#dean junior

his dad's a stubborn old man down to his very bones, though, so dj spends hours sorting books in the library, and moving boxes in the garage, labeling totes and rifling through file folders, and all the other myriad things his dad wants. they load up dj's honda and take several trips to the good will, a few to the scrapyard, two to the antique dealer and furniture restoration specialist dj sorta thinks his dad might've had a thing with back in the day, and one to the household hazardous waste collection center. dj's touched goddamn near every single thing in his father's house. everything but the big old footlocker tucked away at the back of the closet.

"it's nothing you'd want," his dad says with that wry smile, the one he always wears when he's got a secret tucked in his cheek like a piece of hard candy. "and it's personal, deej. no passports or birth certs or deeds hiding in there. just... mementos. a couple lifetimes' worth of junk that somehow manged to make the trip every time I moved."

and... it is mostly junk, when dj cracks the padlock off, still wearing his sober black funeral suit (thank god his dear departed dad kept four pairs of bolt cutters in the garage and one in the trunk of his car).

an old flannel shirt, soft and worn thin in the elbows, the red faded pinkish from a million trips though the washer. a ring of keys that don't open any doors in the house. a pair of kansas license plates that expired back in '06, an unimaginably ancient year. a bunch of old school ID cards for dad and his brother, dozens of them shuffled together in an old tin box the used to hold electrical splicing tape. (dj has the laugh at the mullet his dad was rocking in the early '90s, the long over-gelled daytime tv heart-throb bangs his older brother — dean senior, dean the first— sported back then.)

receipt papers with unfamiliar designs scribbled on the backs and old brochures and brittle, yellowed newspaper clippings leaving acid stains on the folder they're tucked inside. a library copy of the collected works of vonnegut, absconded from a high school in battle creek, michigan. old leather bracelets, the knotted kind you're supposed to leave on until they rot off, wrapped around a black jelly bracelet. beer bottle caps, flattened into misshapen coins. an old winchester repeating arms belt buckle, cowboy logo dark with tarnish and age, attached to a belt whose cheap pleather strap flakes off on dj's fingers. a dark green hoodie with "HURON HIGH SCHOOL MATHLETES" on the front and "S. WINCHESTER" across the shoulders in cracked white vinyl letters. a navy blue bandana with a crusted brown stain gluing the folds together. (it smells like iron when dj tries to peel it apart.)

a box of four- and five-leaf clovers, each one carefully pressed and dried, easily a hundred of them, piled neatly in an old peanut brittle can. a pocket knife with DEAN carved into the casing in crooked, spikey letters. a red plastic whistle on a lanyard, like a lifeguard might use. a keyring with a silver bullet dangling from it. an index card labeled "LAWRENCE HOUSE" in sharpie, folded in half and taped at the edges into a makeshift envelope, filled with grass clippings that scatter all over dj's lap and the closet floor when he finally rips it open.

polaroid pictures, faded blues and oversaturated pinks distorting the faces of people dj only knows by sight. his grandparents. uncle bobby, who "wasn't really our uncle, but if you'd've told him that, he'd've kicked your ass." dean. there are others — better pictures, from cameras and phones; the dark-haired man whose commitment to being photographed repeatedly in a trench coat stems either from a strong personal sartorial philosophy or a complete lack of sense, fashionable or otherwise; the redheaded women, one tall and one tiny; the boy with the sunshine grin — but there are so many photos of dean. dean, and his dad, and dean-and-his-dad frozen in time throughout the years, moving and sitting and standing as a unit, without a sliver of space separating them.

dj had asked his dad over and over as a kid, how come he didn't have a brother or a sister, and his dad always got that little half-grin that it took dj almost two decades to realize wasn't a smile for him, but for the man he reminded his father of whenever he used that tone.

Dj remembered the day he came home from school buzzing with excitement about this new friend he had made— Jessie, but he called her Jess. His Dad had frozen on the spot. Not like he did when he brought up his namesake, but more akin to the time Dj asked about his grandmother. His eyes grew distant and he swallowed dryly.

“That’s nice, son. What else did you do today?” He had managed, but it was strained. Dj could take the hint, and never brought her up again. She moved the next year, anyway.

He had always remembered that name, though. The way his Dad reacted. He had odd reactions to a lot of names, but that one felt different somehow.

That article about Jessica Moore, and every other one he had found, they all mentioned two names. Tyson Brady, the friend who found her, and Sam Winchester, her boyfriend and roommate. Sam, who was nowhere to be found in the wake of her death. Sam, who everyone said had been acting weird and disappeared right before the fire. Sam, who was arrested and even went to prison once with his brother for unexplained, heinous acts. Sam who was a wanted man, at least when he wasn’t known as a dead one, for years.

Dj found the arrest records, and the countless theories that sprouted alongside them. Dj had seen very few pictures of his father when he was young, so he told himself that was why he couldn’t tear his eyes off his mugshot. He looked so young. Concerned and annoyed, but mostly, achingly, young. So far from the man Dj called his Dad.

Every theory and crime he read only carried the man in the mugshot further from the father he grew up with. The freak Bonnie and Clyde. Religious serial killers. Evil nutjobs. Wanted for impersonation, auto theft, grave desecration, murder, arson, faking death, on and on and on.

Dj thought about the life he and his Dad had led. Somewhat isolated maybe, definitely cautious, but they were Sam and Dean Winchester, in one home and one community, known and loved despite our oddities. That wasn’t the life of a wanted serial killer. Right?

The long since healed but once grave wounds covering his Dad’s body screamed at him. They begged to tell a story locked more securely than the black box in their attic. They yearned to be understood.

Dj looked at the mugshot always accompanying his father’s. The first, the original, Dean Winchester. Without a care in the world, smoulder fused into place.

He knew. He understood what Dj never will.