It has to be either this or Sam who just never mentions Dean. Not once. He never even calls Dean Jr by his first name, always just ‘Junior,’ and he flinches when anyone else fails to do the same. It’s Junior’s mom who tells him that he’s named after an uncle—and she shows him the few pictures they have, the ones that aren’t stashed away in some hidden corner not even she knows about.
Whenever Junior asked about his uncle, his dad just gave him a strained smile and made some excuse to leave the room. The only time he ever answered a single question was one night when Junior was a teenager, sometime in late January when he came downstairs for a midnight snack and found his father slouched drunk at the dining room table, bottle of whiskey in hand.
“It’s his birthday today,” his father said, unprompted and without glancing up at him. “He’d be sixty-one. Old man.” He gave a joyless chuckle and took a swig from the bottle.
“…Dad?” Junior hesitated in place, unsure. He’d never once seen his father drink, had overheard once that they didn’t keep any alcohol because he ‘had a history’ with the stuff. “Um, who are you talking about?”
“Your mother wanted you to have siblings, you know,” his father said suddenly, again apropos of nothing. He snorted. “Could never tell her why I was so against it, but…well. I know most siblings don’t end up like us, and thank god for that, but…” He shakes his head, whiskey sloshing loudly in the bottle. “Well, better not to risk it, I thought. Plus, there was always the chance I’d, y’know—you live the worst-case scenario and you start to see it everywhere, get paranoid, suspect…bad things that are all in your head. Or you overcompensate and tear everything apart or end up a making yourself some kind of…a self-fulfilling prophecy…”
Junior stayed frozen in the doorway, his father’s drunken rambling having completely lost him. He was just about to slip back to his room, snack forgotten, when his father cleared his throat and finally turns to him, face serious and eyes searching when he asked, “But I—I wonder sometimes if I did the right—Junior, are you—are you…whole?”
Stupidly, Junior looked down at himself, like he might suddenly discover some gaping hole in his chest or missing limb, but the question just seemed so nonsensical…
But of course it’s nonsense. His father was drunk, it’s all nonsense. That’s what he’ll use to reassure himself for years to come, every time his idle mind turns over and over this bizarre interaction and comes to more and more disturbing conclusions (what exactly is ‘the worst-case scenario’ for siblings?), that his dad was so drunk that this is essentially word salad, able to be entirely dismissed. But he knows, deep down, that there’s some essential, awful truth at the center of his father’s rambling.
“Yeah, Dad, I’m…whole,” Junior assured his father after a minute, because his face had been creasing more and more with worry after each passing second.
“Yeah?” His father smiled at him, eyes sad but genuinely relieved. “Yeah. Good. Good.” His eyes unfocused slightly, sliding past Junior to stare at nothing. He finished in a whisper, “Good for you, Dean.”
