Love and Duty

Author's note:  Welcome to a wildly AU,  post-apocalyptic wild west romantic romp through a world where most of humanity has been rendered barren.  Stern, overbearing patriarch John Winchester purchases a virgin husband for his only son, intent on Dean producing fertile heirs to assure a stable succession for generations to come.  Only one problem: Dean Winchester does not want an arranged marriage, but John's not taking no for an answer.  Maybe two problems: Sam Harvelle definitely does not want to be bred... But nobody bothered to ask the young slave's opinion, either.  Plot inspired by a very imaginative reviewer!  A little romance, a little adventure, a little heartwarming family drama...A sweet little (non-explicit) side of John/Ellen, a heapin' helping of sweet but smutty Sam/Dean...Oh, and in case you missed the warning signs, Mpreg ahoy!  

---

    The various delegations to this conference were so large, the Winchesters had set up a tent to accommodate the meeting.  The canvas monstrosity was at least thirty feet wide and a good fifty feet long, with sides that were rolled up to allow the rare, cooling breeze to drift through.  Fortunately the canvas roof provided shade, making the interior temperature more or less bearable.  

Dean Winchester had supervised the tent set-up himself, along with the procurement of chairs from all over the estate... And then the building of crude wooden benches when it became clear that even if they plundered every broken-down chair from every last field hand’s hut there wouldn’t be enough.  His father, John, had drawn up the seating chart, placing the Territorial Governors and various other government representatives at the head of the table next to Dean and John himself, seating the lower-ranking officials progressively farther down the long trestles, until they got to the lowly clerks, who’d count themselves lucky to have one of the rough-hewn benches.  Dean had attended plenty of meetings where the scribes and clerks had had to stand behind their superiors as they added up their columns of figures and scribbled their notes.   

Now, as two days of negotiations finally dragged to a close, he congratulated himself on the foresight of snagging himself  a chair with cushions.  Dean found the political aspect of maintaining the sprawling Winchester estate incredibly dull.  Treaties and trade agreements were easy enough to hash out in general.  It was the endless-seeming negotiations over every minor detail that bored him to where he could cheerfully knock over the trestle tables and scatter all the papers and pens and inkwells onto the hard-packed dirt floor.  

Not that he did any such thing.  He didn’t even fidget, well-aware of the eyes on him, of his father sitting next to him.  This wasn’t the first conference Dean had attended, nor even the first at which John Winchester had authorized him to speak in the Winchester family’s name, but it was by far the largest and most important.  The bonds forged over the past two days would help assure that their people continued to enjoy peace and prosperity for a long while to come.  Dean forced himself to listen attentively to the interminable minutiae.  

That didn’t stop him from perking right up when the movement of a shadow on the canvas wall behind the Governor of Kansas Territory’s head indicated an arrival… Maybe Ellen and her kitchen helpers with fresh trays of drinks and  refreshments?  But no.   Dean frowned when Bobby Singer, his father’s trusted foreman, ducked into the tent, clutching his disreputable hat in his hands and leaning down to whisper something in John’s ear.  Bobby wouldn’t interrupt the proceedings for anything less than a true emergency.  

“Dean.  Bobby needs your assistance,”  John said, his usual gruff bark toned down in deference to the delegate from Western Missouri who was still passionately debating water rights with the Governor of the Kansas Territory.  

Dean nodded curtly and left the tent with the older man.  “Son of a bitch, Bobby,”  he growled when the foreman led him to a reeking patch of ground behind the men’s bathhouse, thankfully well downwind of the tent where the delegates were meeting.  “You couldn’t pull a couple of hands off another job to help you deal with this?”  His nose wrinkled at the foul-smelling puddles spreading over the grass,  ankle-deep even though it hadn’t rained in days.  

Bobby shrugged.  “Sure, but you promised me you’d take care of it last week.  You, Dean Winchester, not a couple of the hands,”  he said blandly.  

“You and Dad worked this out beforehand, didn’t you?  Just to teach me a lesson,”  Dean said, comprehension dawning.  His cheeks flushed red, but not with anger.  Bobby was right.  He’d made this job his responsibility, and in the excitement of planning for the big meeting he’d forgotten, gone back on his word.  Quickly, Dean retreated to dry ground, stripping off his boots and socks and the fine, button-up shirt he’d worn for the meeting, rolling his pants legs up so they wouldn’t drag in the muck.  Resigned, he waded into the morass with the shovel a grinning Bobby handed him and started digging for the buried lid of the septic tank.  

“All right,  go on and get the pump and hitch up the honey wagon and let’s get this done,”  he said, referring to the rolling fertilizer tank.  Nothing was wasted on the estate.  Even the human waste pumped out of the septic tank would be composted and then spread on the fields as fertilizer.     

“You know, Bobby, you did me a favor,”  Dean chuckled as they finished the unpleasant chore an hour later.  He was drenched in sweat and reeking of shit, but in high spirits, having atoned for his mistake.  “Those blowhards back in the tent shovel shit ten times higher and deeper than this.  You may have just saved me from dying of boredom.”  

“Sure you didn’t miss anything, ducking out early?”

“Nah,”  Dean scoffed.  “It was winding down.  Would have been all over except the delegate from Kansas City’s in love with the sound of his own voice.”  

“So nothing slipped by you?”

“No, Bobby, I told you.  I didn’t miss anything important.”  

The foreman turned away, hiding a wry grin.   Later that evening, Dean was going to  find out how very wrong he was.  John Winchester had ordered Bobby to get his son out of that tent, not just to teach him a lesson in responsibility, but to get him out of earshot of one last, very delicate negotiation.  One that would set the carefree young bachelor’s life on a brand-new course.