Chapter Text
The first time it happened, it was an accident, or that’s what Mary would say if you asked how it started. She was on a hunt with Jack, one that should’ve been a simple salt-and-burn, but quickly became more complicated. Mary was thrown down three flights of stairs in a confrontation with the ghost they were after. Thankfully, Jack was there to catch her and bash the ghost with a fire poker. The one good thing that came out of breaking into the house was the confirmation of the ghost’s identity. It took them the rest of the night to locate his grave at the local cemetery, dig the bastard up, and put him to long-deserved rest. After that, they were running high on adrenaline and didn’t feel like sleeping (well, Jack didn’t even sleep that much in the first place.) They sat in their motel room, Mary sipping cheap whiskey to get drunk and forget as much about the case as she could (the ghost had been very violent with his victims) and Jack doing his best to cheer her up with some small talk. Mary listened, and a weary but sincere smile grazed her lips. It was refreshing to meet someone with so much innocence and positivity in the hunting world, she didn’t find his chattering annoying.
Mary watched Jack as he talked. How his blue eyes squinted or bulged depending on the topic. How his plump lips moved. They must be soft, his future girlfriend (or boyfriend) would be lucky. Mary noticed how his Adam’s apple stood out when he craned his neck. His hands moved a lot as he illustrated his narration with gestures. He had long, slender fingers, Mary knew they were strong enough to wield a knife or pull a trigger. It struck her for the first time that Jack was handsome. Mary caught herself wondering what Jack looked like under his layers of clothes. At least the way his t-shirt stretched suggested broad shoulders and taut pecs. She knew that he was as much of an outcast as her: stranger to this world, separated from his age group, not even human. He’d never been in love or dated anyone. What did he know about human biology and his own body? Mary felt strangely territorial when she realised that she was the only woman Jack communicated with frequently, a flutter of excitement even. Was it somehow confusing to him? How did he even feel about her? Did he know what those feelings meant?
One thing led to another. They joked and bickered, Mary gave Jack a taste of whiskey even though he hadn’t asked, because he had looked at the bottle. She moved closer to him, they touched, and silence fell. There was a pause as Jack tried to figure out what this meant, it was new to him, but next thing Mary knew, they were kissing. She had been right, Jack’s lips were soft, but he was a sloppy kisser from lack of experience. It wasn’t a turnoff though, not with how long Mary had been alone. She’d take anything, even though this was her sons’ adopted son. Technically her grandson, but there was no blood relation between them, so did it matter? She started to feel up his shirt, play with his nipples, and Jack didn’t protest. She didn’t hesitate to pull off his shirt, and her mouth watered at the sight. Does hunting do that to a person, or was it some Nephilim perk to have a body like this? Mary was the one who continued to push things, taking off her own shirt, reaching to unzip Jack’s jeans, and meeting no resistance. Jack didn’t hesitate, and Mary knew it was because he had no sex ed. He didn’t know what she was doing, and he wouldn’t tell anyone, because he didn’t have the words for this. Besides, even if he did, he trusted her. He was an innocent little boy, one who’d never had a mother, who would assume this was just what women were like because he had nobody to compare Mary to. Jack was hers.
“Aren’t we going to cuddle?” He asks as Mary pulls away after getting her satisfaction from him. She wasn’t planning on it, she didn’t need Jack anymore, yet she smiled in her most motherly manner and climbed back into bed to give Jack his overdue fix of cuddles. Soon he was asleep and at least he didn’t snore, unlike Mary’s previous older lovers.
Thankfully, like she hoped, Jack didn’t feel the need to talk about it in the morning. He did kiss her cheek over breakfast but that was it and there was no awkwardness during their drive to the bunker. Jack was his usual hyperactive-bundle-of-joy-self, and it only took Mary a couple of hours to be able to look her sons in the eyes again.
***
It happened like that a couple more times after hunts. They both would get hyped up and get off on each other. Well, mostly Mary did. Jack still had no idea what was going on, even after Mary escalated things further. She missed the feeling of having something inside her, so she sat in Jack’s lap while they were naked. She would just slightly thrust her hips up hoping that Jack would take the hint, but he didn’t. She got off on his innocence, it was just so cute, but the pull out method only worked to a certain extent. After their fourth time together, Mary brought condoms, tearing open the foil with her teeth and expertly rolling the condom over Jack’s cock. It was also the first time she held it in her hand and she shivered slightly.
Finally, Jack seemed to realize that Mary’s behavior was not what he thought it was. “This… this is very intimate, isn’t it?”
“Any sex is intimate, and yes, I want this.” Mary reassured. “Unless you don’t?”
Jack looked like he was about to say no. Mary reached between their bodies and wrapped her hand around Jack’s shaft again making him shudder, though probably not from arousal. Mary didn’t care, she could just pretend. She lined him up with her entrance and lifted her hips up a bit. She felt the head touch her outer rim and the muscles clenched reflexively. She made herself relax thinking of what is about to come and felt her pussy open up with a wet pop. Mary let go of Jack’s cock and wrapped her both arms around his shoulders nudging him on. With a grunt Jack pushed forward, his cock’s head popped inside and Mary saw stars. God, it’d been so long. Mary felt practically no pain, just the delicious stretch of muscles. This was so much better than her own fingers.
Jack seemed like he might cry, or maybe his powers would act up and Mary would die, but the danger just thrilled her more. She was already doing something she wasn’t supposed to even ignoring Jacks abilities. Mary felt her pussy squeeze around his cock. Felt every inch of him inside her. “You can start moving.” She panted.
Jack moved because he had no other choice. Mary was in control, and oh, she’d never had that. Not thirty years ago in her apple pie life with John. This was new, thrilling, an unrealized dream Mary would never get enough of.
Jack gasped; his moves became erratic. He tried to pull out, but Mary wrapped her hands and legs tightly around him trapping Jack inside her.
“You can’t tell anyone what happened. You’ll get in trouble.” Mary reminds him. They stayed locked for a couple of minutes, and only then did Mary let him slide out of her. Jack took off the condom and threw it into the trashcan next to the bed before running away. Mary didn’t go after him because she knew he wouldn’t tell. She was still aroused and wet, her slick cooling and drying in chilly room air and the worked-up muscles clenched around nothing. Mary sighed contently. Whatever they were now, she could definitely work with that.
***
Mary liked riding Jack. Liked being in control, liked the way his cock got deep inside her and rubbed against her from the inside, and liked how convenient it was to just reach down and stimulate her clit in the process.
Another position that she liked was sitting on his lap, with her back to him, his cock inside her, but not moving, while she made Jack toy with her breasts.
She started bringing their intimacy back home with them. Unnoticed by the others, she would press their knees or ankles together when the family sat together. She would steal innocent-looking touches and hold hands under blankets during movie nights. Mary started sneaking into Jack’s room at night, and she hated how she had to be quiet because the thrill of the possibility of someone walking in on them was half the fun.
Most of all, Mary had a perverse kink of having sex with Jack in or on the Impala. Maybe as a statement. As a farewell ‘fuck you’ to her late husband.
Mary didn’t think much about John these days. Somewhere deep a lonely amber of old love was smouldering. He had been, after all, a big part of her life, a reason for many things happening, and the father of her children. But they hadn’t seen each other for thirty years. And their children were grownups now. Also, Mary wasn’t a fan of John’s parenting which she’d learned about from Sam. John was her past, however good it had been. She needed a future now. Only, what kind of future could they have?
There was no happily ever after for her and Jack. And there wasn’t much of a future for her as just her boys’ mom since there wasn’t much of a future in their playbooks either. After knowing nothing but hunting life for so long, Mary didn’t think any of them would be able to settle down for a normal life with an average partner. Well, Dean at least had his angel, even though he refused to admit his feelings for his best friend.
Sometimes Mary felt guilty. For stealing Jack’s youth and abandoning her sons, again. She might be living with them now, but there was palpable estrangement between them. They’d been apart for too long. They were the closest strangers in the world. Mary was too late and too young to be their mother and too out-of-date and too distant to be their friend. Maybe that was why she threw herself into Jack’s arms in the first place. He was the only person who got a chance to get to know her from scratch and decide whether he liked her or not.
Mary thought she should try and make it up to her sons somehow, but what could she do?
One morning she found herself sulking alone in the kitchen watching helplessly as another batch of pancakes turned an unappealing shade of black-and-brown and became a clot rather than a circle. She flopped another black lump onto a plate and poured more dough on the pan, trying again. How on Earth had she cooked breakfasts for baby Dean every morning for four years? And why was it easier to forget how to be a mother than a hunter? Mary would have eagerly switched those two. After this failed attempt, Mary threw the pan down with irritation, then ran to the bathroom when she suddenly felt sick. It couldn’t just be the pancakes, surely she had a stronger stomach than that, but she wasn’t sure what brought it on. After emptying her already empty stomach, Mary felt drained, dropping down into her chair and eating breakfast with great appetite.
***
When Mary’s sickness didn’t subside after a week, she started suspecting it wasn’t just food poisoning or a stomach bug. Her period had been taking longer to start too, but she didn’t pay it much attention for it had been erratic since her coming back from the dead. Honestly, Mary would have remained none the wiser if this sickness hadn’t become bothersome. She had to stay behind during an interesting case that all the boys had gone on to and to turn down intimacy with Jack on several occasions. After three weeks of it, Mary found herself in the bunker’s bathroom with a pregnancy test which wasn’t easy to obtain unnoticed by everyone else.
Of course, it was positive.
Mary tried to comprehend how this happened. Mary was sure that Jack had never foregone wearing a condom, she put it on him herself every time, and when they didn’t have any, they resorted to their hands and mouths. Maybe one broke and they failed to notice? She should have gone on the pill too as soon as she realized this was going to be a long term thing, but it was too late to be thinking about all the whys and ifs. Mary had to break the news to her family and that was going to be extra hard since she hadn’t told Dean and Sam about her fling with Jack. A fling! That was how it had started and was supposed to be, only now things were getting out of the ‘fling’ realm pretty damn fast.
She found the other adults at the kitchen table. Jack was absent, as he often was, he had recently started to avoid her when he could and it gave Mary the thrill of cat and mouse. Judging by the plates, they had just finished breakfast. The smell of eggs and bacon still lingered in the air, and Mary made an effort to swallow another bout of nausea. Actually, given how most food was making her sick those days she was surprised no one had yet caught onto anything.
All eyes were on her the moment she gingerly sat on a vacant chair. Mary couldn’t bring herself to meet the others’ concerned looks.
“Mom? Are you all right? You’re pale,” Sam pointed out anxiously.
“Yes, I am, almost.” Mary smiled. Static noise in her ears was growing louder and Mary felt familiar prickling on her tongue that meant she was on the verge of fainting. “I need to tell you something, boys.” She avoided looking at Castiel, the angel’s stare could be unnerving, make her feel guilty, and she didn’t need that. “I’m pregnant. From Jack.”
Silence fell. It was so quiet, it felt like everyone had stopped breathing. Nobody knew how to react. Dean looked furious, and it reminded her of John in the worst way. She didn’t think Dean would care like that, he had been advocating to kill Jack for the first few weeks of his life.
The first sound that finally came was Sam clearing his throat and then he moved his chair with a screech that in this silence sounded deafening.
“How…” Sam’s voice broke and he coughed again. “How long has this been going on?”
“A couple of months.” Mary confessed. Somehow Castiel had managed to get his eyes on her despite all her attempts to avoid his gaze, and she felt just the tiniest bit bad.
Dean stormed off in the direction of Jack’s room.
“Why?” Sam seemed so upset and betrayed. It reminded Mary of Jack’s question when he first realized the wrongness of what was happening between them, but it didn’t give her the same shivers. “He’s a kid!”
“He’s not human, he’s very mature for a one year old and I think he can hardly be considered a kid.”
“No! He’s not, he might be preventing the third apocalypse or something, but nephilims age normally when the world isn’t about to crumble! He’s sixteen at best, and you had to know he had no idea what you were doing to him.”
Dean came back with Jack, who was shaking and crying. Mary had never seen Dean be as gentle as he was right now, with Jack tucked protectively under his arm, while also looking this pissed off.
“I’m sorry, Dean, I’m so sorry!” Jack sobbed. He looked so vulnerable and childish now, Mary saw Sam’s point that he was just a kid, but she didn’t feel any remorse, only dread. Given Jack’s status as the most powerful being in the universe, his baby was probably also strong enough to destroy the world, and kill its mother in childbirth. That was becoming a habit of hers, dying for her babies, and she realized she threw away a second chance at life. Jack had kept himself alive, keeping Kelly from killing herself during the pregnancy, waiting until he was born to end her life.
Castiel didn’t ask before putting a hand on Mary’s belly. She couldn’t exactly protest him putting hands on her baby without asking when she had done that to Jack. There was clear disdain in his usually monotone voice as he spoke. To Sam and Dean, not to Mary. “It’s not as strong as Jack but still very powerful. It possesses qualities I haven’t felt in any living creature before.”
“It’s going to kill her, good.” Dean didn’t mean it. Mary knew he didn’t, he was a mama’s boy, and he had always wanted her back. Amara said so. There was no reason for him to wish her dead, and especially not over something this minor. He had wanted Jack dead for a while, he was unstable, and he would come to his senses eventually. She covered her belly once more. Cas stopped Dean with a grounding look and a hand on his chest.
“This isn’t a regular human foetus.” Castiel continued. “It’s not even nephilim, not with this much of a dilution to the angel blood. It doesn’t have enough grace to sustain itself and so as not to devour Mary’s soul, it’s feeding off cosmic energy. Right now, the flow is stable, but if we try to destroy it, the energy it’s accumulated will break loose. We’ll start another apocalypse.”
There was another spell of silence. Dean was breathing heavily, not seeming to process the words because he was too busy nonsensically being angry at Mary instead of being excited to be a big brother again.
“I don’t think Mary is in any danger yet.” Castiel argued, “since it’s not feeding off Mary, when the time comes, it will use the energy it’s accumulated to power its birth. I assume this baby would come to term faster even than Jack did.”
Dean took another deep breath, still glaring at Mary, but relaxed and nodded. Sam let him go and Dean straightened his clothes. He then marched towards her and poked him in the chest with a finger. “From now on I don’t want you anywhere near my son, capiche?” He asked. That woke Mary from her trance.
“Excuse me? This isn’t for you to decide.” She told Dean and pulled Jack towards her. “Besides, when have you ever seen him as a son?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Dean snaps, deflective as always, before storming out of the kitchen in the direction of the bunker’s garage. Maybe working on the Impala will calm him down. Even with him gone, the atmosphere was still extremely tense. Mary could not figure out what Sam’s deal was. Jack just stared at Mary’s belly, and for a second, she felt warmth and calm course through her entire body. Must be the baby feeling its daddy’s presence. Mary chuckled. It was crazy even thinking about Jack as someone’s father. Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to see him cradling their baby in his arms.
“What’s so funny about this?” Sam asked, and Mary could see how he was like his father. She hadn’t seen it before, but now he seemed just as angry and protective as the other Winchester men.
***
Mary had been successfully hiding in her room flipping through some paperback mystery novel when someone knocked on the door. She looked up and saw Dean. He purposely avoided looking her in the eyes, still upset and angry. Honestly, he needed to get over it. She was already pregnant, why couldn’t she just be allowed to keep this baby? Hadn’t they learned with Jack than an abortion would be pointless if this child was determined to live?
“I don’t want you living in the bunker anymore.” Dean muttered. Mary was surprised to hear that, it seemed a bit drastic.
“Dean?”
“You touched me when I was little!” Dean snaps out of nowhere, “I told dad you were being weird but he didn’t believe me! I thought…I thought maybe it was Azazel’s fault, that you were possessed or something, but no! You just get off on little kids, cause now you’re back and you’re doing it to Jack!”
“I never got off on you.” Mary says, offended, “you were four. I would never do that to a four year old.”
“Yeah? So what was it that you did with me? And how young would you go?”
“All right, let’s do this.” She proclaimed bravely, “what I did with you was called motherhood. Of course I had to help you change, and bathe, and wipe after you used the bathroom. You were a toddler.”
“You didn’t have to grab my dick to do any of those things!”
“I never did such a thing to you!”
“I remember it!”
“How trustworthy can a four year old’s memory be?” Mary snaps back.
Dean was bitterly silent for a moment after that. “…Sam insists on giving you an ultrasound. He doesn’t want you dead like he should.”
Dean wouldn’t touch his mom as he led her down to one of the dungeons where Sam had apparently set this up. There was a cot, the ultrasound, an entire cabinet of supplies, and various sigils all over the walls and floor. There was one right beneath the cot. Lying on it, Mary would look like a proverbial sacrificial virgin. Far from a virgin, though.
The room felt a bit crowded with everyone there, even if everyone who didn’t have to be right next to her had decided to distance themselves as much as possible. Sam manned the ultrasound and looked almost embarrassed toying with the transducer in his hands. Jack picked his nails shyly, hiding behind a still pissed off Dean, and Castiel seemed to just be trying to calm Dean unsuccessfully. She wondered how Castiel must feel tending to Jack’s child just a little over a year after bringing him into this world.
Sam silently pointed Mary to the cot. “On your back, shirt up, jeans down.” He commanded, not even looking at her.
“Will you do this?” Mary wondered as she followed Sam’s instructions. This was so wrong. Her son shouldn’t be performing an ultrasound for her pregnancy.
Sam cleared his throat. “Well, I figured among all of us I’m the most trained…”
“You were prelaw. Not even actual law.” Dean reminded with a scoff.
“Yeah, well, Jess was premed.” Sam shot back.
“Just let’s get this over with.” Mary asked.
Sam didn’t even warn Mary that the gel would be cold before squirting a generous amount of it on Mary’s lower abdomen.
Sam pressed the transducer to Mary’s belly and moved it around more aggressively than he probably needed to. On the screen, everything was dark.
“Did you remember to plug it in?” Dean wondered.
“Yes, jerk.” Sam snapped.
“Bitch.” Dean muttered. “Maybe she’s not pregnant after all?”
“We would still see the scan.” Sam argued. “Maybe it’s the fetus. Its protection too strong for human devices to see it.”
“I have an idea.” Castiel said and to Mary’s horror he slipped his angelic blade out of his sleeve. Nobody protested this, they were all ganging up on Mary. “I merely want to try to use grace instead of this gel.” He explained, even though nobody had been stopping him, but apparently Dean had more respect for his angel than his mother now, because he suddenly grabbed Castiel’s shoulder.
“You are not wasting your grace on her.” Dean insists.
“We need to know what to expect.” Castiel argues, slicing his palm.
Sam hastily wiped remaining gel off Mary’s skin. Unnecessarily, Castiel used his angel blade to transfer grace. She wasn’t aware that was something he could do, and she didn’t realize her sons had taught him how to be passive aggressive. Sam once more pressed the transducer to her abdomen. He was fully concentrated on the screen which remained dead. Silence hung heavily. Finally, something appeared. Blurry shapes and shadows flexed and rolled. Mary stared at them but even with her two previous pregnancies she couldn’t tell what the hell she was seeing on the screen. How Sam would be able to tell she didn’t know. Mary then peeked at Dean. He was staring at the screen too, wide-eyed and almost as enraptured as Jack even if for a different reason. Castiel watched the screen with his trademark head tilt.
“Okay, there definitely is a pregnancy.” Sam announced.
“Did your girlfriend teach you anything else or is that all you know?” Dean teases again.
“Jerk”
“Bitch.”
“When was your last cycle?” Sam asks while looking backwards at Dean as if gloating that he knew what questions to ask. Dean stuck out his tongue in response.
“I don’t know, it’s been erratic ever since I… came back.” Mary said. She didn’t like the word ‘resurrected’. It implied that she’d been dead and she didn’t like remembering that. It made her presence here even more unnatural. On the other hand, nothing in this situation was natural.
“Well, this was unhelpful. How about we lock up the child molester and revisit this in a week?” Dean says with fake enthusiasm.
While Sam didn’t want Mary dead, he was still angry, and he agreed with his brother on the “lock mom up” plan. So she was alone in the dungeon, memories flooding her mind of the two times she’d laid on a hospital cot, John by her side clutching her hand or shoulder as they listened to their children’s heartbeats for the first time. Tears swelled in Mary’s eyes and she sobbed. The reality of it came upon her. This was happening. She was going to be a mother again and there was a high chance that this time she wouldn’t even get a moment with the baby, childbirth would kill her. She wouldn’t be there to feed and cradle them, or tell them bedtime stories, watch their first steps or hear their first words. She wouldn’t learn to cook again, get the kid all the stupid toys they want, or if it’s a girl, learn to do her hair.
“I’m sorry.” Mary whispered to nobody.
Meanwhile, the others conversed without Mary.
“Heaven, hell, and probably purgatory and the Empty will be after this child.” Castiel proclaimed solemnly.
“Then let them come.” Dean hissed through gritted teeth still looking at the printout of the blurry image. “I’m not four anymore.”