Author's Note:

A character study that got completely out of hand. Stanford era Dean is so horribly lonely it hurts to think about, so I spent 20k words thinking about it, like sane people do. I blame me finally getting around to watching the finale. Please enjoy this completely self indulgent fic where a young Dean gets away from John's influence sooner than he did in canon, dabbles in self-care, and misses his brother a lot.

Content Notes: Dean is a product of the times the fic is set in. Depiction is not endorsement, and I'm not going to add any disclaimers to his POV about why whatever he's thinking is problematic by modern fandom standards. I'm aiming for character fidelity, not morally correct and healthy takes. He's also going to have some very unfair and unkind thoughts about Sam, even though I love Sam.

This is a deep-dive into Dean's mental health issues and while I try to keep the tone light, this fic will touch on darker topics like his suicidal ideation. I've refrained from dumping additional angst on him, so there will be no exploration of popular fanon additions to John Winchester's abuse. John will not be homophobic, physically abusive, or excessively cruel. This isn't because I'm opposed to those headcanons but because they tend to take center stage in confrontations to the detriment of the more subtle forms of dysfunction that canon depicts. I want to explore the damage Dean's upbringing did to him even if, as canon repeatedly asserts, John was genuinely trying his best.


The road was beckoning and Dean had nowhere to go. Baby was the last thing he had left in this world and so he was driving for the sake of hearing her engine purr, the dull roar of her tires a soothing addition to Led Zeppelin's greatest hits, but he really didn't have a destination in mind. No new case had caught his attention so far, and Dad wasn't here to guide his path.

It'd be too pathetic to drive to Palo Alto again so soon, and California was way too far away, anyway. It'd be nearly a day on the road for only a glimpse of Sammy.

Like the well-trained hunter that he was, Sam inevitably sensed when he was being watched. That bitch could play pretend all he wanted, but none of the other kids he was surrounded by ever tensed up like he did and started suspiciously surveying the area. How's being normal working out for you, little brother?

Dean always had to hightail it out of there well before Sam's hunter senses started tingling which led to never getting to see Sam as much as he really wanted to. He had to keep it to quick inspections. Stupid haircut? Check. Looking healthy? This better be a check . Surrounded by friends? More often than not, check .

The best visits were when "Is Sammy smiling?" got checked off the list.

The number of visits this year was threatening to climb into the double digits and it was only March. Already? Dean was losing it. He was a man dying in a desert crawling back to an oasis that could only provide the smallest of sips. Dean knew it was not enough, he was only postponing the inevitable.

The end was nigh, he could sense it.

He wasn't even sure what he was postponing it for. There was no reward in sight for staying on this particular ride. Driving, driving, driving, and then an endless string of shitty motels and blood and guts and monsters and stalking his little brother when he found the time. This was just gonna be the rest of his life now, repetitive and boring and nothing to look forward to, except Sammy.

The Grand Canyon, Dean decided. He wanted to see the Grand Canyon.

Baby handled herself like a dream when he reversed course, finally with a destination in mind. Dean smiled, pictured driving over the edge of the canyon, and the mental image filled him with a strange glee. Maybe that'd be better than ending up as monster chow. Real cinematic.

Hm. Although.

Dean didn't usually fantasize about driving Baby off a cliff. Flinging himself off, yes, just wondering what it'd be like to feel the rush of the air, that'd been happening for years. But not Baby. He frowned and patted the dashboard. "You know I wouldn't do that to you."

The Impala didn't answer but Led Zeppelin did, launching into the next song on the tape. Dean, intimately familiar with every track in his collection, laughed at the lyrics he knew were coming.

Communication breakdown

It's always the same

I'm having a nervous breakdown

Drive me insane

"Maybe," Dean said, still chuckling, though this wasn't really all that funny considering he was alone, talking to his car, and trying to divine meaning from communing with ancient mixtapes. "Maybe this is a sign I should go to a shrink."

A shrink, huh, a voice in Dean's head commented, dripping with contempt. It sounded a lot like John Winchester. Dean could easily picture the disapproving look on his dad's face.

Dean had never been to a shrink. Therapy just ain't for folks like him, that was for people with white picket fences and more money than sense. But therapy was supposed to make you feel better, and Dean could really use some of that. You were supposed to go to a shrink when shit got real bad, or so he heard, and Dean–

Well, shit was getting bad. Had gotten bad. For a while now, really. Started when Sammy left for college. Worst day of his life. Got worse when Bobby chased Dad off with a shotgun because he no longer had a reason to tolerate Dad's shitty temper.

Yeah, his dad had a shitty fucking temper, alright, Dean could admit this, at least in the privacy of his own thoughts. And now, he could even do it out loud. Could have done this all along, really. Wasn't like his thoughts and opinions had ever mattered to anybody even back when there'd been someone around to hear them.

That was the thing Sammy had never understood as he'd endlessly tried to lecture Dean on all the ways Dad was flawed, like Dean didn't understand that man better than anyone else in the world did.

Sam was always preaching to the choir and getting angry that Dean didn't act like Bible study 101 was some profound revelation. He wasn't some heathen who needed to be converted into believing that yeah, John Winchester was not a very good dad. Hallelujah, what daring insight. Please tell me more, Sammy, I hadn't realized.

Did Sam ever even notice just how much he was insulting Dean's intelligence when he got up on his high horse? Yeah, sure, Dean wasn't exactly the smartest guy around. In their little family of three, Sam was the undisputed number one champion when it came to IQ and Dean was the one who took the bronze.

But that didn't mean he was completely stupid.

John Winchester had a shitty temper and was an absent father. So what? He was still a hero who saved countless people's lives and Dean admired the man despite his flaws. Sam was a selfish whiny bitch and Dean still had to compulsively check up on his safety and wellbeing. Everyone in Dean's life sucked in some way, none more so than Dean himself.

Even Bobby, who was the sanest man Dean knew, had pulled that move with the fucking shotgun.

Bobby was a crotchety old guy whose favorite word for Dean was idjit . Unlike when Dad and Sam heaved that quiet sigh that meant there goes Dean, being an idiot again , when that word came from Bobby, it never made him feel small and stupid. From Bobby it seemed almost fond, like it was their private in-joke that meant the opposite. Come on, Dean, you're a smart guy. You're better than whatever foolishness you're up to.

Hard to feel smart with a guy like Sam around for comparison, but Bobby somehow managed it - and he did it without ever putting down Sam. His little brother was an important part of the calculus by which Dean decided whom to trust. If someone couldn't see that Sam was amazing, even if he was a pain in the ass sometimes, then that someone clearly had bad taste.

So what Dean also really appreciated about Bobby was that the guy adored Sammy. Those two nerdy peas in a pod spent a lot of hours together in Bobby's library. Dean would leave them to their geeking out and go outside to tinker with the cars in the junkyard outside. Sometimes Bobby came out to join him and they talked about nothing and everything.

So yeah, it was nice at Bobby's, not just because of Bobby himself, but because he had a gift for bringing out the best in Sam.

From the moment puberty had transformed his sweet baby brother into a moody teenager, Sam had always been bitching about something . Constant, constant screaming matches with Dad, all day, every day the man was around. Fucking exhausting. And then Sam had the audacity to complain that Dad liked to make himself scarce to avoid that, like Sam was the one suffering from Dad's absence.

But it was never Sam who picked up the slack when Dad was gone. No, that was Dean. Dean was the one who had to hustle for money and think about what to feed the two of them and look over Sam's homework as if Sam hadn't already surpassed Dean's smarts at age thirteen.

By contrast, weeks spent at Bobby's were a blissful daze, peaceful and content and just… really nice. Bobby took care of everything, Dean could unwind and Sam was on his best behavior, all smiles. Hey Dean, so get this , he'd say with one of Bobby's books in his lap and a gleam in his eyes, reminding Dean why he put up with all his little brother's shit.

So after Sammy had run off to college and Dean was not coping so well, Dad had decided the two of them should go to Bobby's to cheer Dean up. Historically, that pretty reliably worked, and John's method of taking Dean to bars, getting drunk, and patting him on the back a lot wasn't really doing anything to make either of them feel better about Sam.

Props to Dad for doing that, honestly. Dad barely tolerated Bobby and only ever swung around to drop Sam and Dean off because he knew it was good for them. They'd been butting heads for years now but Bobby kept a tight grip on the reins of his temper while Dad looked deep within to dredge up the last of his manners to be downright civil. Everyone was on their best behavior since nobody wanted to be the one to upset the cart.

Granted, Dad also had this whole oh no, I'm being replaced by another father figure complex about it, so he never let them stay too long. It had taken Dean years to wrap his mind around that one, but apparently grandpa Winchester had skipped out on Dad without a second glance and now Dad made it a point of pride to never fully leave the raising of his sons to someone else.

So for Dad to set his ego aside and admit Bobby might provide better support to Dean was no small thing. They'd gone to Bobby's about two weeks after that first semester at Stanford had begun.

But Bobby's warm welcome had turned into narrowed eyes and a harsh, "Where's Sam, John?" as soon as they'd walked through the door.

Please don't, Dean remembered thinking, not now, don't do this now, Bobby, come on, when Dad had laid out the cliff notes version of that whole ugly affair and Bobby had started yelling at him. Insults were thrown, years of pent-up anger at Dad finally exploding out of Bobby, and before Dean could even process what was happening, Bobby was cocking a shotgun.

"Don't you ever darken my doorstep again, John Winchester," he had said.

Dad, fury written on his face and lips pinched tight, had nodded and turned on his heels without a word.

And Dean had followed his dad outside, not looking back even when he'd heard Bobby call his name. "Yeah, I got it, message received," Dean had hollered over his shoulder because, yeah, he had indeed gotten the message.

Bobby had held his temper and tolerated John Winchester's bullshit for years and years. But that had been for Sam's sake. Or maybe the both of them together. Point was, Dean by himself wasn't worth the same effort. The second Sam was gone, "the satisfaction of telling John Winchester off" rose above "check how the boys are doing first and act accordingly."

Because Bobby had looked Dean right in the eyes and seen the desperation to please not fight right now, and he'd cocked that shotgun anyway.

And hell, Dean couldn't even blame the man. Yeah, Dad wasn't that pleasant to be around most of the time and Bobby had a right to be mad at him, and he really had fucked up with Sammy.

But.

That day, on that particular day when Dad had been smarting as much over Sam leaving as Dean was, he had actually been trying to do right by his son and put Dean first. Bobby had done the opposite. And so Dean couldn't abandon Dad, even though he hadn't even been ordered to follow. Dean could have stayed at Bobby's and let himself be comforted, except he couldn't. Not while his father was out there alone, drowning himself in booze, probably thinking something along the lines of that kid always did love Bobby more than me.

Dean usually went where he was most needed and he really didn't understand why his family insisted on constantly making him choose like this. Dean swallowed a lot of shit to keep the peace, why couldn't they? For a while, it had been Sam's favorite game to wind up Dad somehow and then look at Dean with an expectant expression on his face, as if to say, well? Aren't you going to protect me, big brother?

Except Dean had seen right through Sam. He could tell just fine which arguments were the real ones and which ones were just Sam stirring the pot to see which way the tiebreaker went. For the latter, he sided with Dad out of sheer spite because he'd been sick of this and he didn't understand why Sam was doing this to him.

He'd only realized the purpose of that particular game the night Sam left.

Dean has been so unspeakably angry that Sam had resorted to testing Dean's loyalties like that. Hadn't he done enough for that stupid kid? How many days had he spent with hunger gnawing on his insides so Sam could have enough to eat? He'd fucking left Sonny just to keep this brat safe and this was his thanks?

So Dean had exploded and said some things he didn't mean, then Dad had exploded even worse, and yeah, now Sammy was at Stanford and not returning his calls.

Dean hadn't spoken to Bobby since that shotgun incident either, and didn't really know where he stood with the man now and whether that shotgun had maybe been aimed at him as well.

He shook that melodramatic thought out of his head as soon as it crossed his mind. Bobby would never bust out the shotgun for Dean. But he still might slam the door in Dean's face now if he dared show up there by himself because being the most sane of a bad lot was not actually the same as Bobby being a saint who'd put up with anything, as the shotgun proved. Bobby was an alcoholic whose temper could run hot, and there was a chance he'd taken Dean's choice of John over him there rather personally.

Dean was pretty sure the last thin threads holding his sanity together would snap if Bobby of all people ever slammed the door in his face. So. Better not risk it and relegate Bobby to the memory of better times.

So that was two down and one to go, one last person Dean thought he could count on, and that was Dad. And really, the funny thing was, Dean didn't know why he hadn't seen this coming. When had Dad ever not fucked him over?

It was like Sam and the Stanford thing all over again. Dean had seen the warning signs - the brochures, the applications, the way a restlessness had taken hold of Sam and how he'd snarled at the very idea of the family business - but that night Sam had left them for good had still felt like a punch to the gut he hadn't seen coming.

His mistake was obvious only in hindsight.

But Jesus H. Christ, Dean really hadn't seen that secret second family coming, and a river in Egypt hadn't even been involved this time.

Yeah, he'd abstractly known that Dad hadn't lived like a monk after mom's death, and these things sometimes happened. It wasn't Dad's fault he'd fathered another kid with a one-night-stand and only found out when the kid was twelve, a few months after Sammy left. Okay. That he could live with.

But Dean had only found out about Adam on the kid's 14th birthday.

Two years – two years! – of watching Dean pine for his little brother and it had never crossed Dad's mind to mention that there was another one out there. And Dad would have continued sneaking around behind Dean's back, taking Adam out for baseball games and birthday parties and playing the loving Dad that Dean never, ever got to have…

Worst part was that Dean had found out by complete accident. This could have gone on for years, Adam never knowing he had brothers until he was grown, if he ever found out at all. Dad wanted him to never find out.

See, Dean was the dirty little secret who wasn't allowed to get his grubby hunter hands on the Milligans' white picket fence because there was too much blood on them. But the real kick to the nuts was this: Sam might have been told at some point, depending on whether this whole "being normal" thing worked out for him.

Dad apparently had a letter written out, to be sent on Sammy's successful graduation, but only if they managed to kill that thing that killed mom. Dean wasn't quite sure what Dad's revenge had to do with any of this, but alright, the man just brought that up sometimes out of nowhere because it was all he really cared about.

Anyway, the ultimate plan was to have Sam and Adam skipping off into the sunset together, finally some normal family for Sam to connect with, like some demented apology courtesy of John Winchester's regrets. Sorry I ruined your childhood, Sam, here's a new brother who's actually compatible with your chosen lifestyle. I tried really hard not to ruin this one, and I did it all for you. Love, Dad.

Dean would have been off hunting monsters, living and dying in ignorant bliss because knowing about any part of this insane plan would hurt like a motherfucker.

Which it did.

Dad had tried telling him some more but Dean hadn't really been able to hear his explanation over the ringing in his ears and the hot fury rising up like a tidal wave. Adam got to have a normal dad and Sam got to have Adam and Dean got the pleasure of John fucking Winchester and his insane mind games for the rest of his life.

I chose you, he'd thought, dazed. I chose you over Bobby and this is what you give me.

Well. Dean had dug deep into that pit of anger inside of him and tried to find the most hurtful, vicious words he could think of, the ones he knew would impale John fucking Winchester on a blade and hopefully twist it a little, too.

"Sam was right about you," Dean had said, and he'd walked away and Dad had not followed.

Thing was, Dean didn't actually believe Sam was right. Sam had selfishly abandoned them all to chase a dream and no matter all his many, many, many flaws, their Dad had done the best he could with what little he had and he'd saved countless lives doing it. At the end of the day, John Winchester's problem was that Mom's death had broken his brain, and you couldn't really blame a rabid dog for biting.

Sam meanwhile was out for number one, so smart and ambitious and making the conscious choice to not give a shit about the people around him when he definitely had the capacity to know better. Yet this self-righteous bitch really thought he had the right to judge Dad just because Mom's death had knocked a screw loose.

Well, not one. It was admittedly a lot of screws.

See, here was John Winchester, planning some grand apology to Sam instead of picking up the phone and just saying the words Sam actually wanted to hear. Like Sam wouldn't resent Adam for having the normal childhood he'd craved so badly but never got to have.

But hey, at least the right impulse was there, no matter how twisted it came out.

Dad's doing his best, Sam. Dean had told this to his little brother over and over again, and Sam had never heard what he was trying to say. Stop defending him! Sam had yelled, but that wasn't a defense, it was a bleak truth you had to accept when John Winchester was your father. Dad is a raging lunatic not capable of making rational decisions but he truly has people's best interests at heart. What's your excuse for hurting people, Sammy?

Because the way Dean saw it, you could be bitter and angry at the world and scream at the unfairness of it all, like Sam did, or you could shut up, learn to live with the world being a cruel place and do your best to make it a little better wherever you went. That was the saving people part of the family business, but Sam did like to fixate on the hunting things instead. Because then he could act all aggrieved that life was so unfair to him, didn't see why he should have to fight monsters when other people didn't. And some guy got eaten while Sam was busy feeling sorry for himself.

To Dean, it was about being able to sleep at night, and he didn't know how Sam did it.

Now Dean himself was no saint, either. He was a dick, he knew that, and hunting was the only way he knew how to do good in the world. And he wanted to do good.

Well, now that he thought about it, he actually did know how Sam did it. Sam just had the potential for other ways of doing good that Dean lacked, so who could blame the kid for choosing to do something that involved less monster guts. Lawyers could do a lot of good in the world, too. That way Sammy would live past thirty, at least.

Once, Dean had viewed their little family unit as a superhero team. Saving the day and killing monsters, and dysfunction was the price you had to pay for being a hero. Their family was a little cracked, a little tarnished, but ultimately good.

Then the cracks kept spreading and deepening, no matter how hard Dean tried to keep up with nothing but sheer willpower and a roll of duct tape.

Well, point was, Dean was a solo hunter now and he'd long since stopped being able to sleep at night, which was how he knew this was all gonna end badly for him soon. And no matter how upsetting all this was for Dean on a personal level, he knew Dad had made the right call when it came to Adam.

That kid was only fourteen years old and surprisingly well-adjusted for a Winchester. Smart, top grades, no behavioral issues, not a star athlete but decent enough. 100% Kate Milligan's work. Dad had picked a classy lady for his romp in the sheets, and wasn't that a mental image Dean never wanted to have again.

So yeah, Adam didn't know shit about how cruel the world really was and might still stand a chance to spend his life sleeping soundly, so Dad had decided to put in the bare minimum of showing up for birthdays and whatnot while Adam's mom did the actual child-rearing that Dad wasn't able to provide, as Dean knew from bitter experience. There was no place for Dean in that arrangement, he'd just be the troubled big brother. It'd be a catastrophe if Adam went and did something stupid like latch onto him as a role model.

"He'd take Sammy's place, son," Dad had said gruffly, and they both were smart enough to know why that wouldn't be a good thing.

Say what you will about John Winchester, but that man knew where Dean's buttons were. After all, he was the one who put them there, and he liked to slam them as needed. But Dean also had buttons that John couldn't touch. They were labeled Sammy . With Sam gone, Adam could play him like a fiddle just by vaguely looking in his direction, looking young and innocent. Dean's dumb broken brain would cry baby brother at the sight and then he'd ruin that poor kid by dragging him into this life.

Dad had known, and had spared Dean the pain of knowing there was a second little brother out there he wasn't allowed to go near.

So no, Sam wasn't right about Dad at all, Dean had just said that because he'd known it would hurt. Dean had broken Dad's heart, as he'd known he would when he'd taken aim at it, and that man didn't have much heart to spare, not since mom died. Now he and Dad were not on speaking terms and it was Dean's fault. As usual.

He could go apologize, of course, and be taken in. And he could go to Bobby, and maybe be taken in. And he could go to Sammy, too, and definitely not be taken in. Every single one of these options made Dean so angry he had to find the nearest evil critter to shoot rather than do any of that.

Why was it always up to him to reach out? Why was he forever running after other people begging for attention and crumbs of affection? Why did he always have to give so much and get back so little?

Why couldn't Dad apologize first? Or apologize at all, ever, without making some grand gesture out of it?

Would it kill Bobby to reach out and let Dean know that he was still welcome?

And could Sam fucking pick up his phone or write an e-mail or do anything other than pretend his big brother didn't exist and had never existed and all the shit he'd done for this kid had never meant anything at all?

Would any of them bother searching for him if Dean just up and disappeared and never came back? Because that option was looking more and more attractive by the day. Dean had nothing and no one, he was angry all the time and now he was even thinking about hurting Baby by daydreaming about some Thelma and Louise shit.

He should probably do something about all of that.

So why not pay some stranger to listen to him whine about his problems and come out a couple hundred bucks poorer with a pat on the head and maybe some useful advice for what to do next.

Yeah, that sounded good. A shrink. Jesus, Dean was gonna have to find a shrink. And then money to pay for it. And then try to explain this mess in a way that made sense to a normal person while leaving out all the bits about the monsters in the dark.


Therapy requires radical honesty.

That was what it said on this hippy website. Radical honesty. What was that, honesty from the 80s? Yeah, it was gonna be so rad when Dean started talking about ghosts and shtriga and a woman burned on the ceiling by a yellow-eyed monster. He'd be in an asylum before he could say Poughkeepsie.

Trying to conceal uncomfortable truths is a counterproductive strategy that ultimately harms the patients themselves, as it might lead clinicians to a false diagnosis and a delay in appropriate treatment. In worst case scenarios, it might even lead to clinicians into taking an entirely wrong approach, resulting in detrimental effects on mental health outcomes.

Dean sat back in the rickety library chair and hated how much sense that made. Sometimes the key clue to solving a hunt was hidden in a seemingly small detail that witnesses saw no reason to mention. The devil was in the details, both metaphorically and literally, and so much of Dad and Sam was tangled up with mom's death and everything going bump in the night. Dean couldn't tell just one part of the story and expect anyone to suss out the problem when there was a second half of the full picture still missing.

So. No therapy for him. Wouldn't work and only be a waste of money he didn't have to spare. Great.

He was screwed. There was no one he could turn to for help. Not even a shrink, something that he'd always held in his back pocket as a last resort for when he finally lost the last shred of his pride. People who needed shrinks were broken. Dean didn't know where he'd learned that, only that he knew it as an absolute certainty down to his very bones. Somehow, Dean hadn't even made it to those lofty ranks.

Alright, okay. Time to stop with the self-pity and suck it up, Winchester. So he was extra-fucked, what else was new?

Shrinks had to learn this crap from somewhere, right? It was a trade, a profession, and the tools of a trade could be learned with a library card and a plucky attitude. His GED might lead people to believe otherwise, but Dean wasn't all that bad at book learning when he put his mind to it. Sure, he was no Sammy or Bobby, but… well, he had a knack for figuring something out himself, as long as he could sustain his interest in the topic.

DIY therapy had a certain ring to it.

The Grand Canyon, Dean decided, would be his reward for following through on this. Maybe one day he would stand on that ledge, take in the view, and not feel tempted to do something stupid.


Author's Note 2.0:

I find it so fascinating that during the Stanford era, Dean wasn't just estranged from Sam but also from Bobby. I know the meta-reason this happened (Bobby as a character was a late addition to Season 1), but in light of their bond in later seasons, it was pretty hard to imagine circumstances where Dean being welcome in Bobby's house would ever be in question. I hope the scenario I came up with reads as in-character for everyone involved.

Feedback is always welcome and appreciated.