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Hunters aren’t afforded the luxury of dreams.
It’s something his dad once pounded into him more literally than any point should ever be driven into anyone let alone a twelve year old boy who simply did his school assignment.
“When I grow up I want a farm and a family to share it with and a dog who helps me do my chores.”
Hunters don’t get to dream , boy. We know what lurks in the shadows and it’s our job to fight the nightmare.You ain’t special, boy.
Boy. Hunter. Nightmare.
Dean remembers the cadence of each hit. The blows stung, but the realizations with each punctuation that his personal essay about wanting a farm was more out of reach than a hug from his late mother hurt more. He never brought up the farm or family or settling down again.
But an exhausted mind doesn’t play by John Winchester’s rules.
For the nearly thirty years that followed, Dean’s nights were littered with the nameless faces of those they didn’t save twisting with the demented smirks of the very nightmares John Winchester raised him to kill. But those nights he could handle, they bled into the days of monster after monster.
Rather, it was the unexpected reprieves from his hellish lifestyle that felt more akin to the night terrors he once read about. Flashes, glimpses, almost-memories of a life that was not meant for Dean Winchester.
Boy. Hunter. Nightmare.
Those are the nights he came to dread.
Wrought with familiar faces he couldn’t name, the rumble of a car pulling up to a house he’d call home if he could only recall the color of the siding, a door he finds himself knocking on despite the soft weight of its key in his pocket. A smile framed in laugh lines, bright eyes full of warmth, strong hands settling comfortably on the seat back of an old wooden dining set that commands a too-small room. If he didn’t know better he’d swear there was a story behind its awkward fit.
None of it was Dean’s—he wandered like a stranger in a life that felt like it belonged to him.
There were nights Dean would wake up in a cold sweat, panting and grasping for something not quite there. Nightmares are commonplace for hunters—his younger brother never once bothered to ask what Dean was reaching for. Dean isn’t sure he’d have the answer anyway.
Then there was Cas.
Without a doubt, Dean’s life became irrevocably split in two the day Castiel, Angel of the Lord, walked into that barn in Pontiac, Illinois. But even as he and Castiel stumbled their way through alliance and friendship and heartbreak and betrayal, Dean couldn’t help but feel like the angel had always been there.
The dreams multiplied. Their frequency and length growing with every passing day. A carrot dangling from a string. Taunting. It was all so close.
And there was Cas.
Dean would ache for them. When he’d wake from them he’d scramble to fall back asleep to fall back into where he was allowed to dream.
Because the dreaming mind doesn’t have to play by John Winchester’s rules.
It allows strong hands and warm pies and a home on a farm and a person to share it with and a twelve year old’s picture of a perfect life. Faces, names, details all blurry but all familiar in a way only someone’s personal hopes and dreams can be. Just out of reach.
Dean still has them. He thought they’d dissipated as his life started to even itself out but just as some nights recall his days hunting nightmares, this dream world makes an occasional appearance. But he no longer scrambles for ten more minutes, for one more chance to try and fail to commit any small detail to memory.
He doesn’t have to.
Baby sits in the gravel driveway of a house that has a soft, sage green siding. The front door is wooden and almost always open so there is little need for a key. The table is from an antique store where the strong hands found it and brought it home without so much of a thought to the size of the dining room. The laugh lines frame eyes as blue as the ocean and the smile often turns gummy before Dean can’t help but lean in for a kiss.