Who the heck do I think I am?

Title: Contract to Expand
Author: gwendolyngrace
Rating: PG
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series (pre-fire)
Characters: Mary, John, Dean
Summary: February 1983: Mary’s on medical bed-rest; Dean’s been sick and can’t sleep; and John would give anything to be able to lie down.
Warnings: A little schmoopy, but it’s pre-fire, so that’s allowed, right?
Wordcount: 2,300 on the nose
Disclaimer: Characters belong to the WB/CW and Eric Kripke. See all the money I don’t make doing this?
Author’s Notes: This plot bunny sprang from John’s anecdote during Dean’s illness in Trost und Freude. Harley the imaginary friend came about while I was working on a ficlet requested by charlie_jae. Thanks to charis_kalos for the beta.




Lawrence, KS
February 1983

Mary was reading in bed when John came in. She looked up. In answer, John rolled his eyes and puffed out a tired sigh.

“So Dean’s asleep, finally?” she asked.

“Like a light,” John grunted. “A really, really hair-trigger light.” He pulled off his bathrobe, but didn’t bother shedding his t-shirt or PJ bottoms. Mary watched him climb in next to her, apology and regret in her eyes. They’d learned over the last couple weeks that going to sleep didn’t mean Dean would stay down for the count. Between the kid’s post-illness insomnia and her little medical problem, John could expect to get up at least twice more before morning.

She marked her place and set her book aside. Both she and John were night owls by nature, but with Dean’s schedule, John’s work at the garage, and Mary’s job as a delivery dispatcher, mornings had become a necessary evil. More to the point, John was looking particularly ragged from the strain of the past two weeks, whereas Mary was feeling progressively stir crazy. Forced bed rest was really putting a cramp in her style.

Pun not intended.

“Honey, why don’t I just call Aunt Betty?” she asked, not expecting any different answer this time than all the other times she’d offered it. “She said she could be here within a day if we need her—she’d love being around to help out with Dean.”

John shook his head against the pillow. “Yeah, but then who keeps me from killing your aunt?”

Mary snorted. “She’s not that bad and you know it.” John grunted again and shifted to pick up his pillow for fluffing. Mary pressed on. “Besides, you’ve gotta get back to work. If Dean’s feeling better, we could at least get him back to day care—”

“Daddy?” a distressed cry came down the hall. John dropped the pillow he’d been punching into a comfortable shape and hung his head in defeat.

“Sorry,” Mary said, sharing his pain.

“Coming, buddy,” John called back. He twisted on the mattress to give Mary a kiss: sympathy accepted. “We’re gonna do this again?” he asked, as if they had a choice to back out now. His hand sought the swell of her stomach.

“So the doctor tells me,” she confirmed. “Look, I’ll call Rhonda in the morning. She can come over and at least you can get some sleep.”

“Nah, I got it,” John insisted. He sat up, throwing back the covers he hadn’t even had time to arrange.

“John, if this is some Marine bullshit—”

“That’s not what it is,” John insisted. “Like you said, he’s finally on the mend. Another day or two and he’ll be back in day care—then I’ve just got one invalid on my hands.”

“Thanks, jerk. I could do some things, you know.”

“Daddy!”

John bit off the reply he was about to make. Just as well, because Mary didn’t need to hear him rattle off the doctor’s orders again, either as a battle plan or with earnest concern for her welfare. He wagged a finger at her instead. “We’ll get back to this,” he promised before ducking back out of the bedroom.

She heard his deep rumble through the wall, heard Dean’s plaintive answer, but couldn’t distinguish the words. John was so good with him—she knew he would be, the minute she figured out how freaked he’d been by the prospect. If anything, he was too indulgent. Still, John had been having a hard enough time tending to her since the Braxton-Hicks contractions had confined her to quarters; juggling her cravings and comforts against Dean’s week-long bout with Strep was a lot to ask of any husband and father.

Even one who’d been a Marine.

Mary scooted herself down the mattress so she could lie flat and close her eyes. Immediately, she cursed her miscalculation. Lifting herself up on her heels had set off a miniature cramp and made her bladder tighten. She fought the urge to pee, but holding it hurt.

“Okay, breathe,” she told herself. It hadn’t been that long since the Lamaze classes they’d taken for Dean, and anyway, no one ever really forgot that kind of thing. She coached herself, wondering what the hell was taking John so long. Dean must have been mounting a major putsch to stay awake.

Putsch. Bad choice of words, she told herself.

Another cramp. She rode the crest of it, breathed into it, wondered if she could ease herself off the bed and into the bathroom alone. She wished they’d gone ahead and decided to put in the master bath, fuck the expense—it would be closer, and anyway, soon they’d have four of them all sharing one bath, and it would be nice to have her own little sanctuary from her menfolk….

She kept breathing, distracting herself, and the contraction subsided.

God, she had to pee.

She didn’t want to call out for John. He’d come back as soon as he could, and if he’d managed to get Dean to sleep, her voice would snap him into consciousness. Then John would be right back in the battle of the ages again.

But just when she thought she might have no choice, besides wet the bed, she heard John come down the hall. He was rumbling in a quiet, constant stream to Dean, whose head rested on his shoulder.

“Remember, be gentle with Mommy, right?” he said, rubbing Dean’s back as he set him down carefully on his side—the door side—of the bed. “Eyes shut, big guy—that was the deal.”

Dean nodded with his eyes squeezed closed. He sought Mary’s warmth with tentative hands.

“Hey, angel,” she said to him, but she looked up at John imploringly. “You stay in the big bed and keep it warm for us, okay?” she continued. “Daddy has to help Mommy for a minute.”

That got John’s attention, as expected. He narrowed his eyes in an alarmed, unspoken question. Mary mouthed, “Bathroom” with exaggeration. John nodded comprehension. He came around to her and helped her to a sit so she wouldn’t put any strain on her abdominal muscles.

“Just stay put, bud, we’ll be right back,” he told Dean soothingly. “You know there’s no monsters in here, right?” he confirmed.

Dean nodded again, snuffling into the pillow. Mary looked down at him as John helped her walk around the bed. From the look of it, Dean would be asleep before they returned. But then, Dean had faked them out before.

“Monsters?” she asked while they shuffled down the hall to the toilet.

“Checked the closet for him twice, but he wasn’t buying,” John muttered. “Since he’s been sick, that imaginary friend of his went away—so he wouldn’t get germs, Dean tells me—and he’s convinced that without Harley around, the monsters will get in. God. Wanted me to lie down with him, extra story…. Kid’s gonna kill me yet.”

“Hm. He wouldn’t run you ragged if you’d just let him deal on his own now and then, Winchester,” Mary pointed out helpfully.

“You want me to let him keep himself up all night? Bring back his little pretend pal?”

“No, but—” A cramp racked her abdomen and she stumbled.

“Shh….” John took more of her weight on himself. He swept an arm under her knees and lifted.

“John, put me down.”

“In a minute,” he told her mildly. He lowered her feet to the tile floor in front of the toilet and stood by to ease her onto the seat. “Let me know when you’re ready,” he mumbled and retreated, shutting the door behind him.

“You big lunk,” Mary muttered to the closed door, smiling.

He carried her back as if she weighed as little as Dean, who had taken over both halves of the middle and was snoring quietly. John sat her on the bed. He immediately rolled Dean toward his side, then came back and helped her ease sideways onto her pillow. After clicking off the light, he arranged himself and Dean to give Mary as much room as possible. She felt Dean spoon up against her. A moment later, John’s big hand rested lightly on her hip. Just when she thought they were finally clear, Dean turned over.

“Daddy?” he whispered.

“We had a deal, Deano,” John whispered back reproachfully.

“But I gotta question.” Mary smiled, keeping her eyes closed. “An’ I couldn’t ask before because Mommy wasn’t asleep yet.”

“Can it wait until morning? It’s time for you and me to sleep, too.”

“I’ll forget.”

“Can’t be too important, then.”

“No, it is,” the little voice insisted. Mary felt him scoot up a bit.

“Okay, okay,” John capitulated. He always did. “What is it?”

“Is the baby gonna be a boy or a girl?”

Mary bit her lip. It wasn’t funny—not really—but the way Dean could twist John into knots provided her endless material for the girls at the office and the other mothers at Day Care.

“That’s your important question, Dean?” John hissed.

“No—it’s part of it.”

John sighed. “We don’t know, kiddo. We know it’s gonna be a Sam, though—Samantha. Or Samuel. Sammy.”

“Oh.” Dean sounded disappointed.

“Are you…rooting for one or the other?” John prodded.

“Girl,” Dean breathed sadly.

“Why?” John couldn’t conceal his surprise. Mary didn’t blame him; they’d tried to make sure Dean understood what was happening and that it didn’t matter to them whether Sam turned out male or female. Dean still didn’t quite grasp the concept of what it would mean to become an older sibling. But just as she knew that the idea of a girl privately terrified John, she also suspected that he assumed Dean would naturally gravitate toward another boy as a playmate and co-conspirator. It would never have occurred to John that Dean might want to retain sole rights as John’s son.

“Well…if Sam’s a boy, then…where do I go?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

Dean squirmed a little before explaining. Mary tried not to hold her breath for his answer. “Tommy Hoyt says that if you have another boy, you won’t need me anymore, ’cause the new baby will be more special an’ won’t have made any—”

“Whoa, wait, wait.” John sat up and Mary felt the mattress shift as he pulled Dean up against him. “First off, what have I said about Tommy Hoyt?”

“You said he’s a liar and a punk-ass.”

“John.” Mary admonished, keeping her voice low.

“Well, he is,” John claimed. “So don’t believe anything Tommy Hoyt says, okay, Dean?”

“But you won’t need two boys, right?” Dean pressed, without answering John. “You won’t need me anymore when you’ve got a new boy.”

“Nu-uh,” John said, sounding about five himself. “There’s a problem there, sport. This isn’t a trade-in; it’s an expansion.”

Dean didn’t say anything. Mary took a chance and opened her eyes, craned her neck to look behind at Dean leaning on his father’s shoulder. His jaw was set with frank disbelief.

John tried again to convince him. “We made room for Harley, right?” She knew he hated making an example out of Dean’s imaginary friend; probably his desperation to quickly resolve Dean’s anxiety made him resort to turning their tolerance into an argument in favor of sibling coexistence.

“Y-yeah,” Dean admitted haltingly.

“Sure.” John saw her looking, and winked. “And Mommy told you Harley can stay if he wants to. Didn’t she?” Mary shut her eyes quickly, putting her head down, before Dean could look over and see her listening.

“Yeah, I guess,” Dean said, sounding a little mollified.

“Besides, what we’ve got now is a Dean.” She felt Dean twitch, heard him giggle, and was sure that John must have squeezed him to make his point. “The new baby will be a Sam. Two totally different models. And he won’t be able to do all the things you can do.”

“Like what?”

“Like…tie your shoes,” John offered. Mary smiled into her pillow; Dean had just learned that skill recently. “And play tee-ball. And set the table. And toss around the football in the backyard.”

Mary longed to turn over to watch her baby process his father’s assurances. She could imagine his eyes widening, searching John’s face for an indication that John was joking with him, teasing him. “Could I, maybe, teach ’im some of that?”

“Between you and me, your mom and I were kinda counting on you sticking around to do just that.”

“Really?” Dean’s squeak was so full of awe it made Mary’s breath catch.

“That and a lot of other things. You’re gonna be a big brother, kiddo. That means we need you to help show little Sam the ropes.”

“Oh.” Dean subsided and Mary held her breath. But a second later, he said, “Even if Harley’s better than a baby? Even if Sammy’s a girl?”

“Even if,” John purred. She could hear in his voice how he tried for serious and failed.

“Oh. ’Cause Tommy—”

“Hey, I said, Tommy Hoyt is full of—”

“John.” The warning slipped out before Mary could stop it.

“—Crap, I was gonna say crap,” John told her impatiently. “He’s full of crap, Dean. An’ I’ll tell you something else: he can’t hit worth crap, either.”

“John, honestly.”

“It’s true, Mommy,” Dean confirmed, but John shushed him. After that, Dean settled down much more readily. John flipped over and was snoring within seconds. Mary drifted; aware by a preternatural maternal sense that Dean hadn’t quite fallen asleep, and holding herself awake until he dropped off. She felt a small hand pat her stomach gently. Very quietly, she heard Dean whisper, “Don’t worry, Sammy—I’ll stay and show you stuff. Even if Harley says babies are boring. I’m your big brother.”