Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.
Dean's the tough guy. The guy in the leather jacket with a silver tongue that can charm any woman, and 'playing hard to get' is a phrase he doesn't know. With a wink and an award-winning smile, the bartender gives him a drink without any questions or any need for him to show her his fake ID.
There's swagger in his step and a fun-loving, lighthearted tone in his voice with just the right edge of a challenge lining his words when he walks up to the pool table and asks if anyone's up for a quick match. He tells them he's played before, but doesn't get the opportunity to play as often as he would like. He's a drifter, not the kind of person to stay in one place for long enough to become a regular.
They take him up on the offer, and ask him where he's been and where he's going, but both answers are too vague to decipher. Then, when they ask how Dean feels about making the game a little more interesting, he's all for it. He likes to gamble a bit, and he tells them he's feeling lucky tonight.
His opponent has an over-eager buddy. The kind that can't stop talking about half a dozen topics simultaneously, and each topic is discussed with the same amount of enthusiasm. He gets a round of drinks for all the guys standing around the table, and Dean counts himself lucky. A few victims to hustle and some free beer. There aren't many things that could make his night better. When Dad tells him to replenish their funds while he goes on a hunt, he can't say that he doesn't enjoy that order.
He also can't say that he fully wipes away the dejected face Sam wore when he walked out of the door without him, leaving him alone again because he's not allowed to go out and he has nowhere to go anyway.
It's for Sam that he does this, he tells himself. He's doing this so Sam can eat something nice. Or so Sam can get a new backpack to replace the tattered bag he uses as one. Or so Sam can get some new clothes since he's growing out of his current ones so quickly.
They might be excuses, but that doesn't mean there's no truth to them. That's all Dean needs to enjoy his break at the bar. He gets to enjoy being a little normal in a fun way. He almost feels like a frat boy from the movies he sees and the parties he crashes when they happen to stay in a college town.
He wins the pool game with ease, and by then the alcoholics he played against are drunk enough to believe his lie that it was due to beginner's luck.
A woman in a short dress with a low neckline slinks up to him. Her words are clear enough that she isn't too drunk, but Dean's pretty drunk himself at that point, not that alcohol has ever dissuaded him from doing as he pleases. Her cherry red lips outline her sweet words, and the rasp in her voice seals the deal.
She tastes of fruity drinks, the kind that Dean would never order for himself. Secondhand drinking them, well, he can handle that.
She tells him her roommate is on a business trip and her apartment can be theirs for the night, and he asks what kind of gentleman he would be if he doesn't give a pretty lady a ride home.
She spends the car ride as close to being in his lap as possible, and he's as drunk on her perfume as he is on whiskey and beer. How he manages to get them to her place in one piece is a miracle that he doesn't understand, but he's not about to question it.
He goes back to the motel early in the morning, before the Sun's had the chance to rise yet. The woman he was with was still asleep when he left. She seems like the type that expects her one night stand to be next to her in the morning, but Dean doesn't know her name and he has other responsibilities. Responsibilities that are more important to him than the chance to enjoy the comfort of a real bed with a woman and silky sheets in a place that doesn't smell like human waste.
He shuts the door silently and takes his shoes off as quietly as he can. He's sober enough to be considerate over how much noise he makes and to know that he'll have a hell of a hangover in the morning.
But he doesn't get himself ready for bed right away. He stops at Sam's bed and listens to his deep, steady breathing. He doesn't have swagger in his steps anymore. He doesn't have the untouchable aura, and he left his leather jacket on the back of a chair near the door. His award-winning smile is gone and replaced by something softer. Something sadder.
Sam looks peaceful, and that's more than Dean can ask for. Ever since the night Sam read their dad's journal and had the real world they live in revealed, he has frequent, violent nightmares. Even now, years later, the nightmares have a hold on him. Only they're worse since Sam's had firsthand experience with hunting.
Dean hopes that Sam remains this peaceful throughout the night, but he knows there's a fifty-fifty chance, at best, that it'll happen. It takes only seconds for his peace to dissolve into pain and horror, and the most Dean can do at that point is wake Sam up and offer to stay up with him if going back to sleep is no longer an option.
There's a group of men who saw him as a friend while he played pool and drank with them for a few hours. There's a bartender who never asked him his real age and served him anyway. There's a woman lying in her own bed who thought, for the night, that she was Dean's entire world.
But they were all wrong. The man that each of them knew is not the man that Dean really is. Right here, right now with Sam is the real Dean. He's not the tough guy or the lady killer. He's not winning pool games on the lie of beginner's luck or drinking enough to rival John, whom some might consider a functioning alcoholic.
He's the older brother. He's the mother and father. He's the guardian and the best friend.
He might fill many roles in his life, but there's only one role that he puts his heart and soul into. It's the real him who brushes Sam's long hair away from his closed eyes.
He sighs and gets himself ready to pass out on his own bed. He's at the right level of buzzed and the right level of consciousness that all the thoughts he keeps at the back of his mind flow into the front. Like the thought that Sam's growing up, and one day won't need Dean to fill all the roles he's taken upon himself. He won't want Dean's hovering or coddling, and he's starting to only tolerate it already.
One day, the person Dean really is won't be needed, and he's not sure that he'll be able to hide that pain behind the masks he's made for himself.
Author's Note: This is another tentatively complete story. I might add chapters for Sam and John, and maybe Mary, but I'm not sure.
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