Big Bang 2013: Leaving Footprints behind Chapter 10
Missouri looked through the door where Dean sat with Dr. Robert and shook her head in confusion. Sam had invited her over to discuss this new development with Dean. She could tell that as much as it pleased Sam that Dean didn’t recognize Benny, it was a cause for worry.
Because of the way they were raised, Dean held the few friendships he had in high regards, so him not remembering the vampire set off alarm bells. She watched as Sam and Benny danced around each other as they both worried about the man in question and laughed to herself. She couldn’t understand that why after a lifetime of being loved by Dean, why Sam thought that the vampire could suddenly take his place.
“I can do a reading to see if there is anything new, Sam,” She offered, “to see if the other side is talking.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed nodding his head, “I think that whatever’s going on here is something that’s more your expertise than the doctors.”
“How long has he been like this?” Benny asked. “Am I the only person that he no longer recognizes?”
“That’s the only good thing about this,” Sam muttered under his breath, knowing that the vampire’s keen hearing picked up his words even though Missouri couldn’t.
Benny remained silent and didn’t respond as the three of them watched the doctor examine Dean. Dr. Robert performed a thorough examination, Dean’s eyes, ears, glands and lymph nodes were all checked, but he found nothing to explain Dean’s memory loss. Once the examination was complete, Sam stood up and waited for Dean to join them after the doctor gave him his prognosis, but instead he slipped out the back door and sat on the step beside Eva.
“Why aren’t you inside?” Eva asked, “Surely Sam wants to keep you in his line of sight.”
Dean searched the young woman’s face and saw no malice there, but he knew that there had to be a reason for her obvious dislike of hunters, so he ignored her question and asked, “He probably does, but he’s making a big deal out of my pregnancy brain. Let me ask you something, why do you hate hunters so much?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” she answered. “and what the hell is pregnancy brain?”
“Where you blame your pregnancy on things you can’t explain. Now it’s your turn, try me you won’t believe the things I can understand,” Dean pushed. “So why do you hate hunters?”
“Hunters are supposed to be so helpful, the unsung heroes, yeah right,” she snorted. “They dash all around the country saving others until one day they just don’t come home. They simply just vanish, leaving their twelve year old daughter with their weird doctor friend that she barely even knew before their disappearance.”
“Boo fucking hoo,” Dean responded, “try being a four year old and a six month old raised in this life, being dragged to hell and back with a father seeking revenge on the thing that killed a mother that only one of you barely remembers.”
“Oh, so you’re saying that I should have just become a hunter, huh?”
“No, I’m saying that you need to grow up. The people that Dr. Robert helps save a lot of people, so show them some respect. If you hate them and what they represent so much then find something that you do like. The last thing someone hurting needs is to be bitched at for something that’s not their fault.” Dean told her before becoming distracted by the sound of the door opening. Both he and Eva turned to see who was coming outside to join them. He should have known that Sam wasn’t going to let him breathe until he’d talked this to death.
“Hey, Dean can I talk to you a second?” Sam asked.
Dean knew that because the doctor couldn’t find anything medically wrong with him, Sam and Missouri had come up with some kind of plan to determine what was wrong with him.
“I’ll just leave you two alone,” Eva told them as she stood up and made her way inside.
“Can we just get this over with Sam?” Dean sighed, “This is where you bad cop me and demand to know why I didn’t tell you that my memory was getting spotty and, I try to tell you that it hasn’t been, and you tell me I’m lying. I’m telling you the truth here man, at least as far as I can remember.”
“This isn’t funny Dean,” Sam told his brother, “You’ve forgotten someone that you spent almost a year in Purgatory with, and almost as long trying to convince me that he wasn’t a threat to me.”
“I don’t see what the big deal is Sam, I mean he’s a vampire, one of the things that we hunt so what does it matter if I’ve forgotten him?” Dean asked. “While you’re whining about me not remembering him, honestly I’m trying to figure out why he still has his head.”
“I’m not worried so much about you forgetting Benny, but what if…what if you forget me?” Sam asked. “I’m scared Dean, scared in a way that even the fucking apocalypse didn’t scare me. The thought of losing you this way, that you wouldn’t remember me, terrifies me.”
“Sam I don’t think you understand,” Dean began to explain as he reached up and wiped away the tears sliding down his brothers face, “You are in my bones and we need each other to breathe, so there’s no way I could ever forget you.”
After that declaration, Sam leaned in and placed a kiss on Dean’s cheek, before standing up and offering the older man his hand.
“Missouri wants to do another reading to see if she can see anything and I think that we should let her.”
“Okay, I’ll let her ghost whisper me,” Dean agreed as he placed his hand in Sam’s and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. Sam said that the medium wanted to do another reading, but Dean didn’t know how to tell him that he didn’t remember the first one. It’s not that he wasn’t telling the truth when he and Sam were talking, it’s just that he didn’t know he didn’t remember until Sam mentioned a first reading.
Once the two men reentered the house, Benny looked up from his conversation with Missouri, gave Dean a small smile and walked towards him.
“Chère,” he greeted Dean and smiled as Sam stiffened at the endearment, “I understand that you no longer know who I am because of the curse. I want to remember you the way you were when we met, full of piss and vinegar, and I want to keep my head. Even though you can’t remember me, I’ll live off memories of you. Au revoir, Dean.”
Dean looked at the vampire as he turned and walked away, and he could tell from the way everyone was looking at him that he had a fondness for Benny, but all he could think was vampires are evil and must die. Because Sam wasn’t going after him, he decided perhaps he wasn’t all that evil and would follow suit.
“You boys ready?” Missouri asked once Benny was gone.
“Yeah,” Sam sniffed, “we can do this in the kitchen. Are doc and Eve gonna sit in on this as well?”
“No, they’ve gone back to the house, the doctor received a call from a hunter who was hurt, and he should be here soon.”
Dean stood back and watched Sam and Missouri, since he had no memory of the first reading, he wasn’t sure of what the procedure was so he waited for them to set up before he moved. Once Sam and Missouri were seated at the table, Dean took the chair besides Sam and copying the others, he joined his hand in theirs.
“Now Sam,” Missouri started, “the witch that cursed you two, said she got your number from Bobby right?”
“Yeah, she did,” Sam, answered. “Said that he came through when she was using her Ouija board.”
“Amateurs,” she accused. “I don’t need a board, but I think that Bobby would be a good place to start.”
Bobby, Bobby, Bobby, Dean kept running the name through his mind. He knew that name… he just was having a hard time placing it, but then it came to him. Bobby Singer. The man who was more of a dad than their father was at times. Now he remembered.
“Okay,” Dean agreed as memories of Bobby come flooding into in mind, “but we don’t have anything of his for you to touch.”
“Boy I just told you that I ain’t no amateur,” she said offended as she grabbed both of their hands and began to call forth Bobby Singer.
When the medium called Bobby, he expected it to be like those cheesy made for television movies, where Missouri’s body would go stiff and her high voice would lower in an attempt to emulate a males voice, so he was shocked when he heard: “Hey idjits,” in what he was sure was Bobby’s voice.
Not trusting his memory at this point, Dean looked at Sam for confirmation that it was Bobby’s voice he was hearing and judging by the slack-jawed look of disbelief on his brother’s face, Dean was convinced that this was Bobby’s voice.
Once Dean was sure that this was Bobby his mind immediately changed directions and he now worried about what Bobby thought about them. He remembered that Missouri said that Bobby knew, but it’s one thing to know that Bobby was dead and knew that he was fucking his baby brother, but now that they were going to talk to him, what would he think? Would he judge them and hate them for finding love with each other?
“It’s okay, Dean,” Bobby told him. “At this point things are supposed to be a little woozy, it means that the spell is working, and your custard is doing its job. I promise you that by the time the baby’s here, you’ll be fine.”
It was a little Whoopi Goldbergish to hear Bobby’s voice coming from the body of a middle-aged black woman, so he closed his eyes and tried to envision Bobby. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t get a clear picture, all he could see was a rounded face and a reddish beard, but for him that was good enough, because he remembered something.
“What does that mean, Bobby?” Sam probed.
“Just what I said Sam, woozy,” Bobby explained. “A major part of this spell is the powerful glamor, and that will affect the people that you know both dead and alive. Some of us may be memories, and some of us may not. Until the transformation’s complete we don’t know what the end product will be. Dean’s just experiencing it before you.”
“Why is this happening Bobby?” Dean asked. “We may not have loved this life, but we sure as hell don’t want to forget it or the people we’ve met along the way.”
“Yeah Bobby,” Sam agreed, “what the hell?”
“It took a while, but you too finally were on the same page with what you wanted in life,” Bobby began to explain, “you both wanted family and to be in one place, to put down roots. When Monica Love needed a hunter it was perfect. The people that you need to stay in your life will stay. Don’t worry though, when you die, you’ll see us again.”
“But why this drastic change? Why am I pregnant and forgetting people who are important to me?” Dean asked slightly embarrassed at having to ask that and about the tears forming in his eyes.
“I can answer that,” a new feminine voice answered.
“Mom?” they asked in unison.
“Yes,” Mary Winchester confirmed. “The reason for the change is that you can’t settle down as a family the way you are, two brothers wanting to adopt a child. This way you can have a child that is yours and no one will question it. Eventually Sam’s memories will match yours Dean and by the time the baby’s born, the Winchester name will be restored.”
“But why mess with his memory?” Sam probed.
“Because it’ll be hard for you to know that there are supernatural things out there and not do something about it; this will be a clean slate for both of you. The spell will change the past you knew, it will erase the lonely childhood and cheap motel rooms and replace them with happy childhood memories that have nothing to do with hunting or killing. Dean, everything from your past won’t be lost, and you’ll get to keep Baby.”
With that revelation from Mary, Dean dropped Sam’s hand to wipe the tears that were now spilling over and broke the connection to the other side.
“Mom, come back, please!” Dean begged as he quickly took hold of Sam’s hand again. “Please.”
Missouri was a little groggy after channeling two people, so Dean went to get her a glass of water while Sam helped her to the den and let her rest on the sofa.
“Should we be scared of what’s happening to us Sam?” Dean asked one they had Missouri settled. “I know that we can trust mom and Bobby, but …”
“I think that we are scared of the unknown more than anything else. All I know was that when you couldn’t remember Benny it scared me shitless, and don’t think that I don’t know that you’re struggling with remembering Bobby.”
Dean didn’t know how could you explain to someone that you were forgetting if you couldn’t fucking remember, so Dean wasn’t sure how he was supposed to answer that accusation. He thought about what Bobby said, but especially what their mom told them. Their new life comes with new memories, a happy childhood, and a way for them to be together. What did that mean?
Would he be going through more changes that are physical? He had to think that he would because how was he supposed to give birth sporting a cock and balls. God please don’t let him have ass babies. He could tolerate anything but the humiliation of that.
Missouri woke an hour later and returned home after complaining about dead people riding her body like she was a bus, and Sam left Dean resting while he went to turn in his report to Jeff Johns and returned later with dinner and some much-needed time off.
Dean looked at Sam and for that first time since he couldn’t remember the vampire, he and his brother were alone after being apart for a month. Once they finished dinner, Dean made his way upstairs and waited for Sam to give him the welcome he should have had earlier that day.
Later when they were both spent, Dean let Sam spoon him from behind and lulled by the big man’s even breathing, fell into a comfortable sleep for the first time in a month. It was a good thing that he did get the much-needed rest because the next morning everything went to hell.
The next morning when Sam woke, he wanted to surprise Dean with breakfast in bed as a way to make up for the mind fuck that was yesterday. As he prepared the meal, he wanted something that would be easy on Dean’s stomach, because even if he wasn’t having morning sickness, he was sometimes a little queasy.
With a tray laden with juice, fake coffee, fruit, toast eggs and bacon (his stomach was fine) Sam made his way back to the bedroom and Dean. He smiled when he entered and heard Dean moan, seriously hoping that his lover was dreaming about him and what they did to each other last night.
“Hey Dean, wake up,” Sam bade softly as he joined the sleeping man on the bed, “I got some breakfast for you.”
When Dean moaned again, Sam could hear that pleasure was not the reason for the sounds emanating from Dean; this sound was a vocalization of pain.
What the hell was it this time? Each time they seem to get over some new change with Dean and get used to that change they were hit with something else. Sam kept telling himself that Bobby and his mom wouldn’t lie to them, tell them that everything was going to turn out okay, but as he put the tray down and pulled the covers away from Dean’s body, he questioned how Dean writhing in pain and bathed in his own sweat was a good thing.
When he got out of bed thirty, no maybe forty minutes ago, Dean was fine, or so he thought. He’s sure he would have noticed the heavy sweating and the translucent skin. Dean had always been pale, but now Sam could see the veins underneath the skin and the freckles that he loved and Dean loathed were no longer visible.
“Dean!” Sam called in an attempt to rouse his unconscious brother getting no response, “Dean!” he called again, but the result was the same.
“What do I do, what do I do,” Sam chanted to himself repeatedly. If this were a gunshot wound or a nasty cut, he would be in his element. However, this was neither and because it was Dean, he panicked. Again.
“Okay Sam, fucking think,” he cursed himself and then part of the answer came to him, cool him down. The human body couldn’t withstand a temperature of 104 degrees Fahrenheit without brain damage. Sam wasn’t sure if Deans temperature was anywhere near that, and he wasn’t going to waste time trying to find a thermometer. With a quick glance at Dean, Sam raced to the kitchen, grabbed three food storage bags, and filled them with ice before racing back to Dean.
Once back in the bedroom he took the bags, placed one under each of his armpits and the third between his legs before he found his phone, and made a frantic call to Dr. Robert. By the time the doctor arrived fifteen minutes later with Eva in tow, Sam was emptying water from the bags and replenishing them with ice, as the original had melted from the heat emanating from Dean’s body.
When the doctor entered the room the casual demeanor automatically left his body as he caught a glimpse of the man on the bed.
“You did good Sam with the ice, but you’re going to need a hell of a lot more.” He advised as he moved to examine Dean. “Now Sam!” he ordered when Sam didn’t move.
Sam watched as the doctor pulled his stethoscope and began to listen to Dean’s heart and lungs before his legs began to move. He made a run to the nearest convenient store and purchased all of the ice he could find while he endured stupid jokes about what kind of party he was having.
Sam was surprised that when he arrived back to the house Eva was outside waiting for him to help him and they worked side by side until they had all of the ice inside. When Sam reentered the bedroom, he noticed that Eva and the doctor had somehow moved Dean from the bed to the tub and the doctor was opening the large bags of ice and pouring on his overheated body.
“His temperature was 103.2, so we need to cool him off ASAP,” the doctor told Sam.
Once the three of them had Dean in an ice bath the doctor turned to him and said, “I can’t tell you what’s going on with him because I don’t have the tools I need to examine him, but I know where I can get access to what I need.”
“He… he’s going to be okay right?” Sam asked. It seemed as though he was asking that same fucking question every day, and each time he had to ask Dean was worse each time. He thought that once they had Dean covered in the ice that his temperature would go back to normal in minutes but it took twenty minutes before it dropped to 102.
“I can’t answer because I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but right now Sam you have two choices. You can take him to a regular hospital which is fifteen minutes away, but risk Dean waking up in cage somewhere and ready to kick your ass when he can get his hands on you, or we can drive an half an hour out to a doctor’s office equipped with everything I need.”
“A legit doctor’s office?” Sam questioned.
“Does it matter as long as he gets the help he needs?” Eva demanded.
“No, it really doesn’t,” Sam told her as he prayed that he made the right decision.
The three of them pulled a still unresponsive Dean from the tub, dried him off, and dressed him in sweats and a t-shirt before getting him to the car. The drive took longer than an hour because they had to keep stopping for ice to keep Dean’s temperature down.
When they finally reached the office, Dr. Robert and Eva both sprang into action, with the doctor shouting out orders to Eva in the manner of one of those medical television shows. Sam didn’t understand, but she did and that’s all that mattered.
Dr. Robert wasn’t kidding about this office, it was like a mini medical center and he was able to do a MRI and a CAT scan on Dean before they set him up on an IV drip to keep him hydrated and give him some strong analgesics.
Sam watched helplessly as he watched Eva and Dr. Robert read the results from the tests that he’d run earlier. He made a promise that he’d take care of Dean, but when his life seemed to be in danger, he could only sit on the side lines and watch as others fulfilled his promise.
“Okay Sam, I can only treat one patient and unless I’m wrong, I’m sure you want that to be Dean and not the baby. I had Eva to add analgesics to the drip to help with the pain and the inflammation that seemed to have affected his entire body. It’s as if he’s going through growing pains all at once.”
“Of course Dean,” Sam weakly replied, but he had to ask, “So the baby’s…?”
“I can’t promise you anything as far as the baby is concerned, but know that everything that I do will be for Dean, not the baby.” When Sam nodded his head in agreement, Dr. Robert walked back towards the table where Dean lay.
They spent most of the night in the office letting the drip do its work and Sam could see that Dean was no longer sweating and he was visibly relaxing and resting peacefully. They had to get out of the office before the doctor’s staff arrived for work.
They were back home in under an hour and Sam watched the man he loved more than life sleep. He gently reached over and placed his hand on the bump that was their child and prepared to say good-bye to their son, but then he felt a kick.
The next morning when Dean woke up, he felt as though he was recovering from a week long hangover. He looked over at the space beside him, but Sam was gone. Work maybe? He wasn’t sure but his head hurt too much to worry about that now. Not only was his head hurting, the baby was pressing down on his bladder and he had to go now.
Carefully getting off the bed so that the drummers that had taken up residence in his head would keep the thump, thump, thump down and easing the ache. Once his feet hit the floor he made his first tentative step towards the bathroom and found it was all for naught because he tripped over his sweats.
He had plenty of sweats, why did Sam dress him in his big ass gigantor clothes knowing that they were too big for him. After he picked himself up from the floor and finally made it to the bathroom, he sat down on the toilet to relieve himself and pissed on his clean sweats. What the hell was he thinking sitting down to take a piss? Was this the pregnancy brain he’d tried to convince Sam of when he couldn’t remember the vampire?
After cleaning up the mess he’d made of himself Dean searched for clean sweats, thinking that he was going to take another nap, but even though his head was feeling somewhat better, his body still ached, so he decided to go in search of Sam thinking that the movement would help his sore joints.
After trying on three sets of sweats, they all seemed to belong to Sam, all were too big and cause him to trip when he walked, so instead of a fourth set, he just rolled up the pants legs and the sleeves and made his way downstairs where he found Sam bustling around in the kitchen preparing...lunch? How long did he sleep?
“Sam,” he greeted stretching in an attempt to ease the ache in his back, “don’t say I didn’t tell you, but I hurt all over and I think that I over did it working in the garden.”
“No Dean,” Sam said as he turned to face his lover. He didn’t finish his sentence and dropped the glass of whatever he was holding. “Dean?” he whispered the look on his face was almost comical, but Dean knew it was serious the way he was staring.
“Oh God, Sam,” Dean tried not to panic, “what’s wrong with me now?”
“Dean, you’re,” Sam sputtered as he pointed at Dean and searched for words. “Did you not look in in the mirror?”
“No, I didn’t,” Dean complained, “What the fuck did you do with my clothes?”
“Dean, those are your clothes,” Sam told him as he stepped over the glass he dropped to stand in front of Dean.
“These are obviously not mine Sam,” the sarcasm dropping from his voice he continued, “I wouldn’t be swimming in my clothes…oomph.” He exclaimed as Sam grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the kitchen and down the hall to the foyer and threw open the closet door so that Dean could look into the full-length mirror there.
“Sam?” Dean’s voice shook as he called his brother’s name, “what happened to me?”
Dean backed away from the mirror and into the solid wall of Sam’s chest because what he saw terrified him. Instead of the six-foot, muscled hunter, a shorter, longhaired pretty … person stared back at him.
chapter 9 Chapter11
Because of the way they were raised, Dean held the few friendships he had in high regards, so him not remembering the vampire set off alarm bells. She watched as Sam and Benny danced around each other as they both worried about the man in question and laughed to herself. She couldn’t understand that why after a lifetime of being loved by Dean, why Sam thought that the vampire could suddenly take his place.
“I can do a reading to see if there is anything new, Sam,” She offered, “to see if the other side is talking.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed nodding his head, “I think that whatever’s going on here is something that’s more your expertise than the doctors.”
“How long has he been like this?” Benny asked. “Am I the only person that he no longer recognizes?”
“That’s the only good thing about this,” Sam muttered under his breath, knowing that the vampire’s keen hearing picked up his words even though Missouri couldn’t.
Benny remained silent and didn’t respond as the three of them watched the doctor examine Dean. Dr. Robert performed a thorough examination, Dean’s eyes, ears, glands and lymph nodes were all checked, but he found nothing to explain Dean’s memory loss. Once the examination was complete, Sam stood up and waited for Dean to join them after the doctor gave him his prognosis, but instead he slipped out the back door and sat on the step beside Eva.
“Why aren’t you inside?” Eva asked, “Surely Sam wants to keep you in his line of sight.”
Dean searched the young woman’s face and saw no malice there, but he knew that there had to be a reason for her obvious dislike of hunters, so he ignored her question and asked, “He probably does, but he’s making a big deal out of my pregnancy brain. Let me ask you something, why do you hate hunters so much?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” she answered. “and what the hell is pregnancy brain?”
“Where you blame your pregnancy on things you can’t explain. Now it’s your turn, try me you won’t believe the things I can understand,” Dean pushed. “So why do you hate hunters?”
“Hunters are supposed to be so helpful, the unsung heroes, yeah right,” she snorted. “They dash all around the country saving others until one day they just don’t come home. They simply just vanish, leaving their twelve year old daughter with their weird doctor friend that she barely even knew before their disappearance.”
“Boo fucking hoo,” Dean responded, “try being a four year old and a six month old raised in this life, being dragged to hell and back with a father seeking revenge on the thing that killed a mother that only one of you barely remembers.”
“Oh, so you’re saying that I should have just become a hunter, huh?”
“No, I’m saying that you need to grow up. The people that Dr. Robert helps save a lot of people, so show them some respect. If you hate them and what they represent so much then find something that you do like. The last thing someone hurting needs is to be bitched at for something that’s not their fault.” Dean told her before becoming distracted by the sound of the door opening. Both he and Eva turned to see who was coming outside to join them. He should have known that Sam wasn’t going to let him breathe until he’d talked this to death.
“Hey, Dean can I talk to you a second?” Sam asked.
Dean knew that because the doctor couldn’t find anything medically wrong with him, Sam and Missouri had come up with some kind of plan to determine what was wrong with him.
“I’ll just leave you two alone,” Eva told them as she stood up and made her way inside.
“Can we just get this over with Sam?” Dean sighed, “This is where you bad cop me and demand to know why I didn’t tell you that my memory was getting spotty and, I try to tell you that it hasn’t been, and you tell me I’m lying. I’m telling you the truth here man, at least as far as I can remember.”
“This isn’t funny Dean,” Sam told his brother, “You’ve forgotten someone that you spent almost a year in Purgatory with, and almost as long trying to convince me that he wasn’t a threat to me.”
“I don’t see what the big deal is Sam, I mean he’s a vampire, one of the things that we hunt so what does it matter if I’ve forgotten him?” Dean asked. “While you’re whining about me not remembering him, honestly I’m trying to figure out why he still has his head.”
“I’m not worried so much about you forgetting Benny, but what if…what if you forget me?” Sam asked. “I’m scared Dean, scared in a way that even the fucking apocalypse didn’t scare me. The thought of losing you this way, that you wouldn’t remember me, terrifies me.”
“Sam I don’t think you understand,” Dean began to explain as he reached up and wiped away the tears sliding down his brothers face, “You are in my bones and we need each other to breathe, so there’s no way I could ever forget you.”
After that declaration, Sam leaned in and placed a kiss on Dean’s cheek, before standing up and offering the older man his hand.
“Missouri wants to do another reading to see if she can see anything and I think that we should let her.”
“Okay, I’ll let her ghost whisper me,” Dean agreed as he placed his hand in Sam’s and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. Sam said that the medium wanted to do another reading, but Dean didn’t know how to tell him that he didn’t remember the first one. It’s not that he wasn’t telling the truth when he and Sam were talking, it’s just that he didn’t know he didn’t remember until Sam mentioned a first reading.
Once the two men reentered the house, Benny looked up from his conversation with Missouri, gave Dean a small smile and walked towards him.
“Chère,” he greeted Dean and smiled as Sam stiffened at the endearment, “I understand that you no longer know who I am because of the curse. I want to remember you the way you were when we met, full of piss and vinegar, and I want to keep my head. Even though you can’t remember me, I’ll live off memories of you. Au revoir, Dean.”
Dean looked at the vampire as he turned and walked away, and he could tell from the way everyone was looking at him that he had a fondness for Benny, but all he could think was vampires are evil and must die. Because Sam wasn’t going after him, he decided perhaps he wasn’t all that evil and would follow suit.
“You boys ready?” Missouri asked once Benny was gone.
“Yeah,” Sam sniffed, “we can do this in the kitchen. Are doc and Eve gonna sit in on this as well?”
“No, they’ve gone back to the house, the doctor received a call from a hunter who was hurt, and he should be here soon.”
Dean stood back and watched Sam and Missouri, since he had no memory of the first reading, he wasn’t sure of what the procedure was so he waited for them to set up before he moved. Once Sam and Missouri were seated at the table, Dean took the chair besides Sam and copying the others, he joined his hand in theirs.
“Now Sam,” Missouri started, “the witch that cursed you two, said she got your number from Bobby right?”
“Yeah, she did,” Sam, answered. “Said that he came through when she was using her Ouija board.”
“Amateurs,” she accused. “I don’t need a board, but I think that Bobby would be a good place to start.”
Bobby, Bobby, Bobby, Dean kept running the name through his mind. He knew that name… he just was having a hard time placing it, but then it came to him. Bobby Singer. The man who was more of a dad than their father was at times. Now he remembered.
“Okay,” Dean agreed as memories of Bobby come flooding into in mind, “but we don’t have anything of his for you to touch.”
“Boy I just told you that I ain’t no amateur,” she said offended as she grabbed both of their hands and began to call forth Bobby Singer.
When the medium called Bobby, he expected it to be like those cheesy made for television movies, where Missouri’s body would go stiff and her high voice would lower in an attempt to emulate a males voice, so he was shocked when he heard: “Hey idjits,” in what he was sure was Bobby’s voice.
Not trusting his memory at this point, Dean looked at Sam for confirmation that it was Bobby’s voice he was hearing and judging by the slack-jawed look of disbelief on his brother’s face, Dean was convinced that this was Bobby’s voice.
Once Dean was sure that this was Bobby his mind immediately changed directions and he now worried about what Bobby thought about them. He remembered that Missouri said that Bobby knew, but it’s one thing to know that Bobby was dead and knew that he was fucking his baby brother, but now that they were going to talk to him, what would he think? Would he judge them and hate them for finding love with each other?
“It’s okay, Dean,” Bobby told him. “At this point things are supposed to be a little woozy, it means that the spell is working, and your custard is doing its job. I promise you that by the time the baby’s here, you’ll be fine.”
It was a little Whoopi Goldbergish to hear Bobby’s voice coming from the body of a middle-aged black woman, so he closed his eyes and tried to envision Bobby. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t get a clear picture, all he could see was a rounded face and a reddish beard, but for him that was good enough, because he remembered something.
“What does that mean, Bobby?” Sam probed.
“Just what I said Sam, woozy,” Bobby explained. “A major part of this spell is the powerful glamor, and that will affect the people that you know both dead and alive. Some of us may be memories, and some of us may not. Until the transformation’s complete we don’t know what the end product will be. Dean’s just experiencing it before you.”
“Why is this happening Bobby?” Dean asked. “We may not have loved this life, but we sure as hell don’t want to forget it or the people we’ve met along the way.”
“Yeah Bobby,” Sam agreed, “what the hell?”
“It took a while, but you too finally were on the same page with what you wanted in life,” Bobby began to explain, “you both wanted family and to be in one place, to put down roots. When Monica Love needed a hunter it was perfect. The people that you need to stay in your life will stay. Don’t worry though, when you die, you’ll see us again.”
“But why this drastic change? Why am I pregnant and forgetting people who are important to me?” Dean asked slightly embarrassed at having to ask that and about the tears forming in his eyes.
“I can answer that,” a new feminine voice answered.
“Mom?” they asked in unison.
“Yes,” Mary Winchester confirmed. “The reason for the change is that you can’t settle down as a family the way you are, two brothers wanting to adopt a child. This way you can have a child that is yours and no one will question it. Eventually Sam’s memories will match yours Dean and by the time the baby’s born, the Winchester name will be restored.”
“But why mess with his memory?” Sam probed.
“Because it’ll be hard for you to know that there are supernatural things out there and not do something about it; this will be a clean slate for both of you. The spell will change the past you knew, it will erase the lonely childhood and cheap motel rooms and replace them with happy childhood memories that have nothing to do with hunting or killing. Dean, everything from your past won’t be lost, and you’ll get to keep Baby.”
With that revelation from Mary, Dean dropped Sam’s hand to wipe the tears that were now spilling over and broke the connection to the other side.
“Mom, come back, please!” Dean begged as he quickly took hold of Sam’s hand again. “Please.”
Missouri was a little groggy after channeling two people, so Dean went to get her a glass of water while Sam helped her to the den and let her rest on the sofa.
“Should we be scared of what’s happening to us Sam?” Dean asked one they had Missouri settled. “I know that we can trust mom and Bobby, but …”
“I think that we are scared of the unknown more than anything else. All I know was that when you couldn’t remember Benny it scared me shitless, and don’t think that I don’t know that you’re struggling with remembering Bobby.”
Dean didn’t know how could you explain to someone that you were forgetting if you couldn’t fucking remember, so Dean wasn’t sure how he was supposed to answer that accusation. He thought about what Bobby said, but especially what their mom told them. Their new life comes with new memories, a happy childhood, and a way for them to be together. What did that mean?
Would he be going through more changes that are physical? He had to think that he would because how was he supposed to give birth sporting a cock and balls. God please don’t let him have ass babies. He could tolerate anything but the humiliation of that.
Missouri woke an hour later and returned home after complaining about dead people riding her body like she was a bus, and Sam left Dean resting while he went to turn in his report to Jeff Johns and returned later with dinner and some much-needed time off.
Dean looked at Sam and for that first time since he couldn’t remember the vampire, he and his brother were alone after being apart for a month. Once they finished dinner, Dean made his way upstairs and waited for Sam to give him the welcome he should have had earlier that day.
Later when they were both spent, Dean let Sam spoon him from behind and lulled by the big man’s even breathing, fell into a comfortable sleep for the first time in a month. It was a good thing that he did get the much-needed rest because the next morning everything went to hell.
The next morning when Sam woke, he wanted to surprise Dean with breakfast in bed as a way to make up for the mind fuck that was yesterday. As he prepared the meal, he wanted something that would be easy on Dean’s stomach, because even if he wasn’t having morning sickness, he was sometimes a little queasy.
With a tray laden with juice, fake coffee, fruit, toast eggs and bacon (his stomach was fine) Sam made his way back to the bedroom and Dean. He smiled when he entered and heard Dean moan, seriously hoping that his lover was dreaming about him and what they did to each other last night.
“Hey Dean, wake up,” Sam bade softly as he joined the sleeping man on the bed, “I got some breakfast for you.”
When Dean moaned again, Sam could hear that pleasure was not the reason for the sounds emanating from Dean; this sound was a vocalization of pain.
What the hell was it this time? Each time they seem to get over some new change with Dean and get used to that change they were hit with something else. Sam kept telling himself that Bobby and his mom wouldn’t lie to them, tell them that everything was going to turn out okay, but as he put the tray down and pulled the covers away from Dean’s body, he questioned how Dean writhing in pain and bathed in his own sweat was a good thing.
When he got out of bed thirty, no maybe forty minutes ago, Dean was fine, or so he thought. He’s sure he would have noticed the heavy sweating and the translucent skin. Dean had always been pale, but now Sam could see the veins underneath the skin and the freckles that he loved and Dean loathed were no longer visible.
“Dean!” Sam called in an attempt to rouse his unconscious brother getting no response, “Dean!” he called again, but the result was the same.
“What do I do, what do I do,” Sam chanted to himself repeatedly. If this were a gunshot wound or a nasty cut, he would be in his element. However, this was neither and because it was Dean, he panicked. Again.
“Okay Sam, fucking think,” he cursed himself and then part of the answer came to him, cool him down. The human body couldn’t withstand a temperature of 104 degrees Fahrenheit without brain damage. Sam wasn’t sure if Deans temperature was anywhere near that, and he wasn’t going to waste time trying to find a thermometer. With a quick glance at Dean, Sam raced to the kitchen, grabbed three food storage bags, and filled them with ice before racing back to Dean.
Once back in the bedroom he took the bags, placed one under each of his armpits and the third between his legs before he found his phone, and made a frantic call to Dr. Robert. By the time the doctor arrived fifteen minutes later with Eva in tow, Sam was emptying water from the bags and replenishing them with ice, as the original had melted from the heat emanating from Dean’s body.
When the doctor entered the room the casual demeanor automatically left his body as he caught a glimpse of the man on the bed.
“You did good Sam with the ice, but you’re going to need a hell of a lot more.” He advised as he moved to examine Dean. “Now Sam!” he ordered when Sam didn’t move.
Sam watched as the doctor pulled his stethoscope and began to listen to Dean’s heart and lungs before his legs began to move. He made a run to the nearest convenient store and purchased all of the ice he could find while he endured stupid jokes about what kind of party he was having.
Sam was surprised that when he arrived back to the house Eva was outside waiting for him to help him and they worked side by side until they had all of the ice inside. When Sam reentered the bedroom, he noticed that Eva and the doctor had somehow moved Dean from the bed to the tub and the doctor was opening the large bags of ice and pouring on his overheated body.
“His temperature was 103.2, so we need to cool him off ASAP,” the doctor told Sam.
Once the three of them had Dean in an ice bath the doctor turned to him and said, “I can’t tell you what’s going on with him because I don’t have the tools I need to examine him, but I know where I can get access to what I need.”
“He… he’s going to be okay right?” Sam asked. It seemed as though he was asking that same fucking question every day, and each time he had to ask Dean was worse each time. He thought that once they had Dean covered in the ice that his temperature would go back to normal in minutes but it took twenty minutes before it dropped to 102.
“I can’t answer because I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but right now Sam you have two choices. You can take him to a regular hospital which is fifteen minutes away, but risk Dean waking up in cage somewhere and ready to kick your ass when he can get his hands on you, or we can drive an half an hour out to a doctor’s office equipped with everything I need.”
“A legit doctor’s office?” Sam questioned.
“Does it matter as long as he gets the help he needs?” Eva demanded.
“No, it really doesn’t,” Sam told her as he prayed that he made the right decision.
The three of them pulled a still unresponsive Dean from the tub, dried him off, and dressed him in sweats and a t-shirt before getting him to the car. The drive took longer than an hour because they had to keep stopping for ice to keep Dean’s temperature down.
When they finally reached the office, Dr. Robert and Eva both sprang into action, with the doctor shouting out orders to Eva in the manner of one of those medical television shows. Sam didn’t understand, but she did and that’s all that mattered.
Dr. Robert wasn’t kidding about this office, it was like a mini medical center and he was able to do a MRI and a CAT scan on Dean before they set him up on an IV drip to keep him hydrated and give him some strong analgesics.
Sam watched helplessly as he watched Eva and Dr. Robert read the results from the tests that he’d run earlier. He made a promise that he’d take care of Dean, but when his life seemed to be in danger, he could only sit on the side lines and watch as others fulfilled his promise.
“Okay Sam, I can only treat one patient and unless I’m wrong, I’m sure you want that to be Dean and not the baby. I had Eva to add analgesics to the drip to help with the pain and the inflammation that seemed to have affected his entire body. It’s as if he’s going through growing pains all at once.”
“Of course Dean,” Sam weakly replied, but he had to ask, “So the baby’s…?”
“I can’t promise you anything as far as the baby is concerned, but know that everything that I do will be for Dean, not the baby.” When Sam nodded his head in agreement, Dr. Robert walked back towards the table where Dean lay.
They spent most of the night in the office letting the drip do its work and Sam could see that Dean was no longer sweating and he was visibly relaxing and resting peacefully. They had to get out of the office before the doctor’s staff arrived for work.
They were back home in under an hour and Sam watched the man he loved more than life sleep. He gently reached over and placed his hand on the bump that was their child and prepared to say good-bye to their son, but then he felt a kick.
The next morning when Dean woke up, he felt as though he was recovering from a week long hangover. He looked over at the space beside him, but Sam was gone. Work maybe? He wasn’t sure but his head hurt too much to worry about that now. Not only was his head hurting, the baby was pressing down on his bladder and he had to go now.
Carefully getting off the bed so that the drummers that had taken up residence in his head would keep the thump, thump, thump down and easing the ache. Once his feet hit the floor he made his first tentative step towards the bathroom and found it was all for naught because he tripped over his sweats.
He had plenty of sweats, why did Sam dress him in his big ass gigantor clothes knowing that they were too big for him. After he picked himself up from the floor and finally made it to the bathroom, he sat down on the toilet to relieve himself and pissed on his clean sweats. What the hell was he thinking sitting down to take a piss? Was this the pregnancy brain he’d tried to convince Sam of when he couldn’t remember the vampire?
After cleaning up the mess he’d made of himself Dean searched for clean sweats, thinking that he was going to take another nap, but even though his head was feeling somewhat better, his body still ached, so he decided to go in search of Sam thinking that the movement would help his sore joints.
After trying on three sets of sweats, they all seemed to belong to Sam, all were too big and cause him to trip when he walked, so instead of a fourth set, he just rolled up the pants legs and the sleeves and made his way downstairs where he found Sam bustling around in the kitchen preparing...lunch? How long did he sleep?
“Sam,” he greeted stretching in an attempt to ease the ache in his back, “don’t say I didn’t tell you, but I hurt all over and I think that I over did it working in the garden.”
“No Dean,” Sam said as he turned to face his lover. He didn’t finish his sentence and dropped the glass of whatever he was holding. “Dean?” he whispered the look on his face was almost comical, but Dean knew it was serious the way he was staring.
“Oh God, Sam,” Dean tried not to panic, “what’s wrong with me now?”
“Dean, you’re,” Sam sputtered as he pointed at Dean and searched for words. “Did you not look in in the mirror?”
“No, I didn’t,” Dean complained, “What the fuck did you do with my clothes?”
“Dean, those are your clothes,” Sam told him as he stepped over the glass he dropped to stand in front of Dean.
“These are obviously not mine Sam,” the sarcasm dropping from his voice he continued, “I wouldn’t be swimming in my clothes…oomph.” He exclaimed as Sam grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the kitchen and down the hall to the foyer and threw open the closet door so that Dean could look into the full-length mirror there.
“Sam?” Dean’s voice shook as he called his brother’s name, “what happened to me?”
Dean backed away from the mirror and into the solid wall of Sam’s chest because what he saw terrified him. Instead of the six-foot, muscled hunter, a shorter, longhaired pretty … person stared back at him.
chapter 9 Chapter11