Love and Duty

“Dean!”  John Winchester bellowed over the din, “Get your ass over here!”

The elder Winchester was grinning, deep dimples creasing his gray-streaked beard, but it was never a good idea to keep John waiting.   Dean hustled through the crowd to his father’s side.  The delegations would head back east tomorrow morning, and they were throwing a party to celebrate the success of the negotiations.  Reaching the bench his father was seated on, Dean plopped down beside him, chuckling appreciatively as he joined the older man in surveying the throng of party-goers.  

Unlike the stuffy dinner party they’d hosted in the main house the evening the delegations had arrived, this event was open to everyone on the estate, from the lowliest field hand to the Governor himself, all mingled together.  The makeshift band belting out energetic if slightly off-key dance music consisted of a group of clerks with violins, a few clarinets and flutes, and even a small portable keyboard of some sort.  The staid little grouping was livened by the addition of some of the Winchester estate’s own musicians, including Caleb on banjo and  a couple of field hands playing harmonicas, blending in surprisingly well.   The woman in charge of the laundry was thumping out a tuneful counter-melody on a washtub bass, and a very drunk Rufus Turner interjected trills on a silver trumpet between knocking back gulps of Bobby Singer’s homebrewed liquor from a mason jar.  

If any of the delegates were upset to have common laborers sharing their dance floor, they were wisely keeping their opinions to themselves.  Dean saw their cook, Ellen Harvelle, dancing with a captain of the Governor’s guard, while her daughter spun by in the arms of the red-faced, sweating Governor himself.  

“Somebody better cut in before Jo gives the old man a heart attack,”  Dean joked, nudging his father playfully in the ribs as the mismatched couple spun back in the opposite direction, Jo’s booted feet stomping out the beat perilously close to the Governor’s patent leather-shod toes.  

“Never mind Jo.  Somethin’ I want to show you.”  John threw an arm around Dean’s shoulders, fumbling a small, pasteboard rectangle out of a coat pocket.  

It was a photograph, Dean saw when John pressed it into his hand.  He peered at the little black-and-white image, bemused.  A man, or more accurately, a teenaged boy looked back at him from the pasteboard frame, wearing a stuffy-looking suit jacket, tie, and starched white shirt.  His face was angular, with dark eyes and a smile that, like the collar of his shirt, looked gleaming white but uncomfortably stiff.   The shade of gray of the boy’s hair indicated it would be a medium brown in person, and it curled over his collar where he’d tucked it behind his ears, long enough to brush his clean-shaven jaw if allowed to hang loose.  Dean didn’t really take in the details, looking swiftly back at his father, who was beaming.

“You’re drunk,”  Dean chuckled.  “Who’s the kid?”

“‘Course I’m drunk.  I’m celebrating your engagement.”  

“My what, now?”  Not entirely sober himself, Dean felt a cold knot settle in his stomach.  

If anything, John Winchester’s grin broadened at his only son’s dismay.  “Your engagement.  Brokered the deal this afternoon, after you left with Bobby.”   He jabbed a finger at the photograph still dangling from Dean’s fingers.  “There he is, your blushing bride!”  

“You brokered a deal to get me a husband?  Without even consulting me about it?”  Anger quickly replaced confusion.  “Let me guess, he’s a child-bearing male—”

“Wouldn’t make much sense to hitch you up with another man if he wasn’t a breeder,”  John drawled.  He dropped his arm from Dean’s shoulder, turning squarely toward Dean to  face his son’s objections.   “And he’s pretty, and a virgin.  I’d say you’ve got no reason to complain.”   

“Oh, no, not at all,”  Dean said, sarcastic.  “No reason, except I don’t want to be married yet.  And even if I did, I don’t want to be married to a total stranger.  Dad, what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I want grandsons.”  John was glaring now, his eyes hard.  “I built up this estate, fought for it, made it into a safe, decent place to live.  Look at these people, Dean.”  John swept his hand in a broad, expansive gesture, taking in the crowd.  “No one goes hungry here, not one, because I make damned sure of it.  I take care of them, and when I’m gone, it’ll fall to you to take care of them.  Our land, Dean!  Our people!”

“And I will, Dad!”  

“Shut up,”  John barked, “I wasn’t finished!  Who’ll take care of them when you’re dead and gone, Dean?  It’s your responsibility to father sons, fertile sons to carry on the family line.”    

“And I will, sir.  I know my duty, and I promise you, I’ll do it.  I will.  But I’m barely twenty, Dad.  There’s time.   Look at you, you and Mom didn’t have me until you were, what?  Amost thirty?”

“That was back when there were still a few women left who weren’t barren, Dean, back when we had no idea how bad the crisis would get.   I want grandsons, and I want them yesterday,”  John growled.  “You’re getting married.  End of discussion!”  

Dean’s face was white.  “Yes, sir.”  He rose and strode swiftly away from the noise and merriment, furious, but helpless to defy the patriarch’s orders.  The photograph fell from his hand and fluttered  to the ground, forgotten.