Title: Unrelated, 2/9
Art by: beelikej
Pairing: John/Mary, John/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Total Word Count: 4073
Warnings: Explicit slash
Disclaimer: If only John and Dean were mine... *sigh*
A/N: See all the great art, along with all my other stories on my LJ (john-n-dean dot livejournal dot com). Dean is not a Winchester in this story.
Chapter 2
John looked up from the car he was working on, frowning and gesturing with his wrench. "What's wrong with Annapolis?"
"Nothin's wrong with it," Dean insisted. "I just want to stay here 'til I graduate. You and Sam promised to help me if I tried this, and I don't think you can do that if I'm all the way in freaking Annapolis. I'm just grateful that the University of Kansas is an NROTC school."
"I went to Annapolis after Nam," he said, trying not to sound peevish. He didn't know why it was so important to him where Dean went. Honestly, he was just as disturbed at the idea of Dean being gone as he was with the idea of his kids being gone… but he still wanted them all in Annapolis, irrational as that might be. "Spent eight more years in the Corps after I got back stateside. Four years there and then four years climbing up the ranks after graduation. I was gonna be a career Marine like the Colonel. But… I got married instead."
"You could have done both."
"I could've. But Mary hates the Corps. In case you ain't noticed, my wife's a little anti-establishment."
Dean snorted. "Yeah. I did. You ever regret it? Leaving the Corps?"
"I don't think I would have had as much time for my kids if I'd stayed in. I can't regret that." He snorted softly. "Riley's talkin' about goin to the Citadel. The fuckin' Citadel. Says it's pretty."
He frowned at the older man, trying to imagine Riley calling anything 'pretty' as a compliment. "I take it that's… bad."
"Yes, it's bad. Have you ever seen that place? It looks like some freaking castle outta a fairytale."
"Seriously?"
John shuddered slightly and Dean couldn't tell if it was a fake shudder or not. He snorted anyway. "It freaks me out, Dean. Girl's stubborn even for a Winchester, though. If she's sayin' she wants to go there now, I doubt she'll change her mind down the road."
SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN
"John! I finally found the one!" Dean came striding into the garage, his long legs eating up the distance between them. It was late in the day and Dean had only been gone an hour and a half. John was alone, doing safety checks on cars that would be ready for pick up the next day.
"The one?"
"Yeah… the girl of my dreams. Come on. You gotta come see."
John wanted to be happy, and flattered that Dean would be so anxious for him to meet this girl, but he felt like his heart was being crushed. He was married. He had no right to be jealous. "Uh, sure."
He followed the boy, who was so happy he was practically vibrating, to the front of the shop. John frowned when he saw no one out there. Dean walked right over to a motorcycle. It was a classic, but it was cherry. And beautiful enough to give the Impala a run for her money. All smooth and curvy. Like a work of art made out of steel and chrome, gleaming black and silver in the late afternoon sun. It brought to mind a well-built woman.
"Isn't she gorgeous?" Dean was running his hands over it – her – lovingly. John had to admit that she did have sex appeal.
"She's a motorcycle," John stated flatly, trying to ignore the relief flooding him. The relief didn't last long, though. It was quickly choked out by shame. It was damn selfish of him to not want Dean to have love if he couldn't have him. He didn't like that impulse at all. If anyone deserved to be happy, it was Dean and he felt like a complete bastard for wishing otherwise.
"Yeah. I always wanted one. When I saw her, I just couldn't resist." The boy threw one long leg over the bike and settled onto the seat like he was born to ride her. "What do you think? I'm not gonna be one of those guys who just thinks he looks cool when he really looks like a huge dork, am I?"
"You look…" Sexy? Hot? Fucking edible spread out over that bike like that? "… good."
Dean gave him a blinding smile, every one of his teeth showing. "Yeah? I told my mom about her over the phone. I know it was a cop out, but she's convinced I'm gonna kill myself and I didn't have the nerve to tell her in person that I finally took the plunge."
"You got protective clothing and a helmet, right?"
"Yes sir."
"Then all you need to do is avoid bein' reckless and watch out for the idiots around you."
SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN
"I know. It's weird watchin' him study so hard." John looked up at the sound of Michael's voice. The boy had followed his gaze to where Dean sat in a corner of the shop at a rickety table completely engrossed in a book that didn't contain cars, porn or comics. Dean. He'd wanted to be an officer, but he was afraid. He'd enrolled at the community college to take all his required courses and signed up for the Marine reserves at nineteen. It had been easier than he expected it to be, so he decided to enlist while he continued his college classes. The Corps was footing the bill, and Dean was doing a good job of keeping up with his studies and the demands of the NROTC, which were even harder for Marines. He barely had time to work at the garage at all anymore, but he still spent as much time as he could there or at the house, sitting in a corner with his books and manuals.
John snorted in agreement with his son, like that was actually what had been on his mind. Really, he'd been daydreaming about how he could put the boys' mouth to better use than chewing on that poor, defenseless pencil. His son catching him at it just make him feel like an even bigger lecher. "Speaking of studying, how'd you do on your test?"
"I have no idea. Damn thing was so long. Whoever came up with these stupid standardized tests was an evil bastard. But I'm sure I scored high enough. I've got a solid 3.25 GPA. So, I'm not really worried."
"Good. Give any thought to your MOS?"
"Well, they said my eyesight was 20/10. They seem to think that I'd make a good sniper like my old man."
SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN
"You know I love Dean…"
John was exhausted. After his shower, he hadn't had the energy to turn down the bed or put on a fresh pair of boxers. He lay on top of the covers, face down, still wrapped in his towel. The boys had worn him out playing contact football and he had several bruises to show for it, but Mary's words had him on high alert. She didn't know, did she? He opened one eye and tried to look up at her from where he lay. "But?"
She lay down facing him and ran her fingers through his damp hair. "I think you should try to give equal time to Sam. I know he's difficult right now," John snorted at the understatement, but she continued "but he's at an awkward age and I think he feels excluded."
"Excluded? He never wants to do anything with me. It's not like I say, I'm gonna spend all day with Dean and nobody else can come. The other boys usually just include themselves."
"Maybe if you tried to do things with him? I mean… ask him if he wants to come with you to do something you know he likes. Maybe spend a little one on one time with him." He felt her straddling his hips and she began to knead his back and shoulders with surprisingly strong fingers. He moaned softly as he felt himself slowly relax. "Just remind him that he's your firstborn and that you love him too."
"I'll try. But if I say the sky is blue, he says it's really azure. Which I'm really fuckin' sure is still blue."
She snorted softly and leaned down to kiss his shoulder. "It is. He's just… trying to find something that he's better at than you."
"Well, that's not difficult. I only got two things I'm good at."
"That's not true. You're a hard man to live up to. You never allow yourself a margin of error. He's a lot more like you than either of you think. He wants to be a lawyer and he's strong enough to do that despite the whole Winchester legacy thing… but he feels like he's let you down somehow by doing it. So he's prickly and defensive. That sound like anyone you know."
"Yeah. We never shoulda named him after your father."
Mary laughed and poked him in the ribs. "He's nothing like Dad. He's like you. Proud and stubborn and always trying to do the right thing by his own standards."
"I wanna spend time with the boy, Mary. Especially now, especially when he's about to go off to Stanford."
"I know. Who would've thought you'd be worse than me when it came time for the kids to leave home?" She kissed him behind the ear. "Get up, honey… let me pull the covers back for you. You don't have to put anything on. That'll just make it easier for me to molest you in the morning."
SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN
"Come on, Sammy. Dean and I are gonna shoot some hoops."
Sam frowned up at him, a slightly peevish expression on his face. John wondered what the boy's problem was now. He was trying to include him. Sometimes it worked, but mostly it didn't. Last time he checked Sam liked basketball. "I have to finish my report. It's worth a quarter of my grade."
"One of your honors classes?" Dean asked curiously, casually tossing the ball from one hand to another.
"Yeah."
"Dude… you know you'll ace it. You always ace it. A few hours of downtime can't hurt."
Sammy thought about it, chewing on his lip and looking so much like he had when he was three and trying to figure out how to tie his laces that John had the sudden urge to pinch his cheeks. But Sammy was seventeen and almost an inch taller than he was now and he didn't think that pinching his cheeks would go over well. Especially with Dean in the room. Finally the boy sighed and the moment passed. "I'm not that comfortable with the subject matter. I need to do some work on it first. Maybe next time."
Dean rolled his eyes. Dean had been a solid C student in high school and John suspected that was because he only did what he had to do to pass. School just didn't do it for him the way it did for Sam. When he applied himself in college after John encouraged him to at least try it so he could become an officer, he started pulling As and Bs. "Whatever, geek."
The younger boy smirked. "Jerk."
"I bet you'll be the only kid at Stanford who spends his weekends actually studying."
John's heart gave a painful twist at the mention of Stanford. Sam was his firstborn, and he'd be the first to leave. It shouldn't hurt so much, the idea of him not being around. But it did. Sam thought he didn't want him to become a lawyer and do his own thing. He couldn't have been further from the truth. The fact was… the fact was he felt like he was losing his son and that Sam was just the first. There were five more and they were all close enough in age that it would end up being a constant stream of loss once Sam left next fall. Mary dealt with it by living in a blissful state of denial. John was too much of a pragmatist for that. So he pretty much hated any mention of Sam actually going to Stanford even though he bragged to anyone that would listen to him for more than sixty seconds that his boy had gotten in and earned a full academic scholarship at that. He was already trying to decide what to do with the money he'd set aside for Sam's education. Graduation gift or wedding present? It could make one hell of a nice down payment on a house. Maybe a car too.
SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN
Shauna curled up against him on the couch. She was thirteen and he was beginning to see hints of the woman she'd become. If it was hard think about his boys being gone, it was ten times harder to think about his girls leaving the nest. He wrapped a slightly possessive arm around her.
"Daddy?"
"Yes, angel?" He smoothed back the hair at her temple with a thumb. She was still so small, still looked up at him like he was the most important man in the world. One day far too soon she was going to be looking at some little punk like that.
"Did you like Mom when you first met her?"
John chuckled. "No. And she didn't like me either. So it was mutual."
She frowned at him. "When did you start liking her?"
John pursed his lips and thought about it. His thoughts took him back to a day that he never thought about, but that had shaped the rest of his life.
Mary's older cousin Brad was John's best friend. If it hadn't been for that fact, or the fact that the Campbell clan was so tight knit that Brad was as likely to be found at Mary's house as his own, he never would have spent enough time around her to realize that maybe she wasn't just a gorgeous ditzy blond hippy. But she was a hippy. And he was in ROTC, and chomping at the bit to go off to war once he turned eighteen. Brad was too, and they shipped out together. John came back decorated and field promoted to sergeant. Brad came back decorated too… in a flag draped coffin.
Brad died right in front of him, right next to him, in a miserable water-filled foxhole two days before they were hastily pulled out, the country falling apart behind them. Everything they'd fought and bled and died for falling to pieces in a matter of days. Many soldiers coming back felt like they'd be betrayed, that if the politicians had done the right thing rather than allowing unrest back home to dictate policy, they could have won. Most, though, were just glad to get out alive. John had been among the former but he still understood the later. Vietnam had been a hot, wet, bug ridden hell.
So many had died leading up to and during the evac that the system of identifying victims in the last days of the war and notifying next of kin had been hopelessly backlogged. He realized on the transport back to the States that he very well could be back to Kansas before Brad's body or even the notification letter, and he decided he wanted the Campbells to hear about Brad's death from him. He owed his friend at least that much. Between flashbacks of Brad's death and the prospect of telling his friends family about it, he was so emotionally fucked up by the time he got to Brad's house that he threw up in the bushes. Mary found him out there trying to pull himself together.
"John?"
He stumbled back, slightly shaky on his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of a bare hand, his glove clutched in the other. He tucked it into his belt. "Mary… hi."
"You're back? Already? Don't tell me you've been drinking. Where's Brad? Passed out in the car?"
John shook his head, tears stinging his eyes. "Brad's… he's…"
Mary blinked at him, frowning. "What is it? You're scaring me."
"I'm so sorry."
Mary gasped. "No! No… not Brad. But… he just sent a letter. It came today. Aunt Sara read it to us after dinner."
"It happened less than a week ago. I… there's a backlog with all the paperwork. Things really went to hell towards the end and… I couldn't just come back and not tell your family. And a letter is just a horrible way to find out something like this anyway."
"We have to tell them." Mary took his hand in hers. He could feel the warmth of it radiating through his dress glove. He's felt calmer in the middle of a warzone with heavy artillery raining down on his head then he did standing in front of the Campbells and telling them about his best friend's last hours. But Mary stood next to him, holding his hand and radiating calm. That was the first time she had really impressed him. But it wouldn't be the last.
"She impressed me. I realized there was more to her than I thought. It's like that saying, you can't judge a book by its cover."
"So then you married her?"
"It took another six years," John said softly, smoothing back her silky blond hair, "before we actually got married. I went to college and stayed in the Corps as an officer and she worked her way through school as a waitress. But the longer I knew her the more I loved her and wanted to be with her, so I left the Corps and took a job at the garage. The rest is history."
SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN
John folded the newspaper and tossed it aside in disgust. "The damn politicians need to stop monkeying around with the military before they break it."
"You don't think they should repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell?" Sam asked as he put more eggs on his plate.
"I think they never should have passed it in the first place." John sucked at his front teeth like he had a bad taste in his mouth. "They need to let the people who have to fight and die under the decisions make them. Politics have no place in the armed forces."
"You of all people should understand why Don't Ask Don't Tell is so reprehensible. They need to at least get rid of it."
"Why Dad of all people?" Michael asked, sounding confused.
Mary stopped in the middle of angrily spooning hash browns into her plate and John cleared his throat. His bisexuality was such a fact of his life that it kind of shocked him that his kids obviously didn't know despite having never been actually told.
"Your mother's talkin' about the fact that I'm bisexual, son."
John's announcement was met with complete silence around the breakfast knock. Mary had the good grace to blush as she stared down at her plate.
"You are?" Sam finally broke the silence. "Why didn't you ever say anything?" And that was Sammy. Always expecting to be told everything. As if John's sexuality somehow affected him.
"I'm a married man. Anyone I'm attracted to besides your mother should be a moot point. Just like it should be for a Marine. The Corps ain't a country club or a datin' service. It's there to protect this nation, to make sure that people are free to say and do anything they want, even if it's stupid."
"What about that woman who got kicked out for bein' a lesbian?"
"She didn't get kicked out for bein' a lesbian, kiddo. She got kicked out for bein' an idiot. She had an affair with someone's wife. That's against the honor code for everybody. That kinda crap'll get you dead in some circles, and it'll get you dishonorably discharged anywhere no matter which sex you're attracted to."
SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN
"I'm sorry John." They had finally gotten the last of the kids off to school. It was the first time Mary had spoken since outing John, and her voice was small. He could see how much she regretted it, how ashamed she felt of herself and what little annoyance he still had over it evaporated.
He shrugged and smiled reassuringly. "It's alright. No harm, no foul. It's probably good that they know. It's not somethin' I'm ashamed of."
"No… it's not alright. I don't want to be this person. I love you so much. And I have never doubted that you love me. But… we've been trying to make this work for nearly twenty years now and it's just… not."
"It was only a slip of the tongue, Mary. You were fired up."
"It wasn't just a slip of the tongue. It's everything."
"What're you… what're you sayin'?"
"Maybe we need to stop trying. I want you to be happy, John. I don't make you happy."
"I love you. I want to grow old with you."
"I know that. But it's not enough. I used to think it was all that mattered. How naive was that? Because it's not the growing old part that's the problem. It's the living with each other in the meantime. We're always fighting, always hurting each other. Even in front of the kids now."
"It takes more than love. It takes hard work too. We can… we can try counseling."
She sighed softly, sounding weary. "I suppose we can."
"I'm not ready to give up on us yet. Are you?"
Mary snorted softly and laid her head on John's shoulder. "I don't know who I am anymore without you. We'll try counseling," she said, her voice sounding stronger. More sure.
SPN*SPN*SPN*SPN
"Do you know anyone who's bisexual?"
Sam's question was out of the blue and made Dean choke on his pop. Huge hands pounded against his back and he pushed the younger boy away. Sam's attempts to save him would kill him before the choking would. Dean could beat the hell out of Sam in a fair fight, and especially an unfair one, but Sam was turning into a giant with the strength to match and he felt like the kid was knocking his spine loose.
"Why'd you ask?" Dean asked hoarsely.
Sam shrugged and looked away. "Someone I thought I knew just told me that he was. I… it's just strange to think about. Being attracted to everyone."
"Only potentially." Sam frowned at him, clearly not following his point. "I mean, you're not attracted to every chick you see, right?"
"No."
"So why would a bisexual person be attracted to everyone they see just 'cause they're bisexual? Bisexual isn't code for indiscriminant slut, Sam. A person who's bisexual can fall in love and be just as faithful as anyone else. It just isn't a given what sex that person will be when they find them."
Sam seemed to think it over. Finally he nodded. "Yeah. That makes sense."
"Course it does. I always make sense."
The kid gave him an amused look. "Always?"
Dean gave an emphatic nod. "Even when I don't."
Sam snorted out a laugh. "So who is it?"
"Who is what?"
"The person you know who's bisexual?"
"How do you know it's not me?"
Sam started to open his mouth only for it to snap shut again before he spoke. He cocked his head at Dean and regarded him thoughtfully. "Really? I guess… I never thought about it before but it kind of makes sense."
"And why's that." Dean scowled at him. He liked the kid, but he swore that if he made a crack about how 'pretty' he was, he was going to knock him flat on his ass.
"A few things just fit. I think I saw you a couple of times with a guy you were interested in."
Dean's heart froze in his chest… he prayed that Sam hadn't figured out his crush on John. But the kid wouldn't be this calm about his best friend perving on his father, would he? He took a deep breath and tried to appear composed. "Yeah? Who?"
"That guy from my honors English class. What's his name? Murray?"
Dean nearly deflated in relief, but he forced himself not to move. "Murphy," he corrected, pasting a lecherous smile on his face. "That boy has a mouth like a damn Hoover. Suction that never lets you down."
Sam stared at him, wide eyed and shocked, color creeping up from his collar to his cheeks. "Dude! Seriously? I don't need to know about your sex life."
"What?" Dean said innocently. "I was just confirming your suspicions."
