The Psychology of Genetic Sexual Attraction - Chapter 2/7

[sonofabiscuit77]

Over the next few weeks, he saw a lot of Sam, every other day at least. It was great, in fact, it was pretty damn awesome. And the fact that Dean didn’t mind, that Dean actually liked having the kid around, like, all the freaking time was the most worrying thing about this entire situation. He wasn’t used to feeling like this. From the moment he’d realized he was into guys as well as girls, he’d felt like he didn’t fit in. He definitely hadn’t fit in back in Branston, South Dakota. Even living here, in the Bay Area - an oasis of tolerance compared to his home town - working a job he enjoyed, with plenty of willing fuckable guys and willing fuckable chicks passing through his bedroom on a regular basis, he still didn’t feel like he fit in. Maybe it was the bisexual thing, he didn’t fall neatly into either camp. Most of the girls and even the one dude he’d dated over the years had been suspicious of his claim that he was equally happy eating out a chick as he was sucking cock.

Being with Sam, though - that was different. Sam was different. Sam claimed not to care that Dean still dug girls, that Dean was way more experienced with sex than he was. Sam slotted into everything, into each different part of Dean’s life. Sam forced himself in there like he’d always been there.

Sam was fucking terrifying.

Sam called on Saturday, just as Dean was starting work, asking Dean to come to a frat party with him that evening. Sam didn’t want to go, most of the guys were assholes, and he’d only agreed because his roommate, Brady, had begged him. At least if Dean came too then the two of them could hang out together, mock the dumb frat boys and get wasted on their beer. Dean hesitated, listening to Sam’s warm persuasive voice, fighting the instinctive response to agree, to just say yes, because Sam was the one asking. Instead, he swallowed back the instinct and told Sam that he already had plans.

So he went out, joining Stu at Destiny for the first time in weeks, though after Stu’s twentieth or twenty-first taunt about jailbait boyfriends and being whipped (and not in the good way), he started wishing that he’d gone to the damn frat party with Sam. Still, the night wasn’t over, and as he was there and he was horny, he decided to get what he, and every other horny dude in the place, had come out for.

He did get what he came out for: a hookup and above average sex with an overeager rich muscle-queen called Trent. Dean went back with him to his loft in Mountain View where they smoked a lot of Trent’s excellent weed, snorted some poppers, and had loud noisy sex, Dean fucking the shit out of the guy while he begged for it “harder, harder, give it to me harder, big boy” which - yeah - kinda embarrassing, but still - sex. Trent collapsed afterwards, falling asleep straight away, and Dean wasn’t surprised, all that fucking and screaming and begging had evidently gotten the best of him. But he most definitely wasn’t in the mood to stick around, or even to go for round two once the guy recovered. He got dressed and called himself a taxi from the business card he found stuck to the front of Trent’s huge-ass refrigerator, which also came handily with the account number and password details.

Once home, he fell into his own bed with his stomach churning, drunk and aching from the stomach-roiling mixture of whiskey, poppers and pot. He turned his face into his sheets and breathed in deep, the lingering scent of him and Sam from two nights ago invading his nostrils and making him feel like worse than shit.

He rolled onto his back, stared up at the ceiling, and concluded that he was screwed.

He called Sam later that day and invited him over for dinner, something home-cooked and nutritional. Sam, like the big romantic he was, fucking loved home-cooked dinners. Dean wasn’t that much of a cook, but did have a couple of dishes in his repertoire that Sam’d already tried and enjoyed. One of these was something resembling spaghetti in marinara sauce, a recipe he’d picked up from the side of packet of pasta shells years earlier and since adapted to his own tastes, i.e. with a lot more chili and garlic.

He was frying off the onions and garlic and tomatoes in the pan, Sam keeping him company, perched on the worktop next to the stove, his long legs thumping against the cupboards and his enormous boat-like feet scraping against the floor. Sam updated him on the party, on who had hooked up with whom, intermittently leaning over to steal slimy strands of spaghetti from the pot with slick long fingers, and turning to Dean with a gummy grin that made him look younger than his eighteen years.

Dean batted Sam’s hands away, and felt suddenly like a cradle-snatching pedophile.

“Don’t you have friends of your own to hang out with?” he snapped, momentarily forgetting that it had been him who’d issued the invitation in the first place.

Sam’s face froze for a second, then he shrugged, looking self-defensive. “Yeah, sure I do. But I saw them last night, and anyway, they’re not as pretty as you.”

Dean rolled his eyes, and Sam leaned over into his space and licked up the side of his jaw, holding Dean’s head in place with one of those enormous hands of his. Dean pulled away and wet his lips, looking Sam in the eyes.

“Samuel, I’m serious,” he said.

Sam made a face. “Don’t call me that, you sound like my Dad.”

“Samuel,” Dean whispered again. “Sam. Sammy.” He watched the ripple of Sam’s throat as he swallowed, eyes locked on the bobbing of his Adam’s apple. “Sammy,” he repeated, slowly raising his eyes to Sam’s. He leaned in to press a kiss to the edge of Sam’s pouting mouth because - man - it was there and that pout was just so freaking adorable and he just - he couldn’t help himself.

Sam responded immediately, grabbing onto his face and thrusting his tongue into Dean’s mouth, warm and salty and slimy and spaghetti flavored. Dean kissed him back for a second, then mindful of his caramelizing onions, pulled away to add chili flakes to his sauce.

“You’re amazing, you know that,” Sam said, using this ultra-serious, reverential tone of voice. “Sometimes I look at you and I can’t believe that you’re with me. You make me feel so much, Dean. Just being with you…” he trailed off, swallowing audibly.

Dean turned slowly to look at him. Sam’s eyes were wide and bright and so freaking sincere that he had to blink. Jesus, this kid. He swallowed, mouth dry, fingertips tingling where they gripped the spatula. “Sam -“

“I know, stupid timing, huh? I’ll, um, I’ll shut up. Pretend I didn’t say anything. Like always.”

He was blushing furiously, cheeks red and flushed, eyes dark and liquid. He bowed his head, bangs sliding across his forehead to obscure his eyes, those small curls of hair around his ears like a halo.

Dean cleared his throat, said, “Um, how about you get the knives and forks? I’ll just finish up here.”

Sam nodded without raising his head and slid off the worktop, turning to get the knives and forks out the drawer and a couple of beers from the refrigerator. He knew where everything was already. He’d officially been here enough times to know where Dean kept his plates and bowls and freaking stemware. Dean sneaked glances at Sam as he drained the noodles, gaze lingering over the slouched curve of his back, his long deft fingers placing the cutlery and bottles of beer on the table. He wanted nothing more than to slide across the floor and drape himself around Sam, suck Sam’s fingers into his mouth, press his face into the crook of his neck and breathe him in, smell that scent that was all Sam, rub himself off against him until they both came in their pants.

He didn’t do that. Instead, he ladled the noodles into two deep pasta bowls and dribbled the sauce over them, placing the bowls on the table. Sam looked up and smiled at him. “Thanks, this smells fantastic.”

Dean nodded, his mouth still dry as he stared back at the expression in Sam’s face. “Yeah, thanks. Eat up, or it’ll get cold.”

He sank to his own chair and started to eat. He was actually really fucking hungry; he’d barely eaten all day. He could feel Sam’s eyes on him as he ate, feel the weight of Sam’s warm affectionate gaze, and he thought about last night, about that guy, Trent. He couldn’t remember what he’d looked like, how it’d felt to fuck him, though he was pretty sure he’d enjoyed it at the time. He guessed that that was what chicks called meaningless sex. He’d never really believed in such a thing before, sex was sex, and it was pretty much always awesome, whether or not he knew the name of the man or woman he was bending over the back of the couch. Sure, it was nice when you did know the person, when they knew your sweet spots and you theirs, but one-off sex was still pretty fucking awesome. This time, though, the way he’d felt afterwards, when he’d gotten back here and rolled into bed. Not good, not satisfied.

Guilty. He’d felt guilty. What he was feeling right now - looking at Sam’s open happy expression - was guilt. He’d fucked some guy, had meaningless sex with some dude and he felt guilty about it. For a moment, he wanted to unburden himself, tell Sam what he’d done the night before, have Sam forgive him. Though, Jesus, what for? He and Sam weren’t in some freaking relationship, they weren’t boyfriends, they technically hadn’t even had sex yet. Sam was still an ass virgin, and Dean wasn’t so much of an asshole as to push an eighteen year old kid into bottoming for the first time, and he didn’t really like it the other way round. So, all things considered, he was perfectly within his rights to fuck some guy last night. He didn’t owe Sam anything.

But how would you feel if it had been the other way round? The thought crept into his head as he watched Sam reach across the table to help himself to more pasta, eyebrows drawing together as he concentrated on transferring the slippery spaghetti strands to his bowl.

Last night perhaps… while he’d been fucking that guy. Maybe there’d been some frat-boy asshole, someone who’d noticed just how fucking hot Sam was, who’d used all his best lines on Sam, who’d pressed him up against the wall of some disgusting frat-house and kissed him, shoved his hands down Sam’s pants and jacked him off.

No, just no. No freaking way. The thought filled him with utter revulsion. The thought of some asshole’s hands on Sam’s skin, someone else getting to see what Sam looked like when he lost it, someone else hearing Sam’s dry whispered moans as he got closer to orgasm.

He dropped his fork into his bowl with a clatter, startling Sam, who jerked his head up and stared at him.

Wow, he was acting like a serious drama queen here, but - but this was serious. He had to do something; he had to make sure that that didn’t happen.

“Sam,” he said, licking his lips involuntarily, meeting Sam’s confused gaze. “I - you should know, man, that what you said before about me - about us - you gotta know - it’s the same for me. This you and me thing, I just -“

“Didn’t see it coming?” Sam finished.

Dean huffed out a wry laugh, shook his head. He reached for his beer bottle, took a quick pull. “Yeah. Something like that.”

“I know what you mean.”

Dean worried his lip and nodded. “Yeah.”

“You know, it’s okay, Dean. I get that you’re not used to the dating thing.” Dean made a scoffing sound in the back of his throat and Sam chuckled weakly. “Yeah. And I’m not either, man. This is just as new to me as you. I’ve never really dated anyone. Not since I realized that I liked guys at least. You’re pretty much my first.”

Dean raised his eyes slowly to Sam’s face; saw the blush beginning to stain his cheeks. He’d figured out that Sam was new to this dating thing, that Sam hadn’t been with many (any?) guys before him, but he was okay with that. He was more than okay with that. He wanted to be Sam’s first; he wanted to be the first one to know Sam in that way, to teach him everything he knew. He liked the idea of imprinting his ideas and his experience onto Sam, of molding him into the best gay dude he could be. It meant that Sam was all his, that if Sam met someone else way down the line, he would still carry that bit of Dean with him.

Wow, that was kinda fucked up. Maybe he shouldn’t admit that last part out loud to Sam (or anyone), like, ever.

“Yeah, I figured.”

Sam nodded his head, a steely decisive look creeping into his eyes. “Yeah. So, um, I figure we should, like, make this official? I really like you, like, a lot, and you probably noticed that.” He huffed out a breath, gave a wry twitch of his mouth. “But I want everybody else to know that too. I want people to know that we’re together and that - that you’re my boyfriend. I want us to be serious, Dean.” He trailed off with another awkward shrug of his overly large shoulders, his face practically puce with the awkward.

“I like you too,” Dean said. “So, yes. Okay. You got it.”

***

Things got even more serious after that. In truth, Dean really didn’t know what had hit him; it was definitely true that he hadn’t seen Sam coming. Sam - everything about him - had just hit him out of nowhere, pushed him flat on his ass, like a career-altering football tackle. But he couldn’t get enough of Sam; he wanted him around all the time. And when Sam wasn’t around, he was thinking about him; jerking off and thinking about him, drifting off in the middle of a job and thinking about him.

He thought about the way Sam laughed, the way he gestured when he was trying to explain something or argue some point, the way he looked when he was studying or reading, the way he frowned when Dean said something dumb, like he knew Dean was doing it just to get a reaction out of him. He thought about Sam’s voice, about the way he said Dean’s name, quick and sharp when he was annoyed, soft and loving when he was happy, panted and broken when he was horny. He thought about Sam’s body: the curve of his ass in a pair of jeans, the spread of his shoulders under one of his geeky hoodies, the curls of his hair around his ears and his temples, his enormous hands and clever fingers, the moles on his cheeks, the glittering slant of his eyes and the brilliant warmth of his smile.

Dean was utterly and completely fascinated by Sam, this ridiculously over-grown, way too smart and way too sexy kid. This kid that just - just did things to him - made his insides clench up and his chest hurt and his heart beat fast and his cock as hard as diamonds. And what was even more amazing - even more amazing than the fact Dean had finally turned into a thirteen year old girl - was the fact that Sam seemed to feel exactly the same way about him.

And they were boyfriends. They were a couple. They were together.

Apart from the fuck-up with Greg about a year ago, (the one, the only dude he’d ever dated and then only for, like, two weeks), it was a long time since he’d dated anybody. His last serious relationship had been Liza Dumont back in senior year, and she’d ditched him at Senior Prom. It’d been his fault though, for not reading the situation right at all. In an incredibly stupid and drunken move, he’d admitted to her that he was maybe like kinda sorta attracted to guys as well as girls, but she shouldn’t worry ‘cause it made no difference to them, because she was awesome and he didn’t want to be with anyone else, but he felt bad keeping the truth from her for so long.

It’d been a bad move. An exercise in why telling the truth and admitting shit about yourself never got you good karma, but always managed to get you royally screwed over. Liza Dumont had dumped him, kicked him to the curb with the wrath of a humiliated and self-righteous teenage girl on a God kick. She’d screamed at him for betraying her, for breaking her heart, and being a nasty disgusting homo. She’d told him to go to hell - literally - since that was where he was headed anyway if he embraced the sinful ungodly path of the sodomite.

He’d gone home that evening, drunk eight bottles of his uncle’s favorite strong brown ale, and thrown up all over his bed. When he’d woken up in the morning, he’d vowed to get out of Branston as soon as he could.

He’d left only two months later. He’d taken the money he’d saved from pulling shifts at Honest Bill’s Auto Repair for his last two years of school, gotten into the classic Chevy Impala his father had left him, and made his way across the country. East first, which meant New York, which he hadn’t really enjoyed, though Chelsea had been pretty fucking cool; expensive but cool. So he’d gone south after that, down the coast to Miami, the gay paradises of Miami’s party beaches, where he’d lied about his age and made amazing tips tending bar in a cowboy themed gay-bar and had more sex in a month than in the entirety of his life before then. He’d gone West after that, rambling through the Sun-belt, California-bound like a 1930’s migrant.

It was easy for him to get work in all those towns he passed through. There was always work for a good-looking, legal, English-speaking boy who could tend bar, wait tables, wash dishes and fix cars. And when there wasn’t work, there was the opportunity to put his pool-sharking skills into practice, to run a hustle or just impress some guy or chick enough to guarantee a bed for the night and a good breakfast.

It took him four months to cross the country. He spent the next two years wandering up and down the West Coast, from Seattle down to El Cajon and all the towns in between, eventually fetching up somewhere around the middle, answering an ad in a local paper in Palo Alto for a mechanic with classic car experience.

He’d enjoyed life on the road. In many ways it had suited him, feeling free for the first time in his life. There hadn’t been anyone or any place to fit in with when you were on the road. No need to worry about other people’s opinions, about other people’s expectations, no pressure from Aunt Marion and Uncle Jim, teachers and baseball coaches; only himself to please. The small-town mentality he’d grown up with faded away as he partied on both sides of the country, mixing with people who had no inhibitions, who didn’t care who he liked to screw. He’d liked being able to just up and move on whenever he felt like it, his only responsibility to make rent for wherever he was staying, not get arrested and remember to call his Aunt and Uncle every week - just so we know you’re still alive, honey.

His original intention had been to stay in Palo Alto for maybe two, three months, move onto LA afterwards, assuming that he’d be tired of the Bay Area by then. But it was now almost a year and he was still there and he still wasn’t tired of the area. Some of it was the job; he genuinely enjoyed his job, loved the cars he got to fix, and his co-workers and roommate were cool. But most of it - well, now there was Sam.

This felt like a new stage of his life, a responsible, grown-up stage where he had a steady job, an apartment and a boyfriend. Sam was his boyfriend. Eighteen year-old, smart, ridiculously hot Sam was Dean’s boyfriend. It was strange, and it shouldn’t work. Sam shouldn’t have fit into the life that Dean had made for himself so far, the nomadic loner life that he’d always assumed would be his ever since he left South Dakota behind him. But Sam did fit, the two of them molding around each other despite their differences: Sam with his trust-fund, Newport Beach family, his ridiculous academic expectations and ambition to become the first out and proud Attorney General. And Dean with his aunt who worked in a diner and his truck-driver uncle, Dean who’d only ever had two ambitions in life: to have plenty of sex and to not turn into his father. They shouldn’t have worked, but somehow they did.

They took weekend rides down the coast in Dean’s baby, the windows rolled down the entire way so the wind blew up a storm inside, Sam’s hair crazy and whipping around his head, music on so loud the dashboard shook. Sam would turn and look at him from the passenger seat with stars in his eyes, mouth open to whoop out loud as Dean overtook a douchebag in a convertible. Dean would be hard; his cock throbbing between his legs, the vibration of his baby’s engine all around him, Sam’s hand on his thigh like a brand.

They would stay out so long that the day would drain away, night falling, the bright lights of the Bay, of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge, the cities of Palo Alto and Mountain View and San Jose shining bright and effervescent in the distance, blurry reflections through the dark windshield. Dean would pull the Impala up at his favorite (and almost always deserted) rest stop and there they would climb into the back seat. They’d be on each other immediately: their legs splayed into the footwells, panted breaths misting up the windows, Sam’s hair dark with sweat, his body gleaming like he’d been dipped in liquid gold, his eyes dark and slitted with arousal, looming over Dean, wrestling him to the sticky vinyl seats and pushing up his t-shirt to lick around his belly button until Dean was cursing and screaming at him to finish him, to end his torment already.

Dean had had a lot of sex in the backseat of his car, the two of them had seen a lot of action over the years since he’d left South Dakota. But those times with Sam, the moments when their bodies slid together, when Sam crawled on top of him with that awed hungry look in his eyes, those moments were like nothing else Dean had ever experienced before. Those moments made him want so desperately to believe that maybe, maybe this would all work out; he would get to keep Sam, to be with Sam, for just a little while longer.

He introduced Sam to the scene, to his favorite gay bars in the Bay Area, the ones with half-way decent music, good beer on tap, pool tables, and hot guys draped over the barstools, signs in the bathroom stalls saying: NO SEX IN BATHROOMS. THAT’S WHAT THE COUCHES ARE FOR. His hands on Sam: in his back pocket, on his arm, around his shoulders, proprietary and back off, ‘cause he knew that everybody in the room would be looking at them. All those guys eying the fresh meat, seeing Sam’s face and his body and his fucking dimples, drooling and coveting what was Dean’s, what belonged to him. And Sam would look around, check out the room, see the guys all staring at them, and he’d smile, lean closer into Dean and whisper: “Guess I’m going home with the hottest guy in the room. Again.” Smirk playing at the edges of that fucking beautiful mouth, and Dean’s heart would swell, his mouth fold outwards into a grin despite himself, and they’d be kissing, making out, Sam’s thigh sliding between his legs and his hand on Sam’s ass.

Sam introduced him to his friends, to his roommate Brady, (entitled and whiny), to his best friend Jessica (super-hot and Dean’s first choice if he ever plucked up the courage to suggest his three-way idea to Sam), to Becky (should eat a sandwich or four), to Zach (dumb as a tire iron). Dean acted the part of perfect boyfriend. He went to college parties and Sam’s swim meets. He allowed Sam’s friends to tag along when they went to the movies or hung out in divey student bars where the girls (and even some of the guys) grouped around Dean while he played pool and watched him sink ball after ball.

***

For Thanksgiving that year, their first together, he accompanied Sam back to Newport Beach to meet the folks. It’d been the first time since leaving home that he’d celebrated Thanksgiving in any other way than grilled turkey sandwiches from Subway and deep fried apple pie from McDonalds. Of course, that was the moment when Sam informed him that his parents didn’t actually technically celebrate Thanksgiving, that they saw it as a celebration of the rape of indigenous American culture by the white man, that they would be having some sort of Malaysian curry dish authentically cooked by Sam’s half-Malaysian mom and some sort of kulfi Indian ice-cream for dessert made by Sam’s British-Indian father.

“You’re adopted?” Dean hissed, as he followed Sam up the enormous winding staircase leading from the marble-floored hallway to the second floor landing. “Why didn't you tell me you were adopted?”

“It never came up,” Sam answered with a shrug.

“It never came - Sam, seriously? Do you know how freakin’ embarrassing it was just then? What a fuckin’ idiot I must’ve looked gaping at your parents when you introduced me? You could’ve given me some warning, dude. Said, oh by the way, I’m adopted and my parents are nowhere near as freakishly tall as me, and, oh yeah, my Mom’s half-Asian and my Dad’s Indian.”

“British-Indian,” Sam corrected with a frown. “He’s got dual British and American citizenship. It’s just his family is originally from India.”

“Okay, well, fine. But don’t you think you should’ve told me all this?”

Sam turned to him and sighed, “I’m sorry. Okay, you’re right, I should’ve mentioned it. But it’s just. It honestly never occurred to me.” He paused and pushed open the door of what Dean supposed was his room, and okay, so... wow. When Sam said his folks were wealthy, yeah, he meant it; this room was about as big as the entire first floor of his uncle and aunt’s place back in Branston. And, wait a second, was that -

“Holy crap, you got your own bathroom - like your own bathroom! Sweet.”

He strode over to the half-open bathroom door and poked his head inside. It was sparklingly clean, tiles gleaming, a big sunken bathtub with shiny brass fittings and a separate shower, as well as the toilet and sink.

“Fuck, dude,” he breathed, coming back into the room. “And this is all yours?”

“Yeah. Just for me,” Sam said, pouting as he sank to the edge of the freaking enormous king-size bed. “And you know, man, if you’d ever come by my dorm-room then you would’ve seen the pictures of the family, and you would’ve seen what they looked like. But you haven’t, so -“ he broke off again with a sulky shrug.

Dean rolled his eyes; he’d heard that argument from Sam enough damn times already. Seriously, why the hell did he need to visit Sam’s dorm room? The place was full of freaking teenagers. He saw enough of Sam’s friends every time they insisted on tagging along when he and Sam went out for drinks. Anyway, Sam always came to his place. They could have sex at his place, in a decent sized bed without dead-eyed Brady lying five feet away pretending to sleep. He moved to perch on the bed beside Sam, jostling him with his elbow. Sam turned his head and looked at him, Dean raised an eyebrow and Sam huffed out a breath, his lips twitching at the corners.

“Look, when I was a kid, I didn’t know I was adopted. That was probably really dumb of me ‘cause having parents from two different ethnic backgrounds to me - kinda a big red flag, but it just didn’t occur to me. For me, my mom was just my mom and my dad was my dad, like everyone else. But when I was about eight, there was this douchebag kid in my class and he spent all of recess one time fucking ragging on me about being adopted, about my real family not wanting me, and all this other crap that was super racist and I don’t intend to repeat it right now.” He broke off, huffed out a laugh. “He was a real asshole in the making. But it hurt, you know? It was dumb racist kid shit, but it hurt. And I remember going home that day and just going up to my Mom and asking her straight off: Am I adopted? And she, well, she told me the truth.” He sighed again, bowing his head as his fingers fiddled with the drawstring of his hoodie. “I felt so fucking stupid for not realizing before. Like everybody had been keeping this secret from me and been laughing at me behind my back all that time.”

“They weren't laughing at you, Sam,” Dean said softly. He reached over and squeezed Sam’s knee. “Listen to me, man, family doesn’t end with blood. Family’s about who’s there for you when it matters, not about whose sperm or eggs or whatever made you.”

Family was a lot more than genetics; family was the people who were there for you, who cared about you, who looked after you when you were sick, and comforted you when you were upset. He knew his parents had cared about him once, back before his mother had died so horribly in their house back in Kansas, but that was a long time ago, he barely thought about her or Dad now, it was pointless regretting the past. Uncle Jim and Aunt Marion were the ones that counted; they’d always been there for him.

“Yeah,” Sam nodded, raising his head, a slight shine to his eyes that signaled held back tears. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ve never - never even thought about whoever my birth parents are. I mean, I know I could trace them if I wanted to, but I don’t know, it doesn’t seem important right now. My family’s my family, you know? They’re the people that matter. I’m not interested in the ones that gave me away.”

Dean nodded slowly, letting out a long breath. “I know.” He thought about his own father - the few memories he had of the guy, those occasions when he’d come by to take him out. Back when he was six, seven years old, when he’d still loved his Dad, when he’d still idolized him, before he’d realized what kind of a guy John Winchester really was. He’d been so scared of failing back then, of not being the sort of son his father wanted, of always failing to live up to his Dad’s expectations. The knowledge that maybe if he’d been different, if he’d been better, if he’d tried harder then Dad wouldn’t have left him behind.

He could remember one particular visit when he was nine, overhearing Dad ask Aunt Marion: “Why’s he not playing ball this year?” And her quiet apologetic answer: “He says he doesn’t want to, John. He has so many other hobbies.” And Dad’s contemptuous snort: “Like those freaking planets or all those damn rocks? I can see how hobbies like that would take up his time.”

He’d lain in his bed and stared up at his collection of papier-mâché scale planets, at the rotating solar system he’d hung from his bedroom ceiling, the enormous Jupiter and Saturn he hadn’t managed to make to scale because they were just too big, at his shelves of rocks, (some of them genuine meteorites), and he’d felt this rush of shame deep in his belly. He hadn’t known that an interest in planets, in space and science, in collecting rocks, were things to be ashamed of, but he’d felt ashamed of it after that, after hearing the dismissal in his father’s voice.

Dad had gone out and bought him a new baseball mitt, one of the few gifts he’d ever bought for Dean. He’d left it behind, still in the shop’s plastic bag, on the kitchen table for when Dean got home from school. Aunt Marion had been sitting at the table in her waitress uniform, looking embarrassed as she explained that his father had had to leave early, had a job to get to, but he’d left Dean a present, hoped that he’d get back on the team that year.

He’d gotten onto the team for the rest of that year; hell, he still played baseball regularly. He still loved the game for which he guessed he had to thank his Dad. But he’d given up on trying to please his father in any other way. And as the years passed, and as Dad’s visits got less and less frequent, he started to not care. He was ten years old when he realized what that smell drifting off his father’s breath and his father’s clothes was, and what the whispers Uncle Jim made to Aunt Marion when they thought Dean wasn’t listening really meant: “Drunk, he’s a drunk, Marion. He’s always been a drunk.”

And Aunt Marion would defend him - her favorite cousin John. “After what he’s been through, Jim, give him a break, be a Christian.”

She was the only one who’d cried at Dad’s funeral. Dean hadn’t cried, not at the funeral at least. He’d just felt this overwhelming sense of relief, this weight lifting from his shoulders. He’d asked Aunt Marion and Uncle Jim if he could change his name after they’d buried Dad. He’d asked them if he could stop being a Winchester and become a Cooper just like them, and they’d been happy to agree, tears in their eyes when the official adoption papers finally came through, a few days after his thirteenth birthday.

He could feel Sam’s eyes on him and he gave an awkward sort of a shrug. “Families, huh?”

Sam smiled, nudged him back. “Yeah.”

Sam’s parents turned out to be okay. Scary and intense for sure, but pretty cool overall; surprisingly cool about their only barely-legal son dating a guy more than four years older than him who worked in a garage. But they were hippies, ridiculously rich Californian hippies, but still, hippies. They welcomed Dean into the family, seemed genuinely happy to meet him, declaring that anyone who had their Sam so spun around had to be a good guy, to Sam’s immense embarrassment.

Dean knew the bare facts about them. Sam’s Dad, Rishi, had built his business up from nothing. He'd come to the US in the 1970’s to do a grad course at Stanford and he’d started up a hi-tech firm manufacturing parts for computer motherboards, and been incredibly successful at it. He’d moved into software in the 1990’s, and pioneered video streaming during the 00’s. He’d been even more successful at that. He was currently worth well over a million dollars, though Sam honestly had no idea exactly how much.

Sam’s mom, Celeste, had met Rishi at Stanford while she was a grad student. She’d been a professor and an academic in the anthropology field for several years after her graduation, until she’d had a crisis of faith and switched to a less lucrative but much more emotionally fulfilling career as a public school teacher.

Rishi latched onto Dean with a shared love of American classic cars and the glories of the combustion engine in general. Dean was proud to show off his baby to Sam’s millionaire dad, finally finding a topic of conversation where he could speak without stumbling over his words, where he could be eloquent and interesting and worthy of Sam’s faith in him. And Rishi seemed to be impressed, running his hands over the Impala’s bodywork and peppering Dean with the sort of questions Dean only tended to get from his really devoted customers. Later on in the evening, the bonding went even further when Dean happened to mention that he was working on restoring a pair of ancient broken CB radios in his spare time. Rishi’s face immediately lit up and he dragged Dean off to view his mini home laboratory, his “tinkering oasis”, shelves and shelves of old and new electronic equipment, old computer and telephone parts, drawers of microchips and jumbles of wires.

Sam’s mother, Celeste, was also pretty cool; scarier than her husband, and with that overwhelming public-school-teacher vibe that always managed to make Dean feel like a high school freshman again. She commandeered Dean to help her fix dinner one night, gushing about how Sam had told them what a great cook he was. Dean protested and shot death-glares Sam’s way (to Sam’s amusement), but he couldn’t get out of it. Luckily, it seemed that Celeste was one of those cooks who just needed someone to chop veggies and do the dishes, someone to talk to while she did the real work.

She kept up a steady flow of words the entire time, mainly about Sam, about how they hadn’t been at all shocked when Sam’d told them he was gay. Sam had already told Dean this story, explained how his parents had cut him off in the middle of his big coming-out speech and said, “We know, honey, you’re gay. We’ve known for a while.”

“D’you know why we adopted Sam?” she asked, looking up from her simmering pots with that burning incisive gaze that Dean could imagine was pretty effective on her students. Luckily, the question seemed to be rhetorical, and she continued without Dean’s response: “My mother, my sister and my aunt all died of breast cancer. I know that I will get breast cancer eventually, despite medical advances or healthy living. But I was determined that no child of mine would ever succumb to our family’s curse, would never live with that kind of a death sentence hanging over them.”

Dean nodded, hoping vainly that he wasn’t supposed to comment at this point because - seriously, what was he supposed to say to that? Sorry, man, that sucks, just didn’t cut it. At least, he now knew where Sam got his propensity for “over-sharing”.

“At first Rishi and I chose to never have children, but then we began to feel that it was our duty to the world to give something back. Doing charity work, giving money, for people with our resources, it’s easy. But to devote your life to raising a child that isn’t your own - that takes something special. And even then, I was still unsure. I felt certain that I was not cut out to be a mother. But that was until I met Sam.” She looked up and smiled at him, a serene, intense sort of a smile that reminded Dean overwhelmingly of Sam, of that unbearable earnestness that Sam could sometimes unleash. He blinked at her and nodded, but she didn’t seem to need any prompting to go on, lost in her retelling. “Sam was about fourteen months old when we first saw him in an orphanage in Santa Ana. He was such a beautiful baby, so quiet, but with this amazing inner-life. As soon as I held him in my arms, I will never forget how that felt, Dean. I knew immediately that this was the baby for us, that this would be my little boy. It was an extraordinary sensation, an awakening of something inside me that I’d never imagined. It was a truly life-changing experience.”

She turned then, looked at Dean as if she was noticing him for the first time. “I was very eager to meet you, Dean. I’ve heard so much about you from Sam. And now, meeting you, I can understand why. You’re an extremely handsome boy, and you seem to be very personable, very charming. I can understand why Sam is so taken with you.” Dean blushed, his mouth drying up as he tried to hunt for some sort of a response. Luckily she didn’t seem to need one, still boring that same matter-of-fact, sincere gaze into him. “I’m not just saying this because I’m his mother, but Sam’s an extraordinary person, Dean. I hope you appreciate that.”

He blinked and nodded, stammering, “Um, yeah, yeah, I do.”

She looked at him for a long moment, then nodded, as if satisfied. “I believe you.”

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