nilchance | FIC: Drown in the Wonders

Title: Drown in the Wonders
Author:

nilchance
Rating: PG, gen
Disclaimer: Characters herein are used without permission. No infringement intended, no profit made, no lawsuit preferred.
Summary: In the first days after Dean's birth, John used to creep into his crisp new nursery.

In the first days after Dean's birth, John used to creep into his crisp new nursery. The walls still smelled tacky with paint; everything was fresh, even the rocking chair they'd bought from consignment and that John waxed to a shine. Only the best for his girl.

Dean was crashed out on his stomach, the way they were told back then, his tiny mittened fist clenched up like he was resisting all the sleeping he was doing. He didn't twitch when John carefully knelt down by the crib, though John was ready to move quick and soothe him before Mary tried to get out of bed, just huffed out those small precious milk-sweet breaths.

John's hand almost didn't fit through the bars. He had to wriggle to touch Dean's back with his fingertips, looking coarse and tan against the baby-blue onesie. Dean inhaled through his nose, eyes twitching behind pale lids. At least the poor kid didn't look like a squished red alien anymore.

"Shh, now. Shh. Your mom's worn out." John leaned his cheek against the bar, watching his son. His son, and how weird was that?

He'd been seeing Mary's belly fill out and swell over the last eight months, but there had been too many disasters in both their families for John to rest easy that yeah, there'd be a kid at the end of this run. A kid, not Mary crying herself sick in the ER with blood still sticky on her thighs, not like their first try. John had tried not to think ahead about this, about holding a tiny squalling baby, about taking his boy home with them even though neither of them knew what the hell they were doing. John had hurried them out to the Impala, honestly, afraid that any second a doctor would call out, "wait, that guy flunked the test, that guy is a dumb grunt from 'Nam, what does he think he's doing?"

Mary would just raise an eyebrow at him if she knew what he was thinking. Lucky she's sleeping.

His son. John let himself run that over in his mind until he knew the shape of it, until he could reassemble it in the dark.

He had never been this afraid. Even in the mud and gore of infantry, even holding Mary beside her father's corpse, he hadn't felt this awful gut-clench of terror that he would lose them both, or that the frail rhythm of Dean's breathing would stop. Which brought him crawling into Dean's room to touch Dean's back, small enough that John could span it with his hand, and be sure that he was still there. Unimagined and whole. John felt his own lungs ache with trying to breathe for them both.

"I love you," he accused, the words wrenched out, desperate and spooked. It's new minted and painful, this irrational love for a baby he just met, too raw to think about for long. "So you keep breathing there, kid. Don't you stop."

Dean whuffled and tried to cram his whole fist into his mouth, mitten and all.