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When he was little, he always had trouble with words.
It began with the fire. The freak fire that happened in his brother’s nursery that left his mother dead and his father alcoholic and increasingly more abusive. The fire that left his brother blaming himself for weeks after finding out he was the one she went back to save, the fire that left him unable to say what he wanted.
Because with his father shoving his brother in his arms, saying, “Now, Dean, Go!” and the smoke and orange light pouring out the window, Dean had no idea what was going on. And when his father came back, alone, Dean asked “Where’s Mommy?” the way any four-year-old would but instead of saying gently, “Mommy’s gone,” he got “Shut up.” And when he tried again, he got a slap and a “Just shut your goddam mouth, please.” And so he did.
His father took him to a therapist after six months of no words. He didn’t even notice at first, just thought his son was being quiet, but when John asked him directly “What do you want for breakfast?” and Dean pointed at the diner menu instead of just saying “Pancakes” he realized something was wrong.
The therapist couldn’t get him to talk. No matter what, he stayed stubbornly silent, and they were thinking he might be ‘slow’ and that holding him back in kindergarten another year might help when Sammy said his first word and it was “Dean!”
No one knew that when they were alone, Dean would talk to Sammy for hours and help him walk and talk and everything, but when he said “Dean” with no one else to tell him his brother’s name often enough for it to stick, they realized Dean had been hiding his voice instead of losing it.
They had been living in Sioux Falls with John’s best friend, Bobby, but after finding out his son was fine John took off. They started staying in motel room after motel room, Dean only going to school when John remembered.
By the time Dean was seven, he only spoke to Sammy by choice. He answered questions when asked, and participated loosely in conversations occasionally, but his intense stutter left him to the mostly mute way he’d been throughout childhood. He rarely had friends, as he was often made fun of, and teachers took one look at the scrawny, underfed kid and immediately told him “If he ever needed help…” This only increased when he opened his mouth to respond, and the words came out shaky and broken, like him.
Most teachers were shocked when his test scores came back highest in the class, especially since he almost never did his homework. Moving around as often as he did, he didn’t see a point.
He loved reading because it didn’t require talking, unless it was reading out loud, and he never did that except with Sammy and he never stuttered around Sammy so it was okay. He loved writing too because his stutter wasn’t there unless he wanted it to be. Writing, he could control the characters and the words so they did what he wanted. With so little control in real life, it was a blessing. But again, only Sammy was allowed to read his stories, and even then only some of them.
When he turned twelve, his baby fat vanished, he shot up to 6’ 1” by the time he was fourteen and his green eyes, pursed lips, and tan made him very desirable. Entering high school, he was immediately popular in the new town (a tiny thing called Fairfax in rural Indiana) and despite his lack of talking, had girls throwing themselves at him left and right. If anything, his lack of words made him “Mysterious”. His stutter was mostly under control, only showing up when speaking in front of the class for projects and since half the kids did that he could shrug it off as nerves like the rest of them instead of a speech impediment.
He lost his virginity to beautiful cheerleader Amanda Heckerling two weeks into freshman year, and dumps her two days later after snogging another cheerleader. He and Sammy leave town shortly after that.
His dad is known to leave the boys alone for weeks at a time, and in order to defend themselves, they are taught how to shoot and punch and use a knife. Sammy hates it – he’s always been the more scholarly type. Dean loves it. He doesn’t have to talk when he fights, he’s good at it. It makes his dad proud. Then Dean opens his mouth again and John flinches as his shaky, broken words, because they remind him his son is not whole, has not been whole for a long time. His son is like him, and he wishes he could fix it.
His dad walks in on him kissing a guy when he’s sixteen. He’s not happy. One “teaching” later, and Dean makes sure to hide all the ‘bi’ in his bisexuality.
When he’s seventeen, he drops out of school to get a job after his dad goes missing for two months and they run out of money. Sammy isn’t happy, but he accepts it.
Sammy goes out with a girl named Ruby when he’s fourteen, and ends up in the hospital with an addiction to who knows what. He’s sixteen before Dean manages to trust him enough not to trail him everywhere other than actually inside his school.
Dean starts dating Lisa Braeden when he’s nineteen, but leaves suddenly when he hears his dad’s been in an accident a few states away. He takes Sammy with him, and doesn’t hear from Lisa for years.
When Sammy goes to college (against their dad’s wishes, but Dean secretly gives him some money and clothes and tells him to please call), Dean ends up leaving his dad to travel on his own for a while.
John dies in a drunken car crash right before Sammy graduates from college, and Dean goes to Sammy to tell him and finally meets Jess, his beautiful girlfriend and they all go to the funeral. Sam and Jess go back to Stanford and Dean decides to visit Lisa.
He arrives to find her with a small boy, about five or six, named Ben, who despite not really looking much like Dean other than some freckles and a similar build, acts just like the man Lisa eventually admits is his father.
Dean settles down with Lisa for a year, before tragedy strikes and Lisa is killed in a car crash very similar to the one that took John – the only difference being Lisa wasn’t the one drunk.
Dean takes Ben to California to live near Sam and Jess and their daughter Mary Ellen. Ben and Dean both need to get away from the memories in Battle Creek, Michigan, where they’d lived before.
Dean ends up working as a mechanic during the day and a bartender at night. Both his bosses have familiar faces: He works at Singer’s Auto Shop with Bobby, John’s old friend and the Roadhouse, owned by Ellen Harvelle, Bobby’s second wife (after Karen died years before Dean was born). He finds a sister in Jo, Ellen’s daughter with Bill Harvelle who’s died as well. His family is great here, and he’s happy for the first time in ages. Sure, he still stutters some, but it’s easier.
Sam becomes a lawyer, and his assistant, a quirky redhead named Charlie, finds a lot in common with Dean. The two become close, but as Charlie is engaged to a nurse named Gilda, they never think of each other as more than siblings.
The only thing missing in Dean’s new life is a partner, but he begins to accept that he will never have that.
Until one day, a man walks into the bar in a suit and trench coat, with total sex hair and amazing blue eyes, and says in a surprisingly deep voice “One beer, please” and Dean is hooked.
He saunters right up, and says, “Hi, I’m Dean. Who might you be?”
The man replies, “Castiel Novak.”
And Dean talks to him, having a whole conversation sober (mostly) with a totally hot guy and later manages to get his number.
He doesn’t have any trouble with his words. He doesn’t even stutter once.