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It was a Sunday when the phone rang. A Sunday where it was raining outside and the FBI phones had been ringing off the hook.
He was halfway through copying out of a lore book from a library two cities over when the Bobby phone rang, and he answered.
“Hey, Bobby.”
He knew something was wrong then, with just those two words. Deanna Winchester didn’t call him upset over nothing, he didn’t think he had seen the girl cry in at least a decade. The worst-case scenarios ran through his head. Sam , he could only hope nothing had happened to him. If it was John…he was more okay with that.
“Hey, Deanna. Everything okay?”
He heard a little shuddering breath over the line, a sniffle.
“I messed up, Bobby. I was going to tell them that I’d be giving him up, but I couldn't do it.”
Deanna let out a sob then, “I wasnt going to hold him, Bobby, but I did.”
“What’s going on?” He asked, even though he felt like he might know, even though his brain was counting backwards on the last time the Winchesters had been in town and if she’d been acting differently.
There was a faint memory there, giving her a beer that he couldn’t quite remember if she drank and that she was moody and snappy with Sam. That’d been what, five months ago? And she’d been in those baggy flannels…
He asked another question before she can answer the first one.
“Deanna, did you have a baby?”
“ Yeah.”
Right on cue, there was a little fussing sound over the line, and Bobby just sat in stunned silence as she soothed the kid. Her son.
“Where are you?” He asked when he remembered how to speak again.
“Columbus, “Where’s your Dad? And Sam? They there with you?”
She let the silence last a little too long on that.
“Sam’s at Stanford. Last I heard, Dad was in upstate New York working on a vamp nest.”
“Are you telling me John went to hunt vamps when his daughter was about to have a baby?”
“Bobby,” and she just sounded so tired, “He doesn’t know. I didn’t tell him.”
He felt the urge to go pack salt rounds in his shotgun and drive to New York just so he can hunt John. But that would have to wait till after he went to Columbus. How did the man miss this? How blind was he? It wasn’t like a pregnancy was that easy to hide.
“What’s the room number?” He said instead of a thousand other retorts on the tip of his tongue, and she gave it, “I’ll be there in a couple of hours.”
“Bobby-”
And he hung up before she could oppose him on it. He called Rufus then, more thankful than ever that the man broke his ankle on his last hunt and had to stay local for a little while. Despite the lack of information Bobby gave him, he could sense the urgency and told Bobby he’d be by shortly to man the phones for him.
Bobby packed a bag, nothing much, a day’s worth of clothes, and set out in the truck the moment Rufus got to the house.
Columbus wasn’t too far, thankfully, just a handful of hours, and he made good time. When he hit the city limits, that’s when he started thinking. Now, Bobby wasn’t the kind of man to make a big deal out of holidays. A good birthday to him was a cold beer and a quiet afternoon. Even when the Winchester kids were at the house on their birthdays, the most he did was a sheet cake from the grocery store and a book. Something practical but not a gun.
But this was different . So different that it had him thinking about getting a It’s a Boy balloon from the Dollar Tree he passed on the way to the hospital. He resisted, but only barely, and settled for going through a McDonalds drive-thru and getting Dean an apple pie to go with her burger.
He’d pick up something else later, once he’d seen her. Them. The both of them.
It still hurt his brain to think about it. Hurt his heart too, just as much if not more. The more he tried not to think about the fact she’d had her son alone, with only nurses and doctors and no one who knew her, who knew Deanna, the more he couldn't stop thinking about it. It didn't pass his notice that he’d be just as much in the dark as everyone else if she hadn’t called. That if she’d stayed with her original plan and given up her baby that she wouldn’t have called him and she’d be in a hospital bed alone, with no baby, hurting.
And he’d be at home, working the phones, none the wiser.
At the red light before the hospital, he let himself daydream about his shotgun. About running after John Winchester with it. He was itching for the chance.
The maternity ward was, thankfully, easy to find, and a nurse checked his name and ID against a list before she sent him down the hall to Deanna. He knocked on the door, waiting for her to call him in, and he stepped inside as soon as she did.
He’ll deny it with his dying breath that he teared up when he saw her. Would swear it on anyone’s grave if he has to. He didn’t almost cry.
Deanna was on the bed, in a flannel and sweatpants, blonde hair tucked back behind her ears, dark circles beneath her eyes, smiling.
“Hey, Bobby.” She said, and she sounded a thousand times better than she did over the phone.
He walked over and no his vision isn’t a little blurry at all of course not, and he saw the baby.
He almost felt bad that John wasn’t here because this…there was nothing else like this. Deanna’s son was asleep in her arms, a little fist flexing up next to his pudgy cheek. His tiny arms had rolls . Before Bobby could even say anything, he was sitting down on the bed and she was putting the kid in his arms, little bald head with chubby little cheeks settling perfectly into the crook of his flannel-covered elbow.
“He’s the most beautiful thing i’ve ever seen.” Deanna said, which was probably the sappiest thing he’d ever heard out of her but he couldn’t find it in himself to tease her. She’s right.
“He really is.”
Deanna showed him no reciprocal mercy, “Sap.”
Bobby rolled his eyes at her and she laughed before she tore into the bag of food he brought her.
“You brought me pie?”
“Obviously.”
“You’re the best.”
She ate, he watched the way the baby clenched and unclenched his hand in his sleep, and when she was done he spoke.
“Okay, so what’s the story, kid?”
Her hands twitch a little, anxious, and he gave the baby back to her before she could even ask. She cuddled the baby close to her chest, pressing a kiss to the side of his head.
“Couldn’t tell you who the dad is, probably met him at a bar in Missouri, which I’m sure is another thing Dad will be disappointed in me for. I thought it’d be best to just, hide it as long as I could. When Dad started going on more solo hunts after Sammy left, it made it easier. If he knew…”
She didn’t have to say more on that. Bobby knew enough about John Winchester to know that he wouldn’t have taken the news well.
“I just want him to be proud of me.”
Next time he saw John, he might just shoot him with a real bullet instead of salt. That might be even more enjoyable.
“Wait,” Bobby paused her story then, “What have you been doing all these months then?”
“Nothing dangerous,” She told him, which meant there was definitely some danger involved, “Just some salt and burns. It’s not like I could stop hunting.”
“You could have.”
He could press, he wasn’t going to, and then he remembered what a salt and burn involved, so he had to, “Please tell me you weren’t digging up graves with a baby on board.”
“I thought you hated being lied to, Bobby.” She paused again, “It’s not everyone else’s fault that I ended up like this. I couldn’t just stop and let people die because I’m pregnant.”
“What if something had happened?”
“I was careful,” Her lip was wobbling, then, and Bobby knew he needed to get out of this line of conversation because it was going nowhere good, “And he’s here and he’s healthy.”
Bobby sighed.
“Okay,” He said, and the tension in her shoulders eased then, “Does he have a name or do I just call him Baby and we play the ‘Car or Child’ guessing game?”
She snorted, “Not yet. I guess I was convinced he’d be a girl, I didn’t have a name picked out for a boy.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
She sniffled after a second, eyes shiny, “Bobby, what am I going to do? When I got here, I wasnt intending on leaving with him. I dont have anything for him. I’m not prepared. And Dad-”
“I’ll handle John. And I can go pick up a carseat and all the other crap he needs.”
Deanna smiled, a watery smile but it was real, “Thanks, Bobby.”
“Don’t mention it, kid.”
He got to his feet then and pressed a kiss to her forehead, running his thumb over Baby’s cheek.
“You’re a good mom.” He told her, “Doesn’t matter what your Daddy thinks. Doesnt matter what anyone thinks. You’ll figure the rest out.”
Bobby turned on his heel then, leaving the room. He pretended he wasnt sniffling when he got to the car and if he rubbed his eyes it was just cause they were itchy. If he went to the Dollar Store and got the It’s a Boy balloon he’d been thinking about earlier, it wasn’t because he was a sap.
(Except he was, and she happily called him on it.)
When they're cleared to leave the hospital the next day, he followed her in his car. When they get home, Rufus was sufficiently shocked and sworn to silence. Baby doesn’t necessarily have a nursery , he was young enough that he still slept in the bassinet next to Deanna’s bed and would for a while, but Bobby would argue the entire house was his nursery with how many toys and baby-related items were scattered around it.
Which was his fault, because he couldn’t stop buying things for the kid. He wasn’t a sap, though. Of course not.
(Except, he most definitely is.)
His name was Jude.
Jude Dean Winchester.
Bobby was watching him from his desk, Jude asleep in the downstairs bassinet (which Bobby called him spoiled for, as if it wasnt Bobby who bought it for him), while Deanna talked on the phone on the porch. The window was open so he could hear, and she knew he was there.
“Hey Sammy,” She said, “I’ve got something I need to tell you.”
The other phone call was more difficult, and she sat in the office for that one. She kept the speaker on and they listened to it ring. And ring. And ring.
“This is John Winchester, please leave a message after the beep. If it’s an emergency please call my daughter Deanna at-”
She sent a text instead. Call me.
When her phone rang during dinner that night, they both stared at it like it was a live bomb.
“It doesn’t matter what he says,” Bobby reminded her.
She nodded, took in a shaky breath, and answered.