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according2thelore · 1 year ago

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You are married to Sam Winchester. You don’t have a name.

You met him in a bar. Or a park. Or a diner where you worked. Or a library you were studying in. Or on the bus route back to your apartment. Or in the frozen aisle of a grocery store. The location doesn’t matter, but you know that you know him. That’s all you need to know. He smiles at you, and you smile back. He’s nice to look at, in the way that shards of stained glass are nice to look at. In the way that car crashes are captivating, in the way that a tree can be both dead and alive at once, in the way that homes disappear one room at a time. It doesn’t matter. You open your mouth to introduce yourself but the waitress-librarian-cop-bus driver-clerk talks over you. He never asks again. I’m Sam, he says. It’s a nice name. He’s got a nice face.

Dating him is easy. He never asks any questions about you. You ask questions about him, but he doesn’t like it, so you learn to stop. I had a brother, he offers once, in the way that someone says, I tried to kill myself. You nod. His name is Dean. It’s odd, maybe, that he refers to Dean in both past and the present tense. He doesn’t like it when you question things like that, though, so you keep quiet. Sam says strange things sometimes, when you’re sitting entwined on your couch watching reality TV. I killed monsters. They killed me, sometimes, too. He says. Your eyes go wide. He reassures you, It doesn’t matter. You melt back against him.

Oh, okay. As long as it doesn’t matter, that’s alright with you.

You get married. You get married in a courthouse, because Sam doesn’t like churches. I’ve made too many promises in churches, he said. I can’t break any more.

Okay, you say. You never liked churches much anyway. Or maybe you do. Maybe you believe in God. Sam doesn’t. He says he killed God. You believe him, because he’s got a knife carved from bone hidden under your boxspring. He keeps herbs and finger bones in jars and a golden bowl in your china cabinet, and won’t let you touch them. When the clerk hands you your wedding certificate, you smile as Sam kisses you. You’re excited when you take the paper from him, hoping to see your name. But in the space where it’s supposed to be is blank. Sam rubs a finger over Marriage Certificate, then over his name scribbled in pen. It’s perfect, he says, looking up at you with distant stars in his eyes. Oh. Okay, it’s perfect. That’s good.

He cries out for Dean in his sleep. Night terrors so severe that they upend you from his bed shake him awake once a week. He screams in a language you’ve never heard before. After those nights, Sam doesn’t look you in the eye. He doesn’t talk after nightmares, and you don’t know how to shake him back to consciousness.

You catch him in the reflex of doing things. Odd things set him off. A rerun of that medical drama you binged in undergrad shuts Sam down, and he doesn’t come home until after dinner. An Asia song plays in a grocery store and Sam drops the milk in the middle of the aisle. You find him having a panic attack behind your car in the parking lot.

He has an old car in the apartment’s parking garage that you’re not allowed to touch. It’s vintage—a beautiful thing, because you know a lot about cars or maybe you don’t—and it’s got an arsenal in the trunk. He buries salt lines in your yard. If you sneak up behind him, he’s got a knife to your throat before you can explain yourself.

Sam laughs at something on his phone, and goes to show someone, but it’s always only you there. It seems to disappoint him. When he’s upset, he gets more upset when you say the wrong things. It’s a dance that you don’t know the steps to, and Sam’s too tired to teach you.

It’s okay, you’ll learn yourself. You buy him almonds at the grocery store. You always keep the thermostat above seventy two degrees Fahrenheit. You always grab him a second of whatever you get: a beer, a sandwich, a blanket. You sleep on the side of the bed closest to the door. It’s not perfect. When you do the laundry, he gets frustrated with you because you fold things “too big.” He always orders two sides of fries. He buys ground beef that he doesn’t eat.

He has a dog. The dog doesn’t like you, but it doesn’t not like you either. Sam hates you for it. Dean loves this dog. He loves Dean, too. Sam told you. You wilt. Another test failed. Dean’s really good at this game, but you’re not. Dean’s good at most games, at least the games that Sam likes to play. You try to love the dog more after that, giving him treats and actually cooking the ground beef Sam throws away every week to feed him. When Sam sprints into the kitchen as the smell wafts through the house, he collapses when he sees it’s just you. He doesn’t talk the rest of the weekend.

Sam gets a job at the factory. Or the construction site. Or the law firm. Or the local community college. You work as a nurse. Or a doctor. Or a cop. Or a secretary. Or a chef. It doesn’t matter. The details are blurry. Sam invites you to a Christmas party with his coworkers. This is my wife, Sam says, proud. His coworkers smile, but they never ask your name. You don’t have one. That’s alright with you, as long as it’s alright with Sam. You’d hate to embarrass him at a work party.

You have sex. You get pregnant. You have a kid. Those things happen in some kind of order, but it gets mixed up sometimes.

You’ve always wanted a girl probably, but when you look into the face of your son, you realize that you’ve never wanted anything as much as you want this child. Or maybe you never wanted kids. But you have one now, and he’s your priority. You’re a good mom.

Sam didn’t have a good mom, didn’t have a mom until he was in his thirties, but she didn’t last long. So it’s important to him that you’re a good mom for his son. You’re going to take the job seriously.

We should name him Dean, you suggest, and Sam sobs into your hair. Your chest warms pleasantly. You like it when Sam holds you like this. When Sam shows you the birth certificate, your eyes catch on the name. Dean Winchester Junior? You ask. That’s for naming a child after a parent. Sam looks at the baby in your arms—wait, now it’s in his arms—and says, Dean is as much of a part of this as either of us.

The space for Mother of Child is blank. You’ve never seen a picture of Dean Winchester. Or Dean Winchester, Sr. now.

You fall asleep in an apartment and wake up in a house with a porch and a white-picket fence. That’s nice. It’ll give the dog space to run around. In your child’s sixth month alive, Sam sleeps in the child’s crib with a knife. Just to make sure, he says. Nothing’s going to happen to Dean. It takes him a long time to say the name without flinching when he’s talking about his son. When your son turns a year old, you finally remember to ask what Sam’s tattoo means. He looks surprised that you’ve mentioned it. It’s a tattoo that I got with Dean. He says. Of course it is. You’re angry, but it’s gone again, because these are things you’re supposed to accept about Sam. It keeps demons from possessing me. Demons? You ask, startled. Sam’s mouth thins into a line. Yes. You need to get one, he says. And the second that Dean turns sixteen, I’m signing that form and we’re taking him in to get one, too. You’re alarmed, until Sam tells you that it’s okay. That’s a relief. You get the tattoo, right over your left breast, and Sam fucks you so hard that you can’t walk the next day. You introduce your family to your boss one day, This is Sam and Dean!, and Sam shoves the baby into your arms and has to leave the room. We’re calling him Dean Junior from now on, Sam says later, after the hunted look in his eyes melts into exhaustion. Alright.

You clean the house. You wear sundresses. You like your job, but not enough to let it get in the way of being a mother. Sam teaches Dean Junior how to throw a ball. He helps him with math homework. You make meatloaf and take Dean Junior to soccer games.

You realize late—too late, maybe—that all the pictures of you on the mantle are a little blurry. You can’t remember the last time you saw your own reflection. You pull out your driver’s license. It’s blank, just your address. No picture of you. Your hair colour is just “dark.” No height. “Thin” is your weight. You speed on the way home from work so you can get pulled over. You hand over your empty license and your blank registration, and the cop barely gives either a glance. You’re free to go. He says. Everything’s in order.

You walk in the front door, and Sam kisses you on the cheek. He’s had to get glasses recently, and they make his face look even more handsome. Welcome home, honey, he says, smiling. Do you remember when you told me you killed God? You ask, because that sounds vaguely familiar. Sam blinks at you in confusion for a couple of seconds. The house shudders around you for a second.

Yes, Sam says, voice distant. Yes, I think I did. There’s a new God now though. I helped raise him. He’s a good kid. The house stills. There is no room for nasty things here. Only good. You nod, relieved. I’m glad he’s a nice boy, you say, picking up your son. If anyone could raise God, you could.

Sam looks haunted by this. He retreats.

Sam doesn’t tell you everything. Sam won’t ever tell you everything.

You look into the face of your son as he swings his legs lightly against your hip. He’s got green eyes, and he’s sucking on his thumb, a nasty habit you’ve tried to break. Sam shows Dean Junior pictures of his brother. He tells him stories, when Dean Junior’s asleep, about the open road, about cicadas and fireworks and greasy diner food and sunscreen and used textbooks and ash.

You sit on the opposite side of the door and cry because this man is a catastrophe and he hunted monsters and he loves everything more than you thought anyone could love anything. He’s half a soul, crammed into one body, edges ragged. He’s over two hundred years old. And he likes cherry slushies and he’s killed angels and he dreams of his brothers hands and he’s seen the face of God.

I love your uncle, you had heard his voice, a low murmur in Junior’s nursery one night. Sometimes I don’t know how to exist and be so unknown. Even when we didn’t speak, he knew me. No one has known me in years. I don’t think anyone will ever know me again.

You kiss him and try to make it like his brother would do it. He’s grateful. Sam’s grateful for a lot of things. He calls your lives together an “apple pie life.” But you don’t like apple pie. Or maybe you do. It doesn’t matter.

It’s okay. You’re just Sam Winchester’s wife. You’ve got a son named Dean.

You’ve spent your whole life sharing them both with a dead man.

crossposted on ao3 here

#supernatural #sam winchester #sam and dean #spn #ao3 #sam winchester's blurry faceless nameless thin wife #an icon truly #she's for the people #gencest #weirdcest #implied sam/dean #samdean #wincest #charlotte will be drawing this!!!! because she's the best!!!! and talented!!! mwah mwah mwah!!!#and i'm not just saying that bc she's reading this over my shoulder #lizzy writes

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