August 20, 1997

Family don't end with blood. Dean makes a few visits.

Reality caught up with Dean the next day. He thought of Jo, who wouldn’t understand his sudden absence. He thought of Kate and whether she’d been conned by John into trusting him. He thought of Bobby, who he hadn’t even called.

He drove over on Wednesday in the late morning. He could see his father’s ranch from Bobby’s place, and it made his gut give a sick twist.

When he pulled up, the front door opened with Bobby stepping out. He came down the steps but stopped to eye up the plastic that covered the Impala’s passenger-side window. The scraped dent in her beautiful black exterior.

Dean got out of the car and came around the hood. He didn’t look as bad as he had, but he remained distinctly marked. The bruises receded slowly from his face and the scrapes on his cheek had faded to pink lines.

“What the hell did you get into?” Bobby asked. “We just fixed a window.”

For some reason, Dean thought Bobby would already know. He thought the whole town would know and be talking about the fact that Dean Winchester broke with John. He expected horrible whispers and speculation.

Dean stopped on the passenger side of the car, nearer to Bobby, and leaned back against the door. He folded his arms over his chest. He looked away as he said, “My dad kicked me out.”

“He did what?” Bobby took a step closer like he hadn’t heard right, then stopped. He was too smart not to put it together. Dean looking rough, the damage to the car.

To Bobby’s credit, he didn’t say anything else right away. Kept his quiet fury contained. He flicked his eyes over the car and Dean, lips pressed, beard bristling.

“I thought he might have talked to you,” said Dean, face still turned away, eyes on a rusted tire rim that held down the blue tarp over Bobby’s stack of firewood. “Try to ask you where I’d gone.”

“Well where have you gone, and how long have you been hiding?”

“Missouri has a place, this cottage. She found me Sunday. This all just happened Saturday.” He nodded at the plastic over the car window.

“Why didn’t you come here?” Bobby asked, a desperate note in his voice.

“I was worried he’d come looking for me here,” said Dean. “I didn’t want to drag you in.”

“If he’d come looking for you here, I’d have blast him full of buckshot,” said Bobby. He finally stepped down to meet Dean, grimacing back against whatever else he wanted to say. He put a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “You better come inside, son,” he said. “Get some coffee in you and sit down.” He eyed the Impala once more, taking in the damage.

With a cup of coffee in his hands, sitting hunched over Bobby’s small kitchen table, Dean found himself answering Bobby’s questions. Telling him all about the weekend that passed and the reasons Sam left. The suffering that had been going on for a lifetime just a country mile down the road.

Bobby listened tight-lipped. After enough was said, he scratched at his beard, then wiped his hand over his mouth. “If I knew how bad it was—” he said. “I always knew he was strict and mean-spirited, but I had no idea—”

“He didn’t want you to know, and I didn’t either,” said Dean.

“I would’ve taken you boys in,” said Bobby. “Damn the laws.”

“Bobby,” said Dean. Bobby was saying everything Dean wanted to hear. Every word one of support and faith. But Dean needed to know it wasn’t conditional. It couldn’t be based on Dean pretending to be what he wasn’t. He couldn’t handle that any longer.

He felt his throat grow hot with danger and fear. “There’s something else I gotta tell you,” he said. He cleared the looseness in his throat. “And I want to tell you because… I could never tell him. And he doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t get to know me. But if it’s the last straw, if you can’t stand me for it, then I gotta know now so I don’t get heartbroke all over again.”

“Go on,” said Bobby, eyes clear and steady on Dean.

“I’m gay, Bobby.” His voice shook as he said it. He didn’t know how he didn’t cry. He didn’t want to miss Bobby’s reaction, gaze sweeping up from his cup of coffee to look back at Bobby.

Bobby waited for a moment, like there might be more, then said, “Okay, Dean.”

“Okay?”

“If you’re waiting for me to explode on you, don’t,” said Bobby. “It doesn’t change a thing about you, in my books.”

“Really?”

“Except for thinking how much harder it makes some things for you,” said Bobby. “Pitching wildly from one danger into another. I just don’t want anyone to raise a hand against you.”

“Well I’m not about to advertise it,” said Dean.

“They’d have to go through me, anyway,” said Bobby. He paused, then asked, “You got somebody?”

Dean nodded. He expected to be thrown out. He never thought he’d be able to say this. “Cas,” he answered.

“The vet? Huh.” Bobby raised his cup of coffee. “And how’s he treat you?”

Dean smiled, unable to help himself. He didn’t have the words to begin describing all Cas did for him. “There must be something wrong with him because he acts like I’m smart and special and I think he means to stay with me.”

Bobby pulled in his lips, his gaze between them but his memory somewhere else. “That’s— That’s what it felt like with Karen. You hold onto that— You hold onto that and you give back the same, and you’ll be alright.”

“Really?” said Dean. He rotated his cup on the table. “You aren’t mad?” he said. “Or shocked or any of it? I unloaded a lot on you.”

“I just—” Bobby stopped and shook his head. “Dean, I love you like a son. No matter what. I’m just pissed at myself for not knowing any of it till now. What was going on with John... I should’ve picked up without you having to say. I wish I’d known sooner.”

“Dad always forbid me from coming around here when things were bad,” said Dean. He had months-long periods where John turned foul and fought with all his neighbours. After a while, Dean picked up these patterns of isolation and secrecy without having to be expressly told. He followed them even though they didn’t serve him. “And till lately, I guess... I mean, I always thought adults would take his side. You or Ellen or whoever. I only knew any of you through him.”

“Dean,” said Bobby. “We all hate your dad. And can’t figure how the hell he ended up with a kid as good as you.”

Dean swept his gaze away, not used to hearing Bobby talk like this, parting his lips to interrupt only for Bobby to continue.

“I mean it,” Bobby said. “You— You grew up great. We all saw it, saw how you turned out. Good-natured, hard-working. Everybody but him knows it. Your dad is a selfish dick and he never deserved you.”

Dean kept his mouth shut because after everything that had been said today, he didn’t trust himself not to cry.

“Guess what I’m trying to say is: I’m proud of you.” Bobby nodded his head once like that put the matter to rest. He stood up to refill their coffee. It gave Dean a moment to collect himself.

“So,” he said. “What’s next for you?”

“I dunno,” said Dean, sitting back. He cleared his throat to get some strength back in his voice. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I don’t want to leave town or anything. Cas is taking over the vet practice, so he’s staying. Missouri’s got some work for me in the next week or two. I might go back to the Talbot stables, see what I can pick up there for work.” He raised his fist to his mouth, chewing at his thumbnail. “I gotta go back to the ranch sometime,” he said. “I’ve gotta get Zepp.”

“Dean…”

“He’s my horse.”

“That cottage even got a spot to put him?”

“Nah,” said Dean. “I’ll have to find another place some time. For now, I’ll stable him at the Talbots and work off the costs of it.” There was still a lot to figure out, down the road.

He sighed and said, “The rest of my stuff, Dad might already have burned it out back. Who knows? But I gotta get Zeppelin before he realises… My horse is going blind. And if Dad finds out before I can get there, that’s it.”

“Well,” said Bobby, resting his hand against his chin as he thought it over. “Don’t announce yourself and don’t cross his path. Make Jo your eyes and ears for when the ranch is clear. You want back-up, I’m right behind you.”

“Thanks, Bobby,” said Dean.

“With a shotgun,” said Bobby. Dean laughed.

---

“Bobby lent me the truck while we wait on a new window for the Impala,” said Dean, climbing inside the seafoam-green pick-up. It had seen better days, but it would get them from Point A to B. “Saw him this morning.” He started up the truck with a rattle.

Cas looked handsome in a black button-up despite the warm weather. Dean had taken Cesar up on the invitation to dinner. Dean didn’t expect a dress code, but he wouldn’t have minded looking a little nicer. This was like a date. Dean didn’t have much with him for clothes and had rolled the sleeves of his blue chambray shirt, left open over a white tee, and finished the look with his cowboy hat taken from the back window of the Impala. If they’d been at Cas’ apartment, he might have raided his wardrobe, but so far Dean hadn’t risked being seen around town. He wasn’t ready for any kind of news to get back to his father.

“Did you tell him what happened?” Cas asked, squinting ahead out the window as Dean started off.

“Yeah,” said Dean. “You know, he kinda kept it in while I was there, but I think he was actually pretty steamed.”

“Considering his past,” said Cas.

“What?” said Dean.

“His own father,” said Cas, glancing over. His mouth parted in mild confusion. “You know about that, don’t you?”

“Know what?” asked Dean.

Cas looked at his hands in his lap, opening them palm up, likely regretting having said anything, but unable to find a way out. He lifted his brows as he spoke. “Uh. He shot him. When he was just a boy. Doc Benton told me that, once. He was old enough to remember it distinctly.”

“Bobby— Bobby shot his dad?”

“I understand it was viewed as an act of defence,” said Cas. “His mother had been… mistreated. I thought you might’ve known about it.”

“People don’t talk about shit here,” said Dean, sitting back. “How am I supposed to know anything?”

“I don’t know about that,” said Cas. “There must have been a time when everybody talked and everybody knew. The… scar-tissue is still there. Bobby lives as an outsider. Part of it must come from him, thinking he can never fit into the fabric of regular society after experiencing something… so singular. Part of it comes from everybody else. It’s a small town. People go silent when you enter the room and…”

Cas voiced everything Dean was afraid of. If people here knew his secrets, he’d be treated just the same.

“I think it must mean a lot to Bobby, that you’ve always been there,” said Cas.

“But I didn’t know,” said Dean.

“Does it change anything?” Cas asked.

“No,” said Dean. “I like him more, knowing.”

Cas touched the edge of his finger against his lower lip, elbow leaned on the truck window, half-concealing a smile.

“I told Bobby about us,” said Dean.

That caught Cas’ attention. “You did?”

“He said he loved me no matter what.”

Cas reached out and touched Dean’s shoulder, a physical expression of sympathy and gratitude and fondness. They didn’t need words.

The sunlight off the front of the truck caught in Dean’s green eyes, even under the shaded brim of his cowboy hat. “You know, I’ve been afraid sometimes that all these changes would make me lonelier. Like if I was ever honest about myself it would scare people away. But then it’s like… since you came around and it got harder and harder to hide, the real me seeped around the edges of who I thought I was supposed to be. But the more that happened, the more I heard things that I never got to know before. That people cared about me. Or would fight for me. Or loved me.”

Cas traced over Dean’s profile with his gaze, lids heavy over his eyes. “You were too good at pretending to be self-sufficient before,” he said. “Convincing people you didn’t lack anything.”

Cas talked about Dean, but it struck him that it was even more deeply true of Cas. The boy who forged his own path at sixteen, took his life in his hands and shaped it according to his will. Or so it looked from the outside.

No one had fought for him. No one asked what he needed.

That independence didn’t come without sacrifice, and it didn’t mean Cas never wanted someone he could depend on.

“Oh Cas,” he said. “Neither of us has gotta pretend.”

At Cesar and Jesse’s place, they were greeted outdoors, as they had been before. This time, Jesse welcomed Dean properly, not saying a word about John.

They remained outside at first, Dean helplessly drawn to the horses in the paddock. He’d been away from horses for four full days and had never gone so long without their company. Even when he’d first broken his arm and wasn’t supposed to ride, he’d at least had horses to visit with.

“How’s Indigo doing?” he asked as the horse came up to greet him. Dean wasted no time in hopping to the other side of the fence and holding out a hand to Indigo.

“Oh he’s happy,” said Cesar, climbing over to sit on the top rail of the fence. “But he still won’t let me ride him.” Cesar looked over his shoulder. “Only one he’s let on his back so far is this guy here. He tell you about that, Cas?”

“Why do I suspect I won’t want to hear it?” said Cas.

“I tell Dean here that Indy won’t take a saddle but has done some rope work, knows commands. Dean says, ‘So don’t saddle him.’ Like it’s nothing to ride liberty on an unbroken mustang. Next thing I know, he’s—”

Cesar cut off. Dean had gone from speaking to Indy in a murmur, stroking his neck, to alighting up onto the back of the beautiful blue roan. With a signal, he asked Indigo to canter.

“That,” said Cesar.

Dean knew this horse like it knew him. He knew the kind of rider it wanted. A partnership, the two of them making up one mind together. When he asked Indigo to turn or change his pace, it was because the horse wanted to. And when he knew the mustang wanted to run, Dean’s body responded in kind and he let him. The cowboy hat flew back from his head.

He could’ve stayed out for hours, but he was aware of being Cesar’s guest, not Indy’s. His bruised ribs also protested at even the brief amount of time he spent on horseback in a way that promised he’d feel the pain tomorrow. It was just as well to come in.

He let the horse slow to a walk and returned towards the paddock fence. Cas had climbed over into the grassy pen, meeting Dean halfway to pick up his black hat and dust it off.

“You’re incorrigible,” said Cas, handing the hat up. “You know that?”

“Cas,” said Dean with a smile, “I barely know what that means.” He set the hat back on his head. “But I know you love it when I am.”

Cas laughed, smile stretching across his face.

Dean slid down from the horse. As soon as his boots touched the grass, Cas circled an arm around his waist. Dean pulled down his cowboy hat to hide their kiss behind it: not out of shame, but demure and playful privacy. He smiled against Cas’ mouth.

It was no secret that Cesar was a good cook, but tonight Dean was taking notes. Cesar brought out a plate of crispy taquitos while they visited. Dean could’ve eaten the whole lot, they tasted so good. And this wasn’t even supper. The next time Dean had friends over, like Jo or Charlie or Cesar and Jesse, he’d make an appetiser just like this. These snacks made the whole evening cosier and more welcoming, less restrictive, less formal.

Then for supper, Cesar used the best of the season to every advantage. Grilled corn picked that afternoon, the bright taste of cilantro that grew in the back garden. Everything tasted good on its own, but there was something that made it sweeter. Something about sitting next to Cas in company without having to conceal their clear affection. Arms brushing, gazes occasionally locking just to turn into further laughter that spread around the table.

Much of what they talked about wasn’t all that different from Dean’s usual conversations—horses and rodeos and food. Occasionally they turned serious, though. Cas, Jesse, and Cesar had all lived in other places, knew people with different stories. People who’d been unlucky, people who’d been outed. Lost families, lost jobs. Pressing in on the edge of his vision like a haunting, Dean felt the violence and death that followed so many others like him. Strange that what made him so happy, what felt so right for the first time in his life, could carry equal peril.

“What happened here?” Cesar asked Dean, gesturing on his own face to where Dean’s was still marked. “Get on the wrong side of Eldon Styne again?”

“No, uh,” said Dean. “My dad. Long story. Short version is, I’m staying in a place outside of town for a bit. And if anyone asks, you haven’t seen me.”

“Your dad’s a piece of shit,” Jesse put in helpfully.

“Yeah,” said Dean. “I know.”

“You know there’s lots of ways an accident could happen,” said Jesse. “Especially to a guy who turns down first aid.”

“I think we better hold off on the murder plots for now,” said Cesar, putting a hand on Jesse’s arm. “I like all of you too much to see you in jail.”

The mood shifted again when Jesse cleared away their plates and Cesar brought out the mezcal. Dean didn’t drink, intent on driving them home, but it was funny to see the way it affected Cas. He loosened up untraceably—barely anyone but Dean would be able to tell the difference. The corner of his mouth quirked up a little more and he kept narrowing his eyes like he could see better or think better. It was endearing as fuck.

Dean didn’t need to drink, the laughter in the room contagious, even when the conversation turned on to him and Cas.

“I don’t know,” Cesar said, gesturing with a hand. “I feel like I deserve a little credit, here. You know, some gratitude.”

“Like what?” said Jesse, snickering. “A fruit basket?” Dean cracked up.

“That’s homophobic,” Cesar said, pointing a finger, his smile betraying him. “No, listen, a ‘thank you’ would do.”

“Oh sure,” said Jesse. “The two heartbreakingly handsome guys really needed your help getting together. Right.”

“Okay, I’m feeling a little left out by—” said Cesar.

“You’re handsome too,” said Jesse.

“Better,” said Cesar. He gestured out with a hand. “But I was here when— Dean, you can confirm—?”

“When I had my… brief… crisis, yeah,” said Dean. “You were very helpful.”

“He made bread,” Cas said to Jesse, voice and gaze flat. “He left it outside my door. And the note said: ‘I made bread.’”

“No,” Dean corrected. “The note said, ‘I made you bread.’”

“You see,” said Cas, “what I have had to put up with.”

“I also,” put in Cesar raising a finger, “listened to Cas whine about this man—”

“That was one time,” said Cas.

“Aw, what did you whine about?” Dean asked, grinning.

Cas took another drink from his mezcal, making a face at the strong taste. It should’ve looked funny, but it just made Dean love him more.

Cas looked at the others, eyes somehow deadly serious and amused at the same time. “The whole summer,” said Cas, “he takes me on the best dates of my entire life. And he doesn’t even know they’re dates. And I’m trying not to read into things because it’s not his fault he’s so likeable and attractive and has freckles on his ears.”

“And what’d you tell him?” Jesse asked Cesar. “What was your great advice?”

Cesar winced, though he still smiled. “Well—forgive me, Dean—I think I said it’s not for nothing when someone looks at you like what Cas described.”

“So you weren’t surprised when I told you I’d kissed Cas?” said Dean.

“I was surprised it hadn’t happened before then,” said Cesar.

Dean turned his head to bring Cas back into the conversation, only to find Cas with his chin resting on his hand, his head turned towards Dean, drinking him in and looking like he’d stopped listening some time ago. Looking at Dean like he was the only person in the room.

“Cas?” said Dean.

“I liked our dates,” said Cas.

“I think it’s time to get you home, cowboy,” said Dean.

“You do like cowboys,” Cas said with narrowed eyes and a smile tracing across his lips.

Dean laughed, but he was pretty sure Cas had forgotten they weren’t alone. He tugged on Cas’ arm to guide him back to standing and he thanked Cesar and Jesse for the good evening.

They joined to say goodbye as Dean shepherded Cas to the door. Cas wouldn’t take his eyes off of Dean, his lashes looking dark and full with the calm and satisfied character of his gaze. Dean took his hat down from the hook by the door.

“I’m going home with him,” Cas said aloud. “He’s that beautiful and I’m going home with him.”

“Oh sweetheart,” said Dean. “You’ve hit the limit.”

“I’m sweetheart,” Cas said flatly, looking at Cesar and Jesse. “He means me.”

“Not so sure I should send you that fruit basket after all,” Dean said to Cesar. He grinned and took Cas’ hand, intertwining their fingers to tug Cas with him out the door.