fic: Marveille (Sam/Dean, Sam/Dean/Delphine NC-17) Part 5 of 7

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Part 4

He was quiet all through dinner, lost in thoughts and worries of how Dean was going to react. Dean kept shooting him worried looks and trying to engage him over their meal. Delphine jumped in several times to distract Dean with talk of the research they’d accomplished on the mechanics of re-opening Lucifer’s Cage. She offered to do the dishes and shooed them away, shooting Sam an encouraging smile.

He sat with Dean on the small couch where they kept the bar cart, drinking whisky out of the beautiful cut-glass tumblers. Not saying anything, just enjoying maybe the last bit of peace he’d have with his brother for a while.

“Why are you so damn jumpy tonight?” Dean asked, getting up to refill their glasses.

Sam accepted his refilled glass and looked at Dean. “Nervous about something I have to do.”

Dean’s eyebrows went up, but he didn’t say anything, just sat back down next to Sam and sipped from his whisky glass.

Sam dug around in his pocket and pulled out the small black silk bag, holding it on his open palm. “Your nightmares with Amara are getting worse, every night now. And Del mentioned she thought that this might help.”

Dean set his glass down and took the bag from Sam. His eyes went wide as he felt the weight of it, the shape of the thing inside. He pulled the black cord and the amulet out and held it up swaying between them.

“You’ve had this, all this time? And you’re just giving it back to me now?”

Sam nodded, heart in his throat, he couldn’t tell if Dean was mad or sad or what.

Dean put it over his head with hands that Sam could see were shaking, with anger or some other strong emotion. It wasn’t until Dean raised his head again that Sam could see it for what it really was, Dean’s smile was brilliant, clear and untroubled for the first time in six years, it was Dean’s old smile. The one he’d always worked so hard for, the one that meant he was one hundred percent on Sam’s side. “Thanks Sammy, I love it.” Dean stood up then and held a hand out to Sam.

Sam looked at Dean’s outstretched hand for a long moment, this was going differently than he’d imagined it. Finally he grabbed onto Dean and stood up, surprised when Dean pulled him into a fierce hug. Sam held on for balance at first and then to give the hug back. The amulet pressed between their chests, a still-familiar sharp-edged reminder of their long history together.

“I’m going to pretend that this is back where it belongs for more reasons than just trying to help me with Amara.”

“You wouldn’t be pretending, Dean.”

“Good,” Dean said.

Sam could see the signs of his brother shutting himself down from saying anything else. “Just say it. Dean, please just tell me.” He tightened his arms around Dean so he couldn’t get away easily.

“I haven’t felt a hundred percent like myself without it. Wish you’d given it back a long time ago.”

“Wish you hadn’t thrown it away in the first place,” Sam whispered struggling to keep the hurt out of his voice.

“Sammy, it wasn’t about you, or even you and me. It was all about God and Cas and all that shit that was going on. I regretted it the second I walked out that door.”

“Why didn’t you go back for it then?” Sam challenged, trying to back away from Dean but being stopped by his brother’s arms cinched around him even tighter.

Dean didn’t speak until Sam was looking him in the eye again. “I knew you’d pick it up for me. I knew you’d give it back to me when I deserved it again.”

Sam shook his head, vehement in his disagreement. “That’s not why I haven’t all this time. I didn’t think you wanted it back, Dean.”

“I’m sorry that you thought that. It explains a lot though,” Dean said, letting go of Sam and taking a few steps back.

“Like what?” Sam asked, feeling the prickling edges of old hurts and angers start to poke through where he’d buried them.

“The whole thing back in that church with Crowley, when I stopped you doing the last Trial. I really did a number on you, little brother, I’m sorry,” Dean said, turning to walk away.

Sam fought with himself momentarily to just let Dean go, like usual, let him run away from ever completing one of these talks they always avoided. But it was different this time, it was fundamental in a way to what they both needed. He knew Dean would stop if he started speaking, so he did. “When you first threw it away, I thought it meant you didn’t love me the same way anymore, and I didn’t blame you, after what I’d done. I didn’t love myself. And then you threw away your chance to say yes to Zachariah, just to save me, and I thought maybe there was a chance to get back to where we were. Then it was too late, and I was soul-less and you know all the rest. I swear it’s not that you didn’t deserve it back, Dean, it was that I wasn’t strong enough to take the risk of giving it to you.”

The whole time Sam had been speaking, Dean had stopped, slowly turned and then began drifting back towards Sam. When he finally stopped, Dean stepped close and laid his head on Sam’s chest, right over his heart. Sam’s arms instinctively went around Dean and held him close, melding them back together in a way that they hadn’t been in many years. There were no more layers of misunderstanding between them, it was open and raw and honest the way their bodies began to move against each other.

Sam’s hands were tilting Dean’s face up to meet his, so their lips could meet, their kiss blowing away any doubt that the other had been telling the truth. Their bodies could never lie the way their words had. So they didn’t speak as they guided each other to Sam’s room, to lay with each other on Sam’s bed with the door locked behind them, Delphine not forgotten but omitted from this reconciliation. This was between them, solely for them. Their hands were greedy, moving quickly, touching everywhere as if the skin was any different. But it was, because that barrier they’d kept between them all these years, between their hearts and souls had been a physical thing too.

Dean’s touches were a revelation to Sam, they were gentle and demanding, like it was all new again to his brother, to have this, to get to feel all of Sam in this way. His lips explored all the places that Sam usually enjoyed but it meant more somehow, that his brother still wanted this, could bring him to such unexpected heights of pleasure. Sam opened to his brother’s touch in a new way that was achingly familiar; this was how it used to be, his body was remembering, this was what they’d been missing. And without that hesitation and hurt between them, when Dean moved inside him, it felt much deeper than usual, like he was that much further inside Sam, reaching all the way into his heart, maybe even his soul.

Sam came back to himself when Dean was cleaning him up, he let himself enjoy his brother’s gentle touch; then reached up to tug at the dangling amulet; pulling Dean down for a sloppy kiss. “I missed having this handle to grab onto,” Sam purred into Dean’s lips.

“Guess that’s fair, since I still have your hair to tug on,” Dean laughed into Sam’s mouth, yanking on the hair at the nape of Sam’s neck.

That laughter was suddenly filling Sam up with more joy than he’d ever thought he’d get to feel again. Sam’s heart filled up with it, greedily soaking up every last morsel of Dean’s laughter. Sam opened his eyes and laughed back up into Dean, giving him all of it and even more back. He imagined himself filling Dean up with the lightness of their joy at this reunion, maybe it was his only way to make a stand against something like the Darkness.

The night passed with only one short nightmare, and Dean remembered it all, explaining it to Sam after he’d calmed down. “She couldn’t get to me, Sammy. She was so angry about it, kept battering at me, but there was like this bubble of safety all around and I knew she couldn’t reach me. When I woke up, she was swearing that she’d find a way to make me come to her.”

Delphine was lying in Dean’s bed, the one they usually all ended up in at night, getting in some practice by reading the label of the old box of condoms they'd been using. The ones from the way in the back of Dean’s bedside table drawer he’d found that first night. Sam was still in bed next to her, Dean was out in the kitchen hopefully making them some coffee.  “Sam, what does: exp date eleven slash nine mean?”

“Let me see that, please,” Sam said with a panicked look on his face.

Delphine handed over the box and watched Sam examine the box and waited to hear what he was worrying about.

“They’re expired, by more than five years, that’s what that means. This is the economy sized box Dean kept in the Impala for years too, so they were worn out just from being in the hot car. I never thought to check what we were using.”

“And what happens when condoms expire or are overheated in a car? The ones in my time would have been too brittle to even use, the rubber wasn’t as stretchy as these ones.”

“They get microscopic holes, just sitting there in the package, and then when they get stretched to be used, well they don’t do the job they’re supposed to.”

“Hmmm…that might explain a few things I was attempting to avoid putting together,” Delphine said.

“Go on,” Sam said, looking even more panicked.

“My breasts, they have been heavy,” Delphine said.

“I’ve noticed, but I wasn’t gonna say anythin’,” Dean interrupted from the doorway, he stood there holding three mugs of coffee. One look at Sam’s panicked face had him crossing the room to sit beside Sam and offer him a mug and rub him on the shoulder. “You okay, Sammy?”

“No! I mean…yes? Maybe, I don’t know yet, keep going, Delphine,” Sam said, mouth running a mile a minute. He tried to calm himself down by sipping at his coffee.

“For the last week or so, I have been nauseous every morning, and sometimes after eating. I am also several weeks past the point where my cycle should have begun.”

Dean’s face paled as he searched Sam’s face. “I see why you were looking worried now. Okay, well, what do we do now?”

“I’ll get one of those pregnancy test things when I’m on the grocery run today,” Sam said. “They’re supposed to be as accurate as the tests in a doctor’s office. One way or the other we need to know, right?”

“Right,” said Dean, nodding somewhat frantically, almost enough to slosh his coffee out of the mug.

“Right,” said Delphine, wrinkling her nose at the coffee in her mug, she set it down on the table. All in a rush she was up and out of the bed and hustling down the hallway to the bathroom.

Sam went to check on her and heard her retching, and felt his own stomach turn over in sympathy.  He headed back into Dean’s room and sat back on the bed next to his brother. “She’s in there tossing her cookies, just from smelling coffee, or at the idea of having to bear our child.”

“Our child?” Dean asked in a far-away voice.

“Well, yeah, one of us is the father, right? Pretty sure she hasn’t been steppin’ out on us,” Sam said, almost angry at his brother’s non-response.

“We might be fathers, Sammy, it might actually happen,” Dean said, ducking his face out of Sam’s view.

“It’ll be okay, we’ll work it out somehow,” Sam said, not sure if he really believed it, but he knew Dean needed to hear it right then.

“It’s not that…I don’t want to bring a kid into this life, been there done that with Ben a little and it’s not something that ever seemed like a good idea to try again. As much as I like kids, this life is just not okay for them.”

“I agree, I will need to see a doctor soon then, if the child is not wanted by all of us,” Delphine said in a decisive tone from her position leaning up against the doorway.

“That’s not what he meant, Delphine, it’s up to you, your choice, it’s not for Dean and me to tell you what to choose.”

“Well, what is it that you meant, Dean?” Delphine asked, eyes flashing in challenge.

“All I meant was that if we’re really havin’ a kid, then we’re going to have to figure out a way to stop hunting is all. That and figure out which room to turn into the nursery.”

Sam stared at Dean in surprise, then began smiling as the joy in his heart wasn’t possible to hold in any longer. He put an arm around Dean and hugged him close with his head on Dean’s shoulder. Sam looked up and saw Delphine hugging herself with a beaming smile, so he stood both of them up and pulled Delphine into the circle of their warm arms. “Like that idea, huh, Delphine?”

“Yes, yes, very much, perhaps this is the sign that the Letters does need to be re-started,” Delphine said into Sam’s chest.

“We’ll bring the kid up as a legacy, I promise,” Sam said. “Now that you’ve shown me where to find all the training materials, we’ll start them off early.”

“And we’ll give him or her some basic hunting training too,” Dean said, “so the kid will be well-rounded, able to keep themselves safe.”

Delphine took one of Sam and Dean’s hands and brought them to her lower belly. “We will all prepare our child to be able to take on the world.”

Delphine read the instructions over once again, shaking her head at the simplicity of it all. “I cannot believe that this is all it takes to perform this test. In my time, there were rabbits involved,” she said.

Sam took the paper from her and scanned it over, smiling at her. “It really is that easy. Hard to believe, I know, but just go and do it, okay? We all need to know, I’ll be out here waiting,” Sam said, smiling eagerly.

Delphine shut the bathroom door between them and Sam leaned up against the wall, banging his head gently a few times to calm down. He heard his brother’s footsteps approaching.

“Why are you lurking around outside the bathroom door?”

“Uh, waiting on Delphine to take her test,” Sam said.

“Why didn’t you come tell me she was doing it?” Dean asked.

“She was already freaking out as it was, I couldn’t have handled both of you at once when I am too,” Sam said.

Dean wormed one arm between the wall and Sam’s back, wrapping it around Sam’s waist to pull him in close. “I’m not freaking out. You know I gotcha, Sammy. This is gonna be a good thing.”

“How can you be so sure with Amara and Lucifer and everything we can’t nail down?” Sam asked all in a rush.

“World’s never been safer, we’re better trained, have more resources here in the bunker. We’ve got this, I just know we do.”

“You sound so sure I almost believe you,” Sam said, looking at his brother with hope and skepticism.

Dean leaned over and captured Sam’s mouth with his own, kissing him deeply, one of those kisses Sam knew was designed to make him get out of his own head and it worked just like always. He moaned quietly into Dean, embarrassed to always give it up so easily.

The door opened then and Delphine was crashing into their embrace, kissing both of them and waving the white plastic stick around between them. Sam whooped and wrapped his arms around Delphine’s tiny waist, picking her up and spinning her around, passing her off to Dean who spun her once also. Sam hugged her from behind while she was still wrapped around Dean.

“We’re going to be the best damn family of Hunter-Letters the world’s ever seen,” Dean said.

When Delphine confirmed she was pregnant they of course didn’t know which brother had fathered the baby. After some thought they realized this was pretty much the basis of their relationship, so the mystery would have to be fine by all of them. There wasn’t much thought given to an abortion after the initial discussion. Delphine didn’t want to jeopardize this one chance she might ever find to have a child, and neither did the brothers. It couldn’t be a more inconvenient time, as they continued to hunt for Amara and Lucifer.

They decided to bring Delphine into town to visit the one local hunter-friendly doctor they'd found to get some prenatal care started. He was the son of the doctor that had patched up the Men of Letters when they’d needed it. Sam was the one who went with her to the appointment, they didn’t want to over-scandalize the guy past what he could handle. He examined Delphine and determined she was close to three months along. He gave them a referral to a local midwife who ran a small birthing center. Sam thought this would be a good alternative so that it wouldn’t be a house call situation which would be too risky in the bunker.

Sam stopped with Delphine at the local drug store on the way home for the prescribed prenatal vitamins.

She noticed the giant display of condoms and birth control and pointed at it. “Guess we should have paid more attention to that part of things.”

Sam laughed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I have a feeling this was just how it was all supposed to go.”

Part 6