her who loves you best
Title: her who loves you best
Author: July
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I am profoundly broke and this isn't helping.
Notes:Written for spn_found_fic, prompt number 31 (the prompt is included in its entirety as the first word of each line in a conversation below, beginning with "Goddamn").
Summary: It should have come as no surprise that their first fight is a real ten round, knock-down, drag out, cage-match to the end.
her who loves you best
Eight months, eleven days and sixteen hours after Mary walked down the aisle to marry John Winchester, they have their first fight. And John, she has already discovered, never does anything by half. It’s not in him to leave before quitting time. So it should have come as no surprise that their first fight is a real ten round, knock down, drag out, cage match to the end.
And end it does, with Mary tossing him out of the house at a little after five in the morning while John stands on the lawn, barefoot and shirtless in his jeans. Worse than his state of undress, the obvious display of marital discord in front of the entire neighborhood (oh, Jesus, what the neighbors might have heard), is the way he stands there, completely stone-faced, completely removed from the situation, while she throws a dirty old shirt, his work boots, and his wallet out the door. Entirely impassive, he keeps his eyes on hers while she holds up his keys in her right hand. He is so remote, so fucking aloof while she de-rings his house key and clutches it in her left hand.
She winds up her right arm like a pro and throws the Impala keys with a force she heretofore didn’t know she possessed. They hit him in the chest, drop down to the grass, and still he doesn’t blink, doesn’t take his eyes off of her. She is shaking with rage while she stands there, staring him down in just her-no, his white t-shirt, cotton undies, and nothing else. Except for the scarlet, John-sized handprint across her left cheek.
Mary is way past giving a damn what it looks like to the neighbors.
Turning on her heel, she closes and locks the front door with careful deliberation. She takes a deep and uneven breath, runs one hand through her mussed blonde hair. Mary puts one trembling hand against her hot cheek and the other on her stomach. The Impala roars to life outside. She swallows against a wave of disgust and looks down at her belly.
“Sorry you had to see that, kid. Won’t happen again.”
<<<<<>>>>>
“I’m sorry, what?” Mary stares back at the nurse. Who repeats herself. Again. “I just...I’m not sure I understand.” The nurse is starting to look at her funny and she gives her the test results one more time. But Mary can’t hear a damn thing over the tinny sound in her ears. “Are you kidding me? You’re kidding me. That’s kind of a sick joke, lady.” And she might be yelling a little because then the nurse goes to get the doctor.
“Mrs. Winchester?” Mary looks back, unblinking at the man in the dignified white coat. His tie looks like fine silk. Probably imported. “Your blood work is positive.”
“It’s wrong.”
“Ma’am, I understand-“
“A year ago, in this very office, you told me that this was impossible. A year ago, you looked me in the eye and told me that I was barren. You told me to consider adoption.”
“I remember that conversation, too.” He was speaking slowly now, resting a hand on her shoulder as he tried to meet her eyes. “But there’s no arguing with the facts. You’re pregnant.”
“Holy shit,” she whispers. Then Mary leans over and throws up on his expensive Italian shoes.
<<<<<>>>>>
She calls in sick to work for two days. The imprint in her cheek isn’t bad, would be easy to cover up with a little foundation and powder, artfully applied. But there’s no hiding the look in her eyes, the scared there. And it’s a little hard to explain away the morning sickness. So she spends most of her day sitting on the cold bathroom floor in John’s bathrobe while she reads Jane Eyre, of all things, in between rounds of throwing up like it’s her life’s ambition. The book is comforting. It reminds her of high school English, of safe crushes on mild-mannered boys, before she went off and met a tall, dark, wild-eyed man with a past. The irony does not escape her.
Christ, she thinks, rinsing her mouth out for the tenth time, she hasn’t puked like this since the Jayhawks’ tailgate with the mystery punch...and there she goes again. There’s nothing left in her, just a little saliva. Groaning, miserable, she lays down again when it’s over, settling her head on the threadbare towel she’s folded up for a pillow and thinks about the real meaning of grant me at least a new servitude. She lays an unsteady hand on her belly.
“You’re killing me here, kid. You’re absolutely killing me.”
<<<<<>>>>>
John wakes her up at four in the morning and asks her if she’s feeling better, if she’s over that stomach flu. She feels worlds better, but she does a little perfunctory bitching and moaning about the time--they both know that that’s just for show. With absolutely zero delicacy, he’s stripping off her-no, his t-shirt and kissing her right where her shoulder meets her neck. And soon she’s moaning for another reason completely and wondering how she got so damn lucky.
After, he drops down on top of her, and she holds onto him tighter than ever. She loves feeling the weight of him against her, the way his breathing evens out right next to her neck, the smell of his shampoo. In that moment, he feels present in a way that she can hardly process. He is so with her, so hers. Mary is so happy that it makes her head spin.
“Hey, Winchester,” she whispers into his ear and gets a semi-conscious grunt in reply. “I was wrong.”
“Mmm...about what?”
“About that thing...about.” Eloquent, Mary, well done. She has always been the more articulate, more verbal one in the relationship, but that particular quality seems to be failing her now. So she pushes against him gently, rolling him onto his side. He props his head up with one arm and looks back at her with that dopey, post-coital grin that slays her every time. Swallowing hard, she reaches for his free hand and rests it, palm down, against her lower belly. “I was wrong.”
He jerks his hand back like it’s been burned. And then his face changes. Who are you, she thinks, and she almost says it out loud. The self-satisfied, vaguely smug, oversexed look is gone and it is replaced with something hard. No bewilderment, no joy, no pride, no happiness, no anything. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
<<<<<>>>>>
Mary, feeling brave, is attempting a dinner of Cheerios and ginger ale. It’s Sunday and she hasn’t heard from John for 96 hours. But who’s counting. She picks out a few more Os from the box and swallows them without chewing, washing them down with a few cautious sips of the ginger ale. She’s pretty sure she’s done with the horking today, but it’s still difficult to make herself eat anything. It was a bad morning and for a while all she could think about was how nice it would be if John were there to hold back her hair.
She glances down at her dog-eared book, because she’s getting to the meaty part: What had occurred since, calculated to change his and my relative positions? Yet now, how distant, how far estranged we were! So far distant, that I did not expect him to come and speak to me... The letters are swimming a little, and oh my God is she getting ready to cry? She hasn’t cried since he left because once she starts, there will be no stopping. Mary sits at their little kitchen table, in their little house, choking down dry cereal, alone with only her book, and her transformation from hopeful and expectant to miserable and alone is officially complete. When did she turn into that woman she always pitied: pregnant, alone, and totally adrift?
The phone rings and isn’t that just fucking perfect. She snorts back the impending tears and the snot that comes with them and pulls herself together as best she can. Please, God, don’t let it be mom, she thinks. Because if it is she might just totally lose it and she’s already fighting the feeling that she is standing on the precipice of something, maybe of her marriage, maybe the rest of her whole damn life, and if she loses it on the phone with a third party she will be officially in trouble somehow, and she is in no way prepared to deal with that. But she answers the phone anyway because it might be John.
“Hello.” She doesn’t like the way her voice sounds: flat and a little raw from the not-crying.
“Mary? It’s Jim.” John’s friend? The deacon from Minnesota? The hell?
“Hi, Jim.”
“John’s here. I just wanted to call and check in with you, see how you were.”
“Uh-huh?” Eloquent, Mary, well done, you sound completely fine.
“He’s asleep in the other room.” Read: passed out stone-cold drunk on the nearest horizontal service. “He looks a little rough.” She makes a strangled little noise. Rough? You don’t know from rough. “He hasn’t said much, but I understand that this is an uncomfortable situation.”
“Mmm.”
“Mary. I want to help you. Just...” A painful sigh. “Tell me what you need, please.” That simple request calls up a clarity inside her that she hasn’t felt since that nurse gave her the good news. What does she need? Her fear is set aside for a moment while she considers. She remembers that Jim is a Marine, too. That simple fact brings with it the promise that he will carry out her wishes to the letter. Nothing by half. “Mary?”
“I need you to sober my husband up,” her voice is assertive now, and calm. “I need you to set him straight. I need you to remind him that he is going to be a father and that he needs to dig in, man the fuck up, and get used to the idea.” And, sliding painfully past a little shame, “And I need you to tell him that if he ever lays a hand on me again, I will leave. And he will never see me, or the baby, again. Ever.”
“Consider it done.” Jim hangs up the phone. Mary replaces the phone in its cradle gently and sits down at the table again.
“Come on, kid. Let’s get you some more Cheerios.”
<<<<<>>>>>
John rolls away from her to sit on the side of the bed, presenting his back to her. He is completely still for a moment before pushing off the mattress with force, pulling on his briefs and then his jeans. Mary is speechless for a few moments before following suit, pulling on her underwear and then her-no, his t-shirt. He is pacing back and forth in their small bedroom with a look on his face that she has never seen. It renders him practically unrecognizable.
“John? Talk to me here.” She walks around the bed to face him. He won’t meet her eyes, he just steps around her. “Hey. Hey!”
“Not now, Mary,” he barks and she is stunned. Did he...did he just use his Marine voice on her?
“Watch your tone!” she snaps right back. Now she has his attention, but she’s not so sure she wants it. He’s looming towards her in the weird light from the distant street lamps. Instinctively, she backs away from him but he keeps on coming. She bumps against the dresser and almost jumps out of her damn skin.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he repeats himself, louder, even though he’s pressed right against her, grinding her back into the furniture.
“I’m pregnant, John. With child. Knocked up. Expecting. In the family way.” With effort, she keeps her cool, but it leaves her voice flat and a little bitter.
“That’s impossible. You told me you were barren, that you were sterile. Your words, Mary!” Yelling now.
“And I was wrong! I thought...John, I thought this was good news.” Breathe in, breathe out. In, and out.
“Well, it’s not!” He puts a hand on either side of her, pinning her. He runs his tongue over his teeth. “You’re lying.” That tears it. She shoves back against him, freeing herself, and putting her back up against the opposite wall. But he follows, advancing on her. Before she can get a grip, they’re both yelling at each other, stepping on each other’s words and cussing like a couple of fishwives.
“John! Just wait, one goddamn-“
“-Bitch!”
And that is a word that he can never take back and she can never un-hear. Her mouth drops open and she stares back at him. Looking back, she will decide that this is the moment she should have walked away and given him a little space, a little time to return to himself. But she’s too invested now. The gloves are off and so is the safety.
“You don’t get to call me that.”
“Always with the rules, the boundaries, the high fucking horse-“
“Think about what you’re saying, John.”
“That is really rich, coming from the woman who lies-“
“I have never lied to you, not even once. And I’m not lying now.”
“Am I supposed to believe that? Tell me now. Were you lying then, or now?”
“Lying about what? About how I was heartbroken when they told me I couldn’t have kids? About how crushed I was when you said you weren’t interested in adopting? About how I still pick out names every month, just in case?”
“About us! Lying to me, about us. It was supposed to be you and me. Just you and me. Us. We were going to be a family, the two of us. What the hell changed?”
“Everything! Everything changed the minute they told me that I didn’t have the flu. I had a baby on the way. And I’m sorry if you’re having trouble keeping up here, John, so let me spell it out for you: we are having a baby. I’m going to be a mom. You’re going to be a dad. And you’re going to do a hell of a lot better job when you drop the spot-on impression you’re doing of your own father.”
The back of his hand cracks against her cheek, making a sound like a gunshot. Her eyes fill immediately with tears and she sits down against the wall in a hurry. The skin burns and her ears buzz a little. He stands over her, face unreadable in the half-light.
“Why?” she demands. “Why?”
<<<<<>>>>>
On Monday, Mary has to call her friend Cheryl to get a ride to work. John always drops her off at the bank. She usually climbs into the Impala and he hangs an arm around her like a kid at a drive through and he never forgets to kiss her before he leaves.
None of her coworkers thinks much of her subsisting on Cheerios and ginger ale, because she tells everyone she’s had the stomach flu. During lunch, the phone rings, and it’s the garage wondering where the hell John is. She apologizes and tells them his grandmother died. Which is technically true, but Edith has been dead since 1958. Mary Winchester, folks, like Cleopatra, a Queen of Denial.
After work, she walks to the supermarket. One of the many injunctions that the doctor gave her was not to lose weight. Easier said than done, jackass, she thinks. So she really has to find something to eat besides Cheerio’s. She’s passing the local greasy spoon diner when she is literally stopped in her tracks by the smell of rhubarb pie. Mary hates rhubarb and she doesn’t believe in pie: fruit is fruit, dessert is dessert, and never the twain shall meet. But she will be damned if that pie doesn’t have her mouth watering. She buys two of them. She walks home with the pie boxes under her left arm and her right arm on her belly.
“I don’t know why I’m so surprised. Your Dad likes pie, too, kid.”
<<<<<>>>>>
For a solid minute, there is a profound silence in the house, like not even the walls can believe what just happened. Mary keeps one hand on her cheek and with the other points toward the door. John is so dead behind the eyes that she is well and truly scared now. But he turns and marches down the stairs, through the living room, and out the front door.
She stands there with her arms crossed, stunned and furious while he adopts a similar pose on the lawn. The pre-dawn light looks weird on his bare skin and probably on hers, too. He breaks the silence first and it sounds more like spitting than speaking.
“Outfuckingstanding.”
<<<<<>>>>>
The lattice crust on the peach pie is turning a perfect golden brown when the phone rings. Breakfast of champions, here I come. Mary pulls the pie out of the oven in a hurry, letting the door slam shut as she scurries for the phone. Damn, that pie smells good.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mary. It’s Jim.” Oh.
“Hi, Jim.”
“John’s out back chopping wood. I wasn’t sure...would you like to talk to him?”
“No,” she says it so fast it feels like a reflex. She takes a deep breath. Not now, not when she can’t see his face, to look in his eyes and make sure that it’s John that she’s talking to again, not the man she threw out of the house.
“Okay, okay.” Jim has an easy, steady, trustworthy voice. She can’t put a face to him, though surely he was at the wedding. “I know it’s only been a week.” The longest damn week of her life. “But I’m not sure there are enough trees in the great state of Minnesota to keep him busy much longer.” Mary smiles and she knows that it shows in her voice.
“Yeah, he’s a regular Paul Bunyan.”
“It’s your call, Mary.”
“If he says he’s ready to come home, he can come home.” On the other end of the line, a screen door slams open. Mary can hear John’s voice pleading: Is that her? Is that her on the phone?
“I’ll be in touch.” I swear to God, Jim. You let me talk to her, or so help me- Jim hangs up the phone.
Mary stands there, looking at the receiver for a minute. Then she returns the phone to its cradle and pointedly doesn’t think about how he sounded. She turns off the oven, sets the pie on a burner to cool, and then sits down at the table and sets to work reading. She has to stop, though, when it gets to the part about: I see a white cheek and a faded eye, but no trace of tears. I suppose, then, your heart has been weeping blood? And that whole scene is just a little too close to the mark and thank God the phone rings just about then.
“Jim?” she guesses.
“Yep. I reckon he’ll be there by sundown.”
“Okay.”
“Now, Mary, I’m going to give you some phone numbers, and I want you to write them all down." They’re for his personal and office phone, another Marine buddy named Deacon, a distant relative of his who lives in Fort Scott, and a pastor in the area who owes him a favor. “You can call any or all of us at any time, day or night. No matter what the occasion. Alright?”
“Thank you, Jim.”
“No, Mary, no.” A little sorrow has crept back into his voice. “You don’t ever have to thank me for this. Ever. Don’t make any apologies, don’t make any excuses. If anything, I’m in your debt.”
“For what?” she asks, a little overwhelmed.
“For everything. Now. Do you have those numbers?”
“Yes.”
“Put them in a safe place. Thank you, Mary.”
“Goodnight, Jim.”
She hates pie. The pie tastes glorious. Cognitive dissonance is a real bitch.
“We’re gonna be okay, kid. John’s on his way home.”
<<<<<>>>>>
She waits for him on the front lawn, drinking a cold ginger ale. She worked through the difficult chapters today over the peach pie. There are two more cooling in the kitchen now, blueberry and apple. They should still be warm when John arrives. Assuming, of course, he avoids the speed traps. Mary takes another sip and returns to the book: ...I suddenly remembered that I might have been all wrong, and was perhaps playing the fool unwittingly; and I began to gently withdraw myself...
Of course, it’s here, a mere 20 pages or so from the end, when she hears the Impala. Marking her page and setting aside the book, Mary can hardly credit the wave of relief that greets the sight of the black muscle car. Just the presence of that black beast and she isn’t alone, not by half. The setting sun hits the windshield just so, and she has to look away until John angles it under a tree. She stays seated, observes him as he gets out of the car. Jesus, she thinks, he looks like crap.
He’s wearing the same holey shirt she threw out the front door a little over a week ago. It looks clean, though. As do his jeans. At some point, he must have shaved, but he’s definitely due again. More striking, however, is the shiner John’s sporting over his right eye, the purple jaw, and the lip split in two places. For a holy man, Jim must have a pretty mean left hook. The part of his face that isn’t some shade of black or purple is the color of old oatmeal. And his eyes... Until this moment Mary thought 'putting the fear of God' into someone was just an expression. Now she sees it in the set of his shoulders, the way he’s hanging his head, she sees a fear and an exposure that makes the hair on her neck stand at attention.
Mary gets up, brushes the grass of her skirt, and wishes, not for the first time this week, that there was a manual for just such an occasion: what to expect when you’re expecting your shit for brains husband to come back from having his bell rung by his former Marine buddy cum spiritual advisor. Her stomach clenches and it has nothing to do with the baby. John hasn’t actually looked at her yet, just stands there staring at her bare feet, scratching at his collarbone.
“Hey, Winchester,” she says. No response. She really, really needs him to be John again, not the terrifying man from last week or the terrified man in front of her. It’s now or never, she decides, and walks over to him. She smiles a little and reaches out a hand to him. John stretches out his hands and wraps hers up in them. His warm, calloused palms are torn up and raw and oozing in various places. “Jesus, John, what happened?”
He mumbles something indistinguishable, like there’s something wrong with his voice and then Mary remembers about the wood chopping. She’s about to take him inside to get his hands cleaned up when she realizes that there’s something else seriously wrong here because John Winchester is crying.
“John? Baby?” With her free hand, she reaches up to his chin, trying to get a good look at his face. Before she can, though, he’s let go of the hand and picked her up off her feet, holding onto her like a lifeline. Any anxiety, any trepidation is thrown out the window. This man, he is definitely her husband. Mary throws her arms around his neck, presses her face into his chest and takes a deep breath of his wonderful John smell. Like she weighs nothing, he lifts her up higher, enough so that she can wrap her legs around his waist and allow him to carry her inside to the kitchen.
“You can put me down now, John. I need to fix up your hands.” He tightens his grip instead, holding her with more force than he ever has before, like he’s trying to get something through to her. So she holds on right back. I get it, she thinks, I get it. You’re mine. I’m yours.
“Mary,” he whispers, the first word he’s said. “Mary.”
“Come on, baby, set me down, and let me fix up your hands.” He does, and she gets him a bag of frozen peas for his face. He holds them there while she looks at his palms. He must have gone straight to the car after that phone call, because they haven’t even been washed yet. She does it as carefully as possible and then gets out a safety pin, because there are some splinters way the hell in there. Then she dries them off, applies some of that nasty antibiotic spray, and wraps them up in clean gauze from the first aid kit under the sink.
It takes some time, but she’s grateful. He needs a chance to pull himself together, and she needs to figure out what to do now because John Winchester crying was not an eventuality she was prepared for. She wastes a little time cleaning up around the sink and then goes to get him a beer from the fridge and a fresh ginger ale for herself.
“Mary,” he says again, his voice still gravelly.
“Yeah?” She flips off the cap of the beer bottle and sets it down on the table. He takes a long, appreciative drink, maybe buying a little time.
“What’s with the pie?” She flushes and looks away. “You hate pie: ‘Fruit is fruit, dessert is dessert, and never the twain shall meet.’” Holy hell, now, of all times, she is going to cry. A week and change, and now is when her throat closes up, her sinuses flood, and her cheeks are wet almost immediately.
“It’s just that,” her voice pinches and cracks and John flinches. She clears her throat. “The kid likes pie.” And then, she completely loses it. She’s repeating, “The kid likes pie” over and over around her tears like it’s some kind of magical mantra that will protect her and her baby and her marriage.
“Come here, Mary, come here.” And she does. She crawls into his lap and wraps arms around him and cries into that nasty old shirt that she should really get around to throwing away. Mary has no idea how long it goes on, but when she’s finally finished, John’s shoulder is soaked with tears and more than a little snot.
“Sorry,” she says, and wipes her puffy eyes and her runny nose. She is not a pretty crier. At some point, John must have carried her into the living room because now they’re on the couch now.
“Don’t you apologize to me, don’t you dare.” She swallows and nods. And he gets a look on his face like he’s about to walk into a free fire zone. “Here’s the thing, Mary. My dad, my family...Christ, I joined the Marines just to get out of that clusterfuck of a house. And when I found out about how we couldn’t have kids, I was...I was relieved. Because I knew I could at least be a good husband. I could be good to you, you know, I could be really good to you. But a kid, I wasn’t sure I could be good to a kid. I knew I couldn’t. I just want you to know that, that that’s all I could think about: how I could only be a shit father, just like my old man, and how unfair that was, how panicked and trapped that made me feel. And it’s not an excuse. Because what I did was just inexcusable. And that, I swear to you, will never happen again. And...and if you want me to leave I will pack up my stuff right now tonight and sleep in the Impala, or at the garage, or whatever you want. And I can try to earn your trust back. But, if you don’t want me anywhere near you, you never want to see me again, I swear to God, I will disappear forever.” He’s on the edge, now, of crying again, she can tell. “I swear to God, I will. And it will only be fair. But if there’s any chance that you can let me, I want to try. I want to try and be a father, a decent father, at least. And I want to be good with you, to you, again.”
And that is officially the longest uninterrupted thing that John Winchester had ever said to her. By far. And by far the most difficult. She looks up through her puffy eyes at his swollen face.
“Listen to me, John. And I mean, really listen. We’re going to go into the kitchen. We’re going to eat pie for dinner and you’re going to finish that beer.”
“I can do that.”
“Good. And in a while, we’re going to have a baby. And you, John, you are going to be a good father.” She holds his gaze and waits until the message hits home. He blinks and gives her the faintest of nods.
After pie and ginger ale, while Mary’s putting their dishes in the sink, John comes up behind her and wraps his arm around her waist. He lowers his head by her ear and takes a deep breath of her and her shampoo. Then he slides his hands down over her belly, resting them just underneath her navel.
“Hey, kid. I like pie, too.”
...I served both for his prop and guide. We entered the woods, and wended homeward.
Author: July
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I am profoundly broke and this isn't helping.
Notes:Written for spn_found_fic, prompt number 31 (the prompt is included in its entirety as the first word of each line in a conversation below, beginning with "Goddamn").
Summary: It should have come as no surprise that their first fight is a real ten round, knock-down, drag out, cage-match to the end.
her who loves you best
Eight months, eleven days and sixteen hours after Mary walked down the aisle to marry John Winchester, they have their first fight. And John, she has already discovered, never does anything by half. It’s not in him to leave before quitting time. So it should have come as no surprise that their first fight is a real ten round, knock down, drag out, cage match to the end.
And end it does, with Mary tossing him out of the house at a little after five in the morning while John stands on the lawn, barefoot and shirtless in his jeans. Worse than his state of undress, the obvious display of marital discord in front of the entire neighborhood (oh, Jesus, what the neighbors might have heard), is the way he stands there, completely stone-faced, completely removed from the situation, while she throws a dirty old shirt, his work boots, and his wallet out the door. Entirely impassive, he keeps his eyes on hers while she holds up his keys in her right hand. He is so remote, so fucking aloof while she de-rings his house key and clutches it in her left hand.
She winds up her right arm like a pro and throws the Impala keys with a force she heretofore didn’t know she possessed. They hit him in the chest, drop down to the grass, and still he doesn’t blink, doesn’t take his eyes off of her. She is shaking with rage while she stands there, staring him down in just her-no, his white t-shirt, cotton undies, and nothing else. Except for the scarlet, John-sized handprint across her left cheek.
Mary is way past giving a damn what it looks like to the neighbors.
Turning on her heel, she closes and locks the front door with careful deliberation. She takes a deep and uneven breath, runs one hand through her mussed blonde hair. Mary puts one trembling hand against her hot cheek and the other on her stomach. The Impala roars to life outside. She swallows against a wave of disgust and looks down at her belly.
“Sorry you had to see that, kid. Won’t happen again.”
<<<<<>>>>>
“I’m sorry, what?” Mary stares back at the nurse. Who repeats herself. Again. “I just...I’m not sure I understand.” The nurse is starting to look at her funny and she gives her the test results one more time. But Mary can’t hear a damn thing over the tinny sound in her ears. “Are you kidding me? You’re kidding me. That’s kind of a sick joke, lady.” And she might be yelling a little because then the nurse goes to get the doctor.
“Mrs. Winchester?” Mary looks back, unblinking at the man in the dignified white coat. His tie looks like fine silk. Probably imported. “Your blood work is positive.”
“It’s wrong.”
“Ma’am, I understand-“
“A year ago, in this very office, you told me that this was impossible. A year ago, you looked me in the eye and told me that I was barren. You told me to consider adoption.”
“I remember that conversation, too.” He was speaking slowly now, resting a hand on her shoulder as he tried to meet her eyes. “But there’s no arguing with the facts. You’re pregnant.”
“Holy shit,” she whispers. Then Mary leans over and throws up on his expensive Italian shoes.
<<<<<>>>>>
She calls in sick to work for two days. The imprint in her cheek isn’t bad, would be easy to cover up with a little foundation and powder, artfully applied. But there’s no hiding the look in her eyes, the scared there. And it’s a little hard to explain away the morning sickness. So she spends most of her day sitting on the cold bathroom floor in John’s bathrobe while she reads Jane Eyre, of all things, in between rounds of throwing up like it’s her life’s ambition. The book is comforting. It reminds her of high school English, of safe crushes on mild-mannered boys, before she went off and met a tall, dark, wild-eyed man with a past. The irony does not escape her.
Christ, she thinks, rinsing her mouth out for the tenth time, she hasn’t puked like this since the Jayhawks’ tailgate with the mystery punch...and there she goes again. There’s nothing left in her, just a little saliva. Groaning, miserable, she lays down again when it’s over, settling her head on the threadbare towel she’s folded up for a pillow and thinks about the real meaning of grant me at least a new servitude. She lays an unsteady hand on her belly.
“You’re killing me here, kid. You’re absolutely killing me.”
<<<<<>>>>>
John wakes her up at four in the morning and asks her if she’s feeling better, if she’s over that stomach flu. She feels worlds better, but she does a little perfunctory bitching and moaning about the time--they both know that that’s just for show. With absolutely zero delicacy, he’s stripping off her-no, his t-shirt and kissing her right where her shoulder meets her neck. And soon she’s moaning for another reason completely and wondering how she got so damn lucky.
After, he drops down on top of her, and she holds onto him tighter than ever. She loves feeling the weight of him against her, the way his breathing evens out right next to her neck, the smell of his shampoo. In that moment, he feels present in a way that she can hardly process. He is so with her, so hers. Mary is so happy that it makes her head spin.
“Hey, Winchester,” she whispers into his ear and gets a semi-conscious grunt in reply. “I was wrong.”
“Mmm...about what?”
“About that thing...about.” Eloquent, Mary, well done. She has always been the more articulate, more verbal one in the relationship, but that particular quality seems to be failing her now. So she pushes against him gently, rolling him onto his side. He props his head up with one arm and looks back at her with that dopey, post-coital grin that slays her every time. Swallowing hard, she reaches for his free hand and rests it, palm down, against her lower belly. “I was wrong.”
He jerks his hand back like it’s been burned. And then his face changes. Who are you, she thinks, and she almost says it out loud. The self-satisfied, vaguely smug, oversexed look is gone and it is replaced with something hard. No bewilderment, no joy, no pride, no happiness, no anything. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
<<<<<>>>>>
Mary, feeling brave, is attempting a dinner of Cheerios and ginger ale. It’s Sunday and she hasn’t heard from John for 96 hours. But who’s counting. She picks out a few more Os from the box and swallows them without chewing, washing them down with a few cautious sips of the ginger ale. She’s pretty sure she’s done with the horking today, but it’s still difficult to make herself eat anything. It was a bad morning and for a while all she could think about was how nice it would be if John were there to hold back her hair.
She glances down at her dog-eared book, because she’s getting to the meaty part: What had occurred since, calculated to change his and my relative positions? Yet now, how distant, how far estranged we were! So far distant, that I did not expect him to come and speak to me... The letters are swimming a little, and oh my God is she getting ready to cry? She hasn’t cried since he left because once she starts, there will be no stopping. Mary sits at their little kitchen table, in their little house, choking down dry cereal, alone with only her book, and her transformation from hopeful and expectant to miserable and alone is officially complete. When did she turn into that woman she always pitied: pregnant, alone, and totally adrift?
The phone rings and isn’t that just fucking perfect. She snorts back the impending tears and the snot that comes with them and pulls herself together as best she can. Please, God, don’t let it be mom, she thinks. Because if it is she might just totally lose it and she’s already fighting the feeling that she is standing on the precipice of something, maybe of her marriage, maybe the rest of her whole damn life, and if she loses it on the phone with a third party she will be officially in trouble somehow, and she is in no way prepared to deal with that. But she answers the phone anyway because it might be John.
“Hello.” She doesn’t like the way her voice sounds: flat and a little raw from the not-crying.
“Mary? It’s Jim.” John’s friend? The deacon from Minnesota? The hell?
“Hi, Jim.”
“John’s here. I just wanted to call and check in with you, see how you were.”
“Uh-huh?” Eloquent, Mary, well done, you sound completely fine.
“He’s asleep in the other room.” Read: passed out stone-cold drunk on the nearest horizontal service. “He looks a little rough.” She makes a strangled little noise. Rough? You don’t know from rough. “He hasn’t said much, but I understand that this is an uncomfortable situation.”
“Mmm.”
“Mary. I want to help you. Just...” A painful sigh. “Tell me what you need, please.” That simple request calls up a clarity inside her that she hasn’t felt since that nurse gave her the good news. What does she need? Her fear is set aside for a moment while she considers. She remembers that Jim is a Marine, too. That simple fact brings with it the promise that he will carry out her wishes to the letter. Nothing by half. “Mary?”
“I need you to sober my husband up,” her voice is assertive now, and calm. “I need you to set him straight. I need you to remind him that he is going to be a father and that he needs to dig in, man the fuck up, and get used to the idea.” And, sliding painfully past a little shame, “And I need you to tell him that if he ever lays a hand on me again, I will leave. And he will never see me, or the baby, again. Ever.”
“Consider it done.” Jim hangs up the phone. Mary replaces the phone in its cradle gently and sits down at the table again.
“Come on, kid. Let’s get you some more Cheerios.”
<<<<<>>>>>
John rolls away from her to sit on the side of the bed, presenting his back to her. He is completely still for a moment before pushing off the mattress with force, pulling on his briefs and then his jeans. Mary is speechless for a few moments before following suit, pulling on her underwear and then her-no, his t-shirt. He is pacing back and forth in their small bedroom with a look on his face that she has never seen. It renders him practically unrecognizable.
“John? Talk to me here.” She walks around the bed to face him. He won’t meet her eyes, he just steps around her. “Hey. Hey!”
“Not now, Mary,” he barks and she is stunned. Did he...did he just use his Marine voice on her?
“Watch your tone!” she snaps right back. Now she has his attention, but she’s not so sure she wants it. He’s looming towards her in the weird light from the distant street lamps. Instinctively, she backs away from him but he keeps on coming. She bumps against the dresser and almost jumps out of her damn skin.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he repeats himself, louder, even though he’s pressed right against her, grinding her back into the furniture.
“I’m pregnant, John. With child. Knocked up. Expecting. In the family way.” With effort, she keeps her cool, but it leaves her voice flat and a little bitter.
“That’s impossible. You told me you were barren, that you were sterile. Your words, Mary!” Yelling now.
“And I was wrong! I thought...John, I thought this was good news.” Breathe in, breathe out. In, and out.
“Well, it’s not!” He puts a hand on either side of her, pinning her. He runs his tongue over his teeth. “You’re lying.” That tears it. She shoves back against him, freeing herself, and putting her back up against the opposite wall. But he follows, advancing on her. Before she can get a grip, they’re both yelling at each other, stepping on each other’s words and cussing like a couple of fishwives.
“John! Just wait, one goddamn-“
“-Bitch!”
And that is a word that he can never take back and she can never un-hear. Her mouth drops open and she stares back at him. Looking back, she will decide that this is the moment she should have walked away and given him a little space, a little time to return to himself. But she’s too invested now. The gloves are off and so is the safety.
“You don’t get to call me that.”
“Always with the rules, the boundaries, the high fucking horse-“
“Think about what you’re saying, John.”
“That is really rich, coming from the woman who lies-“
“I have never lied to you, not even once. And I’m not lying now.”
“Am I supposed to believe that? Tell me now. Were you lying then, or now?”
“Lying about what? About how I was heartbroken when they told me I couldn’t have kids? About how crushed I was when you said you weren’t interested in adopting? About how I still pick out names every month, just in case?”
“About us! Lying to me, about us. It was supposed to be you and me. Just you and me. Us. We were going to be a family, the two of us. What the hell changed?”
“Everything! Everything changed the minute they told me that I didn’t have the flu. I had a baby on the way. And I’m sorry if you’re having trouble keeping up here, John, so let me spell it out for you: we are having a baby. I’m going to be a mom. You’re going to be a dad. And you’re going to do a hell of a lot better job when you drop the spot-on impression you’re doing of your own father.”
The back of his hand cracks against her cheek, making a sound like a gunshot. Her eyes fill immediately with tears and she sits down against the wall in a hurry. The skin burns and her ears buzz a little. He stands over her, face unreadable in the half-light.
“Why?” she demands. “Why?”
<<<<<>>>>>
On Monday, Mary has to call her friend Cheryl to get a ride to work. John always drops her off at the bank. She usually climbs into the Impala and he hangs an arm around her like a kid at a drive through and he never forgets to kiss her before he leaves.
None of her coworkers thinks much of her subsisting on Cheerios and ginger ale, because she tells everyone she’s had the stomach flu. During lunch, the phone rings, and it’s the garage wondering where the hell John is. She apologizes and tells them his grandmother died. Which is technically true, but Edith has been dead since 1958. Mary Winchester, folks, like Cleopatra, a Queen of Denial.
After work, she walks to the supermarket. One of the many injunctions that the doctor gave her was not to lose weight. Easier said than done, jackass, she thinks. So she really has to find something to eat besides Cheerio’s. She’s passing the local greasy spoon diner when she is literally stopped in her tracks by the smell of rhubarb pie. Mary hates rhubarb and she doesn’t believe in pie: fruit is fruit, dessert is dessert, and never the twain shall meet. But she will be damned if that pie doesn’t have her mouth watering. She buys two of them. She walks home with the pie boxes under her left arm and her right arm on her belly.
“I don’t know why I’m so surprised. Your Dad likes pie, too, kid.”
<<<<<>>>>>
For a solid minute, there is a profound silence in the house, like not even the walls can believe what just happened. Mary keeps one hand on her cheek and with the other points toward the door. John is so dead behind the eyes that she is well and truly scared now. But he turns and marches down the stairs, through the living room, and out the front door.
She stands there with her arms crossed, stunned and furious while he adopts a similar pose on the lawn. The pre-dawn light looks weird on his bare skin and probably on hers, too. He breaks the silence first and it sounds more like spitting than speaking.
“Outfuckingstanding.”
<<<<<>>>>>
The lattice crust on the peach pie is turning a perfect golden brown when the phone rings. Breakfast of champions, here I come. Mary pulls the pie out of the oven in a hurry, letting the door slam shut as she scurries for the phone. Damn, that pie smells good.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mary. It’s Jim.” Oh.
“Hi, Jim.”
“John’s out back chopping wood. I wasn’t sure...would you like to talk to him?”
“No,” she says it so fast it feels like a reflex. She takes a deep breath. Not now, not when she can’t see his face, to look in his eyes and make sure that it’s John that she’s talking to again, not the man she threw out of the house.
“Okay, okay.” Jim has an easy, steady, trustworthy voice. She can’t put a face to him, though surely he was at the wedding. “I know it’s only been a week.” The longest damn week of her life. “But I’m not sure there are enough trees in the great state of Minnesota to keep him busy much longer.” Mary smiles and she knows that it shows in her voice.
“Yeah, he’s a regular Paul Bunyan.”
“It’s your call, Mary.”
“If he says he’s ready to come home, he can come home.” On the other end of the line, a screen door slams open. Mary can hear John’s voice pleading: Is that her? Is that her on the phone?
“I’ll be in touch.” I swear to God, Jim. You let me talk to her, or so help me- Jim hangs up the phone.
Mary stands there, looking at the receiver for a minute. Then she returns the phone to its cradle and pointedly doesn’t think about how he sounded. She turns off the oven, sets the pie on a burner to cool, and then sits down at the table and sets to work reading. She has to stop, though, when it gets to the part about: I see a white cheek and a faded eye, but no trace of tears. I suppose, then, your heart has been weeping blood? And that whole scene is just a little too close to the mark and thank God the phone rings just about then.
“Jim?” she guesses.
“Yep. I reckon he’ll be there by sundown.”
“Okay.”
“Now, Mary, I’m going to give you some phone numbers, and I want you to write them all down." They’re for his personal and office phone, another Marine buddy named Deacon, a distant relative of his who lives in Fort Scott, and a pastor in the area who owes him a favor. “You can call any or all of us at any time, day or night. No matter what the occasion. Alright?”
“Thank you, Jim.”
“No, Mary, no.” A little sorrow has crept back into his voice. “You don’t ever have to thank me for this. Ever. Don’t make any apologies, don’t make any excuses. If anything, I’m in your debt.”
“For what?” she asks, a little overwhelmed.
“For everything. Now. Do you have those numbers?”
“Yes.”
“Put them in a safe place. Thank you, Mary.”
“Goodnight, Jim.”
She hates pie. The pie tastes glorious. Cognitive dissonance is a real bitch.
“We’re gonna be okay, kid. John’s on his way home.”
<<<<<>>>>>
She waits for him on the front lawn, drinking a cold ginger ale. She worked through the difficult chapters today over the peach pie. There are two more cooling in the kitchen now, blueberry and apple. They should still be warm when John arrives. Assuming, of course, he avoids the speed traps. Mary takes another sip and returns to the book: ...I suddenly remembered that I might have been all wrong, and was perhaps playing the fool unwittingly; and I began to gently withdraw myself...
Of course, it’s here, a mere 20 pages or so from the end, when she hears the Impala. Marking her page and setting aside the book, Mary can hardly credit the wave of relief that greets the sight of the black muscle car. Just the presence of that black beast and she isn’t alone, not by half. The setting sun hits the windshield just so, and she has to look away until John angles it under a tree. She stays seated, observes him as he gets out of the car. Jesus, she thinks, he looks like crap.
He’s wearing the same holey shirt she threw out the front door a little over a week ago. It looks clean, though. As do his jeans. At some point, he must have shaved, but he’s definitely due again. More striking, however, is the shiner John’s sporting over his right eye, the purple jaw, and the lip split in two places. For a holy man, Jim must have a pretty mean left hook. The part of his face that isn’t some shade of black or purple is the color of old oatmeal. And his eyes... Until this moment Mary thought 'putting the fear of God' into someone was just an expression. Now she sees it in the set of his shoulders, the way he’s hanging his head, she sees a fear and an exposure that makes the hair on her neck stand at attention.
Mary gets up, brushes the grass of her skirt, and wishes, not for the first time this week, that there was a manual for just such an occasion: what to expect when you’re expecting your shit for brains husband to come back from having his bell rung by his former Marine buddy cum spiritual advisor. Her stomach clenches and it has nothing to do with the baby. John hasn’t actually looked at her yet, just stands there staring at her bare feet, scratching at his collarbone.
“Hey, Winchester,” she says. No response. She really, really needs him to be John again, not the terrifying man from last week or the terrified man in front of her. It’s now or never, she decides, and walks over to him. She smiles a little and reaches out a hand to him. John stretches out his hands and wraps hers up in them. His warm, calloused palms are torn up and raw and oozing in various places. “Jesus, John, what happened?”
He mumbles something indistinguishable, like there’s something wrong with his voice and then Mary remembers about the wood chopping. She’s about to take him inside to get his hands cleaned up when she realizes that there’s something else seriously wrong here because John Winchester is crying.
“John? Baby?” With her free hand, she reaches up to his chin, trying to get a good look at his face. Before she can, though, he’s let go of the hand and picked her up off her feet, holding onto her like a lifeline. Any anxiety, any trepidation is thrown out the window. This man, he is definitely her husband. Mary throws her arms around his neck, presses her face into his chest and takes a deep breath of his wonderful John smell. Like she weighs nothing, he lifts her up higher, enough so that she can wrap her legs around his waist and allow him to carry her inside to the kitchen.
“You can put me down now, John. I need to fix up your hands.” He tightens his grip instead, holding her with more force than he ever has before, like he’s trying to get something through to her. So she holds on right back. I get it, she thinks, I get it. You’re mine. I’m yours.
“Mary,” he whispers, the first word he’s said. “Mary.”
“Come on, baby, set me down, and let me fix up your hands.” He does, and she gets him a bag of frozen peas for his face. He holds them there while she looks at his palms. He must have gone straight to the car after that phone call, because they haven’t even been washed yet. She does it as carefully as possible and then gets out a safety pin, because there are some splinters way the hell in there. Then she dries them off, applies some of that nasty antibiotic spray, and wraps them up in clean gauze from the first aid kit under the sink.
It takes some time, but she’s grateful. He needs a chance to pull himself together, and she needs to figure out what to do now because John Winchester crying was not an eventuality she was prepared for. She wastes a little time cleaning up around the sink and then goes to get him a beer from the fridge and a fresh ginger ale for herself.
“Mary,” he says again, his voice still gravelly.
“Yeah?” She flips off the cap of the beer bottle and sets it down on the table. He takes a long, appreciative drink, maybe buying a little time.
“What’s with the pie?” She flushes and looks away. “You hate pie: ‘Fruit is fruit, dessert is dessert, and never the twain shall meet.’” Holy hell, now, of all times, she is going to cry. A week and change, and now is when her throat closes up, her sinuses flood, and her cheeks are wet almost immediately.
“It’s just that,” her voice pinches and cracks and John flinches. She clears her throat. “The kid likes pie.” And then, she completely loses it. She’s repeating, “The kid likes pie” over and over around her tears like it’s some kind of magical mantra that will protect her and her baby and her marriage.
“Come here, Mary, come here.” And she does. She crawls into his lap and wraps arms around him and cries into that nasty old shirt that she should really get around to throwing away. Mary has no idea how long it goes on, but when she’s finally finished, John’s shoulder is soaked with tears and more than a little snot.
“Sorry,” she says, and wipes her puffy eyes and her runny nose. She is not a pretty crier. At some point, John must have carried her into the living room because now they’re on the couch now.
“Don’t you apologize to me, don’t you dare.” She swallows and nods. And he gets a look on his face like he’s about to walk into a free fire zone. “Here’s the thing, Mary. My dad, my family...Christ, I joined the Marines just to get out of that clusterfuck of a house. And when I found out about how we couldn’t have kids, I was...I was relieved. Because I knew I could at least be a good husband. I could be good to you, you know, I could be really good to you. But a kid, I wasn’t sure I could be good to a kid. I knew I couldn’t. I just want you to know that, that that’s all I could think about: how I could only be a shit father, just like my old man, and how unfair that was, how panicked and trapped that made me feel. And it’s not an excuse. Because what I did was just inexcusable. And that, I swear to you, will never happen again. And...and if you want me to leave I will pack up my stuff right now tonight and sleep in the Impala, or at the garage, or whatever you want. And I can try to earn your trust back. But, if you don’t want me anywhere near you, you never want to see me again, I swear to God, I will disappear forever.” He’s on the edge, now, of crying again, she can tell. “I swear to God, I will. And it will only be fair. But if there’s any chance that you can let me, I want to try. I want to try and be a father, a decent father, at least. And I want to be good with you, to you, again.”
And that is officially the longest uninterrupted thing that John Winchester had ever said to her. By far. And by far the most difficult. She looks up through her puffy eyes at his swollen face.
“Listen to me, John. And I mean, really listen. We’re going to go into the kitchen. We’re going to eat pie for dinner and you’re going to finish that beer.”
“I can do that.”
“Good. And in a while, we’re going to have a baby. And you, John, you are going to be a good father.” She holds his gaze and waits until the message hits home. He blinks and gives her the faintest of nods.
After pie and ginger ale, while Mary’s putting their dishes in the sink, John comes up behind her and wraps his arm around her waist. He lowers his head by her ear and takes a deep breath of her and her shampoo. Then he slides his hands down over her belly, resting them just underneath her navel.
“Hey, kid. I like pie, too.”
...I served both for his prop and guide. We entered the woods, and wended homeward.