You find him sitting at the kitchen table in the bunker, elbows planted, brow furrowed, pages splayed out in front of him. It’s John’s journal. Not the monster entries. Not the coordinates or lore or kill-counts. These pages are different. Yellowed at the edges with little ink smudges where his dad’s hand must’ve hesitated. Every other paragraph starts with Mary. Dean doesn’t notice you at first, he’s too busy reading, lips moving just slightly with the words.

When he finally looks up, his ears go pink. You arch a brow. “You good, Winchester?”

He clears his throat, closing the journal slowly, like he got caught doing something embarrassing. “Yeah. Just, uh. Research.”

You glance at the table. “Research on… Mary Campbell?”

He shifts in his chair. “Okay, fine. It’s not that kind of research.” He looks away, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. “I was just… I don’t know. I was reading through Dad’s old entries and some of the stuff he did with Mom, before everything went to hell… it wasn’t all bad, you know?” You say nothing, giving him the space to work through it. “And I guess…” He finally meets your eyes. “I wanted to do something like that. For you. For us.”

You blink. “You want to take me on a… John-and-Mary-style date?”

“Okay, not exactly. I’m not trying to be my dad. I just-he really loved her. And I thought, maybe if I could recreate some of that… you’d know.”

“I already know,” you say quietly.

He smiles, soft and a little shy. “Yeah, well. Humor me.”

“Well let’s go then?” So now he drives you out past the city limits cassette player humming with something old and familiar. There’s a blanket in the trunk. A cooler full of diner sandwiches and your favorite pie. A cheap little battery-powered radio he rigged to work off his phone. When the sun starts going down, he pulls you in close and sways with you badly, off-rhythm, but with a grin that says he doesn’t care.

“This is what he did,” Dean murmurs, voice low against your hair. “He danced with her. Right out here in the open like an idiot.”