Dean Winchester wasn’t one to easily fall for someone. He’d been through too much, seen too much darkness, to ever believe he deserved something as pure as love. But you… you were different.

From the moment he met you, he knew there was something special about you. It wasn’t just your looks, though he’d be lying if he said you weren’t beautiful to him. It was the way you carried yourself, the way you handled every situation with grace and strength, even in the face of danger. You were perfect to him, too perfect, and that scared him more than he’d ever admit.

So he kept his distance. He stayed on the sidelines, watching you laugh with Sam, watching you fight alongside them on hunts, always there but never close enough. You’d catch him staring sometimes, his gaze lingering a little too long, and he’d quickly look away, pretending to be engrossed in something else.

Dean had convinced himself that you were out of his league, someone too good for a guy like him. He was broken, weighed down by a lifetime of guilt and mistakes, while you seemed like everything good and bright that he could never have. Loving you from afar was the only thing he knew how to do. Getting close? That wasn’t an option. What if he ruined it? What if he ruined you?

One night, the three of you were in the bunker after a long hunt. Sam had gone off to bed, and it was just you and Dean, sitting in the war room. You were talking about something, your voice soft, your smile lighting up the room, but Dean couldn’t focus. His mind was somewhere else—on you, always on you.

He tried to shake it off, tried to focus on the beer in his hand, but his eyes kept drifting back to you. And in that moment, the weight of everything he felt for you hit him hard. The longing, the fear, the self-doubt… it was all there, swirling inside him, almost overwhelming.

"You’re out of my league," he thought, the words echoing in his head. "I’d just mess everything up if I got close."