A/N: I like mathematical metaphors, lately. Hope you like this too! It's my hundredth fic. :)
Disclaimer: Not mine, not slash.
And bucketloads of Dean angst. Poor baby.
He thinks about it sometimes. Where they stand. Where they fall.
It's math, pure and simple, when you get down to it. Values of greater and lesser. Rarely (never) equal.
Math is the only subject he's ever beat Sam in. But then, Sam's never had to do this kind of math.
Sam, with shoulders squared towards Stanford, will study psychology and apply it to his screwed-over family. Sam will study English, and scorn their imperfect grammar. Sam will study law, and defame the tyranny of his father's ways.
Sam will study math, but he will never define these constants, determine the order of the numbers of their lives.
Not like Dean does. The way Dean sees it, there's a hierarchy. In every relationship, one is greater than the other. The power breaks uneven, the scales tip, and the verdict is set in stone.
He's never tried to explain it to anyone. He doesn't think anyone would get it, and he's never been good with words. But he knows it, knows it like breathing.
The lesser half knows who they are.
Dean knows who he is.
Take him and Dad. Dad's greater, better, bigger, because he's Dad—and Dad knows he holds the power, knows that Dean may be stubborn but he'll always give in, has to, because Dad could take away what they have if he wanted to and Dean couldn't stop him. Dad could shut him out, and the only thing greater that Dean would have would be his loss.
Sometimes he wonders how it would be if Mom had lived. Hell, he always wonders that, every waking, aching second—but sometimes he lets himself really think about it, and he wonders if she would have loved him as much as he loved her.
And despite the fact that (or perhaps because) he paints her as an angel in his mind, she's always above him.
Hunting gives him some sort of excuse to be who and what he is—a poster-child for dysfunction, self-loathing and sarcasm, promises broken by his weakness, not his will. He likes to imagine himself in another life, smart and skilled and capable, football star, maybe. College student. The good son.
But he knows that that's merely a cardboard cutout of a boy. That's not him.
In another life, if he's honest with himself, he sees Mom with her soft, kind eyes framed by the worry-lines he put there. Hears her voice strung taut with disappointment, sees her older than her time because he's not the good son, not really.
Not even in his dreams.
It would be a different equation, sure, but the same constants. He's never enough. Not for Dad, not for Mom.
And not for Sam. He used to believe that the way he looked after Sam was the only redeeming thing about him—but now even Sam doesn't believe that.
And there's nothing else. The equation's the same, and he knows the constants well.
He knows where he stands—knows where, and how, and why he falls.