𝐦𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 (𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫)
pairing: dean winchester x f!reader
summary: Dean will never feel anything for you but friendship, and you have long accepted that. So what's getting him all worked up about you receiving a bit too much attention from one of your witnesses?
warnings: mutual pining, jealousy, idiots in love, friends to lovers, lightly implied age gap, smut (unprotected p in v, creampie, mentions of fingering & oral - f receiving, dumbification, love confessions during the act lmao), a lot of fighting but they're soft for each other, cursing, um ig reader is a little bit of a crybaby and it's mentioned that dean takes care of her
word count: 8.7k words
a/n: if this is bad please don't tell me lol
You don’t have to fake your skittishness as you twirl restlessly on the stool, elbows sticking to the dirty bar counter. The bottle of beer in front of you looks grossly unappealing but you catch Dean’s gaze from across the bar and he raises his eyebrows at you expectantly. You bring the rim to your lips and try not to wince as the bitter, lukewarm liquid goes down.
You do your best to look out of place and uncomfortable, but something tells you that you don’t have to try too hard. The bar is dimly lit and grimy, with deer heads watching you sullenly from the wall. They’re not the only eyes on you. The bar is reasonably busy but there is only one other woman present, and she’s behind the bar. There’s a sinking feeling in your gut and you’re determined that you will never take over Sam’s gig again.
Dean saunters over, cool and cocky, the way you had seen a million times before - but this time he’s sauntering over to you like that. And it makes your stomach do strange, pathetic things.
“Hey baby, you here alone?” he asks, getting up in your space in a way that should be creepy but isn’t because it’s Dean.
“Um yeah,” you mutter, because you may have to fake your body language, leaning away from him in a way that’s supposed to express discomfort, but you don’t have to fake your shyness.
“Lemme buy you a drink. Pretty thing like you shouldn’t be left alone.”
“I’m good, thanks,” you say, twisting your beer bottle around.
“C’mon, just one drink. I don’t bite unless you want me to,” he says smirking, and the way he says it is so unlike Dean, it sets your teeth on edge. If you were really a girl he was trying to pick up, he would have taken no for an answer, but left the door open for you to change your mind, which you inevitably would. He would have said something like; ‘If you’re sure. You know where to find me, baby’ and taken his seat back with a flirty wink. He wouldn’t have insisted or thrown that corny, overused innuendo at you.
“No, really, I’m okay. Thank you.” And you’re squashing your eyebrows together, squirming in your seat, trying to look intimidated but this is Dean and nothing about him is intimidating. Not to you.
“It’s just one fuckin’ drink, bitch. Don’t be such a stuck-up priss.”
Dean’s a good actor but you know he feels remotely uncomfortable having to say any of this to you. It doesn’t matter. The man beside you, taller than Dean but not quite as broad, stands up off his stool.
“Didn’t you hear the lady? She said she doesn’t want a drink, punk.”
Dean makes a big show of backing off, raising his hands in submission and muttering something about how he was ‘only trying to be nice’, before backing away to his table once again. You turn to your saviour with a smile that you hope is radiant.
“Thank you so much,” you simper. “That got a bit scary for a second.”
He looks nice. He is lightly tanned with wavy brown hair, soft green eyes and a handsome smile that verges on shy. You think that this must be what Sam would look like, if life had been a little kinder to him.
“Don’t mention it,” he says with a modest shrug. “God, I can’t stand guys like that. I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”
“Happens more often than you think. Not many people would step in like you just did.”
His chest puffs out like a pigeon at the praise. “Maybe it’s because I’m a cop, but I can’t stand when people sit around and do nothing when something like that is happening in front of them. Makes me sick.”
“You’re a cop?” you ask, smiling and trying to do that ‘doe-eyed shit’ that Dean always accuses you of. It’s harder to do on demand. “That’s so cool, I really admire you guys. Your job must be really hard.”
He shrugs again, cheeks going a dusty pink. “It’s worth it if I can get to help people. But yeah, it can get a bit hairy sometimes.”
“I bet,” you sigh. “I heard about this weird killing spree in the next town over. Those guys sure aren’t living the dream right now. I can’t imagine all the things they have to see.”
He straightens up immediately, animation dropping from his face. “Actually, I- uh, I’m working on those cases right now. You’re right, it’s not pretty.”
You’re losing him. His eyes are drifting away from you, away from the conversation. He’s searching for an out. You’re dimly aware of Dean’s eyes on you from afar, boring holes into your head. In a blind panic, your eyebrows shoot to your hairline, one hand reaching out to his arm in a consoling manner. His eyes drop just once to where your hand meets his wax, green jacket and you feel him coming back to you.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry for bringing that up,” you say, teeth worrying your lip with anxiety that you don’t really have to falsify. “I had no idea. I’m a bit of a true crime junkie, but the last thing you want to do is talk about that right now on your time off. I’m just gonna go. It was nice meeting you and thanks for, uh-” You make a vague gesture towards Dean, who is still watching you with dark eyes.
“No,” he says, hand moving over your own one on his arm to stop you from moving. He smiles in such a genuine way, it almost makes you feel guilty. “I can let you in on a couple secrets if you promise to keep it between us.”
You brush your hair behind your ear and laugh, soft and shy.
“I’m Jeremy, by the way.”
You have to stop yourself from saying I know.
“Sold it a bit too hard back there,” Dean grumbles, leaning against Baby with his arms folded and watching you dart out of the bar. He’s wearing an irritated scowl.
“Don’t be an ass,” you say, rolling your eyes as you open the car door and slide into the passenger seat. It’s not often that you get to ride shotgun and it feels weird - like you’ve suddenly become more important. Dean follows. “You’re the one that told me to ‘charm the pants off him’ if I remember correctly, so-”
“Yeah, charm him,” he says. “I didn’t say to fuckin’ feel him up.”
“Feel him up?” you splutter with a half-laugh as Dean pulls out of the drive. “You’re ridiculous. I put a hand on his arm. I’ve seen you do worse.”
“Yeah, whatever. You get anything outta him?”
You launch into the story and try to share all the same bits that Sam usually does. You tell him how the victims were all men in their early 20s, recently discharged from a hospital not far away. How the cops are currently questioning the hospital staff but haven’t found anything suspicious just yet. You describe all the gnarly injuries, all the pieces of evidence left behind.
“Um- I think that’s it,” you say, eyebrows furrowing together as you try to figure out whether there is anything you left out.
“That’s it?” Dean says with surprise, eyes shifting from the road to you briefly. “You were in there for damn near an hour. Thought this was about to be some fuckin’ Sherlock Holmes shit.”
“Well I couldn’t just leave straight away once he gave me the information, Dean,” you say, frowning at him. “That’s suspicious. And rude.”
He squeezes his eyes shut for a second and shakes his head. “Never mind. What hospital is it?”
You bite your lip, face flushing. “Um- I don’t know. Should I have asked?”
“Goddamnit, sweetheart-”
“I can ask!”
“Ask who?” Dean frowns.
“Jeremy. The cop from the bar. I mean, I probably can’t just call him up and ask him outright but if I tell him I want to meet up then maybe I could-”
“You exchanged numbers?”
“Well yes,” you say, watching Dean carefully. He is looking more wound up by the second. “He asked and I couldn’t really say no after talking for so long. Besides, it’s useful now because I can ask him what hospital it was.”
“Jesus Christ. I asked you to charm information out of him, not to start a fuckin’ fling-”
“Well maybe you should have waited for Sam or done it yourself!” you say, voice raising in frustration. Your lip is wobbling a little bit and it feels like barbed wire is tightening around your throat. “I’m no good at this stuff, the flirting for information. I get nervous. You know that.”
Dean takes one look glance at you out of the corner of his eye and all his exasperation slips away. He lets out a puff of breath and his body deflates with it, eyes going soft and gooey like they always do when you get upset. It makes you feel like a kid in a horrid, humiliating way, but it’s better than being on the receiving end of his frustration. Dean being annoyed at you is your own personal hell. Of course, he doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know anything about that and you’d like to keep it that way for as long as you possibly can.
“Hey now, none of that. I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’ll find out what hospital is it, don’t you worry about it.”
You nod once and turn to face out the window, still fighting the unsteady feeling in your throat and behind your eyes. Damn him - you’re so soft when it comes to Dean. No matter how much you rebel against it, no matter how many phases of denial or resistance you go through, you just can’t fight how you react to him.
He is still giving you cautious looks whenever he can pry his eyes away from the road. “C’mon, sweetheart. Y’mad at me?”
You shake your head because you don’t trust your voice to carry anything, but you still don’t look at him. He sighs and pulls in to a gas station at the side of the road. It’s one of those small, Americana-style ones you’d find on route 66. You can’t imagine he can get very much in there. He gets out without saying anything and you flinch as the car door slams shut.
You tap your fingers against the window as you wait for him and think resentfully about the fact that he, and he alone, seems to determine whether you’re going to have a good day or a bad one. One smile is enough to make you feel the sun on your skin even when the clouds are out, but his disapproval or disappointment shatters you in a way that not much else can.
It’s hard to remember a time when that wasn’t the case. You look back on your life before the Winchesters as boring - insignificant, even. It’s probably pathetic and un-feminist to admit, but it’s true.
The before of your life seems grey. Before Sam convinced Dean to let you tag along with them because you had nowhere else to go. Before you managed to convince him that you were more than just a burden - that you could help with their jobs. Before you wormed your way into his heart, even if it’s not in the capacity that you might have wished for.
When Dean slides back into the car, he has a cherry cola and a pack of those sour green gummy worms that make your face scrunch up and your tonsils hurt. They’re your favourite.
He watches you as you take them from his hands and when you smile, so does he.
Dean finds out which hospital it is two days later. You’re not sure whether he called up Sam, who is out of commission in a motel a few towns back with the flu, or if he did some digging of his own while you were asleep. But he’s tugging on his jacket by the time you wake up in the motel bed, bleary eyed and sore from the awkward position you slept in.
“Dean?” Your voice is thick with sleep. “Where are you going?”
“I’m headin’ out to the hospital to poke around. It’s early. You go back to sleep, I’ll be quick.”
You would usually fight him on this, but your body is tired, having only recently shaken off the flu that you had so kindly passed on to Sam. You nod drowsily, a bit dizzy with sleep, and he gives you a fond, amused smile, as if you did something very funny. You watch him leave.
Your mind is too awake to drift immediately back into your stupor, and your body gradually wakes up with it. Within a few minutes, you’re too alert to even try. The red digits on the alarm clock read 7:09, and you suppose most coffee places would be open about now.
Dean has all your expensive hair products and shower gels out on the counter of the bathroom and you file that away to complain about later, even though you secretly kind of like when he uses your stuff. You like to think that he might have struck out a couple times because the woman could smell the sweet, girly scents on his skin and hair, and assumed he had a girlfriend.
The shower you take is short, only because there is a film of dirt on the shower floor that makes you feel like you might slip. Most of your clothes are in dire need of laundering so you pluck one of Dean’s plaid shirts up. You tell yourself that it’s ok because he has used something of yours too, even though you know you’re lying to yourself. This is very different. You’re wearing Dean’s shirt because some ugly, desperate part of you wants to feel close to him - wants to smell his scent on your skin. He’s explained to you why he uses your toiletries; “All that girly shit is fuckin’ luxe. Makes my skin feel like a baby’s goddamn ass”.
You check your phone for any updates from Dean before you leave the room, but you see only the same text that had been sitting there since yesterday.
JEREMY (COP FROM BAR - HOSPITAL MURDERS): I really loved meeting you last night. Let me know if you’re free any time soon. I would love to take you on a date.
You smile despite yourself as you descend the stairs of the motel, which leads directly onto the streets of the town. The guy really was sweet, but Dean’s reaction is enough to stave off any intentions to respond, even just for a ‘fling’, as he termed it. It’s hypocritical, really, that Dean has the freedom to chat up whoever he wants on a job but considers you to be ‘derailing the operation’ whenever there is the slightest hint of a connection on your end.
Ultimately, though, it’s fine. Your feeble old heart has a one-track mind and any attempts to satisfy it with some shoddy, off-brand replacement, whether for one night or more, leave you feeling sick and heartbroken. You’ve learned well enough by now that any time you try to move on, it just leaves you bereft.
It’s not even that you think that nobody can compare to Dean - not exactly. Dean is good and he’s kind and is smooth enough to make a nun blush. He’s smart, funny, loyal - the best kind of person there is. But you’ve met a lot of guys with those same qualities. It’s just Dean’s unique blend of those characteristics that you feel must have been concocted within him specifically for you.
And it’s fine that Dean flirts with other women. That he can pick up a girl as easy as others can tie their shoelaces and throw them away even easier. Because he has suffered enough and done enough good in this world to be allowed these kinds of indulgences, and you know that if he was aware of how you felt, he wouldn’t do it anymore. He would lock himself away to avoid hurting your feelings and eventually go insane with frustration and you know he would bear it for you if he thought the alternative was hurting you.
But you won’t let him. Because you love him and there aren’t many things you can do with your love. You can’t get rid of it, you can’t put it down anywhere, or give it to someone else. So you choose to love him in this strange, silent way instead. You suffer so that he doesn’t have to.
The diner you choose is straight out of one of those ‘small town America’ travel brochures. You’ve seen ones just like it in those autumnal TV comedies that you put on in the background. Sam watches them with you with mild interest, even if he pretends he dislikes them, but Dean complains about anything that isn’t chock-full with cars and guns and hot girls. It’s bright when you walk in and fairly clean, even if the red vinyl of the booths is cracking and there is a small stain on your table. A tall, pretty girl takes your order of coffee and scrambled eggs on toast and manages to bring them over to you almost immediately. The food is not great, but it’s not bad either.
“Hi there. Mind if I join you?”
Jeremy is standing in front of you, dressed in his blue uniform and hair askew. He’s smiling hesitantly, as if he’s not sure whether you’re about to tell him to get lost.
“Jeremy, hi,” you splutter, even as you do your level best to seem collected. “Of course. Please.”
He seems a lot more assured of himself as he slides into the booth in front of you, hesitant smile giving way to a charming grin. “You remember my name. That’s a good sign at least.”
You breathe an awkward laugh. “Sure I do. Wouldn’t forget. Are you on duty?”
“Nope, coming off. Just ordered some breakfast at the counter. Then I gotta head over to my niece’s seventh birthday party.”
“Ouch,” you say, wincing in an exaggerated way. “A seventh birthday party is a lot for the morning after a night shift.”
“Tell me about it. You kinda forget how loud kids are at that age.”
He uses the waitress’ name when he thanks her for bringing his order. It makes you smile.
“So you remembered my name and you’re good with me joining you, but you didn’t reply to my text,” he says with a small, teasing grin when the waitress - Justine, apparently - goes back behind the counter. “Trying to figure out what that means. Can you help me out here?”
Your face flushes with shame and mortification, your brain racing to come up with an excuse. He’s handsome and nice and not even trying to make you feel bad about the fact that you ignored him and he should be perfect for you. You should be jumping at the chance for someone like him to take you on a date.
“I’m so sorry,” you gush, real guilt pouring through. “Your text was so sweet, it was really shitty of me to not reply to you. It’s just- well, I’m only here for a couple of days and I didn’t want to waste your time.”
“Relax,” he laughs. “I wasn’t mad. Just don’t wanna be sitting here bothering you if you’re not…”
“You’re not bothering me,” you say, and it’s the truth. Jeremy smiles.
“Where do you live, if you’re not from near here?”
“I travel around a lot for work,” you say, and because you know that’s not really an answer that doesn’t raise suspicion - you add; “But technically Kansas.”
“Kansas isn’t that far from here. Just a matter of a few hours when the traffic’s light.” He’s not looking at you, cracking pepper onto his plate casually.
You’re not worth this kind of attention. Guilt, along with something much more complex and difficult to describe, gnaws low in your stomach. You know that you should be thankful that someone like him would even look twice at you, let alone suggest hours of travel to see you again after meeting you once. But your ungrateful heart can only scream that he is not Dean. Not even close.
“I’m in Kansas maybe thirty percent of the time,” you say with a regretful smile. “I really do move around a lot.”
Jeremy responds, but you don’t hear it. Because another sound has taken up your attention; something low and gravelly and something that sounds an awful lot like Dean.
Your eyes snap over to the counter where Dean has just ordered two coffees to-go. You watch in slow-motion while he looks around the diner - probably looking for a hot girl to chat up, your traitorous mind taunts you - before his gaze finds you.
Sitting in the booth.
With Jeremy.
It looks so bad - it looks planned - and you can only gawp open-mouthed as Dean stomps over, looking completely murderous. Jeremy is giving you a strange look now, wondering why you have suddenly stopped responding, but there’s nothing you can say. You feel like a mouse in a trap.
“We’re going,” Dean snaps out when he makes it all the way over, placing his hand on your arm in a firm grasp. “C’mon.”
Jeremy’s eyes darken as he stands up. “Get away from her right now,” he spits. “Or we’re gonna have a real problem.”
Dean seems to remember the part he played in that little private investigation at the same time as you. The pushy creep who wouldn't take ‘no’ for an answer. His eyes flick between yourself and Jeremy for a second, before he decides it’s not worth it to blow your cover, or to get arrested on charges of sexual harassment. He scoffs for just a second and shoots you a very unimpressed glare before walking out of the diner without his coffees.
“I told you to stay here!” Dean snaps as soon as you walk in the door to your motel room again. It has been over an hour since that moment in the diner and you had been dreading this every moment since. The rest of your breakfast was pleasant, if a little awkward after that interaction. Jeremy had insisted, insisted and insisted again on dropping you back to the motel in his cruiser in a show of gentlemanliness that did more to annoy than impress you. And sure, maybe a part of you understood that you would consider the same gesture charming if it had come from Dean, but Jeremy isn’t Dean so that doesn’t matter.
“No you didn’t,” you sigh, throwing the key onto the table.
“Well, it was fuckin’ implied.”
You give him a bewildered look before collapsing down to sit on your bed and peel off your shoes. “In exactly what way was it implied?”
“When there’s a ghost going around whacking people, your natural instinct should probably be to stay the hell outta the way.”
You roll your eyes and make sure he sees you do it. “Well I’m not a male in my early twenties, so I’m not really the target here, am I?” Your mind catches up a second later. “Wait, you found out it’s a ghost?”
“Yeah, it’s a ghost,” he replies, but he really doesn't seem to want to linger on that subject right now. “That little piggy you were with might be a male in his early twenties. You don’t know, which is why you should have stayed the hell inside.”
“He’s late twenties at the very youngest and you know it,” you say. “And since when am I not allowed to go get breakfast while on a job? Come off it, Dean.”
Dean is still furious, but he seems to be scrambling to figure out how to respond. You take advantage of his momentary speechlessness. “Tell me what you got.”
He is hesitant to drop it there, but he eventually does. He still looks displeased while he walks you through what he figured out - the fact that it’s a ghost; a female from the early 1900s who was left to rot in hospital in favour of a male patient in his early 20s and subsequently died from medical neglect. She has been enacting her revenge with a host of killings every ten years around the anniversary of her death. You will be going back to the hospital after hours, when it’s a bit quieter.
“Pretty standard job. In and out,” he shrugs, and you thought he might distract himself with the details and have gotten over the whole diner incident by the time he finished telling you about it, but he’s still not looking at you. It sends a bolt of hurt through you but you shake it off.
“Right, in and out,” you agree.
The job is simple. In and out, just like he said. You distract the receptionist by asking after a grandmother that doesn’t exist while Dean chases the leads he had found earlier. He finds the bones within thirty minutes and burns them. He’s a bit banged up by the time he makes it back to where you’re waiting in reception, clothes askew and hair mussed up with a cut or two spilling blood through his shirt, but he won’t tell you what happened except that he ‘Sorted it.’ The receptionist gives you a skeptical look when you walk out with him, but she doesn’t say anything else.
You feel exceptionally useless when you climb back into Baby. The power rush you had from riding shotgun has evaporated.
“I can’t believe you made me be the distraction again,” you mutter, scuffing your shoes against the car floor just to piss him off.
“Someone’s gotta to do it,” is all he says back. He still won’t look at you, not even to give you evils for the way you’re treating Baby. Hasn’t looked at you properly since this morning in the motel. It hurt before and it still does, but now you’re just fed up more than anything. There’s only so much awkward silence you can take.
“Dean, will you- Goddamnit, can you look at me?”
He takes a second, fingers flexing around the wheel as he pulls out of the carpark. His lips flatten into a thin line, before he looks at you for a brief second, raising his eyebrows as if to say; ‘There. Happy?’
But you’re not.
“What the hell is wrong with you? I don’t know what the big deal is. You can pretend all you want that this is about me going to get a breakfast, but it’s not is it? You just didn’t like that I was with Jeremy.”
Dean wasn’t expecting that. All exasperated sarcasm melts from his face as he steals an astonished glance at you, eyes alarmed and mouth somewhat ajar. “I don’t know what you’re-”
“You don’t want me getting distracted on a job.”
At that, he seems to relax, slipping back into the same easy grouchiness as before and you wonder what it was he thought you were getting at. “Yeah, that’s it,” he mutters lowly.
“You’re such a hypocrite,” you sigh. “How come you can do whatever you want but I can’t?”
You surprise yourself as much as you surprise him by bringing this up. That’s a subject you always stay well away from - Dean and girls. You look away and pretend not to hear when Sam teases him after he stumbles into the motel room the day after a job ends. You’ve smelt all kinds of perfume on him - sweet, spicy, cheap expensive and say nothing. You excuse yourself to go to the bathroom so you can stop yourself from retching when he approaches some random table in a bar and shoots a suave smile to someone who isn’t you. But it’s spilling out of you now; not because you can’t hold it in anymore (because you can and you will until the end of time), but because it’s simply not fair. You couldn't move on if you tried, you know this, but who is he to tell you whether or not you can try?
“Because, sweetheart, it’s different,” he says, and the word ‘sweetheart’ is uttered almost sarcastically, in a way you had never heard before. You had always been his only sweetheart - one of the only things he could give you and you alone, but it was always said with a sort of gentle veneration - never like this. It feels tainted now. No longer yours.
“How is it different, Dean?” You’re trying to keep that damned barbed wire from closing in on your throat again. Trying, for once, to not be the baby that cries too easily and loves too easily and gives herself away to him for nothing in return.
“Because those girls don’t mean anything. They’re not distractions,” he explains, voice thick and low. “But you can’t have someone who doesn’t mean anything. You carry on with that asshole and you’ll end up in some fuckin’ picket fence house with a wraparound porch.”
He’s halfway there. He’s right, of course. You couldn’t just have an indistinct someone who doesn’t mean anything. You could never let them warm your bed without making yourself feel ill and blue - you had tried it before and it didn’t work out well.
But he really doesn’t understand that you could go on a hundred dates with Jeremy or with anyone else and you still wouldn't end up anywhere but right here. Following Dean around like a slobbering puppy. Because your sick, stubborn heart decided what it wanted years ago and has not forgotten.
Dean must mistake your silence for something else, because he watches you wearily, frustration falling away from his face and giving way to a panicked sort of concern. “Unless that’s…” he coughs nervously. “Unless that’s what you want.”
“That’s not what I want,” you confirm glibly. You don’t mention that it could be what you want, if he decided that it was what he wanted too. It’s your turn to avoid his eyes now. You watch the rain stream down the car window.
“C’mon, I’m tired of fightin’ with y’, sweetheart,” he says and the designation of ‘sweetheart’ is once again yours to claim. He is speaking to you sweetly, coaxing you out of your corner. But tears are springing to your eyes so you keep them trained away from him.
It’s mostly for his benefit, that you hide this from him. It’s not his fault that your world is moved by his hands alone. It’s not his fault that all his attempts to take care of you have worked so well that they backfired and hurt you.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve-” he sighs and you can hear him running his hand through his hair, even though you can’t see it. You can smell a burst of your shampoo when he does it. “I don’t know how to… Did I upset you?”
You don’t say anything for a moment, and he seems ready to speak again.
“I don’t want the… picket fence and porch,” you say, tracing raindrops with your fingers. There’s a wobble in your voice. “But it would be nice to just have someone, maybe.”
That ‘someone’ is Dean, obviously. But you can still dream of someday breaking free of these feelings - finding someone else. You won’t feel a fraction of this intensity for them but that would be ok, that would be alright. And they wouldn’t look at you the way Dean does and they wouldn’t be able to make you laugh like he can but you would learn to live with that, maybe even learn to numb your feelings for Dean from this fire into a dull ache.
Because what good is your love for Dean when you’ve had to debase it so many times? You’ve tried to bastardise it - to turn it platonic, to turn it familial, even to get rid of it altogether and none of it ever works. It returns to you, defiled and wounded but no weaker, every single time.
“You could have me.”
Even the tears in your eyes can’t stop you from looking over at Dean now. You’re searching for any sign that he might be making some sort of joke, but you can’t find it. His eyes are trained firmly on the road, a worried pinch between his brows. You almost feel like you imagined it.
“I… What?”
“If you wanted to have someone. You could have me.”
Your breath feels stuck in your lungs. Dean has no idea what he’s saying; how unintentional cruel he is being to you. You have no idea whether he means as a friend or as a warm body to satisfy some part of your longing. You don’t want to think too long about whether he means the latter - because you’re deathly afraid that you are weak enough to accept his offer and then the whole thing really will fall apart.
“I didn’t mean it in that way. I meant-”
“I know what you meant. I want to be that. For you.”
He is speaking so uncharacteristically soft. It’s not the same soft that he offers you when you’re scared or upset, the confident arm around your shoulder while he coos and comforts. This is another kind of soft. He always looks tired, but right now he looks exhausted. You’ve only seen him look this vulnerable a handful of times and you feel a strange discomfort when you realise each time has been when he was speaking about his dad.
You are soaking in his words as he puts the car in park outside the motel. Crickets croak to fill the silence between you. He is sneaking glances and you know him well enough to know that he is trying to get a read on you.
“Why?” you land on eventually.
He frowns. “The hell do you mean why?”
“Why are you offering to-? You don’t need to feel sorry for me, or whatever-”
Dean laughs, more angry than amused. “You really think I’d tell you I want to be with you because I feel sorry for you? I’m fuckin’…” Dean sighs, face twitching with discomfort and awkwardness. “I think if you just gave it a chance, I could maybe be the someone you’re talkin’ about. Maybe.”
Your face flushes with heat and your brain feels like the scrambled eggs you had for breakfast. Your mind is racing to make sense of what you’re hearing - he could ‘maybe be your someone’? “What…”
Dean shuts down, as if a sudden door slams over that vulnerability he had shown you just a minute ago. “Y’know what, forget it-”
“No!”
He pauses, his hand going still on the car door. Your thoughts aren’t making sense at this point but you’re desperate to say something - anything - that might stop him from leaving.
“I want to-” you stutter, clumsy as a baby goat. “I want you to be my maybe-someone too, but I want to know for sure that you… I don’t know how to talk about this, but please don’t leave.”
Dean is skittish when he looks back over to you. You see a flicker of something masked by a cloud of doubt. Slowly, he reaches his hand out for yours. You clutch it with urgency, holding it tight against your own. His hands feel big and rough against your skin. Your thumb glides along all the little ridges and bumps and callouses; the results of the dirty work he never lets you do. He looks as if he is almost afraid you’ll bite when he reaches the other hand out, hesitantly moving up to your face, and his throat bobs a little bit when you lean in to his touch. His pretty green eyes are watching you carefully while his thumb works its way slowly along your cheekbone and you wonder for the briefest of seconds if this is another one of your dreams.
But the next second he’s kissing you and you know it can’t be a dream. Because even in your dreams, you don’t allow yourself to imagine it would be like this to kiss Dean. In your dreams, his kisses are hot and rough, the same way you had seen him dole them out to an endless carousel of girls in dark corners of bars, while you and Sam play solitaire and try to ignore what’s happening in your eye-line.
Dean’s lips are warm and unsure, like he doesn’t know whether he is really allowed to do this. You melt into him slowly, because you had thought about this moment too often for you to freeze up when it is finally happening. He takes your bottom lip into his mouth, pulling you up against him, and chokes a broken sigh into your mouth, as if he was the one who had been waiting on this for years. As if he was the one who had to suffer all this longing, had to wield his love carefully so it wouldn’t pour out of him like water from a faucet.
You have gone astray in the feeling of his lips, of his large hands gripping your waist with such painstaking gentleness. Your heart is aching in your chest and you know it’s lost to him forever when he runs a careful hand through your hair, holding you with the same tenderness that he treats you with in all regards.
You’re not even thinking when you press yourself closer to him, clasping your hands around his shoulders and pushing your chest to his urgently. Your need for him - to just be close to him - is growing rapidly inside you like a fire. You shake a bit as Dean kisses you harder, mouth moving against yours, hot and messy.
Gone is the sweet gentleness from just a moment ago, but this is still not quite how you have seen Dean kiss strangers in bars. He’s holding you a bit tighter, kissing you with a bit more exigency. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but you’re sure you had never seen him kiss anyone like this. Heat is pooling low in your stomach and you’re squirming, legs twitching as you try to get closer to him. Eventually Dean grunts, the sound sending sparks in your stomach and between your thighs. He splays a hand over your thigh and shifts it over his own. In this position, you become aware of how hard he is. You can feel it even through the layer of jeans and it makes you gasp.
“Dean,” you breathe, struggling for air. He’s undeterred. One hand moves to gently caress the side of your neck as his mouth moves to kiss you there, soft but insistent.
“Hm?” he hums against your neck. You feel its vibration.
Your brain is failing you. The need for him is catapulting you off the edge of sanity and all your focus is garnered towards that bulge below you. You press down without even meaning to and Dean groans at the contact.
“Hey now, slow down, sweetheart,” he says, pulling away from your neck and looking up at you with half-lidded, blown-out eyes. You make a noise that you don’t even hear. You think it’s a protestation.
“F’you think I’m gonna take you in the front seat of Baby out in some scabby parking lot for our first time, you’re crazy,” he says, thumb reaching up to pull at your bottom lip.
Your heart soars. First time.
“What, you think that mangy motel room is better?”
Dean laughs. “Maybe not. But ‘least there I can lay you out all pretty. Take my time with you like I always pictured.”
His words go straight to your abdomen in a strange, pleasant mix of love and desire. You clamber off his lap in record speed.
You frown. “Are you sure?”
“Am I - fuck - what the hell are you talkin’ about right now?”
Dean is sitting up against the headboard of the bed. His gaze is dark and unfocused, sweat dripping down his brow and on to his naked chest.
“Are you sure that you want to be my maybe-someone?”
He gives you a strange look, eyes squinting and corners of his mouth poking up in that Dean-is-very-bewildered way. “Huh?”
“I just want to make sure that you’re sure, because I don’t think I’ll be able to- Oh…”
Your mind trails off the subject as Dean uses his grip on your waist to thrust his hips up just a bit, hitting that sweet spot you had just recently (tonight) discovered. His cock is deep inside you, stretching you out in a way that is almost enough to make you want to drop the subject. If you cared about him any less, you probably would.
“I don’t wanna be your maybe-someone, sweetheart. I wanna be your someone. I love you.”
That brings you back. Your heart thuds painfully in your chest, and you have the odd compulsion to cry. Your body is experiencing a lot right now. “You love me?” The barbed wire is tightening again, but this time in a good way. That steamy grin Dean had been wearing crumbles into something softer. He nods.
“But what about the girls?”
“What girls?”
You flush. “Y’know. The girls you… in all the bars…”
His hands palm your hips with a bruising grip, flexing there as he bounces you on him experimentally, like he’s trying to get you to forget that any girls ever existed. Your cunt clenches tight around him, entire body buzzing, and black spots dance behind your eyes, but you sit still because you have really fucking great self-control.
“Shit, baby,” he groans, head rolling back. “I don’t wanna talk about any damn girl except you right now.”
“Dean.”
His face scrunches up in exasperation as he fights to keep his eyes on yours. They keep travelling down to your tits. “I wasn’t lying when I said they didn’t mean anything, sweetheart,” he says, dropping down to press kisses to your neck. Your eyes flutter shut and you unintentionally grind down at the wonderful tingly feeling it gives you. Dean grunts.
“Tried to go on as normal for a while. Thought I could get over you, ‘cause I didn’t wanna burden you with my shit. Didn’t work. Just ended up with a loada pissed off girls who kicked me out after I said the wrong name. That’s it.”
You barely notice that you had begun to grind down on him again until Dean wraps his lips around one of your nipples and you let out a desperate moan. His right hand moves down, feather-light, to stroke up and down your thigh.
“How- how long?”
“Dunno. Kinda sleep-walked into it,” he says, gasping between sentences as you leisurely ride him. “Think I realised when we were at Bobby’s house that one time and I heard you bangin’ around in your room for at least twenty minutes. Walked in and saw you wrapped up in that bedsheet like a ghost ‘cause you couldn't get it on and wouldn’t ask anyone for help. ’S stupid but it made me laugh so damn hard.”
He laughs shakily as he remembers it. You try to recall, but the angle he’s hitting inside you is turning any thought into a tough feat. “I don’t remember that. Must have been years ago.”
He just nods and leans up to kiss you, pretty and desperate. You pull away, even if you would much rather not.
“You’ve loved me for years?”
“Probably longer than that too, sweetheart. Everyone else seemed to figure it out before I did. Everyone except you.”
He’s trying to distract you again with his lips on your neck, but your brain is working too fast now.
“Everyone- Dean, does Sam know?”
He grunts and you can feel it rip through his chest under your fingertips. When he looks up at you, his pretty green eyes have gone a shade darker.
“Please don’t say another man’s name while I’m fuckin’ you ever again, sweetheart,” he damn-near growls. “ ‘Specially not my brother’s.”
You’re being flipped over then, your skull narrowly avoiding the headboard, until you’re under him, knees pressed up and he’s sliding into you at his pace this time.
“But yes. Everyone means everyone.”
He rolls his hips into yours and you can’t stop the breathy moan that escapes at how he feels inside you. He’s so deep and you’ve never been this full before, but there’s no pain to it because it’s Dean and he had made sure you were ready for him - of course he did. He had played with your pussy; rubbed it and fingered it and licked it in ways you didn’t even know were possible before sliding into you with a slow, loving reverence that made your legs tremble and your heart quake. He’d eased in slowly, despite you whining that you wanted to take him all the way. Dean has always taken care of you and he always will, especially now.
“And since you clearly can’t be trusted on top yet,” he says, punctuating his point with a brutal thrust that has you gasping and clenching around him. “I’m just gonna have to fuck all those thoughts outta your clever little head. Maybe then I’ll let you get back on top. When you can’t treat this like a job we’re workin’ on and all you can think about is me and how good I’m fuckin’ you.”
God, his voice is travelling right through your body and you still can’t quite believe that this is really happening. Your hips jerk up to meet his thrust as he turns you to ruins below him. You’re still fighting to hold on to your line of questioning, but he’s making it so hard.
“Dean, I- oh-”
His hand goes down to find your clit, gives it a rub with his thumb without losing any of his rhythm.Your eyes squeeze shut and your body moves against his as if your mind doesn’t have any say or involvement in the matter.
“That’s it, let me fuck you stupid. Forget about everything else. I’ll sort you right out, baby.”
It shouldn’t be possible for him to fuck you like this. One hand still under your knee and the other playing with your clit, still maintaining a bruising rhythm that sends stars to your eyes.
It’s not fair.
Because for as many times as you had pictured being fucked by Dean, as much as you had known that nobody else could compare, you still had no concept of just how good the real thing could be. How thoroughly it would destroy you for anyone else.
“So pretty and dumb when I’m splitting you open like this,” he whispers, fucking himself so deep in that you can feel the tip pushing against your cervix. “Can’t believe you’re letting me have you like this. Knew you’d feel this good, sweetheart. Thought about you like this every goddamn day.”
You have already come twice. Once on his fingers, once on his tongue. And now he’s about to make you come with his cock. You love every woman he has ever been with for showing him exactly the ways to touch you in order to make pleasure flash in every nerve, and you hate them for ever having him like this before you did. But it doesn’t matter now, because Dean seems as far gone as you and his face makes you think that maybe he’s destroyed for anyone else too.
The noises you’re making are barely coherent - something about how good it feels, how deep he is inside you - but they make Dean smile at you, sly and patronising as his tip keeps hitting that spongy spot inside you.
“Yeah, baby?” he coos at you, and all you can do is nod, even if you’re not sure what exactly he’s asking you. “Doin’ so good. Tight pussy’s suckin’ me in.”
Your eyes flutter, fighting the instinct to close only because you want to keep watching Dean - you don’t want to miss a second of how sweet and wrecked he looks above you. He’s got the control now, but you can tell he’s close to losing it by the way his eyebrows furrow just a little and his face goes unfocused. His drooping eyes travel around your body quickly, shooting from your face to your tits to where you’re being split open by him, like he can’t decide where to look.
“Please, Dean. Need more,” you whine, just centimetres from coming. You’re not even sure you could take more at this point, but you want to see what he’ll do.
“Nuh-uh, sweetheart,” he says, even as he slams his hips into yours harder. Your eyes roll back. “Takin’ you nice and sweet right now. Gonna make you come apart real pretty for me. Enjoy it ‘cause next time I’m not gonna be this nice.”
Your brain stutters at the thought that this is him being nice. This feels utterly filthy to you.
There’s an overwhelming pit of pleasure in the bottom of your stomach and it seeps low into your pussy. You twitch once, clenching down on him, and with one more brutal thrust you’re falling over the edge, grinding right down on him. You’re spewing out words incoherently, babbling in tongues. One thing that is coherent, though - one thing that is entirely unmistakable - is how you gasp out; “I love you” in a broken moan.
You hadn’t really noticed that you hadn’t said it back when Dean first admitted it. It had felt obvious to you, like a fact of life. The sky is blue, the grass is green and you love Dean Winchester. You didn’t really think about the fact that he didn’t know.
But you think about it now. When Dean’s half-lidded eyes suddenly shoot open and he’s marvelling at you with such open awe that it makes you feel like maybe you’re something sacred to him too. His face crumbles and he seems to lose control while you’re still riding your high, spilling so deep inside you that you can feel his warmth in your tummy.
Once he’s spent, he slows his hips down and thrusts shallowly while you twitch and jerk around him, his body folding over your own in a way that makes you feel wholly and completely surrounded by him. You feel lax and satisfied as you had never been before.
“You mean it?” he asks against your neck, lips pressing a small kiss there. You know that that kiss means; it’s ok if you don’t.
You shudder out a breathless laugh and your chest moves against his because of how closely your warm bodies are pressed together.
“You really don’t understand. I’m crazy in love with you, Dean.”
His head lifts up and he searches your eyes with the same expression he uses to investigate a haunted house or look for evidence in some abandoned warehouse. “Since when?”
“Since forever,” you say, heat flooding your face. “Even when I was just some dumb kid you didn’t want tagging along with you and Sammy.”
He goes soft. He melts to a puddle and wraps himself around you even tighter, hand going to your face while he presses a hot, gentle kiss to your lips. “My girl,” he murmurs against your lips.
“You girl?” you repeat, pulling back even though you still feel like you’re floating. “Are you sure? I know you don’t really-”
Dean groans. “Sweetheart. You gonna make me fuck all those doubts outta your head again?”
You smile. “Maybe later.”
a/n: first supernatural fic! i am genuinely terrified!
