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The day Dean could drop out of high school, he did. Never looked back.
He told his dad it was because he wanted to be available for hunting. Which was partly true, but there were other reasons as well.
He'd somehow gotten through 4 years of school only able to read at a 6th grade level. That's what his test scores showed, the ones he hid from everybody. Yeah, he could understand some of the stuff he read for hunting, but he didn't read much of it--most of it was up to Sam to read. He was 12 and so smart for his age, so they always went to him for research, and when he couldn't find it--which was rare--either their dad would or he'd call up someone else.
He hid his scores so his dad wouldn't call him dumb and laugh at him with breath stinking of too many beers for his own good, and so Sam wouldn't think less of him--or worse, offer to teach Dean himself and see just how stupid and slow he really was.
It wasn't as if he didn't try. Fuck knows he did, but his eyes shivered over the letters or he couldn't pay attention to the book in front of him when he tried to read, and listening to other people read he just got too distracted to be able to comprehend what was being said.
Well, actually, he knew how he'd gotten through school. A few of the teachers hated him for acting out in class--he just couldn't make himself sit down all the time, legs itching to be up and moving and brain itching to talk to the others in class--but too many of the teachers he had through the months and years liked him, in a way that adults weren't supposed to like him.
He knew the words for it. He just couldn't say them about himself.
He must have had a big neon sign pointing to him everywhere he went, because it happened too many times for it to be a coincidence.
It started when he was young, with one of the hunters that they stayed with. He was a loud drunk, spilling liquor down his shirt and laughing at a volume that hurt Dean's ears. His hands were everywhere later that night, John gone on a recon mission and the hunter--Dean didn't even remember his name, only his hands and voice--said that this was his payment for being a babysitter. He seemed to take forever to be satisfied, and 6 year old Dean choked and cried as quietly as he could so he wouldn't wake up Sam, 2 years old and sleeping in the same room.
Not every hunter they stayed with did that, but enough did that every time he and Sam had to stay with another hunter--except for Uncle Bobby, who never did that, and barely ever put his hands on them for any reason--Dean had to hold back instinctive tears. He couldn't tell his dad. He was old enough to know it was shameful, what happened to him in the dead of night, and couldn't tell anyone. They were all different, did slightly different things, but they all, in one way or another, said he'd regret it if he told anyone.
As far as he knew, no one had ever touched Sam like that, and he was grateful. He knew he was the pretty one, and it only got more pronounced the older he got, the more muscular he got. Sam was scrawny, which was a little weird but good--he could get into places John and Dean couldn't, and he wasn't as attractive to the hunters that came through.
A couple of them threatened to take it out on Sam if Dean didn't comply. But he would always comply.
When he was 12, new kid in middle school for the first time, he went to a football game with an eighth grader. The older kid invited him to the locker room after the game, saying his older brother was in there and wanted to talk to new potential recruits for the team, and said that he was impressed by his abilities in gym class.
It happened there too. One of the three players waiting for him gave him an uncapped water bottle that tasted a little funny, and then everything got kind of hazy and scary but he couldn't control his body enough to fight back from what they did.
The next morning, he took a knife from his dad's bag and tried to kill himself, but he wasn't brave enough to do what he needednto do and his dad found him and rushed him to the hospital, and then broke him out before they put him in the mental ward.
He told one person about the attack after he got out, the eighth grader whom he thought was a friend, and the kid said 'you shouldn't have taken an open drink' and walked away.
He didn't tell anyone else. Just kept his soreness to himself and didn't let his dad or Sam see the bruises from the teens until they healed.
Later the same year is when it started with teachers. When they started noticing him lagging behind all the others, and offered to boost his grade if he would do them a favor.
Most of them called it a favor, or an extra-curricular activity, or extra credit. And they were so bold as to say it right there in class. "Dean, are you turning in any extra-credit today?" And wait for him to join them at lunch, they'd block the window and lock the door and he was theirs until he could go to his next class, clenching his muscles so he wouldn't shake so much.
And that happened for four years, until he turned 16 and dropped out so fast it made the principal's head spin.
Too many reasons to do it, not enough reasons to stay and endure any longer.
So he couldn't read as well as Sam. So what? There's nothin' wrong with learning hands-on instead of reading from a book.
He would never force himself to do that again, as long as he could help it.