A/N: Warnings for themes of homophobic asshole parents. We're finishing up our lovely little (okay, so not so little) flashback here, and we'll be back to the present tense next chapter! Yay! As always, I own none of this, everything is ripped off from the owners with much love, etc etc.
"It's some kind of Bible camp," Ellen told Dean over the phone the next day. "I went down to the church Milton goes to, got a pamphlet about the place. Dean, it…it looks bad."
"Bad how, Ellen?" Dean was sitting on the couch, eyes closed, as if that would keep him from having to deal with the shitshow his life had become in the last twenty-four hours. "What d'you mean, Bible camp? I'm guessin' this isn't something for little kids."
"It's for gay teens. To – " Ellen drew in a sharp breath, and Dean could practically feel the heat of her anger through the phone. "To cure them."
Dean kept thinking that it couldn't get any worse than it already was, but something proved him wrong every time. One of these days, the bad news would stop hitting him so hard. Today was, apparently, not that day. "Motherfucker," he swore, forgetting who was on the other line.
For once, though, Ellen didn't reprimand him. "Couldn't agree more," she said grimly. "Listen, though, Dean. When Castiel gets outta there, odds are he's gonna need you more than ever, not less. The little prison camp gets done before school starts, so he'll be back, okay? We'll figure this out yet, kid."
"Thanks, Ellen. Really."
"Yeah, yeah. You're family, Dean, wouldn't do any less for Jo." Ellen hesitated, then continued. "Speaking of family, I wanted to let you know. John'll be back home this afternoon."
Dean went cold. "Oh?" he managed, in a slightly strangled tone.
"You two are gonna have some shit to work out, but hopefully he'll be reasonable about it now. Bobby talked him down some."
"So now Bobby knows, too." It wasn't even a question at this point. Apparently, all that stupid sneaking around had been for nothing.
"Yeah, but Dean, don't worry about it. I know you weren't – weren't ready for us to know, but me and Bobby, we're behind you all the way, you know that, right?"
"Yeah. Family don't end with blood," he said resignedly, echoing something Bobby had spat at him on more than one occasion.
"Damn straight. Now, I gotta go, I got some people here claiming they're something called a 'customer' and they wanna pay me to feed 'em or something. I'll check in on you later, kid, but call if you need anything, okay?"
"Yeah, Ellen. Thanks again."
Dean hung up the phone and went back to what he'd been doing all morning – reading and re-reading the note Cas had left for him. He'd had the words memorized for hours by now, flattened out every fold and wrinkle until the page looked like it'd been ironed. Sam was upstairs, blasting shitty pop music and pretending like his family wasn't falling apart around him. Dean couldn't exactly blame the kid; this was bad even for Winchester drama. And Dean would rather be left alone anyway.
Sometime that afternoon, John came home. He came in quietly, with none of the bluster of his anger or his drunkenness, walking calmly into the den to find Dean sitting alone on the couch still. Dean couldn't even bring himself to look at his father. His entire body felt heavy with emotion, with loss. He was so tired of this bullshit.
"Hey, Dad," he greeted, his voice quiet and weary in a way he didn't expect.
"Dean." John stood, barely visible in the periphery of Dean's vision, unapologetic, unaccommodating. He sighed. "Talked to Bobby. But, given how Ellen seems to gossip these days, I'm guessing you already know that." Dean didn't make any noise or move to confirm or deny. It felt like the only thing left to do was to just weather the storm. "I'm not kicking you out or sending you to some Jesus camp like that Milton fuckhead. I'm not going to fight with you about it. In fact, we are never going to talk about it again. Understood?
"I don't care if this is you being confused or your hormones being in overdrive or if it's some stupid rebellious phase or something you think is actually real. I don't give a fuck. I don't want to hear about it again. You are never going to mention this – to me or anybody else. You are not to bring boys like Castiel over. And if that boy ever gets out of his little Bible rehab group, he is not welcome under this roof. Ever again. I don't care whether the religious nuts manage to convert him or not. I am not going to see you with him again.
"Do you understand me, Dean Winchester?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good." And John left the room. Dean kept sitting.
The last of summer vacation flew by in a vague haze of work and sleep and avoiding John. Dean didn't come around the Roadhouse much anymore, though Ellen called sometimes to check up on him. Sam started hanging out at home more, and he and Dean would sit and watch TV or play stupid board games and Sam would talk at Dean until he smiled or started to perk up enough to mock Sam for his increasingly ridiculous hair. He tried to lecture Dean about stages of grief or some other bullshit once, but Dean told him to shut the fuck up, and Sammy did. Jo would come around sometimes too; or, she came around until she got grounded on principle after someone egged the Milton house, keyed Michael's car, and let all the air out of the bastard's tires. When interrogated, Jo just smiled her shark grin and said that nothing could be proved, but she'd like to shake the hand of the hero that did it. Dean grinned and clapped her on the back and told her that she might turn out all right yet.
Dad hadn't needed to worry about Cas being allowed back in the house when he got back. The simple reason being, he didn't come back. The day before school started back up, a Uhaul appeared outside the Milton place, though the "for sale" sign didn't show up in front of the house until almost a week after they'd gone. Rumor was that they had moved to somewhere more…suitable for their newly rehabilitated queer, that they'd left to have more control over the last remaining Milton kid. Dean managed to work up the hope that Cas fucking ran away from them and found Gabe and Anna and they all lived happily ever after. He had to try, because he had to try to feel much of anything these days. Most of what he did feel was, he finally understood a bit what Cas must have gone through when his older siblings left, that stupid sinking sense of abandonment that was completely unfair but stayed and lived and festered under Dean's skin all the same.
School was hell.
They'd said it would be, didn't they? One of those nights in the park. The last night? Maybe. (It was already starting to blur together a bit for Dean, and that freaked him out more than anything else had managed to do since Cas had been sent away.) In any case, they'd been right. Except now Dean was facing it down alone, and it was worse than he'd imagined.
He didn't know or care how people knew, because they did, or at least they thought they did, and it turned out that was enough. Dean had never exactly had a lot of friends, but he had gotten along okay. Not anymore. Now the guys on the team sneered when he waved, shouldered him into lockers without bothering to look at him. Now when girls giggled when he walked by, it was clearly not because they admired his winning grin; there was something disdainful and almost sinister in their laughter. Now he came into school to find "fag" scribbled across his locker in sharpie, other students laughing as he tried in vain to wipe it off with his sleeve.
And it wasn't like Dean took this shit lying down. His emotions were starting to come back to him, slowly but surely, a burning anger at the base of them. He had gotten into fights before, sure, a couple of times, either stepping in to defend Cas or before Cas could step in and stop Dean from doing something incredibly stupid. But now – by the third week of school, Dean was in Henrikson's office for the fourth time, eye swelling and darkening, nose stuffed with tissues. Again.
"Dean Winchester, what the hell is going on with you?" Henrikson said casually. As much as Dean bitched about the principal, he'd always kinda liked the guy, mostly because Henrikson talked like this. He didn't try to bullshit the students, which Dean had to respect. "I've got trouble enough in this school without you going out of your way to cause more just because your usual partner in crime up and moved himself out of state."
"I'm dropping out," Dean said, which he figured kinda answered Henrikson's question, and if it didn't, well, Henrikson could go fuck himself.
Henrikson's eyebrows shot up. "Well pardon me for thinking I saw potential in you, Winchester. You know what, you go right ahead and throw away your future over this. Have fun."
Well, that wasn't exactly how Dean envisioned it going the first time he announced his new plan to someone, but hey, what could you do? Apparently it was his year for letting people down. Might as well continue the trend.
Dean stood to walk out of the office. "Thanks. I will."
"Winchester," Henrikson called just as Dean put his hand on the door. Dean turned, defiant, but Henrikson just sat back in his swivel chair, looking completely unconcerned. "Get your goddamn GED."
"Yes, sir," Dean replied, and he couldn't help but grin a little bit.
So Dean dropped out. Dad wasn't pleased about it ("And what exactly are you planning on doing instead of finishing high school?" "Leaving Lawrence." "And who's gonna watch after your brother?" "Sammy's fourteen, he can take care of himself – " "Yeah, Dad, I'll be fine, I like school – " "Not now, Sam." "I'm not staying, Dad." "Your mother would be so disappointed in you." "Yeah, well, who isn't?") but Dean could handle it. Ellen's pursed lips and Bobby's silent, disapproving glare were a little harder to deal with, but Dean just buried himself in work at the garage and studying for his GED.
He passed in one go, which even Dad had to admit in a grunt of appreciation was a job well done. He kept working for Bobby, full time again, through the winter and spring, staying in Lawrence to see Sammy through his freshman year of high school. He didn't have to worry. Sam thrived. (Nerd.) Miracle of miracles, John stayed sober. In June, Dean hugged Sam goodbye, promised Ellen he'd call, assured Bobby he'd take good care of the Impala, and exchanged a too-formal goodbye with Dad. And then he was gone.
The open road brought him back to himself, made him feel alive, in a way nothing in Lawrence had since Cas had left. He crashed at truck stops, motel parking lots, campgrounds, parking garages, open fields, lean-to's on hiking trails, and even the occasional actual motel room. He went and saw landmarks, stupid tourist attractions, natural wonders. He hooked up with girls and guys he met along the way, stayed in one place for a whole month to be with Cassie Robinson, but always left again for the siren call of the open highway. He stopped sometimes to work – on farms, in exchange for room and board; in auto shops, for spare cash or the tools to tune up his baby – and learned how to cook over a campfire and how to make food and money go as far as possible.
He went back to Lawrence for Christmas every year, sometimes Thanksgiving, Sam's birthday. He was there for Sam's high school graduation and stayed the whole summer, catching up with everyone, not-flirting with Jo (she grew up good, though Dean still wondered about her). In August, he packed up the Impala with all of Sammy's shit, and Ellen and Jo followed them out to California, and the four of them spent a weekend setting up Sam and Jo's dorm rooms at Stanford. John didn't come, because sometime in the years since Dean had left, Dad and Sam had learned to fight, to scream at each other, to fume in their silences and clench their jaws through apologies. Dean found himself making peace, mediating over the phone more often than he wanted, trying to hold together the remnants of the family he had abandoned. It worked, barely.
That Christmas, John got drunk again for the first time in more than four years. Driving back from Bobby's, Dean in the backseat half-asleep on eggnog and disappointment in his father, Dad and Sam argued over speed and snow conditions (and Dean would later think bitterly that the only time they'd ever got snow on Christmas it had cost them almost everything). Sam, his only driving experience in Kansas and California, slid on the slick roads, into the wrong lane, into an oncoming truck. Dad, true to form, wasn't wearing his seatbelt. When Dean woke up in the hospital three days later, Sam was tired and bruised and red-eyed, and Dad was dead.
Between the funeral and the hospital bills and the seemingly endless physical therapy, there was no money. Sam offered – more than once – to drop out of school. Dean told him to shut the fuck up.
Dean sold the house (in the end, to their neighbor Missouri, because she was the only one who'd take it, and Dean felt better with their past in her hands anyway). Left to figure out what kind of job would want someone whose only experience was fixing cars and fucking up, Dean wound up selling insurance in Indiana to put Sam through school. Until, of course, he went postal and threw his computer out a window.
And after that came Lisa and Ben and his new life, and in between were a whole bunch of other important things – Bobby and Ellen's wedding and Sam and Ruby's wedding and Jo and Jess becoming…whatever it is they are. Everyone in Dean's life growing up and getting together and having lives in a way that Dean, with his casual hookups and one-night-stands, can't seem to figure out how to do. So instead he's been running, even after settling down with the Braedens; running from a past that's finally catching up to him, drowning him for nine hours in memories of blue eyes until he dumps himself on Ellen's doorstep for Thanksgiving.
