, and it’s as much of a love confession as you’re likely to get. His hugs with Sam and Dean are much shorter, and then the three of you are standing next to each other in the kitchen like baby ducks in a row, and Bobby shoulders his last bag and a second later he’s out the door. 

You all just stand there for a second longer, not moving. Sam grabs you first, because he has had to be careful since you arrived, and he drags you against him, his big hand wrapped around your wrist, your chest against his chest, and is just about to kiss you when the door opens again. Dean’s in the process of coming up behind you and the three of you shoot apart like scalded cats. 

Bobby peeks in and he very clearly notices that he just walked in on something. He grabs for the small sideboard next to the door, raises his hand. 

“Forgot my… car keys,” he mumbles and the three of you nod politely. 

Bobby clears his throat, mutters something about you kids taking care and then pulls back, lets the door fall shut behind him. 

It takes another second of perfect silence and then you, Sam and Dean all burst out laughing. Sam reaches for you again, but you shuffle past him, rush towards the stairs and up instead. It’s only a few moments later that you hear the brothers follow you, their boots clopping on the stairs. You make it to the bedroom and then turn around. 

Sam practically flies into your arms, and he grabs you so close that it almost lifts you off your feet. Dean’s next to him a second later and the moment your lips leave Sam’s, they touch Dean’s. All three of you are roaming hands and pulling on clothes and touching skin that you’ve touched a thousand times before, but it feels different. It feels new. 

Sam starts touching you between your legs when you’ve rid yourself of your clothes, but you shake your head, push him back towards the bed and when he lies down you climb on top of him. You grab Dean’s arm and pull him with you. He kneels next to you on the bed, and you kiss him deeply, hold on to him while you sink down on Sam. 

Your moan is high and needy, and you ride Sam fast and hard while your fingers work between your legs, and soon he needs to tell you to stop or he won’t last, won’t be able to hold back, but you don’t want to stop. You beg him to let you keep going and he does, pulling you down hard against him by the hips soon, his head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut, upper lip pulled into a snarl as he empties himself into you with a long, loud groan. 

Wasting no time, you grab Dean immediately, hold on to his shoulders as he pulls you off Sam, lays you on your back. He’s inside you quickly, his entry eased even more by his brother’s spendings in you, and he fucks you slow and deep, looks into your eyes when he’s not busy kissing you. 

He’s gentle in it all and when you come he doesn’t cover your mouth with his, instead he lets you cry out, because, right now, this is your house and no one can hear you. 

Sam, insatiable one that he is, waits until Dean finishes, and even though he’s not hard again yet, he uses his fingers instead, until you’re squirming, panting, roots of your hair wet with sweat, your entire body feeling like it’s more alive than it’s ever been. You feel like an animal that has only one goal, only one focus, one purpose. Soon, you’re crying out again. 

The three of you fuck most of the late morning away like this and you feel almost comatose by the end of it. You all doze off after the two clean you and themselves up, and you wake up a few hours later to your stomach rumbling. 

Dressing haphazardly, just enough to make yourself comfortable, not to actually hide your nakedness, you slouch down to the kitchen. Dean uses the meat from the day before to make sandwiches, and you’re pretty sure they’re the best thing you’ve ever eaten. 

All the while, you’re talking, gesticulating with greasy fingers, and you keep reminding yourself that you don’t need to stop yourself from kissing Sam or Dean, from staring at them, from saying things that make it clear what they are to you. 

This is heaven, you’re pretty sure. Dean’s right. 

You wish things could be like this forever.

She sinks to the floor, her spine coming to rest against the steel. She leans her head back, looking at the ceiling, closing her eyes and listening to the ragged sounds of his breath on the other side. She had wanted so many things form this moment, to accuse him, to save him, to fix him the way he had fixed her because she owes him that much, at least. She sighs at how her best laid plans always seem go astray, because now that she’s here she just can’t. Can’t see him like this, starving as she starved, suffering as she suffered. The lines between them are too real, and she knows that if she looks him in the eye she’ll let him go, because they are the same and she has to believe it’s what he’d have done.

She thinks in the quiet, with only his rasping to pace out time. He was once her salvation, and now he simply breathes and it illustrates her deepest fears: if he can’t be saved, what hope is there for her?

She loses track of how long she’s sat there, leaning up against the steel door, the metal as cool as her skin with neither warming the other. She doesn’t doze, doesn’t dream, doesn’t dare to move. And then he speaks.

“Caroline.”

It chills her and suddenly she feels like ice. She stills herself, stops her breath, tries to even stop her heartbeat. She doesn’t want to be here anymore, but she can’t just run away.

“Caroline.”

Her name is soft, melodic, sweet and low. It’s a loving note that hasn’t flowed through her in forever, but it still resonates to her core. She closes her eyes and draws in a shaky breath, shaking her head, telling herself no, no, no.

“Someone kept you in here. Just like this.”

She can feel herself start to tremble again, her eyes pricking in the way that heralds tears. She wishes, for once, to feel the pressure of the change. Her eyes stained with blood would be less painful than having them salted and drained.

“You can't deny it, you’re all over this place. You and charred flesh. You were hurt here. Burned. Weren’t you?”

It’s a question she can’t answer, but she doesn’t have to. The evidence in locked in there with him, and if the ghosts of her cries have left, her blood still stains the stone floor, her skin is still fused to those chains where the vervain they were treated with burned her. She covers her face with her hands.

“You’re ignoring me. You think I don’t remember, because I don’t care, but I do. I remember. I promised I’d never let anything happen to you.”

It hurts to hear him say it again, hurts to be reminded that his promise meant nothing, that he doesn’t care anymore, that he isn’t on her side. Her forehead drops to her knees and she squeezes her eyes shut because the tears are coming now, a gentle, insistent trickle.

“I would have stopped it. I would have come. Even monsters keep their promises.”

It’s not quite the apology she wants, the apology she’s wanted from everyone that didn’t save her, the apology she never gets. He isn’t sorry, he can’t feel sorry, but it feels like this admission is as close as she’ll ever get, so she accepts it, assimilates it. Believes it.

“I don’t deserve this, Caroline, no more than you did. I can’t change what I am. Nobody can fix me, there’s nothing here to fix.”

She’s crying quietly, holding herself tightly to keep form falling apart. He’s saying all the things she once said, and even if she knows he’s playing her, trying to manipulate his way to freedom, every word rings clear and true within her heart.

He doesn’t ask her to release him, he just speaks, his voice calm and even, only the slightest edge betraying his hunger and his pain. She listens and she weeps, for him, for her, for all the space that’s come between them. She weeps until her tears run dry, and then she quiets before fresh tears allow her to weep some more.

“Don’t cry, Caroline. I’m supposed to be the bad guy.”

She turns, damp eyes looking up at the covered window into the cell, remembering the thin light that filtered in through that small slit, the faint hope even such slight illumination brought her. She bites her lip, crawling up the door, pressing her forehead to the closed shutter, pressing her body up against the steel to feel something, anything besides the impact of his words and the resonance of his voice. She thinks if there are bad guys, they are not down here this morning and curls her fingers around the latch to slide the shutter free.

“Caroline?”

She wants to peer through the window into the cell, wants to see his face turned up into the dim light, perhaps straining in the dark to see her. She wants to, but she can’t, can’t hold his gaze with him still bound and her still on this side of his subjugation. She cinches her eyes shut, positions half of one within his sight, presses her palms flat against the door, and breathes. Her eyes snap open for one brief second, just long enough to catch a glimpse of her fallen saviour.

“I’m sorry, Stefan...”

And then she runs: into the sunlight, into the open air, into the freedom she can’t quite enjoy anymore.

a/n : this back catalogue entry was originally written and posted in 2011. We have preserved it's original format, and no additional editing or alterations have been done. many thanks to @aniresrene, @velvourne, @sorryitsmyfirstdayonearth and @middleearthislife for the encouragement, the fics are being released.