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Dean drives a lot. He loves the open road. There’s a sense of meditation that comes over him while baby eats up the miles. Just him and his music, and sometimes his thoughts. He thinks about them occasionally. He imagines what the Deans in the other universes are like. He wonders how many of them are girls, which sometimes flows into thinking about what it would be like if he was a girl, but he stops that train of thought pretty quickly.
He thinks about Deanna and her kid brother Sammy in a life that didn’t start out fucked. He thinks she’d be a cheerleader in high school, obviously the captain. He tries to picture who he’d end up with in that life. Who Deanna would end up with. Maybe in that world, Cas isn’t an angel of the lord, but a quiet nerd who wears a trench coat to his college classes and is too enthusiastic about bees. He imagines a future for Deanna where she leaps into her Cas’s arms after he bakes her a homemade pie, and she still becomes a mechanic, because fuck you, she can do anything. And she’s holding Cas's hand while they watch Sammy’s graduation from law school and her dad looks over and smiles at her and there’s no shame in her love.
There’s no hoarseness in her voice from screaming in hell for decades.
And he imagines and dreams and lets himself yearn on these long stretches of road. Wanting to be in a different form, wanting to be in a situation where his feelings are acceptable.
Wanting.
After a time, he shakes his head, and lets Deanna and Cas and their two kids and their nice house sleep. He pulls out his Zepp tape and cranks it loud, letting baby take him to a new place. Cradled in the only home he’s ever known, his cape of shame and self disgust settles on his shoulders again like a worn blanket. He’ll keep his thoughts in line.
He’s a good soldier.