Disclaimer: Not mine.
I was never under any illusions when it came to Dean Winchester.
Sometimes, when we were rushing to get ready in the morning, or listening to Ben tell us about his day at school around the dinner table, or when we were cheering on at a middle-school soccer game and Dean made a point of being just a little bit too enthusiastic to not be embarrassing, I liked to pretend that this was a life I could live forever. Just me and Dean and Ben, enjoying the small-town life, going to barbecues with the neighbours, worrying about things like there being head-lice at Ben's school, or how to survive the day since we were out of coffee this morning. Maybe even having another kid one day.
For the most part I tried, I really really tried, not to think like that, but everyone deserves their moments of weakness and indulgence. On the lazy weekend mornings when Dean woke me up with a kiss and a smile and looked at me with so much… emotion of some kind (I know it wasn't love, maybe longing? or hope?), it was especially difficult to stay grounded in reality. To force myself not to pretend that it was just temporary. But it was. Temporary, I mean.
It wasn't the way Dean drank too much those first months, or the way he had nightmares that woke us both up panting several times a week that convinced me it wasn't going to last. It wasn't even the way he never stopped insisting on pouring salt-lines in front of doors and windows, and drawing those pentagram things underneath the carpets, or his absolutely ridiculous paranoia when meeting new people.
It was the way his eyes would cloud over when he thought nobody was looking, filling with more pain than anybody deserves to bear. It was the way he put that old car of his into the garage permanently, after a few attempts at making it a shared interest with Ben. It was the way he sometimes turned around when he thought of something, like he was looking for someone to share it with and I wasn't enough. And most of all it was the circumstances under which he turned up on my doorstep. Dirty and exhausted and desperate and without his brother.
Of course I couldn't have turned him away just then, in that moment, but I didn't have to let him stay indefinitely the way I did. It was just… when it came to Dean I was willing to take whatever I could get and screw the consequences of a broken heart the day I woke up and was suddenly alone again.
Dean cared about me, and he cared about Ben, but I knew why he was there. I heard him talking to his dead brother one of those first drunken evenings, and I can't pretend like the knowledge that he was only there in my house to keep a promise he made to Sam didn't make me want to slap him and throw his clothes out on the street. But like I said, I took what was offered.
I came to hate Sam almost as much as I love Dean, I don't care if it's fair or not. If there was no Sam, Dean would have been mine. As it was, he wasn't, and would never be. I had only met Sam that one time when those… things were happening to the kids in town, and he had seemed like an alright guy. But the way I knew him later, through Dean and the way he pointedly did not talk about him - the only way I could think about Sam was as the person who caused Dean pain.
Dean was an absolute ninja when it came to deflecting questions, not just from me but from everybody else as well. I'm pretty sure, after nearly a year of living with us, that nobody outside our household even knew Dean had once had a brother, even though it was so painfully obvious that his whole existence still revolved around this one person who was dead. It was wrong and it was dysfunctional.
And that's why I knew it wouldn't last for long, and why I cherished every morning I got to wake up next to him and why, when I tried to get angry about his apathy and he offered to leave, I always asked him to stay. I know, I know, there isn't much logic in that.
I wasn't sure how I had expected everything to fall apart, but Sam Winchester returning from the dead certainly wasn't it. Dean didn't seem all that surprised though. There was something different about Sam. He had looked soft and kind the first time I met him, but all the warmth was gone from him now. I liked that. It made him fit much better with the image I had constructed of him in my mind, where he was basically the source of all evil that hurt the man I loved.
I'm sure Dean saw it too and chose not to care. As soon as I saw Sam I knew Dean was lost to me forever, and I had a reason to hate Sam just a little bit more. Later I overheard Ben say to Dean that by leaving us he was abandoning his family, and it struck me just how untrue those words were. Ben was just a kid and he had taken to Dean almost like a son to father but while Dean cared, there was never a choice for him to make. He had become our family but we had never become his.
And I wouldn't let myself hurt or cry or get angry. Because I had known from the very beginning. Even before, when Dean had come by the house before he went off and lost Sam, I had known that he was desperate and confused and I loved him for coming to me when he was and I loved him for caring. I loved him. But I was never under the illusion that I was anything but the consolation prize.
A/N: Thanks for reading. Please let me know what you think if you have a minute :)