Topic: A Frank Discussion (AU)

Jo Winchester

Date: 2013-08-08 11:23 EST
((Contains material of an adult nature.

Privacy was definitely something that was in very short supply in Bobby and Ellen Singer's house. Despite this, however, there was always the opportunity for an illusion of privacy, which was, admittedly, the best anyone was going to get. Though no words were coherently understandable, it didn't take a genius to work out the cut and thrust of the frank discussion going on behind the closed door of Dean's room upstairs. The high running tensions had come to a head with an innocent query from Nim as to when they were going after Death's Scythe, and after ten minutes of circular argument, Ellen had banished them both to the room they shared until they had worked it all out between them, while everyone else went on with business as usual, pretending not to listen to the back and forth of male and female voices above.

For Dean, it wasn't so much a question of when as to whom, and as far as he was concerned, one of those whoms was not going to be his pregnant wife, whether she was very pregnant or barely pregnant. There was no room for discussion or debate. He had put his foot down, and that was that. Banished to his room or not, he was done arguing.

That may have been that in Dean's mind, but he hadn't counted on his stubborn pregnant wife putting her foot down, too. Nim was furious with him for not even discussing it with her, knowing just from the little he'd said that his decision had been made the moment they'd found out she was carrying their firstborn son. Advancing into the room they shared, she spun on her heel to face him, hands on her hips and dark eyes ablaze. "Don't you dare clam up on me now, Dean Winchester," she snapped at him angrily. "I'm pregnant, I haven't regressed to infancy myself!"

Banished to his room - the one that had belonged to him since he was a small boy when his father John would dump him and Sam off while he went gallivanting across the country on one hunt or another - Dean shut the door behind him, though he was pretty sure it would do little to muffle the argument that was still brewing between them. "I'm not clamming up," Dean pointed out, as he let Nim have the first word, confident he'd have the last. "I'm not gonna argue about this, Nim. There's nothing to discuss." His mind was made up, no matter how she felt about it. He didn't need her to go with him, and he wasn't going to put her life or the life of their firstborn in danger.

"For God's sake, Dean, you can't do that!" she burst out, throwing her hands up in exasperation. "You don't have the right to lay down the law to me. You don't own me, you married me, there's a difference. I'm not stupid, okay' I know there's a lot of things I can't do now, but you're not even going to let me help when you summon Crowley, are you? You're just gonna lock me in a padded cell and assume that I'm gonna go along with that because it was your decision!"

"Not a padded cell, but yes." Dean fully intended to keep Nimue out of trouble and well away from danger for at least the next nine months and maybe even longer. Had she not gotten herself pregnant, he might have been okay with her taking part in the summoning, but now that she was carrying his son - their son - inside her, there was no way he was budging. He had already seen her die once - hell, he'd been the cause of that death, or so he still believed. He wasn't going to chance it happening again, especially where demons were involved. He moved to brush past her, to - oh, clean his guns or something - anything so he didn't have to face her ire.

She glared at him as he brushed by, her small jaw clenched furiously as she considered what came next. "You can't keep me here, you know," she pointed out in a slightly calmer voice. "The second you head out, I'll follow you, any way I can. And you won't be there to keep an eye on me if that happens." It was a bit of a sneaky blow, but she had a feeling Ellen and Bobby weren't going to be quite so overly protective as her husband was. "It's not like I'm proposing to go off right now - I was planning on taking it easy for a few weeks, you know. But of course, I'm pregnant. In Dean Winchester's world, that automatically means I'm braindead and fit for nothing but being an incubator for the next eight months!"

"Someone seems to have forgotten what happened the last time they insisted on coming along," he muttered under his breath as he checked and re-checked his Beretta, though that had really not turned out so well, and he'd sort of promised never to leave her behind like that again, but then, she hadn't been pregnant then, like she was now. Lifting his head from his obsessive-compulsive gun-checking, he glanced over his shoulder at her, eyes narrowed. "I never said you were braindead," he pointed out a little defensively. He really and truly believed he was doing the right thing in trying to keep her safe, but he had to privately admit that in the past, even his best intentions hadn't always worked out so well in the end.

He really shouldn't have brought that up. She was still sore about it, and he knew that. She was also tired, aching, and battling with hormones. Nim's eyes blazed as he met her gaze, narrowing with venomous warning. "Oh, you mean when you almost got yourself killed because you couldn't handle the idea of me being along?" she snapped at him. Furious wasn't a big enough word to cover her strength of feeling now. Incandescent, perhaps. "Care to recall who saved your *ss when that happened" Come to think of it, what part of your brain thought it was a good idea to bring that up at all?"

She glared at him, teeth grinding in the silence for a moment before she went on. "You didn't need to say I'm braindead, Dean, you just went right ahead and decided it all on your own. Nim's pregnant, she's obviously lost all ability to think for herself, not to mention the ability to look after herself. Big bad Dean's going to have to do all the thinking and doing for the next eight months, and we all know how good he is at that!"

Now she was getting personal, and he was getting angry at her putting words in his mouth that he didn't mean - or more accurately, assuming she knew what he was thinking and feeling and practically accusing him of being unable to take care of things on his own. "I'll have you know I was already hunting when you were still just a gleam in your Mama's eyes!" he retorted, turning to face her and pointing at her with one finger just to make a point. Never mind the fact that he wasn't really actively hunting at the age of six. As a matter of fact, he had only just started learning to shoot at that age, but that wasn't the point. He shoved the Beretta back in his jacket, considering going for a drive because that's what Dean always did when he was upset. It wasn't quite the same thing as running away. It just gave him some time to cool down and think straight.

Jo Winchester

Date: 2013-08-08 11:24 EST
As though implying that she was just trouble waiting to happen and certain to land him in it wasn't getting personal. As though making decisions without discussing them with her wasn't getting personal. Behaving as though his word was law and she had no choice in the matter ....that wasn't getting personal at all, was it' She slapped his finger away from her as they glared at each other. "And that gives you the right to get all entitled and preachy on me, does it?"

"I'm not watching you die on me again!" he snapped, blurting it out before he could stop himself. They'd been over this and over this, and he thought they'd resolved it, but then she'd gotten pregnant and complicated matters, and the truth was he couldn't bear the thought of losing her or the baby, especially not after seeing his little glimpse of the future. Now that he'd said it, admitted what it was that was really at the heart of the matter - at least, for him - he felt a mix of guilt and anger and even fear - more fearful of losing her than he'd ever been of losing his brother. He swallowed a deep breath, trying hard to keep his cool. He didn't want to get angry with her. Hell, he didn't really want to tell her she couldn't come with him, but he'd already lost her once, and he didn't want to lose her again.

"No, you're not!" she shouted back at him, almost nose to nose by this point, the sheer force of her feeling radiating out from her to spark against his ire. "Because you're not thinking!" Realizing she'd raised her voice a little too much, she abruptly took a step back, throwing her hands in the air as she turned away, taking a breath to calm down. One hand rubbed at her forehead, her throat tightening as those blasted hormones decided now was a perfect time to be getting tearful. She sighed, half-turning back toward him.

"Look," she began again, her voice back on the level but still shaking with emotion. "You told me yourself what Hope told you. I'm not proposing to go off on a hunt until I'm out of danger of miscarrying from, you know, every day stuff. But having me with you on this is a whole different level of protection. She told you; there's an Olympian out there that physically can't let me get hurt. So just stop this, all right' Because if you go off and do this without me, I'll never see you again. You'll be dead, and Hope, and anyone else they left behind in their time ....they'll never exist."

Or maybe he was thinking too much, worrying too much. He remembered what Hope had told him, but he didn't think it mattered much. Before they even got started on the Olympians - who, in Dean's esteemed opinion, were no better than demons or angels; they were just dicks with even bigger egos - they had to convince a particular demon and a particular angel to side with them, and Dean wasn't sure it was going to work. If they could manage that much, then he'd start worrying about Hades and Zeus' pissing match. Dean's mouth twitched as he met his wife's gaze. Would he ever get used to that word" Would he ever get used to knowing that Jo - Nimue - was his wife" He didn't think so. He saw she was close to tears and knew it wasn't just hormones. She was as worried for him as he was for her.

"Look, I....I just can't do that again," he told her, spreading his arms as if that might help her understand him better. "I can't risk losing you or the baby. You're more important than anything else. I just can't." His eyes pleaded for him. It hadn't been so long ago that he'd lost her, and Bill's death had only reinforced his fears.

Nim stared at him, hating herself for the fact that her own eyes were swimming with tears. "And you really think lockin' me up is the way to go to stop that?" she asked, her voice quiet in the face of his fear. "Baby, you gotta ease up a bit. Take a look at our kids. If I was gonna die, they wouldn't be here, not at all. I love you, but you can't handcuff me every time you get jumpy. You can't push me off to one side and expect me to take it without a fight. Because if I'm tied up or locked down, who's watching your back" Who's makin' sure that you come home?" She sighed again, one tear escaping to drip down her cheek as she closed her eyes briefly. "Don't you think I'm just as scared for you as you are for me?"

He'd spent his whole life taking care of people - first his Dad, then Sam, now Nim. He wasn't the Dean that had grown up here. He hadn't had Bobby and Ellen to clean up all of John's messes. He'd had to clean most of them up on his own. He was used to taking care of himself and of those around him that he loved. Making sacrifices was the Winchester way. It was his way. It was all he knew. He frowned back at her, seeing the tear trickle down her cheek, wanting to wipe her tears away and tell her everything would be all right, but he couldn't promise that. Nobody could. Hadn't they promised to love and honor and protect each other until the end of their days" It wasn't a promise he had made on his own; she had made it with him. As much as he wanted to comfort her, he couldn't. He knew as soon as he so much as touched her, it was all over. He'd give in, and that would be that. "Our kids won't be here if you die, Nim," he pointed out quietly, stubbornly, though he was starting to crack. The future hadn't happened yet. It could still be changed, for better or worse.

"They won't be here if you die, either," she countered softly, biting her lip hard to try and keep those damned tears at bay. She wasn't given to crying; if she was emotional, she clammed up usually, pushed it away and pretended it wasn't there. Maybe being pregnant was going to make her better at communicating with her husband, if she could get the words out without turning into a blubbering mess. "Please, baby ....don't walk away and tell me you're coming home from this if I'm not there with you. You know as well as I do that they'll be on you like dirt the second you get your hand on Death's blade."

Dean chewed at his lip, his thoughts turning to another Nim, a future Nim, one who'd had to try and survive without him because he'd been too stubborn and gone off on his own to fight a battle he couldn't win on his own. Hades had won, and he'd promised that Nim that he wouldn't make that same mistake again when he came back to make things right. "All right," he finally admitted. "But we're not taking any chances. I'm not losing you or Sam."

Jo Winchester

Date: 2013-08-08 11:25 EST
She'd never thought he would give in. For some reason, the shock of that surrender was enough to make the tears come, her hand rising to cover her mouth as she sobbed suddenly. "Oh, for cryin' out loud," she sniffled, rolling her eyes even as her shoulders shook. "Man, you are so lucky you don't have to deal with the crying thing from in here."

"Yeah, I do. I have to deal with you," he reminded her, not looking too terribly happy with the decision he'd made, even if he did see the logic in it. "Come here," he said, opening his arms to her and waving her toward him. If she was going to cry, she might as well do it in the safety and comfort of his arms. "I'm turning into a sap," he complained, only partly to himself.

She came willingly, pressing into his arms even as the tears passed, a brief storm in the aftermath of their argument. There was no sense of satisfaction in having won, though she was pleased with the result. He was at least being reasonable now, and she wouldn't take any stupid risks. Not this time. "You're my sap," she heard herself murmur against his chest. "I promise I won't tell anyone if you don't."

"I'm pretty sure they already know," he complained further, as he wrapped his arms around her to hold her close. "Ayden has me wrapped around her finger, and it's only a matter of time before Hope does the same thing." He said nothing about Ellen or Nim. They both knew he'd do just about whatever Ellen told him to, and Nim had just proven what influence she held over him.

"You're not very gracious about being reasonable, are you?" she commented gently, lifting her head to look into his eyes, uncurling a hand from his back to stroke against his cheek. "I love you, Dean. And that comes with a whole lot of don't wanna lose you, too. Don't forget it, okay?"

"How can I forget when I worry about the same thing?" he asked, curling his fingers around hers and bringing it to his lips for a kiss. "Just got more to worry about now," he admitted quietly. Back home it was just him and Sam. Here, there was a whole houseful of people to worry about, not to mention three kids that had yet to be born yet. "Did you know we have another son?"

Rising up onto her toes, she leaned in close, her forehead against his as they lingered together, the quiet between them going a long way to smoothing over the low blows they'd both made during the course of their discussion. "Not for certain," she admitted, a good deal calmer now she was in his arms. "I figured there might be another one, just from the way Sam talks. It's not just Hope he worries about, it's someone else, too."

"John....His name's John," Dean helped fill in the gaps that he'd learned from Hope. "He's fourteen. Or will be soon." Now that they had come to something of an agreement, at least for now, and were no longer arguing, he took hold of her hand and tugged her toward the bed. They got little enough time alone these days, and he thought they might as well make use of it, even if it was just to talk. "We have three kids in the future. That's different from before." Or more accurately, from his little jaunt into another future.

Drawn along with him, Nim offered no resistance as she moved with him, a small smile playing about her lips as she imagined their family in the years to come. Not one, not two, but three children ....healthy and well-looked after, even if it wasn't by their parents themselves. She hadn't known Ayden more than two weeks, but she was disposed toward liking and trusting the younger woman easily, given the knowledge of how much she had given up to protect her nephews and niece in a future that would hopefully not change too much. "Is that a bad thing?" she asked Dean curiously, lowering down onto the bed with him. "I know we didn't really get a chance to talk about it, but ....I was never gonna be into just one kid. It's gotta be lonely, growing up alone."

Dean tangled his fingers with hers, looking at their clasped hands for a moment. Even though he'd seen proof positive that he and Nimue were going to be parents, it was still hard to believe. "I made a promise to you in the future," he admitted, rubbing a thumb against her hand as he lifted his gaze to meet hers. "I promised I'd never go off alone again and leave you behind."

To her credit, she didn't even consider mentioning how quickly that promise had gone out the window the moment he had fresh worry over her. She just smiled gently, her hand playing with his as she lay back against the coverlet comfortably. "Maybe we should alter that promise a little," she suggested quietly, knowing he needed something to assuage the sting of giving into her so very recently. "To never going off alone again and leaving me behind, unless I agree to it. And there'll be times I will agree, baby. I'm stubborn, I'm not stupid."

He pulled the Beretta from his pocket and set it on the bedside table as she settled back against the coverlet. He frowned a little at her suggestion, worrying still over her safety, but wanting to keep his promise. "Just so long as you don't go off alone," he said. "One self-sacrificing idiot is enough for this family, I think." Or as Bobby would have said, idjit.

"I won't," she promised him in return. Her lips quirked into a lopsided smirk as her eyes met his. "I'm stuck to you like glue, princess. Can't get rid of me now - there's a bit of paper in the courts all about it." She wiggled her left hand at him, the light catching on the engraved silver band about her finger. In all the excitement of the past few days, there hadn't been any time to simply enjoy being newly married, to let that information sink in. She was a Winchester now.

He rolled his eyes at the nickname she had pegged him with right from the first moment she'd met him all over again here in this reality. "Don't let the kids hear you call me that," he said, realizing they'd probably already heard it often enough back home in their own world before their parents had been taken from them. He turned quiet again as he settled down beside her, sliding an arm around her to shoulders to hold her against him, wondering if he should tell her more of what Hope had told him or if it would only upset her.

Jo Winchester

Date: 2013-08-08 11:26 EST
She giggled softly, rolling as he wrapped his arm about her to drape her own arm over him, her head pillowed comfortably against his shoulder. "Would you prefer me to call you kitten around them, then?" she asked him teasingly, enjoying the quiet lull that had settled around them. The last time they had argued, it had taken a couple of days and a lot of sex to reach a point where they could settle it. But a lot had happened since then; enough, perhaps, that they had both grown a little more comfortable with each other, comfortable enough to be able to talk to each other without needing that euphoric buffer to remind them why they were together in the first place. "It's still kinda weird, isn't it?" she mused, her voice soft as she spoke. "That we're gonna have kids, and they're gonna turn out so awesome." Her smile was a little sad, though. Sam and Hope were obviously hunters; she would have hoped for something else for them, something normal.

"Definitely not," he replied. "Unless you want me to start calling you snookums," he countered, smiling at last. He turned his head to brush a kiss against her forehead. He didn't tell her how he felt about her very often, relying on her already knowing from the little ways in which he showed his love, like that tender kiss that was as loving as it was protective. He wasn't quite sure how to answer her question. It was weird, and yet it wasn't. He'd seen the future, and the proof positive was right beneath their roof in the form of Sam and Hope. "I told her why we named her Hope," Dean mused aloud. "Seems obvious, doesn't it?"

Her smile brightened as he kissed her, warmed right through by the unspoken declaration of his feelings in that tender gesture. He might not say the words often, but he showed her every day in little ways just how much he loved her. Even their argument had told her, touching her deeply with how much he cared for her. All she could do was hope that he knew she loved him just as deeply. "Didn't she know?" she asked, a little bemused for a moment. "I mean ....yeah, it is obvious. The whole of her name makes complete sense."

"I don't think she did," he said, enjoying the quiet moment they'd been given, even if it had followed after an argument. Each argument, it seemed, brought them closer together, which was a strange way of going about things, but that's how it had always been with them, it seemed, even back home when she'd still been Jo. "She's stubborn. Takes after her mother, I guess," he said with a sigh, unsure how much he should tell her. It seemed that Hope felt some sort of special connection to him, but wasn't that the way it was supposed to be between fathers and daughters" He wasn't really sure. He'd only met his sister a few short weeks ago, but if his own family was anything to go by, he'd always felt closer to his mom than his dad, even though she'd died when he was four.

Nim snorted with laughter, rolling her eyes. "Oh, and she couldn't have gotten that from her dad, could she?" she chuckled softly. She'd had a couple of conversations of her own with Sam, their son - their firstborn son, let's not forget that little surprise - feeling the warmth of the bond he had obviously had with his mother as it attached itself to her. Sam was more restrained with what information he gave out than his sister, but had settled more easily into the ebb and flow of this time and place, perhaps because he remembered more of them from his childhood. "Baby, you don't gotta feel bad about having something special with your daughter, you know" It's natural."

"It's not that," Dean replied, after a moment, frowning a little as Nim read him so easily, knowing him too well. It was scary sometimes how well she knew him, how well they knew each other, and how comfortable they'd become with each other, despite the occasional arguments, or as Dean called them, discussions. "It's just....she seems so lost sometimes. I think losing us was harder on her than on Sam." And probably even harder on John. No, Johnny. That's what she'd called him. John William, after Bill. Dean wondered why they'd never named any of their children after Brian.

Nim sighed softly, trying to feel her way through this conversation. It wasn't one she had ever thought she would be having, discussing children they hadn't even had yet with parental concerns weighing on them. "She didn't have a job when they lost us," she offered quietly. "Sam's the oldest, his job is clear - look after the others. And the youngest - John" - he can't have been more than four years old. He probably doesn't remember us at all. But Hope remembers, and I guess there's nothing there to distract her from feeling it."

"Like me," Dean heard himself saying regarding his eldest son. The irony of the situation wasn't lost on him. Sam had been left behind to take care of his younger siblings, just like Dean had been left behind to take care of his brother Sam. "At least, they have Ayden." He paused momentarily as another thought came to mind at the thought of his half-sister. "And apparently she's sleeping with Ares in the future."

She had been in the process of agreeing with him with regard to Sam when he dropped that little bomb on her. "What?" Startled, and not a little bit amused, by this revelation, Nim shifted up onto her elbow, looking down at Dean with a laughing smile. "Seriously' Your sister is schtupping the God of War?"

He turned his head to regard her as she slipped out of his arms to look down at him, unable to miss the smirk on her face. "Don't ask me. I only know what Hope said." He didn't look overly fond of the idea of his sister "schtupping" with Ares or anyone really, but especially not someone who wasn't human. It was like she was taking after his brother in that regard. "I can't figure out if she's using him for protection or if she actually likes him." And he couldn't ask either, since that was happening in the future, not the present. If he were to ask Ayden about it in the present, she wouldn't have any idea what he was talking about.

"Would it be so bad, if she did turn out to like him?" Nim asked him curiously. She wasn't exactly thrilled at the idea herself, but there were worse non-humans to fall for than an Olympian who was the definition of being able to look after her. "Or love him, even?" She didn't know why Dean felt those reservations, the blankness of her memory too empty to offer a warning of his brother's fatal affiliation with a demon.

Jo Winchester

Date: 2013-08-08 11:27 EST
"I don't know. I haven't met him yet, but I already don't trust him. God of War" Makes you wonder what he wants from all this. I'm sure it's not just to get laid by my sister." Yes, the thought of Ayden sleeping with Ares make Dean one cranky hunter. "Why can't she just marry an accountant or something" It would make things a lot easier." Though Dean had to admit there were worse things than having the God of War for an ally.

"Well, he's gotta be pretty trustworthy," his wife pointed out thoughtfully. "I mean, you'd think those visions she gets would give her a heads up if he was just using her. That is, if she's still getting visions in twenty years, which I kinda assume she is. It's a job for life, isn't it?" Not quite as wary of the prospect as Dean, nonetheless Nim frowned as she spoke. She liked Ayden, and the thought of the younger woman having her heart broken was not a pleasant one.

"I guess," Dean replied, turning thoughtful again. Sam's visions stopped after a while, at least as far as Dean knew. They'd both assumed it had had something to do with Azazel's death, but there was no way of knowing for sure. Still, comparing Ayden to Sam was like comparing apples to oranges, since as far as Dean knew, Ayden had never been forced to drink demon blood. She just seemed to have been given a gift, like other psychics they'd known. Like Pamela Barnes. That hadn't turned out too well. Dean's frown deepened as he turned thoughtful, his mood darkening. "Sometimes I wish it was..." He broke off as another thought came to mind, an idea forming.

Nim frowned down at him, recognizing the signs of a new thought circling through his mind as he trailed off. It was an infuriating habit of his, not finishing his sentences at times, but she knew she was never going to convince him to stop doing it. She just had to learn to live with him. "Baby?" she ventured after a moment of silence, her fingers gently stroking against his chest through his shirt. "You've gone walkabout on me again."

He blinked out of his reverie and turned his gaze back toward hers. For a moment, he was a million miles away, too easily distracted, but he was back now. "Sorry, I was just thinking....I miss it being about angels and demons. I knew how to fight them. If we could somehow convince them to get over their differences and help us....I mean, they've gotta be chomping at the bit to oust Hades and Zeus." Yes, he knew they were supposed to be on Zeus' side, but as far as Dean was concerned, humans should be beholden to no one, except maybe the Creator, but he seemed to be AWOL. He turned onto his side to face Nim, propping himself up onto an elbow. "The way I figure it, God ousted the Fates when he gave man Free Will. Maybe that's when the Olympians got the boot, too."

"But Apollo said that it was a cycle," Nim reminded him thoughtfully, resting her head on her hand as he twisted to face her. "Remember" He told us when this all started that angels and the Christian God had been in control for two millenia, and that he and his Olympian buddies had been in control for two millenia before that. I mean, the Christian hierarchy had their Apocalypse and wouldn't that signal the end of a cycle?" She sighed, more than a little confused by it all herself. "I know it'd be ideal to get demons and angels working on the same thing, but ....isn't it bad enough that you made a deal with Death' No more deals, baby, we promised each other."

"Yeah, though I'm not really sure the Apocalypse actually happened or not. Technically speaking, I mean." He actually smiled at her scolding. There was no better ally than Death. Death was an even bigger bad *ss than God. Discussing who came first - Death or God - was like debating the chicken or the egg. It was an endless debate that would never be resolved, mostly because Death wasn't talking and God was M.I.A. "No, but we may have to make one more," he warned her, though he wasn't too worried about that one.

Her eyes narrowed, but at least she knew what that deal was and what was at stake. "Just so long as we get to gank him later," she muttered. The thought of leaving any demon alive and well, much less one who was apparently the new King of Hell, stuck in her throat. Dean's smile, however, wiped the frown from her face, and earned him a gentle kiss. "You make it really hard to get worried about anything when you look at me like that."

He winced a little even as she kissed him. He wasn't talking about Crowley, but someone else - someone he trusted only fractionally more than the self-declared King of Hell. His expression quickly changed, as he tried to cover up the wince and let her think he had meant Crowley, though he had not. He had a feeling there was going to be a lot more deal-making than she would have liked before all was said and done, no matter what they had promised each other. His own soul was off the table this time, however. He wasn't going back to Hell again, no matter how all this turned out. "Like what?" he asked, innocently.

"Don't give me that," she snorted with laughter, giving him a gentle shove onto his back as she moved to lean over him once again. "You know what look I'm talking about. That I'm too good to resist look." Grinning, she kissed him again, gently tugging his lower lip between her teeth. She hadn't noticed the wince, or if she had, she chose not to mention it, leaving the subject of deals altogether. It was another discussion waiting to happen, and they'd done enough of that today.

He might have explained if she'd asked, but apparently he had succeeded in distracting her from more talk about their plans to defeat Hades and the Fates - or maybe she had distracted him. Either way, he wasn't about to argue, his lips melding to hers, soft and tender and all too agreeable. "They're going to wonder what we're doing up here," he remarked as her lips parted from his. He found himself looking up at her from his back and he dragged his fingers across her cheek to tuck her hair behind an ear.

"You think?" Nim's smirk was all kinds of impish as she looked down at him, her cheek tilting into the gentle brush of his fingers as she felt her hair tucked back out of her face. "You wanna go and ask Sam if it's okay for you to screw me while he's in residence?" She snickered, imagining that conversation only too easily in her mind and genuinely amused by the prospect. "I could go get him, if you want."

Jo Winchester

Date: 2013-08-08 11:28 EST
"Three's a crowd. Sorry, Sam," he told his son in utero, as he slid a hand around the back of her neck to drawn her downward for another kiss, this one harder and deeper than the last, hungry with desire.

She giggled as he drew her down, unable to miss the comedy in the way he addressed her womb before turning his attention back to the moment. Her arm slid over his shoulder, bracing herself against the bed as she returned his kiss, the other hand smoothing down his side beneath the open hang of his shirt to tease his skin through his t-shirt. "We really need to get a lock on that door," she murmured against his lips, still grinning despite the rising heat between them.

"No one will come in without knocking," he replied. Except maybe Ellen, but even Ellen knew when to leave well enough alone. His hands found their way beneath her shirt, wasting no time it getting it off her, as he arched upwards to tease another kiss against her lips. He was in no mood to p*ssyfoot around, not wanting to waste a single moment of the short time they had alone together.

She twisted about to shake the plaid button down off her arms, letting it fall away wherever it landed, her own hands returning to him, tugging teasingly at the t-shirt he wore to smooth her palm up over his skin. "I love you," she heard herself breathe against his lips, needing to say it again, to assure him beyond any doubt that this was how she felt about him. Nothing would change that, she was certain of it. With a gentle shift of her body, her knee slipped between his thighs, a soft press of a tease as she smirked against his lips.

That was all it took to set him off, but whether it was the declaration of love or her carefully placed knee was hard to say. He groaned against her lips, his desire impossible not to notice and hard to ignore, rolling her onto her back as his lips tasted hers again and again. He pulled away from her only for as long as it took to tug his shirt over his head before returning to devour her lips with feverish hunger.

He knew her inside and out, better than she knew herself, and yet he always managed to surprise her somehow, be it in word or in deed, or in eagerness to share this connection with her. She arched beneath him, her hands warm against his skin as he came back to her, distinctly overdressed but pretty sure that wasn't going to last. And she didn't care that downstairs were two young people who were their children, not in that moment. What mattered was Dean, here and now, and finishing that gentle forgiveness they'd already given each other for the harsher words that had been spoken. Rising up to meet him, she pressed closer, trailing her lips from his mouth down along the line of his throat, hot and eager and above all tender in her loving of him.

He didn't feel like taking his time with her - he needed and wanted her now and was more than ready to take what he wanted, so long as she was willing. It wasn't long before he had removed the rest of her clothing, leaving them forgotten and forlorn in a pile beside the bed, while he explored her with hands and lips, trailing kisses wherever his lips decided to wander. He paid special care to the place wherein their firstborn rested, though there was no outward sign that any life grew there yet, especially tender with his kisses and caresses, as if the child inside might sense his father's presence and his undying devotion to both mother and child.

She was always willing for him, foreseeing no time when she might ever be unwilling. Yet there was something deeply moving in the way he paused in their love making to kiss and caress her stomach, both of them knowing in a way no other parents ever had that in there was a baby less than a fingernail in size. The love and care he showed was enough to spark fresh tears in her eyes, reaffirming her certainty that, for all his worries, Dean would be an amazing father when the time came. Her fingers drew through his hair just as tenderly, even as she arched beneath him once more. "Baby," she breathed, her voice rich with longing, "baby, please ..."

He heard the longing in her voice, which only deepened his desire, a slow, lingering kiss pressed against her lips before he was pulling away to add his own clothing to the growing pile on the floor. If anyone were to intrude on them now, they'd see more than they wanted to see, but Dean trusted his family to know better. If it was quiet in his room, then it meant they were doing one of two things - sleeping or having sex - and neither should be interrupted. As much as he had enjoyed his many jaunts between the sheets over the years, sex had been something Dean had always taken seriously, almost as if it was sacred. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy it - quite the opposite, in fact - but to Dean, making love was almost like going to church, like a little peace of heaven on earth. When he took her, their bodies moved together in a sacred dance as old as Adam and Eve, and when they eventually crested the pinnacle together, it was as if the angels were singing for them alone.

He took her with him into that little slice of heaven, content in the knowledge that he would catch her when she fell, her own arms wrapped close about him in loving possession of the man she loved, the man she was certain she had loved before she ever remembered meeting him. And as heaven faded away, Nim found herself somewhere that heaven couldn't touch - curled close in the arms of her husband, sharing breath and battling heartbeats as her fingers caressed soothingly over his skin. "That's one way to end an argument," she murmured playfully, turning her lips against his jaw affectionately.

"What argument?" he murmured back breathlessly, heart pounding, as he turned his head to capture her lips, still wondering every day when he was going to wake up and find out this was all just a dream. It wasn't perfect - they had a long way to go before they got to perfect, but Dean thought what they had was far better than perfect. He'd had perfect in his dreams; perfect didn't last. This was real, more real than anything he'd ever experienced before, and he wasn't going to let anyone take it away from him. Not this time. Not demons, not angels, not monsters or Leviathan or gods. Not even Death. No one was going to take this away from him. He'd been to Heaven and he'd been to Hell, but as far as Dean was concerned, nothing was better than this life with his Nimue. His Jo.

((They're getting good at this being married thing, aren't they' ::grins:: Hugiflungius thankinsnoodles to Dean's player!))