49. A Patch of Blue

‘You are the little boy made for me in the stars.’ – Nelly Furtado.

When Dean totally zones the hell out, Sam knows they’re in pretty bad trouble. It’s not just all the blood – though, no, he never wanted to see that much of his brother’s blood, ever – it is that no one appears to be quite sure what they’re doing.

Ruthie seems about half-qualified for this and Nathalie is useless. What’s Sam meant to do? He can only stroke Dean’s hair, try and keep him from getting too freaked.

His only job in all this can now be filed under operation failure because Dean has obviously gone into shock, which is the one thing no one wanted to happen.

The problem is that Nathalie slightly misjudged the incision and Sam saw it happen but... he doesn’t know anything about operating on people, about babies. And none of them know how Dean’s body has been supporting life. Only now does Sam realize he has been far too comfortable with the miracle explanation. He should have been looking into it more. But there is only so much a person can research an anomaly.

John is pacing. Helpful. But Sam knows where he’s coming from, why he can’t stop moving. If he could rip himself from Dean’s side, he would be doing something similar. It is the curse of being ineffective as they both are, unable to gain any control of the situation.

So now his brother has been cut twice and he never thought he would want that Big Larry guy to magically appear with all his expertise in how to slice up cows, but now. Now he would love that. Sam needs someone to get the baby out safely. His baby.

Dean is too still, silent, and Sam checks his pulse. Fine, strong enough, given the circumstances, given all the blood.

The blood.

“Okay,” Ruthie has Dean’s blood on her shirt, all over her hands and Sam thinks it should be him. Him and Dean, they’re the same inside. Same genetic make-up. Only he should see what’s underneath the skin. “I think we have him. Nat, give me a hand. I think I brought everything in.”

I think, I think...

People should know these things for sure.

Sam knows, logically, that he should look up and make sure that they are... dealing with this. But he can’t. He kneels, keeps his eyes on Dean’s face, flushed and slack, because it looks just as if he’s sleeping. Nothing worse. Nothing worrying.

“C’mon, Dean,” he tries to sound encouraging, but he probably just sounds scared, desperate, “open your eyes. You want to see our boy, huh? Soon. Only if you open your eyes.” One thing Sam wants now is a clean, sterile hospital room. A structured environment, professionals, somewhere where he could be sure that both his brother and their son are being looked after, safe. Not Bobby’s dirty house, in the care of incompetents.

If only things were different, it would be better. Wouldn’t it?

He touches Dean’s hot face, his burning cheeks, and wishes he had paid more attention. Dean must have been getting progressively sicker over the past day or more. Things like this don’t just spring on you. And he must have been in pain, too, but he didn’t mention it. Too busy feeling guilty, being silent, suffering.

Crazy, brave thing. My Dean.

Sam presses his face to Dean’s hair, biting back a few stray tears. No point letting them out right now, no point allowing all this irrational emotion to get the better of him.

Stupid, self-loathing... nothing’s on your shoulders, none of this... none of it’s down to you...

“Okay. Sam, can you... Make sure he doesn’t move,” Nathalie sounds vaguely like she’s going to cry. “Please.”

Sam looks over his shoulder, eyes raised deliberately above the state of Dean’s gashed belly. “He’s not going to move.” And he feels so sick because something is going wrong and he can’t shift positions. Doesn’t want to know. He can just crouch by the bed and try very hard to bring Dean out of it. Out of himself. He rubs Dean’s arm to warm him more effectively.

Maybe if he’s warm enough...

“Holy... more towels...”

A hand grips Sam’s shoulder and he keeps looking down. “Dad...”

“Don’t worry.”

It’s such a ridiculous thing to say that Sam almost laughs. “Yeah, okay.”

John’s voice is too thick, too rough, and Sam can’t take it. He recognizes his brother’s way of covering things up, how he tries to keep the truth of how bad things are from Sam. And he knows exactly who Dean inherited that unsuccessful trick from. “It’ll be fine”

He heard somewhere that c-sections are meant to be fairly quick and not too traumatic. Ha. Dean’s cheeks are draining colour, like the fever has been startled out of him and Sam thinks all this has just gone on too long.

“What can I do?” he asks, because he abruptly needs to do something more. What can a person do when someone is in shock and bleeding all over the place? It’s as if all his training, all his hardened hunter existence has been knocked clean out of his head. “Can I...”

No one responds to him and he begins to doubt the strength of his voice.

“Oh my God...”

Sam makes the mistake of looking anywhere that isn’t Dean’s face. He looks down. And mostly it is just blood, which he has something like prepared himself for, and slashes through flesh like Dean has been clawed open and then.

And then.

Sam’s vision goes flat, dimensionless.

“I’ll be damned,” his father says and his fingers become so tight around Sam’s shoulder that it hurts, hurts enough to bring him back into the room and figure out that he is looking at Nathalie, chalk faced and holding the messy mass of his son.

Sam means to look at Dean, to see if he is awake, he should be fully conscious for this.

But he isn’t. Sam knows he isn’t without sparing him a glance. If he were, he would be grasping and desperate. As it is, he is only still. Sam reaches out his hands instead, not understanding, entirely uncomprehending. Breathless.

He’s stunned and it occurs to him now, now at last, that he hasn’t been expecting there to be an end. He has only expected endlessness.

“Here, I have... I have... have to hold him. Dean said.”

His dad is holding him back in the same way he tried to hold Dean back, from seeing something that would scare him.

He gets it.

Everything has gone quiet.

Under the way his heart is beating in his mouth, underneath his ears, there is too much quiet. All the air has been sucked out and as Nathalie turns her back to him, holding his tiny miracle, he feels like the roof of the house is going to slide free and everything cold is going to flood in.

Sam hears himself say, “Dean, Dean...” because it’s all he can articulate. A smattering of other words won’t make sense in his voice. What are you doing? Where? Where are... Dean’s irrational fear of someone stealing their baby away seems viable for a cluster of seconds.

The world is full of separated whispers and unconnected noises and Sam takes his hands off Dean to stand. “I said I’d hold him,” he says. There is a hopeless note to his words and he can’t put together what he really believes, what he is even thinking except.

Everything is wrong.

And Dean said. Dean was so insistent.

You have gotta hold him if I can’t. If I’m... he meant if he died, but... This counts. Dean is just. Not with them.

Is anyone with Sam?

The answer is only one, thin wordless cry.

And Sam’s knees shake, braced in expectation of hitting the floor. John’s hand has slipped, it is splayed against his back so much like Dean’s could be.

It’s more of a scream, really. In a small way. Like a scream that Sam could hold in just one of his hands.

He curls his fingers and this time his own voice works. “Dean told me I should hold him. So he knows me.”

Nathalie looks back at him, and her smile would be coy if her eyes weren’t still empty with shock. “Sam, you realize cleaning the kid off a little is sort of necessary? Making sure he’s breathing and all that stuff? Getting his mouth clear?”

“Um...”

“One minute, okay? Chill.”

Chill.

Great advice. Thanks.

Sam sweeps his hand across Dean’s damp forehead and now he feels it at last, weak but there. The hunter instincts kicking in again, as sure as if it’s just another inborn impulse. His hands are too twitchy to be useful, but he can sure as hell instruct. “Dad,” he turns his eyes to his father, who honestly looks more than a little stunned. “Dad.”

“Sam?”

“Dean needs stitching up or... or something. God. Should there be so much blood?”

“We’re not stitching him right away,” Ruthie actually sounds blasé, like she has done this a million times and Sam knows full well that she is in no way a pro midwife. “All Dean needs is... clips.”

“Clips?” Those bleeding, gaping places look like they need more than to be simply clipped together.

“Well, I don’t know about the one incision... You don’t need to think about it. Just. Here. Nat, give Sam his kid. You don’t want the little guy thinking you’re his mom.” She frowns down, like something has distracted her. “Did Dean black out? We all did a bad job of keeping things calm.”

Sam is ridiculously riled up by the fact she hasn’t noticed that Dean slipped, very damn abruptly, into a state of unreachable shock. Then he rationalizes, tells himself that it’s good she was absorbed in her work.

He chokes. “No.”

“You guys were pretty badly prepared for the whole home birth thing, given that this was your only option,” Nathalie is saying, interrupting him, ignoring him, “but at least Bobby has clean towels, huh?”

“Clean towels...” Sam can’t keep up.

“Here.” Coming closer, she steps into his personal space and Sam thinks that this is wrong, somehow. Just wrong.

He remembers as she leans forward. “Wait.” Sam unbuttons his shirt and he knows that Nathalie isn’t the only one raising her eyebrows at him. He must look strange. Trembling, unsure, lost. It’s all chaos and he’s standing there, looking like the freak he is without his freak brother to back him up on it. “Okay. Dean said that it’s best. If he can get used to my skin, my... my scent. It’s important he knows.”

Who he belongs to. Who loves him the most.

Really, though, all Sam feels when she presses his son into his arms, wrapped in one of Bobby’s clean towels, is numb. He is very numb all over.

Overwhelmed, he thinks, just don’t think about Dean for a minute. He won’t be happy if you screw this up.

It is that conflict and a sudden, throat blocking blast of affection and then Sam realizes that he’s crying. Softly, half-happily, and he knows that he shouldn’t be even a little happy.

You’re here. His head is a jumble of sound again, murmurs without meaning, and he cannot make himself focus too far away from the face of his son. So small. Oh God, too small. His eyes want to roll downwards, searching for someone to help him be sure this isn’t an exceptionally vivid dream – Dean, Dean, Dean. But for Dean, Sam imagines that right now there is only dark and he is powerless to make the light come back.

We’re all here, I promise. We’re all here. Waiting for you.

There is so much... confusion. Sam thought he knew how this would go, if it happened. How he would feel when he held his son, his and Dean’s own creation, for the first time. He imagined... well, a glow. A cliché.

In place of that, there is guilt. I’m so sorry for bringing you here, when everything’s like it is. There is love. Too much love to hold in one place. Sorrow for the thin, muddy coloured hair and closed eyes and heartbroken little mouth letting out tiny sounds like hurt. As with Dean, there is no lack of this was meant to be.

Standing still, looking at the boy who Dean wants to call Alexander, a name that to Sam seems to carry too much weight, too much responsibility, he feels like he does when he looks at his brother. When someone says something to cut Dean down, to wound him.

Laced with fire, that same urge to protect, to shelter. To keep.

It has been dark for a while by the time Dean comes around. His eyes flutter and Sam watches him cautiously, trying not to startle him. He keeps his eyes open, staring like they don’t see anything he understands.

Sam has been dividing his time in five or ten minute slots, between Dean and their son, and he thanks God that he happens to have gotten lucky. At least he’s here when Dean starts to surface.

Dean stays like this, gazing blank and unseeing, for a few minutes before Sam leans into him and whispers, “Dean. Hi. It’s okay. Nothing’s gonna hurt anymore. I promise. No more sharp things. No one cutting. It’s all fine. You were amazing... you are...” He murmurs on until Dean looks at him. Really looks.

His eyes are unstable with bemused, hazy fright and Sam can’t let that get the better of either of them. “Hey,” he touches the back of Dean’s hand to pull him down, back to earth, back to reality.

Dean licks his lips and Sam wishes he had some water nearby. He should have thought to bring some, of course Dean needs something to drink. It isn’t as if he asks for a whole lot, Sam could at least pre-empt his simple necessities.

“Hey. What hap... where’d everyone go?”

Sam doesn’t know what to say. Dean hasn’t got a good concept of the time that has passed, but it has been... too long. “Downstairs.”

“Oh,” Dean’s hand drifts down to his stomach and he flinches before he can make contact, hissing, “Crap, feels like... it hurts. Hurts like a bitch.”

“Getting cut open will do that to you, I guess. You should heal up in a few days. There’s gonna be an ugly scar, but... well, it sorta goes with the collection, huh?” He’s rambling and not particularly trying to make sense, just hoping to keep Dean from disconnecting again.

Dean’s face falls, mouth turning down in sharp, panicked curves. “No,” he presses his head back, eyes damp, gritting his teeth, “no, Sammy, tell me. Just tell me.”

The reaction is more than unexpected. Sam blinks slowly, trying to think of the right things to say, to stop this sort of overreaction. “Tell you...” It comes at him like a wave, what Dean wants, what Dean thinks, and Sam can’t believe he has been stupid enough to assume that any other thought would be in Dean’s head right now. “We kind of turned Bobby’s kitchen into a temporary maternity ward. He’s not gonna be thrilled when he gets home, but.... It was the cleanest place in the house. You cleaned it up, remember? Our boy’s just there. Just downstairs. We’re all here, Dean.”

It sounds so good to say it. Our boy. Something between them, solid, real, touchable. Proof of them.

Ours.

“He’s there? He’s okay? Just... just downstairs?”

Sam smiles. “I’ll go and fetch him for you. Dad hasn’t really stopped staring, I’m pretty sure Alex could do with a break from that.”

“I did it,” Dean says, disbelieving, stuck.

“Yeah, you did.” He watches the way Dean struggles to find the correct response to this, the right kind of cocky smirk.

“I’m awesome.”

Sam nods.

“You called him Alexander?”

“Jesus, Dean, you’ve only been out for a few hours. I just had to call him something. If you don’t like it anymore...”

“Does it suit him?”

Sam is about to answer, but instead he pats Dean’s hand again. “I’ll just let you figure that out for yourself, all right? Wait here.”

“I have so much choice in that,” Dean gripes, gentle and too faint. He’s exhausted, Sam can hear it in every word, in how he moves uncomfortably, shifts like he’s too heavy and sucks his breath.

“Does it hurt that much?”

“Are you nuts? Feels like those bitches cut me in two.” It’s mostly bravado, but the pain is real and Sam is going to have to do something about that. “Doesn’t matter.”

“If you’re...”

“No,” Dean is too agitated to listen, “Sammy. Please.”

It doesn’t take a genius to guess what he’s asking for. “Back in a minute.”

Sam’s feet always get tangled when he’s rushing and, as he takes the stairs two at a time in his attempt to be quick, he hears Dean call softly, “Don’t break anything, Sasquatch.” It is maybe his answering laugh that draws John out of the kitchen, to the foot of the stairs.

“He’s okay?”

“Yeah. I think so. In pain, but... with me.” He means to say with us, but doesn’t correct himself. “Just wants to see Alex. And, uh. You.”

Alright, so that’s a small white lie, but Sam is certain that Dean does want to see their father, he just hasn’t mentioned it.

“Later,” John smiles at him with a dismissive gesture of his hand, “I could use a drink. After all that.”

Sam wants to tell him thanks, because he knows this is his way of stepping back and letting them have time together, alone, yet he isn’t sure how to say it without making a big deal. In the end he says nothing, just passes John by and nods gratefully in his direction.

It works. They’re Winchesters, words aren’t always the best thing.

He intervenes in Nathalie making googly eyes at Alex (he figures John handed him over to her) and Ruthie whisper-shouting at someone on the phone that late is not good enough. He’s guessing that’s Larry, who is apparently more incompetent than anyone else. Nathalie looks up and grins at him, unsurprised.

“He’s very quiet.”

“What? Like, abnormally quiet?”

She shakes her head before he can really start in on her, questioning and fretting. “Not abnormally, Sam. Just quiet. Kind of. Considerate.”

The thought makes him want to smile, though he knows it’s not possible. “Dean wants to meet him now. He’ll be okay if I just take him upstairs, right?”

“Hm? Oh, yes. Totally. Very strong.”

“Really?”

“Good lungs, good heart, just... strong,” she smiles at him, “well done. Tell Dean well done, too. You’re both so weird. I mean, not in a bad way.”

“Thanks.”

His heartbeat starts to inch closer to a normal pace when he takes Alex from her. Yes, the name suits him. Dean will have to agree with that. It was his choice, after all. Sam whispers hello and takes the stairs much slower this time, breathing low in his chest.

“Y’know,” he says, “I think there’s only one person in the whole world who maybe loves you more than I do. So you gotta be real good for him. Not that you’re not good. Crap. Wait. No. I didn’t mean to say that. That’s a bad word...”

He doesn’t have the whole talking to children thing down yet.

There’s time, though.

“Crap,” is actually the first thing Dean says when Sam goes into the bedroom. He has struggled to sit up, propped against his two thin pillows, and Sam hopes he hasn’t hurt himself in the places where they worked to put him back together, to help him heal.

“Language,” he scolds and Dean doesn’t even scowl. He just stares, incredibly intent.

“I thought...” That’s all he manages before he quits speaking and yeah, Sam completely understands that.

“Here, hold your arms right. That’s... like that. So he’s comfy. I think you’re right. He’s an Alexander. It suits him.” He makes an effort to shut up when he kneels to give Dean his baby.

This is a different silence from the veiled horror of birth. It’s soft and lamp lit and Sam could swallow it and be happy for the rest of his life.

It is the silence of a clearing sky, showing some sunlight.

“Oh...” Dean exhales a blunt, wet breath. “Sammy.”

“I know.”

“Sammy.”

“Uh huh.” He perches uncomfortably on the edge of the bed and runs his hand through Dean’s hair. “We did good, didn’t we?”

Dean dips his head in agreement and leans his face forward, whispering incomprehensibly, words that are only meant for one person. Sam lets himself swallow the murmured words he can’t quite understand and thinks that, yes, he is going to be happy for his whole life, and it is going to last for a long time.