Lonestar State of Mind

chapter 6 I'm a little unsteady

Note: The title of the chapter is from the song Unsteady by X Ambassadors

After Claire left, Dean got a little down. Seeing Sam and Eileen, then Claire, it had felt like his family was back together, so when he had to go back to being alone, that weighed on him a little.

He didn’t break down, but he did let loose, maybe a little too much. He went out to a bar, and he got drunk. He acted like the self-destructive idiot he used to be, and then he got melancholy. He started to think about all of his old drinking buddies and where they were now.

Crowley was dead. And he was a sticky subject for Dean because yeah, he had been a dick, but in the end, he had been a good dick, and he had died for a good cause. That made Dean depressed because, at times, he’d hated Crowley, but if he was honest, he had never wanted him to die.

Bobby was dead. And Bobby was the one person, apart from Sam, who would call him out on his bullshit. If Bobby were here right now, he’d tell him to quit moping about Cas because moping ain’t gonna bring him back, is it you idjit? Dean smiled half-heartedly as Bobby’s voice rang in his head.

And Benny. Benny wasn’t just dead; Dean had killed him. If Dean was honest, Benny had been something of a breath of fresh air. When he had told Sam that purgatory was pure, he had meant it. There were no rules there, no limits. Anything went, and that had meant that for the first time in his life, Dean hadn’t repressed the way he felt about Benny. If he was honest, Benny had been his first step towards accepting who he was as Dean Winchester, not as the hunter who was constantly trying to be John Winchester.

“How you doing there, partner?”

The voice pulled Dean out of his thoughts. He looked along the bar at the man who had spoken to him – he had something of Benny about him and that same slow southern drawl. And he was giving Dean the look – the look that a guy gave another guy when he could tell he was into guys.

So Dean went home with him, and he was self-destructive.

And afterwards, he sat in the Impala and hit the wheel angrily. Then he drove home when he really shouldn’t have, he’d had too much to drink, and he knew it.

Somehow, he got home without hurting anyone, but when he looked at the angel wings on the side of the house, Dean felt overwhelmed with guilt. Still drunk and angry at himself, he went inside and got some paint.

As he slapped it onto the angel wings, well aware of the angry tears in his eyes, he spoke to a man he knew wasn’t listening.

“You don’t tell a man you love him, then go and die on him, Cas.”

The angel wings were half covered.

“You don’t do that,” He slapped some more paint on.