Dean Winchester x GN reader
Warnings: a little angsty
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Dean Winchester had always been good at knowing where the line was.
More importantly, he was good at knowing exactly how close he could get to it without ever crossing. It was a skill he’d developed long before he ever had a name for it, somewhere between learning how to read a room for exits and learning how to read people for weaknesses. You figured out what they wanted, gave them just enough of it to keep them interested, and made sure you never gave them enough to expect anything from you in return.
Most of the time, anyway.
There were rules to it. A hunt was a hunt. A motel room was a motel room. A pretty face was a pretty face, and if that pretty face happened to be interested in him, Dean wasn’t exactly the kind of man who was going to complain about it. He could flirt, he could tease, he could make somebody laugh until their stomach hurt, and when the time came to move on, he could do that too.
No complicated conversations at two in the morning about where things were going.
Which was probably why he liked the person sitting across from him in the diner so much.
They had a way of looking at him that made it difficult to tell whether they were amused by him or simply trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with him. Dean wasn’t entirely sure which possibility he preferred. Either way, he found himself watching them over the rim of his coffee mug, letting his attention linger a little longer than necessary.
Eventually, they caught him.
Dean blinked, only once, before the familiar crooked grin settled across his face. He wasn’t about to let himself get caught off guard when he could turn it into an opportunity.
They raised an eyebrow. “That’s your excuse?”
“No.” Dean took another slow drink of coffee, then lowered the mug and leaned back against the booth with the kind of casual confidence that suggested he had absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about. “That’s my compliment.”
A laugh slipped out before they could stop it, and Dean felt a small, ridiculous sense of victory settle in his chest.
That was why this worked.
They laughed at his stupid lines instead of falling for every single one of them. They pushed back when he teased them, rolled their eyes when he got too cocky, and seemed entirely immune to the particular brand of Winchester charm that had gotten him out of more trouble than he could count.
Three weeks wasn’t long enough for anything else.
They’d met on a hunt, spent a couple of nights in the same motel, and somehow ended up lingering together after the case was finished. Since then, they’d developed a habit of finding excuses to stay a little longer whenever their paths crossed. A late dinner after a hunt. A drink at some dive bar neither of them would remember the name of in the morning. A stolen hour in the back seat of the Impala while Sam was conveniently somewhere else.
Nothing that needed a name.
“So,” they said, pulling Dean back into the conversation, “are you always this charming?”
“That must get exhausting.”
Dean’s grin widened. “You’d be surprised.”
“I imagine you tell everyone that.”
He pressed a hand to his chest in mock offense. “Ouch.”
“Probably.” Dean took another drink, then tilted his head toward them. “You jealous?”
They stared at him for a moment before shaking their head. “Of your nonexistent line of admirers?”
“Ah.” He nodded slowly, as if they’d just confirmed something very important. “So you are jealous.”
The eye roll that followed was so predictable that Dean laughed before they even finished doing it.
He liked the way they rolled their eyes when he was being an ass. He liked the little crease that appeared between their eyebrows whenever they were trying not to laugh. He liked that they never seemed particularly impressed by him, which was strangely refreshing after a lifetime of people either being afraid of him or assuming they knew exactly what kind of man he was.
He liked the way they looked at him when they thought he wasn’t paying attention.
His eyes dropped to his coffee.
That was a thought he didn’t need to finish.
He was getting ahead of himself, and Dean Winchester did not get ahead of himself. He knew better than that. This was easy. This was fun. It didn’t need to become anything else.
He repeated that to himself until the words almost sounded convincing.
The first real warning sign came three days later.
Dean was sitting on the hood of the Impala outside the motel, running an oiled cloth along the barrel of his gun while Sam was inside finishing up the research. The morning was cool enough that the coffee in Dean’s hand had gone cold before he’d finished half of it, and the parking lot was quiet except for the occasional passing car on the highway.
The motel room door opened behind him.
Dean looked up automatically.
They stepped outside, still half-asleep, wearing one of Dean’s shirts.
The sleeves hung too long over their hands, and the hem fell lower than it should have. Their hair was a mess from sleep, and there was a faint crease along one cheek from the pillow.
Dean stared for a second longer than he meant to.
They smiled sleepily. “Morning.”
Then they walked toward him holding out a paper cup.
He took it slowly, his fingers brushing theirs in the process. The cup was warm against his palm.
“Don’t make it weird,” they warned.
Dean’s mouth curved into a smile. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
They shook their head and moved toward the driver’s side of the Impala, leaving Dean staring down at the cup.
Black coffee. Two sugars.
Dean looked toward them again.
They glanced back over their shoulder, looking genuinely confused by the question. “Of course I remembered.”
Then they climbed into the car as though they’d done nothing remarkable at all.
Dean remained where he was for another moment.
He’d mentioned it once. Maybe twice. He couldn’t even remember when. It was the kind of insignificant detail people usually forgot five minutes after hearing it.
Something warm moved through his chest, subtle enough that he could have ignored it if he wanted to.
Dean was very good at ignoring things.
He looked down at the coffee again and gave a quiet, almost disbelieving laugh.
He hopped off the hood and walked around to the driver’s side.
The second warning sign was harder to ignore.
It happened during a hunt, because apparently the universe had a sense of humor.
The farmhouse had been abandoned for almost twenty years, but the spirit inside hadn’t gotten the message. Doors slammed on their own, objects moved when nobody was touching them, and the EMF meter had been screaming for the better part of an hour.
They’d split up because Dean had insisted they would cover more ground that way.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
Twenty minutes later, Dean was standing in a dark hallway with his flashlight sweeping across peeling wallpaper and empty doorways, listening to the silence.
He told himself he wasn’t worried.
They were an experienced hunter. They knew what they were doing. There was no reason for him to be checking his phone every few minutes.
Still, he checked it again.
Dean shoved it back into his pocket and continued down the hallway, trying to convince himself that the tightness in his chest had everything to do with the hunt and nothing to do with the fact that he hadn’t heard from them.
Then he heard the scream.
Everything inside him went still.
His gun was in his hand before the sound had even finished echoing through the house. He ran toward it, boots pounding against the warped floorboards as he tore down the hallway, every carefully measured thought about staying calm and assessing the situation disappearing beneath one terrifying certainty.
Dean rounded the corner and saw them.
Their back was slammed against the wall, a dark, distorted shape twisting around their body. For one horrible second, Dean couldn’t move.
He raised the gun and fired.
The room erupted with the shriek of the spirit. The EMF meter went wild, the temperature dropped sharply, and the shadow around them seemed to tear apart before disappearing entirely.
Dean caught them before they hit the floor.
His hands moved over them almost frantically, checking their shoulders, their arms, their face, searching for blood or broken bones or any indication that the thing had managed to hurt them.
The words came out harsher than he’d intended.
Dean realized, suddenly, that he was still holding their wrist.
His fingers were wrapped tightly around it, thumb pressed against their pulse.
They reached up and placed their hand over his.
Something inside him cracked.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just enough for him to feel it.
Dean stood and took a step back, forcing himself to breathe normally. He had faced monsters that could tear a man apart without blinking. He’d walked into burning buildings, fought things that shouldn’t exist, and watched people die in front of him.
So why did the sight of them almost getting hurt make his hands shake?
And he definitely wasn’t going to think about it.
Instead, he pulled his usual grin into place.
“Guess I’m getting soft.”
They smiled faintly. “Maybe.”
Dean laughed, but there wasn’t much humor in it.
For the first time, the joke didn’t make him feel better.
That night, they fell asleep before he did.
The motel room was quiet except for the low murmur of the television and the occasional rumble of a truck passing outside. Dean sat against the headboard with one knee drawn up, staring at the screen without absorbing a single thing that was happening on it.
Beside him, they slept beneath the thin motel blanket, their breathing slow and even.
He’d seen them asleep before. Plenty of times, actually. But tonight felt different.
Maybe it was because of the hunt.
Maybe it was because he’d come too close to losing them.
Maybe he was simply tired.
Whatever the reason, Dean found himself studying them in the dim light from the television. Their face was relaxed, completely unaware of the battle happening inside his head. There was something strangely peaceful about the sight, something that made the motel room feel less temporary than it usually did.
Dean reached over and pulled the blanket higher over their shoulder.
He looked at it for a moment before slowly pulling it back.
Not vampire bad. Not cursed-object bad. Not even Sam-was-right-and-Dean-didn’t-want-to-admit-it bad.
Dean leaned his head back against the wall and stared at the ceiling.
Attachment was dangerous. He knew that better than anyone. Caring about somebody meant giving the universe another way to hurt you, and Dean had spent his entire life learning exactly how creative the universe could be when it came to taking things away.
He didn’t need to give it something else.
Except when he looked beside him, he realized that he’d already done it.
The thought came quietly.
The room suddenly seemed much too quiet.
He looked at them again, really looked this time, and everything he’d been dismissing for the last three weeks began arranging itself into something he couldn’t pretend not to see.
The way he looked for them whenever he walked into a room.
The way he wanted to tell them things that didn’t matter. Stupid things. Funny things. The kind of things Dean normally kept to himself because they weren’t important enough to say out loud.
The way he’d started memorizing their expressions without realizing it.
The way he’d felt the world tilt beneath his feet when he’d heard them scream.
The way he had wanted, with a desperation that scared him, to make sure they were still breathing.
The word barely made it past his lips.
He closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face.
He couldn’t be doing this.
But the truth had already found him, and Dean had never been particularly good at lying to himself once he was forced to look directly at something.
He was in love with them.
The realization settled over him with an almost absurd sense of finality.
Dean stared at the ceiling for several long seconds.
Then he looked over at the sleeping figure beside him and whispered the only response his brain could come up with.
Because this wasn’t fun anymore.
And for the first time in a very long time, Dean Winchester had absolutely no idea what the hell he was supposed to do next.
