A Life Most Ordinary, Chapter Two

[sonofabiscuit77]

CHAPTER TWO

Living on a thin line;
Tell me now, what are we supposed to do
Living on a Thin Line - The Kinks

Back to Interlude One

A few months ago, to Dean’s dismay, Jonah started asking questions about why Uncle Sammy dated guys instead of girls, and if Uncle Sammy was gay, why did that also mean he was lame? Luckily, Sam was more than willing to sit down with the kid and explain carefully with diagrams and pop culture references why it was perfectly normal and natural to be attracted to boys instead of girls, and why he should never use the word gay to mean lame, whatever the other kids said.

Sam then took him on a special trip into the city to the big gay bookstore his old boyfriend David had used to manage and introduced him all around to everybody’s mutual glee - Jonah loved being the center of attention and naturally, all of Sam’s gay friends had equally adored Jonah. He came home full of excitable stories about the Todds and how someone called Wayne who was really fun and cool had given him a book called So Your Daddies are Gay: A guide for kids of gay parents, written by kids of gay parents.

Naturally, Jonah being Jonah, he took the damn book to school to present in Show & Tell which led to Dean and Sam being called in to see the school principal and be lectured about the suitability of certain reading material on young minds, and that, in turn, led to a huge fight.

Sam insisted that they remove Jonah from the school immediately and place him somewhere where he wasn’t going to be indoctrinated by “petty-minded, prejudiced, supposed educators”.

“Yeah, ‘cause he’s sure not getting indoctrinated at home!” Dean retorted sarcastically.

“What are you trying to say, Dean?”

“You. Filling his head with all this shit. Why you gotta make things so fuckin’ difficult? He’s already different from other kids, why’d you gotta make it worse? Now they all think he’s got two gay dads!”

“And you think that’s something to be ashamed of?” Sam demanded, eyes narrowing dangerously.

“No, I don’t think it’s something to be ashamed of, but it’s not true!”

“So, what about me?”

“What about you?”

“I don’t count then? Is that right? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Dean sighed wearily, “Sam - what the fuck is this about?”

Sam’s nostrils flared, lips pinched together, as he glared at his brother: “I’m just their uncle, right, Dean? What I think - that doesn’t matter ‘cause I’m not their Dad like you, I’m just the sucker who’s helping you raise them. Who gives a fuck what I think?”

“What? No! That’s bullshit!” Dean protested. But Sam was pissed, chest heaving up and down and color flooding into his cheeks as he stood in the doorway to the big den, huge shoulders blocking the room behind from view.

“You know what, Dean: fuck you! Fuck you for not standing up for me! I always thought -” he broke off, laughed bitterly, nodding to himself, “But, whatever, I get it now. You’ve never been okay with me - with what I am - and now you wanna hide it! Well, go ahead, do what the fuck you want, ‘cause I’m out of here!”

He left. 'Course he fucking left, Sam always carried through on his threats, Sam never backed down in anything.

Two days later and Simon was crying and refusing to go to sleep because Uncle Sammy wasn’t there to tuck him in, and Jonah was moping around, looking crushed and hurt, thinking Sam had left because he’d gotten into trouble at school. And as for himself, well, it was bad enough having to beg Jess to take the kids after school ‘cause there was no Sam and he couldn’t afford to get off work early, but it was later in the evening when he sat down to watch the game with a beer, turning his head to make a comment to Sam only to find a big empty space next to him that Sam’s absence really hit him. And then Simon woke up screaming from a nightmare, his hoarse, rusty vocal chords unsettling and eerie in the big, dark house.

He gave up on the game and carried Simon into his own bed and held him close, a big fuck-you to Sam and his parenting manuals and his boundaries, Dean, you gotta give them boundaries crap. After all, how many times had Sam crawled into bed with him when they were kids and it was too dark or there was a monster in his closet or under his bed? Fuck it, it hadn’t done them any harm, except for the fact that Sam had been gone for two days and he was already missing him to a degree that was slightly disturbing.

The next morning, Jonah woke him up by jumping onto the bed beside him and demanding to know when Uncle Sammy would get back from his trip, and Dean felt like a heel for promising, “Soon, buddy, soon,” just to get the kid to shut the fuck up.

The same evening at bath time as he distractedly watched Jonah pouring buckets of water over Simon’s head and cackling as Simon tried to push his big brother and tormentor away, he had a flashback to his own eight-year-old self washing four-year-old Sammy’s hair, and he knew that he had to get Sam back, even if it meant admitting that he was completely and utterly the one in the wrong (which he wasn’t).

Luckily, he didn’t need to call Sam to know where he was, he knew Sam better than anyone, which was how he knew that Sam would be at the big gay bookstore in the city. Sam’s first port of call in any crisis was always his big brother, but in this case when he guessed his big brother was the cause of the crisis (at least in Sam’s eyes) then Sam would always retreat to the bookstore. Sam did the books there, one of the cash-making side ventures, alongside the SAT coaching, ASL classes and TV reviews for that gay website, that he’d taken on since losing his job at the DA’s Office two years earlier. Dean had always been wary of the bookstore, (wasn’t it taking Jonah there that had started up all this shit in the first place?) seeing it as foreign territory - David territory - but it was Sam’s safe haven.

When Dean walked into the bookstore, a twinky-looking teenage boy with Goth-black hair and dramatic eyeliner looked up from the copy of Us Weekly he was reading, and gave Dean an enormous and overly enthusiastic smile.

“Hi, can I help you? Please say I can.”

“Uh, yeah, hi. I’m here to see Sam. I’m his brother, Dean. Is he around?”

The kid didn’t reply at first, just stared at him in a way that would do a Customs official at Tel Aviv airport proud. “You’re Sam’s brother? Fuuuuck, dude, Sam talks about you, like, all the freakin’ time, but he never mentioned, like, what a total DILF you were.”

Dean was rendered speechless for a moment, because... no, just, no... DILF? What the fuck? He was not a fucking DILF.

Seriously, he was not that old.

He licked his lips, muttered: “So, uh, Sam? He around?”

“Oh, yeah, Sam,” said the kid, still staring at him, and seriously, was he not capable of blinking? “He’s in the back. But, dude, like, before you go - promise that you’ll call me before you guys kiss and make up. ‘Cause I totally want a front seat for that shit.”

This time Dean’s mouth really did fall open. “Fuck, man, you do know we’re brothers, right?”

“Oh yeah,” he sighed wistfully, “but, like, that just makes it way, way hotter.”

“Right. Yeah, well, I’ll. Thanks,” Dean stuttered, and beat a retreat to the back of the store, feeling the kid’s eyes on his ass the entire time.

“The back” seemed to be a glorified storeroom with a desk and a computer and boxes and boxes of books with titles like The Back Passage, Manhandled, and Backdoor Friends. And Sam had taken Jonah here? Fuck.

But he wasn’t here to fight with Sammy about that kinda shit, quite the opposite, he was here to make-up with him, beg him to come home, on his knees if necessary, and, hey, at least that would give that freaky kid a thrill.

Sam was bent over a laptop, looking even more of a ginormous dork than usual in the tiny, cramped room, his stupidly long legs and arms and shoulders seemingly taking up every inch of space that wasn’t donated to piles of gay erotica.

Dean coughed and knocked a beat on the open door. Sam’s head snapped up, eyes landing on him and going wide with surprise.

“Hey,” he greeted Sam.

Sam heaved out an enormous sigh and asked, “Dean, what are you doing here?”

“What d’you think? I’m here to beg you to come home.”

“Beg me?”

“Fuck, yeah. You gotta come back. We need you. Simon hasn’t slept in two days; both of them think you left because they did something wrong.”

“You did tell them that wasn’t the case, right? You’re not letting them think that?” Sam said, looking concerned.

“Of course I did! But they’re kids, shit like this happens and they blame themselves. They don’t understand that it was just us having one of our stupid fights.”

“It wasn’t a stupid fight,” Sam said seriously. He sighed and closed the laptop, getting slowly to his feet to lean against one of the piles of books. “This is important to me, Dean. All this,” he raised his hand, waving it to take in the storeroom, the entire freaking store, “this is me. I’m gay, but I think sometimes you like to conveniently forget that, or you fool yourself into forgetting it.”

“Sam, c’mon, I don’t forget that. Look, just -“ he hesitated, licked his lips. “Okay, so, yeah, sometimes I don’t think of you as Sam, the gay dude. But you gotta see that isn’t ‘cause I’m homophobic or ‘cause I have a problem with it. It’s ‘cause you’re way more than that, you’re my dorky kid brother, you’re Sammy!”

Sam’s mouth quirked gently and he bent his head, stupid floppy hair falling across his face. Dean stepped forward, shuffling past five piled boxes until he was in the room, standing in front of his brother, the two of them taking up the rest of the available floor space. He placed his hand on Sam’s bicep and squeezed, causing Sam to raise his head and meet his eyes.

“I know that you’re just as miserable without us as we are without you. Come home, Sammy, we miss you.”

Slowly the little smile at the corner of Sam’s mouth broadened, until it was one of those startling Sam grins, the ones that Jonah could replicate so dangerously. He leaned forward; his head slumped onto Dean’s shoulder, forehead nuzzling against Dean’s neck as his arms slid around Dean’s waist, pulling him into a hug. Dean let himself relax into the touch, enjoy the sensation of holding Sam so close. Sam loved to hug, all that touchy-feely crap, that was Sammy, and throughout their childhood he had pretty much indulged Sam, so, hell, whatever, he was kind of used to it, and he was happy to indulge Sam now. Besides, it was actually kind of okay, nice almost, comforting to have Sam hold him so close, a warm calming sensation in his belly like this was how it was supposed to be.

They sprang apart at the ratatat of beats on the open door. Dean stumbled against one of the tables of books, feeling his cheeks start to heat up annoyingly, as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

“No, please don’t stop! Like, seriously, don’t stop!”

Fuck, it was the freaky kid again. Dean scowled and raised his hand to rub the back of his neck, feeling suddenly self-conscious and really, really out of place.

“Shut up,” said Sam to the kid, but he sounded amused, and not at all embarrassed. “Give us a minute, will you?”

“I’ll give you as long as you want,” the kid said with a sly, knowing tilt to his voice that Dean was really not appreciating. He risked a glance at his brother, but Sam was still looking amused, rolling his eyes at the kid’s back and getting up to push the door closed as far as it could go.

“That dude freaks me out,” Dean said with a shudder. “I think he’s totally serious about wanting to watch us make out.”

“'Course he is,” replied Sam matter-of-factly, “you ask most gay guys what their ultimate fantasy is and I bet a lot of them say twins or brothers.”

“Is that your ultimate fantasy?”

Sam hesitated for a second; Dean catching that deer-in-the-headlights expression in his brother’s eyes, before Sam ducked his head, his cheeks staining bright red. “I, Dean -“

“Dude, it is, isn’t it?” he joked. “Sam, you sly dog.”

“Whatever,” Sam retorted, the petulant twist to his mouth telling Dean that he had hit some serious pay-dirt. “You telling me you’ve never fantasized about fucking identical twins or a threesome with sisters?”

“Well, yeah, naturally. But that’s different.”

“It’s not different. This is what I’m trying to tell you. And if you were totally okay with me - with the gay stuff - then you’d get that. I know that you try, but…” he broke off for a second and raised one hand to tug at his hair. “Look, I’m gay, and Dean, it’s really fucking hard sometimes. But I’m not gonna hide, I wanna fight for what I believe in, for the right to be free to be what I am. This is Kansas and anti-gay discrimination laws have only been around for two years - two fucking years!”

“Dude, c’mon, you don’t gotta preach this stuff to me. I’m on your side. You know that. I’ll support you whatever.”

Sam gave him a rueful smile, letting his hand drop to his side, to the desk, the sprawl of papers by his laptop. “Okay, so then you’ll understand why it’s so important to me that Jonah and Simon get all this too. That they understand that being gay is normal and that they’re not - not ashamed of their big gay uncle -” he trailed off with a self-conscious snort.

Dean felt his chest clench up, the anxious but hopeful expression on Sam’s face doing strange things to his insides. “Of course they’re never gonna be ashamed of you. Don’t ever think that. They love you. Seriously, they miss you so much; I’m beginning to feel like a spare part.”

“Yeah?” Sam lifted his head, a tentative, hopeful quirk of his lip as their eyes met.

Dean swallowed, feeling the weight lift from his stomach. “Yeah. Now, can we go already?”

On the drive back to the house, Sam was quiet, looking out the window with a pensive expression on his face. After a while, he sighed and turned his head, eyes settling on Dean’s profile.

“What now?” snapped Dean. It was unnerving having Sam watch him like that, though he should be used to it. Sam watched him like that all the damn time, as if Dean was the most interesting thing in his eye-line.

“I was thinking,” said Sam slowly, “this fight we had, it was about you and me and how you want to raise Jonah and Simon. That’s what was upsetting me, but then it occurred to me that it might not matter at all. I mean, you’re still young…” He broke off, worried his lip before he continued: “And, well, at the moment I feel like you and me - like we’re both raising Jonah and Simon together - like I’m the co-parent, I mean, that was what we told Jonah’s school -”

“Sam, what are you trying to say? I thought you were happy like this, being a parent? Helping me raise them?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course I am. But, Dean, I’m just their uncle. You’re their dad, you’re always gonna be their dad, and you might get married again -“

“Not a fucking chance!” Dean snorted.

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, man, yeah, I do. Look at my track record: I’ve been married twice, well, three times if you count Cora, ‘cause that was like a goddamn marriage. Jesus. Three times, and all of them were monumental fuck-ups, and I’m only 31. That’s pretty pathetic.”

Sam huffed out a half-laugh, “Dean -”

“No, listen to me,” Dean paused, licked his lips, trying to find the words, the reassurance because he could see where this was going now, and he had to cut it off right now, derail the pity and panic train for good. “I’m not interested in getting married again, or getting serious with some chick. Casual sex, yeah, bring it, but anything more than that, no, not now. It’s not worth it. I’ve got the boys to think about, and they’ve had enough bad shit happen to them, they need stability, they need me and they need you. You are way more to them than just an uncle, they love you, you gotta see that.”

“Yeah, I do, I do see that,” Sam said quietly.

There was a heavy silence for a couple of minutes, then Dean cleared his throat, said: “Look, I get it. But, seriously, Sammy, you don’t gotta worry about anything. The way things are right now - well, I don’t know about you - but I like it. Me and you and the kids, that works. And me and you - we’re a great team, we always have been - why would I want to change that?”

That had all happened a couple of months ago, and since then, things had shifted into another gear between them, as if they’d settled into something, had some big unspoken agreement. Ever since Jess had left him, Dean had been half expecting Sam to go too, to go off and start his own life, find someone to replace David at long last. Hearing Sam finally admit how important it was to him to be part of their family, to be a parent to Jonah and Simon, had been a relief, the most welcome news in a really long fucking time.

The problem was that he knew he shouldn’t be feeling this way. It was selfish of him to expect Sam to put his life on hold, to dedicate all his time to his brother and his brother’s kids. Sam deserved better than that, he deserved someone of his own, someone just to himself, maybe some perfect guy with whom he could adopt a couple of Asian babies ‘cause Sam was an awesome father.

He always buried those kinds of thoughts whenever they insisted on cropping up and banging against his conscience, instead comforting himself by thinking that Sam still wasn’t ready for another relationship, that he still wasn’t over David and that entire shit-storm. Besides, he knew Sam, and he knew how important it was to Sam that Jonah and Simon have the kind of childhood the two of them had been denied. And more importantly, Sam loved Jonah and Simon like his own kids, like his own blood - hell, they were his own blood, he could see Sam in Jonah’s smile or in Simon’s eyes, in Jonah’s epic stubbornness and Simon’s quick intelligence. Jonah and Simon loved their Uncle Sammy, and Dean, well, he just needed to know that his brother and his kids were happy; everything else was just gravy.

**************************************************

On Saturdays, Dean and Sam played football for the Corn Raiders - part of the Kansas Amateur league. The team coach was a staggeringly superstitious dude called Greg who took the job very, very seriously. It was thanks to Greg’s superstitious nature that Dean was still wearing the same freaking knee pads he’d tried out in eight years earlier. The things were so decrepit by now, they were practically falling off him and had to be kept on with swathes of ace bandages.

He sighed irritably as he secured the bandages in place, moving his knees gingerly as he got to his feet to stretch out, rolling the shoulder of his throwing arm, and glancing over at the crowd through the chain-link fence. For an amateur league, they always drew big crowds, but then football was practically a religion in Corn, and during the high school’s off-season this was all there was. He spotted Jonah and Simon easily, sitting either side of Bobby on the second row. He waved in their direction, but as usual, they were completely uninterested in anything happening on the field, instead Jonah’s attention was fixed on the ancient but well-loved iPod that had once been Sam’s, and Simon’s on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

“Hey, you ready?”

Sam’s voice drew his attention away from the boys, and he turned to see his brother carefully arranging his hair before even more carefully putting on his helmet.

“As I’ll ever be,” he answered, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at Sam’s efforts. Jesus, sometimes his brother really was incredibly gay.

He looked forward to these games all week; there was a part of him that only woke up when he played football. He’d played it in high school, helped their school to the state final, gotten recruited and a scholarship to KU off the back of it. Dad had been so proud of that, he’d gone to most of his games, the biggest interest he’d ever shown in either of them, ‘cause he’d barely made a parents evening or any of Sam’s track meets or debating competitions. But football had been his and Dad’s thing, the one thing they could talk about without running into any awkward silences, and even now, after Dad had been dead so long, his mind always flew to his father when he stepped onto the field.

He’d dropped out of college, realized soon after getting there that college football was way different from high school football, and although he’d been the big deal at school, he was one amongst many at college. If he was brutally honest with himself then he knew that Dad’s sickness and their family money problems while being entirely real and urgent back then, had also been convenient excuses for him to quit while he was ahead, to not let himself experience the failure of never getting his dream of being pro, and instead to go for something that was equally dear to his heart - like becoming a police detective. Of course, the fucking irony was that eleven years later, he still hadn’t made detective.

Whatever, the great thing about football was that for an hour or more, he didn’t have to think about any of that crap. He just had to think about getting the ball to the other end of the field and scoring more TDs than the other team, and luckily, he pretty much rocked at that, being by far the best player on the team, probably in the entire goddamn league, though he did say so himself. He caught Sam’s eye as they went into the first huddle, laying out their first play to the guys. If he was honest with himself he enjoyed playing football now more than he had in the past, even more than senior year when he’d led the school to the state championship. The photo of him holding the trophy aloft still decorated the halls of the high school; none of the teams who’d followed had ever managed to repeat his success. But now it was different, and he knew that a good deal of his enjoyment was due to Sam’s presence on the team. Sam hadn’t played football in school: soccer or track had been more his sort of thing. But Sam had tried out a few years ago, giving into Dean’s insistent nagging, and had turned out to be awesome on defense. He was solid and big and quick, and when Sam was on his game no one got past him.

This team turned out to be the best opposition they’d faced all season, and in the end, they won by just one field goal, continuing their undefeated record, only two games away from their inevitable league triumph. Dean met Sam’s eyes as they shook hands with their opponents, throwing his brother an exhausted and exhilarated grin.

After football, their usual ritual was barbecue in the back yard, Bobby bringing the meat, and Sam getting the alcohol from a fuck-buddy of his who owned a bar in the city. Usually, Jess or Jeannie and her husband, Steve, joined them, but tonight it was just Bobby, and after they’d put the boys to bed, the three of them sat out at the old picnic table in the middle of the yard with their beers, the bug repellant candle smoking from its spot in the middle of the table as they shot the shit.

Bobby owned a scrap yard about five miles from their house, just outside the town limits, and when they were kids the place had been their second home. During Dad’s bad periods, Bobby had been the one to calmly step in and provide adult supervision when it was needed, a convenient guardian figure to parade in front of Child Services, and one of the only people capable of dealing with Dad when it got really bad.

Bobby took off shortly after ten, clapping the two of them on the shoulders as he made his slow, steady way up the front drive to his beat-up pickup. Dean waved him off and closed the front door behind him, coming back into the kitchen to see Sam throwing their empty bottles into the recycling. He got a couple more bottles out the refrigerator and the two of them made their way into the big den.

“You wanna see what’s on? Maybe catch SNL?” Dean asked.

Sam snorted, “Nah, s’total shit these days.”

They drifted into a silence that he supposed most people would call comfortable. He finished off his beer, letting the bottle slide to the floor, and got up to fetch them a couple more. He was feeling loose and relaxed, his limbs sinking into the old, saggy couch, vision gone kinda hazy.

Sam turned his head towards him, cheek smushed up against the back of the couch; he regarded Dean lazily for a moment, then grinned, sudden and drunken.

“Who’d you go gay for: Indiana Jones, Jack Bauer, James Bond or Han Solo?”

“Which Bond?”

“Oh - I dunno - whichever one you like best. Daniel Craig?”

Dean gave the question some thought, licking his lips as his eyes drifted over his brother’s face; it was ridiculous how familiar Sam’s face was, way more familiar than his own. “Aren’t Han Solo and Indiana Jones like the same guy?”

“Hell, no!” protested Sam with drunken sincerely. “I mean - yeah - it’s the same actor, but they’re totally different people. Indiana Jones has a PhD in archeology.”

Dean snorted and shook his head, “You’re such a dork.”

“Whatever.” He prodded Dean in the arm with one of his freakishly long fingers. “You gotta pick, dude. Who’d it be?”

“Easy, Han Solo, no contest.”

“Hmmm,” Sam nodded pensively, “why?”

“Dude’s cool as hell, Sammy. Plus, you know, I’m kinda takin’ it for granted that he’d be up for a threesome with Princess Leia - ‘cause she’d totally be into it.” He leered at his brother while Sam rolled his eyes at him. “Whatever, you know it’s true. Anyway - who’d you pick?”

“Oh, Han Solo, same as you. He’s hot.”

“Heh, heh, heh, you and me, pickin’ the same guy, huh?”

“Who’d’ve thought it.”

Dean shrugged, “Nah, s’not that weird. We picked the same chick.”

“Huh?”

“Duh, Jess.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Sam took a long pull on his beer, turned his head, eyes blinking blearily at Dean. “Forgot that.”

“Dude, how’d you forget that? She was only the chick you lost your freakin’ virginity to. You dated for, like, two years, right?”

“Yeah, ‘bout that I guess. But you know, I always kinda knew. That there was something missin’.”

“No dick?”

Sam huffed out a laugh, “Yeah, no dick. If she’d had a dick, she’d’ve been perfect.” He paused, made a face. “Had to have gotten rid of her tits, though.”

“Whoa, no! No freakin’ way, man. Jess has amazing tits.” He held his hands up, mimicking grabbing them, shooting Sam a drunken leer, “I remember cupping them in my hands when we fucked. Jesus, so fuckin’ good.” He leaned back in the couch, head slumped against the cushions, “Man, I miss fuckin’ her. We could go all night. I remember one time, we did go all night. Like, I must’ve come about four times, and this one time, I had her up against the wall, and she had her legs wrapped around my waist -“

“Dean.”

Sam was regarding him with a lopsided frown, that prissy Sammy look made even more ridiculous by the drunken slant of his eyes and his flushed cheeks.

Dean barked out a laugh, reached out to punch him lightly in the arm. “Such a prude, Sammy.”

“Fuck off.”

There was a moment’s silence while they sipped their beers. Dean felt Sam turn his head again, his eyes boring into him, making the side of his face feel itchy.

“You know, when you and Jess were together - did you ever, uh, did you ever think about when I was with her?”

Dean frowned. “What do you mean?”

Sam hesitated, licked his lips. He looked uncertain, jittery, his fingers playing with the label on his beer bottle. “I don’t know. Just. I thought about it: about how both of us ended up with the same girl? And, uh, how it must’ve been for her, like, being able to compare us? You know, this one time, me and Jess were having the threesome conversation, like, who’d we’d most like to invite to have a threesome with us -“

“Like I said, Princess Leia,” Dean said promptly.

Sam sighed, his martyred, uber-patient sigh and flicked him a look, “I wasn’t lookin’ for input, Dean.”

“Whatever, way I figure it - she’s all kindsa kinky in the sack - you can see it in her eyes.”

“Oh my God, you know when you say shit like that it really doesn’t surprise me that you’ve been divorced twice.”

“Yeah, but you still love me.” He turned his most endearing smile on his brother. Sam stared at him for a moment, then shook his head, mouth twitching at the corners. God, but Sam was so easy.

“Only ‘cause I have to, ‘cause it’s, like, family duty.”

“Always such a bitch.”

“And you’re a jerk.”

“Yeah? You’re just spoilin’ for a fight, aren’tcha? You know I’d take you down, little brother.”

Sam laughed out loud, a throaty, genuine laugh that had Dean smiling involuntarily, unable to stop grinning at the delighted look on his brother’s face.

“Dean, Dean, Dean,” Sam sighed, and gave him a superior smile. “You think you could beat me? Seriously? You seen this?”

He placed his beer on the battered coffee table, movements only a little slurred and haphazard, and raised his arm, flexing one of his enormous biceps, sinewy muscle bunching up like a cartoon Popeye.

Dean gulped, stared; he licked his lips, met Sam’s confident gaze. “Dude, that’s freakin’ obscene.”

“You’re so jealous,” Sam said smugly.

“You wish.”

“Bite me.”

“Nah, you bite me, you gay dudes like that.”

“Okay, if you say so.”

Sam raised an eyebrow and gave him a cool, smug look, before he pounced, pinning Dean to the couch with one smooth move. Dean yelped and struggled beneath him, but Sam was fucking huge and a fucking linebacker and built like it, with fiendishly long arms that were snaking under Dean’s body and holding him in place, trapping him down into the balding couch cushions. Dean struggled some more, but he was making no headway at all. Sam had him trapped better than he’d trapped that poor running back during the game.

“Say uncle!” Sam cried, laughing hysterically.

“No! No fucking way!” came Dean’s muffled response.

He squirmed some more, bucking his hips up and sending a couple of empty bottles, the remote control and a cushion tumbling to the floor, but Sam was holding firm, and goddamn him, was still laughing, like this was the funniest fucking thing he’d ever seen.

“Ngihghth!” squawked Dean, and scrambled one arm free; he reached up, grabbed a handful of Sam’s crazy hair, and tugged, hard. Sam yelped loudly and Dean sniggered, taking advantage of his brother’s distraction to squirm one leg free and kick Sam in one hard meaty thigh, free hand still wrapped tight in Sam’s hair.

“Okay, okay, I’ll let you go. Jesus!” Sam bitched, sitting back on his haunches and frowning down at Dean.

“Ha! I win!”

“No, you so don’t,” retorted Sam. “You fight like a girl. You pulled my hair.”

“No, I just figured out one of your weaknesses and exploited it,” he shot back with a smug grin. “S’your fault for having such stupid hair.”

“Whatever.” Sam rolled his eyes, picked up the couch cushions that had wriggled free and batted them back into place. “You fight like Jonah.”

“Well, I’m gonna take that as a compliment ‘cause my kid rocks.”

Sam’s expression got softer, that fond curl to his lip as he attempted to flick his bangs out of his eyes. “Yeah, okay, he is pretty awesome.”

Dean grinned back at him, settling back into the couch and kicking his feet up onto the coffee table. “Sometimes I look at him, you know, and I can’t believe that he’s really mine - that both of them are mine. I mean, who’da thought it - me and Cora - producing a kid like that.” He huffed out a long breath. “I mean - me and Reiko - that I kinda get, she was smart, and Simon’s so smart too - got her genes alright. But me and Cora. Shit, man, who’da thought anything good woulda come out of that train wreck?”

“Dean, c’mon, it wasn’t all that bad.”

“Really?” Dean raised one eyebrow, sardonic and disbelieving. “Dude, you hated her.”

“I didn’t hate her.”

“Uh-huh. Sure you didn’t.”

“Whatever. S’not like you ever made an effort to like David.”

“’Cause I knew he was no good for you, Sammy.”

“I know,” Sam sighed wistfully, this sad little look on his face, “but I did love him.”

“Course you did,” Dean said matter-of-factly. He leaned in and prodded Sam’s chest with one finger: “But he wasn’t good enough for you. No way good enough for my brother.” He gave Sam a bleary grin. Sam’s face was still red from their earlier fight and all the beer they’d been drinking, hell, his own face was probably as red as a fucking beet too. Still, it kinda looked good on Sam, made his eyes light up and shine, his mouth loose and easy and not pursed up and stressed as he so often was. Sammy needed to relax more, that had always been his problem.

He dragged his finger over Sam’s chest, tracing from nipple to nipple, aware of just how hard Sam’s body felt through his thin cotton t-shirt. It still amazed him how big and cut and fucking ripped his little brother was; there was still a part of him that expected to see this pudgy little kid when he looked at Sam and was continually surprised by this enormous, muscled dude in his place. He traced his fingertip back again, across and down, over Sam’s stomach and abs, towards his belly button. Sam’s belly button used to stick-out, and he could picture Sam at five and six, those tight thrift t-shirts outlining his plump belly with its sticking-out belly button. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him now, just hard lean muscle.

“Dean, what are you doing?” Sam whispered.

He froze, his finger hovering just over Sam’s belly button. Shit, he’d been practically caressing his brother’s chest, like he was feeling him up. He swallowed and snatched his hand away, not daring to meet Sam’s eyes, feeling the blush spread over his cheeks.

“Dean,” Sam repeated, his voice low and cracked and nearly unrecognizable.

Dean swallowed again and slowly raised his head; he blinked and tried to smile. “Man, I am so fuckin’ drunk.”

Sam nodded, looking oddly disappointed, then he too gave a half-hearted smile. “Yeah, we, uh, I guess we should hit the sack.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed shakily.

He watched Sam pry himself off the couch, stumbling as he bent to pick up their empty bottles and leave the room, treading soft and slippery in his thick socks, the hems of his overlong jeans spilling over his feet, the low waistband exposing a couple of inches of black boxer briefs. There was a crash of glass as Sam tipped the bottles into the recycling, then the soft pufft-pufft sound of Sam’s footsteps as he came back into the room. Dean tilted his head back to stare up at his brother; Sam was standing under the overhead light, looking really, really tall, his shadow falling over Dean.

“I’m headin’ up,” he said finally, eyes meeting Dean’s for a fraction of a second. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Dean nodded; when he spoke his voice sounded strange in his ears. “Yeah, see you.”

**************************************************

Dean was attempting to finish the paperwork on the cars he and Jeannie had pulled over two evenings earlier when he glanced up to see a leggy blond with big blue eyes and a deliciously even tan stroll into the station and head straight for his desk. Okay, so most of the time his job sucked, but there were occasionally some upsides.

“I’ll let you handle this one then,” Jeannie commented dryly.

“Huh?” He spared her a quick glance, but she was already leaving. He turned his most winning smile on the new arrival. “How can I help you, Miss?”

She was called Amanda and she had lost her dog, a scrawny rat-like thing called Rory. She tilted her iPhone screen his way, showing him one of the hundred damn pictures she seemed to have. “I took this one on his birthday, he had such a lovely time, you could really tell that he understood what was happening, that he knew it was his special day.”

Jesus. The only thing more boring than listening to other people talk about their problems was listening to other people talk about their pets.

“Uh, listen, Miss uh…” Fuck, she had told him, but -

“Maloney, Amanda Maloney,” she said reproachfully.

He smiled at her, making the reproachful look waiver and then vanish completely under the full power of the Dean Winchester charm.

“Yes, sorry, Miss Maloney, would you mind filling out this form here with your details and the description of, uh -” fuck it, what was that goddamn pooch called? “Rory? Just here, see.” He silently congratulated himself on the last-minute recall, and glanced out the window into the parking lot, an involuntary and this time genuine smile springing to his face when he saw Sam, Jonah and Simon climbing out the Impala and heading his way.

“Hey, Dad!”

He waved at Sam and the two boys. Amanda looked up from her form, her gaze tracking interestedly from him to Jonah, then to Simon and lingering over Sam until she was finally looking back at him again with wide eyes.

“Are they your kids?” she asked as the three of them took a seat in the waiting area, Simon sliding up into Sam and twining his small foot around Sam’s leg like a vine around a tree trunk.

“That’s right,” he said unable to disguise the note of pride in his voice.

He watched them surreptitiously as he tried to concentrate on finishing off his reports. Something was fluttering in his belly, a soft tug-tug of warmth and affection and something else; something to do with the serious way Sam was talking to Jonah, his crazy, floppy hair falling across his face, impervious to Sam’s fruitless attempts to tuck it behind his ears, that small crease between his eyebrows that hadn’t changed since he was ten years old and trying to teach himself French, the enormous overachieving geek. Jonah looked so solemn, his big brown eyes locked on Sam and Sam’s fingers as he quickly signed like it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen, while Simon was curled up against Sam’s side, totally engrossed by the discussion between his brother and his uncle. Dean knew that his boys loved Sam, but sometimes he truly realized just how much they adored him.

“I didn’t realize you were gay,” Amanda said conversationally.

“Huh?” He jerked his gaze away from Sam and the boys, for some reason, he’d completely forgotten about her, but it seemed she’d been watching Sam and the two boys as closely as he had with that typical outsider’s fascination with sign language.

She gave him a knowing smile. “I thought you were trying to hit on me, but I see now I was way off. You have a really attractive family, you know.”

“I, uh,” he stammered, unsure what to say to that. Sam glanced up, as if he could feel Dean’s eyes on him, and quirked his eyebrow into a questioning arc. Dean stared at him for a moment, then blinked and gave her a big fake smile, after all, it was the God’s honest truth, they were an attractive family. “Thanks, sweetheart. We think so too.”

After his shift, they went to their weekly support group meeting for gay families of children with hearing difficulties that Dean privately called the Deaf and Gay Club. It was something that Sam had helped to start up about two years ago, designed to bring together the local gay and deaf communities, Sam being an active part of both. Both Jonah and Simon seemed to love it which was the sole reason Dean was still attending, despite feeling like a glaringly out of place non-gay and non-deaf fraud, but there was a ridiculous amount he would be willing to put up with for his kids’ sakes, including watching the group organizer, an officious, humorless ass with a ginormous crush on Sam, fawn all over his brother all freaking night. Just because Dean wasn’t as fluent as Sam in ASL, didn’t mean he couldn’t tell when two dudes were flirting with each other.

He supposed it said a lot about his and Sam’s differing outlooks on life that he hated all this group activity shit while Sam loved it. Sure, he’d always socialized with his football teammates during school, but off the field, he’d never really felt like part of the team, he’d been too different for that. He'd always preferred to hang out with his brother or his girlfriends outside of school, taking Sam to the movies or the mall or the bowling alley, instead of hanging out on the school field with the guys and a keg. He knew it was weird, but hell, their family was weird, having a Mom who was murdered by one of America’s most notorious serial killers and a father who needed six different types of medication to get out of bed in the morning automatically excluded you from the normal category, and Sammy had always been the only other person in the entire world who understood that.

He sighed tiredly and turned to peer through the window into the room next door where the children’s activities were taking place. All the kids were standing in a semi circle, while the teacher in front signed and sang, obviously teaching them a new song, those of them who could were also singing along, and Dean could hear Jonah’s voice clearly above the others. Last week they’d learned Octopus’ Garden, and Jonah and Simon had performed it afterwards for him and Sam to everybody's mutual excitement.

Simon was standing next to Jonah, his eyes darting from the teacher to his big brother as he tried to keep up with the rest of the group. Dean watched him, feeling his chest hurt in that aching, protective way it always did when he watched his youngest son. There was a part of him that just wanted to run in there, scoop Simon up in his arms and carry him away to someplace where he’d be safe forever, where he had perfect hearing and a father who wasn’t scared of facing up to the reality of his disability, a family who could afford to give him every support and every medical advantage he deserved. Sam was so much better at dealing with Simon than he was, so much better at owning up to his needs, so much stronger and braver than him. Sam was brave enough to be gay, to be out and proud in their home town, to face up to all the shit that that brought with it, he was brave enough to get over that whole shitstorm with David, and Dean had known how much Sam’d loved that unworthy fuck-up.

He forced back the inevitable scowl that thoughts of David always brought to his face and dragged his gaze away from the children. He turned and searched the room for Sam, finally locating him by the coffee machine, flanked by Troy of course. This time he did scowl to himself, watching in irritation as Troy placed a hand on Sam’s ripped forearm, tongue coming out to flick greedily over those thin lips of his as he stared up at Sam with freaking moon-calf eyes.

A hand on his own arm had him spinning around, gaze falling on a woman standing beside him. She was one of the new members, one half of a deaf lesbian couple who had just moved into the area from Seattle a month ago with a daughter of about Jonah’s age; she was kinda hot, good body, bad hair, a bit short, but with a generous wide mouth and attractive eyes, definite sex-appeal.

Must piss you off, she signed. If he was my girlfriend, I’d be pissed. She nodded towards the spot where Troy was still flirting desperately and badly with Sam.

It always surprised him how open the people in these groups were, immediately taking to him like he was one of them. There was an automatic inclusion mentality, a solidarity in the way they behaved. He could almost understand why Sam liked it so much, it was comforting to be able to just slot in, to be automatically included, to fit. Outside of his family, he’d never really felt like he fit anywhere.

He hesitated, about to explain that he and Sam were not in a relationship for Christ’s sake, and why the fuck were people always thinking that? But then he remembered that she was new, that she probably hadn’t been told that they were brothers, so she was jumping to the inevitable conclusion; after all, all the other families here were couples.

That’s okay, he told her, he’s my brother, not my boyfriend.

She looked surprised, glancing between him and Sam again before she shrugged and signed an apology, the expression on her face telling him that she didn’t entirely believe him.

“God, I hate that place,” he bitched under his breath as they drove back to the house. Simon and Jonah were asleep in the backseat of the car, Simon’s head on Jonah’s shoulder.

“Dean, c’mon, it’s good for them, you know that. And if you gave it a chance -“

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

“Well, I’m just sayin’. Quit being so damn negative all the time.”

“Whatever. You just like it ‘cause you get slavered over by that asshole organizer guy.”

“Who? Troy?”

“Yeah, Troy!” Dean retorted. “It’s totally pathetic, the way he fawns over you, like he’s about to drop to his knees and suck you off right there.”

Sam made a face. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“Oh, so he hasn’t propositioned you then?”

“So what if he has? Should it matter?”

Dean gritted his teeth, shooting Sam an aggravated look. Sam was kinda right, it really shouldn’t matter. Sam was free and single; he could hook up with whomever he wanted, and Dean knew that he did hook up. Sam went out a couple of times a month, when he had money and when Dean wasn’t working, and Dean knew that he always got laid, usually not coming back until the following morning, grinning from ear to ear and looking sickeningly pleased with himself. But at least, Dean never had to witness any of Sam’s hook-ups first hand. It was bad enough when Sam had been dating David, watching the two of them together.

He couldn’t exactly say why it was that it bothered him so much to see Sam hooking up with guys. He wasn’t homophobic, no way, but Sam was his little brother and he hated thinking of Sam with another guy, doing shit with another guy, sucking another guy’s cock or taking it up the ass from another guy, though Sam had reliably informed him that it was usually the other way round. He swallowed and fixed his gaze on the road unfolding in front of them.

“I don’t know, okay!” he gritted out, “It’s just. Fuck, man, that place is our thing; it’s where we take the boys. The idea of you hooking up with some desperate sad-ass -“

“You’re jealous,” said Sam, sounding amused, the jerk.

“Fuck off, I am not!”

“Dean, yeah, you are.” Sam darted him a look, amusement tinged with fondness. “Dude, it’s okay, I turned him down. I’m not interested in him. I can do way better than that.”

“Pretty sure of yourself.”

“Yeah,” Sam said with a shrug. “You should come out with me sometime. See what I’m talking about.”

Dean hesitated, licked his lips, changing his grip on the wheel. “You serious?”

“Completely.”

“You mean - like, a gay bar? Me come out with you to a gay bar?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean.” Sam shifted in his seat so his face was turned towards Dean, eyes boring into the side of Dean’s face, his profile. Dean swallowed, feeling suddenly self-conscious under Sam’s close scrutiny. “Listen to me, man, this could be exactly what you need. I’ve been thinking about this and I think it could be good for you.” He reached over, big hand landing suddenly on Dean’s thigh and giving it a friendly squeeze. Dean flinched, breath catching in his throat, as he tried to swallow again. “You told me you haven’t been laid in ages, that you miss sex, gotten tired of porn -“

“Not completely tired of porn, nobody can be completely tired of porn,” he corrected, surprised by how shaky his voice seemed to be.

Sam waved his hand, flashed him a smile. “Absolutely true. But, seriously, I can guarantee, if you come out with me, you will get laid. I’m not talking about sex or anything too gay,” catching Dean’s eye, he smirked. “But, a blow-job, no problem. Guys will be lining up wanting to blow you. And, Dean, you haven’t been blown until you’ve been blown by a guy, we know how to do it. So what do you say?”

Dean risked a glance at his brother’s face, that big wide smile, the goddamn dimples and shining eyes, fuck it, he could never say no to that face, and Sam fucking knew it.

“Jesus Christ, alright,” he said finally.

Sam’s smile got even wider. “Awesome. You are so not gonna regret this.”

**************************************************

The following night, Dean worked late. There was a six car pile-up on the 35; all crews were being called in, and he and Jeannie were the first patrol-car after the ambulances on the scene. They’d dealt with multi-car pile-ups before, this stretch of the 35 was a notorious accident black-spot, but as he pulled up with a screech of brakes his mouth fell open in shock: this was something else, the entire stretch of road in front of them reminding him of those opening scenes from the pilot of Lost. He gulped and exchanged a quick glance with Jeannie; she was swallowing back her fear, the whites of her eyes stark in the high beams.

He found himself giving CPR to a little girl about Simon’s age, silently counting off the 30 - 2 in his head as his arms and shoulders pumped mechanically, silently pleading for God or Jesus or whatever it was that decided this shit to give her a break - to give him a break. For once, it seemed that God was listening and he felt like bursting into tears of gratitude and relief when he felt the puff of air against his cheek, her pulse buzzing sluggishly back to life under his fingertips.

It took about four hours to clear the scene enough to get traffic moving again. He got back into the patrol car, and curled his fingers around the wheel, bending over until his forehead touched the hard black plastic. He squeezed his eyes closed and listened to himself breathe, the radio crackling quietly in the background. The lights of the sirens - blue and yellow and red - were blurring against his closed, tired eyes, and he suddenly remembered another night with a lot of sirens, a lot of people crowding around him while he clutched tight to his baby brother and watched the paramedics load the stretcher holding his mother’s body into an ambulance.

Someone knocked at the car window and he snapped his eyes open, memories disappearing. He cranked down the window, and Jeannie peered inside, looking concerned.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Fine.”

She pursed her lips, her don’t give me that bullshit look. “Go home. It’s after three; you should be home with your boys.”

It was nearly four am by the time he finally did get home. He stomped tiredly up the stairs, eyes ghosting over the family photographs taking up every inch of space on the staircase and landing. Mom and Dad outside the house in Lawrence, young and happy and beautiful; he and Sammy at nine and five, sitting on the hood of the Impala in Bobby’s yard; his senior high-school football picture, himself in the middle on the front row, holding the state trophy and grinning like a loon; Sam and Jess at junior prom, looking happy and dorky; Jonah and Simon at five and three, in the backyard half-naked and covered in mud and grinning stupidly at the camera; Dad and Bobby in their marine uniforms before they’d gone to their platoon’s 25th anniversary reunion; him and Sam standing over the smoking barbecue at their fourth of July party last year, holding barbecue tongs and solo cups of beer; and his own favorite photo: Dad two months before he died, holding six month old baby Jonah in his arms and smiling warmly at the camera, that slow easy genuine grin of his, the same grin that both Sam and now Jonah had inherited and could use to such devastating effect.

He dragged his eyes away from the pictures and headed for the boys’ room. He pushed their door open, his heart missing a beat when his eyes skated over two empty beds. He swallowed, getting himself quickly under control, and padded down the landing towards Sam’s room. There were three dark tousled heads just visible over the top of the enormous quilt that covered Sam’s enormous bed. He repressed the urge to roll his eyes, instead allowing himself a half-smile as he silently tiptoed inside. Sam was always giving him shit about allowing the boys to sleep with him; he should’ve known Sammy wasn’t taking his own damn advice.

Simon looked up as he pushed the door shut behind him, blinking owlishly, his tousled brown bangs tumbling over his forehead.

Daddy? his hand moved sleepily to shape the word.

Dean smiled at him, Hello, sweetheart.

Simon held out one small hand, and Dean leaned over to squeeze his fingers, Simon’s hand warm and clammy against his. He quickly shucked off his uniform until he was down to his boxers and undershirt, and crawled under the covers into the space next to Simon. It was a tight squeeze - the four of them in the same bed - but Simon was burrowing into him, pressing his face into Dean’s chest as Dean pulled him in closer, his mouth in Simon’s warm messy hair. He heard Simon let out a long whimpering breath then slowly go still as he faded into sleep. He closed his own eyes, feeling the crappiness of the day melt away as he too fell asleep.

On to Chapter Three