Archive of Our Own ^beta

Sam, uncomfortably crouched in the public bathroom of a drugstore in the town they’re hunting in, looks down at the plastic stick in his hand in disbelief. It seems downright impossible, after all the years and the multiple traumas that his body has been through, but he’s staring at two bright pink lines. He reads the directions again, as though he might have been miraculously wrong the first time, but no. He’s definitely thirty-seven and pregnant with his brother’s unwanted offspring, after one singular night of inadvisable and highly regretted sex. 

He and Dean hadn’t touched each other like that in years, and for good reasons. That level of closeness made every death and parting that much harder to bear, so their inappropriate liaisons had dwindled over the years, and eventually stopped entirely after Sam completed the trials. He hadn’t understood why at the time, and the amount of pain Dean put him through with every rejected advance had hurt him nearly as much as finding out that Dean’s reason for avoiding him was the angel he’d unknowingly been harboring. Dean never made a move on him again after that awful year, and Sam was glad of it. He was so tired of being hurt and betrayed by the person he loved most, he honestly didn’t know if he could stand for it to happen again.

Then, a little over three weeks ago, he slipped up. He hadn’t meant for that to happen. They’d just been having a particularly good night, watching a movie on the couch with too many drinks, so when Dean had teased him into an impromptu wrestling match that turned into frotting on the couch, he went with it. He knew it was a mistake, even as it was happening, and when he woke up sober at four in the morning he went back to his own bed seething with annoyance for not remembering to tell Dean to use a damn condom. 

In the morning, Sam had been practically sick with fear that Dean would call him out for sneaking out. His brother said nothing though, and betrayed no sign of hurt feelings, so Sam told himself that Dean must have realized it was a mistake as well, and chosen to pretend it didn’t happen.

Sam’s phone rings out, shrill and echoing in the cinderblock bathroom, and he almost drops it on the floor in his haste to answer. 

“Dude, where the hell are you?” Dean’s voice demands, without waiting for a hello. “You said you were running out for a coffee, it’s been half an hour.”

“I- um- there was a line,” Sam lies. It’s lame, and even he has to wince as the words come out of his mouth.

There’s a moment of obviously skeptical silence, but apparently Dean decides to drop it for once instead of being his usual nosy self. “Whatever, just get back here, I think I found something.”

If Sam is quieter and more distant than usual throughout the rest of the hunt, Dean doesn’t seem to notice. He’s trying to be normal, but it’s difficult when he’s aware every second that there’s a little part of Dean inside him all the time. What makes it worse is that he can’t decide if he actually might want it or if carrying his brother’s baby just turns him on a little in a kinky sort of way.

Days creep by, one week, then two. Sam is technically six or seven weeks pregnant, if he’s counting right. He looked it up but the language is confusing, and he’s never kept track of his cycles. Dean is acting normal while Sam is about to jump out of his skin at any moment. He keeps having dreams about being hugely pregnant and waking up in a cold sweat.

Finally, in desperation, Sam uses the excuse of Jody mentioning the struggles of parenting the four girls she’s taken in to ask his brother, “You still think about having kids?”

Dean snorts. “Yeah, right. Because my last two adventures in parenthood went so well.”

Sam shrugs, and says, straining for a casual tone, “Well, if you met the right person it might not have to be like that.”

“I highly doubt I’ll find my soulmate in a truck stop waitress.”

What Sam can’t admit even to himself, is that he always thought he was that person. He’s Dean’s soulmate, literally. In the future they’ll share a heaven, now they share a home and a life. 

“Not to mention,” Dean mutters, reaching for the whiskey carafe, “what the hell would I do with a kid? Can’t exactly leave it home with the dog when we go hunting.”

That’s a mystifying response. On the one hand, his brother seems to be dismissing the idea of a child on account of how unlikely it is that he’ll meet someone, but on the other, he’s acting as though if there were a child, nobody else would be around, which would preclude the existence of a girlfriend. 

Dean chuckles under his breath. “Anyway, I just got cut loose from Chuck’s puppet strings, I’m gonna be enjoying total freedom for years to come.”

It takes a few days for Sam to sort out how he feels about that, and all the while he’s profoundly aware that his time to decide whether to have the baby or not is limited. This isn’t New York or Chicago, this is Lebanon, Kansas and abortion access isn’t that easy to come by. 

Finding Dean passed out drunk in the TV room is what eventually decides Sam’s mind. He isn’t sure if he can do this with his brother, but he’s damn certain he can’t do it alone. After so many years, he’s come to accept that he’ll never be able to change Dean, and he doesn’t want to deal with Dean’s resentment over the loss of his free time, either. If Sam’s choice is his baby or his brother, he’ll choose his brother just as he has every other time in their lives.

Next day, he starts making calls. The waitlists aren’t that long, so he doesn’t have to go through too much hassle to get an appointment in Wichita. Unfortunately, he’ll be twelve weeks by then, which means he’ll have to have the abortion in-clinic instead of quietly taking a pill at home, but he has only himself to blame for putting off making the appointment. If a case comes up, he’ll just have to reschedule as soon as possible and hope for the best.

The real issue is getting out of the bunker without Dean getting suspicious. Wichita is three hours away, which means a minimum of six hours on the road, plus at least a couple at the clinic. That’s eight hours which could easily turn into nine, and there’s nothing short of a hookup that could convince Dean not to worry about an unexplained absence like that. 

With no better ideas, Sam tells his brother he’s going to an art show in Kansas City, since it’s about the same distance away. Dean wouldn’t go to a gallery opening if you paid him, so of course he declines to come along. 

When the day comes, it’s a long and lonely ride to Wichita. Dean insisted that Sam take the Impala, like he always does, as if any old vehicle just wouldn’t be enough to keep his baby brother safe on the road. Being in the car makes Sam maudlin though. He tries to listen to music but just ends up crying, and has to turn it off again.

He ends up reaching the clinic half an hour ahead of time, so dithers in the parking lot for a reasonable amount of time before going in. Inside, Sam is handed a clipboard of paperwork but a concerned-looking receptionist who asks him if he’s feeling alright. He mutters a vague response, already distracted by the long list of questions about his medical history. Most of them he can’t answer honestly, but he hasn’t had a serious illness or injury since the last time Jack healed him before leaving for Heaven, so he fudges his way through on the assumption that he doesn’t have any of the listed health problems.

Sam is returning his sign documents to the desk when he sees a most familiar and unwelcome face through the plate glass door. Dean sees him as soon as he sees Dean, but he still slouches down instinctively as though that will help him escape notice.

Dean is a lot of things, but he is not, and has never been, naturally subtle. He can be if he tries, but if he isn’t trying he’s like the most disruptive bull in a china shop of the world who is so charming most people don’t hold him responsible even when he breaks things.

Frozen in trepidation, Sam watches as Dean lets himself in and approaches across the yellowed linoleum, every eye in the room fixed on him.

“What the fuck is this?” Dean hisses at him, in a passable attempt to be quiet.

“Just taking care of my reproductive health, Dean,” Sam says, lying through his teeth.

“Oh, bullshit,” Dean snaps. “You didn’t drive three hours away and lie to my face about where you were going just to- to get a- pap smear or something.”

“Sir, do you need me to call security?” the receptionist asks Sam, peering disapprovingly over the counter at Dean’s furious scowl. 

“No, no, thank you,” Sam declines hastily. “He’s-”

Dean interrupts him with a yank on the elbow. 

“What is going on?” Dean says to his brother, ignoring her completely. “Are you pregnant?”

Sam doesn’t answer and Dean scoffs bitterly.

“Holy shit, you are. And you weren’t gonna tell me?”

“No, I wasn’t,” Sam snaps at him. “Besides, you’re the one who laughed off the idea of having kids when I asked you.”

“Well, you completely left out the part where I knocked you up. You were talking like it was hypothetical, Sam, that’s not fair.”

“You know what? I actually made this decision for me, Dean. Not everything is about you. You can’t just stalk me here and demand that I do whatever you want.”

Jaw clenched, Dean looks around at the sterile walls, decorated here and there with equally frigid warnings about HPV and how condoms are the best way to prevent the spread of STDs.

“I’m not demanding,” he says eventually, “I’m just making sure you know I’m absolutely not fucking okay with this. I’m not. I hate it, I hate the idea of it, I hate that you lied to me-”

“Really? After all the times you lied to me about something that changed my whole life?”

“This- this isn’t that!” Dean protests. “This is us, Sam. An actual, not just you and me, but an us together thing. And I think I should at least get to say how I feel about how we are going to spend the rest of our life, so just for the record, I’m a no on the whole abortion thing.”

There’s a beat of silence before Sam sighs, “Yeah, okay, duly noted.”

“Duly noted,” Dean mutters. “Thanks for taking the time to consider my opinion, Sam.”

The hurt in his voice sounds so sincere that Sam hesitates, momentarily shaken in his conviction, but then he thinks back to every drunken night Dean’s ever had and stands firm.

“You said it yourself,” he points out. “What the hell would we do with a baby? We’d have to retire.”

“And?”

“And I know you’d never agree to it. You couldn’t do it for Lisa and Ben, so-”

“That is such bullshit!” Dean says, then lowers his voice again when the receptionist reaches for the phone. “You can’t compare that to this.”

“What?” Sam shakes his head in confusion. “It’s the same thing.”

“No, Sam, it’s not.”

“Just go home, alright? We can talk about this later.”

“I’m not letting you drive home alone,” Dean huffs indignantly. 

“It’s fine, really,” Sam insists, “I can drive myself.”

The receptionist gives a polite cough to get their attention, and says, “Actually, sir, you can’t drive yourself.”

“There you go,” Dean says. “No driving, Sammy.”

“Just leave,” Sam snaps, right as the door behind him opens and a nurse calls his name. “I’ll see you at home, Dean. Goodbye.”

He turns his back on his brother, keeping his chin up defiantly until the heavy door clicks shut behind him. Silently, Sam follows the middle-aged man in blue scrubs to Room 4. He takes Sam’s vitals, then instructs him to undress from the waist down and wait for the doctor.

Feeling uncomfortably large in the small room, Sam does as he’s told and perches himself awkwardly on the edge of the exam bed. It seems like an eternity before the doctor arrives. He doesn’t really listen to her explanation of what’s about to happen, he spent plenty of time on the internet looking up every gory detail before deciding to go ahead with it. His pain tolerance is certainly high enough to endure five to ten minutes of being poked and prodded. 

When the nurse comes back in with a cart though… that gets Sam’s full attention. He can’t help staring at the gleaming silver tools lined up on the tray, forceps, dilators… speculum. The last time anyone came near him with one of those he was still in the Cage, and for just a brief second when he looks up, he sees Lucifer’s grinning face instead of the doctor’s. He forces himself to focus, relax, lie back like the doctor said to, put his feet up in the stirrups. Right up until cold metal touches him, Sam thinks he’s going to be able to make it through the procedure, but the sensation of a freezing spike sliding inside him has him right back in Hell, trapped in the Cage with Lucifer between his knees, slamming into his cervix with an ice-cold cock.

“Stop,” he says in a whisper, then loud enough to be heard, “Stop, stop, I- I can’t do this. I can’t.”

The speculum is withdrawn and Sam sits up, freeing his legs as quickly as he can without kicking the doctor in the face, and holds his thighs together with shaking hands. His vision is getting hazy, and the doctor’s voice sounds very far away, telling him to take deep breaths and exhale slowly through his nose. He just can’t take his eyes off those tools, can’t keep out the visions of discarded probes, frosted over from the touch of Lucifer’s hand.

“Sam?” she asks kindly. “Sam, are you alright? Do you need some water? Or I can have someone call in your support person from the waiting area.”

“N-no,” Sam stammers, “I’m here alone. I- I lied about that. Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” the doctor says, patting his knee reassuringly. “I’m not here to judge. Would you like to continue after you’ve had few minutes?”

Sam opens his mouth to say that he’ll be fine, but he can still feel the chill of Lucifer’s phantom cock and he has to shake his head. “I don’t- I don’t think I can.”

“That’s no problem, we can reschedule. But I do think it would be a good idea for you to take some time to sit and collect yourself before you drive anywhere.”

She won’t let Sam leave alone, she walks him out, presumably to tell reception that he’s supposed to reschedule and hang out a while. He’s resigned to it, since he’s still struggling not to let his hands shake, but when he steps out into the waiting room he realizes with a rush of relief that Dean didn’t listen to him after all. He takes a few steps across the waiting room and almost falls, but Dean springs up to catch him before his knees buckle.

“Sammy?” All the anger is gone from Dean’s voice, he’s worried and tender now. “You okay?”

“No,” Sam mutters into his neck. His big brother’s presence steadies him though, and after a few seconds, he’s able to straighten up. 

The doctor says quietly to the receptionist, “Mr. Campbell here needs to reschedule.”

Sam doesn’t move right away, so Dean turns him towards the the desk with a nudge on his back, and says, “When do you wanna come back?”

“Wait- what?” Sam’s stomach flips. He doesn’t really want to come back. “I thought you weren’t okay with this.”

“I’m not,” Dean says flatly. “But in the interest of not being a raging dick and having a peaceful rest of my life, I’m not gonna make you have a baby you don’t want.”

“Seriously? You’re not even gonna argue?”

“Do you want me to?”

Sam’s entirely forgotten they’re in public, and basically blocking the whole entryway. “Look, Dean, I didn’t mean to- It’s just, you fought so hard to be free. I don’t want to be the one to trap you again.”

“Trap me?” Dean shakes his head, apparently in absolute disbelief. “Baby, I love you. Being with you forever is all I ever wanted. You know that, right?”

He thinks he did once, and maybe he just forgot somewhere along the way. In any case, this unexpected development means he needs to take some to think and consider things in another light. 

Turning to the receptionist, Sam says, “I, um, I- I think we’re just going to go actually, thank you.”

“We are?” Dean is already brightening, corners of his eyes starting to crinkle in a smile. 

“Don’t get excited,” Sam replies, but he can feel the corners of his mouth turning up anyway. “You’re gonna find me somewhere to eat, and then we’ll talk.”

“Yeah,” Dean chuckles, with a shit-eating grin, “talk about how cute and suburban we’re gonna look taking our baby and our dog out for walks in the park next summer. C’mon, Sammy, imagine it.”

“Dean…”

“I’ll even figure out how to put a carseat in the Impala, nice and safe.”

“Go,” Sam says with amusement, shoving him towards the door.

“Get you one of those jogging strollers-”

There’s probably no point in asking how Dean even knows what a jogging stroller is, but Sam is going to tease him about it anyway over cheap diner food.

“So what happened, anyway?” Dean asks as Sam tosses him the Impala keys over the roof of the car. “You looked pretty determined going in.”

The doors open, Sam automatically reaching for his and sliding into the comfortingly familiar passenger seat.

“Was it-”

“It was the- the instruments. Y’know, the medical tools they use,” Sam interrupts. He’s never outright said anything, but he knows Dean knows. Lucifer was never exactly subtle about it. “They, um, they have to put this thing inside you to- t-to open the… The first one was cold, is all. It didn’t hurt, but it was freezing, and the second it was inside me I couldn’t see anything but him.”

All mirth drops out of Dean’s face. “Oh, Sammy.”

“It was okay,” Sam says quickly, even though it wasn’t. “I mean- I- I had sort of a panic attack, but the doctor was nice, and when I came out you were there. I really thought you wouldn’t be, but you were. So I’m okay.”

“Still.”

“Can we just find something to eat? I’m starving. I didn’t have breakfast, I was too nervous.”

“You know what, how about we pick up some passable takeout,” Dean suggests, “find a motel, and you can eat your gay little rabbit food meal while sitting on my nice, warm dick. You’ll forget all about that icy son of a bitch.”

It makes him squirm a little in embarrassment, but Dean is right. When Sam first got his memories of Hell back, he wanted to fall asleep with Dean inside him every night just to keep away the dreams of something cold wedged into a place it had no right to be.

“Sounds good to me,” Sam tells his brother with a soft smile. 

There’s a look on Dean’s face that he’s never seen before as they pull out of the parking lot, which is a little off-putting. Sam doesn’t like when he can’t tell how Dean is feeling.

He decides to ask, instead of working out the puzzle, “De, you’re gonna take care of us, right?”

“Yeah, Sammy.” Dean reaches over without looking to squeeze his knee. “I’m gonna take care of you. I wasn’t kidding about walks in the park, y’know? We can do that. We can pull back from active hunting, like Garth did. Start up with family stuff. You, me, and the kid. We’ll go to the drive-in, and take him to the dentist, and do holidays. It’ll be good, Sam. If you let me, I swear, I’ll make it good.”

Sam wants to believe him. He wants to believe so badly that he comes right out and says, “If you promise me you’ll do all that, I’ll have the baby.”

Dean’s smile is blinding when he glances over to say, “Absolutely, darlin’. Whatever you want.” 

The diminutive term still gets a reaction from the ghost of the person Sam used to be, but it’s so distant and ethereal that he doesn’t really feel it anymore.

“Okay, De,” he says absently, then points through the windshield. “Ooh, Pizza Hut. You can get your artery-clogging breadsticks and I’ll hit the salad bar.”

Dean doesn’t even need to say that he wants Sam to grab him some butterscotch pudding. Sam just does it, automatically, after so many years of being together. 

“We were meant for this, Sammy-boy,” Dean crows as they return to the car. “You and me, come whatever, plus baby.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”

It feels, for once, like everything is going to work out. The sky is a perfect color, Dean harbors no ill will about the lie, and Sam can barely remember what it felt like to have Lucifer inside him. Everything is going to be okay.