Thank you to the reviewers.

Warnings- Domestic violence- may be triggering!

Cas closed up his shop, feeling positive. Dean had helped him in the morning after their visit to Ellen's pub. It had been nice having another person in the shop even though Dean was so moody and crotchety. Castiel had noticed something else as well. All day, after Ellen's, Dean had been calling him 'Cas.' It was nice, he'd never had a nick-name before. Lilith just would bark out his name, as if the name itself was enough to annoy her.

Later Dean had gone home, saying something about needing to tidy up his 'shit-hole' of a house but Adam had then popped in later that afternoon, as a replacement of Dean. The boy had been shy and embarrassed and no doubt expecting Cas to turn him away which, of course, Cas most certainly did not do. Instead Adam helped him sort out all the back room and made tea for the old woman, Berta and Clara, who had come in to buy new cardigans for church. The elderly ladies loved Adam, it wasn't often that they saw nice young children offering up pleasantries and good manners. Cas worried about Adam, there was something nervous about the boy, something Cas recognised. He wondered if the boy was being abused, but Adam hadn't given much information about his home life, and without Adam showing any visible signs of abuse or neglect Cas thought it was best to not call social services; he would just have to keep an eye on the boy and so encouraged Adam to come to the shop whenever he liked.

Now it was five in the evening and time to shut up the shop. He lingered for as long as he dared, before finalising all his cheques, putting the money in a safe, and pulling down the shutters. Outside was very cold and he walked quickly, jumping on a local bus which took him close to his home in the prestigious hills.

The house he shared with Lilith was in a small neighbourhood, a cul-de-sac to be specific. Cas's home was right in the middle. The poor house looked like it was trapped in between all the others, or so it always seemed to Cas. Lilith and Cas's home was fairly standard: two bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen, dining room and living room, a small front garden containing nothing but a path and cut grass and a back garden that contained a shed holding a few plant pots and a boring garden with a few shrubs. It was very standard, lower-middle-class living.

Cas went inside and immediately turned on all the heating, Lilith hated the cold and would want the home to be toasty warm when she arrived home from work. He looked at a wedding photo of them hanging in the living room wall above the fireplace. She looked like she was smirking in the picture, her nose slightly up-turned and her smile almost cruel. Cas was smiling tightly, worry lines on his forehead.

He had hoped that day that things would get better.

Sighing quietly he entered the kitchen and began to cook dinner.

Three hours later, Cas sat alone at the kitchen table. Dido was playing quietly in the background. It was too warm but he dared not turn down the heating and so was wearing a light cotton shirt (a t-shirt would have been ideal but Lilith did not like those worn at the dinner table.) Cas was hungry, but he didn't want to risk eating without Lilith. Instead he drank away the red wine he was meant to be serving with the meal. They had lots of wine so Lilith wouldn't notice how much he had drank. He began to wonder if he should start packing away and crawl up to bed when he heard keys in the door. He gulped down another large glass of red wine with seasoned proficiency and stood as Lilith walked in. She raised an eyebrow at him and the dining table.

Cas smiled nervously, "hello darling. Would you like to eat something? I can warm it up."

"Microwaved food?" she asked, her voice dripping in disdain and Cas felt his tentative smile dying away, "when do I ever eat microwaved food apart from when you mess up dinner plans? I told you I was working late tonight. I told you. God you're so stupid it's embarrassing. Why would I eat microwaved food at this time of night? Are you insane as well as stupid?"

"I'm sorry," said Cas, "I'll put it all away."

"It's wasted now!" she shouted, "it's wasted! I'm the main bread winner in this house, I have the sensible job, I bring in the money! That's my food you've wasted! I can't eat it now, it'll taste horrible tomorrow, why save it? You do an laughably bad job of cooking anyway, but I eat your slop because God knows I have nothing else to eat, but now it's completely wasted."

She took a plate and flung it onto the floor, splattering the food across the carpet.

"Come here," she said quietly to Cas. He hesitated, but seeing the growing fury in her eyes, obeyed. Coming close to her, she began to hit him around his chest and waist. Lilith was a petite woman. She had light brown hair and large green eyes. She was beautiful, Cas always thought so. She kicked his leg, which she had already damaged in a fit of rage the day before, making him fall to his knees so that she could begin hitting him around his head.

He flinched but put up with it. When she got very angry she would kick more viciously, like the previous night, or she would even bite him. One time she had pushed him down the stairs, knocking him out; when he had woken out of his unconscious, he found that she had not only left him on the floor but she had actually peed on him. That was what it was all about really, humiliating him, making him feel that he was nothing. It was bad enough knowing that he was under the thumb of his wife, getting beaten by a small woman was even worse but Lilith always found new lows to sink them to, so that the mortification was just that much worse. Despite all this he never hit her back. He would never hit anyone, male or female, child or adult, it just wasn't who he was.

When she had exhausted herself he was bleeding slightly and could feel welts beginning to appear. "Eat that food," she demanded, pointing to the mess on the floor. Cas sat cross-legged and used his fingers to pick up a buttered asparagus, now slightly hairy from the floor, and began to eat it.

Lilith sat at the table, and began to eat the food on the other plate, watching her husband on the floor as she did.

After dinner they went upstairs. Cas showered and then had sex with Lilith because she wanted him too. He was tired and injured, but she wanted to so they did. Afterwards they lay together and Lilith informed him that they needed to start thinking about participating in the Nativity Play their local church would be putting on soon. Cas had agreed with her on everything. When she fell asleep, her arm draped around his chest, he lay very still so that he wouldn't risk waking her up. He stared across the room at a picture of Christ on the other side. He couldn't see it in the dark but he knew that underneath it had a slogan saying 'Jesus Saves.'

Cas lay cold and lonely in the bed beside his wife feeling that not only was he completely detached and unloved by her, but also by the universe and God Himself.

xxXXxx

Dean's green eyes scanned the horizon. The pale winter sun had just barely broken through grey clouds, its white light radiating out, dappling across the city. Dean was up early again, even earlier than yesterday. His head didn't hurt, but he wanted a drink badly. Real badly. Hs body was shaking slightly and he knew it was bound to get worse. So he had to keep images of Jo and Ellen in his head. He needed to think of Cas because Cas was the kind of person he secretly wanted to be. Dean was never the geeky kind, but he always kind of liked those types of people. There was something about that innocence that he was attracted to. He wanted to be good and kind and forgiving, like Cas. He even wanted Cas's life, a wife, a nice house in the hills, no doubt kids would soon be in the equation for Cas, it was nice. It's what Cas deserved and maybe, one day, it would be what Dean deserved.

He stretched before finally leaving is bedroom. The bed was actually made that morning. In fact, he had spent most of his day before cleaning and hoovering his home. It had been a little embarrassing because in tidying up he realised how dirty his home really was. He had washed all his clothes after that. He had to wash them by hand as the electric was low and he hadn't enough money to pay for the bill, but it was worth it. His home almost looked respectable again, like when it had been him and mom and dad.

"Should I go to the shop today?" He wondered, "I don't want to crowd him but...I want to see him."

He thought of Cas's deep blue eyes, his dark brown, almost black, hair which looked so soft to touch, he thought of the way Cas tipped his head to one side when he was thinking or confused and Dean realised that he was grinning- actually grinning!

"Jesus what is wrong with me?" he spoke aloud, sitting at the kitchen table. He anxiously felt at his chest, realising his heart-rate and breathing had increased. Thoughts of Cas and his charms continued to push their way into Dean's conscious thoughts, he just couldn't stop it.

"Am I obsessed with him? Is it because I haven't had friends in so long? But I'm not like this with Ellen or Jo...or Adam." He glanced out of the window, remembering the first time he had seen Cas a couple of days ago. "Ok, maybe it's a bit of a man-crush, but that's ok, man-crush's are ok. Bromance's are vogue now." He snickered at the stupid terminology but felt a little better. Cas cheered him up, Cas made him think of better things and he wanted to be around him. he didn't want to think of Ellen dying or Jo being pissed or him drinking too much, he didn't even want to know Cas's problems, not really, he just wanted to feel good and Cas did that and Dean was damned if he was going to let some silly worries about his heterosexuality get in the way of a good thing. "Besides," he half joked, "If I was going to go gay I could do a lot worse than Cas."

Dean checked the time. It was still too early for the shops to open and the morning stretched out in front of him. He thought of drink, but there was none in the house and nowhere was open and even if there was he had no money left. Maybe now was the time to make good on his promise to Jo?

He closed his eyes and laid his head on the table. He tried to think of his future. Dean had done this many times before, back when his mom left and dad started drinking, then when dad died, and then when Ellen got sick. Before he had never seen a future for himself. Dean knew he wasn't going to get married or have kids, he wanted that sort of life, but he knew it wasn't for him. No one loved Dean, he wasn't a good guy there was nothing in him to love. But now, now he could see him and Cas in the shop perhaps laughing, perhaps arguing, but that was ok. He could see Adam coming in, talking incessantly about stupid shit Dean didn't care about. When had he begun to even really care about Adam? It was before Cas, as Dean had known Adam much longer, but it seemed like since seeing Adam with Cas and learning a bit more about him, the boy seemed much more real. Perhaps before he had always been either too drunk, too angry or too hung-over to really see the child, where yesterday morning he was stone-cold sober. Then an interesting thought popped into Dean's head, what if Cas and Adam weren't the only ones? What if there was an entire world of people out there that he could care about and that he could love? Could he re-connect with the world? Could he be part of that? He now imagined himself standing beside Cas at a garden party surrounded by laughing people. Was that likely; was it in the realms of possibility?

Dean raised his head. That last image was going too far... but still.

Getting up Dean finally headed out, not to Cas's shop, he would got there later, but to where he could finally get some help.

The local adult education centre was combined with the youth centre. It was a depressing concrete building thrown up in the eighties ad covered in bad graffiti and boarded up with planks of wood and it's windows were heavily grated. Dean rang the doorbell and though it was only seven thirty in the morning someone opened the door to let him in. It was an older, rounder woman with curly blonde hair and too much make-up. He recognised her as the sex-education nurse who did a lot of work with the teenagers giving them the advice they had really needed from their parents before they had had a chance to get pregnant or an STD.

"Well I'll be damned!" she cried, "I remember you...Dean, right? Dean Winchester?"

"That's right," he grinned charmingly making her giggle. He still had it.

"I always remember the handsome ones," she winked leading him through the building. While the outside was vile, inside they had plastered over the dingy walls with hundreds of pictures and photo's and thank you letters from local families and children they had saved over the decades. Funding was always low and they relied on volunteers, but they were the small-time heroes that never got recognised. Yet still Dean had known that after five years of walking out of his last AA meeting that he could still come here for help.

She left him alone for a moment, offering to make some iced tea though really he knew she was giving him some space. He appreciated it, though it wasn't necessary, everyone knew he drank too much. He looked at the notice board and saw the AA meetings would start that evening. Jo had offered to go with Dean, as a way of making sure he completed the programme this time. He didn't like the idea that she was essentially holding his hand and that she didn't trust him to do this alone, but he knew she was right. He wrote down the time of when the meeting started onto a sheet of paper before stuffing that into his pocket and accepting a tea from the nurse.

"It's Peggy, right?"

"That's right Dean. Have a sit down, how have you been?"

"Alright."

"How about John?"

"Ah," Dean hadn't expected Peggy not to know, and shifted in his seat slightly, "he's dead Peggy. That's why I stopped coming. Dad died and I just...I just didn't care anymore. I didn't have anyone left in my family."

"Oh honey I'm sorry," suddenly Peggy looked very uncomfortable, as if she wanted to say something but wasn't sure.

"What is it Peg, what's up?"

"It's just...are you sure you've got no family? No uncles or aunts?"

"No, both my parents were from one-child families. My grand-parents on both sides died before I was born. What is it?"

There was a long, fraught silence now. Peggy took in a few large gulps of her tea, her eyes turned away from Dean. He allowed the silence, sensing that she knew something that could likely shatter his world.

Finally Peggy began to speak, firstly looking away but then slowly meeting his eyes as it became more personal, "normally, in my job, I get told stuff that I don't tell anyone. My whole career is based around confidentiality... but it's also about compassion and making people feel better. Though I'm not sure how you will feel if I tell you this...ok. Dean I shall tell you this and if I get struck off or sued by you, just know I am saying this with the best of intentions, the people who swore me to secrecy are both gone now and you're all alone and that hurts me. Ok...just before your mama left you and John she told me something. She was pregnant Dean, pregnant with another boy. But she couldn't cope, not with John's drinking."

"What? He only started after she left!"

Peggy shook her head, "no honey, he was drinking long before then. She had a hard time with you. It was post-natal depression, though no one really knew that at the time. Then John's drinking just added to the pressure and depression. By the time she got pregnant again she knew she couldn't do it." Peggy held Dean's hand, "your daddy told me this in confidence, and I'm breaking that now like how I just broke your mama's. John had been raised by a real mean nasty drunk, John and his older brother. You have an uncle Dean. Some years before you were born, it was becoming obvious that John was going the same way as his father, so your uncle cut off all communication with him. Then, when your mama ran away, she said that she was going to find this uncle of yours to see if he could take on you boys, because she knew neither she nor John was coping."

"I've got an uncle," breathed Dean as Peggy nodded mournfully, still doubting if she should have told him, "and a little brother. I have a brother?" Dean couldn't imagine having any siblings.

"I think so, somewhere out there," she brushed her hand across his hair and face in a motherly way.

"Thank you Peggy...do you know where I could find them?"

"I'm sorry no. You'd have to work out where your mama went. Are you alright?"

"Yeah...yeah...thank you Peggy."

Dean left the community centre and walked slowly to the shops. He had a brother. The notion felt strange and he wasn't even sure how he felt about it. The fact that he hadn't realised his father's drinking stemmed back further in time than he had known, or that his mother had felt depressed made him sad and slightly bitter. He thought back on his memories and remembered how vacant his parents had been, how defeated and how desolate. As a child he had accepted it as ordinary as it was all he had known.

"Maybe that's why I'm this way now? I live in the same crummy house, I have no job and I can't keep a hold of the few friends I have. It's like I don't know how to be happy or fulfilled." He passed his house now, and he looked up at it. The windows looked black, the house was empty and dark, a shell of what should have been. He bet that Cas's house up there in the suburbs was full of light and joy and life. He wondered how his uncle lived, or where his mother and brother were. Were they happy? He hoped so, even if it was something he couldn't be a part of.

He looked over the flat where Adam lived. Rap music played loudly, the bass thudding into the streets. The song was something about bitches asses and having a sweet ride. Dean scowled and went into his house; that was another type of music that had just gone downhill. There had been a time when Rap had been about empowerment, especially for working class, black people. But now it was all just part of the machine to make people greedy and feeling bad about themselves and their lot.

In the kitchen he turned on the kettle and began to think about his parents. If there was an uncle out there then that meant his details must have been somewhere in this house; his mother wouldn't have known where to go unless John had written down the address because, according to Peggy, his uncle had stopped talking to his dad before he was even born and therefore before John had met Mary.

After mom had gone, dad had packed almost everything up in the attic. After dad had died, Dean had left his room alone. Dean began to make a drink, wishing it was something stronger than coffee. He would need to go into dad's room, he hadn't been in there since John's death.

"Maybe I should just leave it," he thought, "what if I do find this uncle? Wouldn't I just ruin his and my brother's lives? If my uncle cut off dad for being a drunk, then he won't want me around." Dean sighed and brushed his hands over his face, "makes sense, who the hell wants to be around a mess like me?"

He sat in his living room and watched daytime television for a while, but he just couldn't deal with it. His shaking was worse than ever and his head was beginning to pound. He needed to take the edge off, to be distracted. Finally he grabbed his coat and left his house, aiming for the local shops.

A.N.- For more on violence against men check out charities such as Shelter and Men's Advice Line. Too many victims are too ashamed to admit abuse for they feel it makes them seem weak. The only person who is weak and should feel ashamed is the abuser, regardless of their gender.