Fic: Children of War, gen, PG, Dean, Mary, John
Title: Children of War
Author: nwhepcat
Setting, spoilers: pre-series, none (but hints of things we know from 4:03 "In the Beginning")
Characters: John, Mary, wee!Dean
Rating, genre: PG, gen (with established John/Mary relationship)
Summary: When 3-year-old Dean gets night terrors, it threatens more than a few nights' sleep.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Note: Written for hoodie_time's h/c tags challenge. Much thanks to the mod for the extension!
Additional warnings: Memories of wartime effects on children
John woke to the sound of screams.
It was the kind of screaming he'd only ever heard in country, a relentless wall of sound broken only by necessary sobs for breath, in the ear-punishing pitch of a small child. Napalm burn screams. Shrapnel damage screams. The kind of screams that had made John weep in camp at night, even after they had been cut short.
It was his kid screaming that way.
Tearing off the blankets, John ran for Dean's room, finding Mary already there, Dean already clutched tight in her arms. She rocked him gently, murmuring, "It's okay, baby, you're safe, mama's got you."
Dean appeared inconsolable, eyes open but not seeming to register either of his parents.
"Mary," John said, his voice still sleep-roughened.
The look she shot toward him was so fierce it reminded him of some of the mothers he'd seen in Nam with those tormented, screaming children. For a second, he'd have sworn it was a look of pure hate. Then she blinked and was herself again.
"What happened?" he asked over the sound of Dean's shrieks.
"He just woke up screaming, I think. I checked him for fever or some kind of bite, but nothing."
"Nightmare?"
Mary nodded. "But I can't wake him up."
Crouching in front of Mary and his boy, John caught one of Dean's flailing arms. "Dean. Buddy. Wake up, son. You're safe, we're right here."
Nothing helped, either to calm him or wake him. After fifteen minutes of futile attempts, Dean sank back into his mother's arms, exhausted, deep in sleep.
"What the hell?" John muttered, shaken.
"I don't know, but I'm staying with him tonight," Mary said. She settled Dean back onto the mattress, rearranging the covers over him, then wrapped herself in a throw before stretching out between Dean and the edge of the bed.
John caressed Mary's hair and smoothed a hand over Dean's, spiked with the sweat from his -- hell, what could you call it, a fit? "Call out if you need me," he told her.
"I will."
He shuffled back down the hall to face a night of dreams about napalmed babies and screams that never stopped.
***
The next morning Dean was his old self, up before anyone else. He woke John by clambering over the bed and crawling up to rest on Mary's pillow and stare him in the face like a cat. "Daddy," he said in a loud whisper. "Are you up?"
"I am now, buddy."
"I want pancakes."
"Oh you do, do you?" John ruffled his hair. "We'll have to see what Mom says."
Mary was leaning in the doorway, looking like she'd kill for another eight hours of shut-eye. So would John, for that matter.
"Mom says IHoP," Mary said, voice scratchy.
"Yay!"
John exchanged a look with Mary, who lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. He didn't pursue the topic until Dean was half covered in butter pecan syrup, maneuvering sticky army men on the laminated tabletop.
"You have a bad dream last night, buddy?"
"No," Dean said without hesitation, still focused on the battle raging beside his empty pancake plate.
Though Mary and John both asked again over the course of the day, Dean still seemed unaware and untroubled by his terrifying dreams of the night before.
John wished he could say the same for the next few nights. He heard screams of children and bursts of gunfire, woke bathed in cold sweat, with Mary still asleep beside him.
***
Four nights later, the whole deal happened again. The screams in the middle of the night. The eerie wide-eyed but unaware state they found Dean in. The inconsolable tears and screams. And, the next morning, a complete lack of memory about the whole thing. Dean was more subdued on this morning after, but he still looked a helluva lot better than John.
When he shambled into the garage for his shift, Mike gave him the once-over and said, "I hope you got the plate number of the truck that hit you."
John groaned. "My kid had some kind of nightmare last night. Screamed for twenty minutes solid and nothing we did made any difference. He didn't remember a thing in the morning. The same thing happened a few nights ago."
"Sounds like night terrors to me," Mike said.
John paused in the midst of unscrewing the cap of his Thermos. "What?"
"Angie had that a couple of years ago. It's called night terrors. Dean's what, three?"
"He'll be four in a few months."
"That's the right age. He'll outgrow 'em. The pediatrician told us it's like a phase, but not all kids have them. Angie came through it no worse for wear, but Donna and me, we weren't sure we'd make it."
John shuddered at the thought of more nights like the last one, but Mary would be relieved. "That's good to know. Thanks, Mike."
Mary received this information with a tight-lipped stoicism that surprised him. Though she didn't say so, he got the feeling she didn't believe him.
***
Mary's reaction got odder with the next three a.m. outburst. As he sat by her side on the edge of Dean's bed, their son sprawled across both their laps and dieseling with spent sobs, Mary whispered, "I wish Dad was here."
Samuel? That gruff sonofabitch was the last person he'd call on to comfort a crying child.
"I'm here," he told her.
***
"He doesn't remember them," John reminded Mary as Dean watched cartoons in the living room. He was cooking eggs for them, giving Mary a morning off from breakfast duty. He wished he could relieve her of the night terrors duty too, but neither of them could get a break from that.
"That's what I'm afraid of," she said, but she wouldn't explain what she meant.
John hoped to hell this would all be over before there were two kids in the house.
***
It had seemed so miraculous when Dean awoke in a sunny mood from his first round of night terrors, that it didn't surprise John at all that it didn't last. Dean still didn't remember the panic he'd endured the night before, but the lack of good sleep wore on him, and he was a smart enough kid that he picked up on his parents' tension.
Dean's fifth bad night came on a Saturday, so John took him out to the park so Mary could catch up on sleep. John felt he could take sleep or leave it, since it only brought him another round of war dreams.
Dean was unusually whiny and clingy after the previous night, which John handled with as much patience as he could muster. Dean was such a good little soldier most of the time -- only the profound misery of what he was going through, memories or not, could make him whimper and hang on his dad. It wasn't the impatience that ruled John, but the guilt that he couldn't make this any better for his son. That he couldn't protect him from this invisible torment.
"Hey, Deano," he said as they reached the playground section of the park. "How about if we go over to the swingset?"
This prompted a more enthusiastic response than the park suggestion had. Dean loved the swings, the sensation of flying. John used to love that too, had once talked about going into the Air Force, but it had been the Marines that hooked him.
For a while the sound of Dean's happy shrieks drove out the echoes of his wild screams. Though his muscles started to protest at the repetitive pushing motions that propelled Dean, John would push him all damn day if that's what he wanted. As it was, no more than three more minutes passed before Dean spotted Mike, Donna and Angie heading for the massive sandbox, and Dean called out to them and let go of the swing.
John cried out but it was too late; Dean went down onto the rubber mat below the swings and the metal seat banged him on the head. Though John scooped him up before he could start to cry, he erupted in a wail that bayoneted John right through.
Can't even take him to the park without fucking it up. Despite the mental loop of self recrimination, he managed to hold Dean tight and murmur, "It's okay, Buddy, I've got you."
Mike and Donna caught up to them, Angie looking like she might chime in too, the way younger kids did. Donna gave John a quick greeting before whisking Angie off to play in the sandbox.
With Dean sobbing wetly into his neck, John accompanied Mike over to a bench and settled in, bobbing one knee up and down just enough to lull him a little.
"How's he been sleeping lately?" Mike asked.
"Another bad night last night. We're all getting a little ragged."
"I bet."
After a moment's consideration, John said quietly, "After the last one, Mary's been sleeping in his room every night."
"Is it helping?"
Wryly, John said, "Not so's I can tell. Especially by last night." He paused, then spoke, feeling like a traitor. "I found this weird little bag under Dean's pillow. Cloth. Mary snatched it away from me before I could see what was in it. Said it was potpourri."
"Women do like that shit," Mike offered.
Absently he gently rubs Dean's back. The sobs have slowed to a random snuffles, with Dean's breaths slowing. Maybe he'd nap for a bit; best thing for him. "I'd sniffed at it before she took it. And it sure as hell wasn't lavender in there. I could feel things inside, but I couldn't figure out what they were."
"Huh," Mike said.
"That's all I've got, too."
"Maybe it's pregnancy stuff. Hormones, man. If the Pentagon could figure out how to weaponize 'em, we'd have won the war."
"Their side on that shit? Oh hell, no."
"Guess you're right," Mike conceded with a chuckle.
John laughed softly too, and it roused Dean from his half-doze.
"Wanna go play."
"That's a fine idea, buddy." He ran a hand over Dean's head to check that he wasn't bleeding or sporting a massive goose egg, making it a casually affectionate gesture so he wouldn't alert Dean to the fact that maybe he should still be crying. "Go check out what Angie's doing."
It occurred to him, since they'd just been talking about the war, that maybe he could mention the dreams, get that off his chest. He hadn't told Mary, since her focus was where it should be, on Dean.
But Mike changed the topic to the Royals' chances for next season, and the moment was lost. As Mike rattled on, John decided it was probably best. He wasn't sure how he'd talk about the little kids screaming without having to add a disclaimer: It wasn't like My Lai or anything.... They got caught up in some napalming, we just came after, that's all.
Yeah, that's all. Poor little bastards, these children of war.
***
Mary's so-called lavender potpourri didn't do a damn bit of good. Dean kept having night terrors, Mary kept up sentry duty in his bedroom, and John wove Dean's screams into his own nightmares.
A number of times John found her poring over a leather-bound book she'd dug up in the attic. It smelled of gun oil, which made him suspect it probably wasn't her mom's copy of Dr. Spock, but she wouldn't let him close enough to get a look. One day while Dean was watching cartoons, john confronted her in the kitchen as she put together a lasagna.
"I've had enough of this. I want you back in our bed, not sitting in there with him all night."
"And since when do you tell me what to do, John Winchester?"
"Since your way of handling this isn't working. I'd see the point if your staying with him every night kept the nightmares away. But it doesn't. In fact, I think it just makes things worse. Dean goes to bed knowing you think something's wrong, and it sets him up to wake up afraid."
The lasagna noodle she'd been carefully trying to untangle tore, one end dangling from each hand. "You're blaming me?" Her eyes held so much rage it was easy to imagine the streaks of marinara sauce on her hands was blood.
"Dammit, no, but there's no point in you hovering over him that way. You look like you're waiting for the boogieman to show up so you can gun him down."
Slinging both halves of the noodle haphazardly into the baking dish, she snapped, "Fuck you, John. Don't you tell me how to raise my son."
"He's our son."
"He's three. I'm not having you tell him to suck it up and be a good little marine."
"That's not what I'm saying."
"Same thing. I'm not going to leave him all by himself until that thing goes away."
Something about that thing pinged an alarm bell, but before he could question her wording, Dean shuffled into the room, his voice plaintive as he said, "Mommy? Daddy?"
"Hey there, sweetie pie," Mary bent to him and planted a kiss onto his head.
"Are you mad?"
"We're just talking," John answered. "I guess we got a little loud. C'mon, Deano, let's go watch TV while your mom finishes dinner."
Uncertainly, he looked back toward Mary as John led him from the room.
"C'mon, we don't want to miss anything." He settled Dean onto his lap and both of them stared at Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny without making a sound until Mary called them to dinner.
***
John slept in the back seat of the Impala that night, after he'd tucked Dean in and kissed him goodnight. He made sure to creep back into the house before Dean's usual rising time. God knew somebody had to keep things seeming normal as possible.
He kept to the same routine for a week. It got damn uncomfortable after a while, but he slept better nonetheless, without any napalm dreams. The days were getting crisper, though, and soon he would need more than a moth-eaten army blanket to keep him warm. Before he had a chance to ask Mike about using a cot in the garage, Mary walked out to the car one morning in her robe, carrying two coffee mugs.
John opened the door for her, scooting over and lifting the blanket so she could slide under. "Dean's made it through a week now without any night terrors." This was the first time she'd used that name for them. He wasn't sure if it was an admission or an olive branch, but he'd take it and not ask questions.
"Is he asleep now?"
"Watching cartoons." With a bit of shifting and handing over the mugs, she produced a baby monitor from the pocket of her robe, setting it on the floor. Looney Tunes music played softly in the background.
"Is he up early, or did I sleep late?"
"A little of both."
As bizarre as it was to be having coffee with his wife in the back seat of their car, listening to antic cartoon music, it was the most normal he'd felt in a long time. John felt the stirrings of desire to do what they used to do back here, but Dean was alone in the house, and Dean was most important.
"Tell you what," he said. "I'll go buy donuts, and since that'll send Dean completely out of his mind, maybe he won't notice I wasn't in the house when he woke up."
"You'll be late."
"Call in, tell Mike I'm sick. I'll watch Dean while you catch up a little on sleep."
"I have a better idea. Get some magazines and comic books while you're out, maybe a new coloring book. We'll all spend the day in bed."
This had always been a Sundays-only event, but the unusualness of it seemed a good capper for the not-normal that had marred the last few weeks.
Bed-in for peace. It was an old joke, one they'd stopped using since John Lennon had been murdered before Yoko's eyes. And it was a little too close to the bone considering the war that had threatened to break out between them. But it was more apt than ever.
Mary offered him a lingering, coffee-flavored kiss before she took up the monitor and scuffed in her fuzzy slippers up the sidewalk to Dean. John settled in behind the wheel, eager to get his errands done so he could come back to his home and bed, his wife and son.
Author: nwhepcat
Setting, spoilers: pre-series, none (but hints of things we know from 4:03 "In the Beginning")
Characters: John, Mary, wee!Dean
Rating, genre: PG, gen (with established John/Mary relationship)
Summary: When 3-year-old Dean gets night terrors, it threatens more than a few nights' sleep.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Note: Written for hoodie_time's h/c tags challenge. Much thanks to the mod for the extension!
Additional warnings: Memories of wartime effects on children
John woke to the sound of screams.
It was the kind of screaming he'd only ever heard in country, a relentless wall of sound broken only by necessary sobs for breath, in the ear-punishing pitch of a small child. Napalm burn screams. Shrapnel damage screams. The kind of screams that had made John weep in camp at night, even after they had been cut short.
It was his kid screaming that way.
Tearing off the blankets, John ran for Dean's room, finding Mary already there, Dean already clutched tight in her arms. She rocked him gently, murmuring, "It's okay, baby, you're safe, mama's got you."
Dean appeared inconsolable, eyes open but not seeming to register either of his parents.
"Mary," John said, his voice still sleep-roughened.
The look she shot toward him was so fierce it reminded him of some of the mothers he'd seen in Nam with those tormented, screaming children. For a second, he'd have sworn it was a look of pure hate. Then she blinked and was herself again.
"What happened?" he asked over the sound of Dean's shrieks.
"He just woke up screaming, I think. I checked him for fever or some kind of bite, but nothing."
"Nightmare?"
Mary nodded. "But I can't wake him up."
Crouching in front of Mary and his boy, John caught one of Dean's flailing arms. "Dean. Buddy. Wake up, son. You're safe, we're right here."
Nothing helped, either to calm him or wake him. After fifteen minutes of futile attempts, Dean sank back into his mother's arms, exhausted, deep in sleep.
"What the hell?" John muttered, shaken.
"I don't know, but I'm staying with him tonight," Mary said. She settled Dean back onto the mattress, rearranging the covers over him, then wrapped herself in a throw before stretching out between Dean and the edge of the bed.
John caressed Mary's hair and smoothed a hand over Dean's, spiked with the sweat from his -- hell, what could you call it, a fit? "Call out if you need me," he told her.
"I will."
He shuffled back down the hall to face a night of dreams about napalmed babies and screams that never stopped.
***
The next morning Dean was his old self, up before anyone else. He woke John by clambering over the bed and crawling up to rest on Mary's pillow and stare him in the face like a cat. "Daddy," he said in a loud whisper. "Are you up?"
"I am now, buddy."
"I want pancakes."
"Oh you do, do you?" John ruffled his hair. "We'll have to see what Mom says."
Mary was leaning in the doorway, looking like she'd kill for another eight hours of shut-eye. So would John, for that matter.
"Mom says IHoP," Mary said, voice scratchy.
"Yay!"
John exchanged a look with Mary, who lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. He didn't pursue the topic until Dean was half covered in butter pecan syrup, maneuvering sticky army men on the laminated tabletop.
"You have a bad dream last night, buddy?"
"No," Dean said without hesitation, still focused on the battle raging beside his empty pancake plate.
Though Mary and John both asked again over the course of the day, Dean still seemed unaware and untroubled by his terrifying dreams of the night before.
John wished he could say the same for the next few nights. He heard screams of children and bursts of gunfire, woke bathed in cold sweat, with Mary still asleep beside him.
***
Four nights later, the whole deal happened again. The screams in the middle of the night. The eerie wide-eyed but unaware state they found Dean in. The inconsolable tears and screams. And, the next morning, a complete lack of memory about the whole thing. Dean was more subdued on this morning after, but he still looked a helluva lot better than John.
When he shambled into the garage for his shift, Mike gave him the once-over and said, "I hope you got the plate number of the truck that hit you."
John groaned. "My kid had some kind of nightmare last night. Screamed for twenty minutes solid and nothing we did made any difference. He didn't remember a thing in the morning. The same thing happened a few nights ago."
"Sounds like night terrors to me," Mike said.
John paused in the midst of unscrewing the cap of his Thermos. "What?"
"Angie had that a couple of years ago. It's called night terrors. Dean's what, three?"
"He'll be four in a few months."
"That's the right age. He'll outgrow 'em. The pediatrician told us it's like a phase, but not all kids have them. Angie came through it no worse for wear, but Donna and me, we weren't sure we'd make it."
John shuddered at the thought of more nights like the last one, but Mary would be relieved. "That's good to know. Thanks, Mike."
Mary received this information with a tight-lipped stoicism that surprised him. Though she didn't say so, he got the feeling she didn't believe him.
***
Mary's reaction got odder with the next three a.m. outburst. As he sat by her side on the edge of Dean's bed, their son sprawled across both their laps and dieseling with spent sobs, Mary whispered, "I wish Dad was here."
Samuel? That gruff sonofabitch was the last person he'd call on to comfort a crying child.
"I'm here," he told her.
***
"He doesn't remember them," John reminded Mary as Dean watched cartoons in the living room. He was cooking eggs for them, giving Mary a morning off from breakfast duty. He wished he could relieve her of the night terrors duty too, but neither of them could get a break from that.
"That's what I'm afraid of," she said, but she wouldn't explain what she meant.
John hoped to hell this would all be over before there were two kids in the house.
***
It had seemed so miraculous when Dean awoke in a sunny mood from his first round of night terrors, that it didn't surprise John at all that it didn't last. Dean still didn't remember the panic he'd endured the night before, but the lack of good sleep wore on him, and he was a smart enough kid that he picked up on his parents' tension.
Dean's fifth bad night came on a Saturday, so John took him out to the park so Mary could catch up on sleep. John felt he could take sleep or leave it, since it only brought him another round of war dreams.
Dean was unusually whiny and clingy after the previous night, which John handled with as much patience as he could muster. Dean was such a good little soldier most of the time -- only the profound misery of what he was going through, memories or not, could make him whimper and hang on his dad. It wasn't the impatience that ruled John, but the guilt that he couldn't make this any better for his son. That he couldn't protect him from this invisible torment.
"Hey, Deano," he said as they reached the playground section of the park. "How about if we go over to the swingset?"
This prompted a more enthusiastic response than the park suggestion had. Dean loved the swings, the sensation of flying. John used to love that too, had once talked about going into the Air Force, but it had been the Marines that hooked him.
For a while the sound of Dean's happy shrieks drove out the echoes of his wild screams. Though his muscles started to protest at the repetitive pushing motions that propelled Dean, John would push him all damn day if that's what he wanted. As it was, no more than three more minutes passed before Dean spotted Mike, Donna and Angie heading for the massive sandbox, and Dean called out to them and let go of the swing.
John cried out but it was too late; Dean went down onto the rubber mat below the swings and the metal seat banged him on the head. Though John scooped him up before he could start to cry, he erupted in a wail that bayoneted John right through.
Can't even take him to the park without fucking it up. Despite the mental loop of self recrimination, he managed to hold Dean tight and murmur, "It's okay, Buddy, I've got you."
Mike and Donna caught up to them, Angie looking like she might chime in too, the way younger kids did. Donna gave John a quick greeting before whisking Angie off to play in the sandbox.
With Dean sobbing wetly into his neck, John accompanied Mike over to a bench and settled in, bobbing one knee up and down just enough to lull him a little.
"How's he been sleeping lately?" Mike asked.
"Another bad night last night. We're all getting a little ragged."
"I bet."
After a moment's consideration, John said quietly, "After the last one, Mary's been sleeping in his room every night."
"Is it helping?"
Wryly, John said, "Not so's I can tell. Especially by last night." He paused, then spoke, feeling like a traitor. "I found this weird little bag under Dean's pillow. Cloth. Mary snatched it away from me before I could see what was in it. Said it was potpourri."
"Women do like that shit," Mike offered.
Absently he gently rubs Dean's back. The sobs have slowed to a random snuffles, with Dean's breaths slowing. Maybe he'd nap for a bit; best thing for him. "I'd sniffed at it before she took it. And it sure as hell wasn't lavender in there. I could feel things inside, but I couldn't figure out what they were."
"Huh," Mike said.
"That's all I've got, too."
"Maybe it's pregnancy stuff. Hormones, man. If the Pentagon could figure out how to weaponize 'em, we'd have won the war."
"Their side on that shit? Oh hell, no."
"Guess you're right," Mike conceded with a chuckle.
John laughed softly too, and it roused Dean from his half-doze.
"Wanna go play."
"That's a fine idea, buddy." He ran a hand over Dean's head to check that he wasn't bleeding or sporting a massive goose egg, making it a casually affectionate gesture so he wouldn't alert Dean to the fact that maybe he should still be crying. "Go check out what Angie's doing."
It occurred to him, since they'd just been talking about the war, that maybe he could mention the dreams, get that off his chest. He hadn't told Mary, since her focus was where it should be, on Dean.
But Mike changed the topic to the Royals' chances for next season, and the moment was lost. As Mike rattled on, John decided it was probably best. He wasn't sure how he'd talk about the little kids screaming without having to add a disclaimer: It wasn't like My Lai or anything.... They got caught up in some napalming, we just came after, that's all.
Yeah, that's all. Poor little bastards, these children of war.
***
Mary's so-called lavender potpourri didn't do a damn bit of good. Dean kept having night terrors, Mary kept up sentry duty in his bedroom, and John wove Dean's screams into his own nightmares.
A number of times John found her poring over a leather-bound book she'd dug up in the attic. It smelled of gun oil, which made him suspect it probably wasn't her mom's copy of Dr. Spock, but she wouldn't let him close enough to get a look. One day while Dean was watching cartoons, john confronted her in the kitchen as she put together a lasagna.
"I've had enough of this. I want you back in our bed, not sitting in there with him all night."
"And since when do you tell me what to do, John Winchester?"
"Since your way of handling this isn't working. I'd see the point if your staying with him every night kept the nightmares away. But it doesn't. In fact, I think it just makes things worse. Dean goes to bed knowing you think something's wrong, and it sets him up to wake up afraid."
The lasagna noodle she'd been carefully trying to untangle tore, one end dangling from each hand. "You're blaming me?" Her eyes held so much rage it was easy to imagine the streaks of marinara sauce on her hands was blood.
"Dammit, no, but there's no point in you hovering over him that way. You look like you're waiting for the boogieman to show up so you can gun him down."
Slinging both halves of the noodle haphazardly into the baking dish, she snapped, "Fuck you, John. Don't you tell me how to raise my son."
"He's our son."
"He's three. I'm not having you tell him to suck it up and be a good little marine."
"That's not what I'm saying."
"Same thing. I'm not going to leave him all by himself until that thing goes away."
Something about that thing pinged an alarm bell, but before he could question her wording, Dean shuffled into the room, his voice plaintive as he said, "Mommy? Daddy?"
"Hey there, sweetie pie," Mary bent to him and planted a kiss onto his head.
"Are you mad?"
"We're just talking," John answered. "I guess we got a little loud. C'mon, Deano, let's go watch TV while your mom finishes dinner."
Uncertainly, he looked back toward Mary as John led him from the room.
"C'mon, we don't want to miss anything." He settled Dean onto his lap and both of them stared at Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny without making a sound until Mary called them to dinner.
***
John slept in the back seat of the Impala that night, after he'd tucked Dean in and kissed him goodnight. He made sure to creep back into the house before Dean's usual rising time. God knew somebody had to keep things seeming normal as possible.
He kept to the same routine for a week. It got damn uncomfortable after a while, but he slept better nonetheless, without any napalm dreams. The days were getting crisper, though, and soon he would need more than a moth-eaten army blanket to keep him warm. Before he had a chance to ask Mike about using a cot in the garage, Mary walked out to the car one morning in her robe, carrying two coffee mugs.
John opened the door for her, scooting over and lifting the blanket so she could slide under. "Dean's made it through a week now without any night terrors." This was the first time she'd used that name for them. He wasn't sure if it was an admission or an olive branch, but he'd take it and not ask questions.
"Is he asleep now?"
"Watching cartoons." With a bit of shifting and handing over the mugs, she produced a baby monitor from the pocket of her robe, setting it on the floor. Looney Tunes music played softly in the background.
"Is he up early, or did I sleep late?"
"A little of both."
As bizarre as it was to be having coffee with his wife in the back seat of their car, listening to antic cartoon music, it was the most normal he'd felt in a long time. John felt the stirrings of desire to do what they used to do back here, but Dean was alone in the house, and Dean was most important.
"Tell you what," he said. "I'll go buy donuts, and since that'll send Dean completely out of his mind, maybe he won't notice I wasn't in the house when he woke up."
"You'll be late."
"Call in, tell Mike I'm sick. I'll watch Dean while you catch up a little on sleep."
"I have a better idea. Get some magazines and comic books while you're out, maybe a new coloring book. We'll all spend the day in bed."
This had always been a Sundays-only event, but the unusualness of it seemed a good capper for the not-normal that had marred the last few weeks.
Bed-in for peace. It was an old joke, one they'd stopped using since John Lennon had been murdered before Yoko's eyes. And it was a little too close to the bone considering the war that had threatened to break out between them. But it was more apt than ever.
Mary offered him a lingering, coffee-flavored kiss before she took up the monitor and scuffed in her fuzzy slippers up the sidewalk to Dean. John settled in behind the wheel, eager to get his errands done so he could come back to his home and bed, his wife and son.