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There was once a time when Dean Winchester wanted a family. He had craved a wife, 2.5 kids, a dog and a yard with a white-picket fence. He wanted to get a job as a mechanic and maybe go back to school. He wanted to come home every night to supper on the table and his kids to tackle his legs and giggle in his arms. He wanted to read them to sleep, then climb into his own bed to a woman who would kiss him and whisper that she loved him.
But the Winchester curse had always bit him in the ass with teeth like knives. He went to hell. Came back. Sam went to hell. Came back. Then Dean went to Purgatory. Came back. Cain gave him another curse to pile on all the others. He got rid of it.
To do that Dean had to rip apart some of his soul and was in a coma for about a year. He has some pretty impressive scars on his torso and was little softer in the middle, but it wasn’t that bad. It could have been worse.
And even after going through all of this, that possibility for Dean was gone. He couldn’t have a family. He was thirty-eight years old, and dating freaking sucked. It was exhausting, and every once and a while the chick turned out to be a demon or a hooker.
Or both.
Adoption was no longer an option, being a fugitive and all, and he refused to steal a kid. Dean had to draw a line somewhere. And besides, women and children require love and energy, something he seemed to be lacking lately.
Hunting was placed on the back burner, with hell and heaven doing whatever the fuck they do respectively, and monsters seemingly went extinct. The Winchester brothers had way too much time on their hands.
Sam decided to learn another language, Cas had taken it upon himself to read every book in the entire bunker, and Dean took to buying baby shoes.
It was embarrassing and sad as fuck.
He was shopping in their local Wal-Mart during the summer when he came across them in a bargain bin. The things were blue with snow-flakes on them. They reminded him of Sam and that shifter kid he took care of for a couple days. And Ben. Fucking Ben.
No matter what Lisa said, that kid was his. And he tried his damned hardest to be a father, but he wasn’t a father. He was a killer, barely a man. One who couldn’t even protect his own flesh and blood. That kid was the best damned thing that had ever happened to him and he fucked it up. Ben was curious, sure, but he was still innocent. One of the only pure things Dean was ever allowed near, and now the kid didn’t even remember him.
And then there was Emma. His blood, but not his family. She was a monster with his DNA, only further proving to himself that he was poison, and he created poison.
Dean had been standing in the aisle for far too long, and people were pushing at him. So, without really thinking about it, he grabbed the shoes and threw them in his cart. It wasn’t until he was at the checkout that he noticed them. The cashier smiled and asked him if he was going to a baby-shower. He lied through his teeth and said yes, clenching his hands. He wanted to chuck them in the trash a little less than he wanted to just fucking hold them.
When he got back to the bunker, he stuffed them in his pocket before Sam could see, unpacked the groceries, and headed for his room. He sat on his bed in silence and just stared at them for a while.
After 20 consecutive minutes, his lip curled and he threw the shoes across the room. They hit the wall and bounced away. Dean was angry, furious, even.
Why did the world have to fuck him up so much? Why wasn’t he allowed to have a family that didn’t fucking die all the time? One that wasn’t cursed, one that didn’t hate him at least a little bit for all the shit he put them through?
He wanted kids, Goddammit. He wanted cubby little babies to hold and to have drool all over him. He wanted kids with freckles, dark hair and blue eyes. He wanted to teach them how engines worked, how to throw a baseball and shoot a bb gun. He wanted to yell at them when they snuck out of the house or failed a test. He wanted to show off his gun collection on prom night and cry when they went off to college. He wanted it so fucking bad it hurt. He’d been to hell and back, but this was a pain that hurt more than anything.
Dean wiped angrily at his eyes and stormed out of his room. He ripped off his flannel and his watch as he stormed down to the bunker’s gym. He didn’t bother with gloves, just started pounding on the punching bag. His knuckles ached and his wrists groaned in pain, but Dean kept going, needing the familiar hurt.
That’s how Cas found him, crying and bleeding on the floor next to the weights.
“Dean, you’re crying.”
“Fucking thanks, Cas, I didn’t notice,” Dean snapped, running his bloody knuckles across his face, doing more harm than good.
“I can offer you comfort. A hug or a beer, perhaps?” He suggested, kneeling closer to the taller man. Castiel had never seen Dean cry before, had never seen him so pathetic either. Even when he was begging for his life, bloody and almost unrecognizable in that dank crypt, he carried a sense of pride and composure. Now the hunter was a blubbering mess of tears, blood and great pain. Castiel felt… discomfort at the state of his friend. Human emotions were so complicated.
“No, I just want all of this shit to stop. Why couldn’t I be normal, Cas? Have a family that wasn’t so fucked up and broken?”
“You know why, Dean Winchester. It was your destiny. You were meant to sell your soul for your brother, meant to go to hell and become the Righteous Man, just as I was meant to raise you from perdition,” Castiel explained, gently settling himself beside the hunter, their sides touching. “Although, after that things did get a little ‘fucked up’ as you say.”
Dean chuckled through his tears. “Amen to that.”
The two men (Castiel assumed he could be called a man now that he was human) sat in silence. Eventually Dean’s breathing evened out and the sobs stopped wracking his body. When he finally calmed down, he felt embarrassed. Why the hell did he let Cas see him so weak? He was supposed to be a rock for fuck’s sake. He needed to be strong for the fallen angel. He was just learning how to be human, and seeing such a god damned poor example of one was probably messing him up.
He wanted to say something, apologize, maybe, but his words were caught in his throat. He focused on Cas’ breathing and took comfort in the warmth coming from the other man’s body in waves.
“I don’t mean to pry, but why were you crying, Dean? You knew already that your familial lineage was ‘fucked up and broken’. Why today, what caused this?” Castiel asked. As an angel, curiosity was always his fault, and now being human, this sentiment has only gotten worse. He’s seen the elder Winchester beat men to a pulp for asking lighter questions first-hand, and the former angel feared for his squishy body for a moment. Dean looked angry, angry enough to make a close friend bleed, but his face relaxed and his shoulders slumped. He looked defeated, a sight rarely seen on such a strong man’s face.
“I just… I found some baby shoes at the store today, and it brought out a lot of bad things.” Castiel listened closely and felt his chest constrict. Dean cleared his throat and continued. “It made me thing about families and how I’ll never have one like that, how I’ll never be able to hold my kid in my arms and call them mine. I thought of how the Winchester name dies with me and Sammy, and maybe that’s for the best. It’s not healthy for babies to be raised up with blood-soaked hands.”
Castiel opened and closed his mouth, looking for the rights words to say. But what do you say to a man that dreams of things that could never be? To give encouragement would be cruel, one of the cruelest things he’d ever do, but to voice the truth would hurt this man, even though the man was Dean Winchester.
So Castiel stayed silent and held his friend through his pain.