Characters not mine.

(Originally written for a free-for-all challenge on comment_fic. Prompt was "first birthday.")

The morning routine was well established by now. John would get up at o'dark thirty, check and make sure his kids were still breathing, and then go in search of the nearest cup of coffee. If he was lucky and quiet, he could even get a little work done before one of them woke up, because whichever it was, the other one wouldn't be that far behind.

This morning was no different than usual. Sam and Dean were snuggled up against one another and snoring peacefully, and the motel staff were just putting out the pots of caffeine when he got there. The woman was used to him by now, and just nodded to him as he tried to separate the styrofoam cups from one another.

Back in the room, there was a box of newspapers still to go through, and he brought the coffee back to get started on them. He'd thrown them haphazardly into the box when he'd finally hit the sack about four hours before, and the ones he hadn't gotten to yet were more or less most-recent-first. He pulled out yesterday's and started flipping in search of the obits.

He was somewhere in the middle of Section B before the numbers after the day of the week registered.

He checked them again, just to make sure. He knew it was getting to be around that time, after all.

Then he carefully put the newspaper down on the table in front of him and reached up to rub at his temples. They were already beginning to throb gently just beyond the reach of his fingers. Maybe he should have started with the books today, although even as he thought it, he knew he was sure to run up against something that had the date on it today, anyway. He'd at least check his watch at some point.

At three-thirty this afternoon, his youngest would have been on this planet for exactly a year.

As of sometime tonight, his wife would have had left it for exactly six months.

He ought to focus on the former. Or the task at hand. Or any of the various other things that were going on around him. At some point in the near future the oil in the car needed to be changed; it might as well happen today. It would be better to think about something like that.

He glanced over at the boys again. Dean shifted in his sleep, whimpering a little in his dreams. The movement made Sammy a little more visible, baby fingers curled inexpertly around his older brother's sleeve.

Mary's boys.

John still sometimes woke up in the middle of the night and hoped all of the . . . the crazy world he'd gotten mixed up in was still some kind of terrible dream brought on by parental fears and too many slasher flicks after midnight, only to remember when he reached across the bed for his wife and realized he was either alone or with Dean pressed up against his side. He was only now getting to the point where he was pretty sure he couldn't dream this much shit up in one night.

Sam had stopped crying for her months ago, of course—now it was either for dad or Dean like she'd never been there at all. That hurt, even though he knew it shouldn't, and even though he was already dreading the day the kid was old enough to ask why he didn't have a mom. It wasn't right, that he didn't remember her. It wasn't right that John and Dean had to keep going on without her and would eventually have to tell the youngest member of the family what his own mother was like.

Right now, though, both of his kids were asleep and happily oblivious, and if he pulled himself together well enough, then Dean wouldn't wake up and ask if he was thinking about mom again. Dean always did notice too much for his own good. Sammy was always good at picking up on the general mood, too, and John would rather the general mood not result in a fussy baby on the kid's first birthday. Even if it was the anniversary of something else as well.

He turned back to the newspaper almost aggressively, and managed to get through a full page of mostly useless obituaries, circling the death of a Jasper Talbot for some looking into if nothing else came up, without the thought of Mary intruding again.

He folded it up, shoved it to the other end of the table and retrieved the previous day's paper from the box. The date that stared up at him this time didn't stand quite so accusing.

The first few pages offered nothing more interesting than a human interest story about a bear, so it was on to the obits again. It was a moment before he realized the shuffling from the paper was accompanied by persistent shuffling from the bed.

So which kid was up?

He glanced over to see that Sammy had pushed Dean's arm away from him and was blinking owlishly at the world. At least he didn't look like he was about to cry. It was nice to know that somebody was happy to be here today. "Mornin', Sammy," John mumbled.

His eleven-month-old—no, twelve-month-old as of today, wasn't it?—grinned at him. "Da," he said, and held out his arms, wanting to be picked up.

John glanced back at the obituaries and decided the hell with them. He put the pen down on the table and got to his feet, reaching out to scoop the kid up. Sam giggled happily and his fingers scrabbled for a hold on John's collar, and John found his arms tightening a little around his son.

Sam still smelled like softness and baby powder and all those little touches of domesticity that John knew he was losing fast. And he was growing so damn fast, but he was also one of the few things that felt like home as it was supposed to be anymore. Even Dean was segregated in his head as the kid he'd had before the fire and the kid he'd had after.

Of course, Sammy was also barely a year old, and after a minute or so of being hugged, he started to squirm, wanting his freedom of movement back.

John loosened his grip enough that Sam could move his upper body again, and he looked around speculatively before he reached up to feel the two or three days worth of beard on his father's cheeks. John shook his head and, when that didn't deter Sam, tolerated the exploration and wondered if he ought to start thinking about breakfast. Or anything else, for that matter.

He'd been determinedly not thinking about anything in the past for at least five out of the past six months now, and the date had kind of snuck up on him. Sammy, of course, didn't care what day it was, and Dean would hardly remember the exact day John had dropped him off at Mike's and rushed his mom to the hospital, half in a panic even though they'd gotten through this once before. So John was the only one who knew today was anything special, and he had the opportunity to keep it that way and not have to think about how different a first birthday would be if Mary was still around for it.

But at the same time, there were so few markers of normality in his boy's lives, and while Sam might not care one way or another, marking the anniversary of his brother's birth might actually get one of the still-rare smiles out of Dean.

More rustling from the bed drew John's attention downward as Dean sat up, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. Sammy immediately attempted a dive towards his big brother, but John was experienced enough at holding a kid by now to grab him in time and just lower him to the bed.

"Dad?" Dean asked, and yawned hugely.

"Mornin'." John nodded. "Know what today is?"