Sorry, but I don't buy Dean being all Dad of the Year, happy-house-husband. I think he's been very unhappy in his new life, and he's staying for reasons other than love. He knows where he really belongs. Please review? (Spoilers for S6 E1 and 2)
"For anyone who is alone without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful."
-Albert Camus
Dean ran his tongue across his back molar, still getting used to the smooth new edges. It had cracked during some brawl in the months before Sam fell, and he hadn't even noticed it until Lisa mentioned that he should get it fixed. A visit to the dentist and a bad nitrous trip later, the tooth was smooth and pearly and perfect for crunching up the bits of hippie health food that Lisa kept bringing home.
She had called from the gym, apologizing all over herself for running late and could he please feed Ben and get him started on his homework and Goddamn did Dean feel it, responsibility like a snare trap tightening around him. No Lucky Charm dinners here. This time he was a man, not a boy raising a younger one. Now it was different. The weight was heavier now.
Pinching the bridge of his nose against an oncoming headache, he pulled a heavy cast iron skillet out of the cabinet, wincing as it clattered against the other pots and pans. He tipped a block of ground turkey out of its plastic wrapping into the pan and clicked the stove on. The burner ticked one, two, three, four, gas hissing, then ignited with a tiny whoomph of blue flame. He pushed away the urge to hover his palm above the seating heat.
As the meat began to sizzle he scraped at it with a spatula so it wouldn't stick to the pan. Not enough fat, he thought ruefully, wishing for the arterial red of beef rather than the chalky pink turkey. Fat and cholesterol and sodium, Oh My, he thought waspishly, turning to the fridge. He foraged for a beer but was only able to come up with a bottle of the Lite piss-water that Lisa insisted would keep him trimmer. With a grimace he guzzled it down, missing the firewater burn and quick buzz of rotgut whiskey. Missing a lot of things.
He slopped jarred sloppy joe mix over the sizzling turkey, restlessness spreading across his brain like a rash. He could hear Ben's music blaring upstairs, the backbeat thumping like a boot against a heavy door. With every bump of the bass Dean's blood pressure rose, until it was all he could do to stop himself stamping up the stairs, John-Winchester-Hulk-Smash style, and tearing that goddamn stereo out of the wall.
But he'd been there, done that. He'd lost his temper with the kid too many times, reacted the only way he knew, the way he'd been raised. Just the other week Ben had been busily hovering up peas through the gap where he'd lost a tooth, slurping and giggling to himself, and kicking his feet against the leg of the table. Dean tried to contain his annoyance, tried to just eat his own meal in silence, but the knot inside him grew quickly to frustration borne of the new hair-trigger temper he seemed to have acquired. When one two many peas flew out of Ben's mouth and rolled to the floor, Dean couldn't stop himself and brought a heavy, white-knuckled fist slamming down on the table. Ben looked at him like a kicked puppy and pushed back from the table, wide-eyed and white-faced, and he fled up the stairs hollering that old standby, "You're not my dad!" And as Lisa followed Ben upstairs, calling out to her son, Dean sat silently finishing his dinner, his mind kept repeating, I'm not my dad.
So now Dean sucked a breath in through his nose and tried to ignore the music, turning and staring blankly at the little TV on the counter, where Christian Cage was being pummeled by some steroid-bloated wrestler, only to come back and win the pinfall after a vicious beating. The triumph of the underdog. Dean turned away and stared down at the meat and sauce burbling in the pan, and he stirred it absently. His thumb was throbbing from where he'd inattentively bashed it with a hammer, and he concentrated on the ache until it filled his chest and settled in the pit of his stomach, the pain centering him and focusing his mind.
Truth? He was bored. Sure, he had Lisa, a real woman, a woman with an IQ higher than her bra size. He had a job, and a house, and a built-in-kid. Wasn't that what he'd always wanted? Wasn't it enough?
No. It wasn't.
He never felt so alive as when he picked up that gun and went toward the unknown. Adrenaline was like a drug in his blood, like that cool assurance of gunmetal in the small of his back. There was a time that he couldn't piss without catching a warrant. He'd been a heartbreaker, a lifetaker. Now he was goddamn Ward Cleaver? I don't buy it.
But what could he do? He was responsible for them now, and he wasn't going to walk out on that, wasn't going to disappear on them. I'm not my dad.