Chapter Text
Dean hasn’t been home in a while, but he’s passing through Kansas on his way to the Campbell farm to meet up with some cousins, and he figures there’s no harm in stopping in. He doesn’t see his parents often, they were always more interested in each other than they were in him. He’d look over after making a home run at little league and they wouldn’t even have noticed. They were gazing into each other’s eyes, and sometimes kissing passionately enough that the other parents would titter and smirk. After years of being ignored in his own home, he found his real family in his mother’s people, the ones she’d left to be boring with his father, in their little house in Lawrence.
Dull fucking suburbs, that’s all he thinks as he turns off of the main street in the direction of his childhood home. There couldn’t be anything more pointless that his mother being a childless housewife while his father works his regular hours at the garage he part-owns. Mary made it clear to him the first summer at his grandparents’ place that he was not to say a word to John about anything he might learn or hear there, so he never has. To this day he can’t understand why she would ever give up defending humanity and knowing things most people wouldn’t believe, for re-heating meatloaf for his father. She’s not even a good cook, that’s the funny thing. He thought she was, when he was a kid, but he learned better when he caught her putting a store-bought loaf into a real tin pan to heat in the oven.
The house looks the same as it always has when he pulls into the driveway. Funny thing about the car he’s driving, it was the only interesting thing about his father. It was also the only thing that set their house apart from anyone else’s, but when Dean turned eighteen and refused to either go to college or join the military, his father had handed him the keys and all but shoved him across the county line. John drives a sensible pickup now. That rejection is why Dean doesn’t go back often, but he’s loyal enough to show up and check on his parents sometimes.
They’re home, he can see the truck is there and the lights are on, but he has to wait on the doorstep for a while before his father comes to answer the bell. The door opens to John’s scowl and the shrill sound of a baby. Dean doesn’t know shit about babies, but he knows what a screeching infant sounds like, and there’s no reason for one to be in there.
“You woke the baby,” John grumbles, not even moving to welcome him in.
“What baby?” Dean scoffs in return. “Since when does a baby live here?”
“Since two weeks ago, when we… brought your little brother home from the hospital.”
There’s a little flash of hurt, just a tiny one, when Dean realizes his father is serious. His own mother had a baby, his baby brother, and he didn’t even know. It’s not like they don’t have his phone number, they could’ve said something if they wanted to.
On impulse, mostly because he can tell how unwelcome he is, Dean shoulders his way in and says, “Well, if I’ve got a brother, I wanna see him.”
“Now isn’t a good time,” John replies stiffly. “Your mother is exhausted, and Samuel is colicky.”
“Wow.”
“Excuse me?”
“Six months ago I was here, and you didn’t tell me I was gonna have a little brother or sister. Now I’m here again, and you can’t wait to throw me out the door, can you?”
It’s not like Dean has any interest in babies, but his desire to thwart his father has been building up for years. He can tell, because he was raised by the man after all, that John doesn’t want him anywhere near that baby, but if dad wants him out he’s going to have to drag him there.
Finding the baby is easy as pie. There are only two bedrooms in the house after all, and he’s not at all surprised to find that his old room has been made over into a nursery, complete with storks and clouds on a pastel blue background. His mother is bouncing a screaming bundle wrapped in blankets, and doesn’t notice him right away.
“Hey, Mom.”
She jumps and turns to the door. It stings that she doesn’t look pleased to see him. It hurts more coming from her than it does coming from his father because she knows him in a way John doesn’t. She knows about the hunting and that he’s really trying to do good and help people, he isn’t some useless drain on society like his dad thinks he is. It just doesn’t matter to her.
“Dean,” Mary says with a bit of a sigh. “I’m sorry, it’s really not a good time.”
“Well,” Dean answers stubbornly, “I’ve only got a little time myself and I want to meet my brother before I gotta get back on the road.”
“Alright.” His mother clicks her tongue, barely audible over the sound of little Sammy wailing his head off. “At least, take your boots and coat off before you come in here, the carpet is new.”
Fine, no big deal. He can leave his outerwear in the hall if she doesn’t want her precious white carpet stained. Samuel is purple in the face and crying so hard Dean can see the back of his throat when Mary puts his little brother in his arms.
“Hold his head up,” Mary says sharply, reaching out to adjust Sammy’s downy head in the crook of his arm.
“Heya, Sammy,” Dean chuckles at his baby brother, so tiny and innocent and mad for who knows what reason.
Sammy stops howling immediately, and right in that moment, Dean is hooked for life. This is his baby brother, tiny and helpless, who stopped crying just for him.
“Oh, goodness,” Mary murmurs. “It probably won’t last long, he cries all day from dinnertime to midnight, but maybe he’ll behave for a bit.”
“If he starts up again, I’ll take off and get out of your hair,” Dean offers. “Not like you and dad want me around anyway.”
“Come now, that’s not true.” Mary sucks her teeth and tuts. “You were the one who left home so young.”
“Only ‘cause Dad practically kicked me out the door.”
“Oh, hardly. He just wanted you to get some life experience, since you refused to do anything respectable.”
“Yeah, sure. That’s why he handed me the keys to the car and two hundred bucks, then told me not to expect anything else. And you know, Mom, you know, I’m doing something worth doing, but you let him think I’m some kind of bum.”
Mary’s expression hardens. “I told you never to talk about that in this house.”
“What’s it matter?” Dean laughs bitterly. “Ain’t like he’s coming up here. He didn’t even want to let me in the house.”
His mother doesn’t deny it, and his brother doesn’t start crying again. He actually gets an invitation to dinner then, and he’s tempted to decline out of spite, but Sammy sleeping in his arms is too damn cute to let go. Sometime around eleven his little brother wakes up to mewl and fuss for his dinner, and that’s when Dean finally releases his new favorite human back into his mother’s arms.
The Campbells are polite but not interested in Dean’s little brother. He figures that’s normal. It took them a while to warm up to him after what his mother did, and surely they’ll warm up to the idea of Sammy eventually.