Disclaimers: Yep, I'm still broke, even if I was able to pay off one of my student loans last month. Kripke will have to get in line. Rated R for language and nothing more.

Author's Notes: Believe it or not, this one has nothing to do with a little addition to my own family. I was listening to Thunder Road for about the millionth time in a week (it is definitely my favorite Springsteen song that makes me love a hot summer night with slamming screen doors and porch swings), and all I could see was John and Mary laying on the bed and holding hands. An hour later, this is what came from it. So much of the fic coming out right now is so very depressing, my own included, that I had to find some happy here. Hope you enjoy! ETA: the site is editing me again, so I'm having to be creative. Some words that should have been long run on words are now separated so they aren't just clear space. But I suppose the effect is the same. Thanks.

Baby, These Hands Are All Right With Me
by That Girl Six

It was almost midnight when Mary decided for sure that she was really in labor this time. The sickness had come on two days before, keeping her in the house and pretty much cloistered to the point of her going stir crazy, but the contractions had been pretty much the same as they'd been for the last week so she hadn't been too sure. Now, she was sure. For the third time. But this time was definitely it. He'd tried to keep her happy, bringing her whatever she wanted and rubbing her back when she said she wouldn't mind it. They spent a lot of time looking at each other, both clearly scared beyond belief that it was going to happen. They were going to be parents.

Of course, it was a contest which one of them was less eloquent about it. He came up with a fairly long string of holy motherless fucking god on a pile of week-old horseshit that did little to impress his wife. She came up with fuck me running backwards with a dull rusted chainsaw from Hell. When he laughed, she once again shrugged her shoulders and smiled; that she'd grown up around rough people with rough words was the same explanation as always. He'd never met any of them besides her father, but she assured him her use of bathroom invective had calmed down quite a bit after meeting him. Then she got that distant look in her eye that after six years he'd given up trying to understand. He just called bullshit, which brought her out of it with the same bright smile he always got from her right after. Then the little vixen gave him that smile.

They couldn't do much — anyone who says they can still do it a week from labor is lying their horny little asses off — but the shower was good enough. She never made it there, what with contractions interrupting her rhythm and all, but she got him there with a few more dirty words and, Hail Mary Mother of God, she was fucking beautiful when she held him like that. He loved what her hands could to do him in any and all the right places.

She got restless then. It was two a.m., and aw hell, she wanted to vacuum. She didn't want to leave the house until it was spotless. She knew he was perfectly capable of keeping up the house after himself while she and the baby — wow, they were really going to bring a baby home — were in the hospital, but it was the concept of the thing. For her, leaving a messy house was the same thing as never leaving the house without a clean pair of underwear in case she got in an accident. Once in a while she'd tell him how she'd moved around a lot as a kid, so now that she had her own house, she wanted to appreciate it. He thought it was kind of adorable in an obsessive compulsive kind of way. So when she really did dig the vacuum out at just after two, he went down to the front hall to take the suitcase out of the closet and out to the car. He could feel the beater bar thumping an excited march on the hallway carpet overhead on his way out.

At nearly four-thirty in the morning, Mary decided she was hot. Forget that it was the end of January and not the middle of July; she thrust their bedroom windows open and stood in front of them in her nightgown with her arms raised out to her sides to let the breeze (pneumonia-inducing-gale-force-gusts-of-doom) flatten the gown against her front. She looked up at the sky, moonless, and whispered something up to the stars that John didn't quite hear. He heard the word "Mom" a few times, but the rest of it wasn't meant for his ears anyway, so he picked up the book she'd been reading from her nightstand. He read one paragraph before putting it back down. Witches? Seriously?

She started dusting not long after that. Apparently there were dust bunnies in the house having little dust bunny families of their own. He wasn't positive, but he was pretty sure at one point she told a clump of feathers from the pillows under the bed to get a room of their own if they were going to keep at it like this. When she dusted the mantle down in the living room, she started making up dirty lyrics to the music she started blaring from the record player. John was pretty sure Johnny Cash never wrote anything about some of the bluer words coming out her mouth, but he couldn't help thinking The Man in Black probably would be as amused as he was. After a while, the singing stopped in lieu of more contractions, so she turned up the volume a little more. It wasn't loud enough until the walls were shaking, she reminded him.

At one point during her cleaning spree, she looked at him and laughed an almost panicked little girl giggle. She missed her mother so damn badly and wished she could have Deana there to tell her what to do, what this was going to be like. Of course, she laughed, she probably wouldn't have believed it if her mother had told her what to expect in the first place. This wasn't something anyone could've prepared her for, no matter how many books she read or doctors she talked to. Whole new ballpark, to say the least. He would've wrapped his arms around her and brought her ramblings back, but she got that look again, like she was hearing something someone said to her once, and straightened her shoulders like her drill sergeant had put her at attention. She hit the dusting with a lot more determination after that.

The clean dishes in the cupboard got another scrubbing. John wasn't even going to try to figure that one out.

The contractions went from three minutes to five minutes apart with her getting up and moving around so much. He wanted to tell her to lay down, to remember she was in a delicate condition (a running joke between them), but then he remembered that about the only time his wife was ever delicate was when she looked at him like that. He looked at her in her white nightgown and laughed. There was nothing virginal about his Mary. There probably never had been. And he only called her delicate when he wanted to piss her off. This probably wasn't the best time to do that; she was sharpening the Chicago Cutlery at the moment.

He did the smart thing and turned the Beatles up even higher instead, biting his tongue for now. He'd save it for when she started blaming him, screaming that he did this to her and all that stuff he'd heard the wives usually scream at their unsuspecting, pandering, pampering-only-for-survival husbands. Yep, it was all his fault, he would beam. But he was pretty sure he couldn't remember her complaining about it that night either. In fact, she had pretty much screamed the opposite, if memory served. He'd have to ask the neighbors; they'd left the windows open without thinking that night. Speaking of windows, it was getting awfully damn cold upstairs.

They watched the sun come up together, taking turns smacking each other on the ass. It was just so damn romantic. You know, for them.

The brilliant smile started to fall from her face around ten-thirty that morning. The contractions started to hurt a lot more and come more often. A few of them about knocked her off her feet, and considering he knew Mary had an incredibly high pain tolerance, it became apparent that things were about to truly kick into gear (this time). She said it wasn't time yet, even though he wanted to take her in right then and there. She hated hospitals and had no intention of going in any earlier than absolutely necessary. She told him again how she'd spent a lot of time in waiting rooms; Samuel had been hurt a lot on the job, she explained, even though he still wasn't entirely sure what her old man had done for a living that would get him hurt so often. She simply asked him to trust her. She would get their baby into the world without a hitch as long as he trusted her to do it.

Mary laid down on the bed after a particularly bad contraction came only four minutes after the previous one. She said it was still okay, though. Baby wasn't coming just yet. She held her hand out to him, and when he took it she pulled him down to lay down next to her. They lay there, side by side, staring up at the ceiling. John crooked his outside hand up behind his head; Mary let her free hand rest over her belly, feeling the little thing trying to kick itself out into the world. It wasn't long before the pressure on her tailbone got to be too much that she had to turn onto her side. Not that she was complaining. John followed her in turn, facing her.

With the fingers of the hand otherwise trapped under the weight of her overly huge and awkward body, she reached for the hand under him. When she found it, she curled her fingers around his and pulled them up, clasped, between their eyes. She held her breath as another contraction took over her body, completely forgetting all of the breathing and nonsense that had been shoved down her throat over the last month that was supposed to make this easier. Everything in her tensed except for their hands and their eyes. Her lower lip trembled with the effort, but she kept her hand as gentle as it had been that hot June night on their back porch when she'd told John this moment would be coming. When the pain passed, that was when she decided to squeeze his fingers.

It was going to be okay. They were going to be okay.

He didn't mean to, but he fell asleep not long after that. He vaguely heard Mary pick up the phone from the nightstand and call the shop to let Mike know she was in labor. He knew they carried on at least a short conversation about nothing at all like they always did, but he didn't actually catch any of it. The lack of sleep from the night of cleaning and Zeppelin and Cash caught up with him, especially after putting in a twelve hour day before to try to get that Monte Carlo job done before he'd have to call in for the rest of the week. He heard Mary tauntingly tell Mike how cute he looked laying there, but he couldn't quite get up the energy to flip her off for it. His one hand was already there, so he tapped her ass instead. She'd get the hint.

The next thing he knew, Mary was yelling at him to stop. Stop. John, stop. Look around. You're home, baby. You're okay. His hands ran down his own body, feeling the rigging of his vest and the holster for his sidearm and the pack of smokes he kept in the right pocket and the chem lights in the other. But he was okay. He was home. He saw trees and grass and three of his buddies in front of him in the closet just next to the dresser and the floor lamp. But he was okay. He was home and her hand was pulling him back to bed. He laid down obediently when she barked that he had better sit his ass down, Marine, and squeezed the hand locking him down just a little harder. Even as he struggled against the restraint, he felt a hand in his hair telling him how she would keep watch until he closed his eyes again like they'd never opened. He was pretty sure he dreamed about witches that morning.

When he woke up, he found Mary still holding his hand between their eyes. She was watching him with a look he couldn't quite figure, but he liked it. He didn't say anything as the sleep cleared from his head, but he moved his other hand up to cup the side of her face. They were going to be three soon. This would be the last time they would lay here like this as only two. He didn't know for sure if she was thinking the same thing, but he thought she was. Their smiles both grew until his cheeks hurt. He pulled their clasped hands to his mouth and kissed hers.

He had no idea what kind of deal he made with the kiss, but he was okay with that. He knew he'd follow his Mary to the ends of the earth if she wanted. They could do anything as long as they did it together. The tears welling in her eyes sealed the deal.

It was time for two to become three: The Winchesters Three. He could get used to that. Hand in hand, they would.

(March 2009)
(Edited, May 2014)