Title: Uphill Battle
Author: belittledtolate
Rating: M
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Cas, references to Dean/OMC, Sam/Jess, Mary, John.
Spoilers: none AU
Word Count: 1,393 (this chapter (WIP))
Summary: Dean leaves home at seventeen after disappointing his father by being gay, he joins the Marines in a hope at making his father proud. Year's later his brother Sam, never knowing why his brother left goes in search or his older brother to find what's left of the boy he used to know.
I was seventeen when I couldn't hide it anymore. That's not to say for the lack of trying.
It was just that there was this thing inside me, clawing at my very soul, trying so desperately to get out that to keep it in hurt every ounce of me.
But he just kept talking question; asking if I was going to go to prom that year, who was the lucky lady I would ask, do I have some special lady in mind, that it's fine to bring a girl back to the house sometime to met everyone if I'd like.
With every word it was like a stab deeper and deeper. It was this hurt that had my confession out of my mouth before I even realized I was thinking of saying anything. And once it had left my lips it's not like I could take it back, no matter how much I wanted to. Because by then I had seen the look on my Dad's face, the mixture of shock and horror, with just a little bit of anger.
I wanted to play it off as a joke but I knew that there was no hope of that as I felt the tears drip down my face. Because I could tell by the way he stared at me that I couldn't deny it any longer, to many pieces of the puzzle where sliding into place in his heads. I could hear it, the gears turning, and making sense of all the things about me that never really fit.
The real reason I never had girlfriends although I always had friends who were girls who seemed up for it. Why I never showed any interest in them, instead content to hang out with my friends. The reason I always talked about sports and cars while all my friends could talk about was which girl was the hottest in class.
For a long time I didn't understand why I couldn't for the life of me see what they saw. I wanted to, I tried to.
I spent nights alone at home trolling the internet for that spark inside to be light from the many painted faces in ecstasy online only to find myself disgusted or indifferent to the images. Or the worse, to find my self drawn in by the partner in the movie that I was supposed to ignore, to the point where one night I finally got the nerve to click on a different link only to find that spark that I had so long for and been so disgusted with my self that I ended up sitting in the shower crying for an hour before I convinced myself that it couldn't be true, that it must be some weird puberty thing because I was only 12.
Because there was no way I could be like that. There was no way I could want to do those things that where supposed to be disgusting, that were perverse. There was no way that those images could light an ache inside me I've been missing. Because I like sports, I was good at sports .I loved to talk about cars and loud music and get my hands dirty. I was my father's son, I was going to be a marine and be a hero, I was going to be a fireman and have a family, I was a total guy, but unfortunately it seemed also a man's man.
So I did the only thing I could, I ignored those feelings. Pushing them so far down that they it began to fester. It started as a dull itch that grew into a soul consuming pain that I felt that day.
The pain was manageable for the longest time, which was of course until football camp last summer. Two months of hard physical labor next to sweaty hot men, and although my roommate could see what we did as just helping a friend out in the absence of girls, I couldn't. The way his body moved to my touch, the look on his face, the way his skin felt on my hands, the things I wanted him to do to me. I could tell he knew that it was different to me, that I was something else but for two months I suited him, and he made sure to voice his opinion on our differences on that last day. To this day those words he said to me still hurt. It was then that everything changes, then when no matter what I wanted I couldn't deny that this was me, that I would never feel at inferno of lust a desire for the smooth curves of a woman. And I had to admit to myself that I was gay.
And it was this realization that caused me to now be sat here, in the passenger seat of my fathers car pulled off to the shoulder of the road, father looking like his head is about to explode. And I can tell this is going to be bad, that I may regret this. But I can't help feeling happy somewhere inside my mixed up head because the pain has stopped.
Sometimes looking back I wished he would have yelled at me instead of saying nothing. He just started the car back up and stared darkly at the road and drove us home. I moved to get out of the car when he told me to wait. He was still staring straight ahead, as though looking at me wasn't even an option. His voice was deep and calm as he told me that I had a decision to make. How I could either go inside and we could both forget this conversation happened and I could find a nice girl to date or I could go inside pack a bag and leave, because he wasn't having that kind of thing in his house, not when he had another son to think about.
And I stared at him, I stared open mouthed, hot tears still streaming down my face at the vacant spot my father had left in his wake. And I sat outside for an hour till I eventually went inside, my mother asking me what was wrong, my brother transfixed by his book. And I didn't speak, not as I went upstairs and packed a bag, or grabbed the money I had hidden in my closet. I didn't answer as my mother asked me where I was going as I walked out the front door, not looking back to see my father's stern look as he sat stoically in the kitchen.
I wish I could say that I left and went and became a proud successful man, but things like that rarely happen. Instead I called a friend from my football team asking if I could stay the night at his house because I knew his mom was never in town any ways and didn't care if he had people over. I didn't tell him anything other then play off that my dad and I had a fight about my grades or some other crap I made up at the time.
The next day I did something that I still don't know if I regret, even though it cost me so many things in life. The thing is it also giving me my greatest gift as well. I think I did it out of some twisted need for my father's affection still.
I went and enlisted in the Marines.
Usually at 17 they make you enter into a DEP (delay of entry program) until you graduate, but the one thing that my general lack of interest in girls and my fear of actually pursuing a guy did was get me a lot of high school credits, so I was able to leave a high school a month later at the end of my junior year. I had mailed the form to my dad, and to this day I can only guess and say he signed it and sent it in because I never spoke to him since that day in the car.
The next week I found myself in California going into boot camp as a 17 year old boy with a daddy complex, and leaving a war as a 22 year old man without a leg.