Chapter Text
The truth is, Deanna never actually takes a pregnancy test.
There’s no two pink lines on a stick in a motel bathroom and her shocked expression in the mirror. No dramatic reveal where said test falls out of the torn bottom of her backpack, telling the world that yes, she is pregnant.
The truth is, denial seems like the best place to be. Well-informed, knowing, denial that has her mimicking how much trash should be in the hotel bathroom bin when her period is due just in case her Dad or Sammy for some reason notice that kind of thing. Denial, or maybe it’d be more accurate to call it pretending everything is normal, has her not actually drinking the beer that John or Bobby hand her. If it was denial, real deep down unmoving denial, she’d be drinking it.
But she isn’t.
The truth is, she never actually takes a pregnancy test, but she does keep a pack of mints in her pocket for the nausea and refills her beer bottle with water when the others aren’t looking.
. . .
There’s a gash in her side, angry and bleeding and red that has her gritting her teeth with every step.
The only thing that makes it better is that there’s no blood in other, more dangerous places.
John passes her the bottle of whiskey to dull it while he sews her up and she fakes a sip, letting it backwash into the bottle while he’s digging through the first aid kit. Deanna shrugs out of jacket and flannel and feels her heart beating in her throat as she rolls up the tank top.
There’s not a real bump yet, nothing identifiable, more like cheeseburger and milkshake weight. When John does a double-take and her anxiety shoots through the roof, that’s what she blames it on. Too many cheeseburgers and slices of pie and not enough running around. Her cheeks are fuller too, face rounded and softer, she wonders if anyone’s noticed.
John, thankfully, accepts it as an answer, shaking his head with a little laugh, “You always have liked pie.”
She makes herself laugh with him, even as she winces through every stitch.
. . .
They’re at Bobby’s so Sammy can graduate highschool, which means John goes on hunts by himself and Deanna helps Bobby with the cars.
Normally, weeks at Bobby’s are the best, her favorite even though she’d never tell her Dad that, but this time is different. She wants to tell Bobby. Wants someone else to know what she’s going through. Wants someone to ask advice from and to tell how terrified she is. Wants someone to be concerned.
She tries to tell him more than once, but her tongue locks up and she can’t get the words out. When it isn’t her tongue it’s her feet, a blatant refusal to carry her around the corner to where Bobby is sitting watching TV.
After about the tenth time, she just gives up and accepts that he’ll never know about this.
. . .
Sometimes, when John is off at a bar and Sammy is reading in the hotel room, she thinks about finding whichever one John isn’t at and finding someone to flirt with so she can feel like herself again.
Sometimes, she actually does. She flirts and dances and plays pool (but doesnt hustle, no, she can’t risk a fist fight) and her shorts are painfully tight to the point that she takes a hair tie and uses it as a makeshift extender on her belt loop. She dances closer to whoever she’s flirting with and accidentally smells his breath and it reeks of tequila.
She barely makes it to the bar bathroom before she vomits. The girl in the next stall does too.
When Deanna finally leaves the stall, shaking and feeling gross, she leans against the sticky wall next to the sinks and tries to catch her breath. She undoes the hair-tie-extender so she can unbutton the shorts that are still, despite her best efforts, digging in.
She glances to her left, to the mirror, and does what she hasn’t allowed herself to do in months.
She looks. Really looks. Pulls the flannel she’s wearing unbuttoned over a tank top back behind her so she can properly see and looks.
The truth is, she’s never actually taken a pregnancy test, but she’s at the point where it’d be a waste of money to do so. There’s a bump. An actual, swear-on-her-mother’s-grave bump . Not cheeseburger weight. Not one slice of pie too many. She’s pregnant, that’s the truth, she doesnt need a pair of pink lines on a piece of plastic to tell her that.
The other puker stumbles out of her stall then. Skinny and tall and in a tight shirt and her miniskirt fits.
“Girl, are you pregnant?”
Deanna promptly burst into tears.
At some point, Miss Puker hugs her. A group of girls enter the bathroom and start a drunken impromptu women’s conference. Someone stands on the bathroom counter in heels that are dangerously high and seranades her with a Celine Dion song. At least three more girls hug her and tell her she looks gorgeous. Deanna definitely sobs something out about feeling alone and the girl two stalls over who needed to pee yells you’ve got us babe! You’re gonna be okay! What’s your name again?
The designated driver of this impromptu women’s conference pulls her aside after ushering the other girls back out onto the dance floor and asks if she’s okay. If she’s safe.
Deanna nods, even though there’s really no such thing as safe in her life.
“Here,” the girl whose name she doesn’t even know says, grabbing a paper towel from the dispenser and digging a pen out of her purse, “This is my number. You call me if you need anything while youre in the area.”
Cassie Robinson, the paper towel says, with her phone number beneath it.
“Thank you,” Deanna says, feeling like she might cry again.
Cassie hugs her again, tight, and then she’s gone, and it’s just Deanna and the mirror.
“Oh kid,” She sighs, “What are we going to do?”
. . .
She buys bigger flannels, she fake-drinks more beers, and then she gets tossed to the ground by a werewolf and she sees her life flash before her eyes.
Her back hurts, aches from the impact, and as John and Sam burn the werewolf’s body all she can think about is she fell. Her hands shake in the car, white-knuckled against the steering wheel, and she’s tempted to pull into one of the gas stations on the way back to the motel. But if she did, how would she handle bad news if that was what was waiting? Just come back out the car and act like everything was fine and continue up the road that John had gone to the hotel with Sammy sitting next to her in the front seat?
So she waited, feeling the cramping in her fingers as she drove. The car was silent, she hadn’t even thought to put music on, and Sammy was looking at her weird.
“You okay?” He asked.
Deanna nodded, “Of course.”
Of course she was. She had to be.
Deanna calls the bathroom first, darting in and hopping in the shower and almost bursting into tears of joy when she didn't see blood. She ends up squatting on the grimy shower floor, crying into her hands, trying to be quiet.
She feels movement, a little flutter, and gasps. When it happens again, she almost laughs, pressing her fingers against her belly to see if she can feel it from the outside too.
She tries not to think about how heartbroken she’d be to lose this kid.
She tries not to think about the inevitability of losing this kid.
The truth is, she’s never actually taken a pregnancy test, and at this point she doesn’t know whether to try not to get attached to this kid or cherish every moment she has with them before they’re born and she loses them forever.