Title: In for a Penny, In for a Pound
Author: AlexJanna
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Gen, mention past Dean/OFC
Rating: PG
Genre: AU, pre-series
Word Count: 6,886
Warnings: darker!Dean, past Dean/OFC, Kid!fic, brief discussion of abortions
Disclaimer: Supernatural is not mine. The plot to this fic is, though.
Summary: After a hunt alone, Dean listens to a voice message from a woman that will turn not only his life, but hers down a path neither of them expected.
A/N: I don't usually write gen (or gen-ish) fics, but this was just an interesting one-shot I've been sitting on for months. I finally decided to post it so I hope ya'll enjoy.
There was a message blinking on Dean's phone when he got back from salting and burning. He ignored it, until he was already one beer down and half a burger in.
It hadn't been so long until he and his father had gone their separate ways on their own hunts; a year perhaps. Without Sam there to hold them all together, Dean and John figured they could do just as well apart as together. It was lonely, though.
Picking his phone up, Dean wiped absently at the mustard he could feel on the corner of his mouth as he flipped it open and punched in to get to his voicemail.
One message from his dad was asking him when he was going to head to Bobby's again and one message from Bobby asking when he was going to be heading over again. Dean rolled his eyes and deleted them both making a mental note to call them back when he wasn't covered in grave dirt and smelled of smoke.
The last message however put a lot of his plans on hold.
"Hey, Dean." The young woman started out, her voice hesitant and halting. "I don't know if you remember me, but I'm Penny, from Spokane. I know we only had that one night together, but I thought I had better tell you before… Well, before. I'm –um- pregnant."
Dean dropped his beer bottle with a clatter on the wooden floorboards of the bar he was sitting in and felt utterly and completely numb.
"I know you were just passing through, but I figured I better tell you at least before I…get rid of it. So… I hope you're doing well with whatever you're doing and don't worry about anything. I'm taking of it."
Dean didn't hear the rest of the messages if there was anymore. He'd already snapped the phone shut, slammed down enough money to pay for two burgers and bolted out of the bar.
He swung by the motel long enough to shower, change, pack everything up and load the Impala before he flew out of the sleepy little town like the bats of Hell were on his tail.
He made it to Spokane in two days without stopping for more than a piss break.
The Broken Spoke diner in Spokane was filled with regulars for the lunch shift as Dean pulled up into the parking lot and slid out of his car. He'd built up a fury on the long drive over state lines. It rankled something awful in his gut that this girl, Penny, whom he'd slept with for one night had the gall to call him up out of the blue to inform him that she was going to get rid of his child and not expect him to care.
It made him burn in ways he hadn't since he'd watched Sam step on the bus to Stanford, not even looking back.
He stepped through the door of the diner a baleful frown on his face as he looked around and spotted the girl standing serving coffee to a pair of weathered old men at the other end of the diner.
Taking a seat at the counter he ordered himself a large cup of steaming coffee and some chicken fried steak. He hadn't eaten or slept since he'd gotten that voicemail, he figured he was entitled to a meal before he had a conversation with Penny.
It didn't take long for her to spot him once he'd downed two cups and inhaled half the food on his plat. She paled but stepped toward him, chin held high and mighty.
"Dean." She greeted, uncertainly. She hadn't expected him to call her back, but seeing him appear out of thin air in her workplace looking like death warmed over with hellfire had unsettled her.
He held her gaze chewing his mouth full of chicken fried steak slowly before swallowing and taking a gulp out of his third cup of coffee. "Penny."
She refilled his cup out of habit of waitressing for the past decade. "I didn't expect to ever see you again."
If it were possible his light green eyes grew even colder. "That much was evident from your message." He said voice low and quiet. Several of the other patrons at the counter were watching him like a bunch of skittering chickens with a fox in their coup.
It made Penny nervous. Perhaps calling Dean before she got the abortion hadn't been such a great idea. He hadn't seemed quite this dangerous a month and a half ago when he'd been all charm and moves. But then again, her mama had always told her she was going to get into trouble with her taste in men.
Maybe getting knocked up hadn't been the kind of trouble she'd meant.
She averted her eyes feeling cornered and began fiddling with things behind the counter to keep her hands from shaking. Dean seemed so much more dangerous than he had originally hustling pool down at the Buffalo Bar.
"You got my message then?" She said, voice light but with the barest hint of a tremble. "You shouldn't have come all the way back just for that."
"Oh, I think I should have."
She snapped her head up and looked at him, her face paling. He looked livid in a quiet, predatory way. Dear God what had she gotten herself into?
He didn't let her respond. "When your shift's over, I'll be waiting. We'll talk then." He said, not leaving any room for argument or discussion. His eyes finally left and she felt as if she'd just been dismissed.
Stepping away, she shoved her hands into her apron to hide their shaking and hurried off to take more orders.
It was mid afternoon by the time Penny's shift finished and Dean had waited patiently the entire time. He'd gone through a pot of coffee and half an apple pie before she stepped out of the back dressed in worn jeans and a light button up blouse.
He couldn't see any visible sign of the child she carried… or he hoped she still carried, but then again, what did he know? He only had vague memories of his own mother large and warm and content as she's been in the last months of carrying Sam.
Since then he hadn't been real close to any woman that he'd known was pregnant.
Without a word, he followed her to the apartment she rented a block away from the diner. He left his Impala in the diner parking lot and figured he'd move her once this conversation was over.
Either that or drive her out of town with one more hole in his chest right next to the ones left by Sam and his mom.
She unlocked the door and let them in turning the lights on as she went until they were in the kitchen and the air around them was tense.
Dean studied her from where she was leaning against her counter nervously trying not to meet his eyes. It made that slow burning fury in him spike once again.
"Have you killed it yet?" He asked, voice harsh and cold not caring for the way she flinched away from him.
Penny ran a suddenly shaking hand through her wavy blond hair and refused to look him in the eyes. "No." She answered feeling like it had been wrenched from her. "I have an appointment for Wednesday at the clinic two towns over."
A growl broke from deep in his throat and Dean had to look away from her to keep it inside.
"And you thought I wouldn't care?" He asked, needing to know. "You thought I wouldn't care that you were going to kill my kid without even giving me a say in it?"
She snapped her head around to look at him, a sneer curling at her lips. "We had one night, Dean. One night of good sex and you left the next morning. What would make me think you cared one iota about some woman you knocked up?"
"Nothing." Dean growled, eyes flashing furiously. "Nothing except that it's my child, Penny. Mine and I have a say in what happens to it."
"It's my body, Dean." She shouted at him standing up straight and facing him with her feet planted firmly in her sneakers.
"Fuck that!" Dean bellowed at her. "It's not just you anymore! It's my kid in there too and I'll let you kill him over my dead body!"
His words fell over the kitchen like a bomb. The silence that followed was heavy and hot, Penny could have sworn that she felt sweat begin to bead out on her skin. She was shaking visibly and Dean just watched her with flashing green eyes. She knew he was dead serious.
"What do you want from me, Dean?" She asked once she knew her voice wouldn't tremble. "Why did you come here?"
That brought him up short. What did he want? He frowned realizing that the answer was so very clear. He wanted to know his child. To love them and raise them. He wanted the part of his family that she was holding hostage.
"I want my kid, Penny." He said low and quiet. "I just want my kid. Alive and whole."
She inhaled sharply and pursed her lips to keep them from quivering. "I can't, Dean." She answered. "I don't have the money or the time for a baby. I can't raise it here in my apartment. I can't take it to work. My mother kicked me out when I was fifteen, I don't know how to be a mom and I know you don't know how to be a father. It's better for us both if I just get the abortion and you get back into your car and drive out of here."
He felt as if she'd slapped him. He knew she was right for most of that except for two very salient things. A sneer pulled at his lips and took a threatening step toward her. "You don't know shit about me." He growled at her. "And that may be the easiest solution for you and me, but it sure as hell isn't for my kid."
Penny took a step away from him only to find herself backed against the kitchen counter. She glared at him. "Then what do you want? I'm getting an abortion with or without you, Dean. You can't force me to have this thing when I don't want it."
A surge of protectiveness and violence welled up in him and he moved forward till he was in her space and staring down at her. "You don't have the money for a kid, fine. I'll pay for it. I'll pay for everything until it's born. I'll pay for your rent, your bills, your doctor's visit; anything; everything." He said with ferocious surety that Penny's eyes widened with nerves.
"Then you'll sign over any rights to the kid to me and I'll get in my car with my kid and you'll never see either of us again. But I swear to God I will hurt you if you try and kill my kid before then."
This wasn't the first time she'd wondered to her self what her penchant for bad boys would get her into, but it was the first time she'd actually feared it. Dean Winchester, she discovered as he had her pinned against the counter in her kitchen, was a frightening man. He was not going to let her have her way and she wondered why she had even bothered to pick up the phone and call him at all.
Dean left Penny alone for three days with a warning that when he returned she had better still be pregnant or she had better be far away from him.
She didn't know what he'd been doing for those three days and truthfully she didn't want to know. When he returned he had enough cash in hand to pay for her tiny efficiency apartment for the rest of the year with some to spare. She didn't ask about it. She didn't ask about a lot of things after Dean had moved himself onto her battered sofa.
She didn't ask about the lines of salt she'd found across her doorway and windowsills one evening after work. She didn't ask about the weapons –pistols, shotguns, sawed-offs, knives, machetes, hatchets- Dean had spread out on her kitchen table. She didn't ask about the books, old and leather and Latin, he'd stacked on her coffee table. She didn't ask about a lot of things.
And he didn't offer any explanations.
Their agreement held. She stayed pregnant, he paid for everything and the silence between them stayed.
When her breasts ballooned out of her blouse and her jeans stopped buttoning, Dean had driven her to the only maternity store in town in silence and sat in the car until it was time for him to pay.
He paid in cash.
At her first doctor's appointment, Dean went with her, ever silent and tense. The receptionist asked if her husband was nervous and Penny didn't know what to say to that.
He insisted on coming with her into the examination room and the doctor asked questions of family history that Dean either couldn't answer or answered very reluctantly. She wondered what kind of a childhood he'd had and how his parents had treated him, but she didn't ask.
The sonogram flashed on the screen and the doctor pointed out a small blob that looked vaguely like a lima bean. That was the first time Penny had seen Dean look anything other than stoic or furious since he'd sat at the bar in the diner weeks earlier.
He had leaned toward the monitor with a look of pure awe, his green eyes wide. "Can you tell if it's a boy or a girl?" He asked, voice sounding absent and far away.
"Not yet." The doctor answered. "Not for a couple of months. Everything seems healthy and progressing along fine."
Dean nodded and continued to stare raptly at the screen before asking if it would be alright to have a printout. When the doctor returned with several small black and white pictures, Dean held them in his hands as if they were gold.
After that Penny wondered what it would have been like to be going through this with the Dean she'd met before. The Dean that had smiled at her in a smoky bar and asked if she'd like to dance.
Perhaps if she hadn't called him and told him her decision to terminate the pregnancy they could have done this as friends. Perhaps he would have smiled at her more. She would never know now, would she?
Dean would disappear sometimes for up to a week and every time with a warning spoken over his shoulder before the door closed behind him. She never questioned him on where he went and when he returned with bruises, scrapes, a limp and another roll of cash she just closed her bedroom door and wished she'd never seen his pretty green eyes before.
Her belly grew and Dean's respect for her personal space shrank.
The first time she felt the baby kick she'd gasped in surprise and Dean had been in front of her in a flash dropping the pistol he'd been cleaning with a clatter.
"What is it? Is something wrong?" He asked, eyes fastened on her belly and roughened hands hovering nervously.
"Nothing's wrong." She answered annoyed that he hadn't looked her in the face once that day. "It just kicked me, is all."
Dean sucked in a surprised breath and seemed to freeze. Penny held her breath and kept perfectly still like a mouse in front of a cat. When Dean's hand pressed to her belly she nearly jumped out of her skin.
"What are you doing?" She asked a little more sharply than she'd meant to.
His eyes flicked up to her face for the first time, an annoyed glint in them. "I'm feeling my child, Penny." He said simply and knelt on the kitchen floor in front of her bringing both hands to her belly more firmly.
Dean could remember sitting next to his mother on their porch swing with his face pressed to her round belly and feeling Sammy kick at his cheek with sharp little jabs. He could remember the wonder that he felt for that little baby that was going to be his little brother.
He could remember the love and fierce protectiveness that had filled him even at the age of four for the life under his hands.
This was stronger than that.
Without thinking, Dean leaned forward and pressed his cheek against Penny's belly and ignored the way she stiffened at the contact. He waited with the patience of a saint until he felt the gentle little prod of his child's foot against his face.
He smiled for the first time in what felt like months. "Hey, baby." He whispered against her skin; she knew he wasn't talking to her.
Penny got used to Dean touching her growing belly because she had to. He never asked her for permission and she never bothered to tell him no. Those first few glimpses of his temper made her weary and submissive when it came to the child growing inside her.
His child, he called it.
When Dean was whispering things to her belly and feeling every kick for two hours straight with the same rapt look of love and awe on his face, she believe it. She knew this child ceased to be hers the moment she'd spoken to Dean's voicemail.
She couldn't take it back now.
One night she was awoken by the strongest craving for Chinese take away she'd ever had and struggled her way out of her bed to throw on a robe and find her way to the kitchen. She opened her door and paused at the sound of the deep rumble of Dean's voice.
"What do you mean, 'it's not a simple salt and burn'?" Dean asked sounding exasperated and more animated than he ever did while not pressed against her belly.
Penny crept out of her room and down the hall until she could see him, bare-chested and sitting up on the sofa with his elbows propped up on his knees and his cell phone pressed to his ear. His hair was mussed and she thought that he must have been asleep when the call came through. She hadn't even heard it ring.
"Dad, seriously, I can't do this right now." Dean said running a hand through his hair. Penny was surprised. She'd never heard him mention anything about family. Not that they talked often.
Dean growled in his throat and leaned back against the sofa back in frustration. "I'm not fucking quitting hunting, Dad. I just can't-" He paused and listened for a moment, a scowl etching into his brow.
"Fine!" He eventually interrupted the apparent stream of scolding. "Alright. I'll come. Now tell me why this isn't a salt and burn."
Penny frowned to her self. Salt and burn? She glanced over to the line of salt stretched out before her front door. What was it with Winchesters and salt? What was it that Dean actually did?
The sound of Dean's voice caught her attention once more.
"Demon possessed cats? Dad, if you wanted to see me that badly you could have just said so." Dean chuckled, but something said from the other end wiped the mirth from his face so quickly it made Penny dizzy.
Dean blew out a breath and felt the familiar dread settle into his chest. "Fuck. Alright. I'll be there as fast as I can. I'm two states away, do you think you can hold it back till I get there?... Alright."
He hung up and rubbed at his face tiredly for a moment before lifting his head and looking right at Penny with haunted eyes. "Penny." He said.
She stepped out of the shadows and felt her cheeks heat at being caught eavesdropping. "Are you leaving?" She asked, not sure of the answer she was hoping for.
"Yeah." He nodded and stood reaching over to his duffle and pulled a dark t-shirt from it. "I'll probably be gone for week or so." He tugged it over his head and began gathering most of his weapons from the kitchen table.
"What is it that you do exactly?" She stepped toward him and crossed her arms over her belly, her curiosity trumping her annoyance at feeling like a beached whale.
Dean flicked his eyes toward her without ceasing his quick movements, loading nearly every gun with reloaded brass cartages. "It's better that you don't know," was all he said as he moved around the room.
Penny felt, not for the first time, afraid of his man that slept on her couch and talked in a soft awed voice to her belly. She didn't push the issue, though.
When Dean was finished packing what he needed he set a Windex bottle filled with holy water, a one pound box of rock salt, and a .32 six shooter and a box of reloaded shells on the coffee table then looked up at Penny and motioned her over. She went with reluctant steps.
"This is holy water." He pointed to the spray bottle. "This is rock salt, and this," he pointed to the pistol, "is loaded with three rock salt-snake shot cartages and three silver bullets." He waited until Penny nodded that she understood, but they both knew it had gone over her head.
"I want you to keep those salt lines unbroken." He instructed with a voice that brooked no argument or disobedience. "Anyone who can't cross those lines, you shoot first and asked questions later. Then call this number." He slapped down a torn piece of a car magazine with the ten digits of a phone number on it along with a name. "You tell Bobby that Dean Winchester has been camping on your couch and you've got something that won't cross the salt lines outside your door. He'll help you."
She wanted to protest and question and tell him not to go because he was scaring her, but she stayed silent and tucked her hands under her arms to hide their shaking.
"Keep the gun with you everywhere and I would suggest taking a bottle of that holy water as well. Anyone so much as looks at you funny you flick some of that water on them. If they do anything not normal you get the hell out of there."
"Okay!" She snapped, fighting the fear that was creeping into her bones. "Alright, Dean. I get it."
He raised an eyebrow at her. He really didn't think she did. "If I'm not back in two weeks call Bobby anyway and stay with him. Tell him that you're carrying my child, tell him about our arrangement and tell him that the baby is to go to Sammy. You got that?"
Penny felt her heart pound in her chest and she nodded. She didn't know who Bobby was other than a messy number scrawled on a torn piece of paper and a man that understood what good salt and holy water would do as a weapon. She didn't know who Sammy was either, but by the light in Dean's green eyes she knew that Sammy was someone a whole hell of a lot more important to Dean than she was. He would haunt her from the grave if he could should she not follow his instructions.
"Yes." She answered, voice quaking just a bit. "I got it."
Dean studied her for a moment before nodding. "Alright. I'll be back." He picked up his duffels; one with clothes and one with weapons and headed to the door. Penny followed feeling somewhat like a housewife sending her husband off for a regular day of work.
She looked down at the lines of salt in front of her door and wanted to cry just a little bit because that couldn't be farther from the truth.
Dean turned back to her and felt some real remorse for forcing all of this on her. She hadn't asked to get pregnant, for him to bust his way into her life and turn it upside down. It was visibly obvious just how much he had scared her with all of his instructions and precautions, but he knew it was necessary. For her safety and his baby's.
He crouched down and placed both hands on either side of her stomach before pressing his face into the skin between them. "I'll be back, baby." He said to his child hoping that the kid could actually hear him. "Grow strong while I'm gone and…" he glanced up at a frightened, teary Penny, "and go easy on Penny. She's keeping you safe for me."
Penny was partially stunned out of her fear at his words. When Dean straightened from his crouch he laid a heavy callused hand comfortingly on her shoulder before he turned away from her and the front door closed behind him.
She was alone for the first time in what seemed like forever and she was suddenly afraid of things that don't like holy water and can't cross salt lines. Needless to say she didn't sleep any more that night.
Dean's warning had made her paranoid and over the course of a week Penny had discreetly spilled holy water on five customers and compulsively checked the salt lines in her flat three times a day. Every shadow in her apartment made her jump and every stranger she passed on the street made her hand itch for the gun stashed in her purse.
Damn Dean Winchester for making her afraid of things she knew weren't real. Damn him for just making her afraid.
The longer he was gone the more she wished he would return and start setting up his strange weapons out on her kitchen counter again. The longer he was gone the more the baby began kicking her.
She figured it was missing Dean. If she needed salt lines to keep things out then surely the kid growing in her could miss its father before it was even born.
One week rolled into two and one evening Penny was sitting in front of her old tube tv eating pasta before she realized that two weeks had come and gone and Dean had not yet returned.
Her heart began to pound and she felt a nauseous fear grow inside her. She rushed as much as she could with a beach ball under her dress toward the fridge where she had stuck the number Dean had handed her with a grape magnet and clutched the cordless phone in her shaking hand as she dialed.
The ring tone seemed too loud and Penny had to wonder at her fear at being without a man that had dictated her life and would be dictating her life for the next two months. If something hadn't happened him.
"Hello?" Came a deep gruff voice shocking her from her thoughts.
"H-hello? Is this Bobby?" She asked hoping it wasn't the wrong number, but then again wishing it was.
"Yeah." The man on the other end said brusquely, sounding distracted and a twinge annoyed. "Who is this?"
Penny swallowed and calmed herself. "I-I'm Penny Shueller. Dean Winchester is staying with me and he said that if he didn't come back in two weeks or someone couldn't cross the salt lines that I should call you."
There was an inordinately long pause, before Bobby came back, his voice sounding all at once curious and amused. "Is that right? Now which would cause you to be calling me, ma'am?" He asked.
Penny frowned getting the feeling that this Bobby was laughing at her. "Dean hasn't come back in two weeks and I'm pregnant with his child, now are you going to help me or not?" She snapped into the phone. All her fear and anger and repressed aggression at the man that did this to her suddenly coming to a head.
"Whoa, now." Bobby soothed into the line sounding bewildered. "Did you say you were pregnant?"
"Yes." She ground out through her teeth. "We have an arrangement."
She didn't explain what that arrangement was nor did Bobby ask of it.
"Well, I'll be damned." Bobby muttered distractedly. "Just wait till John hears about this."
Penny had had it up to here with hearing about random men she knew nothing about, but she kept her mouth shut and squeezed her eyes closed. "Are you going to help me or not? Dean gave me a gun with salt bullets and a Windex bottle filled with holy water. I don't even know what good they'll do. What am I supposed to do with the stuff if you won't help me and Dean isn't coming back?"
Bobby chuckled over the line at her. "Nothing, ma'am. Dean just left here this morning. I expect he'll be with you soon. No need for either of us to do anything."
She felt something in her chest loosen and a smidgen of her fear ease. She sighed and unclenched her jaw. "Thank you," was all she said before she hung the phone up and wandered to her bed curling up under the covers.
Before she fell asleep she damned Dean Winchester for putting her through this and for making her fear a night without a man in her house.
When Penny woke again Dean was passed out on her sofa and the weapons were back on the kitchen table, the salt lines were thick and unbroken and Penny hated that man on her sofa just a little bit more.
She had no doubt that the feeling was mutual.
The months passed and soon her due date was looming. She felt a mixture of relief and fear about it. She was relieved to see the light at the end of the tunnel, to finally move on with her life and forget any of this ever happened. She was afraid of what would happen once it all started, once it was all over.
She was still afraid when her contractions started and breathing exercises just weren't cutting it. Even so, she was reluctant to actually step out of her room and interrupt Dean while he was doing God knows what with his guns.
Penny didn't go to get Dean until her water broke and even then she frowned at the very thought of asking him for help. At this point it hadn't really set in that she was actually in labor.
"Dean?"
Dean glanced up from his cleaning and did a double take at the sight of Penny standing in the kitchen doorway, pajama pants wet and her face sweaty and pale.
Penny took a deep breath and pressed on the point were the next contraction was squeezing at her belly with a trembling hand. "I'm in labor."
The trip to the hospital two towns over was eventful. Dean ran every red light and threatened her with bodily harm if she threw up in his car. She did it anyway just to spite him.
By the time they waddled into the hospital and had shouted for assistance, Penny was ready rip the kid out of her herself, shove it at Dean, and then shove them both out the door. Of course she couldn't do that and was forced into being wheeled into a birthing room where Dean donned scrubs and refused to leave the entire time.
She could have killed him with her bare hands by that point.
"Alright. Get ready to push." Her feet were in stirrups and there was a stranger between her legs. She had never regretted dialing Dean's number more than at that moment.
Penny screamed her head off and snagged a fist full of Dean's shirt pulling him close to her face. "I hate you Dean Winchester!" She shouted in his face.
His eyes bore into her. "It's almost over, Penny. Then you can go back to her life as if you had never met me." He said, voice calm, but distracted. It was easy to see that the majority of his attention was on the thing coming out from between her legs.
God, how she wanted to hit him then. "Why the fuck am I doing this again?" She asked, giving another hard push as per the doctor's instructions.
Dean glanced at her a moment feeling the weight of nearly every nurse in the room's eyes on them. It was easy to see that this was not the sort of conversation that expectant parents normally had. He didn't really give a fuck.
"Because I'm paying you to." He said, before turning his attention back to the doctor waiting with near bated breath for the moment his baby was born.
He didn't have to really wait all that long.
A shrill cry hit the room, and Dean had to steady himself from his sudden light headedness.
The doctor pulled a soggy, red, wrinkled baby out from between Penny's legs and glanced from Dean to Penny warily. "Congratulations. It's a boy." He said a bit uncertainly.
Dean didn't even hear him. He was just staring at the perfect little crying being still attached to his umbilical cord. The entire room was gone and it was just him and his son.
His son.
Almost in a daze he stood and approached, a nurse handed him a pair of scissors and instructed him where to cut the cord then placed a sterile cloth in his arm and set the squirming little baby in them. Dean was entranced.
"Wow." He breathed seeming like the young man he was for the first time since entering the hospital.
The nurses and doctor all glanced at each other even as they instructed Penny through the last stages of the birthing process and began to clean her up. This was oddest couple they'd ever encountered.
Dean ignored them and continued to just watch his baby, his son, as he slowly stopped crying and looked up at him, eyes light infant blue and wide.
He was perfect.
His lips pursed and his cheeks pinked in exertion. Dean couldn't look everywhere at once, but still he tried. It was easy to see himself in this little baby, but surprisingly he could see some Sam in him too. He might have Penny's ears, but Dean figured that's to be expected since she gave birth to him.
Raising a hand, Dean stroked a shaking finger down the little baby's nose and across his brow feeling the muscles move and the softness of his skin, damp with goo though it was. He counted every finger and every toe making sure everything was there and then just held him close and watched his son watch him.
He didn't move, didn't sit, didn't say a word until a nurse came up next to him and tapped his shoulder apprehensively.
"Excuse me, sir, but we have to weigh and measure him." She said, watching him uncertainly.
Dean tore his gaze away toward her for a moment before nodding and reluctantly handing his son over. He let her carry him and do whatever she needed to do, but he hovered over her shoulder the entire time.
He knew he was making the poor nurse nervous, but he couldn't help it. He felt the strongest surge of protectiveness in him and it wouldn't ease.
"What-what are you doing?" He asked in a slight panic when she wrapped a band around his baby's wrist.
She glanced up at him. "I'm fastening his hospital bracelet on him. It identifies who he belongs to."
He reached over and fingered the band and sure enough it said "Baby Winchester" on it. He felt an irrational sense of pride at that. Then it was shuffled away for the time being.
"Sir, have you picked out a name? It needs to go on the birth certificate." Another nurse asked as she brandished a sheet of paper with a seal on the corner and his and Penny's names already on it.
He took it from her and stared at the blank line that would hold his son's name and suddenly he was drawing a blank. He had no earthly idea what he wanted to name his son.
Looking up he found that nearly everyone in the room was watching him. "Can I spend more time with him before I decide?" He asked, knowing full well he would do it anyway regardless of her answer.
The nurse nodded and stepped away to do something else he wasn't going to pay attention to.
He was handed his son back wrapped in a soft blue blanket with a tiny little beanie atop his head and he fairly collapsed into a chair his eyes refastened on the baby sleepily blinking up at him.
Somehow he just knew that the baby's eyes were going to be green, like his. His hair though was a fine golden brown. It reminded Dean of the wheat fields he'd driven passed more times than he cared to count. His eyes blinked with long lashes and Dean was somewhat surprised to realize that his son looked like Sam had when he was a baby.
His heart swelled and he knew he had at least part of his son's name picked out.
Dean was so wrapped up in his son that he didn't even stir until a commotion across the room drew his attention.
"But don't you even want to hold your son?" One nurse was asking an exhausted sweaty Penny as she huffed and moaned in her bed.
Penny grimaced and swept her stringy hair away from her forehead. "God no. I'm glad this is all over with. I don't want to have to do a thing more for either of them."
Dean knew he should have been angered by her words, but all he could dredge up was a cynical amusement at the scandalized look on the nurse's face.
"This is my son." He said drawing their attention. "Penny gave him up long before he was born." He met the nurse's dismayed expression with stoic indifference. "I would like those legal papers now, thank you."
Thankfully another nurse with a surer head on her shoulders, nodded, "I'll bring them right to
you, Mr Winchester," before she ushered the other nurses out of the room and left.
Penny huffed after them and rolled her head tiredly over the pillow to look at him. "I think you frightened that nurse more than I did."
Dean just snorted at her absently and looked back down at his now sleeping son. His heart swelled with unexpected love, love the likes he hadn't felt in nearly two decades that it actually made him hurt.
"I don't care. He's mine. That's not ever going to change." He said, voice sounding transfixed.
Penny studied him for a moment. It would seem that Dean Winchester was a possessive man. She didn't have a single pang that that trait was never directed at her. Good riddance to him and his son. That baby never felt like hers anyway.
"What are you going to name him?" She asked just out of morbid curiosity. Perhaps a part of her wanted to know, to have at least that much of her son to keep, even if the rest of her wanted nothing of either of them.
Dean just continued to study his son's sleeping face. Wrinkled and pink, lips slightly open to reveal toothless gums and eyes puffy from his previous upset at his being thrust into the world.
"James Samuel." He said with a little inflection. It felt right. It felt perfect for the little life in his arms.
"Hello James." He murmured to the sleeping baby softly. "I'm your daddy." He stroked a work roughened finger over James' brow. "I'm going to protect you and love and take care of you."
Penny watched as Dean leant forward and kissed his son's forehead softly with a tenderness she'd never seen him display before. Not even during their one night of sex and alcohol that had led them here.
"I love you already, so much." He whispered into baby-fine golden brown hair.
Penny didn't doubt it.
A few days later papers had been signed, James' birth certificate had been filled out, Dean's things had been loaded into the Impala, and Penny was released from the hospital.
She hadn't really expected either Winchester to be there when her friend had dropped her off at her apartment, but still it was slightly jarring to find the kitchen table devoid of weapons and her living room empty of Dean's various paraphernalia. Her windowsills were free of salt and her front door jam was rubbed clean of the sigils he carved into them on his first night there.
She walked through the quiet apartment and sat down on her couch to stare almost blankly at her coffee table. An envelope carrying ten thousand dollars in cash was the only thing waiting to welcome her home.
End.