Chapter Text
His whole life, Dean’s first priority was Sammy. Not himself. No- Sammy had to eat first, he was growing. He had to be tucked in tight, even tighter, because Sam would complain otherwise. So Dean did.
And- when Dean rolled him up in the scratchy motel sheets and decreed he had made “The Worlds First Sam-ritto”- if it made Sam laugh, that was enough.
But then Sam got older. He didn’t need Dean so much. He could find his way to the motel from school on his own, and carried cash in his pocket, just in case.
Sam went to middle school. Dean flunked out, got his GED as secretly as possible, and kept hunting. Priority number two. Yellow-eyes.
That was life, for a while. The three of them, Dean silently encouraging Sam further into his freakily genuine affection for school, tailing after his bull-headed father, hanging off his every word.
It was comfortable. They hopped from town to town, re-enrolling Sam every months or so. Dean laughed his ass off when Sammy shaved for the first time, coming out of the bathroom looking like he lost a fight with a rugaru.
Dad nearly lost his head when he found Dean behind a bar necking with one Mark Tohler, a hunter who had beaten them to a case. He didn’t yell, which was worse than anything. He broke Mark’s nose though, and Dean learned his goddamn lesson.
Dad and Sam fought. Oh yeah- priority number three. Keep them from killing each other. Dean mediated as much as he could without setting off John’s fuse.
Suddenly, Sammy was a junior in highschool, and begged them to stay put in one place long enough for him to take the ACT.
When Dean was 22, John bought a truck. He gave Dean the Impala, clapped him on the shoulder, and told him that when Sam is older, they’d hunt in it, together.
It was fine. It was.
Until Sam graduated. Dean had found the acceptance letter from Stanford and drank himself hoarse before begging Sam not to leave.
Sam was practically one foot out the door when he and John got down to brass tacks and the screaming started.
The way John yelled- something in Dean wanted to roll over, bare his soft throat, do anything to stop it.
“Dad. Stop. Please. He’s made his decision.” Dean remembers choking it out, squeezing between them, his back pressed to Sammy.
“Oh.” John had breathed. “You with him on this?” He leveled a finger at his face.“You gonna let him leave? Pussy out, like you always have?”
“No, Dad-“ Dean says, hands up and placating.
John grabbed him by the shirt and flung him away. Before Sam could respond he was fenced up to the wall.
“Sammy.” John had said, voice low and flat. “You leave right now, don’t you dare ever come back. Y’hear me?”
It was an ultimatum if he’d ever made one. The room was brittle and tight, the tiny whir of the AC unit the only sound.
Sam pushed John off of him, picked up his duffle, and with three decisive strides, was out the door.
John put his hand through the tacky painting on the wall with a roar. Next, tipped over the nightstand before landing on the bed with his face buried in his bleeding hands.
Dean finally unfroze from near the desk, vaulting the toppled nightstand and sprinting out the door.
“Sammy!” He yelled, skirting out of the parking lot on foot. “Sam!”
Sam was walking briskly on the next road.
“Dean. You heard him. I’m leaving, you can’t stop me.”
“Sammy-“ Dean latches onto Sam’s jacket and stops him.
“You can too. Leave, Dean. This doesn’t have to be our lives anymore.”
“I- Sam. I can’t. You know that.”
They looked at each other. Sam’s face was bruised and sallow. He had stubble dusting his chin, a man in all rights. But when he blinked at Dean, with those huge sad eyes, all he could see was the little boy he had raised.
His Sammy. Freckled and odd and quiet. Smart, clever, bleeding heart Sammy. The kid who threw up on him when he picked up the flu, who named all of his G.I. joes.
He can’t cage that kid.
“I know.” Sam says.
Dean wipes his stubborn tears and pulls his idiot brother into a hug.
“No matter what. I love you.”
Dean doesn’t say that, ever. None of them do. Sam squeezes him tight.
“I love you too.”
And that was it. Sam walked away, towards whatever bus he could catch, and Dean cried. He cried and cried, and nobody had to know.
-
John gave him hell. Dean was sure he was concussed by how hard he had thrown him around that night. After he got his fill, he told Dean to get the hell out of dodge, because he couldn’t stand to look at his face.
He kept his cellphone on, and John would call him every so often. If he needed help, Dean would help.
For the first time in his life, Dean was alone. And Christ, he was 23 and free as a bird. It was time for him to have some fun.
Coke was fun. It was damn expensive, so he only did it at clubs if a hot piece offered it to him.
Weed was okay. It made Dean feel heavy and slow, which wasn’t really his prerogative.
Dean really caught his stride with pills though. Ecstasy, man. It felt hot and poured over his skin like silk, like his spine was electrified. It gave him the same floaty copper feeling in his head as when a big guy put his even bigger hand on his throat, and squeezed.
That was new, too.
With no John lurking behind every corner, Dean indulged. He didn’t even know half of the things he was into, until suddenly his body told him, more, now, please.
It was the soft rock of the Impala, steamed in an alleyway at night. It was fingers in his mouth and teeth in his neck.
He couldn’t do drugs every night, not when he still had to hunt, had to be able to hit a moving target at moments notice.
But he could let someone pull his hair, spit in his mouth. When he would get up in the morning, all he would have to work through was the shame.
He hunts a wendigo with his Dad for two weeks- it’s aggressive and the cave systems in Kentucky are miles wide, branching out, and he trudges through them mind-numbingly.
By the time they split, Dean is sore and exhausted and just. Needs.
The guy he stumbles into a bed with isn’t big, but he’s mean. Meaner than he’s used to. It hurts, but it’s so good, when he bruises Dean, and his stubble burns and scrapes.
It’s so good, that after, when the adrenaline drops, and he begins to shake and turns pale, it’s worth it. The guy burns rubber leaving, and Dean falls apart in the shower, heart fluttering like a weak bird.
On Deans 25th birthday, John shows up in his motel room. He sets down a six-pack with a clank, mumbles ‘Happy Birthday’ and sticks to him like glue for the next four months.
He’s no different than before. They work, avoid the topic of Sam, bicker, and drink.
It makes Dean antsy in a way he’s never been around Dad. He has to watch his step, again. But they function. Quite well, actually. He had forgotten how well they hunt together.
John asks him about girls, and Dean thinks about Cassie, and telling him about how he lingered for a month with her, how good it was.
Then he thinks about Peter, who let him sleep in his house, who didn’t ask questions, but knew exactly how to take him apart.
He’d rather take a bullet than tell his father something like that. So he just shrugs and doesn’t say anything at all.
Dean gets antsy, cooped up with his Dad, who obliterates every motel room he stays in, and the diesel fumes from his stupid lifted beater. After the second time Dean accidentally puts on John’s jeans instead of his own, he breaks.
They just capped a vampire whose shtick was posing as a marriage counselor, and John should be fast asleep. So Dean goes out. He’s sending his best sly grins to the bartender chick when she slides a scotch to him.
“You can stop tryin’ for me, hon. This one’s from that gentleman over there.” She gestures with her rag to the corner booth.
The guy is built, with mottled silver hair and a nice smile. Dean slides easily into his booth and the game is on.
It’s an hour later and Dean is loose and melty from the whiskey, and the guys hands are hot like brands up his shirt in the bar alley. It’s slow and easy, like how most older guys do, Deans noticed.
Deans pressed up and rolling into him, both hands in his hair when he hears a measured cough creep through the mouth of the alley. He breaks away and looks out in horror to see his Dad standing right there, watching his son get busy with a man twice his age.
John has his hand surreptitiously placed on the butt of his gun, tucked neatly into his waistband. “Dean.”
Dean peels himself away from the man as smoothly as possible, quietly hustles himself to the street and straight into the passenger seat of the truck.
John takes a concerning amount of time to join him, but Dean didn’t hear any gunfire, so at least there’s that.
Later, Dean sits in the rain outside the motel, thumbing his phone open and closed, hearing it snap. He thinks about calling Sam. Asking him for comfort. Telling him. Finally, finally, telling him.
He doesn’t.
He goes inside, collapses into the shitty box-spring and waits for sleep to come.
When he wakes up, Dad is gone with not a whisker of a trace to follow. It’s normal, until three months later it’s not. Until Dean worries that the bastard might be well and truly dead.
And then he’s standing in front of his sweet little Sammy for the first time in years, gargantuan now and sidled by a gorgeous slip of blonde.
He aches, wishing so badly that things could be different. But they can’t. So he shakes it off, breathes in, and says, “Dad’s on a hunting trip.”
The rest can wait.