Hello all *waves* I hope everyone is well xx
I had so much fun with little Dean in Four Men and a Little Hunter that I couldn't resist playing with him again. This time in the Brotherhood universe
Unfortunately, no Sam in this one (sorry Sammy) as he is away at university, but I am working on another Brotherhood story with lots of cute little Sammy moments to make up for it
Anyway, I hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer: "I do not own Supernatural, or any of the related characters. The Supernatural series is created by Eric Kripke and owned by The CW Network. The Brotherhood AU is a fanfiction series created by Ridley C. James, Tidia, and Williamson M. Scott. This work of fanfiction is for entertainment only. I am not making a profit of any kind from this story.
As always, thank you to both the wonderful Meilean and Churchlady63 who patiently put up with me and always give me such thoughtful feedback. If you haven't read Meilean's stories, you should definitely check them out, they are amazing.
Deuces
deuce (plural deuces)
* A euphemism for 'devil' in expressions of annoyance, impatience, surprise, etc. i.e: What the deuce do you think you're doing?
* The number two/A card with two pips, 222 2 . (Pocket ducks - two 2s)
* (baseball) A curveball.
* (tennis) A tied game
* A way of saying bye or peace
SPNBROAU
Part 1: What the Deuce - Feb 2002
Caleb was woken by a sharp slap to the side of his head. The rude awakening had him sitting up sharply nearly headbutting his mentor who was bent over him.
"What the hell, Junior!"
"W…what?" Recognising his assailant, Caleb relaxed from attack mode and rubbed the side of his head, frowning.
Getting a rude awakening from John Winchester wasn't that unusual. The man barely slept and seemed to have little patience for those who did. But on this occasion John hadn't been with them the night before. Caleb and John's son, Dean, had been on recon for the case they were working, with John due to join them the next day.
"I said, What. The. Hell?" John threatened.
"I heard your 'what the hell'," Caleb grumbled sourly. "I just don't know what the hell you're 'what the helling' about." He grimaced against the pounding in his head and tried to get his bearings.
John moved his gaze from the sore-headed thirty-year-old, across the room, to the other bed crammed into the quaint, small-town hotel room. Caleb's eyes followed.
The room wasn't the usual flea-pit type the Winchesters usually stayed in but nor was it exactly the Marriott. It was the best the small town had to offer though. Apart from the luridly flowered decor, it was fairly comfortable.
It was worrying enough that John had somehow got into their locked room without waking them. But last night, Caleb had dumped the unconscious body of his best friend on the other bed before passing out himself. Given the Knight's mood, he was worried that Dean's head wound was worse than he'd thought, or that he'd missed something in light of his own condition.
Fingers crossed, he looked across the space hoping that he'd see a familiar mocking smirk. But in the other bed there was no longer a twenty-three-year-old, blood stained, hunter. Instead, sprawled on top of the duvet, in a pile of what looked like Dean's favourite jacket and faded Metallica shirt, was a small child who seemed barely bigger than the pillows.
"What the hell!" Caleb was upright in a blink.
John raised a disparaging eyebrow at him.
"Who the hell is that and where the hell is Deuce?" Caleb demanded. Panic was clawing at his belly, scaring away the last vestiges of sleep.
At the loud voice, the small figure shifted. Chubby arms twitched, eyelashes fluttered, then the toddler started to sit up.
John swiftly left Caleb's side and moved to the other bed. "Hey there, kiddo," he said in an uncharacteristically gentle voice. He perched on the mattress, his back to Caleb. The small boy blinked at him.
"Daddy?"
A smile, alien on the usually gruff hunter, softened John's face.
"Hey Ace, did you have a good sleep?"
The small boy pouted and rubbed his fists at his eyes for a moment. Then he reached his little arms towards the man. John scooped him up and tucked him over his shoulder, rubbing the heaving back soothingly.
"It's ok, Daddy's got you."
The boy latched on, resting his head on the broad shoulder and yawning.
"Deuce?" Caleb whispered, bemusedly.
The big eyes drifted over to him and blinked a few times.
"Daddy, who dat?"
John shifted so he was sitting evenly on the bed with Dean sitting on his lap, with them both facing his protégé.
"Dean, this is Caleb."
"Cleb?" Dean queried.
Caleb looked in shock at the curious green gaze and goofy grin …
SPNBROAU
The night before:
… Caleb looked in shock at the curious green gaze and goofy grin.
"I hate to break this to you, Damien, but I don't think the wishbitch is two clicks north," Dean said as a strange tentacle-like appendage snaked around his neck.
Caleb shook his head at his friend's inappropriate response to the threat of being strangled. "What can I say, my animal magnetism draws them from miles around," he said as he side-stepped and tried to find an opening to strike the monster without hurting Dean.
"Pretty sure it's me she's focused on, Dude," Dean choked out before managing to get an arm free and bringing up his blade to swipe at the tentacle, forcing it to withdraw. He turned to confront his attacker, but she had vanished into the shadows. Caleb was also squinting through the dark, trying to figure out where she had gone, and the two hunters moved closer together, not quite back-to-back.
A strange unnatural light suddenly filled the small dell, like a spotlight had been aimed at them. Except it came from below instead of above. Each of them got a firm grip on the handle of their own five-inch hunting knife and prepared for battle. They weren't meant to confront the thing tonight, Johnny had been clear they were not to hunt it until he arrived. Apparently the djinnaiad had other ideas.
As the offspring of a djinn and a naiad, djinnaiad were rare but not unheard of. The two parent species rarely found themselves in the same territory but when they did, apparently there was an irresistible attraction. The resulting child was double the trouble. Luckily, they also had the vulnerabilities of both parents.
Even so, the fight was brutal, Caleb and Dean each took several knocks. After Dean was thrown into a tree and crumpled to the ground, Caleb took a running dive at the thing. They rolled through the dirt, arms, legs, and the thing's tentacles, flailing, trying to strike at each other. As they came to a stop, Caleb's blood-dipped blade was sticking out of the djinnaiad's heart. With a groan, he rolled off of it and flopped back onto the forest floor, catching his breath.
"Normally I don't mind a little sweaty wrestling with a chick," he gasped to the corpse. "But seriously, the tentacles are a bit much." He closed his eyes for a moment.
The djinnaiad was shrivelling to a husk. It would soon turn to dust, dispersing in the wind. In the wake of its death, the strange glow that still seemed to seep up from the ground was starting to recede.
After getting his breath back, Caleb pushed himself up on his elbows and looked around. He'd been searching, psychically as well as physically, for hours and the only thing he'd been able to predict was the migraine that was already beginning to make itself known. He tried to blink away the double vision.
"Deuce?" he called, squinting through the murky light. Finally locating the lump on the floor that was his best friend, he scrambled over. A quick exam satisfied him that, while out cold and probably in for one hell of a headache when he woke up, Dean didn't seem to have any other serious injuries.
He knew Mac would fuss over the head injury, but Caleb put his faith in the invulnerability of the Winchester steel. Dean had responded to the sternal rub, albeit only with a groan. Besides, Caleb didn't have a lot of options. He could check him more thoroughly back at the room. For now they needed to get out of here.
With some effort, he was able to get Dean over his shoulder in a fireman's lift and start making his way towards his Jeep.
"Damn it, Sleeping Ugly," Caleb panted as he approached the edge of the strangely glowing dell. "I wish you were lighter, it would make lugging your sorry ass out of here a hell of a lot easier."
Caleb had managed to get them back to the motel and barely got Dean onto his bed before collapsing and passing out himself.
SPNBROAU
Back to present
"Cleb?" Dean asked.
Pulled back to the present, Caleb looked into the familiar eyes and sighed.
"Ca-leb," he corrected pointedly.
"Cleb!" Dean declared. Caleb shook his head. It could be worse.
"So, 'Cleb'," John said with equal levels of mocking and acidity. "You want to tell me how this happened?"
Though completely discombobulated by the unexpected turn of events, Caleb tried for his usual cocky grin as he moved his attention back up to John. "On the plus side the djinnaiad is toast, so, the hunt's done."
John didn't smile. "You call this done?"
"I don't know what to call this, except f―"
"Hey, watch the language," John cut him off, placing his large hands over the small ears of the little boy, who appeared to be watching his own feet wiggle.
"Like you haven't said worse," Caleb said sulkily.
"Not when he was this age," John said. There was something nostalgic in his sad eyes as he stroked the soft blond hair of his son. Caleb knew it wasn't the age but the circumstances that meant John had been a very different sort of father back then.
"Daddy, juice?" Dean asked, looking up at the rugged face with wide bright eyes.
"Let's see what we have, Ace." John stood, picking the boy up with him. Holding him close, he went to the small fridge in the corner of the room. He wasn't surprised to see only beer inside. "Looks like we're going out for breakfast," he smiled at the little boy. John moved to the sink to get him some water in the interim. "Junior, I'm going to need a t-shirt and some duct tape."
"What?" Caleb was staring at Dean, not really paying attention to anything else.
"Pull it together, Caleb!" John snapped, pulling the younger man out of his bemused stupor.
"Duct tape, right." Responding automatically to the order, as he was trained to, Caleb got up and headed out to the car. Orders were good right now, orders he could handle.
When he got back, he was surprised to see John had taken one of the sheets from the twin bed, ripped it, and was folding one part to fashion a temporary diaper. Dean tolerated the process without squirming. He just watched his daddy hopefully as he announced he was 'hun-gee'. Caleb handed over the tape and John used it to secure the sheet-diaper, careful to keep it away from the little boy's skin. Then John held out his hand again and Caleb remembered he'd also asked for a t-shirt.
Thrusting a hand into his bag, Caleb carelessly pulled out the first one his fingers found.
"I need one without bloodstains," John explained derisively.
Caleb rummaged deeper and pulled out an old college t-shirt that lived in the bottom of his go-bag. The orange and blue were faded but at least it was blood free.
John unfolded the Auburn shirt and held it up for Dean's approval.
"GRRRRR!" Dean roared, looking at the tiger, then looking at his daddy with a grin. He curled his fingers and roared again, clawing at the air. "GRRRRR!"
Caleb couldn't help but laugh at the antics. He would never admit it out loud, but the kid was kinda cute.
"Okay, Tiger," John poked the small belly, "let's get you some food in there before you eat your daddy."
Dean seemed to find this hilarious and threw himself backwards laughing.
As they exited the room, the little boy was looking around keenly. He spotted Caleb's Jeep, which was right outside and slipped his hand from his dad's to point keenly. "Lookit." Then he spotted the Impala.
Darting between the legs of John and Caleb before either could stop him, he ran over to the car, arms spread like he was going to run into its embrace. Once close, for a moment he just stared, the biggest smile on his face and his little fists opening and closing, like he could somehow scoop up the entire car.
He moved closer. Gently pressing his hands against the lights, he peered in, his face close like they were looking into each other's eyes. Little Dean moved on, his fingers carefully brushing the chrome where he could reach it. Touching each new aspect as he discovered it reverently, even the keyholes were worthy of inspection.
The two men watched silently. John feeling afresh his own appreciation of the Chevy through the little boy's eyes. Caleb shaking his head.
"There is something unnatural about his obsession with that car," he muttered.
"Jealous, Cleb?" John teased, before moving to grab his son as a paint-chipped and dented truck sped into the carpark and he became conscious of the little boy' bare feet. "Come on, Ace, she's even better on the inside."
They all travelled together, leaving Caleb's Jeep at the motel for now, Dean bouncing excitedly at getting to sit shotgun in the 'Pala'. He sat on Caleb's lap, the seatbelt over both of them.
Caleb was surprised how easily Dean had accepted him. The five-year-old Caleb had first met all those years ago, had been wary of strangers. Even Pastor Jim, who exuded calm and trust, was treated with caution at first. It was a trait Dean had retained into adulthood, always reluctant to let anyone new get close. But this two-year-old version, despite having not known who Caleb was not ten minutes ago, quite happily sat on his lap, clutched his hand, and jabbered indecipherable comments about the things they passed.
John stopped briefly at a grocery store for some essentials then took them to a pancake house on the next block. By the time they arrived, Caleb had finished filling him in on what had happened on the hunt.
The stark overhead lighting didn't help with Caleb's headache but at least none of the breakfasting families turned a hair at the sight of a small boy wearing only an oversized t-shirt. Perhaps because there was also a child in an astronaut costume and another dressed as a princess. After placing their order, John took Dean off to the bathroom to replace the makeshift diaper with a proper one.
"We'll need some other supplies," he said, sliding Dean into a highchair before taking his seat opposite Caleb.
Caleb still couldn't stop staring at Dean, taking in every detail of his tiny features. He could feel that same connection that told him it was Dean but yet … Caleb just kept getting stuck. How did this happen? How did he let this happen? He hardly knew what to feel.
Dean wasn't hurt or dying. Though he wasn't sure how he kept surviving it, Caleb knew how to feel that, he'd had plenty of experience. But this was just … Deuce wasn't Deuce, so Deuce was gone. But here was Deuce, being distracted from trying to escape a highchair by his dad's car keys and pretending he was driving by making brmmm brmmm noises.
"Caleb! Did you hear me?" John snapped. Dean stopped brmmming for a moment and looked up worriedly at the angry tone. Caleb refocused on John, his brain slowly processing the comment he'd heard but not really registered before.
"Supplies, like what?"
Satisfied that no one was angry with him, Dean went back to driving.
"Clothes, a car seat, a cup he can use –" John stopped speaking as a waitress brought their food. He ran a hand over his hair, trying to force his mind to think of what else the little boy would need until they could fix this.
Caleb watched his mentor. He knew Johnny was calm in a crisis, hell they were all used to dealing with the weird and the freaky. But freaky didn't cover this. And besides, it was Deuce. The waitress gave them a warm smile and moved on.
"– We only need enough to get him safely to Jim's."
"The farm? That's your plan?" Caleb spluttered.
"If you've got a better one, I'm all ears," John challenged back. There was silence for a moment. "That's what I thought," he said, when Caleb dropped his eyes. "He'll be safe there until we figure this out. In the meantime, you need to get with the program and stop spacing out on me. Or do I need a kiddy seat for you too?"
SPNBROAU
AN: Thank you for reading, there are 6 chapters in this story. Please do leave a comment, I'd love to hear what you think xx
Apologies if you don't get notifications, likewise, sorry if there is a delay in responding to any reviews, seems to not like sending emails anymore. I do try to remember to post on my Instagram (penpracticing) and twitter (X) (penpractice) when a new chapter is up and check the story regularly. Story is cross-posted on AO3 also.
Much love to all.