#dean jr | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

zmediaoutlet · 1 year

Text

closing lines of a 4th-c. woman’s epitaph to her husband:

Now with all these things wrenched away I am a mourning spouse: happy, if the gods had left me a living husband; but happy nonetheless, because I am yours & was yours & after death, soon, I will be yours.

***

Parking lot was a disaster. Sam managed to get his truck into a spot -- didn't double park in the pick-up lane, unlike some people -- but he hopes whoever's in the Toyota next to him doesn't have a passenger, or if they do that the passenger's pretty thin. Like, model-thin. Now it's the hallways, milling adults looking lost, kids rolling their eyes and tugging on hands, lockers decorated with Welcome, Parents! in carefully printed bubble letters.

"Da-aad."

"Yeah, coming," Sam says, and Dean rolls his eyes, like every other kid. Sam tries not to let it bother him. Every kid goes through this phase. He did, at least. He doesn't have a lot of experience, otherwise.

Dean leads the way, confident, and polite at least to other parents when they have to squeeze past. How Sam knows he isn't fucking this up completely. He slips through a gap that only a fourth grader could manage, though, and Sam's left to dance politely around a rotund couple he doesn't recognize, scolding some older twin boys under their breath. The wife finally notices him and looks up and then up, blinking, and Sam takes the look he's used to. "God, sorry!" she says, sticking out an arm and shuffling her kids out of the way to make a space. "Like a cattle call in here, huh?"

"Moo," Sam says, which makes her laugh too hard, which makes her husband frown, but then he's past, where Dean's bouncing in his light-up sneakers, annoyed. Sam pushes his hand through Dean's hair before he can duck away. "What?"

"Moo?" Another eyeroll. Sam should maybe tell him the lie about getting stuck that way. "You are so weird. And we're gonna be late."

"When have we ever been late?"

Dean does actually grab Sam's hand, yanking. Sam lets himself be pulled, enjoying at least that his kid's deigning to hold Dad's hand after being far too old for it, at least as Sam's been told. "Last year? Mrs. McMorrow made us reschedule!"

"I think getting in a car accident was a decent excuse," Sam says, mild, and Dean groans and says, "Come on," stomping ahead down past the 5th grade classrooms to where Ms. Valdez is, see, just saying goodbye to the previous couple. Sarah Gold's parents, given that Sarah's waiting on the little blue plastic chair outside, reading a library book, making Dean halt in his tracks and making Sam almost run into the back of him. He's heard a lot about how Sarah's very, very annoying. Most annoying girl in school. Somehow she always gets an invitation to Dean's birthday parties, anyway.

Sam fits a hand around Dean's little shoulder. Small bones. Always makes him feel like a giant and also not big enough, like he needs to be planet-sized to protect this kid from all that could be. Still. A girl's not that scary. "See, on time," he says, easy, and Dean's blushing deeply when he shrugs.

Ms. Valdez is a good teacher, Sam thinks. She's in her late twenties, which Sam knows is plenty old enough but still makes her feel like a kid to him. If he does the math she really could be his kid. She's nice but not saccharine, complimentary but not a suck-up. Dean seems to be doing okay. He likes math and science, loves P.E., suffers through his music and art specials, does the reading but insists he doesn't like the 'girl books'. "I think he's overcompensating," Ms. Valdez says, and laughs lightly, and Sam's hit with this strange weird flush that makes him queasy, for a second. His throat closing.

She blinks at him. "Mr. Winchester?" Then, uncertain: "I didn't mean--"

"No," he says. An effort to smile but he does it anyway. "I think you're right. It's important to look tough in front of the right people, if you know what I mean."

She smiles back, relieved. She is young. "Maybe he'll grow out of it. Although, maybe not. Some boys never do."

"No," he says, "they don't."

She shows him the units they'll be going through for the rest of the term. Egyptian mythology, with art components and a small writing assignment and a research paper, just to get the kids used to what sources mean, writing in paragraphs instead of often-incomplete sentences. She leans close. Smells like jasmine. He realizes only when the twenty minutes of the conference are about up that she's been flirting, the whole time. Her smile small and her eyes softly dark, telling him that Dean's a good kid, and if it's not rude to say she thinks he's done very well, since the divorce, and he seems to be adjusting. She was sorry not to see Mrs. Winchester, this evening.

"She never actually took my name," Sam says, and Ms. Valdez -- Marisol, he remembers -- lets her mouth form a small moue, like -- he doesn't know. Some implication he should pick up, if he were looking to do so, but he isn't. She is pretty. Long dark hair she sweeps into a messy bun, full mouth, elegant hands with bitten nails. Apparently has a thing for older men. But--

He comes out into the hall where Dean's sitting on the little plastic chair the lovely Sarah has vacated, eating a cupcake. "Hey, where'd you get that?" Sam says. He has a sense of having dodged a bullet.

Dean shrugs. "Honors Society kids having a bake sale," he says, garbled.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Sam says, and Dean raises his eyebrows and chews like a cow, exaggerated. "Well, I want one. Lead the way, buddy."

They make their way out to what this school thinks is a playground. The 2030s have really just taken away all of the possible edges from being a kid. They sit on a bench under a tree and Sam bites into his cupcake while Dean mows through his second. Awful, storebought, chemical-tasting frosting. Cake. They don't have it very often.

It's a pretty night. Warm, for the time of year. The moon up, nearly full, past all the school lights, and Sam thinks that after this they'll go pick up a pizza, maybe, and they'll go back to the house, and he'll let Dean watch an episode of that new Star Trek cartoon -- or is it Wars? he can never remember -- and then he'll have to insist about bedtime and Dean will whine but he'll go because despite the eyerolling he is a good kid, confirmed, the best thing Sam's got in his life at this point, and from how things have gone the best thing he'll have, from the end of that place that was and where he'll never be again, until...

"Da-ad."

He blinks. Dean's sitting crosslegged on the bench, looking at him, eyebrows high. "What?"

"You were on Planet Dad again," Dean says. No eyeroll. "Did you run into any Cardassians? Or like, a big Andorian cruiser?"

"Yeah," Sam says. "Fought 'em off with my lightsaber."

"Da-ad, you know that's Star Wars," Dean says, genuinely offended, and Sam huffs, cups the side of his head. His face that's entirely his own, some mix of his parents that ended up not looking much like either of them somehow, but his expression, sometimes. Something around the eyes.

"I'll get it one day, buddy," Sam says.

"Sure," Dean says, doubtful, and slides off the bench, bouncing on his toes, ready for pizza. They get pizza and they watch the show -- Trek, who knew -- and Sam puts him to bed with the exact amount of whining he knew he'd get and turns out the light -- knows Dean will read comics by flashlight, with the flashlight that always has fresh batteries in his bedside table -- and he looks at the small lump in the blankets through the crack in the door for a solid minute, standing in the hallway of the house he never wanted. Then he goes downstairs and pours himself a drink, and goes out to the porch where the night's getting cold, and he sits on the deck chair that he really ought to repaint and looks up at the stars and he thinks, god. God.

Then he goes inside, and goes to bed, and there's the next day to get through, after that.

#my writing #spn #sam winchester #dean jr #--does he have a tag? whatever #just kinda something i've been noodlin' on

109 notes · View notes

torturedpoetemotions · 8 months

Text

A little fic where Dean Jr. grows up with his hunter mom after she divorces his dad. Inspired by this post by @shallowseeker.

Read on AO3

His mom and dad split when he was fourteen.

Well, that's when they made it official, anyway. The cracks were there long before his mom finally got fed up and left, tired of trying to get past his dad's wall of "everything's-normal" to reach the man she married. He first started to notice when he was eight or nine, old enough that the suddenly halted conversations and the sadness in his mother's eyes didn't quite make it over his head anymore.

By the time she gave up trying to salvage something real with his dad, he was old enough to pick who to live with, and though they never forced that choice on him, he made it anyway. His dad didn't even flinch when he told him he wanted to live with Mom. Like the walls he'd built up were too thick for the sharp edges of his son's abandonment to reach him. He wonders sometimes, if his father had been less stoic, would they have walked out the door after all?

They left on a sunny day in July, everything packed haphazardly into his mom's truck. His dad's hug goodbye felt perfunctory, like he'd already accepted that they were gone. Like he knew even then it would be a long time before they saw each other again, and didn't care.

Dean tried to hide his tears, but his mom reached over and squeezed his hand.

"It's okay to cry," she told him as she maneuvered out of the driveway. He wiped his eyes impatiently and signed, turning in the seat so she could see him easily in her periphery.

"I know. Don't want to." The sullenness of the statement must have translated even with one eye on the road, because she chuckled at him. That sound--her laugh, which he rarely got to hear anymore--made him smile for the first time all day. He wondered what life would be like, without the ghosts his father refused to confront hanging over them all the time.

---

For his fifteenth birthday, he got a name change. The divorce papers came through the month before, his dad's messy signature applied without even a token protest. His mom became Eileen Leahy again and he became Dean Leahy right along with her. That other last name, he didn't want it. Too many ghosts attached, dragging it down. Too many people he came across who did a double-take when he said it out loud.

Not his mom's close friends, of course. They spoke of the other Dean very little, and with a lingering sadness that made him feel sad too, missing someone he never even got to meet. He knew the story, of course. Told to him by his mom, not his dad. His dad buried Dean Winchester like he buried everything else: alone, and in perfect silence.

Nobody ever did a double take upon hearing the name Dean Leahy, though. Occasionally the mention of his first name without the anvil of his last did prompt stories, reminiscence from near strangers. Dean? They say, in that way that means dredging up an old memory.

I knew a hunter named Dean. Years ago now. He was a damn fine hunter, they say almost without exception.

He was a damn good man, they say less often, but the ones who do mean it. Raise their glasses in a toast to a man who's been dead longer than he's been alive. The man who gave him half his name.

His mom's friends and acquaintances were an odd, scarred, rowdy bunch. He called them all aunt and uncle, grandma and grandpa, cousin...based on age more than anything, because that's what you do when your family is bigger than your bloodline and the branches are all muddled by time and distance. There was Aunt Claire and Aunt Kaia, Grampa Garth and Nana Bess. Grandma Jody and Aunt Donna, who refused to be called Grandma by anyone. Aunt Patience and Aunt Alex, Uncle Max, and more and more and more. All these people who knew his mom, or knew of her, from before he was born, and welcomed her back with open arms everywhere they went. He didn't want for family growing up, or for stories.

He knew what his mom did could be dangerous, but it never kept him awake at night. He never had nightmares about fire or screaming. He never imagined himself dying in a pool of his own blood. Hunting was just his mom's job, the way other kids' parents might be firefighters or oil rig workers. He had a warm bed to sleep in and food in his belly and friends at school, and instructions on what to do in an emergency, how to check if someone who said she sent them was lying. Like most kids. He never saw her come home bruised or bloody. She never spent more than two nights away from home in a row, and he was never alone when she was gone. He didn't think to wonder until years later how she managed it, because it was just normal. His mom was a hunter, and he got to be a kid. Two things can be true at once.

Nobody ever asked him when he was going to start hunting, because no one expected that of him. They asked him how he did on his math test, or what his favorite subject was, or whether he played any sports. He did okay, and he liked history, and he hated sports. He didn't mind running through the woods with his cousins or working in Aunt Donna's garden, but throwing a ball around felt pointless and wasn't even fun. He liked to read, and sketch, and paint. His mom had a collection of his drawings in a big book on one of the living room shelves.

---

The day after his high school graduation he takes the rust-bucket van Grandma Jody gave him on his sixteenth birthday and heads out onto the road. He has a phone full of numbers to call in an emergency and no set destination. His mom, tiny to him now but still the strongest person he'll ever know, makes him lean down so she can kiss him on his forehead before he leaves. She reminds him to check in every few days, and he promises he will.

Once he's on the road he finds himself heading down US 29, drawn southward despite no map and no plans. He told himself he wouldn't, but he wants to see it. He wants to see the place where so many fantastical stories from his family's shrouded past played out.

It's a six-hour drive from Sioux Falls, South Dakota to Lebanon, Kansas. Nearly seven in his beat-up old van, its many repairs notwithstanding. The sun is low in the summer sky by the time he reaches his destination. Lower still, sinking below the horizon by the time he gathers his courage to get out and explore.

The key works, though the door seems reluctant to open. Stale air greets him, too long underground being cycled through the same pipes. The interior is dark and silent as he descends the stairs by feel alone, the ringing kind of silence that makes every breath and footfall seem louder than a shout.

When he finally finds the lights he has to squint against their sickly yellow-orange glow. He holds his breath. Nothing stirs as the darkness is chased away, so he lets himself relax, just a little, and look around.

There's a map table like something out of an old movie in the entryway. He only lingers for a moment before he's drawn to the warmer glow of the room beyond. It's a library, and the sight and smell of so many old books draws him in immediately. The polished wood of the tables, the golden light of the lamps...he could live in this room. It feels like something out of a dream.

And there on the center table, at the end nearest him, there are letters carved roughly into the wood. He steps closer, stares down at them. Lets his fingers trace the lines, darkened by time and dust.

DW. SW. MW. Castiel. Jack.

SW...his father. DW...the uncle he's named after. MW...he searches his memory until he recalls his grandmother's name was Mary. Castiel and Jack are names he's only heard in passing. Always spoken with sadness. Once or twice, whispered as if in prayer. But no one has told him their stories, these people so important that their names are carved next to his father's when his mother's isn't. He's never liked to pry into the old wounds of his family history with his mother, and it simply did no good with his father. But now he makes a mental note to ask about Jack and Castiel the next time they talk. He wants to know.

For now, he moves on.

Down one hallway he finds a kitchen, grimy with long years of disuse. Past that, long hallways lined with doors, most of which seem to open onto empty bedrooms or storage rooms.

One door won't open at all. It seems almost welded shut. All he can see through the tiny window is a dusty storage room and a giant devil's trap on the floor. Another door leads not to storage or a bedroom, but to some sort of den. There are comfortable-looking, if dusty, chairs. A small couch, only big enough for two if they sat close. A foosball table along the back wall. Shelves full of movies and music in formats he's only seen at his grandparents' houses. A large, if somewhat ancient, television that probably wouldn't turn on for love or money. Beer and movie posters on the brick walls, a rug on the floor, a table laden with ancient, unopened beer bottles. Someone's attempt to make a home out of this underground barracks. Dean lingers over the shelf of DVDs, old westerns and cheesy sci-fi movies from before his parents' time. He laughs to see that some of his favorites are here.

The bedrooms are less interesting, mostly empty of any personal effects and covered in a thick layer of dust. Only a couple seem to have been inhabited in the last hundred years, and then only sparse traces of their former inhabitants remain. Dean wonders which one of these rooms belonged to his father. He tries to imagine what he was like back then, the man his mother fell in love with. The kind of person who could lead people, who would fight for the world.

Finally he comes to a room that has real personality. Granted, whoever lived there must have been a barely-functional alcoholic, judging from the number of empties tossed haphazardly in and around the unlined metal trash can. The desk on one wall has a lamp like the ones in the library, a crumpled flannel tossed over the chair, and not much else. He opens the closet in the corner and sneezes at the unsettled dust. Nothing remarkable, just a lot of faded flannels and a green army jacket with a faded stain on one shoulder.

There's a shelf above the bed with an odd assortment of books, trinkets, and weapons. Books on angels and the afterlife, books on cosmic powers and primordial darkness. Possibly everything ever written by Kurt Vonnegut. A couple of books of poetry. Ginsburg, Bukowski. They spill over onto the night stand, along with a couple more empty bottles of booze.

He sits down at the desk, the chair creaking ominously under his weight. This room feels like the den. Like someone really tried to make this place their home. He opens the drawer, feeling like he's invading someone's privacy even though he knows no one has been here since before he was born.

There's surprisingly little there compared to the rest of the room: a lockbox with a busted lock, a few old leather-bound journals. He opens one and finds that it's some kind of log of supernatural creatures. He's heard of a few of the ones listed, listening to his mom and aunts talk shop over the years. Others, he's never heard of. But then again, hunters barely go after monsters anymore. There are so many ways for them to survive without killing anyone, it's rarely needed. And when it is, the monster communities typically take care of their own. Nobody wants the kind of attention a bunch of missing civilians tends to draw. Hunters are mostly called in for exorcisms and salt-n-burns, nowadays. Relocations for displaced packs and covens as the human world becomes ever more inhospitable to anyone different. The odd curse-breaking, if no witch is available to help. That kind of thing.

But he knows it wasn't always this way, and this book is from another time. When hunters and monsters were at each other's throats. He flips through the book with only idle interest. There are several different people's handwriting, and varying levels of artistic ability. Some of the earlier entries are in a script so full of flourishes it's difficult for him to read. The later ones are thankfully more plain, if a little messier.

A name catches his eye, and he turns back one page.

Castiel, it reads. Angel of the Lord.

One of the names on the table, and here it is in this book of supernatural beings. The handwriting is sharp but legible, but what takes up most of both pages is the illustration. It's of a man, or sort of a man, angular features and eyes that seem tired even rendered in ink. There's a dignity and ferocity to the figure, something clearly meant to inspire awe in the viewer. And not just because of the pair of massive, midnight-colored wings extending from his back.

Dean stares at the picture, trying to imagine his dad ever knowing someone this cool. It's impossible to picture.

The accompanying text is similarly striking, a description of a beloved friend and comrade-in-arms, rather than a hunted monster. He wonders who wrote this. Who this angel was so important to that he had to be immortalized in ink and wood.

When he moves on to the next leather volume, he finds his answer.

---

It's a diary.

More specifically, it's the diary of his long-departed uncle, Dean Winchester.

Dean traces his fingers over the letters of his own name, hands shaking a little. Does he want to know?

Of course he does.

He turns the page and starts to read.

And as he loses himself in the pages, hungry for all the details of this man whose name he carries, the ones his father denied him growing up, he becomes certain of two things exactly.

One, Dean Winchester was far bigger on the inside than any of the stories he'd ever heard could possibly tell.

Two, he was a man going slowly mad with grieving.

It's nothing on the surface. If anything, it's in what isn't said. As if even in this book he never expected anyone to read, Dean Winchester could not tell the truth about his wants and needs. But Dean reads them between the lines of his ragged handwriting.

He wanted to be safe. He wanted to be free. He wanted the angel Castiel to stay with him.

He never asked him to stay.

The journal may be one of many, for it starts, bizarrely, with Castiel coming back from the grave. "Cas is back," written in big bold letters, taking up the entire page. On the next page there's a brief explanation followed by an outpouring of guilt about his treatment of Jack--the other name on the table--and excitement about a hunt that somehow involved Wyatt Earp. The events and emotions are so mingled together he can't tell where one ends and another begins, as if the man writing was trying to record every detail as fast as he could think them, leaving nothing out.

Pages of that, sometimes daily, sometimes skipping weeks. But every entry mentions Castiel, or as the other Dean, Uncle Dean, calls him: Cas. Cas did this, Cas disagreed, Cas is pissed, Cas said something hiliarious, Cas hasn't checked in for a few days. The writer's mood shifts palpably when Cas isn't around, the language terse and the handwriting pointed and angry.

There are updates about Jack and Sam as well, and Dean reads those with interest, trying to reconcile the Sam described in the pages with the father he knows. It doesn't quite fit.

He sits for what must be hours but feels like no time at all, reading the thoughts of this man who loved people so much and could tell them so little. Toward the end there's a shift--a desperation creeping into the tone, a shakiness to the writing. Mentions of someone named Chuck and the end of the world. All through the lens of this other Dean and his love--frustration, anger, sometimes, but always love--for his family. And for Cas.

And then, on the very last page, it just...ends.

Two lines, the ink and paper warped and bled and water-stained. Two lines:

He's gone. He saved me. I didn't give him anything.

I should have said it back. I wanted to say it back.

---

He doesn't read the third journal for a long time. The ending to the second one haunted him enough on its own, the final written words of someone with deep regrets that could never be set right.

Dean puts the journals back where they were, leaves the tin lockbox unopened for the time being. He finishes exploring, and then he locks up the bunker and goes on the rest of his road trip. He sees new places, visits friends and family, learns a thing or two about the world. And eventually, he comes back.

The rooms are as silent and empty as when he last left them, albeit with a thicker layer of dust. But this time he comes bearing cleaning supplies and helping hands, and before long he and his cousins have all those old wood surfaces gleaming again.

"What d'you plan to do with this place, anyway?" They all want to know. He isn't sure yet. He just knows it's a waste, all these books molding and crumbling underground, all these well-warded rooms sitting empty when they could be put to use.

Their first use is a place for everyone to crash for the night after cleaning for six hours straight. Their second and third uses will come later, as the shadow of an idea takes firmer shape in Dean's mind over time. A crash pad for hunters and monsters down on their luck, or needing a place to hunker down for a rough moon or a human blood detox or whatever else. One day, a place where curse boxes could be stored in relative safety, and without the threat of thieves or unfortunate looky-loos stumbling their way into really bad luck.

Somewhere safe, where children with nightmares full of fire and screams can fall asleep without fear. Somewhere generations of hunters and supernaturals will learn to think of as a haven. A home. Somewhere for the ragged underground armies of good to gather, should a new threat ever arise.

And a place with its history carved in wood and ink. Thoughts spilled in late-night talks over cooling cups of coffee and hearts unburdened over warming tumblers of whiskey.

And countless names of friends and family carved into the table.

#supernatural #spn fic #15x20 compliant just this one time #dean jr #fanfiction #my writing

17 notes · View notes