I would like to start this chapter by throwing myself at SoulfulSam's feet and kissing the ground she walks on. I want to thank her for taking my neediness and channeling it into something productive. I really don't know how to say how much it means to me.

Onward! A few warnings: Mature content and FEELINGS ahead.

Sam had been expecting some level of culture shock when he showed up at the Stanford dorms. Of course, Sam had expected it to come in the form of paranoia: seeing things in the shadows, hearing ghosts in the night, feeling chills in classrooms where there was nothing more dangerous than a hung-over student. And of course, he had expected to miss Dean. Dean had been his life before he left and now Sam was alone and having to pretend to be normal on a completely unprecedented scale.

Freshmen orientation week was an exercise in torture. Everyone he met asked the same question, Where are you from? They did it in that polite, small talk way, but Sam hated it. He had to come up with some lie every time someone asked it. At first he would answer here and there, without realizing that growing up on the road was the single most fascinating thing that these kids had heard all week. So then he started saying Lawrence, Kansas which was both the most honest and dishonest answer of them all.

Technically, he was born in Kansas, but he left before he was even enrolled in grade school. Their dad would drive an extra three hours off the interstate to avoid the city and he never talked about their home. Ever.

The Kansas thing worked for a while at least, until he bumped into someone who was actually from Lawrence and that conversation had totally sucked. So Sam had to try and guess who he was talking to, had to gauge their accent, their body language, their personality before choosing which lie to whip out. It was much more work than awkward small talk warranted. But, generally the Kansas thing was just boring enough for whoever was talking to him to smile sympathetically and move on to asking about his major.

Sam was much more comfortable talking about who he wanted to be than talking about who he was.

He had friends now, which was weird and uncomfortable, but kind of nice, he guessed. He had never been held accountable to anyone besides his father and his brother, but now he had virtual strangers expecting him to meet them for coffee, for study group, to watch a movie or get high. They wanted to be around him, even when he wasn't very funny or interesting. They always invited him to play pick up games and they always sat next to him in class.

He had never been very close to having friends before, maybe because a part of him knew that he would just have to leave them and maybe because he was always waiting for Dean. Waiting for Dean to pick him up after school, after soccer practice, after the library. He was always waiting for Dean to take him into the Impala and eat with him and even hold him in the night when Sam hurt for it so much he thought he was going to die.

But here were people who genuinely thought he was funny. People who wanted to be with him for him and not just for some fucked up idea of duty. Some of them, a flatteringly large amount, actually, wanted to be with him, be with him.

But Sam never really cared about that, or craved that kind of affection, even without Dean's mouth or ass getting him off when the itch came along. But he realized that normal people did. He left his Dad and Dean to give Dean some shot at 'normal' so Sam decided it was worth a chance, too.

His name was Brady.

He was in Sam's legal writings course and he laughed a little too loud and he made eye contact a little too much for Sam to believe that he didn't want him. He was nice looking, clever as hell and pre-med.

Sam had always just assumed that he was gay. In reality, he'd simply never felt what he felt for Dean for anyone else, not even fractionally. A few girls, here and there, even a soft kiss with a kitsune at a tender, confusing age, but compared to the way Dean made Sam burn up inside, they were hardly blips on the hormonal radar. Sam wasn't sure that he believed people were capable of loving both men and women. Fucking both? Sure, why not, Dean did it everyday, but loving both? No; there was a side and you picked it. Sam loved Dean. Dean was brave and brilliant and sexy beyond question and Sam had never given anyone else much more than a second glance.

Sam liked watching Dean's muscular shoulders flex as he swallowed Sam down. Sam liked the deep voice and the big hands and the roughness that he was allowed when he was intimate with another man. It might have just been Dean. It probably was just Dean. Dean was a hurricane of sex, but Sam was in the desert, so he made do with what he had.

And Brady was nice looking.

It happened at a frat party, since Brady was the frat's token fag, as he liked to refer to himself with a raised plastic red cup and a grin. Brady had been drinking, and he generally got extra boisterous when he drank, with winks and lewd comments and suggestive eyebrow waggling.

Sam wasn't very drunk, but he followed Brady away from their group of friends anyways.

Their friends weren't stupid, they knew where Sam was going and they all gave collective, whispers behind his back, surprised but all a little relieved that they had pinned him down, finally. On his best day, a "normal" Sam was still close-lipped and cautious. An in-the-closet kid made much more sense. He wasn't a freak anymore; he was poor gay Sam. His family wasn't a mystery anymore; they were a bunch of right wing assholes who didn't accept him. He didn't say a word, he didn't come out of the closet to a single soul, but the imaginations of ivy league students with some weed and a little gossip did all the heavy lifting for him.

Their Dad had always taught him that the best lies were the ones they didn't even have to tell. Letting people assume what they were going to assume was always the easiest way to go. People liked to think that they had figured it out, all on their own. It was almost polite to let them keep thinking it.

Brady didn't even need any prompting to drop onto his knees the second that Sam had ushered him into the bathroom. Sam braced himself against the sink as Brady unzipped and unfastened him then went to town on his cock, moaning and slurping like Sam's dick was the first one he'd ever tasted.

He wasn't bad at it. He was a little too loud and over the top for Sam's tastes. Brady's muffled moans and sighs sounded hollow and harsh against the tiled bathroom. They were nothing like the soft symphony of noises that he had heard with Dean, a thousand sounds otherwise lost to the world but made deafening in the silence of their motel room. The preluding sigh of his bed as Dean climbed into it, followed by the soft chorus of sheets moving, accommodating and revealing Sam's most vulnerable places in his most exposed and needy state. Then would come the crescendo of breaths, panted and quiet; Dean's as he picked up speed, breathing heavily through his nose so that he never wrenched his lips from Sam's desperation and Sam's panting as he rose higher and higher, as Dean's lips and tongue and sheer beauty took him higher and higher. But Brady was enthusiastic if nothing else, and that sort of compliment was arousing in its own right.

It was wrong. Brady wasn't wrong, Brady was being a real trooper down there, giving Sam everything he had in his porn archived repertoire. Brady was a consenting, adult partner who had been drooling over Sam for months and it was wrong.

Dean was slower, at first at least. Dean would spend minutes luxuriously salving the head of his cock, kissing up the length, twisting it in his hand, touching everything between Sam's legs from his balls to the little hole that Dean would play with—though never penetrate. Dean was Dean and Brady wasn't Dean and that was what was wrong. It was, actually, right and healthy, but it was wrong.

After fifteen long, laborious minutes of Brady working his dick like it was some sort of miracle, Sam ran his fingers through Brady's hair and guided him up. Brady stood, confused, hurt, probably sore, and Sam closed his eyes, leaned forward, and kissed him.

Brady opened his mouth up to him, willing to suck face if it would get Sam with the program, but Sam just ran his fingers though Brady's hair and kept playing between their lips, without any sense of urgency. After a while, Brady relaxed and joined along with the chaste kissing game, all lips and pressure and gentle nibbles, but no tongue.

It was nice. Sam had never kissed Dean, one of the few lines that Dean actually kept uncrossed, so with Brady it was different. When he didn't compare it to Dean, it wasn't so bad.

Because nothing would measure up to Dean and Sam just had to learn to live with that. No one in this life, this "normal" life would ever know him as well as Dean did. No one would ever touch him like Dean did, or smell like Dean did or sound like Dean did. Dean was gone. Sam gave Dean that and it wouldn't be fair to either of them if Sam couldn't stick to his promises.

So he would make Brady right. He would kiss Brady and make Brady something special.

The kiss was heating up and Sam felt Brady cupping his crotch again, running his fingers over Sam's cock, trying to keep it hard. Brady slipped his leg between Sam's longer ones and started grinding them together, his hands gripping at Sam's ass, his need for Sam intense and unrelenting against Sam's thigh.

After a couple of minutes, Sam broke from their kiss, which was progressing from nibbles to bites and passion and pulled away. A moment of worry flickered across Brady's face before Sam dropped to his knees and pulled Brady out.

"Oh, God, yes." Brady murmured and looked down at Sam like he was the most beautiful thing he'd ever laid eyes on.

Dean was thicker than Brady. Dean smelled different, less intense. Maybe it was because Sam and Dean had lived together for their whole lives, had done laundry together and used the same bath products that Dean's smell was comforting, not offensive. But Brady didn't smell bad. Just musky and foreign, Sam could get used to it. Sam would make himself get used to it.

Sam mimicked Brady's technique rather than Dean's; harsh and fast rather than savoring. Sam could only assume that Brady sucked cock like he liked having his cock sucked. Sam lavished a half dozen firm strokes of his tongue against Brady's dick, lubricating it before he started to pump him with his hand. Precome was already pearling out of Brady's slit, so Sam knew that he was close. He wrapped his mouth around Brady as far as he could, then sucked him and jacked him at the same time. Brady's head was thrown back, moaning and crying so loudly that Sam was sure they could hear it outside. He was hamming it up like a B list porn star and Sam was turning pink around the ears as Brady made his pleasure known to whoever happened to be walking by. But Sam had a cock in his mouth and he was pretty committed at this point.

It was mercifully fast, and Brady gave him plenty of warning, "Fuck, yes, fuck, yes, fuck, so fucking—yes, I'm coming. I'm coming so hard, yes!"

Sam took it like a man and swallowed to be polite. Dean always swallowed.

Except that first time. That first time when he threw it up and hid from Sam for the rest of the night. That first time that Dean hadn't looked at Sam or touched him until the second time. The second time when Sam had whispered his name into the night and Dean had given a long, sad sigh before climbing in and giving himself to Sam.

Sam had always taken everything from Dean. Sam had taken seconds of dinner when there was barely enough for two in the first place. It was always Sam who took the last of the orange juice or finished the tube of toothpaste and Dean never said a word. Dean never mentioned that there were two growing boys in the family, since he was only a little older than Sam, after all. Dean never spoke up so Sam didn't realize that he had been taking more than his fair share until he was too old to go back in time and fix all his oblivious greed. Dean would give Sam a blowjob, Dean would even bend over and let Sam fuck him, but that was because Sam, not Dean had needed it. It was just Dean giving Sam more than his fair share all over again. Dean had been so beautiful before Sam started wanting him, and taking him with all the selfish entitlement of a child.

Brady grinned then dropped down to his knees and reached out to finally finish Sam off, but Sam was soft now and he didn't think he would be able to muster up the enthusiasm to match Brady's for another blowjob.

So he smiled sadly, muttered something sheepish about too much to drink and pulled away. They both tucked themselves back into their pants quietly. Brady washed his mouth out with some mouthwash he kept in his pocket. He generously offered Sam a swig, which he took gratefully.

As he watched Brady gargle the Listerine, Sam decided that Brady was sweet. Brady was thoughtful and vivacious and he was perfect.

For someone else.

To Sam, he would always be just nice. Brady caught him staring and gave him an exaggerated wink, though the suggestiveness was gone. They'd already seen more of each other than most people saw. What was left?

Brady offered to let Sam go out first. As Brady opened the door for him, Sam leaned forward and kissed him again. Brady just let him. Brady let him because they had just had oral sex and for most, healthy, normal relationships, the two went hand in hand.

Brady could be Sam's 'normal.' Brady could be the one that Sam kissed and wanted and taught himself to love. Brady was perfect for everyone else, so why not Sam? Sam tried to love Brady, he really did, even before whatever it was in Brady that cracked. Even before Brady fell apart, Sam tried to love him. Brady was nice, even when he was wrecked. Brady kissed him even when he was a mess.

It was nice, but it wasn't Dean. Dean never broke.

Dean's sexual promiscuity made much more sense once Sam got acquainted with the gay sex community. What happens when you put good looking, intelligent, unattached gay men together in a school campus? Lots of anonymous sex. Loads of it. Everywhere. And most of the participants weren't exactly eager to settle down.

It was the their sophomore year that something snapped in Brady. Frat house bathrooms wouldn't cut it anymore, Brady needed to be out in clubs at parties every night. Brady wasn't drinking for fun anymore; he was drinking to prove a point. He wasn't just hooking up with a couple of boys; he was clearly determined to blow every gay man in Palo Alto and as many of the straight ones that he could manage before his face was beaten into a pulp.

And Sam let himself be led along on Brady's wild bender because Brady insisted and something about watching a man screw and drink himself into oblivion struck a nostalgic note in Sam.

He had learned to stay out of the bathrooms if Brady was in there, just in case Brady was snorting something or sucking someone. He had learned to steal Brady's keys at the beginning of the night otherwise a sloppy, drunken wrestling match would ensue which almost always ended with Brady's half hard dick against his thigh and Brady's lips at his mouth moaning, c'mon, baby. Lets break in the back seat of that car. As if Sam hadn't seen him break it in with a half dozen twinks before.

Sam wasn't really worried, not until the end, at least. He had seen Dean go through at least three of these same benders. Out all night, coming home smelling like sex and cheap alcohol just as dawn peeked under the doorframe. The first of these that Sam could remember started the night of his thirteenth birthday. But Dean would be out for a week, maybe two, spending the day hungover, sometimes nursing a cigarette, before disappearing again around Happy Hour. Then Dean would be back to being Dean and no one would talk about it. Sam should have learned by now; there was Dean, and then there was the rest of the world.

Maybe because Sam hadn't learned his lesson, or perhaps precisely because he had, he followed along with Brady, telling himself that he liked Brady and that his wonderfully idiotic and self destructive friend couldn't get into too much trouble with Sam in tow. Brady started bringing Sam along to the gatherings with cute boys falling over themselves to hit on Sam. And they all did, sooner or later. At one party or dinner or movie night or another, someone's hand would be on his thigh, their eyes would search his for some cue and he knew that all of them were more than willing to wrap their lips around him, hell, probably bend over for him, because he was big and he worked out and he said 'no' most of the time. All of the time, actually. Besides the night with Brady in the frat house, Sam had been perfectly content on his own. He had always been perfectly content on his own. What he had with Dean was something eternal and obsessive and beautiful in all its filthy shame. Sam would never share that with anyone else, and he probably would hate himself if he did.

After a few months, Brady noticed his celibacy and pulled Sam aside at a party after Vincent, a pretty Asian boy, struck out with Sam again.

"Sorry about him, you know how he gets when he takes E." Brady started. Sam laughed and swiped his hand in the air, dismissing the apology.

"I think I can handle myself if he gets a little handsy. What is he, a hundred pounds wet?"

"Some of them gotta diet to keep that twink figure. Keep themselves lookin good."

Sam chuckled before taking another sip of his – whatever was in his cup—Brady thought of himself as a great bartender, but he really just put shots of everything into a cup with cranberry juice. It went over well with the gay scene crowd who liked to get plastered quickly and didn't much mind how. Sam had mastered the ability to not grimace when he took a sip in front of his friend.

Brady narrowed his eyes before looking around to see if anyone could hear them.

"Twinks not your thing?" asked Brady. Sam shrugged. Brady looked him over, "Not Twinks? Circuit? Drag Queens? Bears?"

Sam actually spit out a bit of the sickly sweet drink as Brady said that. Sam wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he laughed, shaking his head, 'no.'

"Jocks?" he asked, "Yeah, you're a regular gym rat. You got some little thing with a trainer or something? Get a happy ending with your work out?"

"Really, Brady, what does it matter?"

"I worry about you 'sall." Said Brady, leaning in and stroking his hands up Sam's thighs, tucking his thumbs into the folded dent where Sam's crotch was. Brady leaned up and kissed Sam, chewed his bottom lip, flicked his tongue over Sam's closed mouth. Sam let him, even leaned into him a bit since the warmth and affection was comforting. Brady pulled away and looked at Sam with narrowed eyes. "You're pining for someone, aren't you? I thought so. Some ex-boyfriend you left behind? Someone waiting for you at home?"

Sam must have drank more than he intended because he felt his eyes mist over and he looked over Brady's head to the dredges of the party, most of their friends having already hooked up or moved on by that time. Sam hated it when he cried.

"No one is waiting for me. I haven't got a home," He whispered and Brady made a soothing 'shhh' sound and tucked Sam's head into his shoulder, stroking Sam's hair.

It wasn't Dean. It was wrong.

Sam pulled away, but Brady was looking at him so sympathetically and, to be fair, Sam was probably drunk.

"I… He and I can't be together. We can never be together. They don't… They'll all hate us. They'll all abandon us."

"Your family?"

"Everyone. Everyone everywhere." Sam said, trying in vain to stop the tears. He hated that he was crying. He hated that he was blubbering to a stranger about secrets too dark for his own father.

"Then they're assholes. Seriously, fuck them. You should love who you're going to love. They can go shove a rod up their ass. No one has any right to make you hate yourself. If they can't accept you, they didn't really love you anyways."

"But he loves them too. He needs them. I don't care but… it would break his heart. It would kill him if they hated him. We can never be happy together. Never."

"This boy did quite a number on you. What was his name?"

"Dean. His name was Dean." That was stupid. Why did Sam do that?

"Dean, huh?" asked Brady, scratching his chin, "He sounds like a real heartbreaker. He your first?"

"My only."

"Wanna change that tonight?" Brady asked, swooping back in and kissing Sam on the mouth.

And Sam didn't know why he relented, but Sam cupped Brady's face and took control of the kiss. He pried Brady's lips apart with his, stood from the barstool and flipped them so that Brady was pinned to the bar, completely at Sam's mercy.

Despite the sudden violence, Brady was recovering at record speed and doing everything in his power to meet Sam, fire for fire.

Dean had fucked a thousand girls and probably as many boys. They weren't too good for Dean, but Dean always treated Sam like glass. Like Sam was something fragile and sweet that couldn't be soiled or broken. Dean always kept Sam at arms length, even when, especially when Sam was balls deep in him. Even when Sam was rutting up against his thigh, Dean never lost control.

Sam had fucking seen Dean with girls, heard him panting, begging, pleading, calling them baby, kissing them so hard so fast so desperate. So needy. Dean was so needy in the arms of a thousand other bodies. But Dean didn't need Sam like Sam needed Dean. Dean didn't need Sam like he needed all those girls in the dark, when he thought Sam was asleep or couldn't hear them from the room. If Sam was so damn precious, why didn't Dean love him like that? Sam was a man, a fucking man, and he wanted to be treated like one.

If only Dean could see him now, rubbing up into another guy, late at night in a not-quite-empty apartment off campus. If only Dean could see his beautiful Sammy on his knees for some other guy. Taking up the ass for some other guy.

That was a wonderfully intoxicating train of thought, Dean, somehow knowing that Sam wasn't a kid, he wasn't a treasure to be protected but a man who knew what he wanted and how he wanted it. A man who wanted to be used.

But Dean would never see Sam. Dean would never see Sam like that because Sam had asked him not to. Sam had asked Dean to try something as close to normal as he could get. Sam had set Dean free to have the family that the three of them never were, to create the home that Sam always wanted for all of them.

Dean would never see this, never see Sam happy or grown or loved. Because Sam had given Dean that clear conscience.

Dean had always made sacrifice look so beautiful. No one warned Sam that it would feel like dying, like drowning, like poison boiling in his gut whenever he thought of Dean. No one warned him that it would never stop aching whenever he thought of Dean and the life they would never have together.

Brady's hands were down his pants now, gripping his ass, searching through folds of fabric for that part of him. A finger found it, small and tight but there and fluttering in response to the heat and touch.

Sam finally wrenched himself from their blur of hands and bodies.

Wrong. It was wrong. It was supposed to be Dean but it would never be Dean and Sam had wanted it that way all along. Would Sam ever feel normal or would he always have Dean in the back of his mind?

"Can't…" he panted, apologetically. He really was sorry. Brady was perfect, even in all his hot mess glory.

"You sure?" Brady pleaded, his voice was still broken, his breath still short, he cupped Sam's dick again, smiling at the hardness of it. "C'mon baby. Please?"

"I'm really sorry," Sam shook his head.

Brady rubbed his fingers across his lips, swollen as they were from Sam's ministrations. "You're kind of a romantic, you know that?" Sam snorted with disbelief. "You like to kiss. You fall in love. You know, I've never had the privilege. You'll probably tell me it's a burden though, won't you? All the boys with the broken hearts always do"

"No…No, it fucking sucks, but I've never wished I felt different. Even the bad isn't bad enough to take away the good. I just wish that it had never been so hard for him. He's beautiful, you know?"

"If he's worth your time, I'm sure he is." Said Brady with a wry smile, "You're special, you know that, Sam? You're a goddamn miracle on legs. Don't ever let them change you."

"Thanks, Brady. You're real special too."

"I know, right?" Brady asked, "But I'm no Dean. C'mon, get all cleaned up. Let's get your drunk ass home. I want you good and sober for tomorrow night."

"What's tomorrow night, again?"

"A little shindig with some pre-med students. We're gonna convert you, Sammy, great mind like that is a damn waste behind a desk."

"Better spent behind a clipboard, is it?" Sam asked with a laugh, relieved to fall back into the easy and familiar argument. Pre-med versus pre-law, the eternal rivalry.

"Now you're getting it!" Brady grinned, looping his arm around Sam's neck. "Besides, I want you to meet my friend."

"Uh-oh. Is this a circuit 'friend,' a twink 'friend,' or a bear 'friend?'"

"Would you get your mind out of the gutter? It's a lady friend. You can go ahead and wipe that shocked look of your face. I have lady friends. This one's name is Jess."

Looks like it's time for me to shamelessly pander for attention. REVIEWS PLEASE!