pre-series fic for Jayne Faire
Did you think I forgot? Apparently, I was not able to write a quick-fic, but I finally finished (though couldn't come up with a title) this random bit of preseries 'birds and bees' business. So, justforspite this is for you!
“Hey Sammy, what's this?”
Sam looked up from the Algebra worksheet that was giving him a headache to his older brother sitting on the sofa, folding laundry in the living room. As soon as he saw the paper Dean was holding, he felt his face get warm.
“Just a permission slip,” he mumbled, trying for nonchalance, but the crack in his voice gave him away just as much as his burning red ears and cheeks.
“A-ha,” he said as if Sherlock Sam had just solved a big mystery, got up from the sofa, and walked into the kitchen to sit beside his brother at the table.
“You know,” Dean said conversationally, “I realize that you are the genius of the family kiddo ('kiddo' not 'shorty' anymore because his baby brother had finally gone and grown that extra inch to make him taller than Dean, and if that isn't the most unfair thing ever...), but even if I hadn't been tipped off by the “I give my permission” followed by the line for Dad's signature, I think that even I could have deduced that this is a permission slip - what with the words 'Permission Slip' written across the top and all.”
“Well,” Sam muttered, not taking his eyes off of his homework (and of course it was something that made absolutely no sense so he couldn't even pretend to be hard at work on it), “there you go.”
“Put the common exponents together first, summing the coefficients,” Dean told him after glancing at the worksheet in front of his brother, blank of all pencil marks save Sam's name at the top.
“Huh?” Sam was sure his brother was speaking another language, and not one that he knew - and he knew several well enough to know, you know?
“Right here,” Dean smiled sympathetically, and if it hadn't been about math Sam would have thought that his brother was mocking him or making fun of him. Leave it to Dean to go and be nice about something when you least expect it.
“See, in this first equation: (2x2 + x + 3) + (x2 + 5x + 1)? Start by putting the like-parts together.”
“Like this?” Sam asked as he slowly wrote the first pair out: 2x2 + x2.
“Right,” Dean encouraged. “Now keep going with the rest of the numbers. (pause while Sam began writing) So, when did they start doing this?”
Sam finished the first step of the equation and then looked up, seeing Dean nodding towards the permission slip. Sam looked at his brother for a moment to see if he was joking or somehow setting him up or something. When he realized that Dean was simply asking out of curiosity, he answered.
“In the 70s, if the filmstrip is anything to go by,” Sam told him off-handedly.
“Filmstrip? They letting you watch porn in that school?”
“Its not porn, Dean,” Sam told him with a hint of exasperation. “Its sexual education class. So far, the film has just been about getting pimples and growth spurts and how your voice changes. Tomorrow is when they separate us and get a little more... detailed.”
“Now do the actual adding,” Dean said, pointing towards Sam's worksheet again. “Detailed?”
“Yeah,” Sam said as he wrote the final part of his answer: 3x2 + 6x + 4, looking for his brother's approval and getting it with a nod and a small (proud) grin. “They split up the boys from the girls and we get two different films about... more... specific changes and stuff.
“You know, Mike told me that both of his brothers took the class and the oldest is older than you. I'm sure you had it when you were in eighth grade.”
“So, you want me to sign that for you?” again nodding to the permission slip. Dean had probably signed more permission slips and report cards and medical forms than Dad had himself. He had even faked the sloppy, near illegible signature when Dad had been in a cast after fighting off a particularly nasty poltergeist. Honestly, if John began signing the slips himself, the school might think one of the boys forged it.
“Might as well,” Sam gave a little smirk, “but its not like I'll learn anything new - I do have you for a brother after all. Of course, I might learn the actual names of things and not just the vulgar slang you like to use.”
“You see,” Dean laughed, “all those stories were purely for your benefit.”
“Yeah right,” Sam shook his head and rolled his eyes even as he let a little laugh escape, then went back to his worksheet.
Seeing that Sam was getting through the rest of the problems on worksheet with little hesitation, Dean went back to the living room and resumed folding laundry. He was sure he would have remembered taking a sex ed class. Of course he'd remember - and since he didn't, he must not have had one.
Taking his thoughts back to his eighth grade year - 1993 - he soon realized what must have happened. The Winchesters were always on the move, with the boys switching schools more than the average army brat. But, in '93 they set a new record and Dean and Sam had attended four different schools in four different states. (five, if you went by calendar year instead of the school year)
Somehow, with all the moving around, and the fact that no two schools were ever on the same curriculum schedule, fourteen-year-old Dean had managed to miss any and all sexual education classes. Not that he hadn't learned a few things on his own. The bad thing about being the perpetual new kid was that you could never make lasting friendships. The good thing about being the perpetual new kid was that you learned to make friends fast - and Dean learned early how to put on a charming smile and say all the right things.
Of course, his real education came quite unexpectedly. He had been paired up with another boy in his class - a basketball player named Greg Westen - to work on a science fair project. Somehow he had talked Greg into a more original project than a model volcano (though he thought that Greg's mother and her distaste for anything messy had a lot to do with it, too) and they spent the afternoon coming up with a plan to build an extremely sensitive electroscope for detecting static electricity.
The second afternoon spent at Greg's house turned out a little differently. The boys began the project - well, had gotten most of their materials out and started putting it together - only to be interrupted a short time later by Greg's father, basketball coach Westen. Apparently, the team had a practice, and father and son left quickly without more than a rushed 'bye' to Dean.
Not really sure what to do next - what with being left alone in a (rich) classmate's (extra-large) house - Dean decided to finish up what he was doing, clean up his materials, then walk home. When all he had left to put away were his tools, he heard the front door open again followed by the sound of things being thrown into their places angrily and enraged muttering and growls.
“Mom! I'm home!” a young female voice called out. “Mom? Dad?” she was getting closer. “Hell-Lo!?” she said as she burst through the swinging door into the kitchen.
Dean stood stock still as the girl - Greg's older sister - jumped and nearly screamed at the sight of him.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked him.
“Um, I'm your brother's... I mean, we're partners for, um, this school project thing...” he knew he sounded like an idiot, stuttering and bumbling his way through a sentence, but he couldn't stop himself.
“What? That science fair thing?” she asked, sounding a little less annoyed and a little more human. When he nodded, she looked down at the electroscope in front of him. “So, you're the one that's gonna keep Greg playing basketball, huh? I'm guessing this... thing... was your idea. He probably thought all science projects included a papier mache volcano - like that would have brought his grade up enough to keep him from failing science.”
Dean grinned, feeling a little more comfortable, and resumed putting his tools away.
“So, what's your name?” she asked him, and he noticed her eyes taking in all she could see of him. “And... what is this?” pointing to the nearly complete (no thanks to Greg) project.
“Its a simple circuit that can detect the invisible fields of voltage which surround all electrified objects,” he told her, then looked up to see he had completely lost her on the details. “And, I'm Dean.”
He wiped off his hand on a paper towel and extended his arm to shake her hand, having been taught that this was the proper way to introduce himself. She gave him a raised eyebrow and a crooked grin as she took his hand and introduced herself - Amy or Allie or Annie, or something.
They talked while Dean finished putting his tools away. Well, Ashley (or Avery or whatever) talked. Dean soon learned all about her - sixteen years old (seventeen in three weeks), high school varsity cheerleading captain, dated the captain of the football team for over a year... until he dumped her... tonight... just before she came into the house yelling and throwing things.
When Dean finished cleaning up, he quietly told her he had to leave.
“What's your hurry?” she asked, blocking his path and studying him from head to toe again.
And that's how it all started. For the next two weeks, Dean would walk over to Greg's house, arriving about five minutes after Greg and his father left. He and Audrey (or Aubrey or whatever) would go up to her bedroom and she would... tutor him.
As Dean was walking to meet up with Angie (or Andie or whatever) one week before her birthday, he started to realize how incredibly lucky he had been - to be at the exact right place, at the exact right time - and then came to the conclusion that something very, very wrong was going to happen. After all, good things didn't happen to Winchesters, not without repercussions anyway... and those repercussions would be happening soon.
In fact, sooner than he thought. When he got to the Westen home, he noticed an unfamiliar car in the driveway. He walked slowly to the front door and stopped without knocking. He had just turned around, deciding to leave, when the door opened and he was roughly pulled inside.
It seemed that Addie (or Abby or who the hell cared) had told her ex that she was seeing someone, knowing he would get jealous and come back to her. She tried to tell Dean that she didn't know quarterback-boyfriend would be so angry or that this would happen, but he was a little beyond caring - what with said quarterback-boyfriend and four of his buddies trying to beat the ever-loving $#!% out of him.
Though Dean ended up with a split lip and various cuts and bruises for his trouble (of course, quarterback-boyfriend ended up with a broken nose and his friends faired similar), he had a hard time finding fault with Greg's sister. After all, she taught him what no sex ed class given at school could ever have - at least not with such hands-on accuracy and specified techniques.
Smiling to himself at the memory, Dean decided then and there that his brother deserved more... better. He knew his father wouldn't be giving Sam 'the talk' - after all, he had never gotten all 'birds and bees' with Dean. This was something that the older brother would have to address.
It wasn't as is he hadn't paved the way already. Dean was the one to notice when Sam started having 'those' dreams, telling him it was natural and normal. He was the one who told his little brother stories after all of his dates - in detail - and realized that Sam had been paying more and more attention, mentally taking notes, in recent years. Dean was the one to bring home a girl from his class last year to teach Sammy the finer points of kissing (knowing full-well that the girl in question assumed she was doing it as a favor to him and would therefore get closer to Dean - and Dean made sure to repay her kindness afterward).
Sam had had his sexual education out the yin yang since Dean had begun kissing girls. Sammy would notice something different about his brother - about the way he was acting, ask what was going on, and Dean would tell him - in Technicolor detail. Sam knew more now than Dean had at the same age.
And, of course, this sexual education class would be giving him all the technical junk, er, knowledge.
But, Dean realized the one thing that both he and the school would be inadequately preparing Sam for: how to treat a girl/woman. And that was the talk that he needed to have with his brother. Because Sam deserved a nice girl who would treat him well, love him, care for him - someone good.
Dean knew that his own carefree lifestyle was not good enough for his little brother and, though he didn't put the knowledge into practice for himself, he knew how to find a nice girl and treat her right.
“Hey Sammy, come in here, would you? We need to have a little talk...”