"Boys don't cry," his father says gruffly to the 10 year old child with skinned knees and a nosebleed from killing his very first ghost. He reeks of sweat and he's terrified, but he listens. He sniffles all the way on the car ride home, wipes his nose on his sleeve, and holds back the tears from spilling because boys don't cry.
"Guys don't cry," his father snaps at the 16 year old who can't help the tears escaping his eyes as his father stitches up the stab wound in his shoulder from his very first demon exorcism. He grits his teeth in the backseat of the Impala and asks instead for a shot of whiskey in a hoarse voice and he keeps himself from crying because guys don't cry.
"Men don't cry," his father throws over his shoulder without looking at the hunched 21 year old whose arm is in a sling from his first ghoul. It throbs with pain because they don't have time to stop for medication, but maybe he's more hurt from Cassie breaking up with him than the physical ache. It doesn't matter. He clears his throat and straightens his back, refusing to get emotional because men don't cry.
.:.
After his father is gone, Sam is the only one left. When he cannot halt the spill of tears, he turns away in shame, Sam's embrace is there, comforting and accepting. But he still tries to stop because he isn't supposed to cry. He has been taught that Winchesters don't cry.
.:.
He doesn't cry when Castiel sobs in his arms. He doesn't cry when the disgraced angel talks about his mistakes and his mortal brothers and sisters wandering the dangers of the planet, at the mercy of thousands of monsters and humans alike. He doesn't cry when Cas disappears from him for a week and returns bruised and bleeding and silent, and he feels like he will either destroy the earth or destroy himself because he can't stand the thought of those blue eyes enduring physical pain, not after everything they've already been through.
And he screams and slams his hand against the wall and lets Castiel punch his jaw (and Christ, it feels like his face has been ripped apart but that only makes him push Cas against the wall and kiss him as hard as he can and swear with every inch of his whole being that he'll never leave again, swear it). And when the angel swears every word gently and deliberately, he takes his clothes off, ripping fabric, tearing out buttons, leaving crumpled heaps on the floor. They fuck on the mattress, on the floor, on the couches.
Dean can only imagine what his father would have said to the idea of his son in love with a man, but his cock doesn't care nearly enough to stop. And this is, more than a man, an angel. He doesn't think angels have defined sex and gender, at least not enough to differentiate when picked vessels.
Afterward, spent and exhausted, lying on the bed with silken sheets draped over their bodies, he murmurs secrets and confessions and wishes.
But he doesn't cry.
.:.
Charley stops picking up the phone. He worries about her and asks Sam to find where she is.
Sam's face is wet with tears when he brings the laptop to Dean, Charley's smile filling up the bright screen.
He reads her obituary, young and gone too soon, self-made billionaire, unable to stop the spread of disease, loving wife and mother.
They forgot to mention she had two brothers, he thinks to himself.
.:.
On a hunt gone wrong, a manic demon hot wires the Impala and drives it across town. When Dean finds it again, his childhood, his memories, his first loves and hatreds and first everything's, his home, it is crashed against a building, burned to a crisp. Even the chassis is bent out of shape, nothing remaining but ash and soot and the smell of burning paint.
Dean picks out a car from Bobby's old garage, any car, any keys he can get his hands on. He never speaks of it again.
.:.
Sam dies a martyr, his body serene and calm for once. Dean buries him in Kansas beside their mother in a grave he dug all night, shoving at Cas when he got too close. This is something he needs to do alone.
Filthy and soaked through with sweat, he mumbles under his breath.
Sammy my baby brother I loved you I love you
please no don't do it, I told you not to do it, I knew you would die, you knew you would die
come back, once more just once more, I don't care who does it demon angel god reaper lucifer crowley meg please just
come back
please
With the pale light of the sun coming up, Cas slips his hand into his and every muscle in Dean's body tightens and the very fiber of his being calls out in anguish. But he swallows the guilt and the anger and the grief and shovels dirt over the unmarked grave.
Sam doesn't come back.
He doesn't cry.
.:.
He doesn't cry.
.:.
He leaves the bunker of the Men of Words and fails to return that night.
And the next day.
When he comes back on the third day, dark circles around his eyelids, unshaven and stinking of booze, he grabs Castiel and says, "Why are you still here? Everybody dies around me. Why don't you leave? Find someone else."
His words slur and run together, unfocused bleary gaze; monster monster lonely monster.
And Castiel answers honestly, "I don't know."
Dean turns away. "You're a fucking idiot. Leave. Go back to Heaven. Even you don't know why you stay with someone like me. I'm miserable and I'm broken."
Castiel's voice cracks when he says, "I said I don't know why I'm here. But it doesn't mean I won't stay."
When he kisses him, he tastes like sadness and loss
(abandoned starved locked)
like there is nothing left.
He loses himself completely in his smooth skin and the gentle feel of his lips and dark strands of his hair. Castiel's touch is warm and Dean melts under it every time- the ice in his soul softens, the ice in his mind dissolves, and the ice in his eyes melts. It trickles down from his eyelids, over his cheekbones, dripping down, salty and bitter. Shuddering breath, trembling weary shoulders, shaking chest. The boy inside him cries for fear, the teenager inside him cries for pain, the man inside him cries for heartbreak. He cries for his mother and father, for Bobby and the Harvelles, for Cassie and Lisa and Ben, for Adam, for all that he lost and all that he never had, for Sam Sam Sam.
.:.
He cries.
.:.
Castiel says nothing. Nothing needs to be said.
He nudges Dean and takes everything he is, fragile and hurting, and wraps his arms around them, fingers overlapping. He lets every bit of him break and build within those confines. He quietly watches Dean become every depraved being he has ever killed, every shard of glass he has smashed, every shallow grave he dug. Dean clutches onto the only thing he has left and finally does not stop to think whether he should or should not. He simply does.
There is nothing beautiful about it, nothing poetic or just. There are only raw sounds escaping his throat, animalistic howling. It is everything he never wanted to be, reduced to this- or perhaps, finally capable of being this.
Castiel does not tell him, "Don't cry."
Castiel holds him and whispers, "It will be okay. I love you."